Category: Reviews – Concerts

NIMBY Opera triumph in Janáček opera

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Cunning Little Vixen by Janáček: NIMBY Opera

Musical Director :Justus Rozemond; Director : Jacqueline Coats;  Kate Lineham, Matthew Landreth, Edmund Hintz, Daniel O’Connor, Barbara Paterson, Stuart Coats,
Chorus/Dancers: Barbara Graham, Felicity Smity, Megan Corby, Frances Moore, Rachel Day, Natalie Hona. Instrumentalists: Claire McFarlane, Margaret Guldborg, Tui Clark, Dillon Mayhew, Catherine Norton

Salvation Army Citadel, Vivian St., Wellington

Friday 27 March  2009

This was my first experience of NIMBY Opera, so I didn’t really know what to expect regarding the company’s capabilities. I’d read about their previous productions – Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, and Lyell Cresswell’s Good Angel, Bad Angel, both of which had garnered some excellent reviews. Nevertheless, considering the size of the venue for Vixen it seemed as though a compromised operatic experience would be the order of the day, however skillfully presented and performed – no full orchestra, for one, no operatic stage, curtain or proscenium arch, in fact almost none of the things that one associates with ‘opera performance’ atmosphere, or at least with things on the normal scale of opera performance.

In the event, nearly all of these potential shortcomings were transformed into virtues, with their own valid operatic/theatrical qualities. It’s true that a stage, a curtain, and a dividing orchestra pit can help create a magical, far-away-land ‘happening-in-a-dream’ ambience if the performances are sufficiently involving – but one can also feel ‘distanced’ by those physical spaces, far removed from the characters and their world, the audience on the outside looking in, as it were. Here, there was no need to look in, because it was happening all around and close at hand. The dimensions of the Salvation Army Citadel auditorium gave the production an intimacy that couldn’t have been easily reproduced in a normal opera house. And of course the opera eminently suited this close-at-hand, intimate setting, with the use of English words enhancing our enjoyment (most of the time!).

In short, here was an operatic experience that I, for one, enjoyed to the full away from many of the normal operatic structures and conventions. I think it was partly this sense of performers ‘stepping out’ from conventional presentation scenarios which helped give the production some of its power and engagement.

I thought I would lament the substitution of a full band with a small ensemble, because Janáček writes so vividly and pungently for orchestra, vesting each scene with very specific ambiences and textures with the help of his orchestration. It’s a tribute to the skill of the music director, Justus Rozemond, that, once the first pricklings of getting used to a smaller scale of sound were over, I hardly missed the full orchestra – obviously something to do with the sounds matching the intimacy of the theatrical situation, but also suggesting that the arrangement managed to convey Janáček’s thematic and rhythmic essences, and sufficient colour to suggest the worlds of imagination the composer wanted us to enter. Again, there was a sense of something happening so closely at hand that one felt physically caught up with it – not exactly Wagner’s concept of the ‘womb of Gaia’, but something quite different, elemental in a completely different way.

The story of the opera is on an intimate rather than a grand scale – a mischievous young fox is kidnapped from her forest home as a cub and taken to the world of the humans. Vixen Sharp-ears, however, is not a fox to be trifled with – she escapes, and proceeds to turn both the local Forester’s life, and the rest of the woods upside-down. It’s a story with a lot of humour, a lot of action, and with some twists, some of which Janáček himself incorporated into the original source-story. This was from a novel by Rudolf Těsnohlídek that was serialized in a Brno daily newspaper, and was brought to Janáček’s attention, as legend would have it, by his housekeeper, whom he caught reading the paper and laughing to herself at the vixen’s adventures.

Janáček made several changes, the most radical of which was introducing into the story the death of the vixen, shot by a poacher. He justified the story-change by saying he wanted to emphasise the cyclical nature of things – ‘death follows life – life follows death’, a premise which of course changes the whole opera from a light-hearted children’s tale into a serious matter involving death. The production emphasizes the cyclical nature of things by depicting the original Vixen, played by Kate Lineham, entering at the end as one of her own cubs – so life is renewed in a heart-warming way.

One of the traditional truisms regarding opera is that performers are there to sing, not to act. There have been numerous instances in the past of famous operatic performers with stunning voices behaving like lumps of lead on stage – I’m sure that was largely because in earlier times the conductor ruled the roost in the opera houses, and the stage directors largely did what they were told and tried not to get in the way, so that everything became subservient to the music. We’ve seen the balance of power shift quite dramatically in those terms – some would say far too much, considering the wackiness and inappropriateness of some opera directors’ conceptions.

But one of the good things resulting from this emphasis on stage production is that singers are now expected to be able to act – and this was one of the great strengths of the present production. Everybody looked, moved and sang completely and utterly in character – a tribute to Jacqueline Coats, the director, Sacha Copland the choreographer, costume designer Rachel More, and of course to the performers themselves. And we were so close that if there had been any weaknesses or discrepancies they would have been uncomfortably obvious.

As the Vixen, Kate Lineham gave what I thought was an extraordinary performance, quite all-encompassing, with acting and movement that fully matched the quality of her vocal performance. She was a Vixen who, despite her sharpish temperament and occasionally deadly intent, warmed our hearts at other times with her sense of fun and her vulnerability. Her interaction with Fox Goldenstripe, portrayed with a fine show of gallantry by Barbara Paterson, was a highlight of the production, both singers playing into each others hands, or should one say, paws! The ‘teenage love’ antics of their first meeting delighted the audience, and was marred only by some over-loud instrumental playing, which circumstance I’ll return to later.

Matthew Landreth as the Forrester gave a strong and well-focused, entirely believable ‘character’ performance, bringing out both the robustness as well as the philosophical side of the character. It was a pity he wasn’t placed further forward for his final aria, so we could have ‘connected’ with his love of the natural world more readily at that point. On the other side of the same fence was the Poacher, played by Stuart Coats (he also took the smaller part of the Innkeeper), whose voice made, for me, the strongest impression of the evening amongst the men – in many ways the ‘alter ego’ of the Forrester, with both a rugged and a sentimental side to his character, singing his folksong-like serenades to his absent sweetheart. Another versatile performer was tenor Edmund Hintz, who bounced between the gravitas of the schoolteacher and the cartoonish machoism of the rooster with relish, his farmyard antics vividly choreographed, and complete with evocative animal noises.

The chorus were required to play a number of roles, from feathered cockerel-cohorts and their offspring, to their enemies, the foxes and their cubs, as well as a host of other animals and human beings. Thanks to on-the-spot choreography, vivid costuming and great singing and acting, they achieved wonders of characterisation with each scene, bringing out the earthiness and comedy of it all, especially during the Vixen’s wedding when there were cries of “Halleluiah!” from all parts of the auditorium.

As I’ve said, I thought the arrangement of the original score for five players by musical director Justus Rozemond was an outstanding piece of work, skillfully and sensitively done. Obviously it needed to be played well to work as it did, and by-and-large the work of the musicians was first-class, with only a tendency to play too loudly detracting from the effect of Janáček’s subtle colourings, and obscuring some of the vocal lines from the singers. The light and shade of the original score was missed at such times, as was the amplitude asked for by the composer at the beginning of Act Three, where the original’s harshness and power just doesn’t come across with a small ensemble.

Small caveats, these, set against one’s warm-hearted enjoyment of the whole. NIMBY Opera can be justly proud of what the Vixen was able to achieve, a welcome alternative view to set against one’s usual preconceptions concerning opera and its production.

The Eroica Trio’s seductive Town Hall concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND – THE EROICA TRIO

Music by Lalo, Villa-Lobos, Schoenfield and Mendelssohn

Erika Nikrenz (piano) / Suzie Park (violin) / Sara Sant’Ambrogio (‘cello)

Wellington Town Hall,

Tuesday 24th March

Described in a preview to the group’s recent Wellington concert as “three Sassy women who put the sex back into symphony”, the Eroica Trio, here in New Zealand on its second tour, charmed a Town Hall audience with its familiar combination of visual glamour and a winning stage presence, playing a sprightly, easy-on-the-ear programme of music by Lalo, Villa-Lobos, Paul Schoenfield and Mendelssohn. I thought the three musicians had to work quite hard to sufficiently project this largely affable, and for the listener, relatively undemanding programme of music throughout the venue’s voluminous spaces, a feat that to their credit they managed to achieve by beautifully-tailored teamwork and impressively sustained concentration upon the task. In none of these works were those grand, impassioned gestures that one finds in the trios of Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak or Shostakovich, statements whose melodies, accents and rhythms leap from the instruments and pin back audiences’ ears, making for unforgettable listening experiences – even the D minor storms and stresses of the finale of Mendelssohn’s work didn’t explore much outside the realm of a drawing-room sensibility.

The concert began with Edouard Lalo’s C minor Trio, an early work (1850), and one of three written for this instrumental combination by the composer. This was a work that, perhaps unfairly, considering its place in the composer’s output, reinforced my opinion of Lalo’s music in general – pleasant, well-crafted stuff, designed to charm and entertain an audience without ruffling anybody’s sense of well-being or delving into recesses suggesting disturbances below the surface. When one turns to the music of Lalo’s almost exact contemporary, Cesar Franck, one is in a diametrically different sound-world of expressive depth of feeling, joyful, passionate and mystical. However, to be fair one would need to hear more of Lalo’s work in this genre, such as the Third, and much later (1880) Piano Trio, before indulging in such grandiloquent comparative judgements! The Eroica brought out the music’s charm and craftsmanship with some beautifully dove-tailed teamwork set against many a beguiling solo, with the ‘cello invariably given the thematic ‘lead-in’ to each movement by the composer.

The Villa-Lobos work is probably better-known as a piece for eight ‘cellos and soprano voice, though it’s been arranged for many an instrumental combination over the years. The composer adored the music of Bach, and paid homage to that great genius by writing nine pieces entitled Bachianas Brasilieras, of which the work played this evening was the fifth. I thought the arrangement (by Brazilian composer Raimundo Penaforte) worked better and better as the piece progressed, particularly the ‘cello’s contributions, and with beautifully expressive work from the strings at the piece’s end.

Café Music was described somewhat disarmingly by its composer, American-born Paul Schoenfield, as “high-class dinner music…which might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall”. This performance began with a roar and continued with a swing, with plenty of leaning-into and -away-from beats, slurring of notes for expressive effect and high-kicking, hip-swinging momentum – music marked by energetic drive throughout, though one could imagine that more variation in tempo would characterise different episodes of the music more tellingly, such as with the characterful and languid violin solo just before the end of the movement.

A ‘bluesy’ piano solo at the next movement’s beginning invited a similarly sultry response from the strings, which didn’t quite happen – I could imagine the response being several shades ‘dirtier’ than the sweet, relative innocence of Suzie Park’s violin playing, though her duetting with ‘cellist Sara Sant’Ambrogio at the reprise of the movement’s ‘big tune’ was lovely, heartfelt stuff. The finale was little short of a full-frontal assault, with the instruments scrubbed, yanked, stretched and twisted, made to sound at their extremes, and the piano scampering along keystone-cops style, occasionally calling the strings to attention before dashing headlong into another orgy of wild exhilaration, everybody hugely enjoying themselves, listeners included!

Mendelssohn’s D Minor Piano Trio promised much, with markings such as the first movement’s Molto allegro ed agitato and the finale’s allegro assai appassionato suggesting something of the dynamism and sharply-etched focus of parts of the composer’s symphonies. Apart from a somewhat rigidly-phrased first rhetorical climax which needed a touch more amplitude to properly tell, the players realised the movement’s ebb and flow skilfully, rescuing the second subject’s initial melodic sentimentality with a finely-judged surge of burgeoning activity. Some of Mendelssohn’s themes, perhaps due to the composer’s amazing technical facility, seem too easily wrought, this aforementioned second subject being a particularly smug example until the dramatic coda, where the theme is spiked with a minor strain, changing its character to one of great agitation.

A sensitive treatment of the ‘song without words’ ambience of the slow movement was followed by a scherzo in the composer’s distinctive tradition, elfin scamperings and insistent patternings keeping the players instruments whispering, bubbling, chattering and occasionally trumpeting (to spontaneous applause from the audience at the end). The finale brought some Sturm und Drang to bear on the proceedings, even if the demons weren’t quite of the disturbing order of, for example, Schumann’s. The music’s drive through various agitations towards the work’s G Major resolution brought out the evening’s best playing from the Trio, committed and thrustful on all fronts. And if I would have rather they’d left the evening’s music-making at that, instead of giving us a somewhat syrupy trio arrangement of Saint-Saëns’ ubiquitous Le Cygne as an encore, it was a view that wasn’t shared by the audience. Anyway, by now the unfortunate bird ought to be well used to such treatment – what price fame!

NZSO with Inkinen and Cho-Liang Lin – Barber’s concerto and Tristan for orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Melodies for orchestra (Body), Violin Concerto (Barber), Tristan and Isolde, a symphonic compilation after Wagner, arranged by Henk de Vlieger

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Cho-Liang Lin (violin).

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 20th March

Though reviewing concerts that are being normally covered by the press was not part of the ‘mission’ of Middle-C, and I did not decide to attend the first of the NZSO’s subscription concerts in Wellington till that afternoon, the temptation to hear Barber’s Violin Concerto, live for the first time (I think), and what Henk de Vlieger had done with Tristan und Isolde, without voices, and in just over one hour, proved too strong.

And I enjoyed the concert so much that a review, perhaps even a panegyric, imposed itself upon me.

Jack Body’s Melodies from the early 1980s opened the programme. Little of his music has been written for orchestra and I relished the chance to hear how he extended his palette to opulent symphonic musical forces.

Body writes that his intention was to ‘create coherence and continuity’ in the orchestral fabric, simply conveying something of the joy and excitement he experienced when he heard the pieces. All the outward marks of excitement – speed, rhythmic energy, and orchestration that is spare but striking, with his idiosyncratic use of percussion – were there, but in spite of a brilliant performance I found little emotional warmth or some kind of spiritual feeling which I’m sure infused the originals, even in the quieter piece from West Sumatra.

Though it was hard to perceive musical relationships, or meaningful contrasts between the three works in the evening’s programme, the two major pieces made the concert.

For most of the 70 years since its composition, the Barber concerto has been regarded in academic musical circles as rather an anachronism if not an irrelevancy. Happily, the disinterment of much of the tonal and attractive music written during the bleak years has restored Barber’s music to the permanent repertoire.

The tunefulness of the first movement is as surprising and beguiling as the lyrical, elegiac second movement. Though the last seems to take off in a direction that has not been prepared for, the whole is a vindication of the continuing relevance of a traditional form.

American violinist Cho-Liang Lin emerged as a balanced and mature musician, an ideal performer of the work through his committed and deeply sympathetic reading that brought it immediately to life. The orchestra played with a conviction and intensity that is being noticed in international reviews of its recent recordings under conductor Pietari Inkinen. Where I was, centre stalls, balance was admirable and the orchestra rarely lay too weightily on the violinist.

The second half comprised an hour-long performance of a ‘Symphonic compilation’ by Dutch musician Henk de Vlieger of music from Tristan und Isolde. Enjoyment of it depended not at all on recognition of where the various leitmotive came from or what they represented in the opera, but it did depend both on freedom from Wagner antipathy and any doctrinaire aversion to such transformations or arrangements. At the end, I was simply surprised that the hour had passed and that I  felt a great, all-consuming satisfaction.

In character, it was like one of Strauss’s longer tone poems – Don Quixote, or Death and Transfiguration perhaps, and the strength of Wagner’s musical inspiration, especially in the consummating Liebestod, compensated for what might be felt as shortcomings in the evolution of this orchestral survey.

A piece of this kind will inevitably press an automatic disapproval button in some listeners who are programmed to fault any kind of tampering with the original character of a great work. I wondered whether I might find that the treatment cheapened or corrupted the essence of the original music, but all I noticed was condensings and bridge passages – where one episode was grafted on to another. De Vlieger succeeded in avoiding anything tasteless or clumsy.

Seven episodes called up various scenes, none as dramatic as the second act love scene in the forest, interrupted by the arrival of King Marke. The music was as self-sustaining as in the opera itself, one of whose most remarkable features is the absence of harmonic resolution at any point till the very end. De Vlieger followed the same path and there were no breaks between sections and the transitions were rather well crafted.

I only had a slightly unfulfilled longing for more passionate, aching expression, perhaps a slower and more undulating pulse, in the love music.

I had wondered whether I would long for singers to emerge after the Prelude, but perhaps my first experience of the work came to my rescue: broadcasts of the orchestral version of the Prelude and Liebestod in Early Evening Concert on 2YC in the early 1950s when I was discovering music as a teenager. As a result, I even remember being disconcerted when I first heard the scene complete with singers. This purely orchestral treatment, so well conceived and played, brought me full circle.

Finally, I was glad I happened to hear about 40 minutes of the later broadcast of the concert on Radio NZ Concert (Monday 6 April). My impressions were confirmed, not only of the success of the musical compilation, but also at the opulence of the NZSO’s performance: its careful dynamic gradations, the swelling of tone in string phrases in the second act love music, the splendour of the brass and the richness of the strings.

Gianni Schicchi in Christchurch, starring Martin Snell and Anna Argyle

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Gianni Schicchi by Puccini. Southern Opera, conducted by Peter Walls, diected by Mark Hadlow with Martin Snell, Virgilio Marino, Grant Dickson, Anna Argyle; players from the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra.

James Hay Theatre, Christchurch Town Hall; Saturday 12 March

Gianni Schicchi is the third part of a trilogy (Il Trittico – Triptych) that Puccini wrote in 1918 and was first performed at the Met in New York in January 1919. It’s the one comedy in the group and the only real comedy that he wrote (La Rondine is an ‘operetta’ rather than a comic opera).

I was surprised to find the auditorium on the Saturday, the second performance, only about half full, perhaps 500. I gathered that the first night has been fairly full, presumably by sponsors and their guests and other free-riders. The audience was somewhat larger on the Sunday when I saw it again. That may have been because the Saturday performance was competing with the Final of the National Concerto Competition with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra next door in the Town Hall. But that might not be the main reason, and I return to the question of the choice of this opera below.

The opera itself, an hour long, occupied the second half of the evening. The first half comprised a recital of opera arias and ensembles: six vocal extracts from various operas. There was no real pretence that this was the company’s first choice, for clearly another short opera, such as most companies would present, would have been normal and might have pulled bigger crowds.

Because the opening performances fell during the Ellerslie Flower Show, the first half was called Blooming Opera, and most excerpts had a floral connection, if sometimes pretty tenuous.

The programme had listed Puccini’s lovely quartet movement Chrysanthemum as the evening’s prelude – certainly highly appropriate, but it was not played.

Grant Dickson sang a sonorous ‘Ombra mai fu’ (a lime tree rather than flowers, but you got the idea), and Virgilio Marino, the Rinuccio in the opera, did the Flower Song from Carmen, a little stiffly. Rachel Doig and Maree Hawtin-Morrow shared the Flower Duet from Lakmé, a pretty blending of voices, and Stu Miles aand Stephen Chambers shared the predictable ‘Flowers that bloom in the Spring’ from Mikado,

More tenuous in the floral context were Anna Argyle’s Maiden and the Nightingale from Goyescas by Granados and Martin Snell’s Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni, a demonstration of polished wit, gesture and timing. All joined in the final ensemble from Figaro.

The director of the production, Mark Hadlow, introduced each item with a few comments about the aria and its opera and about the singer(s). His style seemed vaudevillian rather than in a neutral style that an opera audience might have expected; and the impression was slightly patronising, lending an unneeded amateur tone to the evening.

Unorthodox perhaps, but amusing and engaging. given an audience not much exposed to polished, live opera productions; evidence: breaking into applause a couple of times in the middle of quite well-known arias or duets.

The opera itself was a very considerable success. It was well cast, with strong singers in the main roles, and more than adequate singers – almost all from Christchurch – in the secondary roles. All were well suited to their roles and with musical guidance of conductor Peter Walls, met the demands both of their own roles and the opera as a whole.

The star of the evening, without a doubt, was bass Martin Snell in the title role, a former Mobil Song Quest winner and one of the half-dozen most successful New Zealand singers in the international opera arena today: he is based in Switzerland and has sung in major productions in most of the important houses, including the Wagner festival at Bayreuth. The polish, seriousness, subtlety and clarity of his performance was the critical element in the cumulative comic finale.

The credit for the entire dramatic impact however must go to Mark Hadlow; if he showed uncertainty in presenting the first half, his sure hand as a theatre director shone through in the opera itself. The handling of the aspiring beneficiaries was fluid, natural, sometimes formal in a satirical way, well distributed and balanced around the flexible stage area. He knows that the essential stuff of the comedy is in the words and the music, not in superficial gesture or farce; and the social satire at its heart was all the more sharp and funny because of it.

Southern Opera employed an all-New Zealand cast, apart from the tenor role of Rinuccio, Australian Virgilio Marino, who sang it convincingly.

It struck me that the young tenor, Stephen Chambers, who sang Marco, might have proved a very adequate Rinuccio.

It is an ensemble opera, depending not on strong individual roles apart from Schicchi himself, but on the effectiveness of the groupings of the venal family members, their interaction and their chorus-like dismay at the unfolding reality of the old man’s will. Certain members stood out somewhat: Maree Hawtin-Morrow and New Zealand’s most distinguished living bass, Grant Dickson, as Buoso’s cousins Zita and Simone. Rachel Doig as Nella and Stephen Chambers also caught the ear. Non-family members included the Lauretta of Anna Argyle whose part is small other than the hit tune, ‘O mio babbino caro’. The distinctive Valery Maksymov was Betto of Signa, and both the Doctor and the Notary were strikingly performed by Stu Myles and Sam Abbott.

The orchestra, strangely, was the only weak point, occasionally too loud, covering voices, and sometimes revealing weaknesses in articulation and ensemble. The score had been reduced by Michael Vinten for performance by about 20 players which certainly left players exposed at times, even wind players for whom such exposure is normal.

This may have been the result of the need to share orchestra members with the Concerto Competition.

Both stage and costume designs, by Mark McEntyre and Alistair McDougall, fitted the chosen period – the late 19th century – perfectly, and that shift of 600 years seemed unexceptional, no doubt just as rich in family hypocrisy and greed as any other period. The set, in particular, was ingenious and entertaining, with a revolving bed that was used with studied wit.

Both stage and musical directors were experienced New Zealanders, not a common practice of Christchurch’s predecessor company.

The next step, of course should be the regular engagement of a young assistant stage director to build experience in that area.

 

 

 

A triple-strung harp recital from Robin Ward

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Christopher’s church, Tawa

Thursday 5th March 2009

Robin Ward is carving something of a reputation internationally as an exponent of a rare kind of harp: the triple-strung harp; triple means there are three courses of strings, the two outer ones tuned identically, diatonically, while the middle row supplies the ‘black notes’. It evolved in the 14th century and was supplanted by the development of the pedal or orchestral harp in the 18th century. Robin took a B Mus at Victoria University on the pedal harp under NZSO harpist Carolyn Mills and moved to the baroque harp for a Master’s degree under Euan Murdoch and Douglas Mews. In the course of his studies he became interested in the triple harp which he had to design and build himself by means of research in books, pictures and articles. Because of the lack of triple harp teachers in England he has also had to teach himself the playing technique.

He is now resident in England and was back for a short time in March when he gave this recital in the suburb where he was brought up, and one other in Wellington.

The instrument is much lighter and delicate-toned than its orchestral cousin; clearly, it would have difficulty in an orchestral environment though its voice is quite penetrating and filled the moderate size of the church very well, particularly its middle and upper register; like other harps, the bass strings produce a weaker though warm sound.

My first impression of Ward’s playing was of a musician of wonderful fluency and refined musicality. His playing of renaissance, baroque, folk, 19th century music alike were invested by a keen stylistic sensitivity, attracting particular attention, for example in Bach’s Suite BWV 996 with its tastefully ornamented phrases, .

His programme moved chronologically from three 16th century Spanish pieces and then two arrangements of Dowland part songs.

Apart from the Bach suite, one of those he composed for the theorbo, there were other baroque/classical suites from Robert de Visée and Johann Krumpholtz. Such obscure works only demonstrate how much we owe to the endless explorations of the by-ways of music, either the forgotten contemporaries of the greats, or the exhumation of repertoire of forgotten or superseded instruments, as in this case. It reveals music of very great charm and accomplishment that must stand repeated hearings.

The balance of the programme was of graceful and attractive Irish and Welsh pieces, acknowledging the importance of early harps in the music of the Celtic peoples; and three 19th century pieces: an arrangement of a piano piece by Grandjany, a guitar piece, Capricio Arabe, by Tarrega, and a genuine Air and Variations and Nocturne by Glinka, actually written for harp.

I had not known what to expect from this concert; what I heard quite captivated me both by the variety and charm of the music itself and by the great accomplishment of the executant.

Trans-Atlantic: music theatre piece from Boutique Opera

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Trans-Atlantic: music theatre piece from Boutique Opera, devised and directed by Alison Hodge and Michael Vinten
Where: Saint Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 28 February

The tradition of concocting new operas or music theatre from popular bits of existing operas goes back almost to the beginnings of opera 400 years ago: the word is pastiche.

That’s what Boutique Opera, Wellington’s enterprising little company, now seven years old, has done for its 2009 production. There were three performances in Wellington, 27, 28 February and 1 March, and the following Saturday in Otaki.

Michael Vinten and Alison Hodge made a collection of mainly well-loved numbers from shows by Cole Porter, Ivor Novello, George Gershwin, Noel Coward, Richard Rodgers, nostalgic of the feckless 20s and 30s; great numbers like ‘Someone to watch over me’, ‘I can give you the starlight’, ‘It’s de-lovely’, ‘This can’t be love’, ‘Waltz of my heart’…. For me, it was the several Novello songs that struck a real nostalgic note, particularly evoked the era.

Trilbies and wide-brimmed straw hats, white-topped shoes, long white scarves announced the era clearly enough, though the atmosphere would have been helped with some more subtle and pointed lighting: a fully-lit church is hardly a suggestive setting for the era’s easy-virtue.

However, the aisles of the church were well used though the reason for certain violent chases escaped me.

I was half expecting something resembling a story, though without rewriting the words, that would have been very hard. The reality was a series of numbers that lent authenticity to the setting and generally matched the singer. Events were confined largely to hints of love affairs igniting or falling apart, as dictated by the songs.

It was of course set on board a big trans-Atlantic liner, in the days when the aim of a sea voyage was to get somewhere, albeit to have a good time on the way – the sole aim of today’s cruises. A cross-section of passengers typical of the day was on board, not all very well assorted in terms of appearance, but mostly better than adequate as singers; from aristocrats, a love-sick couple and honeymooners to an assortment of singles, including a theatrical Frenchwoman, a novelist and a matinee idol (Greg Rogan and Andrej Morgan: both good) and the Ship’s Purser (well-cast Jason Henderson): 23 in all.

The singers range from the polished to the passable, but all are directed, by Alison Hodge, with such flair that most excel themselves, both individually and in ensembles. Among the most accomplished were the Honeymooners Barbara Graham and Charles Wilson; the Widow, Nikki Hooper – her ‘They’re writing songs of love, but not for me’ was a high point; Fiona McCabe and Stuart Coats; and as a whole, the chorus was splendid.

There was an excellent, small band of Vinten leading from the piano, with striking contributions from trumpets, violin, cello, and particularly, Murray Khouri’s clarinet.

Most of the songs simply reminded me what a very rich era the 20s and 30s had been for the various genres of musical/light opera/operetta, not only with their durable music but libretti that were witty, frankly sentimental, ironic, generally literate, with a gift for sharp if not profound characterisation, qualities that seem scarce today. It was these qualities that made this show a success, making the tenuous, almost non-existent character of the narrative irrelevant.

The Tudor Consort sings songs of the sun and the moon of all ages

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Friday 20th February, 2009

For years performers of what we regard as “classical” music took an extremely formal and rigid attitude towards live concert presentation. Historical precedents regarding concert-giving, such as the patronage-driven pragmatic baroque example, the chaotic classical performance era and the flamboyance of the romantic age were all brought to heel during the nineteenth century by martinet-like reactionaries such as Hans von Bulow and Clara Schumann, whose loathing of any extra-musical elements in concert-giving spawned an age of ritualistic formality which reached its apogee in the mid-twentieth century.

Concerts stopped beg pragmatic, chaotic or flamboyant affairs, and developed an ethos of elitist worship of “holy art”, for which one dressed and behaved accordingly. Even today, classical musicians still mostly cling to the formal dress and “pure” music-making presentations that were entrenched for much of last century’s concert-going – rather like the old Catholic Latin Mass, one could go to a classical concert anywhere in the world and obey a pre-ordained code of dress and behaviour and feel completely at home with the proceedings.

More recently, musicians and impresarios have begun to venture away from a purist approach to classical music performance, with interesting results – one thinks of things like violinist Nigel Kennedy’s presentation of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” Op.8 concerti and various modern music-theatre treatments accorded works like the Bach Passions.

Bringing more theatrical elements such as lighting and movement into traditionally static musical presentations isn’t as new as one might think – after all, Haydn did it back in the eighteenth century with his “Farewell” Symphony – but such innovations are more associated with “new” or contemporary music performance. So, it was refreshing and stimulating to encounter the Tudor Consort’s creative evocations of sun and moon, day and night, through imaginative lighting and effective movement, for their Songs of the Sun and Moon presentation at the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University.

Another element infrequently associated with concert presentation, though again, by no means unknown, is the spoken word. For this concert, it was an interesting and effective idea to intersperse readings, properly and winningly delivered by various Consort members, of a variety of poems among the musical items similarly celebrating the juxtaposition of sun and moon, and day and night. It seemed to me that the solo speaking voices were successfully able to create alternative kinds of musical inflections which contrasted pleasingly with the sung items.

The concert began dramatically, with the Consort members entering carrying lighted taper-like torches, suggesting a monastic-like atmosphere in which to perform the opening item, an Introit Illuxerunt, which featured deliciously sinuous lines of sound, seemingly floating towards us across the ages in the semi-darkness. Illumination was then forthcoming with Longfellow’s poem Sunrise on the Hills which preceded a beautiful Easter hymn by Orlando de Lassus, The dawn’s light reddens, one whose antiphonal effects played with a kind of “concerto grosso” for voices mode, setting solos, and smaller groups against the full choir. Set guilelessly against such antiphonal skill was Katherine Mansfield’s charmingly direct child’s poem about the sun, accompanied by ambient lighting reflecting the shifts of perspective suggested by words and music.

William Walton’s setting of St. Francis of Assisi’s Cantico del sole began with the utmost tenderness, gradually radiating gentle warmth, before irrupting jazzily, lines thrusting jaggedly upwards, then grasped by the composer into tightly-worked handfuls of harmonies that never lost their grip throughout. The voices attacked the upward thrustings fearlessly, while keeping their timbral poise and harmonic direction admirably.

Walton’s visceral physicality contrasted tellingly with the other-worldliness of fellow-Englishman Thomas Tallis, whose shortish, but evocative O nata lux de lumine almost immediately had its listeners in thrall in this performance, despite a slightly uncomfortably-tuned harmonic moment towards the end.

Further contrast was in store with David Hamilton’s Lux aeterna, music with Ligeti-like lines spaced-out across vistas, tones melting into glissandi, and clustering together for warmth and companionship, creating some exquisite colour-changes. After such kaleidoscopic riches, the Gregorian Chant “Alleluia – Candor est lucis aeternae” was like a plunge into cool water, with the long, sinuous lines like subterranean undercurrents, timelessly undulating, and with a quality that seemed at once both to beseech and command. The Goethe poem which followed returned us to a world of sentiment and bourgeoise romance!

After an “Evening Song” by Rheinberger, richly and sonorously delivered, the choir turned its attention to Holst’s richly-conceived “The Evening Watch”, a work couched in appropriately mystical tones and harmonies, characterizing the poet Henry Vaughan’s dialogue between the body and the soul. Beginning with a tenor solo, the piece explores in places a world so still and transparent of texture that one catches one’s breath in order to listen, before the musical denouement swells like a sunrise towards the end. It was all nicely managed by the Consort, if a little “reined in”, lacking for me that last ounce of fervour and abandonment which would have overtaken our sensibilities as listeners completely. But the delightfully wry Ben Jonson poem that followed made for a more coherent flow as a result of this circumspection, difficult though it was for some of us to get Britten’s famous setting of the verses our of our heads when listening to the speaker.

The two settings which concluded the presentation seemed to draw whole worlds of time and space together, the Tallis Hymn To Thee Before the Close of Day ageless and immediate at one and the same time in its appeal, while the Ligeti setting of verses characterising Night and Morning exploring both the psychological “interior” of night as a human metaphor, and the tumbling externals of daybreak, complete with raucous cock-crowings and awakening bells – a brilliant and radiant way to conclude a concert..

Overall, the presentation was a great success for the Tudor Consort and Michael Stewart, considering the challenges set by the programme, plus the extra distractions afforded by the introduction of diverse elements. If very occasionally a tone sounded a shade raw, or a harmony wasn’t honed to quite the level of the Consort’s usually impeccable standards, it didn’t impair our appreciation of that sense of interaction the musicians sought to convey between natural cycles of things and the music that sprang from their inspiration.

Soprano recital with baroque oboe: Rowena Simpson and Samantha Owens

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Works by LEGNANI, D.SCARLATTI, HANDEL (arr. Babell) and KUSSER

Rowena Simpson (soprano), Samantha Owens (baroque oboe), Emma Goodbehere (‘cello), Douglas Mews (Harpsichord)

St. Andrew’s on the Terrace

Wednesday 18th February

A most engaging programme, this, mellifluous and varied, and expertly performed by soprano Rowena Simpson, with her instrumental partner, baroque oboist Samantha Owens, and their sterling continuo duo cohorts, Emma Goodbehere (‘cello) and Douglas Mews (harpsichord). I had not previously heard a note of music written by either Angelo Domenico Legnani (1663-1700), or Johann Sigismund Kusser (1660-1727) – or “Cousser” as he was known in France., so the concert was an education for me as well as a delight. Legnani’s Cantata “Chi sa dove e la speranza” is a setting of a highly over-wrought text concerned with love, despair and grief, which the music and the performance illuminated with spirit and skill.

Rowena Simpson’s light but agile soprano gained in strength and confidence as episode followed episode, with florid runs capped by pinging top notes, and with Samantha Owens’ beguilingly-voiced oboe complementing the singer with both shared and contrapuntal lines. Not every turn of phrase was wholly accurate in pitch but the spirit of the music was wonderfully stirred and shaken throughout., the continuo of Emma Goodbehere’s ‘cello and Douglas Mews’ keyboard providing admirable support.

Douglas Mews then gave us the well-known “Cat’s Fugue” by Domenico Scarlatti, giving us a short illustrated explanation of the title before playing the work proper, which both entertained and enlightened his audience. This was a cat whose keyboard figurations gave a sense of the animal hardly being able to believe its own ears at the sounds, whose stepwise progressions then developed into wonderfully labyrinthine complexities before finding their way through to the end once again – a nice performance.

William Babell’s “arrangements” of opera arias and overtures were represented by a transcription of an aria from Handel’s Rinaldo – uncommonly civilised keyboard sounds, working up a bit of energetic contrast in a middle section, but ultimately confirming Charles Burney’s verdict that Babell’s arrangements “astonished ignorance…at small expense” – still, Douglas Mews enjoyed himself thoroughly and delighted us accordingly.

My education was advanced further by hearing Johann Sisimund Kusser’s music, a selection of arias from an opera Ariadne, dealing with the well-known story of the daughter of King Minos of Crete and her lover Theseus, the Athenian prince who overcame the monstrous Minotaur in the labyrinth. The music’s considerable demands enabled Rowena Simpson to demonstrate her skills as a singer developed during nine years of study and performance based in The Hague Royal Conservatoire, and various engagements throughout Europe.

Kusser’s vocal writing demands considerable flexibility and agility, with frequent treacherous leaps and large reserves of breath, and both singer and oboist were up to negotiating nearly all the music’s requirements without mishap, even if some of the awkward intervals proved difficult to properly “pitch”. Emma Goodbehere played a ‘cello transcription of one of the arias with Samantha Owens, ‘cello and oboe dancing nicely together, fleet-of foot and bright-eyed.

A smallish audience was captivated by the music and its performance, and saluted the performers at the concert’s conclusion with great enthusiasm – a promising beginning to what appears to be a year’s thoroughly worthwhile music-making at St. Andrew’s.

Adam Chamber Music Festival at Nelson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Adam Chamber Music Festival (A selection of events from the Festival)

Nelson, Marborough, Motueka, Golden Bay  

23 January to 7 February 2009

Cynics often remark, a propos of the hoo-hah surrounding ‘world premieres’, that second performances, like second editions of novels, are much rarer than first ones. So the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson has already entered the sphere of the remarkable by reaching its tenth.

It began in 1992, the brainchild of New Zealand String Quartet second violin Doug Beilman and NZSO violinist, the late Stephen Managh, and cellist James Tennant. The ambition then was for annual festivals but after the second festival, in 1993, it has prospered as a biennial event with the continued huge support from the Adam Foundation.

The artistic management has now moved to two of Beilman’s colleagues, Helene Pohl and Gillian Ansell. In the past there have been some famous and exciting ensembles and soloists from around the world: few more so than the Prazak Quartet, one of the world’s greatest string quartets; it also remains an important date in the diaries of many leading New Zealand, Australian, American and other musicians.

The festival’s administration, at first in the hands of Cindy Flook with logistic support from her husband, landscape architect Ron, has been assumed this year by Wellington music administrator Roger Lloyd. It is also necessary to acknowledge the many years of dedicated guidance by chair of the Festival’s Trust, Colleen Marshall.

 

Mendelssohn and More II

Beethoven and Mendelssohn Quartets: respectively Op 132 and Op 13, in A minor

New Zealand String Quartet, Prazhak Quartet

St John’s Methodist Church, Monday 2 February

The 1pm concert at St John’s on Monday featured both quartets in a special programme offering an example of Mendelssohn’s devotion to his predecessors. Having heard the first quartet, Op 12, on the Sunday, a work in which Beethoven’s influence is clear enough, this concert was specifically devoted to playing Beethoven’s Quartet in A minor, Op 132 on which Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No 2, Op 13 was modelled.

Gillian Ansell spoke about the thematic and spiritual relationship between the two works and the New Zealand String Quartet began with the Mendelssohn. It couldn’t have been written by Beethoven even though only a year or so younger than Beethoven’s, in 1827, the year of Beethoven’s death. But it was by an 18-year-old, a composer 40 years younger, and its spirit was of a later era. In place of the great slow movement in Beethoven’s quartet, Mendelssohn’s Adagio has a somewhat sentimental feel, even though there is weight and it is meditative in a way that few young men of his age would manage. In the NZSQ’s hands it was affecting nevertheless. It’s as if the young composer whose compositional skills were already astonishingly mature, knew what it should be like but lacked the years of disillusion and frustration, and spiritual ecstasy, that fed Beethoven’s late works.

Given all that, this was a very significant performance by the New Zealand String Quartet, the fruit of some years devoted to study of Mendelssohn’s chamber music. It was generous to give the Beethoven to the Prazak Quartet, for it gave the audience the chance to hear them in one of the great masterpieces, in a performance that was a study in Beethoven’s expression of unimaginable emotion: the wit, flippancy, torment, spiritual power equalled by hardly any other composer before or since.

Mendelssohn hardly scratched the surface of all that, and the Prazak Quartet had the key to it. It was yet another Nelson concert that ended with the audience, emerging into the midday sun, bemused and many without words.

Coda

There was a concert at Motueka on Monday afternoon, 2 February, by American guitarist, David Tanenbaum. It was the most disappointing concert of my festival and I concluded that he was having a bad day.

I left Nelson on the Tuesday of the second week; the festival continued till Saturday, 7 February, with several great concerts to come: Mendelssohn’s Octet and his Quartet Op 18; another Piers Lane concert, repeating in part his Blenheim one; the Prazak in Blenheim repeating the Dvorak Quintet plus Haydn’s Emperor Quartet; the Prazak Quartet and others in Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, and York Bowen, Schubert, Webern; a New Zealand programme with Farr, Whitehead, Rimmer and Ian Whalley featuring Richard Nunns on taonga puoro; Schubert’s String Quintet in C and a grand finale including Tchaikovsky, Kenneth Young, Haydn and Bartok.

Adam Chamber Music Festival, Nelson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mendelssohn and More I: Music by Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, and Schumann

Prazhak Quartet, Piers Lane (piano), Rolf Gjelsten (cello), Jenny Wollerman (soprano)

Nelson School of Music, Sunday 1 February

The first phase of the mini-Mendelssohn festival featured the Prazak Quartet, Piers Lane and other musicians. Cellist Rolf Gjelsten was the first of the others, playing Mendelssohn’s Cello Sonata, Op 38, with Piers Lane; it’s a wonderful, ripe, joyous work of fearful difficulty. Mendelssohn is in his characteristic scherzo vein right from start; the score, filled with melody, drives both players through high-speed, finger-breaking gymnastics. The quintessential Romantic, even with its Bachian echoes, appears in the Adagio where the players met the sonata’s demands, not exactly with ease, but leaving both audience and themselves breathless.

Piers then played four Songs Without Words, perhaps to recover his composure, with sparkle and affection. The concert was as much about Mendelssohn’s musical milieu as about him, and we next heard Jenny Wollerman singing three songs each by Felix and his sister Fanny. Her songs were charming enough, as sung with simple clarity by Wollerman, but they lacked the assurance and polished melodic and expressive genius of her brother.

They included Frage, Die Liebende schreibt and ended with the very fine Sukeika, the ecstatic quality of which Wollerman expressed with conviction. The String Quartet, Op 12, was played by the Prazak Quartet. It’s the mark of the most gifted players that they can infuse a work that is not in the ‘great’ class with a depth of feeling and sense of the inevitable that seems to raise it almost to the level of Mozart and Beethoven whose influence in this work is overt. That they did from its very opening phrases: glorious ensemble, each instrument lending its own colour and exact weight to the balance of the whole.

Schumann’s most inspired chamber work, the Piano Quintet, Op 44, had its connection with Mendelssohn through his playing the piano part at its premiere, when Clara, who would have played it, was pregnant. This too was performed by the Prazak Quartet with Piers Lane and, to my prejudiced ears, demonstrated Schumann’s superior creative gifts, through the strength and individuality of melody, driven by a rare musical impulse that was also guided by sure feeling for shape and all the elements that hold an extended structure together.

This performance left me with the confirmation that its finale is simply one of the most thrilling things in the chamber music repertoire.