String Quartet in F, Op 77 No 2 (Haydn); John Adams’s String Quartet; Octet in E flat, Op 20 (Mendelssohn)  

Saint Lawrence String Quartet and the New Zealand String Quartet:

Town Hall, Friday evening 16 October 2009  

This final concert in the 2009 season of Chamber Music New Zealand, was a brilliant ending to the year; and General Manager Euan Murdoch announced the 2010 season, CMNZ’s 60th anniversary year which opens with a concert in the International Festival next March from the great Borodin String Quartet.

The first half belonged to the St Lawrence Quartet, from Canada.

The Quartet in F was the last Haydn completed and though it’s not as familiar as several of those in the immediately preceding sets, it is highly original in character, and in this remarkable performance exhibited qualities that even Haydn might have been surprised by. I suspect that the tonal variety, the pungent expressiveness and the compulsive momentum might have been unusual around 1800. But today, such extremely vivid, and rhythmically and dynamically varied interpretations are almost essential for musicians who want to distinguish themselves from the rank and file.

Certainly, Haydn invites such performance through his pains to avoid the expected, the cliché, the routine, so that the composer’s wit and intelligence found ideal interpreters in these players determined to bring the piece to life in a thoroughly arresting way.

John Adams has gained fame chiefly in the opera house and secondarily the concert hall: he has not written much chamber music. His string quartet, written for the St Lawrence, and first performed in New York in January, shows a gift that will surely inspire other similar commissions. One is impressed by the fecundity of his invention, its profusion and variety and his structural skill in manipulating it; and even more overwhelmed by the exuberance and phenomenal brilliance of the performance that will set a benchmark hard to equal.

Adams’s work was evidence of his genius for creating a substantial and compelling work that maintained its momentum through many moods, marvellously captured by these players.

Adams has moved far beyond ‘minimalist’ style of his early years; he belongs to no particular school and this work was simply evidence of Adams’s individuality and his flair for creating a substantial and compelling work that maintained its momentum through its huge vitality and variety that the quartet .

The New Zealand String Quartet joined the Canadians for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet, possibly the most astonishing creation by any composer in his teens. The arrangement of the parts meant that the St Lawrence Quartet, and especially their first violinist, Geoff Nuttall, rather dominated both by the energy and endless tonal variety of his first violin part, and by his total physical involvement; leg-work that even Michael Jackson might have envied.

The other members of the St Lawrence quartet and the New Zealanders displayed comparable mastery if less physically conspicuous.

The fast movements were both spectacular in their ever-changing rhythmic and dynamic expressiveness; it was a revelatory experience, reinforcing the octet’s place as a singular masterpiece. 

(an extended version of the review printed by The Dominion Post on 20 October)

Vieuxtemps: Viola Sonata in B flat, Op 36; Bax: Viola Sonata (1922)

Helen Bevin (viola) and Rafaella Garlick-Grice (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 7 October 

This recital was by two graduates of the New Zealand School of Music: it was at least illuminating if not exactly revelatory, an opportunity to hear to greatly gifted musicians who have been acknowledged in other countries before they have been listened to and appreciated in their own country – a rather common experience.

The pair began playing together, as Duo Giocoso, in 2008 while they were studying at the New Zealand School of Music, won a scholarship that took them to Britain where they played both at the Edinburgh Fringe and in a lunchtime concert at St Martin in the fields in London. 

Vieuxtemps was the great Belgian violin virtuoso of the generation before Eugène Isaÿe, a contemporary of César Franck, known mainly for his violin concertos. It was interesting to hear a chamber work, carrying the opus number before his last Violin Concerto – No 5, though there was nothing in it that would have surprised listeners of a generation earlier. Nevertheless it’s a very attractive piece, whose romantic quality found a champion in Helen Bevin’s beautiful, rich viola tone; she and Rafaella Garlick-Grice played its generous tunes with phrasing that was delightfully musical, resisting any temptation to conceal its frank sentiment or to belittle its unpretentious, popular character.

The second movement, a Barcarolle, enjoyed a plain melody that might have looked backwards, but the performance conferred on it a certain weight, especially in the last movement where the viola spends much time on the C string.

Bax’s Viola Sonata was the result of his friendship with Lionel Tertis who was largely responsible for turning the viola into an important solo instrument. The first movement has a recognisable English character where the duo created interest with their instinct for the Bax’s musical personality. The second movement was played with energy, abrupt chords from the viola, but never an ugly note.

In the last movement I felt a certain Irish sentiment which was treated rhapsodically, with thick piano chords and a charming pensive melody given to the viola.  

Though such a programme might not have been a particular draw for a paying audience, we must count ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy these free lunchtime concerts of very worthwhile if less known music; however, I gather that the voluntary organizers and their overhead costs seem not always to be appreciated, judging by the amount of koha left by audience members. There’s always scope for greater generosity. 

Goldberg Variations (Bach, arranged by Cowdery); Piano Quintet in A minor (Elgar)

New Zealand String Quartet and Diedre Irons (piano)

Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt. Monday 5 October 2009 

The New Zealand String Quartet have had William Cowdery’s version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations under their belt for a couple of years though this was my first hearing. 

The nature of Bach’s contrapuntal keyboard writing gives almost equal importance to all four voices as the melodies or themes pass from one to another. 

The first impression of the performance is of clarity of lines; played on the harpsichord or piano the several voices are not nearly so distinct, and I found myself delighting in the individual timbres of the four, almost more striking than in most custom-written string quartets.

In addition to the pleasure of hearing the separate voices was that of hearing the inner voices of the quartet – Douglas Beilman’s second violin and Gillian Ansell’s viola, taking a more important part in the fabric than is normally the case with Haydn or Beethoven quartets.  Many of the variations are for two and three parts while the other instrument(s) stand(s) idly by, and it was a treat to hear Beilman’s warm and fluid playing in many of these. The cello is quite prominent in many traditional quartets but Rolf Gjelsten too must have relished making such prominent statements.

The effect was most marked in the canons and fugues, such as Variation 10 when the theme began in the cello and moved up.

Furthermore, the four instruments could obviously create far more interesting dynamic contrasts than is available on the harpsichord, or even on the piano; and they seemed to highlight the varied rhythms though, as I found later when I refreshed my memory with a harpsichord recording, that rhythm was not as piquant and alert.

It is illuminating to have programme notes that draw attention to the time signatures and the dance rhythms of each variation, though I have seen other sets of notes that are rather more detailed. The work was called by Bach ‘Aria mit verschiedenen Veränderungen’ (Aria with diverse variations) – the Goldberg story is doubtless apocryphal – and it is in fact a compendium of most of the dance forms – German, French, Italian, English – that Bach would have known, and there is always the diversion of working out the exact nature of the rhythm of each variation if the work were to become at all tedious – which of course it doesn’t.  

It opens with an Aria, the statement of the melody very slowly. It seemed slower than it does on piano or harpsichord, but I think that was an illusion as a result of the greater tonal variety presented. The four string players thus seemed to extract more of the melodic beauty from it.

On the other hand, there’s always a price to pay. I later listened to Gustav Leonhardt’s harpsichord recording of the work, expecting to find it dry and colourless by comparison. Not at all: even though shorn of repeats (perhaps because of), I found this more monochrome performance thoroughly engaging, like a musical stroll along a windswept coast. At the hands of such a gifted player, the plucked notes of the harpsichord sharpen the rhythmic character, enliven the pulse and substitute rhythmic vitality for the richer timbres of the strings.  While I’d like to add this string quartet version to my ever-growing desert island, I-Pod collection, I won’t be deleting either of the already loaded piano or a harpsichord versions from it.

Elgar’s Piano Quintet could hardly have offered a more different world.

It’s not a piece that seems characteristic of Elgar for he was not a piano composer; yet from the start, the quintet sounds highly idiomatic, the piano part integrated comfortably with the string quartet.

The players approached the beginning with a rather engaging hesitancy which heightened the emergence of the big, very Elgarian, first movement tune which put its stamp on it. With that and later very conspicuous tunes, it’s a wonder the quintet is not better known.  

Nadia Boulanger: Three Pieces for cello and piano, (1915); Brahms: Cello Sonata No 2 in F major, Op 99

Robert Ibell (cello) and Catherine McKay (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 30 September

The first of Nadia Boulanger’s three pieces is marked modéré. Though it’s the only one of the three in a major key, it is calm, of exquisite peacefulness though written nt eh first year of the first World War. It offered the chance to hear Robert Ibell,outside the orchestral or string quartet clutter, as a cellist able to draw the listener into a sound world filled with delicacy and subtle colours. For the cello part enjoyed most of the melodic character of the piece while the piano, just as engagingly played, decorated the music with a rocking motif and supported the delineation of its graceful shape.

The second piece, ‘Sans vitesse et à l’aise’, had an open air feel, though nothing too lively; Boulanger’s debt to Fauré could be heard in the melody here, elusive, fragile, leaving one seeking their prolongation and perhaps repetition, but French art is distinguished by its reticence and economy of expression and Boulanger was the inheritor of that and its transmitter through her many famous pupils (not all of whom followed all her precepts).

The title of the third piece was just as apt as the others: ‘Vite et nerveusement rythmé’; it was a bit louder and more extrovert, certainly a bit agitated, but it broke off for a meditative phase, and later returned to a quick quasi dance in commontime. The highly attractive and persuasive account by both players, sustained throughout its duration, makes one curious about Boulanger’s other music. It is odd that it is the compositions of her sister Lili, who died very young, which have gained more exposure in recent years.

Brahms’ second cello sonata was probably the main draw-card for this recital; so it was for me in anticipation though, in retrospect, the above experience altered things. In all, this was a highly persuasive, beautifully played performance by both musicians, though I was a little bothered sometimes by the imbalance between cello and piano and felt that the piano lid might well have been down in order to allow the cello its due; it was not such a problem in the emphatic and impetuous gestures.

The second movement, affettuoso, was particularly – well – affecting, shifting between careful pizzicato and dreamy legato, with vibrato that was perfectly pulsed. The rise and fall of dynamics, the long crescendi, in the third movement, building towards dark passionate climaxes, and then subsiding to a divine quietness, was the real Brahms. So was the strong playing of the final Allegro molto.

In two weeks we’ve had recitals by violinist and cello plus piano: look for our review of next Wednesday’s concert by viola and piano (Helen Bevin and Rafaella Garlick-Grice) to complete a set of duos for strings and piano.