Category: Reviews – Concerts

Diverting, varied, guitar recital by NZSM students

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Guitars

Music by Brahms, de Falla, Ravel, Philip Houghton, Barrios

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 10 October 2018, 12.15pm

It was not easy to understand what were the alterations to this concert’s programme, caused in part by illness; the microphone not working (as indeed it did not the previous week) didn’t help matters.

First up in this varied programme were Rameka Tamaki and Oliver Featherston.  They played as a guitar duo Theme & Variations from Sextet Opus 18 (second movement) by Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897), arranged by the great guitarist John Williams.  The work was in B-flat major, and was composed in the summer of 1860, while Brahms was staying near the River Elbe. It was premiered later in Hanover, by an ensemble led by Brahms’s colleague, the violinist Joseph Joachim.

The second movement andante was played in a very pleasant arrangement. The fact of it being a theme and variations based on Hungarian rhythms and sonorities made it somehow suitable for guitars. There was perfect co-ordination between the players, despite plenty of technical demands.  For the most part the music was gentle and delicate, throughout this quite long movement.

Music from Falla’s opera La Vide Breve is quite well-known, particularly the orchestral music from it, such as this Spanish Dance, adapted for performance by two guitars by Emilio Pujol, and played by the same duo as was the first piece on the programme.  It was a thoroughly pleasing performance of this delightful, bright piece.

Next were two solos, both by Agustin Barrios (1885-1944), who was born in Paraguay, but lived in other parts of Latin America for most of his life.  He wrote many works, mainly short ones, for guitar.  Chris Everest played his La Catedral and Rameka Tamaki played Julia Florida.   The first consisted of three movements; after a short Preludio came an Andante, followed by Allegro.  This was an attractive solo, the player obtaining gorgeous resonance from his instrument.  The middle movement was slow and pensive, beautifully executed.  The third movement was fast, with a sustained melody over  running accompaniment.  This demanded, and achieved, great skill.

Like the first, the second soloist played from memory.  Gentle and lilting Julia Florida qualified as a pretty piece (that is not meant to sound demeaning!).  Like the previous piece by Barrios, it was full of interest, and quite demanding on the player – I thought I noticed a few missed notes, but overall, it was another fine performance.

Megan Robson, Finn Perring, Chris Everest played an arrangement of String Quartet in F, (second movement) by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), arranged by Winton Yuichiro White, a contemporary American composer chiefly associated with film music. Ravel completed the quartet in 1903.

The movement is marked Assez vif – très rythmé. The pizzicato theme is eminently suited to the guitar; what was striking in the arrangement was the long passages played at a very high pitch – not so common perhaps in guitar music.  It was a spirited rendition, ending in a flourish.  As the programme note stated “White made use of the classical guitar’s large range of colours and techniques, utilising a 7-string guitar, to create a convincing impression of the piece.”

The programme ended with a delightful Suite by Australian Phillip Houghton (1954-2017): A Masque for Lady Nothing.  It was made up of seven short movements, and was played by Joel Baldwin and Oliver Featherston (violin and guitar).
1. Fanfare
2. Bonsai Garden
3. Tinkers’ Dance
4. Le Tombeau de Juliet
5. The King’s Blue Frog Galliard
6. Lovers Dance
7. Spanish Spaniards Pilfer Portuguese Parrots

The work was commissioned by the Sydney Guitar Trio, for the 1999 Darwin International Guitar Festival and is inspired by ancient modal music illustrating seven scenes for a masque (a Renaissance celebration of dance, song, art and all things magical), held in a long-lost kingdom. Below I reproduce the programme note, slightly edited.

“Each movement depicts a different story – Fanfare: the entire kingdom gathering in the woods outside the castle. Jugglers, incense, dancing and a body painter named Bosch. Let the celebrations begin! Bonsai Garden: a world where everything big is small, where stillness is a fragrant breeze. Tinker’s Dance: bawdy and swaggering, not too fast though, they’re all drunk.  “Le Tombeau de Juliet” depicts the tomb of Juliet in silence, all hearts each recall their own true love. “The King’s Blue Frog Galliard”: is a gleeful and slightly clumsy dance, obnoxious and rude. The typical instrumentation of the lute is imitated with bright ponticello and harmonics. “Lovers Dance” is flowing, graceful and entwined. Spanish Spaniards Pilfer Portuguese Parrots depicts how in olden days, not only did Spain have a superior armada than Portugal, but also a superior network of parrot smuggling.”

 

NZSM cellists under Inbal Megiddo play cello favourites, some rare, some in disguise, all skilled and entertaining

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Cellos, led by Inbal Megiddo

Music by Mozart, Grűzmacher, Bach, Vivaldi, Brubeck, Gershwin, Joplin

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 3 October 2018, 12:15 pm

lnbal Megiddo is the head of Cello Studies at the New Zealand School of Music.  Along with her today were seven cello students, all highly competent on the instrument.  Their varied programme was heard by a sizeable audience.

The programme commenced with a very fine arrangement of Mozart’s Overture to his opera The Magic Flute, by Douglas Moore, an American composer who died in 1969. The tone of the four cellists who played this was not always well-blended.   The names of the players (five females including Megiddo, and three males) were given in the printed programme, but they were not identified individually for each piece played.

Verbal explanations were given rather too fast for everything to be clearly heard.  Megiddo explained the origins of two of the cellos – the first was given by the family of the late Wellington luthier and cellist, Ian Lyons.  The origin of the other I could not hear.  Two of the group played these instruments in Friedrich Grutzmacher’s Duo for two cellos, Op.22 no.2. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Grützmacher was a noted German cellist in the second half of the 19th century.  This was most attractive music, very well played. The upper part was quite lovely, with an interesting lower part accompanying.  The two players swapped places from time to time, i.e alternating between upper and lower part throughout the performance so that both got a chance to be the soloist.  There were gymnastics for both parts.

Next we turned to J S  Bach; Prelude and Fugue from Suite no.5 in C minor.  It was arranged by Laszlo Varga, (1924-2014), a Hungarian-born American cellist.  The effect of the Prelude arrangement was quite romantic.  In the Fugue, the separate entries of the instruments revealed the differing timbres of each individual instrument.

A fast version of the three movements of  ‘Winter’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (RV 297, Op.4 no.8) followed, in an arrangement by James Barralet, a British cellist.  Inbal Megiddo played the solo parts in the first two movements; the largo was beautifully rendered.  A student performed the solo in the third movement (allegro) in fine style.  It was exquisitely played, and the performers’ ensemble was splendid.

Elegy was quite different from David Brubeck’s other compositions (assuming this is the famed jazz composer Dave Brubeck) such as the well-known Take Five.  It lived up to its title superbly. Again, Megiddo played the solo rather mournful but beautiful melody.  The music fell away to pianissimo at the end. The players had a lovely blend here.The Gershwin standard ‘Summertime’ from Porgy and Bess kept us in the United States; it was short and sweet, but effective, with Megiddo again playing solo.

Finally, in jazz-land again, we heard The Entertainer, a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin (1868-1917).  Again the players revealed their expertise.  Although intonation was no always perfect, the playing was full of contrast, including in an excellent pizzicato passage. A cellist in the audience told me that most of this programme had been performed at this year’s Cellophonia, for cellists; ‘a week of music making and expert coaching from international musicians’ held in late August, at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington.

 

 

 

300 years of riches from the NZSM Orchestra – What is it about Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto this year?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra presents:
THREE CENTURIES

BELA BARTOK – Violin Concerto No. 2 BB 117
MICHAEL NORRIS – Claro  (2015)
ANTON BRUCKNER – Symphony No.8 in C Minor (ed.Haas): Mvt.4 – Finale

Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (violin)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

St. Andrew’s on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington

Tuesday 2nd October 2018

Though primarily a vehicle for displaying the stellar talents of violinist Claudia Tarrant-Matthews, winner of the NZSM Concerto Competition for 2018, this concert gave considerable added value in terms of the wide range of repertoire, not to mention the quality of the NZSM Orchestra’s committed, focused and excitingly-played performances of the same. Following Tarrant-Matthews’ astonishing traversal of one of the twentieth century’s truly great concertos, we heard an evocative piece, Claro, by the recent SOUNZ Contemporary Award winner Michael Norris, and then, to finish, the finale of what many people regard as the greatest of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies, the Eighth (difficult to “bring off”, but here, most excitingly played, the movement’s somewhat unwieldy structure tautly held together by conductor Ken Young’s visionary direction).

Not for a moment did I think I would hear ANOTHER live performance of Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto during the same twelve-month, much less one that was as skilfully-played and richly-wrought as an interpretation as that of Amalia Hall’s earlier in the year with Orchestra Wellington. But here was Claudia Tarrant-Matthews, fearlessly shaping up to the music with the utmost authority, putting her own stamp on the composer’s idioms and evocations, and together with a group of musicians who were prepared to follow her through thick and thin, enabling the music to come alive,  every detail from both the soloist and orchestra in the mercilessly clear St.Andrew’s acoustic finding its place and expressing its character in relation to its context in the work as a whole.

Tarrant-Matthews’ tone throughout I thought gorgeous in its sheer range of expression, maintained unfailingly throughout the most demanding sequences involving double-stopping, glissandi or rapid passagework, yet sounded always with an ear to what the orchestra was doing, giving such character to her interactions with the winds (a strongly atmospheric cor anglais, for example) or the sometimes irreverent brass. Her cadenza-like displays had a hair-raising, spontaneous quality that contributed to the “rush-of-blood” effect in many places throughout the first movement, most excitingly and satisfyingly. As well, the slow movement’s ethereal opening occasioned a beautiful cantabile from the soloist, giving the big orchestral tutti even more impact with its raw emotion, and in turn throwing into bold relief the ensuing “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” world eerily evoked by winds and percussion. Each variation brought its own character to bear on the narrative so eloquently, the solo violin’s stratospheric work illuminating pinpoints of light as the strings slowly danced, before they and the winds towards the movement’s end generated suitably celestial resonances in the wake of the whole.

The work’s finale – a reworking of the first movement, Bartok enabling the Variation form he wanted its utmost scale of expression, here – burst in upon us furiously, strings swirling about, and the soloist at first steadily and folkishly playing the earthily-flavoured melodic fragments of themes which straightaway “grounded” the music, before “taking the orchestra on” as a kind of sparring partner – most exciting! The themes were here played by the orchestra in such a heartfelt and forthright way, combining emotion and physical energy so irresistibly! – and the soloist replied in kind, before leading the way into a chromatically-flavoured kind of vortex of tightly-wrought exchanges, dissolving into sinuous, eerie utterances.  These moments made for a lovely contrast with the more raucous, “Concerto for Orchestra”-like confrontations, all of which were duly disarmed by the composer and set upon trajectories into different realms – such staggering invention! I loved the Holst-like timpani and brass towards the end, as well as Bartok’s sweetly simple reversion to a child-like folk-figure, so artlessly and innocently played by Tarrant-Matthews, before the orchestra “let ‘er rip” over the final few bars (I think the composer could have let the violinist join in with the fun, but there you go!) – a great, and much-acclaimed performance by all, and deservedly so!

After this, it almost seemed that to go on was risking an anti-climax – however this was decidedly not the case! On two counts conductor Young and his players fully justified pairing the concerto in its wake with two other pieces, both of which received riveting performances.  The first of these works was Michael Norris’s 2015 work Claro, commissioned by the NZSO for that year’s “Aotearoa-plus” concert, and well-received by my colleague Lindis Taylor in these columns, with the words “a remarkable exercise in imaginative orchestration and harmonic ingenuity”. The composer himself wanted to write a piece that unselfconsciously explored the idea of “a gradual emergence of line out of simple little points in space – of expressivity out of abstractiveness”. Admitting that Douglas Lilburn’s work exerted something of a subconscious influence in this case, possibly due partly to the commission being intended for performance with the earlier composer’s Second Symphony, Norris cited Lilburn’s awareness of space and colour as having certain resonances of sustained quality in this later work, though without exerting any direct influence on the piece’s outcome.

We heard harp, percussion, and pizzicato strings at the outset, joined by piano, the pizzicati alternating with bowed notes, the percussive sounds with “held” wind notes, these latter having an “electric current” quality, a feeling of energy being channelled and sent to various places. The sounds began to cohere and make patterns, vary dynamics and pitches, tumbling over the top of one another in a kind of awakening chaos of delight, a rolling, bristling ball of impulses, the light within the “lighter” instruments playing, bouncing and refracting, while the heavier instruments created impulses that moved and shook land masses. A high shimmering string note stimulated wonderment in all sonic directions, with instruments, in Dylan Thomas’s poetic words, doing “what they are told” in describing the play of natural forces.

An uneasy calm was coloured and flecked with a second wave of gradually animated trajectories, as kaleidoscopic scintillations and movements gradually sped up, the instruments fusing their impulses together, sometimes falling over themselves to push the animations onwards, at other times vaingloriously “fanfaring” the soundscape and stimulating challenges from other quarters. The feelings of movement spread steadily and remorselessly through the textures, the variations of texture, colour and dynamics constantly leading the ear on. As the figurations took on more and more girth the excitement from within grew – huge crescendi of sounds dashed themselves to fragments against the music’s basic pathway. In their wake the sounds seemed to settle in overlapping layers, while a solo violin sent out a raincheck call answered by winds and harp, and allowing the instruments which began the piece to re-emerge and gratefully complete the circle. In all, I thought it a marvellously-constructed “adventure” for orchestra, here patiently, fearlessly and sonorously delivered.

That last sentence would sum up almost any successful performance of a symphony by Anton Bruckner, though we were given only a movement from one of the Austrian master’s greatest works this evening, the finale of his Eighth Symphony. A much-troubled work in its genesis, the Eighth was completely revised by Bruckner after suffering the humiliation of having the piece rejected for performance by his chosen conductor, thus leaving two versions for posterity (1887 and 1890), and an ongoing argument as to the relative merits of each version, with, confusingly, a “combined” version thrown into the mix for further argument! Up until recently the edition prepared by Leopold Nowak in 1955 was the one most favoured by conductors, but the earlier edition by Robert Haas (1935) incorporated more of Bruckner’s original ideas from the 1887 version and restored certain cuts that an earlier editor, Josef Schalk, had made to ANOTHER revised edition of 1892! (At this point the reader needs to take a deep breath, and recall the late Sir Thomas Beecham’s response to news of a new edition of somebody’s (it could well have been Haydn’s) symphonies, with the words, “Are they scholarly, or musical?” – which, regarding all of this, of course, is the most important consideration!)……

After reading Ken Young’s note telling us that the edition used in this concert was that by Robert Haas, we could settle down and enjoy the music, its tumultuous beginning with apocalyptic brass and thunderous timpani! Having “cleared his symphonic throat” as it were, Bruckner then gives us an amazingly discursive amalgam of seemingly disjointed motifs, fused together in the best performances by a strongly-projected overview involving no-holds-barred playing and focused, clearly-articulated figurations throughout. Which is precisely what we got from Young and the NZSM Orchestra, with the help of certain extra players to make up the numbers required by the composer in this epically-conceived work. Young pointed out that Bruckner had set orchestras difficulties by requiring “specialist” instruments like Wagner tubas, whose parts were played here most effectively by two extra trombone and two euphonium players. The St.Andrew’s acoustic barely passed muster throughout this encounter with such gargantuan forces, further advancing the urgent need for a recommissioned Town Hall, presently undergoing “earthquake-strengthening”.

Without indulging in a blow-by-blow description of the performance, I can still remark on the “charged” playing by the string sections throughout (only in the latter “working-out” sequences did their lines occasionally register the occasional strained note in their convoluted passagework), supported by sonorous work from the winds, having to deal with equally intricate patterns of symphonic impulse from the composer’s  fertile brain, and invariably golden-toned brass, their sounds somewhat constrained in the venue, but by turns massive and richly-wrought throughout, everywhere sturdily underpinned by alert timpani-playing, the latter especially enjoying his “road-music” sequence with the strings and brasses that at an early stage takes us into the symphony’s heart.

Always of concern for players of these works is being able to keep enough strength in reserve for the massive perorations with which they invariably finish – and the Eighth Symphony is certainly no exception. Here, the monumental build-up throughout the coda, beginning in C Minor, moved inexorably in Young’s hands towards that point when the music turns on massive pivots into the all-encompassing sunshine heralded by those brass shouts of C Major, thunderously supported by the rest of the orchestra. As Ken Young had remarked in farewelling certain players who were completing their studies and appearing in the orchestra for the last time, “You can’t get a better farewell than playing in the Bruckner Eighth Symphony” (or words to that effect!), a statement that was unequivocally affirmed at the end by the music, its composer, the interpreters and the by-now-flabbergasted, but still-appreciative audience!

 

 

Violin and piano competition winners show robust musical and technical gifts and fine rapport

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society
Ioana Cristina Goicea (violin) and Andrey Gugnin (piano)

Schubert: Rondo in B minor, D.895, “Rondo Brilliant”
Enescu: Sonata no.3 “In Romanian folk Style”
Brahms: Sonata no.3 in D minor, Op.108
Brahms: Scherzo in C minor, from the F.A.E. Sonata

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 30 September 2018, 2:30 pm

A concert of illustrious music from an illustrious duo.  Ioana Cristina Goicea is the winner of the 2017 Michael Hill a Violin Competition, and Andrey Gugnin the winner of the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition.  Their tour of New Zealand with Chamber Music New Zealand is in association with the Michael Hill Competition.  A good-sized audience heard this noteworthy recital, the last in the Waikanae Music Society’s 2018 series.

It wasn’t difficult to see why such accomplished musicians won their respective competitions.  Both have won numbers of other international competitions also.

The Schubert Rondo starts dramatically, revealed gorgeous tone from the violin, and demonstrated much subtle shading of dynamics, and lyrical playing.  The piece switched between major an minor tonalities, and employed a persistent dotted rhythm.  This first section was marked andante.  The music became faster and more excited in the second section, allegro; even dance-like.

The piano gets a turn at expounding the theme, after more-or-less continuous violin.

The piece featured sundry false endings.  The last section was fast and brilliant: a showpiece for the violin.  The opening theme and the dotted rhythm return; there is quite a lot of repetition.  It was a spirited performance.

The next piece was in quite another genre, by the pre-eminent composer from the violinist’s homeland: Romania.  Enescu’s sonata was described in the programme notes as “Invigorating and edgy, one feels the pulse the pulse of Eastern European fold dance…”  (There were numerous misrelated dependant clauses like this in the notes; n.b.  NZSO, guilty often of the same grammatical error.)

The work’s chromatic opening was gentle, with Eastern European tonalities.  The notes slithered here and there, like a slow, seductive dance.  Then the music broke into a faster dance.  The tempo marking moderato malinconico means ‘moderately; melancholy’, but I didn’t find this a dominant feature.  Full-toned low notes from the violin were notable.  The music returned to the slower tempo before enlivening again, and closing pianissimo. This was an intrepid movement, full of variety.

The second movement, andante sostenuto e misterioso began similarly softly.  There were many brilliant touches for the violin, particularly in the upper register.  The music then broke into a jolly dance, with birds joyfully accompanying from above.  But the mood soon became ominous, as though a cloudburst had fallen on the dancers.  Exciting descending piano ripples followed, and then the peace was restored in a restrained, muted passage

The third movement, allegro con brio ma non troppo, featured sprightly music, in unison for a time, with decorations, and very rhythmic.  Then we were back to the deep notes from the unison section, the violin part being most effective, including fast pizzicato.  The movement brought to an end a spectacular musical journey.

Throughout, the ensemble between these two superb musicians was perfect.

After the interval, we came to more sombre music, by Brahms.  His third sonata for violin and piano opens melodiously, in D minor.  It was played very thoughtfully; every note beautifully placed; nothing unimaginatively slurred, the many delights in Brahms’s writing appropriately exposed.  The playing from both was robust when required, but always the tone and timbre were splendid.

Brahms always gives the piano plenty of interesting music to play.  A passionate rendering of the main theme brought the first movement (allegro) to an end.

The serious adagio second movement introduced a wonderful broad, calm theme; the movement ended as peacefully as it began.  The third movement, un poco presto e con sentimento features lively rhythm and chirpy sequences for both instruments.

The fourth movement, presto agitato,, has thematic links with what has gone before  There are grand statements with answering phrases, and many mellifluous episodes.  It becomes fast and hectic; cascades on the piano end it.

Last on the programme was a delightful scherzo, from a quartet written as a collaborative project with some of the composer’s close friends.  The letters F, A and E denote not only the musical pitches, but also the personal motto of his friend, violinist Joseph Joachim: ‘frei aber einsam‘ (free but lonely*).

It opened quite ambiguously as to key, like others of Brahms’s compositions.  This is an early work, and is more extravert than the later sonata we had just heard, although it soon became thoughtful, even sublime, before the busy opening sequence returned, interspersed by passages of great delicacy.

As well as showing great musical and technical ability, this duo exhibited a strong rapport; they played as a unity, with each nevertheless revealing their own particular skills.

*Gloss by Lindis Taylor
“I have always felt that this translation of Einsam doesn’t reflect what Brahms might have meant. Certainly, it translates as ‘lonely’, and that is the usual translation, but is also means and here feels better translated, according to my instinct, as ‘solitary’. The latter removes the element of self-pity that colours ‘lonely’, and my feeling about Brahms is that he valued being alone, but didn’t suffer loneliness – apart from the emotions that might have derived from his enigmatic relationship with Clara Schumann.”

 

Aroha Quartet with animated, robust, delightful evening concert at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Aroha String Quartet (Haihong Liu and Anne Loeser, violins; Zhongxian Jin, viola; Robert Ibell, cello)
‘Light and Dark’

Haydn: String Quartet in C, Op.76 no. 3 ‘Emperor’
Ross Carey: Elegy (Toccatina)
Shostakovich: String Quartet no.11 in F minor, Op. 122
Dvořák: String Quartet no.12 in F, Op.96 ‘American’

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 26 September 2019, 7:30 pm

It was most unfortunate that this concert had had to be rescheduled; this made it clash with another chamber music concert in the city, which was presumably responsible for the rather small audience.

Anne Loeser substituted for the regular second violinist Ursula Evans, the latter having had an injury.

The two older works on the programme had been played By this group at a St. Andrew’s lunchtime concert less than a year ago (see Lindis Taylor’s review, Middle-C, 6 December 2017.)  The Shostakovich was played at lunchtime two months ago; see Lindis’s review, Middle-C, 26 July 2018.  The Ross Carey, too, had been played before by the Aroha Quartet.  See Peter Mechen’s review of 26 October 2016.

Accuracy you expect from an experienced quartet such as the Aroha, but the animation of their playing is noteworthy, also the subtle shading of dynamics, and the warm, often mellifluous tone, and excellent balance.

The Haydn quartet’s first movement (allegro) was robust and delicate by turns as required, making for both exciting abd pleasurable listening.  The second movement is famous for the theme, which became the Austrian national anthem, and is widely used as a hymn-tune.  The four variations each feature a different soloist from the quartet.  The first variation has the second violin to the fore, its rendition of the melody embroidered by the first violin’s arpeggios and runs.  The other instruments have a rest.

The second variation features the cello, with counterpoint from the violins, and a few comments from the viola.  The playing was rich and sonorous from the cello.  The third variation is for the viola, playing a restrained version of the melody with the violins floating above, finally joined by the cello halfway through.  The first violin takes over for the last variation, with the other instruments playing a harmonic accompaniment.

The minuet and trio third movement is of a much more jolly nature.  A few hairy notes early on did not really detract from a delightful performance.  The trio, initially in a minor key, gave a complete contrast.  The repeat of the minuet brought back the bouncy theme, with its wonderful interplay of parts and instruments.  The finale is fast and dynamically varied, incorporating shades of earlier movements, mainly the first.

The piece by New Zealander Ross Carey was not long, and was written in memory of an Australian Aboriginal singer.  Its lively opening featured a repeated dotted rhythm; a perpetuum mobile with a dark melody on viola.  It moved to the second violin and then the first violin.  The cello introduced a new melody on the upper reaches of the strings.  What a different timbre this produced compared with a violin playing notes at the same pitch!  The first violin then took over this quieter section, which had a Mendelssohnian quality.  The insistent rhythm from the beginning returned, then solemn, slow passages ended this attractive work.

Shostakovich’s 11th quartet is in seven short movements, played without pauses between them.  It was written in memory of his violinist friend, Vasily Shirinsky, in 1966. The first movement is ‘Introduction – Andantino’. It began somewhat portentously; slow, chromatic phrases, glissando flourishes  on violin and cello.

After the ‘Scherzo – Allegretto’, the following ‘Recitative – Adagio’ has a harsh introduction, and features a first violin solo that includes passages of double-stopping. over the top of the other instruments’ accompaniment.  Then comes ‘Etude – Allegro’ with fast runs for first violin and cello.   Later movements introduce more dissonant chords, and restrained melody from the first violin.

Following the ironically named ‘Humoresque – Allegro’, the sixth movement ‘Elegy – Adagio’ is calm and profound, leading to the final movement, which recapitulates earlier themes.  The end comes as quite a shock (Finale – Moderato).

The popular ‘American’ Quartet by Dvořák ended the concert.  The melodic and rhythmic invention of the composer is a constant source of delight.    One of the melodies (third movement) was based on an American bird, a picture of which Robert Ibell showed the audience, and the first violinist played its song for us.

The rich opening viola solo set the tone for a joyful experience, and brought home to me how much better it is to hear a live performance rather than a recording, no matter how good the latter.  This first movement was taken at quite a spanking pace compared with other performances I have heard (allegro ma non troppo).  The melody that follows the opening section was sublime.  Then there is a repeat of the first melody, with pizzicato accompaniment, followed by a return of the second subject, with lovely harmony underpinning it.  The whole is full of delightful and even ingenious touches.

The second movement (lento) introduces a fabulous melody, which is especially so when played by cello – ravishingly beautiful, while the third movement’s molto vivace has a folksy feel to it, like a country dance in the composer’s native Bohemia, with everyone having a good time.  The harmonies were most satisfying, as was the finale: vivace ma non troppo; a very cheerful and melodic movement, even more like a country dance than the previous one.

While it was excellent for the printed programme notes to acknowledge the sources of information, I think it was a mistake to fit it into the same format as that used for the lunchtime concerts: a folded A4 sheet.  With a much longer and more substantial musical offering, the space required forced the splendid notes into a tiny font which I for one could not read in the church.  All things are possible but not all things are expedient.

 

 

Springtime winds at St Andrew’s from the NZSM

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Woodwind Students

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 26 September 2018

This further recital by music students from the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington attracted a rather smaller audience than is usual for these lunchtime concerts. However, everyone was appreciative of the display of talent, skill, and hard work on show.

First on the programme was sonata V in E minor for flute and continuo, BWV 1034 by J.S.Bach. Samantha McSweeney played the first and second movements, accompanied by Kirsten Robertson on the piano. The adagio consisted of lovely music, and was played with a beautiful sound. The only drawback was rather noisy breathing sometimes. The player needs to try to breathe as singers do, inaudibly.

The following allegro was lively, the melodies shooting all over the stave – no doubt demanding to play. It was a gorgeous performance.It was followed by the slow, second movement from Mozart’s bassoon concerto in B flat major, KV 191, played by Breanna Abbott, with piano accompaniment from the incomparable Catherine Norton. This youthful composition was a delight to hear. Its melodious, lyrical and pastoral characteristics were fully demonstrated in this performance.

Next was a flute trio from Bella Anderson, Samantha McSweeney and Ainslee Smithers. They played an allegro first movement by Kaspar Krummer, a nineteenth century German composer and flautist. The players’ ensemble was excellent; their mastery of both instrument and music most accomplished; a delicious work beautifully played.

Now for something completely different. Schulhoff was a Czech composer, whose life came to an untimely end in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942. The alto saxophone piece, of which the third and fourth movements were played by Peter Liley accompanied by Catherine Norton, was entitled Hot sonate [sic] for alto saxophone and piano. Despite this, the programme note described it as ‘cool, raucous and smoky’.

Schulhoff composed in many styles, but was strongly influenced by jazz, which is the predominant element in this work.It opened with whining, siren-like sounds on the saxophone. Discords abounded from the saxophone; the piano part was fairly tame in the third movement. The fourth movement was fast, and ‘classical’ in a Satie-like manner. The music was very well played, and effective, though the repetitious figures in this movement tended to become tedious The movement had an abrupt, unexpected ending.

Darius Milhaud’s quirky, humorous style of composition was somewhat muted in his Pastorale Op.147, which was played by Samantha McSweeney (flute, substituting for the original oboe), Billie Kiel (clarinet) and Breanna Abbott (bassoon). The piece immediately lived up to its title, its smooth quality expertly played, which I found quite soporific.

The final work was by Gareth Farr, played by Isabella Gregory (flute) and Finn Bidkin (marimba). I assume (thanks to Wikipedia) that it was Kembang Suling. Neither the composer’s nor the piece’s names weere printed in the programme; it was easy to pick up the composer’s name spoken, but not that of the work.

The first movement’s opening featured repetitious rhythms for both instruments (obvious gamelan  influence here and elsewhere), that built up from quiet piano to forceful forte. The music became more excited; it was impressive to watch the marimba-player using two mallets in each hand, at
speed. The music then moved between the flute taking the solos spot and the marimba doing so.The second movement was slower, with a slightly eerie quality; the flute melody was very quiet, backed by a ghostly marimba accompaniment. The third movement was a vigorous duet with variety and independence of the two parts, though they were linked thematically and rhythmically. The piece ended with a dynamic unison, and a final flourish.

Too important to let go – Ashley Brown with a “new” NZTrio for Braid, a Suffrage Year concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The NZTrio presents:
BRAID – Celebrating the Feminine in all of us……Braid

RACHEL CLEMENT – Shifting States
CLARA SCHUMANN – Piano Trio in G Minor Op.17
ELENA KATS-CHERNIN – Spirit and the Maiden
VICTORIA KELLY – Sono
FANNY MENDELSSOHN – Piano Trio in D minor Op.11

NZTrio – Benjamin Baker (violin) / Ashley Brown (‘cello) / Stephen de Pledge (piano)

City Gallery, Civic Square, Wellington

Wednesday, 26th September, 2018

This is the second concert with overt connections to the recent 125th suffrage anniversary that I’ve recently reviewed, very different to the earlier one (Cantoris Choir, Wellington), though packing a similarly powerhouse punch on behalf of women’s musical creativity. It was titled Braid, and is one of three concert series given by the trio this year featuring the work of women composers, the other two being called Weave and Twine. As with Cantoris Choir’s presentation, I very soon forgot the “idea”of these sounds I was hearing having been composed by women, so caught up was I in the process of listening – reacting to creative sensibilities expressing the kind of individuality and focus which put any idea of “gender” in a proper existential context. To use less convoluted language the sounds were soon coming to me as a listener “on their own terms”.

The NZTrio has of late reconstituted in an altogether startling way, losing both its violinist (Justine Cormack) and its pianist (Sarah Watkins) in relatively quick succession, due entirely to attrition. Surviving member, ‘cellist Ashley Brown has joined forces with various other musicians in order to present the group’s 2018 series of concerts, given the titles Weave, Braid and Twine. This was the second in the series, Braid, and brought into the picture the talents of violinist Benjamin Baker and pianist Stephen de Pledge, an all-male lineup which found itself addressing the entirely female-composer essence of Braid. One article I saw concerning the concert was subtitled “The classical blokes saluting unsung women composers”, which certainly conveyed the ironies of the situations in no uncertain terms!

Perhaps it’s a “sign of the times” that both the Trio and Cantoris, mentioned above, featured works by nineteenth-century as well as contemporary female composers, allowing a comparison of contexts in which women worked to create music. Cantoris featured an 1892 Festival Cantata by the American composer Amy Beach, as well as including pieces by Dame Gillian Whitehead and Jenny McLeod, while the NZ Trio gave us chamber works by two different nineteenth-century women, both connected with illustrious male composers by blood or marriage – firstly Clara Schumann, and then Fanny Mendelssohn. Along with these we heard pieces by Australian Elena Kats-Chernin (b.1957), as well as contemporary NZers, Rachel Clement and Victoria Kelly.

To open the concert the Trio chose an attention-grabbing piece by Rachel Clement, one called Sabbia (sand) from a larger work whose title “Shifting States” referred to the process of artistic glass-making in its numerous forms. The opening sounds were flung at us by the composer, the playing positively suggesting flint-like substances with hard, sharp edges, able to change shape and form at a moment’s notice, evoking by turns long, sinuous lines, scintillations and colourings. These sound-impulses developed a certain breadth, suggesting either dreams of a substance morphing into something else, or in the hands of a glassmaker interacting with her or his artistic imagination! A certain “exotic” element in colour, texture and rhythm also evoked something of sand’s natural environment, desert vistas, long lines of unbroken space, something of a wonderous contradiction with the piece’s actual brevity. Austere and yet beautiful and startling!

In the programme Fanny Mendelssohn’s D Minor Piano Trio was next scheduled, but Ashley Brown told us that the group had done a rethink, and swopped the pieces’ order around, which meant we got Clara Schumann’s Trio first. Had the music been unannounced and simply played, then away from any programme listing, I would have hazarded a guess that Robert Schumann was the composer, right from the flowing tune that opened the work – though some of the following piano figurations seemed to push the music slightly more Mendelssohn’s way. I did like the generosity of both melody and interchange throughout, the flowing theme of the opening tempered in its seriousness by the more quixotic second subject.

I enjoyed the charming quirkiness of the Scherzo’s opening, and the “different-worldliness” of the Trio, so circumspect in its poise, equivocal in its rhythmic trajectories, and yet so passionate in its string unisons, played here with the kind of focus that made every note mean something. The third-movement Andante begins as a veritable “song without words”, with a piano solo whose “drawing-room” melody give way to vigorous dotted-rhythm exchanges in the movement’s middle section, the players digging into the forthright statements with a will. The ‘cello leads the music out of this mood and back into its opening lyricism most tenderly, with melting acquiescence from both violinist and pianist.

Again I thought the finale’s opening Schumannesque in its anxieties and suggestions of flight, the melody having a “haunted” quality, which the violinist’s chromatic descents seemed at first to take further, though the rather chirpy second subject was more of a children’s “hide-and-seek” game than anything deeper and more sinister. I liked the chromatic figuration of the fugue-like development, the players giving their various entries a trenchant quality that again took the music away from the drawing-room and into more fairy-tale realms. In the work’s coda the players found both qualities , the anxiety given more energy and punctuated with vigorous phrases that resolved as many doubts as showed their faces.

It seemed quite a quantum leap to go from these gracious drawing-room gestures to Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin’s Spirit and the Maiden – very much an “in your face” work right from the beginning, with driving rhythms and deeply-etched melodic lines creating a strongly “filmic” kind of atmosphere, the trajectories covering a lot of ground, dancing along, wildly and abandonedly, with occasional folkish touches that eventually steer the sounds into wonderment at the first movement’s enigmatic conclusion. The story involves an affair between a young girl and a water-spirit, which ends, as these things seem always to do in folk-lore, tragically – and much of the music’s course over the first two movements was wild and vigorous, as if emotion on all sides was hper-driven by both exhilaration and fear. The second movement’s dance-like course again concluded mysteriously, with added menace and unease suggested by a string tremolando whose sound seemed to dissolve into spectral-like regions.

Unlike the first two movements this concluding piece began lugubriously, with heavy sighing, gradually becoming more animated and florid, everything seemingly trapped in a great trough of despair, the ‘cello upwardly sighing with great glissandi, and joined by the violin, continuing a series of increasingly-despairing moments. The piano then ”upped” the rhythm to a march that became more and more savage until the textures suddenly started to dissolve, as it were, right in front of our ears! All momentum ceased and the sounds drifted into nothingness.

Victoria Kelly’s Sono is, literally, the stuff of dreams, in this case, it seems, a rude awakening from a dream. Not unlike Rachel Clement’s Sabbia in its initial impact, this was more obsessive an experience, long-term, the music trying to both enter into and escape a world from which the sensibilities have been, according to the composer, “untimely ripp’d”. Here, it was a superbly-sustained dreamscape, one half-lit but made altogether tremulous with possibility. As the piano picked its way through its own sound-world, the strings more and more insistently beamed their tones upon the wanderer, half-encouraging, half-mocking the figure’s progress. Depending on one’s mood one could have been wandering lost after being cast adrift, or, more passively, immersed in some kind of meditation amid an extended jazz-piano solo, the strings present either as fellow-musicians or representing a totality of listener-responses, a “did we dream you or did you dream us” scenario. Whatever the case, the music was superbly focused on states of consciousness and their waxing and waning, setting up a state of trance-like wonderment, seeming to me to be in the process of fusing outward and inward states of being.

Awakening us from such reveries was the programme’s final work, a Piano Trio by Fanny Mendelssohn, in fact her last published piece (of almost 500 separate works found posthumously only eleven found their way into print!), and one which was completed only a short time before her death. By all accounts she was as talented a performer as her more famous brother, Felix, and on the strength of her surviving compositions, possessed gifts as a composer that matched his own. In fact Felix occasionally published her songs under his own name to give them a public life otherwise denied most of her work at the time. Pianist Stephen de Pledge introduced the work to us, calling it “remarkable”, and drawing our attention in particular to the finale, in which the writing, he remarked “goes mad”, perhaps partly reflecting the composer’s urgent desire to complete the music in time to present it to her sister as a birthday gift!

I thought on the strength of this evening’s hearing, it overshadowed Clara Schumann’s work in content if not in form, its intensities reflecting what seemed an “inner life” of enormous depths of artistic feeling and imagination. That Fanny desired recognition as a composer was indicated by her decision to publish some of her works, initially without her brother’s approval, but then, in 1846, on being approached by no less than two publishers, six opus numbers of works, with his (probably reluctant) blessing! Hearing this Op.11 Piano Trio with its compelling outer movements, one gets the feeling that this was music which desperately NEEDED to be written!

The opening Allegro vivace began with a remarkably Schumannesque melody sounded by the strings over an agitated piano accompaniment, the players bringing out the music’s restlessness, which was then partly relieved by a wide-leaping melody shared by all three instruments in turn, with variants of the melodic line then tossed about among the individual players. At the development it seemed as though the music’s underlying mood had merely been waiting its chance – with the piano once again in agitated mode, the players built the music towards some wonderfully full-blooded romantic gesturings, with even the wide-leaping melody being subjected to the composer’s “sturm und drang” manner, removing all hints of drawing-room sensibility with splendidly assertive gesturings (I was going to use the word “virile”, but thought better of it!). After what appeared to be a somewhat desolate little coda, the music suddenly re-ignited and flung the last few bars at us most unapologetically!

A piano solo began the slow movement, andante expressivo, joined by the strings, the instruments in turn given ample chances to sing, not only with the opening, but a more flowing minor-key melody in the music’s middle sequence, one which is heard again later as a piquant counterpoint to the opening tune – everything is “voiced” by the players with great poetry and sensitivity. Instead of a third movement scherzo, we got a “Lied”, a brief but beautiful “Song Without Words” kind of movement requiring little comment. Not so the finale – beginning with a heroic recitative-like flourish, the piano took charge from the outset, launching into a swaggering dance-like processional, not unlike a Czardas in rhythm, and one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies in mood. The strings entered soon enough, joining in with the dance, and helping to build up the tensions, adding weight and pace to the textures, including a forthright “strut” to the dance-rhythms – very sexy in places, with the piano contributing great flourishes. Finally, the coda galvanised the energies further, paused for a brief reminiscence of the slow movement theme, then despatched the rest with a tremendous burst!

All credit to the NZTrio for their scintillating and thoroughly engaging traversal of music which ought to be heard more often.

 

 

Exotic, rhapsodic, gruesome and tragic – Wellington Chamber Orchestra with conductor Andrew Atkins and Thomas Nikora (piano)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

GREAT ROMANTIC SYMPHONIC POEMS

BORODIN – In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880)
RACHMANINOV – Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini Op.43**
DVOŘÁK – Symphonic Poem “The Wild Dove“ (Holoubek) Op.110  B.198
TCHAIKOVSKY – Fantasy Overture “Romeo and Juliet“ (1880)

Thomas Nikora (piano)**
Andrew Atkins (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday, 23rd September 2018

I thought the programme’s given, somewhat “Readers’ Digest”, title “Great Romantic Symphonic Poems” simply didn’t convey the essence of this concert, so I have invented my own, above, thinking that it ought to “grab” people’s attention more readily, even if for the wrong reasons. The adjectives refer, of course, to the concert’s contents, and by no means to the performances, which were simply riveting throughout – and what reservations I might have had concerning the latter can be self-dismissed, in any case, with the words “in my opinion”, writ in water rather than in stone!

At least the title conveys the extraordinary range of content and sensibility to be found in this assemblage of music, of which only Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” could be said to be truly standard fare. I can’t ever remember hearing Alexander Borodin’s delectable piece “In the Steppes of Central Asia” in concert, before, and we don’t get to hear “live” THAT often the most jazzy and contemporary-sounding of all of Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra, the Paganini Rhapsody. As for the Dvořák symphonic poem “The Wild-Dove”, well I didn’t anywhere see any labels on the item with the words “Contains disturbing content” or “Adults must be accompanied by children” – but the material from which the composer drew his inspiration for this and several other tone-poems outdoes even some of the Brothers Grimm’s stories for malevolence and bloodthirstiness (the “Wild-Dove” actually being the least brutal of a very nasty bunch of stories by Karel Jaromir Erben, based on Czech folklore!)

So, ‘twas programming of a most enterprising kind, and its realisation was, I thought, most successful. Beginning with that most evocative of musical realisations, Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia”, a brilliantly-conceived musical picture of, for we South-Sea Islanders,  a most exotic and fairy-tale part of the world, the performance straightaway took us to a land of seemingly endless vistas, through which occasionally passed travellers from both east and west, in this case a caravan from Asia making its way westwards accompanied by Russian soldiers. Borodin’s idea was to portray these salient characteristics of two worlds in music, separately at first, and then together, all under the sway of the landscape’s vast spaces.

The strings began with a single held note, delineating the vast stillness of the steppes, with solos from firstly clarinet and then horn (beautifully played) establishing firstly the “Russian” presence, followed by the sinuous “Eastern” melody, here most evocatively sounded by the oboe, both wind choirs and brasses beautifully realising their differently-coloured and ambiently spaced-out sequences. And so came the ”big tutti”, which burst upon the scene in brazen glory, the Russian theme splendidly “rasped” by the brasses and ably supported by winds and strings alike – magnificent!

But the most splendid part of the work was to come, with the two melodies then so beautifully and nostalgically combined as the different worlds intermingled, sharing instrumentations and colours and timbres between them in lump-in-throat ways, the strings particularly affecting here as they changed from Russian” to “Eastern” in one of the sequences. A shortness of breath in one of the early wind solos, and some momentary imprecise ensemble between wind and strings in the “intermingling” of melodies did no violence to the power and beauty of the evocation by conductor and players, the horn and wind solos all heroic, the strings and flute heartbreakingly magical at the end.

Enter then Thomas Nikora, taking time out from his duties as Music Director of Cantoris Choir, to essay the soloist’s role in Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” for piano and orchestra. With a flick of the conductor’s wrist, a couple of emphatic, confident piano chords, and a frisson of orchestral energy, we were away on a wild, spontaneous-sounding ride, the music very much in Rachmaninov the composer’s later leaner, more spiky mode, though with a few melting moments at one or two places. Of course, everybody was waiting for the work’s most well-known sequence, the eighteenth variation (when asked about this variation’s return to the “old” Rachmaninovian style, the composer simply replied “That one was for my agent!”) – and Nikora and Atkins and the players didn’t disappoint, giving the famous melody plenty of room to expand and fill the spaces with luscious tones – even if the strings lacked the “heft” of professional orchestras their backs were bent to the task and their phrasing of the melody fully demonstrated their depth of feeling for the music.

Elsewhere, the soloist and players relished the “cat-and-mouse” moments of the music’s interactions as much as the quieter, more reflective sequences. I was impressed with the articulateness of it all, and the fitting-together at high speed of the various impulses, drolleries, explosions and longer lines – there was only one minor derailment, early on, that I noticed (I think in Variation V), when the orchestra was in one place slightly too quick for the pianist, who adroitly skipped the hiatus and reconnected in an instant, a moment atypical of the performance as a whole, though the realignment was in fact perfectly in line with the quicksilver responses of the musicians in general.

Besides the brilliance there was atmosphere – Variation VII brought the first appearance of the composer’s oft-used  “Dies Irae” theme, with bassoon and lower strings filling out the lugubrious tread of the music, and Variation XI rhapsodised, with tremolando strings and piano recitatives bringing a stillness to the soundscapes into which was poured cascades of piano notes in quasi-cadenza fashion, followed by Variation XII, which disconcertingly turned the “Dies Irae” theme into something like a ballroom waltz, graceful and sultry. More half-lit and even sinister in places was Variation XVI, staccato strings and stealthy piano ushering in a plaintive oboe, with the harp sounding the tocsin and strings shivering with foreboding at the phrase-ends and the solo violin doing its best along with the clarinet to reassure,  despite wonderful moans from the horn and flute – everything so well characterised!

As for Thomas Nikora’s piano-playing, it was by turns brilliant, forthright, charming, poetic and ruminative, as befitted the character of each of the variations – whether scintillating with cascades of notes as in Variation XI, or emoting with elegance and poetry, as in the famous No XVIII, or in complete contrast despatching the virtuoso demands of the last three variations with strength, wit and brilliance, he seemed in complete command of the music and in accord with what conductor and players were doing – at the end of it all we felt we had been “treated” to something out of the ordinary, and responded accordingly – quite unexpectedly, we were then given by the pianist an additional gift of a delicious arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the “Nutcracker” Ballet.

After the interval we returned for some more serious, not to say grimmer, business – Antonin Dvořák’s “Holoubek“ or “The Wild Dove“ is one of four symphonic poems written in 1896  by the composer, all inspired by a collection of folk-ballads called Kytice (Bouquet) written by Karel Jaromir Eben. Dvořák had previously written works inspired by Eben’s poetry in his “Legends“ (written firstly for piano fourhands, but later orchestrated), and like both Mussorgsky and Janacek in their music sought to reproduce something of the native flavour of the texts, and make specific musical references to objects and events in the stories, in the case of the symphonic poems often using Eben’s actual speech-rhythms in his treatment of the thematic material. The influential and arch-conservative critic Eduard Hanslick, who had previously expressed great enthusiasm for Dvořák’s music, was outraged at this “descent“ into programmatic detailing (Hanslick had previously castigated Liszt’s symphonic poems for similar reasons), calling Eben’s poems “ugly, unnatural and ghastly“, adding that Dvořák “has no cause to go begging before literary texts”. Fellow-composer Leos Janacek, on the other hand, embroiled at the time in his own work on the opera Jenufa, praised Dvorak’s latest pieces, saying that “the direct speech of the instruments……has never sounded with such certainty, clarity and truthfulness”.

The story of “The Wild Dove” involves a woman who has poisoned her husband and taken a new lover, whom she intends to marry. After the wedding a wild dove appears from nowhere and lands on the grave of the former husband. Its piteous cooing reminds the woman of her guilt, and increasingly torments her conscience, so that she eventually takes her own life. Conductor Andrew Atkins and his players brought the whole doom-laden scenario to life, right from the introductory darkness of the funeral march, through the quickening of interest between the widow and her new lover, the music’s pastoral beauties burgeoning into joyful dance-like expression with the wedding celebrations, and the arrival of the dove and its piteous cooing, accompanied by sinister winds and baleful horns, with the bleakness of the scene activating guilt and subsequent suicide on the part of the murderess. Dvorak also adds a kind of “redemptive” coda, suggesting a kind of acceptance and even forgiveness NOT in Eben’s story! I thought it a strong, evocative and sharply-focused performance.

Perhaps after such a gamut of tragic and harrowing dramatic expression, Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture “Romeo and Juliet” which followed was all just a bit much of a similar mode to take in! I appreciated the conductor letting us know that the piece was special for him, and I wondered whether at times he was “loving” it all a bit too much rather than letting parts of the music simply breathe and establish a more natural flow. Ask person B for his or her opinion and the impression could well be different; but I thought in places the expression was too “full on” at the beginning of a sequence for the music to be able to “go” anywhere except where the players started from. Particularly in the case of the wind choirs at the beginning and end of the work, I thought a lighter, more air-borne texture would have given the music more life and allowed the players room to deepen the expression as the sequences developed – here, it seemed to me that everybody was trying just a bit TOO hard!

That said, the work’s other sequences provided by turns plenty of excitement and lyrical warmth – apart from a too-eager horn at the beginning, the detailing from the different instrumental strands readily and precisely  brought things to life – the timpani and the lower strings built the tension superbly just before the “fight” music, the strings’ swirling exchanges with the winds prepared the way excitingly for the brass and percussion interjections depicting the warring houses, and the combination of strings and cor anglais melted all hearts with the famous love-theme, the harp and strings sounding gorgeous together with the winds when creating a diaphanous resonance in the lovers’ wake.

The return of the “fight”music created even more tension a second time round with great work from the horns, and the strings brandishing great attack and holding tightly-wrought rhythms, so important in this music. The heavy brass made splendid sounds, while the trumpets, fallible at their first big entry, rallied and delivered, contributing to the excitement – amid the exhaustion of these energies, the conductor drove his winds and strings onward to that incredible upsurge of feeling which  flooded in with the love theme’s return, the strings giving all they had with real passion and commitment. One more frenzied upsurge of energy and the music most satisfyingly collapsed, all passions spent, everybody having played their hearts out! A pity that the brass, having done such sterling work throughout were a degree or so too loud for the timpani’s deathly, funereal drumbeats to be heard, though a friend I sat with who was an ex-brass player commented on the difficulty for the players of keeping the instruments’ tones really soft. Though I thought the winds also gave too generously at the end, I thought the strings positively celestial in their rising figure, with the thunderous timpani and powerful brass giving us a most emphatic conclusion to the concert.

I haven’t given sufficient attention to Andrew Atkins’ direction throughout – though parts of the Tchaikovsky I thought needed a lighter touch, I was riveted by his work with the players for the rest of the time – the responses he got from the orchestra throughout the afternoon’s music-making produced, to my way of thinking, a truly memorable musical occasion.

 

 

 

 

Singular, well-conceived recital by male four-voice ensemble, reaching far and wide

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aurora IV: Dark Light, To mark the Spring Equinox
‘Exploring darkness and light and the shadows in between’

Toby Gee (counter-tenor), Richard Taylor (tenor), Julian Chu-Tan (baritone), Simon Christie (bass)

Music from 500 years ago to five years ago, by Lassus, Sheppard, Jean Mouton, Schubert, William Harris, Andrew Smith, anonymous plainchant and two poems (Emily Dickinson and Anne Glenny Wilson)

Pukeahu National War Memorial, Hall of Memories, Carillon, Mount Cook

Saturday 22 September, 8 pm

The beautiful, and acoustically excellent Hall of Memories carved into the bottom of the Carillon is one of the loveliest places for music in the city. It’s a wonder that it’s not more used for music recitals.

My previous musical experiences here have been by choirs: The Tudor Consort, Nota Bene; and just three months ago, Peter Mechen reviewed a concert by Baroque Voices.

Aurora IV have moved around. Their last concert was in the TGIF series at the Cathedral of St Paul’s, and my last hearing, in November 2017, was at St Andrew’s on The Terrace with a programme that was nearly as wide-ranging at this was.

The Hall was lit by a dozen candles on the floor and others on ledges on the side walls. It created a strangely spiritual atmosphere that was generally appropriate to the sense of the music. However, it made the reviewer’s task tricky, for it was not possible to read the titles of the pieces, and so there was a certain amount of guesswork, later, in fitting my sketchy notes to the works listed on the programme; which was otherwise excellent, offering words of each piece, in English. Ideally, it’s also nice for the original language to be supplied as well… but you can’t have everything.

The programme, of sixteen pieces, with all the words ran to three pages. Though being advertised as being about an hour, it seemed improbable at the outset, but the timing was indeed right.

The theme of the concert, the Equinox, when hours of light start to exceed those of the dark, drew on music, and some poetry, that touched on the transition from darkness to the light, which lends itself to symbolic references, both religious and secular.

The major element was parts of a Requiem Mass by Orlando de Lasso (here Orlandus Lassus), late 16th century.

After the lights went down, distant sounds of singing emerged from behind us, as from nowhere: a plainsong setting of a verse from the Lamenatations of Jeremiah. Sung by a solo tenor – presumably Richard Taylor – it seemed to float into the high vault of the chapel.

There were also pieces by Oslo-resident British composer Andrew Smith. I was intrigued later as I read my notes alongside the programme to find that I’d remarked on the Renaissance sounds, alternating with distinctly contemporary passages; it turned out to be Smith’s Flos regalis virginalis, and was relieved to read that this was the composer’s style: “his modern harmonic twists cast sparks of light against the darker, mystical tones of plainsong and medieval polyphony“.

Furthermore, it created a sound image of more than four voices. Which was a characteristic of their singing that impressed me many times: I was hearing both the richness of a small choir, but of one whose perfect ensemble gave the impression of single voices.

Other Andrew Smith pieces were a Magnificat. Once again I found its nature enigmatic and my notes bore the cryptic word ‘language?’; it must have been Latin. However, I enjoyed the echoey, complex harmonies, along with touches of plainsong. Their third Smith piece was And Surrexit Christus (I’m not sure whether that is usually known as ‘Hodie Christus natus est’). Again, not being able to read the programme, I scribbled ‘wide harmonies evolving into more dissonant’ music. Aurora IV have recently given the New Zealand premieres of all his pieces performed in this concert.

The Introit, ‘Requiem aeternam’ of Lassus’s Missa pro defunctis, was the first of three excerpts; later we heard his setting of Psalm 23, as a Responsory, commonly used in the Mass, then the Sanctus, and near the end of the concert, the Lux aeterna. My note in the dark about the first of Lassus’s excerpts remarked ‘perfectly blended voices’, each sounding of similar impressive quality’, and later that the bass, Simon Christie, sounded ‘clearly of international stature’. That section included ‘Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, Et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem’ and then the Kyrie.

Emily Dickinson’s comforting, much loved poem, ‘We grow accustomed to the dark’ followed, seeming to touch emotions very similar to the impact of the preceding music, though written three centuries later. It was admirably read, without a trace of elocuted, ‘poetic’ diction, by Toby Gee who also read Anne Glenny Wilson’s ‘A spring afternoon in New Zealand’ which was very popular in the 1890s. Not a poet I’d come across, and I enjoyed this poem and others by her that I found (inevitably, in these Googling times); quite comparable to Swinburne or Thomas Hardy, Bridges or Drinkwater, and Emily Dickinson if you like, of similar sensibility.

Quis dabit oculis? is a lament on the death of Queen Anne of Brittany by Jean Mouton – 16th century, featuring counter-tenor Toby Gee prominently. The Irish folksong, She moved through the fair, followed, after two of the singers had moved to the sides, conjured such a different aural landscape, in clearly pronounced Irish accents, in the seamless sounds of polyphony. (Was the remote sound of a flute an external coincidence or a part of the performance?).

Schubert’s Die Nacht was the only German entrant in the concert; apart from the distinct sound of the language, I might have been pressed to identify the composer, but the singing was perfectly idiomatic in words by a rather obscure poet of Schubert’s time. (part songs – there are many – by German Lieder composers, seem to be rarely performed).

Another anthem, in English, was William Harris’s Holy is the true light, a typical 20th century, four-part anthem, showing the quartet’s ease in a shift from the Medieval or Renaissance to a musically touching, contemporary idiom, not nearly as saccharine as such pieces sometimes sound.

Another outlier was a Latin motet by John Shepard, English mid-16th century, In Manus tuas, with a dominant tenor line handling the plainchant, between weaving polyphony, written probably during Mary’s reign when it was safe to compose Catholic music in Latin (dangerous not to!).

It ended with plainsong, as it had begun: first, lamenting the fall of Jerusalem, and the last offering the light of everlasting paradise. They were more or less forced to sing an encore: ‘Il bianco e dolore cigno’ by Flemish composer Jacques Arcadelt, which I was driven to find and play several versions of with great delight, on YouTube.

It was a totally admirable concert by four male singers whose voices coalesced in a way that is rare; and as well, they found the appropriate tone and rhythms that coloured the words and their musical settings, with sensitivity, awareness of their era, and just sheer intelligence.

 

Strong, exemplary student performances of string orchestra masterpieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts 
New Zealand School of Music String Ensemble, conducted by Martin Riseley

Handel: Concerto Grosso in D, Op 6 No 5
Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings in C, Op 48

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 19 September, 12:15 pm

I confess I was unprepared for the actual nature of this concert, entitled string students of the NZSM. Naively I’d thought of a string(?) of solos, duets and threesomes, perhaps a string quartet. I was a bit late, arriving as Martin Riseley finished his introduction to the recital, and launched into Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D, Op 6 No 5, inspiring playing that sounded as if it was a prelude to a highly dramatic opera, perhaps not even by Handel.

I’d missed hearing Riseley’s comment about Handel’s borrowing tunes from a contemporary, Gottlieb Muffat, in this and others of his works, a practice that was common and evidently acceptable at that time. Muffat was Handel’s contemporary whose career was at the Austrian court. It explained the impression I got that Handel’s fingerprints were not very conspicuous, certainly in some parts of the work. The Introduction was marked by vivid dotted rhythms, boisterous rather than elegant, while a different energy infused the fugal Allegro that drew vigorous playing from the very distinct concertino and ripieno sections: the concertino parts were taken cleanly and strongly by Nick Majic on first violin, and Sarang Roberts and Ellen Murfitt on second violin; Rebecca Warnes played the concertino cello part.

The Presto was an even more dynamic movement, with the concertino handling the triplet quavers while the ripieno maintained the strong pulse, with its very emphatic first note of each animated and light-spirited triplet. The Largo was a long time coming, but it seemed to speak in a more familiar Handelian language, the last note leaving it unresolved, awaiting the arrival of another Allegro, and further demonstration of the players’ energy that Riseley succeeded in maintaining splendidly. And the Menuett, rather than any kind of Presto Finale, was a calmly played, pensive movement that ended in an elegant, civilised manner.

So I was thoroughly impressed by the ensemble’s competence (only minor flaws of no importance), and looked forward with confidence to the different challenges of the Tchaikovsky. It’s symphonic in length, and so, the Handel having taken about 20 minutes, the concert ended around 1.15pm; and such was their enjoyment of a splendid hearing, right to the end, that scarcely anyone left, convinced as I was that it’s one of the composer’s real masterpieces.

They captured the varied phases of the first movement with distinction, often sounding more like a professional ensemble than a group of students.

Riseley again set the tone and the spirit with big gestures that emphasised rhythm, as if the notes were written in BOLD. I approved. Though there are distinct virtues in taking some parts pretty slowly, such as the Introduction – Andante non troppo, and particularly, the end of the Elegy and the rapturous, almost silent start of the Finale; and these were carried off well.

The Waltz used to be much played on its own, and I’m surprised not to hear it occasionally, removed from its family, on RadioNZ Concert, which now specialises in dismembering substantial pieces of music, for fear of frightening listeners with a 2-minute attention span.

This was no Karajan performance, and no one would have expected to hear a specially subtle or immaculate performance. But it was a very fine student effort, captured the essentials, and dealt with them with confidence, sensitivity and accuracy. In truth, it was probably their level of gusto and energy that masked very successfully what blemishes there were in ensemble and intonation.

It’s a long time since I heard the Serenade in live performance, and I was deeply grateful; reminded me what a great work it really is.