Category: Reviews – Concerts

Extraordinary SMP Ensemble Commemorative Concert missing a part but nevertheless packing a punch

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The SMP Ensemble presents:
NEW WORLD, NEW BEGINNINGS

The second of a pair of concerts given to mark
the 75th Anniversary of the arrival of the Polish Children
in New Zealand at Pahiatua, in November 1944

ANDRE TCHAIKOVSKY – Trio Notturno
LOUISA NICKLIN – III:RE
HANNA KULENTY – Cradle Song
KAROL SZYMANOWSKI – Songs of an Infatuated Muezzin

Members of the SMP Ensemble

Barbara Paterson (soprano) / Monique Lapins , Tristan Carter (violins)
Elliot Vaughan (viola) / Ken Ichinose, Jack Hobbs (’cellos)
Simon Eastwood (double-bass) / Gabriela Glapska (piano)

St Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 17th November, 2019

Woe betide the hapless reviewer who, amidst his domestic rough-and-tumble, glances distractedly and approximately at a schedule before hotfooting it along the roads and down the pavements to a concert, thinking he’s in plenty of time, only to find that he‘s misread the actual starting-time of the event, and has arrived half-an-hour late! The above explanation, I trust, entirely incriminates the said reviewer, who needs must take his punishment in the form of a public confession, hereby proffered amid the most shameful of feelings and regretful of expressions!

More the pity that I had been looking forward to hearing the programme’s opening item, by dint of having been in a ritualistic sense, several steps from greatness in the actual person of the piece’s composer, Andre Tchaikovsky, who had been “a close friend of a close friend” of mine in, of all places, Palmerston North, but whom I unfortunately never actually got to meet to exchange words with! I do remember seeing him play once in Wellington with the NZSO during 1975, and actually bought an LP of him playing a Mozart concerto with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, at around that same time.

So, red-faced and abashed, I presented myself at the admissions desk AFTER the Tchaikovksy Trio Notturno had finished, not wanting to burst in and distract listeners who had taken more care and trouble than I to arrive at the correct time, and thus deserving totally uninterrupted communion with the music! The players involved in the performance of the first item, Monique Lapins, Ken Ichinose and Gabriela Glapska, had departed, and as I got to my seat, four different musicians appeared on the platform – Tristan Carter, violin, Elliot Vaughan, viola, Jack Hobbs, ‘cello, and Simon Eastwood, double-bass – to play the concert’s second item, Louisa Nicklin’s III:RE.

A recent graduate of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music, Louisa Nicklin has already demonstrated her creative range and versatility as composer and performer – a number of her contemporary classical pieces have already been performed and recorded by professional groups and ensembles, including both the NZSO and China’s Shanghai Philharmonic – but she also writes and performs popular songs as a soloist and with the band No Girl. From the title of the work we were about to hear, one might have supposed that III:RE was the third in a series, as the SOUNZ website lists a previous composition of Nicklin’s as I:RE (a piece for solo ‘cello) – however, I wasn’t able to find a reference to any work of hers with the name II:RE.

A soft, nostalgic sostenuto-like “presence” began the work, redolent for me of the buzzing and droning of distant aeroplanes, the tones and timbres drifting lazily to the ear. These sounds were overtaken by irruptions, the dronings intensified and augmented by deeper tones whose textures by turns sweetened and then curdled, the different instrument lines coalescing and reforming to evoke different states of being.

Late-Beethoven-like chordings coloured the soundscapes, occasionally exposing the ghostly-voiced harmonics of the double-bass, before the instruments wonderfully “reversed” their textural qualities, as if buildings were suddenly turned back-to-front, or things flipped over to reveal their undersides – the viola droned a single note before suddenly leaping skywards, joined by a violin playing a soft, ethereal harmonic. Not to be out-manoeuvred, the ‘cello and double bass filled their own stratified space, enabling a kind of structure, and developing what I could feel as a kind of empathy for the music’s moment of time, at once registering its passing and capturing and holding fast its essence. The resulting sounds celebrated both the composer’s remarkably-focused creation of a uniquely-fused sequence and its outcome, and the players’ concentration and almost alchemic rendering of a treasurable “moment of being”.

Following this came Hanna Kulenty’s “A Cradle Song”, played by the trio of musicians who had performed the Tchaikovsky work which began the concert – Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (‘cello) and Gabriela Glapska (piano). Polish-born Kulenty trained originally as a pianist, but while still in her twenties became a free-lance composer, and soon established herself as a “leading figure in the Polish composer’s scene”. Dating from 1993 “A Cradle Song” is a relatively early work, though Kulenty had already made her mark with her 1985 work for orchestra “Ad Unum”, one which made an enormous impact on what was then a largely male-dominated realm of composition, so that a well-known Polish critic heralded his review of the work with the words “Gentlemen, hear and tremble!”

Kulenty’s work began almost casually, the sounds wrought from the air, it seemed, with the cello sounding a single note, but including undulations at the phrase-ends which could have been likened to a “mantra”, the repetitions suggesting the act of breathing or the pulsing of blood. The pianist played attenuated chords, shaped as a rising and falling away of intensities, the cello taking up the “mantra-like” figure again and joined by the violin, the two playing the folk-like decorations as a kind of canon, augmented by the piano’s chordings. What focused intensities these players drew from this sequence! – stepwise falling figures, reworked canonic passages, and echoings of phrases all contributing to a somewhat desolate ambience.

Something had to give, and the string players took the initiative, galvanising the piano into hammered-out rockfalls of sound, interwoven with skittery, diaphanous about-weavings and motoric repetitions of motifs, a cataclysmic “nightmare-ride” to an imagined kind of abyss, exciting for listeners in a kind of voyeuristic way, given that we might as well have been conscious spectators of some unfortunate soul’s horrific dream! What ghoulish dive-bombings of chromatic terror from the strings! – what lurid cries of terror and anguish instigated by the piano! The notes became a tolling, bell-like portent which eventually silenced the strings’ pitiless descents, and allowed the ‘cello to finally reintroduce a variant of the music’s folk-like opening, to which the violin responded, tones glistening and sighing, a descending angel’s serenade, bringing hard-earned peace at last…..

It was left to soprano Barbara Paterson together with pianist Gabriela Glapska, to complete the evening’s music, with an extraordinary set of songs written by Karol Szymanowski, Songs of an Infatuated Muezzin. The texts for these songs were written by the poet Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980), the undertaking being one of several projects in collaboration with Szymanowski, including his writing the libretto for the opera King Roger (1918-24) and the texts for Trzy kolysanki Op.48 (Three Lullabies, 1922), as well as providing translations of poetry by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore for the Vier Gesange Op.41 of 1918. Szymanowski was inspired by his pre-First World War travels throughout Sicily and North Africa to explore and absorb Islamic culture, and reflect it in his music of the time and the years immediately following. The texts of the songs are not renderings of actual calls made by a muezzin, but poems created by Iwaszkiewicz intended to give an impression of the calls – the poet had intended to set them to music himself, but his initial ideas, which he showed to Szymanowski were transformed by the latter to an extent that the poet by himself could never have realised. So it was that these songs came into being.

The opening song, Allah, Akbar (translated as “Allah is great”), began with the title’s invocation, Barbara Paterson’s voice magically soaring over the piano’s delicately-wrought tapestries, the singer’s tones impulsively varying the lines,  here floating the sound on high and there creating a frisson of melismatic emotion. Gabriela Glapska’s playing kept the music’s trajectories steady, allowing the voice to create a kind of tension between fervour of worship and smouldering earthly passion, intertwining thoughts of both Creator and the Beloved – “the sound of my voice sent towards Heaven in praise of Allah might somehow awaken you”….the delicacy of the song’s opening and its  “awakening” reference suggested that this might be an early morning prayer.

A whimsical, “walk-in-the-woods”-like piano solo began the second song O, ukochana ma! (O, my Beloved), bringing us to an impassioned, almost distraught figure wrestling with a great longing in the midst of a vast and lonely space. The vocal attack at the beginning of each phrase was exemplary, with the singer’s beautifully-focused tones moving organically throughout from short-lived composure to volatility, and with both musicians so fetchingly realising the melismatically-repeated Debussian phrase towards the end. By contrast, the following song Ledwie blask slonca zloci dachy wiez (The rising sun has barely gilded the tower-spires) gave us wraith-like tones from the piano at the outset which burgeoned into deeply portentous fetchings from the depths, festooned by great trills, the music seemingly at the mercy of great emotion, the singer’s voice poised and feather-like as her words described the rising sun’s first rays. Voice and piano rolled with the emotion of the next phrase – “Awake, oh beloved, and send your first smile with the rising sun!”, before the music sent both into a kind of trance-like entwinement, a floating vocal line borne aloft by ecstatic, trilled fragments of pure impulse – remarkable!

The ensuing W poludnie (At noon) began innocently enough with both singer and pianist inviting one another to rhapsodise, though before too long the singer’s gentle evocations of the city’s noonday heat and rippling green pools were energised by the pianist’s increasingly florid and excitable figurations, the muezzin aroused by the thoughts of his beloved taking off her clothes to bathe. Overcome by such transportings, the muezzin found himself recovering, at the next song’s beginning O tej godzinie (At This Hour) from the trance-like sleep his imaginings most likely induced – the piano’s rise-and-fall pattern and the singer’s beautifully-judged contourings of the vocal line suggesting the whole of the town asleep, whether at siesta-time, or later at night, the serenity then rudely broken into by the piano’s call to action and the singer’s decalamatory urgings to people, young and old to rise and go about their business. How sultry and evocative, then, were the characterisings by both voice and piano of the “beloved”, “nestled in dreams” – the soprano’s highest notes fearlessly and evocatively sounded, along with the piano’s Ravelian colourings, conveying the utmost gentleness and tenderness.

Alas for love, passion and ecstasy! The concluding song of the cycle,  Odeslas w pustynie (You departed) straightaway flung bare, despairing piano notes across the soundscape, as the muezzin confronted the loss of his ”Beloved” (whether to  death, or a different form of absence, the text doesn’t actually say, though the words convey imagery that’s powerful and suggestive – “in dry sands of the Western Desert you immerse your body”). As she had done throughout the whole cycle, Barbara Paterson again simply “owned” these words, perhaps with intensities that in places pushed the voice to its limits, but with the effect  that we who heard her “lived” those emotions just as palpably – and with Gabriela Glapska’s equally involved rendering of the piano part matching and mirroring her singer’s identification with the music, the performance by the duo made for a uniquely memorable experience. It was doubtless a “stretching to the limits” of the age-old idea of “beauty is truth, truth, beauty”, but in doing so defining how I most want to hear the music performed that I love.

 

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The Tudor Consort in remarkable performances of great poly-choral masterpieces from the 16th and 20th centuries

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart
‘Music for a Great Space’

Striggio: Ecce beatam lucem
Frank Martin: Mass for Double Choir
Giovanni Gabrieli: Omnes genes plaudit and Jubilate Deo
Ockeghem: Deo Gracias
Tallis: Spem in alium (the ‘40-part motet’)

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Saturday 16 November, 7:30 pm

On successive Saturdays the Cathedral of St Paul has hosted quite major choral concerts, performing some of the greatest choral works. Much as it’s important to be exposed to compositions of our own time, I feel that there’s a tendency for musical bodies in all genres to be unduly burdened by an imagined obligation to perform contemporary music, most of which is listened to from a sense of obligation rather than an urge to enjoy the emotional qualities of music that’s stood the test of time.

These two recent concerts, by Cantoris and The Tudor Consort, have let us hear masterpieces that have attained that rank over the years through intrinsic qualities.

This concert by The Tudor Consort was inspired by two ideas: another performance of Tallis’s wonderful Spem in alium (this was the choir’s fourth performance) and another choral work that employs many parts: Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir. Tallis 40-part composition was inspired by a motet by Alessandro Striggio (who was thirty years Tallis’s junior), Ecce beatam lucem as a result of Striggio’s visit to London in 1566/67. The Tudor Consort had sung the Striggio motet along with the Tallis, as here, at a concert in the Sacred Heart Cathedral in July 2011.

40-part choirs competing
So we started with Striggio. But first, we were introduced to a discreet instrumental accompaniment, in the shape of three sackbuts (Jon Harker, Peter Maunder and Matt Stein) and a violin (Rebecca Struthers); sackbuts (ancestor of trombone) were spread from side to side, behind the singers while the violin was on the far left, in front. Even though their contribution was discreet, it did make a gesture towards Striggio’s intentions.

Striggio 
According to Wikipedia, in a Bavarian performance of Ecce beatam lucem in 1568, instruments included eight each of flutes, violas, trombones; a harpsichord and bass lute. And it also noted that the four choirs were spatially separated; at this performance, the distinctions between the choirs could have been clearer, but the point of the composition was, after all, to create a kind of opulent, seamless performance that didn’t draw attention to individual parts. In contrast to the differently distributed pattern of singers in the Tallis, here the sound was completely homogeneous and there was no point in trying to locate voices.

My 2011 review in Middle C of The Tudor Consort’s performance of both the Striggio and the Tallis, recalled that the music to be performed had stimulated such interest that the Sacred Heart Cathedral was overflowing and the unusual step was taken to open the organ gallery above. The crowd might have been partly the result of David Morriss on RNZ Concert’s Classical Chart speaking about a CD sitting at No 1 on the Chart: the motet by Alessandro Striggio, performed by I Fagiolini.

Browsing, as one does, on YouTube, I came across this comment from a listener 10 years ago about the Striggio motet:

“… after hearing this work over and over again, I feel surrounded, uplifted, and caressed by it. I believe I like this work even better than the more famous Spem in Alium of Tallis, which of course was based on it. This is a divine, heavenly piece – truly worthy of the words. Absolutely astounding! No wonder it caused a sensation in Tallis’ England.”

What more can I say!

So this was in striking contrast to the distribution of the singers in the Tallis, at the concert’s end, where the choir members encircled the audience.

Tallis 
The Tudor Consort’s first performance of Spem in alium was in 1992, under the founding conductor Simon Ravens; the second, marked the 20th anniversary of the choir’s foundation, in 2006 when Simon Ravens returned to participate in the celebration. (I reviewed both, in the Evening Post and Dominion Post, respectively); and the third performance of Spem in alium was in July 2011, and I also reviewed that, in Middle C.

The cathedral can, as it did for last Saturday’s Cantoris concert, present problems, but music of this kind, composed in long slowly evolving lines and harmonic density seemed perhaps to benefit from the acoustic. And this smaller choir, consisting generally of more polished, professional voices, also benefited from more rehearsal. Anyway, a comparison was hardly possible, for the Striggio was sung with the choir in a conventional formation at the front while the singers in the Tallis were spread around the all sides of the audience which created a very different aural picture.

The spreading of the choir around the cathedral made a dramatic difference to the experience. For me, sitting fairly close to the right side, it was interesting to hear the singers close to me much more clearly than those 40 metres away, on the other side. Listeners in the middle would have heard a more balanced performance. However, it was fascinating to hear the way Tallis had planned the listening experience by being aware of the music passing around the circle clockwise and then anti-clockwise and all the other imaginative devices he used.

Nevertheless, there was enough common ground to make it clear that both were masterpieces, beautifully sung, that touched the human spirit and the emotions very deeply.

Frank Martin’s Mass for double choir  
The choir was rearranged for the Franck Martin Mass: men behind and women in front, across the front of the choir stalls. I was relying on a degree of familiarity through a live performance by the Bach Choir in 2010 at St Mark’s church, by the Basin Reserve: I suspect my first live hearing.

It has been speculated that Martin chose to employ a double choir because an early musical experience had been Bach’s St Matthew Passion which also employs double choral parts. That might explain the vocal arrangement, but its real musical roots lie with Renaissance polyphony and even medieval plainsong: another reason why the contrasting music at this concert was chosen and created such a hugely satisfying experience.

The work is very intricately composed, with attention to word meanings as well as to the spiritual sense of the texts, and there are constant changes of dynamics and rhythms. There was a lightness and delight in the Kyrie eleison that suddenly became excitable with ‘Christe eleison’; and it continued, as the Kyrie always does, to create its own varied textures and emotions from these few words. But this is a setting like no other that one has heard (‘one’ meaning me). The Mass was broken up after the Gloria, interspersed between the motets by Gabrieli and Ockeghem.

The Mass is unique in the unusually human interpretations of the words. There’s a simplicity and directness in the expressive gentleness in the rather prosaic language of the Credo, as the message passed from innocent high voices to matter-of-fact basses. After the slow lament of ‘passus et sepultus est’, the sudden, excitable women’s voices surprise with ‘Et resurrexit tertia die’. Yet another more intimate mood takes over with the ‘Credo in spiritum sanctum’. These features characterised the whole work, till at the Agnus Dei a peaceful light shines through, couched in sounds that were remote from the more common, deep piety that darkens much liturgical music through which the story is told, in rich harmonies involving all eight voices that alternate in what can be considered the melody line: it slows and dims and gently fades away.

There are no signs of atonality or other 20th century fashions; in fact the music comes close to conventional melody, with conventional key signatures throughout. At each hearing the humane beauty of this remarkable work runs more deeply, particularly in a performance of such scrupulous attention to rhythms and dynamics as from this fine choir.

More motets
The balance of the programme, after the three seminal works, took us through a couple of examples of Renaissance polyphony: two motets by Giovanni Gabrieli and a canon by Ockeghem. The Gabrieli family was a family of prominent Venetian musicians the most important of whom were Andrea and his nephew Giovanni, both significant in St Mark’s basilica in Venice. There a tradition of ecclesiastical music developed of investing a dramatic character in two choirs, often featuring instruments, that took advantage of the church’s twin choir lofts facing each other, each containing an organ.

Gabrieli Omnes gentes
While the choir was somewhat reduced in size following the first two movements of the Martin mass, the violin and three sackbuts returned to make important contributions in the performance of Giovanni’s Omnes gestes plaudite. It’s written for 16 voices, in four distinct ‘choirs’, thus ‘polychoral’. The four choirs sing most of the time, though punctuated by solo voices or smaller groups from just one or two of the ‘choirs’. The continuous and prominent feature of the piece was an almost martial, character, with strong dotted rhythms. A second Gabrieli motet was Jubilate Deo, a particularly joyous piece in which sopranos seemed to be prominent though not to the point of damaging the ensemble. Rhythmic and dynamic changes kept it alive and though the prevailing rhythm was a quick 4/8, it never remained for long.

Ockeghem 
The last filler, as it were, was from a century earlier than anything else on the programme. Johannes Ockeghem was one of the most important 15th century composers. The setting of this Deo gracias (‘thanks be to God’) is assumed to be by him. It called for another re-arrangement of voices: all the women on the right, men on the left, for this 36-part setting of the words as a highly sophisticated canon piling one on top of another, but seeming to emerge from the lower voices. The men came first, then the women, uttering a musical interpretation of the significance of the words, presumably reflecting their use in the extraordinarily complex rituals of the Catholic church. The impact of the amazing variety that was based on endless repeats of two words and brief musical motifs, in the context of what we might imagine to be a later, more sophisticated era, struck me, as the music of the early Renaissance often does, as extraordinary.

This could well have been a concluding piece that might have left the audience as mesmerised, even stunned, as it was at the end of Spem in alium.

It’s been an extraordinary week: at one end, two of the greatest choral works (not counting Bach) of the late Baroque/Classical era, from Cantoris, and then a concert of some of the most sophisticated and emotionally powerful music written for voices, in the Renaissance and contemporary eras. This latter concert was indeed a triumph for The Tudor Consort and its conductor Michael Stewart.

And it occurs to me to apologise to those who have read this far, for the inordinate length of this review, a habit I rather deplore. The compulsion sometimes gets the better of me. 

 

NZSO and Orchestra Wellington players, with a Slovenian pianist deliver fine performances of Mendelssohn and Mozart

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Members of Enzemble NZ

Gregory Squire and Charmian Keay (violins), Sam Burstin (viola), Ken Ichinose (cello), Ana Šinkovec Burstin (piano)

Mendelssohn: String Symphony No. 2 in D Major
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 13 November 2019

Listening to a concert of happy, delightful music is a lovely way of whiling away a lunch hour. This week members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Wellington presented a programme of charming music by Mendelssohn and Mozart.

Mendelssohn: String Symphony No. 2
The prodigious talent of Mendelssohn is hard to comprehend. He grew up in a home that was a gathering place for writers, musicians and artists. He took music lessons from the composer Karl Friedrich Zelter, who impressed on him the importance of studying Baroque and Early Classical music, and Bach in particular. Music just flowed out of the young Mendelssohn. Between the ages of 12 and 14, 1821 to 1823, he wrote 12 String Symphonies, which were performed by the musicians at his home.

No. 2 is an exuberant piece, joyful, sparkling, but a challenge for the musicians. It requires precise, clear fast articulation and phrasing. Playing the piece as a string quartet without the rich sound of a string orchestra puts even greater pressure on the players. The four members of Enzemble NZ, the thorough professionals that they are, were undaunted. They tossed the piece off lightly. The first movement, full of energy, has the touch of J. C. Bach and his contemporaries, the second movement is darker, infused with a rich melody, the final movement is fugal in which the young Mendelssohn shows his mastery of the Baroque style. Although not often heard here, these Symphonies have had a number of recordings and obviously enjoy popularity. It was good to hear live such a fine performance.

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 12
This is one of the set of three concertos that Mozart wrote in 1782 . Although scored for an orchestra with strings, oboes, bassoons and horns, Mozart himself arranged it for a String Quartet. Played by a quartet, it has a different quality, a clearer sound of the dialogue of individuals which brought out the operatic features of the work. Mozart had left Salzburg and moved to Vienna. He had completed the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, and this concerto has operatic touches, particularly in this string quartet arrangement. The quartet was playing the ensemble part with the interplay of the strings and the piano solo coming in with the arias. It is a charming modest concerto and opens with a light hearted theme on which the keyboard elaborates. The second movement is notable for the quotation of a theme by Johann Christian Bach. Bach had just died and the Andante was a musical epitaph of the younger composer to the older master who had greatly influenced him. The final movement is full of sparkling singable melodies. It is a happy, sunny work, played here recently with the NZSO by Steven Osborne.

The Slovenian Ana Šinkovec Burstin played with great sensitivity and effortless simplicity. She has had a successful career in Europe and America, and its is wonderful to have her here in Wellington. She will be a great asset to the New Zealand musical scene. We hope that we will hear her many times more. Her next performance will be with the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, playing the Grieg Piano Concerto on 8 December 2019.

 

“Kristallnacht” at the Wellington Jewish Community Centre – brilliant and deeply-felt performances of significant music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Beth El Synagogue (the Wellington Jewish Community Centre), in partnership with
Te Kōki New Zealand School of Music (Victoria University of Wellington) presents:
KRISTALLNACHT – Unity Concert, 2019

This concert was a commemoration of the anti-Jewish events of 9/10 November, 1938, (“Kristallnacht”) which took place throughout the Third Reich

Music by Schulhoff, Weinberg, Farr, Korngold and Pigovat, along with jazz and cabaret selections

Erwin SCHULHOFF (1894-1942) – Five Pieces for String Quartet
Sixteen Strings: – Toloa Faraimo/Shanita Sungsuwan (violins)/Peter Gjelsten (viola)/ Emma Ravens (’cello)

Miecyzslaw WEINBERG (1919-1996) – Piano Trio Op.24
Te Kōki Trio: Martin Riseley (violin)/Inbal Megiddo (‘cello)/Jian Liu (piano)

Gareth FARR (b.1968) – He Poroporoaki (A Farewell)
New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl/Monique Lapins (violins)/Gillian Ansell (viola)/Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello), withy Ruby Solly (taonga puoro)

Erich KORNGOLD (1897-1957) – Marietta’s Song, from the opera Die Tote Stadt (arr. for voice and piano quintet)
Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)/New Zealand String Quartet/Jian Liu (piano)

Boris PIGOVAT (b.1953) – Nigun, for viola quartet
Lucy Liu, Grant Baker, Sophia Acheson, Donald Maurice (violas)

Selection of jazz and cabaret music from the camps
Barbara Graham (soprano)/David Barnard (piano)/Ben van Leuven (clarinet)
Te Kōki Trio

Beth El Synagogue (Wellington Jewish Community Centre)
Mt.Cook, Wellington

Sunday, 10th November, 2019

We were welcomed to the Beth El Synagogue (the Wellington Jewish Community Centre) by Rabbi Ariel Tal, our host for the evening, who talked about the words of the Torah as having a similar “song of life” quality to that of the concert we were about to hear; and then by Deborah Hart, the Chair of the Holocaust Centre, who drew a poignant and powerful comparison with the events of Kristellnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) throughout Hitler’s Reich in 1938, and the recent attack on the mosques in Christchurch, contrasting the sounds of glass shattering with the comforting and restorative strains of the music programmed for tonight’s concert.

Other speakers were Adam Awad from Somalia, now a resident of New Zealand and an advocate for refugees through organisations he helped to found such as the Changemakers Refugee Forum and the National Refugee Network, and Professor Donald Maurice, presently the Acting Head of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music, who talked of the collaborations that have taken place between the NZSM and The Holocaust Centre since the historic concert of 2008 at which Boris Pigovat’s Holocaust Requiem was premiered.

Introductions completed, the first performers were welcomed to the platform to begin the evening’s music, which was for the most part written by composers of Jewish ancestry, though included in the programme was a piece by one of New Zealand’s leading composers, Gareth Farr. First to be performed was a work by the Czech-born Erwin Schulhoff, whose career as a composer and pianist brought him considerable acclaim at its outset, his radical, forward-looking music influenced by jazz and contemporary trends such as Dadaism. All of this was effectively ended by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939 – too late, Schulhoff applied for and was granted Soviet citizenship, but he was arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis before he could leave the country. He died in a concentration camp in Wülzburg in 1942.

His Five Pieces for String Quartet from almost twenty years previously proclaimed happier times – dedicated to the French composer Darius Mihaud, the sections of the music commanded instant attention with their invention and variety. They were splendidly performed by a group of young musicians called Sixteen Strings – Toloa Faraimo and Shanita Sungsuwan (violins), Peter Gjelsten (viola) and Emma Ravens (‘cello), a group that, having formed in March of this year, had then actually carried off the top award at the 2019 NZCT Secondary Schools Chamber Music Competition.

Right from the opening Viennese Waltz the players “owned” both the music’s “point” and “line”, characterising its angular aspects with both wit and insouciance. The Serenade sang its droll swagman’s song, its brief “circus act” in the middle section as deftly managed as the subtle gradations towards the end; while the Czech Folk Music was a wild ride whose energies contrasted beautifully with the sultriness of the Tango, the musicians beautifully and instinctively “feeling” when to hold, and when to let go. Finally the Tarantella displayed ear-catching dynamics, the trajectories by turns ‘weighted” and “whispered”, here beguiling and there dangerous-sounding! – and all done with razor-sharp ensemble that left us all breathless with exhilaration! Well done!

Better-known, perhaps, though with a name suffering under a confusing plethora of different renditions and translations (variously Weinberg/Wajnberg/Vainberg and Vajnberg, with the former emerging as the most frequently-used in recent times), Mieczyslaw Weinberg, born in Poland in 1919 to Jewish parents, came from an artistic family, his father a conductor and composer, his mother an actress, both in Warsaw’s Yiddish theatre. The year he graduated from the Warsaw Conservatory (1939) he had to flee Poland for the Soviet Union, leaving his parents and younger sister in Poland, all of whom eventually perished at the hands of the Nazis. Weinberg’s meeting and subsequent association with Dmitri Shostakovich changed his life, the older composer regarding him as an artistic “brother” and supporting him through various conflicts with the authorities, at least one of them a potential death-sentence.

Though strongly influenced by Shostakovich’s work, Weinberg’s music has its own unique personality and qualities – native Polish, Jewish and Moldavian elements are common, as is a fondness for humour and satire, balanced against a feeling for epic structure. His output was enormous, comprising 156 opus numbers (and still remaining for most concert-goers largely undiscovered territory). Te Koki Trio, comprising Martin Riseley (violin), Inbal Megiddo (cello) and Jian Liu (piano) threw themselves onto the canvas of the composer’s epic Op.24 Piano Trio, launching the opening Prelude and Aria of the work with the kind of gusto one imagined would be inspired by a masterwork, the violin and ‘cello declamatory, even joyful, the strings swapping themes and the piano hammering out an accompaniment – gradually the intensities melt into the Larghetto, the piano joining the duetting strings with a bird-song-like obbligato, as the music alternated violin pizz. with ‘cello arco, and vice-versa, finishing sotto voce.

The Toccata:Allegro movement which followed had a Shostakovich-like insistence, the triplets hammered out by the piano and reiterated by violin and cello with nightmarish intensity, mingling sounds of war (air-raid siren-like modulations and the clamour of frightened voices  and running feet), each instrument intense and frenetic, expressing something all-pervasive and overwhelming, right to the concluding moment of silence. A Moderato which followed was subtitled “Poem”, allowing pianist Jian Liu whole moments of poetic musing before the string instruments’ pizzicati exchanges led to interactions whose intensities built up into a grotesque march, the energies of engagement remarkable and harrowing, and their gradual dissipation no less so. There came into view a different, though no less challenging world, a single violin note held plaintively and tragically as its strains were overcome by the resonances from piano and ‘cello…….

Into the void drifted the piano’s artless carefree theme, switching its mode to an accompanying one as first the volatile violin, then the carefree cello took the argument forward. The violin skirmished and the cello danced a circus dance, which the piano couldn’t resist, joining her in fugal style, the violin doing the same – the energy generated fired up the performers even more, the strings launching into a kind of danse macabre, building up the intensities until the performers seemed to plateau almost stratospherically, the air beneath pushing up the sounds, and trying to liberate some kind of grand statement! To the music’s near-impasse came the violin to the rescue, a wistful waltz-tune, one to which the other instruments seemed to want to align with, the ‘cello musing richly and almost contentedly, the piano suddenly intoning a hymn-like melody, restraining its own portentous reply, and giving way to the violin and ‘cello’s single, stratospheric concluding notes – (apologies for the long-winded description, but I found this music so gripping I couldn’t help myself!)

Gareth Farr’s “He Poroporoaki” (A Farewell) came afterwards like a kind of benediction following a soul’s torturous journey, the taonga puoro ambiences emanating from Kai Tahu musician Ruby Solly’s playing (assisted at the outset by quartet leader Helene Pohl’s activating of a gong-like instrument) imbuing the sounds and textures wrought by the New Zealand String Quartet players with a palpable sense of valediction relating to our time and place, the universality of lament given a home-grown identity, as it were. While the strings throughout remained largely elegiac in manner, the taonga puoro realised a range of emotions and evocations from anger and grandeur to tenderness and sorrow, the “Now is the Hour” refrain worked into the lines with a bitter-sweet sense of loss and grief, the poignancy of it all underlined by the sounds of breath accompanying the final strains.

An interval separated these larger-scale works from what seemed a more “relaxed” second-half, though with no lessening of focus or musical quality. Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s opera 1920 “Die Tote Stadt”, a work banned by the Nazis, was represented with “Marietta’s Song”, here sung by mezzo-soprano Margaret Medlyn, and accompanied by string quartet and piano (the last-named instrument omitted in the programme). No-one could deny the distinctive “Viennese” quality of this music, with the vocal line so beautifully partnered instrumentally in places – real, lump-in-the-throat stuff! Medlyn’s phrasing and shaping of the vocal line  “placed” the emotion of the moment as exquisitely and easefully as did the instrumental-only central part of the music, with first the ‘cello and then the viola taking up the melody with the piano. Everything seemed to simply “float” on a sea of intense emotion, the violin harmonics before the voice’s re-entry and at the song’s end capturing the beautiful and bitter-sweet essence of the work with the most acute delicacy and sensitivity.

Boris Pigovat, the Israeli composer whose “Holocaust Requiem” began  in 2008 the  “Kristellnacht” series of concerts in Wellington, was represented here by Nigun, a work written to express the “tragic spirit” the composer felt informed Jewish traditional music without quoting any such specific themes. Originally written for string orchestra in 1996, this version for viola quartet was made by the composer earlier this year (2019), and was premiered in Poland by an ensemble led by Lucy Liu, the leader of the “consort of violas” performing the work in this concert.

Beginning with a solo played by the leader – a recitative-like opening, reminiscent in parts of Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo” – the piece’s different voices cleverly explore contrasting registers to diversify the textures and intensities of the music, not unlike a Baroque concerto would do. The piece’s structure – an introduction, followed by an intense building-up to a central climax, followed by a partly valedictory, partly tragic conclusion – was vividly realised, with energies properly spent and feeling seemingly exhausted at the piece’s end.

The concert concluded with a “selection of jazz and cabaret music from the camps” – beginning with a tango number put across with tremendous flair and a good deal of power of presence and voice by soprano Barbara Graham, realising the song’s ever-agglomerating intensity and focus towards a terrific climax – it sounded like Kurt Weill and it was! – a work called “Youkali” a “tango-habanera”, written in 1934 for an opera “Marie Galante”, the song a plea for peace and love in an imagined land “Youkali” of hope and desire. Graham was accompanied by pianist David Barnard and clarinettist Ben van Leuven.

For Graham’s final three songs, David Barnard took up the piano-accordion – the first of these was called “When a small package arrives”. Sung in Dutch, Graham delivered the wistful opening with pent-up longing, which broke into a polka-rhythm for the song’s main body, the singer charmingly translating the words for us during the music’s middle instrumental section.  Then came the “Westerbork Serenade”, famously and bizarrely recorded by two of the transit camp’s inmates, a popular singing duo ”Johnny and Jones”, in 1944, and here sung by both Graham and Barnard with fervour and energy. The Te Kōki Trio joined the duo for the final “Auschwitz Tango”, the words of the song, incredibly, written by a twelve year-old girl in Auschwitz, and translated by Graham at the song’s beginning – the music was dark, tragic and incredibly defiant, and the performance by the singer exemplary. It was all put across with almost unbearably laden strength of feeling, and so very movingly strong and resistant-sounding at the end, a veritable ballade of courage in the face of adversity and persecution – which, of course, was what the concert and its context was all about. An extraordinary experience!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cantoris steps up to two of the great choral masterpieces, successfully in the face of difficulties

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cantoris Choir conducted by Mark Stamper, with Thomas Nikora (organ)
Soloists: Olivia Stewart, Lizzie Summers (sopranos), Sinéad Louise Keane (alto), Jeffrey Dick (tenor), Morgan-Andrew King (bass)

Handel: Dixit Dominus
Mozart: Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339

Wellington Cathedral of ​St Paul

Saturday 9 November 2019, 7:30 pm

Handel’s Dixit Dominus was written in 1707 for the church of Santa Maria in Montesanto in Rome. He was in Italy between 1706 and 1710 and composed operas for Florence and Venice, but because the Vatican in Rome forbade opera, Handel wrote dramatic works in concert form, the most famous of which is the Dixit Dominus which is drawn from Psalm 110, part of the Catholic Vespers service, and thus related to the other work in the concert by Mozart.

It’s no secret that the Anglican Cathedral doesn’t offer an easy acoustic for many sorts of music, particularly large orchestral and choral works that, like most post-Renaissance music, is harmonically more complex and fast in tempo in many parts. This was the case here, particularly in brisker movements of both works with dense orchestral or choral passages. But it would be very hard to generalise as there were many, especially quieter parts, where the sounds were reasonably clear.

The concert encountered some problems during rehearsals. Richard Apperley withdrew from the organist’s role shortly before the concert and was replaced by Thomas Nikora who was to have conducted. He had not played the Cathedral’s organ and so had the challenge of mastering its manuals and registrations in a few days. A replacement had to be found for the podium, and Mark Stamper agreed to be ‘guest conductor’. There had been time for only two rehearsals and he admitted it had been a busy week!

There was also a late change to the soloists. Soprano soloist Jessie Rosewarne pulled out and Lizzie Summers, a soprano from the choir itself, stepped in and learned her solo parts in four days. It would have been hard to detect these problems, if we hadn’t been told.

Handel’s Dixit Dominus
Though I confess I miss an orchestra in both works, the lively, staccato opening of the first movement, the ‘Dixit Dominus’ itself, with Thomas Nikora at the digital organ was as good as one could expect; even if not quite what an ideal world would have given us, either from the now absent pipe organ let alone an orchestra. Solo voices were recruited from the New Zealand School of Music and though one could detect varying levels of skill and musicality, all performed their parts intelligently and in the appropriate spirit. The choir itself, though detail was sometimes clouded, had a brightness and warmth in all parts, but particularly the sopranos.

In the second part, ‘Virgam virtutis’, alto Sinéad Louise Keane sang attractively, her voice well projected in the upper register, while the organ rarely covered her.  The third section, ‘Tecum principium’, in brisk triple time, introduced the first of the two sopranos, Lizzie Summers (who I assumed took over the role of the first solo soprano), though physically slight, had a fine ringing voice, particularly in the upper register, and her intonation was good. The fourth section, ‘Juravit Dominus’, with a rather heavy organ introduction, returned the music to the choir alone, the next chorus singing in exclamatory spirit, singing again with clarity and energy. The choir again sang the next chorus, ‘Tu es sacerdos’, a lively movement with dense textures that were a bit troubled by the reverberant space.

All soloists, for the first time, and the choir sang the brisk, triple-time ‘Dominus a dextris tuis’. First, the two soprano soloists (Olivia Stewart and Lizzie Summers), and the alto, rising alternately in pitch, were joined by tenor Jeffrey Dick, and bass Morgan-Andrew King – both male singers present for the first time and making very good contributions. Next, Handel wrote music for ‘Judicabit in nationibus’, for chorus without soloists. But this was omitted, as I suspect the ‘conquasabits’ with which it ends might have seemed a bit barbaric and challenging. So the eight part became the seventh: ‘De torrente in via bibet’ (‘He shall drink of the brook’). It is a slow, penetential, rather beautiful chorus that opened with soprano at the top of the stave and alto, soon joined by chorus, women first and then men, in an affecting episode.

The last movement, ‘Gloria Patri, et Filio’, is predictably joyous and quite long with a staccato, incessant pulse and the usual protracted Amen.

Mozart’s Vesperae solennes
Mozart’s Vespers, the last work he wrote for the Salzburg Cathedral before he went to Vienna, was a great choice. It’s rare to have a concert that consists of two undisputed masterpieces, instead of the more common habit of attempting to get audiences to listen to undistinguished, uninteresting minor works along with just one great composition.

It struck me as strange and surprising to find, after the splendid Handel work, Mozart’s comparable setting of the Vespers service, that begins with Dixit Dominus, just a little less dramatic and, well, exciting than Handel’s. Yet its flowing lines with the full choir, sounded coherent and beautiful. The music of the ‘Confitebor’ struck me again as such an individual and imaginative setting, first with the full choir, then at ‘Memoriam fecit…’, with four soloists – the same as in the Handel (if I have them right, Stewart, Keane, Dick and King): there were some taxing ornaments in the alto part.

It always surprises me that the title ‘Beatus vir’ always brings to mind my teen-age encounter with the famous setting by Monteverdi on a 78 record that I’d unknowingly picked up. Since then I’ve heard many other settings, naturally, and Mozart’s is right up there! – a mixture of the solemn and the discursive in triple time, with voices seeming to speak to each other. Again the full choir sings the first couple of minutes and then, variously, solo voices took turns effectively.

‘Laudate pueri’ begins with an imposing and carefully articulated fugue which the choir handled well; followed by the well-known ‘Laudate Dominum’ sung with a sense of joy, but also consolatory expressiveness by both choir and soprano (Olivia Stewart).

The ‘Magnificat’ was ‘grand’ according to my notes. The choir not only coped well with the acoustic, but I thought they actually exploited the echo interestingly as the music rose and fell, and though I’m reluctant to single out individuals, the soprano was brilliant.

In spite of the comment where I rated the Handel a little ahead of the Mozart, I had now come to feel after these two adjacent performances that any such comparison was foolish, for I had again fallen in love with Mozart’s marvellous work.

To have programmed both in one concert was both brave and successful, and in spite of all the last-minute problems and the short rehearsal time, I felt at the end that the choir, organist and conductor had overcome them and had given the audience, especially those hearing them for the first time, a bit of a revelation.

NZSO: Salonen’s Violin Concerto points in a fruitful, inspiring direction; Schubert’s Greatness persists through 200 years

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Edo de Waart with Jennifer Koh (violin)

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Violin Concerto
Schubert: Symphony No 9 in C, D 944 (‘Great’)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 8 November, 6:30 pm

Here was another NZSO concert that merited a bigger audience. Again, as at the 24 October concert, the gallery was well inhabited but the stalls rather sparse. A concert that is dominated by a very long work, unless by Mahler or perhaps Bruckner, suffers from a lack of variety and there needs to be a smaller, first-half piece that will overcome it, probably a familiar and well-loved concerto.

Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is well-known as a conductor, but few would have heard any of the compositions he has been writing in an effort to establish a different career, and to contribute to a repertoire of more accessible music. But he may not yet be widely known, and it was unlikely that a much admired, and even popular violin concerto by him would thus get the kind of reception accorded to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Sibelius. Predictably, a couple of acquaintances remarked adversely about it at the interval.

Salonen’s Violin Concerto was written on the eve of his departure from 17 years as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009. It was commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, among others, as a collaboration between Salonen and Canadian violinist Leila Josefowicz, who played the first performance. United States violinist Jennifer Koh, comparably alive to and inspired by the music’s character, played here. The programme notes quote his remarks at the time, writing that his move to the United States caused him to question the assumptions that his experiences in Europe had taught him: inter alia, to “avoid melody, clear harmonic centres and clear sense of pulse … over here I was able to think about this rule that forbids melody. It’s madness!”

So the concerto avoids most of the forbidding characteristics of a lot of music written in the past half century; yet it could never be heard as other than very ‘contemporary’. The first movement, Mirage, is far from what that word suggests; it’s hectic and energetic, a “razor-sharp violin toccata in constant motion”, Alex Ross called it. The solo violin opens as if in mid-flight and it’s soon joined by, first, subtle celeste sounds, then glockenspiel and vibraphone and some ringing chords from the harp.

Flutes and clarinets were added and then brass, along with prolonged string chords (noticing that Concert Master Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s place was taken by associate concert master Donald Armstrong while his place was taken by Martin Riseley). However, it’s the woodwinds and celeste that are the soloist’s main companions in the semiquaver department, though Koh was vividly centre stage, playing constantly through the near ten minutes of the first movement for all but a dozen or so measures.

The sound was uniquely Salonen, and I came to feel delight as the music of the first movement stormed along, steadily gaining familiarity, helped by the changes of tempo from time to time.

Two Pulses and Adieu
The next two movements are entitled Pulse I and II, driven in turn by an astonishing refinement in the singular orchestration, and then in Pulse II by an utterly different impulse, a sort of concerto grosso for violin and drum kit. It employed the log drum and other percussion again, acquiring the character of rock music by engaging with the jazz or rock percussion, including cymbals, tom-toms and occasionally vibraphone and marimba. And at the end the drum set is told to ‘go crazy’.

The finale, Adieu, is the longest movement, beginning with a quiet, dreamy solo violin, accompanied tellingly by solo viola, soon joined by bassoon, harp and quite prominently, cor anglais. Finally we heard from the battery of tuned gongs suspended behind the horns. As elsewhere in the concerto there were sounds, especially combinations of instruments, whose source eluded me, individually or in ensemble: from the gongs, vibraphone, harp, celeste…: their spirit was no less haunting than those in the elusive Pulse I. Edo de Waart knew how to exploit and enhance these beauties and managed it all with full attention to clarity, balance and expressiveness.

For me, this enchanting, energetic work epitomised the feelings I’ve long had, winning lively disapproval from avant-garde quarters, lamenting the prolonged dominance of music over the past century by determinedly difficult, academic, melody-free music. For this was a happy combination of the refined, deeply felt, sophisticated music from Europe, and some of the music of America which has been closer to popular roots and a better awareness of the likely death of classical music through intellectual, esoteric, universities-driven ideas. And it was played by a stunning young violinist evidently steeped in the idiom, with impressive conviction and a deep belief in the music’s worth and importance.

The Great Symphony
Schubert’s ninth symphony is one of music’s great masterpieces, and though I love Schubert’s music, there are features of this last symphony that give me a bit of trouble. The numbering of the symphonies is one interesting topic (there are perhaps three incomplete or perhaps non-existent ‘symphonies’ which would make The Great No 12 if they were counted); but of more musical concern is a matter the programme note ventured to discuss: the many repeats of melodies, without interesting development. Ever since the work’s discovery by Schumann in 1838, there have been questions about Schubert’s repetitive melodies that lacked change and variety. A common defence has been that Schubert was more interested in variety through tonal modulation, which scholars have pointed out was not common in the 19th century.

The first movement makes its claim to greatness right at the start with horns opening the 4-minute-long Andante: warm, legato sounds conjured a wonderful sense of peace. The brass section as a whole, that is the trumpets, trombones as well as horns, sounded unusually rapturous, building expectations of something portentous in the main body of the movement, Allegro ma non troppo. The pace, the dotted rhythms and the magnificent balance maintained by De Waart throughout, quickly created an expectation of a near hour of musical fulfilment and inspiration.

The Andante con moto marches at a steady pace gaining interest, as usual, through modulations that were not a common feature at the time, but making a profound impression: particularly the lengthy preparation for the stunning, dissonant climax in the middle of the movement, dramatically delivered. After that, the remaining half of the movement generated a sense of peace and beauty that never seemed too long.

Each movement is around a quarter of an hour, and after the slow movement, the formally repetitive Scherzo and Trio can sound too mechanical. Yet there are constant modulations, and one’s response depends on one’s openness to them; after all, the shift from C to A major at the Trio might hardly sound very exciting.

The repetition affair has, for me, been a noticeable matter in only some performances; and this was not one of them. There’s never any problem with the first ten minutes or so of a Schubert movement, and in the finale, Allegro vivace, audiences can read some kind of message in the famous Beethoven quote early in the second part of the movement. Beethoven is also there with Schubert’s use of trombones which had only just been used by Beethoven for the first time. The splendidly calm pace added to the sense of grandeur and contentment.

At a certain point the last movement might seem to repeat its main themes too often, but if you are presented with a performance from a conductor like De Waart who grasps the entire structure and is capable of investing it with grandeur and spiritual conviction, those repetitions actually help sustain it. And they speak to any listener with open ears and capable of perceiving genius in a work of art. Even a self-effacing composer like Schubert surely knew that his symphony was a masterpiece and an imposing sequel to Beethoven’s. That’s certainly what I experienced, and I felt exhilarated, deeply moved and at peace at the end.

 

Diverting and varied concert in The Queen’s Closet, devoted to all the pleasures at the Prefab

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Queen’s Closet period instrument ensemble

All the Pleasures:
Music by Henry and Daniel Purcell, John Barrett, William Topham, Godfrey Keller. a Holy Roman Emperor, Vincenzo Albrici, Johann Schmelzer, John Eccles, and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber

Instrumentalists: Gordon Lehany (trumpet, recorder), Peter Reid (trumpet, cornetto), Sharon Lehany (hoboy), Rebecca Struthers (violin), Hyewon Kim (violin), Anne Loeser (violin), Peter Maunder (sackbut, recorder, trumpet), Jane Young (cello), Craig Bradfield (bassoon), Lachlan Radford (double bass), Kris Zuelicke (harpsichord), Laurence Reese (percussion)

Prefab Hall, 14 Jessie Street

Sunday 3 November, 5 pm

The lively atmosphere of the Prefab on Jessie Street provides a happy environment for all kinds of music, not least for classical music of all kinds. It facilitates experimental and early music, instrumental and choral, serious and whatever the opposite might be.

The Queen’s Closet consists partly of NZSO and Orchestra Wellington players as well as some whose provenance I don’t know.

The English Restoration
They devote themselves to the Restoration, the permissive, perhaps degenerate period from the return of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II, till, well, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William of Orange and Mary took the throne, after which the more boisterously licentious plays and poetry faded away. The term is used most commonly about drama and Restoration Comedy is one of the liveliest, and indeed most licentious periods of the English theatre, with playwrights, Congreve, Dryden, Wycherley, Vanbrugh and Aphra Behn (a rare woman playwright). As well as poets, the most sexually frank being Rochester whose poems got quietly circulated around my English literature classes at university.  Please excuse the side-tracking; one became familiar with a lot of this in the 6th form in the days when English (and other) literatures were basic in the curriculum. Though at college, Congreve’s Way of the World was more acceptable than Wycherley’s The Country Wife …

None of the licentiousness could be detected in the music however.

The first item, the ‘symphony’ and ‘aria’ from Come ye Sons of Arts by Henry Purcell (1659-1695). (His younger brother Daniel, was represented later in this concert), exposed sackbuts, trumpet, the hoboy (early oboe), recorders, bassoon, strings, and the only appearance of the cornetto. The splendid introductory ‘Symphony’ exposed some of the technical challenges of the early wind instruments. Nevertheless, it left a lively impression of the emotional character as well as the fun that inspired music of the late 17th century.

Cornettos and sackbuts
For that’s what the concert was devoted to. Genial remarks by Gordon Lehany (I think) followed the Purcell, drawing attention to the less familiar instruments which included the cornetto played by Peter Reid. It’s an early, hybrid trumpet-recorder sub-species whose curious characteristics I sorted out many years ago, but I have no recollection of hearing it played live before this. But my efforts to record what was said and by whom was unreliable as some faces were unfamiliar and not all voices were loud or clear enough; and at times I could not see all players or the instruments they were playing. (I’m grateful to Sharon Lehany for help in clarifying things).

Though I am reasonably familiar with the early instruments used, it was interesting to hear Peter Maunder speak about the sackbut and its descendant, the trombone, and Peter Reid’s remarks about the cornetto. Reid and Gordon Lehany also played natural trumpets (without valves) impressively in John Barrett’s (1676-1719) music for the comedy, The Yeoman of Kent. (Looking it up: “Tunbridge-Walks, or, The yeoman of Kent : a comedy, as it is acted at the Theatre Royal by Her Majesty’s Servants”, was written by one Thomas Baker and printed in 1703.

The range of music chosen was highly diverting, and its performance sparkling and lively, at the small price of a (very) few fluffs from the fine replica instruments played.

An Imperial composer
The John Barrett piece was followed by a piece by ‘Emperor Joseph I of Austria’ (1678-1711) actually, I think, he was Archduke of Austria and at his father’s death became Holy Roman Emperor, a curious, elected imperial position involving weak hegemony over much of Europe). Anyway, he was a musician and the ensemble played a piece called Alma Ingrate, in which Maunder’s sackbut, supported by harpsichordist Kris Zuelicke, played its smooth, warm melody that required some fancy ornamentation towards the end.

There were 12 pieces in the programme; half were works entitled ‘sonatas’. The first of them was by one William Topham (1669-1709), ‘compos’d in imitation of Archangelo Corelli’, didn’t remind me of Corelli, involving two natural trumpets (Gordon Lehany and Peter Reid), as well as two violins.

The next sonata, by Godfrey Keller (??, died 1704), was for two flutes (actually two recorders played by Gordon Lehany and Peter Maunder) and two violins (Rebecca Struthers and HyeWon Kim?), Sharon Lehany’s hoboy and double bass (Lachlan Radford).

The third successive sonata was by Vincenzo Albrici (1631-1687): simply Sonata a 5 (spoken in Italian, ‘a cinque’). It involved two violins and double bass, then two trumpets and bassoon: rhythmic and quite short.

Daniel Purcell, Schmelzer. Biber and Eccles
The second half began with a Symphony to an Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day by Daniel Purcell (1664-1717). Heavy timpani (Laurence Reese) introduced it; all three violins took part, first lamenting and later in fast triple time where the trumpets took charge.

There were three further sonatas, by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (??1620-1680). He worked in the Habsburg court in Vienna under Emperor Leopold I (the father of the earlier mentioned Joseph I). The first of them, Per camera “al giorno delle Correggie”, employing sequences of rising then falling motifs, where I was attracted to Craig Bradford’s comic, perhaps rude, bassoon and HyeWon Kim’s violin.

I came across John Eccles (1668-1735), first as composer of a cello sonata and later in the music theatre context. He was perhaps, after Henry Purcell, the most famous English composer in the concert. He famously set Semele, an English ‘all-sung’ opera libretto by Congreve, in 1607, in the face of the domination of London by Italian opera; but it was not performed till 1972. Handel however set the libretto in 1744 – his only English language opera. Many believe that had Eccles’s opera been performed it might well have put an end to Italian domination, have led Handel to compose opera in English and profoundly changed the face of opera in England over the next two centuries.

More successful at the time was Eccles’s setting of Congreve’s masque The Judgement of Paris. They performed the ‘Symphony for Mercury’, the music distinctly more interesting and elaborate than much that had gone before: high trumpets echoing , then outshining violins; then a slow lament and a return to brisk dancing music led by Reese’s hand-held tambourine. It gave real life to the concert.

There were two further Schmelzer sonatas: the first – a sonata a tre – featuring a sort of competition between trumpet and Rebecca Struthers’ violin and Jane Young’s cello. And a multi-lingual ‘sonata con arie zu der kaiserlichen Serenade’, switching abruptly from noisy timpani to a calm adagio, brisk common time and then a sort of gigue, and marching, hard-hit timpani again.

The penultimate piece was by another important German composer Heinrich Ignaz Biber (1644-1704): a passacaglia using just four descending notes, repeatedly, with increasing decoration, as well as slowly becoming more complex and difficult, with growing emotional involvement. It ended as a much more interesting piece than its opening had suggested.

At the end a sort of encore emerged from the cello, and the sackbut: maintaining the spirit of the unexpected and unorthodox with always a quiet humour that kept the audience surprised, mocked, enlivened, puzzled, but overall, satisfyingly entertained.

Exceptional recital from Alexander Gavrylyuk gets tumultuous applause at Waikanae

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Alexander Gavrylyuk – piano

Waikanae Music Society

Mozart: Rondo in D, K485
Brahms: Rhapsody in G minor, Op 79 No. 2
               Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op 117 No. 2
               Intermezzo in C sharp minor, Op. 117 No. 3
Liszt: Paganini Étude No 6
Saint-Saëns: Danse-Macabre (Liszt / Horowitz)
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition  

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 3 November 2019, 2:30 pm

Alexander Gavrylyuk, the internationally celebrated Ukranian/Australian pianist, has become a regular visitor to Waikanae. He played there in 2017 and 2016, so I knew that we would be in for an exceptional concert. Peter Mechen, my colleague at Middle C, had written about the pianist’s ability to enchant his listeners with every note and in doing so, display a Sviatoslav Richter-like capacity to invest each sound with a kind of ‘centre of being’. Reviews of his concerts from all over the world attest to his brilliance. Engaging him for Waikanae after New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Russia, France, the Netherlands and the Wigmore Hall in London is a great coup for the Waikanae Music Society.

The hall was full. The gorgeous Fazioli piano, perhaps the best piano in New Zealand, was on the stage, and the artist, a slight modest young man, appeared from behind the screen, sat down and started to play.

Mozart Rondo in D K485
The notes, flew like butterflies, effortlessly. This was a magician conjuring up music with cascading notes, the music reflecting different shades with each repeat of the theme; an understated humour distinguished the piece. Gavrylyuk played it fast with a light, ethereal air. This is a joyful piece. The main theme was borrowed from Johann Christian Bach and it appears in various transformations, modulating into distant keys and transposed from treble to bass, making this a fairly complex but delightful Rondo.

Brahms Rhapsody and Intermezzi
The Mozart Rondo was followed by a bracket of Brahms works calling for a very different musical vision. Though the Rhapsody was written in 1879, the two Intermezzi are late Brahms, when he came back to writing short works for the piano, creating new genres for these pieces. The Rhapsody in G minor is built around a grand theme, which Gavrylyuk played broadly with a rich, mellow sound. The piece gradually increased in intensity, yet within this intensity he brought out the full flowering of the lyrical passages.

The two Intermezzi were of contrasting character. The music critic, Eduard Hanslick, described them as thoroughly subjective, personal monologues. The B flat minor Intermezzo is gentle, singing, with themes which evolve and transform one into another. The C sharp minor Intermezzo is a profoundly sad work which Brahms described as the lullaby of all his griefs. It is like a song, a prayer.

Gavrylyuk brought out its dark yet resigned depth.

Liszt Paganini Étude No 6
Paganini gave new meaning to the idea of the virtuoso. He produced sounds and effects on the violin that were previously unimaginable. He had the personality of the virtuoso showman. Liszt, with his incredible technique on the grand piano set about cultivating an image of the virtuoso like Paganini’s and wrote these studies on themes by Paganini and as a homage to him, arranging them after Paganini’s death. Of these No. 6, based on Paganini’s 24th Caprice is the best known. It is spectacular and fiendishly difficult, showing off the potential of the instrument and the skills of the artist.

Danse-Macabre
My father, when he was a young man, had heard Horowitz in concert, and for him there was no pianist like him, he was indisputably No. 1. I grew up with a 78 rpm record of Horowitz playing this piece. It is brilliant and hair-raising. Liszt transcribed Saint-Saëns’ orchestral tone-poem for piano and Horowitz added further embellishment and technical difficulties to Liszt’s version. It did not, however, daunt Gavrylyuk. He played effortlessly, showing off what a fine pianist can do. The performance was fun and his mastery of the technical challenges was prodigious.

Pictures at an Exhibition
Mussorgsky’s ten colourful piano pieces were composed in memory of his friend, the painter, Victor Hartmann. Each piece captures in sound one of Hartmann’s 400 paintings. They range from the comic, Gnomus, the nostalgic The Old Castle, the playful Tuilleries, the frentic Ballet of the Unhatched Chickens, the ponderous turning of the heavy wheels in Bydlo, the pompous and satirical Goldberg and Schmuyle, the busy Marketplace at Limoges, the ghostly Catacombs: Roman Sepulchre, the absurd and bizarre Little Hut on Chicken Legs, and finally the majestic Great Gate of Kiev. They are connected with Promenades, each Promenade different, suggesting a spectator walking, in anticipation, from picture to picture. There is mystery, melancholy and humour in the work and a measure of the Russian spirit of national identity reflected in the Great Gate of Kiev with its Russian Orthodox chants. A spectacular and memorable performance.

This was an amazing concert and the tumultuous applause of the large audience reflected their enjoyment and appreciation; it was a privilege to hear one of the great pianists of the younger generation. His playing was stunning, and the memory of it will be cherished by all who heard it. The nagging question, however, is why we had to travel to Waikanae, a small seaside town, to hear one of the finest pianists to visit New Zealand. Alexander Gavrylyuk plays in some of the greatest concert halls of the world, but those responsible for providing the best in music for the New Zealand public can’t organize a concert for him in the Michael Fowler Centre: neither a solo recital nor a concerto appearance in Wellington with the NZSO. Before the New Zealand Broadcasting Service and the then National Orchestra were restructured such a concert would have been held in the Town Hall and would have been broadcast for a wide audience to enjoy. Much has been lost in the restructuring.

Post scriptum
It is unusual for a reviewer to comment on his own review, but I regret that although I consider that I wrote a fair and accurate review of Alexander Gavrylyuk’s concert I failed to capture its essence.
It was not a concert like any other. It was an experience that would stay with those who were there. The music seemed to just sprout from the artist, like someone musical utterance in a trance. Perhaps it was an idiosyncratic performance. Some of the pieces might have seemed a little faster or slower than usually played, but they all seemed to be the expression of the inner of the soul of the artist. There was a spontaneity and fluidity about Gavrylyuk’s playing that is impossible to capture in words. He just created music there in front of us, totally absorbed in the music. The music spoke directly to the listeners’ inner beings. It was magic.
Steven Sedley 

Triumph tempered by sadness – Hutt Valley Chamber Music faces dissolution despite a sensational 40th anniversary season capped off by the remarkable Diedre Irons

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
HVCM’s final 40th anniversary concert with Diedre Irons (piano)

Music by JS Bach, Beethoven, Liszt and Schumann

JS BACH – Concerto in the Italian Style BWV 971
BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.23 in F Minor Op.57 “Appassionata”
LISZT – Piano Sonata in B Minor S.178

Diedre Irons (piano)

St.Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Thursday 31st October 2019

The evening was earmarked as a celebration, a culmination of the 40th year of presenting chamber music in Lower Hutt by the Hutt Valley Chamber Music Society. And the choice of pianist Diedre Irons to give the concert this evening couldn’t have been more appropriate, as back in October 1980 she and the then-concertmaster of the NZSO, Peter Schaeffer performed a recital as one of the Society’s concerts during that opening season. However, by contrast with the joy and optimism of that inaugural year of music-making, this latest occasion gave cause for great sadness, being the Society’s swan-song of concert-giving, until further notice – for a number of reasons, there are no plans for a 2020 Hutt Valley Chamber Music series.

Diedre herself reminded her audience of that long-standing connection she had with the Society’s concerts after she was invited to cut the “Celebration cake” at the concert’s end, expressing the hope in doing so that the Society would rise again, “like a phoenix from the ashes”. The Society’s problem is similar to that of a decade ago, when it seemed that there were not enough volunteers to form a committee with sufficient numbers to run the concerts in 2010 – on that occasion help was forthcoming – but now, ten years on, after retirements at the end of this year, only four committee-members will be left, with no immediate prospect of new and interested people available to offer their services. This has been in spite of frequent verbal pleas to audiences at concerts and statements made in newsletters, as well as through general networking.

We at Middle C have already expressed our alarm at the prospect, my colleague, Lindis Taylor having reflected at the “catchment” of the HVCM Society being approximately 35% of Greater Wellington’s population, and describing the loss as “a very regrettable hole in the region’s musical scene”. Considering the quality and richness of the 2019 concerts, the removal of the series is nothing less than a tragedy for music-lovers in the region, and must surely be similarly viewed by those authorities concerned with maintaining the range and scope of Hutt Valley’s overall pool of cultural activities.

This particular concert, by dint of its outstanding quality, served to further underline the tragedy of any such impending loss. It also reinforced the fact of our having been so fortunate that Diedre Irons chose all those years ago to make New Zealand her home,  bringing with her, as she has done, such an all-encompassing range of skills relating to her piano-playing, to the delight and enrichment of thousands of people throughout her adopted country. For here was a kind of apogee of the pianist’s art laid out for our gratification and pleasure, via her playing of three of the greatest works for the keyboard ever composed.

Though written for performance on a two-manual harpsichord, and designed to employ the contrast in the music between “solo” and “orchestral” writing for the player between the hands, JS Bach’s “Italian Concerto” has become a favourite of pianists everywhere, all relishing the challenge of realising these contrasting passages on a single keyboard. The work’s three movements provide the fast-slow-fast framework of a concerto, while different voicings inflect both the single lines and the contrasting two-handed, “orchestral” aspects of the music.

From the beginning, Irons’ playing had strength and vigour, the opening paragraph a veritable  irruption of joyful energies, everything having a “schwung” kind of quality that seemed to give the music all the elbow-room it needed. Further into the movement I found myself beguiled by the waxing and waning of so many hues and colours from out of the pianist’s different  phrasings, Bach refracting and reimagining his material before our very ears, until the opening flourish returned almost laughingly, bringing us to a full, deliciously burgeoning circle!

My view of Bach’s slow movements has never been the same since listening to ‘cellist Raeul Pierard’s “masterclass” performances of the ‘Cello Suites about a year ago, a saga whose guided journey “opened up” the composer’s emotional world for me to a hitherto unrealised extent – https://middle-c.org/2018/11/baching-at-the-moon-cellist-raeul-pierard-at-st-peters-on-willis-wellington/ Here in the Concerto’s middle movement murmured depths of emotion, out of which, under Irons’ fingers, both the stoically-repeated accompaniment and the exposed melodic line created arabesques of feeling through which we drifted in wonderment, a deeper, richer accompaniment intensifying the sequence’s repetition, its sighing conclusion framed by two deeply-felt trills.

Irons’ touch throughout the work’s finale seemed to me to enable us to leave the world of keys and hammers behind, the instrument transformed into something magical admitting to no age or era, merely a “transport of delight” whose tones sing, chatter, whisper and chuckle in all registers, maintaining that sense of captivation by the music which the pianist seems to me to bring to whatever she plays – a joyous experience for all!

I last heard Irons play the mighty “Appassionata” Sonata of Beethoven’s at Wellington Cathedral, of all places, something of a surreal sonic experience in that fearsome reverberation. Partly to her credit and partly due to our sitting as close to the pianist as we could, she seemed to me to make as much musical sense as was possible of the work amid the haloed ambiences of resonance that threatened to swamp much of the fine detail. It was a truly “enhanced” musical event, the sound-picture akin to, in sonic terms, “a mighty Polypheme”, at once fascinating and grotesque to experience.

By comparison, here in the relatively modest confines of Woburn’s St.Mark’s Church, one could appreciate in an almost completely untrammelled way the pianist’s mastery of the music, the portentous opening gestures disturbingly reaching upwards and into the light, before conflagrating and, avalanche-like, rolling thunderously down into the music’s brooding folds, glint-eyed gestures of defiance having their say before giving way to an opening-up of rich, warmly-laden utterances, the defiant opening theme turned on its head and transformed here into something almost Prospero-like in its wisdom. Irons took us into the heart of each episode, relishing each of the work’s tumultuous arpeggiated episodes leading firstly to the appearance of the ominous Fifth-Symphony-like four-note motif, and then the latter’s even more portentous reappearance just before the movement’s tempestuous coda, the playing encompassing a climax and a dying fall whose force and focus left us stunned!

The middle movement’s theme-and-variations here unfolded simply and directly, with Irons giving the second-half of each of the sequences a crescendo-like flowering of warmth and strength, grown beautifully from the first half’s simplicity. She galvanised us with her rapier-like repetition of the questioning upward gesture at the movement‘s end, and the finale was upon us like the surge of a rapidly-burgeoning river in flood. Irons’ command of the music’s trajectories was total, conjuring up as many ghostly half-lights as there were full-blooded onrushings, the onslaught less a question of tempo and more of focused energy and momentum, the music here controlled, there unleashed, and everything balanced within the vistas of a tumultuous overview – to the point that, when Irons DIDN’T plunge into the movement’s (admittedly controversial) second-half repeat, and went straight on into the work’s coda, I found myself for the very first time in my experience not objecting, so taken-up was I with what she WAS doing instead with it all, to resoundingly satisfying effect! – an amazing performance!

In the wake of such an onslaught of focused musical impulse the Liszt B Minor Sonata held its head up proudly, the work’s unities and diversities finely-judged by the pianist, her playing underlining the shape and intent of the structure, while bringing out the music’s poetry and nobility. Liszt hides nothing in this work by artifice or false emotion – every gesture is whole-hearted and part of an overall integration of thought and feeling, as is the almost alchemic synthesis of the work’s different motifs – a remarkable achievement by the composer, and one which Irons enhanced with her acute instinct for proportion and varied emphasis throughout.

Right from the beginning of the work a kind of urgency informed the proceedings, of the kind which sought out essences rather than glossed over them, and honed them to their sharpest extent – the first few pages of the Sonata give the listener nearly all the material the composer is going to use throughout the whole, single-movement work,  Irons here displaying an almost alchemic flair with each fragment in its delineation and later development. At every turn I felt her playing triumphantly balanced the work’s virtuoso elements with the more inward, poetic content, in a way that left one in no doubt as to the logic of the composer’s thinking and the creative mastery of it all.

Faced with such a recreative achievement one hesitates to dwell on any single aspect of Irons’  performance – but I couldn’t help but be particularly moved on this occasion by the delicate poetry of the “Consolations-like” theme at the piece’s very heart, which all but held the music’s pulsings still for a few precious moments, just before the fugue’s darker purpose grew out of the still-to-be-negotiated journeyings – here, its evocation felt to me almost Dante-ish, life-journeying stuff, like a glimpse through a window into a pilgrim’s soul, and as such, a precious and profound moment.

Very great acclaim at the piece’s conclusion from us all for Diedre Irons, who then treated us to an encore in the form of Schumann’s well-known “Träumerei”, a performance which, to my surprise, I must confess to finding somewhat enigmatic from this pianist in its most uncharacteristic “matter-of-factness”, the notes to my ears expertly but somewhat plainly sounded – I reasoned that, at the conclusion of such a recital, a performer’s instinct may well be to return us to our lives, rather than weave further ongoing spells of enchantment. Whatever the case, and however unexpected, it still didn’t lessen the impact of a remarkable recital, one whose resonances will surely fuel our hopes for some kind of as-yet-unspecified “revival” of chamber music performance in the Hutt Valley for the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diverting recital by senior NZSM tutors Inbal Megiddo and Jian Liu at St Andrew’s lunchtime

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Inbal Megiddo (cello) and Jian Liu (piano)

Music by Boccherini, Manuel de Falla, Mendelssohn  and David Popper

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 30 October, 12:15 pm

A larger than usual audience came in from the sun to hear these two members of the music faculty of Victoria University (known as the New Zealand School of Music).

Boccherini
They began with one of Boccherini’s cello sonatas: one on A major. A look at the Boccherini catalogue shows 29 cello ‘sonatas, for cello solo (and basso)’, which is believed to mean probably a second cello; most were written when he was young. Of those, two are in A major, the second of which (No 13) was one of the few published in his life-time (unauthorised by the composer according to the programme notes).  However, there’s one in A major that is played by several cellists on YouTube: listed as G. 4 or No 6. Coming across these a few days after the recital, I doubt that this is what Megiddo played.

In any case it was clear at the start why this one has been found worthy of attention today. The music was distinctive and satisfyingly varied through its two movements, and Megiddo played authoritatively, nimbly and with a keen ear to its style and musical substance; this was an interesting, melodious piece that whets the appetite to hear more. As several writers have remarked, though Boccherini has attracted much more attention in the past couple of decades, his very large body of worthwhile music including a dozen cello concertos, is still seriously neglected.

De Falla
That was followed by Manuel de Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole which is an arrangement of Siete canciones populares españolas (‘seven Spanish popular songs’ – the second song, ‘Seguidilla murciana’, was left out of the arrangements that have been made for various instruments). They are widely different in character, a factor in their wide popularity; but they also offer very rewarding opportunity for other musicians, and Megiddo and Liu made flamboyant, colourful yet sensitive use of them.  Though my first impression was that the cello didn’t capture all the sparkle and dancing character of pieces like the ‘Jota’ and the ‘Canción’, it created a different, more mature character. Jian Liu’s piano made a bigger contribution in these pieces, particularly distinctive in the ‘Polo’.

A Song Without Words
One of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words was written for cello and piano, not, like all the others, for piano alone. He published eight books of Songs Without Words for solo piano, six in each, plus some others not published in his lifetime: Decca has recorded a ‘complete’ edition totally 56 pieces. Op 109 was written two years before his early death aged 38. I was surprised to find this lovely piece quite familiar, though I had not been aware of its source; typically charming and played most expressively.

David Popper 
Liszt was not the only composer of Hungarian Rhapsodies; David Popper, Czech cellist, was a prolific composer, mainly for the cello. (I still have a relatively easy piece, Gavotte No 2, Op 23, that I played as a student). His Nocturne No 4 (Op 47) and Hungarian Rhapsody, Op 68 made a nice pair. The Nocturne was quite long with a prominent, interesting piano part, showing Popper as much more than merely a cello virtuoso. The Hungarian Rhapsody prompted the word ‘expostulation’ in my notes, and was a pretty spectacular piece, quite as bravura in style as Liszt’s pieces with the same name, and as startling to watch as to listen to.