Category: Reviews – Concerts

Enchantments of baroque instrumental combinations: Archi d’amore trio

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Archi d’amore Zelanda (Donald Maurice – viola d’amore, Jane Curry – guitar, Emma Goodbehere – cello)

Vivaldi: Largo from Concerto for viola d’amore and guitar, RV540
Piazzolla: Café 1930
Michael Willliams: Fugue
François de Fossa: Sonata No 1 in A (from Op 18)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 2 March, 12:15 pm

I last heard this trio in October last year in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University where I was taken with the unexpectedly charming effects of the combination of three instruments, none of which demand attention to itself at the expense of the music or of each other.

The Ryom catalogue of Vivaldi’s works lists eight concertos including the viola d’amore, and this is the only one that is scored for the lute as well as the viola d’amore. Many of the pieces played by a group of this kind necessarily involve arrangements, but here we could enjoy the most minimal of translations from lute to guitar. The performance of R540 captured the singularly opulent tone of the viola d’amore, the effect of the large number of strings – 14 – half of which are passive resonating strings, threaded through the lower part of the bridge and not played. Its play of sounds with the guitar was enchanting.

Though it is still fashionable to deprecate – ever so slightly – Vivaldi’s music on account of its Telemann-like profusion and its to-be-expected stylistic similarities, one listens to it, always, with pleasure and admiration, and in my case, more than Telemann.

Then came Piazzolla’s four-movement Histoire du Tango: the second part, Café 1930. It begins with the guitar alone, wistfully; and the viola d’amore’s entry, so lyrical and idiomatic, removed it from the Buenos Aires café to a French café with the sensual tango tamed to a more sedate character. It’s music for the heart rather than the feet, Donald Maurice remarked, for by 1930 the tango had become a more sophisticated that the bordello music of the turn of the century, music to listen to, interesting and involving.

They had a new piece to play, Fugue, composed for them by Hamilton composer Michael Williams; they’d premiered it the week before in Bangkok. It opened sounding like a very traditional fugue with a useful diatonic tune, shifting in the middle to a lively phase, never striving for anything resembling an avant-garde or strenuously ‘original’ character. It formed a nice link between Piazzolla’s Latin idiom and their next step back to the early 19th century.

François de Fossa’s name cropped up earlier last year in a St Andrew’s concert by a trio of Jane Curry, with saxophonist Simon Brew and flutist Rebecca Steel. There they played a trio in A minor.

This time the piece was listed as a sonata, No 1 in A, and though I could not recall the music played last year, I suspect it was the same ‘Trio in A, Op 18’ played then: the four movements shown in today’s programme were the same as those shown in the Wikipedia partial list of his works, for Op 18 No 1.

In any case, after recording my impressions of this performance, I found they were very similar to what I wrote ten months ago, though I’m sure that the present combination sounded more authentic and convincing than the adaptation for saxophone which, while interesting, did not altogether persuade me. Here, I was quite won over both by the warmth and femininity of the viola d’amore combining with guitar and cello, especially in the Largo where the three ebbed and flowed so charmingly from one to another. Though the cello’s role was essentially a ‘continuo’ one, there were surprising little flourishes occasionally.

 

 

Fire, flamenco and folksong ‘cello style, from Ramón Jaffé

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Ramón Jaffé (‘cello)
Catherine McKay (piano)

CHOPIN – Introduction and Polonaise Brilliante
BEETHOVEN – Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano in C Major Op.102 No.1
JAFFÉ – flamenco improvisation
BRAGATO – Graziela y Buenos Aires
DVORAK – Piano Trio No.4 in E Minor “Dumky” (with Carolyn van Leuven – violin)

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Tuesday 1st March 2016

The title given to this concert by the artists rolled off the tongue colourfully and evocatively enough – however, I confess that I found myself involuntarily drawn into slightly circumspect mode over the word “fire”, having over the years grown somewhat weary of being assailed by regular barrages of hype from major arts organization by way of advertising their oncoming productions.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried, as what followed during the actual concert was precisely what the title suggested. In fact, “fire” in its threatening, smoldering form aptly characterized the playing of ‘cellist Ramón Jaffé throughout a good deal of the proceedings, especially when he tackled those pieces related directly to a Latin American tradition of music-making, such as flamenco.

What the programme in fact described as “a flamenco ‘cello treat” was just that, when Jaffé played for us a piece which he had written in honour of flamenco guitarist, Pedro Bacán, with whom he had closely worked, and who had since died in a tragic accident in 1997. Jaffé described how he had to “begin again” as a ‘cellist when taking up the flamenco style, putting aside his classical training and learning new techniques and responses to the music, and reaching a point where he could play and improvise as if he were a folk musician.

I wrote down what I remembered Jaffé called his piece (the name wasn’t written down in the programme), which was something like Canta de Passion (in translation, Passion Sings, or Song of Passion). It was a detail which didn’t seem important at the time, so arresting were the sounds the player was drawing from his instrument. His bow danced suggestively upon the strings, the rhythms allowing pizzicati from both bowing and “fretting” hands to generate an ever-burgeoning excitement  which broke off into a kind of a kind of recitative and then developed into something almost hymnal, free and sonorous.

Rhythmic impulses reasserted themselves in the form of percussive gesturing, Jaffé knocking and slapping the ‘cello’s body and tapping his feet to the music’s pulsating, using the dancing bow on the strings once again and working things up to an intensity which carried through to the piece’s end. In both song- and dance-like sequences the music generated a good deal of impassioned feeling.

Jaffé then joined forces with pianist Catherine Mckay in a work, Graziela y Buenos Aires, by one José Bragato, an Italian-born Argentinian composer who celebrated his hundredth birthday in October last year. ‘Cellists who play tangos more often choose the works of Astor Piazolla, (most often a piece called  Le Grande Tango) but Jaffé told me after the concert that he preferred to play Bragato’s work.

Loaded with sultriness and dark-toned suggestiveness, the music began with the ‘cello following the piano’s mood-jazz lower-register evocations, occasionally giving the trajectories a “lilt” to enliven the languid atmospheres. Solos from each instrument alternated with racy, interlocked Latin-American dance rhythms, driving the music along with ear-catching timbres and hues, as when the ‘cellist played over the bridge of his instrument amid droll piano glissandi.

The piece’s concluding sequence memorably took in a long and sinuous ‘cello melody, tenderly and delicately partnered by the piano, the pair of instruments breath-holding and trance-like in their murmurings towards the music’s end.

Before either of these exotic pieces were performed, ‘cellist and pianist had given us two more conventionally “classical” works, beginning with an early work by Chopin, Introduction and Polonaise Brilliante. A lilting Andante-like beginning featured plenty of give-and-take between the instruments, though with the piano more typically forthright and decorative than the cello’s more song-like lines, after which both players launched into the Polonaise section with great gusto.

In places I was reminded of the piano writing in Chopin’s concertos, giving the player a real work-out in places, leaving the cellist to impress us with aristocratic poise and gorgeous tones. Catherine McKay balanced the virtuoso element beautifully with the poetic moments, the give-and-take between both musicians giving a strong and positive impression as to the music’s worth. Beethoven, of course, received similar advocacy in his Op.102 No.1 C Major Sonata which followed, the music’s improvisatory manner in places drawing forth finely-drawn tones from both players.

Particularly delightful were the “cat-and-mouse” sequences between the instruments in the work’s second movement, the cello’s “open fifths” and the piano’s teasing gestures subsumed into the playful allegro vivace with terrific élan, leading to the throwaway payoff.

Concluding the concert was Dvorak’s well-known “Dumky” Trio, for which Ramon Jaffé and Catherine McKay were joined by violinist Carolyn van Leuven. From what I’d heard ‘cellist and pianist do earlier in the concert, I anticipated that they would bring out this music’s expressive qualities to a point of deep satisfaction – and I wasn’t disappointed. From the tragic, lamenting opening, through to the inhibited gaiety and energy of the quicker sections of the movement, the players seemed fully engaged with the sounds and their purposes, thus conveying to us plenty of that “Bohemian lament” character for which the composer’s work was and is justly renowned.

Of course, ‘cellist and pianist were already “on fire” with the conflagrations of the concert’s first half, so that it took a little while for violinist van Leuven to find her richest voice to contribute to the textures, though her rhythmic sense instantly “kicked in” with the ensemble. The poco adagio second movement drew us in from the beginning, the violinist responding to the cellist’s eloquence with atmospheric “squeeze-box” tones, so very nostalgic and moving!  Even more so was the andante moderato which followed, the music having a “heartbroken” quality, a great longing which subsequent episodes of energy and dogged strength didn’t entirely banish.

Such moments came thick and fast during the finale, with its volatile shifts between tragedy, introspection and gaiety, the motto theme tossed almost recklessly between the instruments and spontaneously inflected as to express a bewildering variety of moods, with no holds barred – that last-named quality a defining characteristic of the concert’s overall music-making. Each of the musicians played a part in serving up this feast of creative re-enactment for our delight – we did our best to mirror their efforts with appropriately enthusiastic appreciation.

Worlds brought more closely together – the Miyata-Yoshimura-Suzuki Trio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music NZ and the New Zealand Festival present:
MIYATA-YOSHIMURA-SUZUKI TRIO
Music from Japan and New Zealand

Mayumi Miyata (shō)
Nanae Yoshimura (koto)
Tosiya Suzuki (recorder)

CHRIS GENDALL – Choruses
OSAMU KAWAKAMI – Phoenix Chicken
SAMUEL HOLLOWAY – Mono
TOSHIO HOSOKAWA – Bird Fragments 111b
DYLAN LARDELLI – Retracing

TRADITIONAL – Banshiki no Choshi (for shō)
Tsuru no Sugomori (Nesting of Cranes – solo recorder)
Chidori no Kyoku (for koto and voice)

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

Sunday 28th February, 2016

For a time it seemed as though the world had realigned its meridian intersects and taken St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace and its occupants north of the equator to somewhere in Japan. Woven into this enchanted web of things were a trio of musicians, a clutch of composers and a spell-bound audience, united for a brief time to wondrous and magical effect by means of exotic strains and realizations, wrought by the performers. The latter were inspired by both traditional work and present-day creativity, performing a programme of music with age-old folk-music presented side-by-side with new compositions from both Japanese and New Zealand composers.

Not for these musicians a performing world of merely antiquities, featuring only museum pieces or cultural artifacts from bygone ages – the trio has encouraged living composers to write for their instrumental combinations as well as for the solo instruments – a glance at a list of composers who have worked with these musicians indicates their involvement in music-making as a living and creative tradition, besides paying homage to the great works of the past.

All of this would be of specialist interest only, were not the actual sounds created by the instruments in this ensemble of such beauty, poignancy and atmosphere. Whether playing together or individually, the sounds and timbres brought with them such strongly-flavoured and sharply-focused evocations as to hold our attentions in thrall for timeless durations. The concert’s opening took us straight to such a sound-world, by way of Mayumai Miyata’s playing of the shō, a traditional Japanese mouth-organ, the musician giving us a traditional work, Banshiki no Chosi.

I found the listening experience arresting, if at first a little disconcerting through not being able to clearly see the player’s face (I can’t think of another instrument that’s similarly designed – the mouthpiece is at the bottom, so that the instrument’s “body”, when held up to play, almost completely obscures the player’s facial expression and any movement associated with the physical act of breathing. Still the strains made by the instrument are so ethereal and unworldly, that this “disembodied” effect given by the player isn’t inappropriate. The timbres were not unlike the highest notes of an organ played softly and sustained for great, long-breathed periods of utter calm and serenity.

Chris Gendall’s piece Choruses, which followed, was anything but serene, resembling choruses of  wild things uttering long-drawn cries, punctuated by excitable flurries of energy. The shō player.Mayumai Miyata had exchanged her instrument for a lighter, wood-grained affair, though I couldn’t discern a difference in sound-quality to that of the previous item – the instrument exhibited the same kinds of ethereal ambiences, with many variations of intensity.  I had difficulty observing the recorder-player, Tosiya Suzuki, as the composer, (Chris Gendall, who was conducting) kept getting in the way, though the sounds made by the player via his instrument certainly had a mournful and volatile impact upon the whole.

No such impediment obscured my view of the koto player, Nanae Yoshimura, who coaxed from her instrument a range and depth of expression which I found remarkable, not only in the music’s more forceful sequences, but in the sustaining resonance of the lower timbres. The music seemed to me to set different time-frames together, as if they were warring relativities – as with peace and war, calm and tumult, chaos and clarity, we experienced through the music a series of “altered states” which left its impression upon us long after the sounds had ceased. Each of the instruments contributed to the contrasting effect of these opposing realities, a point from a different view, or state of mind, one that left this listener more-than-usually sensitized to disruptive potentialities!

The trio again took the stage to perform Osamu Kawakami’s somewhat disconcertingly titled work Phoenix Chicken – the only clue to this mystery was the equally enigmatic comment in the composer’s printed biographical note: – “Kawakami is deeply interested in living creatures, and many of his works (including Phoenix Chicken) have been titled after them”. Tosiya Suzuki had exchanged his flute-like recorder for one of the largest I had ever encountered – whether a great bass, or sub-great-bass, contra bass, or sub-contra bass I didn’t know, but it impressed with its looks alone, and it made a splendid noise!

How helpful the Phoenix Chicken title was for the listener I wouldn’t have liked to have guessed at in general – perhaps some contextual reference of which I remained blissfully aware! To me the piece seemed to deal with different kinds of rhythmic complexities and tensions, building them up through interaction and then dissipating them, the recorder augmenting the textures with various kinds of bird calls, gurgling  and chuckling, as if pursuing a kind of separate internal rhythmic pulse. The koto mused over melodic figures in a cimbalon-like way, varying the figurations beautifully with strummed chords augmented by interjections from the shō, a texture through which the recorder lurched and strutted like some kind of living creature, the music’s last few measures resembling some kind of poultrified climax!

Birds of a different kind of feather then glided gently into our ambient sensibilities with the magically-distanced beginning of the folk-inspired Tsuru no Sugomori (“Nesting of Cranes”), Tosiya Suzuki here exchanging his hookah-like contraption for a recorder about the size of a clarinet. He used this new instrument to convey at once a sense of the spaces into which the birds flew to build their nests, via graceful phrasings and resonant tonguings. The music introduced new calls throughout, including one sounding uncannily to my ears like a quote from Sibelius’s “The Swan of Tuonela”, amid the diametrically different surroundings of the Japanese piece.

A similar kind of spatial experience using a very different harmonic language was provided by Samuel Holloway’s Mono, the music beginning with what seemed like a tentative exploration of a scale and octave, the instruments making their unisons and individual notes like depth-soundings in reverse, pushing gently upwards and outwards as if creating spaces in a void, energizing the inert spaces where there was nothing except the will to receive and to be impregnated with impulses. After establishing some kind of acoustic domain, and pausing to consider how best to proceed, the music then tried some semitone ascents, involving slow repetition of single notes before moving upwards, a fascinating/frustrating/despairing process of laying bare that which silence had hitherto concealed – almost like Michelangelo’s famous slaves slowly emerging from the raw marble, frozen with tremulous wonderment at having been given their freedom in any degree or part.

Toshio Hosokawa used just two instruments to express his work Bird Fragments IIIb, the shō paired with the recorder, enough to evocatively set ground-fowls against a high-fliers! The ethereal tones of the shō at the outset conjured up images of elegance and graceful beauty, until the entry of the recorder’s timbres brought an angular, at times raucous presence to the sound-picture. This intensified with the introduction of a smaller recorder, capable of the most ear-splitting squeals, until the tones of the shō finally prevailed and order of sorts was restored.

With a third traditional piece, Chidori no Kyoku, Nanae Yoshimura demonstrated to us the expressive qualities of the solo koto, a kind of Oriental dulcimer, capable of conveying a vast array of tones, timbres and colours. I was pleasantly surprised to find the piece was actually a song, which Nanae Yoshimura delivered with pleasantly plangent tones, at first activating her instrument with a brief introduction containing a flourish and a short but dignified processional sequence before beginning to sing. The music gave an impression of great depth of melancholy, the player varying the vocal line with the occasional tremolando effect, before breaking into a quicker dance tempo – one might have interpreted the sliding figure at the end as a dry death-rattle or else a strengthening of resolve to dispense with the song and go on throughout life, taking it as it comes.

It was left to Dylan Lardelli and his beautiful work, Retracing, for the ensemble plus a guitar (played by the composer) to conclude the evening’s music. At the beginning the recorder (here, played as if it were a transverse flute) and then the shō breathed on the wind to one another, the guitar adding its voice with a few low notes as the “dialogue of winds”  grew in intensity, before being joined by the softly-strumming koto. Occasionally the recorder and shō made attention-grabbing sounds, goading the guitar and koto into a response, and animating the discourse, a dynamic which all too soon reverted to those half-lit ambiences of the opening. Particularly beautiful were the guitar’s pin-pricks of light gently punctuating the firmament of sound, everything generating a sense of emotion recollected in tranquility.

Was it a kind of re-exploration of youthful impulses? – the gently pulsating sounds seemed to re-evoke memories, but at the same time surrender them to the inexorable tread of time – it was all, at once, beautiful and desolate. Still, one wouldn’t have wanted the afternoon’s music-making to end otherwise, as the musical worlds we were taken into were, for the most part, of such a delicate and fragile nature. In fact they demonstrated something we need to be reminded of occasionally, in this frantic, insistent world we’ve created for ourselves, that simplicity and understatement have a power and resonance all of their own to refresh and renew our human spirits.

Monteverdi gets keen, sharp-edged and exciting treatment

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Claudio MONTEVERDI – Vespers of the Blessed Virgin of 1610
New Zealand Festival 2016

Concerto Italiano
Rinaldo Alessandrini (director)

Michael Fowler Centre,
Wellington

Saturday, 27th February 2016

There was certainly a festive spirit around and about the Michael Fowler Centre leading up to the performance on Saturday evening of Claudio Monteverdi’s resplendent Vespers of 1610, to be given by the highly-acclaimed visiting baroque ensemble Concerto Italiano with their director Rinaldo Alessandrini.

The performance fulfilled all expectations, managing even to transcend the venue’s drab, determinedly secular vistas and ambiences. My last encounter with this music “live” having been in the atmospheric precincts of St.Mary of the Angels Church here in Wellington, it took a while for me to supersede my resonant expectations and recontextualise the sounds made by Concerto Italiano – here, a far tighter, more focused sound-picture, emphasizing clarity and transparency ahead of any layered ecclesiastical context of listening.

Of course the focus and brilliance of the singing and playing drew me into the group’s very different sound-world before too long – and even though I would still have preferred a church setting in which to experience this work, I was ultimately carried away by the beauty, wonderment, excitement and depth of feeling of it all – things which go to make up the full force of the festival experience!

Having said all of this, it’s ironic that this work by Monteverdi, regarded as one of the cornerstones of the baroque vocal-and-instrumental repertoire, and on a par with similar iconic masterpieces such as Bach’s B Minor Mass and Handel’s Messiah, was written by its composer more as a kind of showcase of his composing talents than a public expression of personal faith. In fact, it appears to have been performed only once in the composer’s lifetime, and then, not for over three hundred years afterwards.

At the age of forty-three, Monteverdi wanted a change from being in the service of the Duke of Mantua, and so arranged for the publication of his Vespers in 1610 to advertise his wares as a composer. It didn’t land him the job he REALLY wanted (Master of Music at the Papal Chapel in Rome), but it helped get him something nearly as good – Master of Music at the prestigious St. Mark’s Church in Venice. The rest, as they say in the classics, is history.

So the 1610 Vespers represent Monteverdi as a composer of a number of different styles of sacred music which he had produced during his time in Mantua, and here put in the form of a single liturgical service. The scholarly arguments over what ought to go into the Vespers from Monteverdi’s publication for whatever  structural or liturgical reasons have raged about this music for years, ever since the work was taken up once again in the 1930s.  The upshot of all this is that there seems to be no one “correct” version of the work, and that every performance is therefore, as expressed by the writer of an article in the festival program about the music’s history, “a unique experience”.

Though comparisons with the previous performance I had heard in Wellington six years ago (referred to above) are largely academic for all of the above reasons, each one on its own terms proclaimed the music a masterpiece with stunning and often breath-taking conviction. From the earlier performance I continue to cherish things such as the performances of the two soprano soloists, who remain hors concurs in my experience – good though the female singers of Concerto Italiano were, neither put across the music’s beauty, colour, sensuality and even erotic impulse, to the same extent as did Pepe Becker and Jayne Tankersley in St.Mary of the Angels, especially in the vocal concerto Pulchra es, as well as in the Psalmus 147 Lauda Jerusalem, with interactions and dovetailing highlighting what the remainder of the singers were doing most delightfully.

My other enduring memory of the earlier performance relates to its physical setting, allowing a wonderful and engaging immediacy in overall effect for we in the audience/congregation – for me, greater than was to be had in the MFC – and a more atmospheric sound-picture in St.Mary’s giving both vocal and instrumental tones splendid resonance, as well as allowing for especially stunning antiphonal effects (though Concerto Italiano’s off-stage efforts were exquisite and magical in their own way).

So now, having satisfied my urge to relive some of the more memorable aspects of the work’s previous Wellington performance, I can now at last turn to the real point of this review and consider Concerto Italiano’s stimulating and satisfying rendition of the music. As I’ve said, it took me some time to get on the performance’s wavelength, but as each section took its turn to unfold, I found myself more and more drawn into the music’s world and that of the group’s strongly-focused realizations. Throughout the particularly arresting section featuring the motet Nigra sum, words taken from the biblical Song of Solomon and pertaining to the Virgin Mary, I was spellbound – here sung by a tenor and accompanied by a pair of theorbos (instruments similar to lutes but with lengthy fretboards and strings), the music achieved an intimate, heartfelt quality, ranging from passionate declamation to raptly-voiced wonderment on the part of the singer.

Though not quite matching the élan and physicality of the earlier performance I’d heard of Pulchra es, the singers gave their exuberant flourishes sufficient energy to make a stirring impression, before throwing themselves into the complexities of the coloratura of Psalm 121, Laetatus sum, the music’s rollicking pyrotechnics concluding with a Gloria. The men’s voices then purposefully tackled another motet, Duo Seraphim, the singers relishing the piece’s fantastically rapid note-repetition, before combining with the rest of the ensemble to deliver the Psalm 126 with grandeur at first, and then energy, as the music switched engagingly to three-four time – a great first-half closer!

We enjoyed the onstage/offstage echoes of the tenors’ exchanges during the motet Audi coelum, the music having a luscious, exotic “feel” about it, a mood which the entry of additional voices and a quicker tempo set upon its head in the tumult which followed, the harmonies of the music taking on a lovely ongoing, “rolling” quality. And I so enjoyed the deftness of the music’s interweaving during the following Lauda, Jerusalem, Dominum, the syncopated figurations generating tremendous “schwung” – well, its Venetian equivalent, anyhow – finishing with a hymn-like grandeur of utterance, again, with a rolling, surging “Amen” that was a thrill to experience.

What gorgeously rich harmonies were floated, hymn-like, for our pleasure at the beginning of Ave maris stella! And how tenderly both strings and brass by turns contributed gently-voiced, dance-like reprises to the verses! This was, however, but a prelude to the splendors of the Magnificat which concluded the work, beginning with grand declamations and passages of florid vocal decoration intensifying the radiance of the opening words, and concluding with a Gloria which built upwards from an amazing “statement-and echo” sequence between two tenors into a mighty peroration from both singers and instrumentalists, effectively giving the lie to my opening impression of a certain smallness of scale from the brass. The trombones, especially, contributed a truly awe-inspiring sonority to the panoply of sounds ringing through the auditorium.

At the work’s end Alessandrini and his singers and players were treated to a standing ovation, as well they might have been – a truly festive occasion!

Waikanae’s chamber music year starts brilliantly with Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Amici Ensemble
(Waikanae Music Society)

Violins: Donald Armstrong and Malavika Gopal; violas: Julia Joyce and Andrew Thomson; cellos: Andrew Joyce and Ken Ichinose

Strauss: Prelude (Sextet) to Capriccio
Anthony Ritchie: Ants: Sextet for Strings, Op 185
Boccherini: Quintet in D, G 270 – Grave and Tempo di fandango
Brahms: Sextet No 2 in G, Op 36

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 21 February, 2:30 pm

It is the season for beginnings of the year for series of concerts from a variety of musical organisations. After St Andrew’s on The Terrace comes the first of Wellington’s four main chamber music bodies, the Waikanae Music Society, which presents the most concerts: nine this year.

The Amici Ensemble, comprising leading NZSO players, has been a regular and prominent contributor at Waikanae. Its composition changes according to the demands of the music; for this concert, it’s a string sextet, and all but one of the works was for those six instruments.

Capriccio was Strauss’s last opera, written early in World War II, and premiered in Munich in October 1942. The Sextet which serves as its prelude is actually the beginning of the action: the Countess Madeleine (the main figure in the opera) and her brother are listening to a sextet written in honour of her approaching birthday. The opera is greatly loved by Strauss aficionados (including the writer), a ‘conversation piece’ that debates the relative merits of words and music in opera, drawing on an 18th century play, Prima la musica, poi le parole which Salieri composed as an opera. The Countess’s two suitors are a composer and a poet, and the question remains at the end unresolved but, for the audience, it’s rather unfairly stacked in favour of the music, given the Countess’s long and rapturous soliloquy that brings the piece to an ostensibly inconclusive end. The role of Countess became one of Kiri’s greatest, and Renée Fleming has been its supreme interpreter for many years.

The sextet is simply beautiful, and these players left us in no doubt that they think so too. It was warm and generous in spirit, giving little hint of what later in the opera becomes a somewhat intense debate; its easy invention and exquisite scoring hardly suggest a composer approaching his 80th birthday. From where I was sitting the sound was opulent and beautifully projected.

With a commission from Christchurch music patron Christopher Marshall, the Amici offered here the first performance of Anthony Ritchie’s Ants, inspired by the request for a sextet (the ant is a six-legged insect, if it had escaped your notice). Its five sections considered aspects of ants’ lives and characteristics, and fate. Obviously, not a heavy-weight composition seeking to plumb emotional or intellectual complexities, nor to tax the listener with avant-garde structures and idioms, yet it did not belittle the audience’s cultivated taste. The use of varied instrumental techniques and rhythmic patterns applied to agreeable tunes conjured up impressions that reflected the titles of each section, such as ‘Anteater’ and ‘Self-impaling’, created a sense, perhaps, of danger or ingenuity. The performance fully explored all its individuality and badinage.

The Fandango from Boccherini’s String Quintet in D, commonly played in the composer’s arrangement for guitar and string quartet, has rather replaced in popularity the formerly ubiquitous ‘Boccherini Minuet’ from the Quintet in E, G 275. It’s the last movement of the string quintet in D, G 270. The quintet (momentarily retiring the ensemble’s second viola) captured most convincingly, with spiccato bowing and other Guitar effects, the character of the Andalusian dance. The performance was lively, even spectacular, particularly the virtuosic part for the first cello, flawlessly rendered by Andrew Joyce. A splendid end for the first half of the concert.

Brahms second string sextet occupied the second half. Its first movement is one of Brahms most rapturous creations, the second theme of which employs the letters of the name of the young woman, Agathe, he had spurned a few years before and which later caused him pain; it got a performance that would perhaps only have increased Agathe’s sadness over her failure to overcome Brahms complex relationship with women, that led to his never marrying. For me, it ranks alongside the gorgeous second movement of the Op 18 sextet. The rest of the Op 36 does not quite equal that first movement, with a second movement, Scherzo, in common time, that doesn’t take off till the triple time Trio section. The players found a suggestion of uncertainty in the third movement, Poco Adagio; again one wondered whether that too reflected Brahms’s regrets. The last movement somewhat recaptures the spirit of the first, as the players tossed themes from one to another in the concluding Coda.

A great start to what looks like a splendid concert series.

 

 

 

Inbal Megiddo and friends stage fifth Cellophonia at School of Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Te Koki
Cellophonia Concert

David Popper: Requiem
Handel, arr. Claude Kenneson: Adagio and Allegro from Organ Concerto in G minor, Op.4 no 3
Elgar: Salut d’amour, Op.12, arr. Kenneson
Kreisler: Liebesleid, arr. Kenneson
Piazzola: Libertango, arr. Alvin Ware

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Saturday, 20 February 2016, 6.30pm

Cellophonia consists of a day of rehearsals for cellists, followed by a concert. This was the fifth such event. While organised by the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington, it includes mature cellists from amateur orchestras as well as students of various ages. Tutors were Inbal Megiddo (cello soloist and NZSM Senior Lecturer) and Andrew Joyce (Principal Cellist of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra). There was no printed programme; I am grateful to Brigid O’Meeghan for supplying the details.

There were other highly experienced, indeed expert, cellists participating. I saw Rolf Gjelsten, Brigid O’Meeghan and Lucy Gijsbers; there may have been other top-line cellists also.

A good-sized audience heard the short programme (approx. 40 minutes) from the 23 cellists, of whom between one-half and two-thirds were female.

Before the concert commenced, Inbal Megiddo paid tribute to the late Wellington cellist and luthier, Ian Lyons, who died suddenly, recently. The first item, written for multiple cellos and piano (Jian Liu), appropriately, was dedicated to his memory. The work was suitably sombre. There was strong tone from Megiddo and Joyce against a background of the other cellos. Soon the piano joined in. The music was solemn, even portentous; the players created a big sound, playing without a conductor, but carefully following the two tutors’ head, bow and eye signals. However, I sometimes found the volume too much in this rather small auditorium.

The piano made a considerable contrast, with its higher pitch and different timbre. This was an effective work, and being written for this instrumentation, made a greater musical impression than did the arrangements that followed.

Some rearrangement of the players took place for the Handel piece. Two groupings of two cellists each provided the concerto effect: Megiddo and Joyce; Gijsbers and another young woman whom I have seen and heard before. They played more-or-less alternate concerto sections of the score.

Not every other player was in tune all the time, but all made a solid contribution. The allegro in particular sounded odd after the familiarity of the organ original. The playing was a little too insistent, with the harmonic variation being rather swamped. However, there were lovely solo, duet and quartet passages from the four leaders.

The Elgar piece was not sufficiently ingratiating, with all that low grumbling below the solo part, played by Megiddo and Joyce. Others got a chance to carry parts of the melody, but the playing of the remainder of the band was insufficiently delicate. The polished wooden floor is responsible for a lot of this sound; the cello, unlike nearly all other instruments, has direct contact with the floor.

The two cello tutors swapped places for the Fritz Kreisler piece. Joyce’s playing of the melody was mellow and gorgeous, and the accompaniment was nicely varied with not so much deep grumbling here. Some harmonies were pitched above the melody, which made for variety.

Astor Piazzolla’s brief tango “Libertango’ was played by some of the group with great aplomb; by others more cautiously. It ended with a great flourish.

I am sure that those of the players who are not under regular tuition at NZSM would have got a lot out of their day’s workshop; the final concert was by no means a compromise of quality, with its variety of pieces.

 

Accomplished duo play Brahms at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Catherine Norton (piano) and Carolyn van Leuven (violin)

Brahms: Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor, Op 78
Scherzo from the F.A.E. Sonata (1853)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 17 February, 12:15 pm

The lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s started last Wednesday; Middle C neglected it.

But I was delighted to be at this one, starting the year so splendidly with Brahms. Catherine Norton’s name is reasonably familiar in Wellington, and I realized that Carolyn van Leuven’s ought to have been, too, as her short biography revealed, though her origins are in Canterbury, with studies and work in Europe and America, that she has played with the NZSO. She is now working in Wellington.

It was clear from the start that this was a seriously rehearsed performance, with care over balance, each taking pains to offer space and attention to the other; the piano, even with the lid on the long stick, remained a perfect partner. Brahms offers plenty of warmth and lyricism in his violin sonatas: the warmth of the violin and discretion of the piano part. They handle bits of melodies from two of his songs, ‘Regenlied’ and ‘Nachklang’, which offer a sort of emotional basis to the music. Though it is hardly fair to expect listeners today to pick up themes from a quotation from a song in another language, the symbolism of rain and then of sun shine, the alternating feeling of sadness and peace were there; in the second poem rain mingles with tears and they are audible in the semi-quavers in the last movement.

But Brahms is always careful to avoid emotional references that are too bold and precise or too obvious. The rather secretive opening of the Adagio led perhaps to a slightly too emphatic piano passage: perhaps understanding the poetic reference would have helped the listener, but that is inadmissible. The finale, Allegro, however was both calmly paced and even, though quite assertive, clearly followed the detailed dynamic markings, bringing to an end what was a singularly polished and satisfying performance.

To play the Sonata before Brahms’s Scherzo contribution to the ‘FAE’ collaboration with Schumann and his pupil Dietrich – a gift to their violinist friend Joseph Joachim – tends to draw attention to the Scherzo’s surprising maturity, written 25 years earlier, when Brahms was 20. The confidence of the brisk opening phase with its clean staccato piano chords, followed by a broad, meditative section were splendidly captured by the players, as if Brahms was referring to the character of the other movements of the sonata for which he was not responsible. Yet the feeling almost of grandeur towards the end could have been felt as the conclusion of the work rather than just the third movement (Schumann was assigned to both the second and last movements). It’s strange that the entire sonata is not played much.

This was a recital that dramatically illustrated the value of, the gratitude we should feel for, the year-long series of Wednesday lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. For me at least, if I may for a moment reflect on my own relationship with them. In the mid 80s, I went regularly to the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts, and pinned on various departmental notice boards details of forthcoming concerts, encouraging awareness of all the delights to be found there. They were probably a catalyst that led to my taking early retirement from the Public Service and devoting myself to both nature conservation and the preservation of historic buildings in Wellington, as well as to writing about music.

St Andrew’s, led by its minister, John Murray, was also important in dramatizing various civic issues such as the preservation of Wellington’s historic buildings. This was the time of building frenzy when council and developers were allies in the widespread destruction of scores of buildings that should simply have been valued and restored. The building boom culminated in the collapse of 1988; the bitter irony followed with many of them, many head offices, being vacated soon after by the companies that had built them, abandoning Wellington for Auckland and elsewhere.

One minor but precious one was 22 The Terrace, a very early building and near neighbour of the church, which survives thanks to the efforts of John Murray and others including the feisty ‘Save our City’ campaign.

The mid 80s (1986) also marked the first New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, with its important three-week-long series of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s. Those concerts drew together a great many leading New Zealand musicians, as well as a few from abroad, who were not the main focus of the big festival events. The lunchtime concerts, and for a couple of festivals, daily early evening concerts as well, continued to enrich the festival till, in the post-Chris Doig era, through the later 90s, its artistic standards declined, turning away from a focus on acknowledged classics in the performing arts.

With the devoted enterprise of Marjan van Waardenberg and the generous support of the church itself, St Andrew’s helps preserve much of Wellington’s important musical character.

The Tudor Consort 30th anniversary with founder Simon Ravens

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Thirtieth Anniversary concert
The Tudor Consort directed by Simon Ravens; Douglas Mews (organ)

John Taverner: Missa Gloria tibi trinitas
John Sheppard: Adesto Sancta I and II and Libera Nos I and II
Robert Johnson: In Nomine (organ)
Simon Ravens: Outwitted I and II

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Saturday 13 February, 7:30pm

Simon Ravens was an English choral musician who, while an undergraduate, had become the conductor of an early music choir at the University of Wales; he came to Wellington in 1985 where he sang with the choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. He was soon taken with the idea of forming his own choir that would specialise in Renaissance music. It was named The Tudor Consort, modelled to some extent on famous ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars, and almost immediately, through Ravens’ knowledge and enthusiasm, won itself a rather special place in the New Zealand choral scene. In fact, it probably played a rather important role in the remarkable flourishing of choral music, and particularly Medieval and Renaissance music, that occurred in Wellington in the following 20 years or so.

Concerts by The Tudor Consort commonly filled the Anglican Cathedral, and other spaces, coming to specialize in performances that attempted a liturgical reconstruction of sacred music, to recreate the atmosphere and character of the music’s original context. They included memorable performances in the beautiful Erskine chapel in Island Bay, and an enactment of the French medieval Play of Daniel.

After Ravens returned to England in 1990, the choir determined to continue and with a succession of local choral specialists has managed to do just that over the following 25 years. In 2006, the choir staged a three concert festival to celebrate its 25th birthday in St Mary of the Angels and in the great hall of the former National Museum, one of them conducted again by Simon Ravens.

Ravens returns to celebrate 30 years’ survival, in fact triumph, if we are to accept Ravens’ flattering comment in his pre-concert talk, that the choir is even better than he left it 25 years before. This time, no liturgical reconstruction, no particular attention to atmospheric lighting (though it was convenient to be able to read the texts in the programme, even though the Latin was pretty-much muddied in the acoustic).

The concert was underpinned by Taverner’s masterpiece, Missa Gloria tibi trinitas. Taverner is perhaps the earliest of the Tudor composers whose names are reasonably familiar. Born about 1490, his adult life fell within the reign of Henry VIII. The mass has four parts – Gloria, Credo, Sanctus (and Benedictus) and Agnus Dei – there is no Kyrie, as it was not regarded as part of the ordinary of the Mass before the Reformation. The performance was punctuated with the original plainsong Gloria tibi Trinitas, and two settings of the motet Adesto Sancta Trinitas by John Sheppard who was some 20 years Taverner’s junior, as well as Sheppard’s Libera nos; and very interestingly, Ravens’s own settings of an epigram by American poet Edwin Markham, Outwitted.

The other interesting contribution was the organ interludes – two settings of In Nomine – played by Douglas Mews.

At this point I might comment that while the programme gave texts in both Latin and English, it offered little background about the pieces apart from the oblique remarks in Ravens’ overview of the music which dwelt mainly on the problem of performing and hearing music written in a very different era from our own. So there is much to be gained from pulling out reference books and exploring websites to gain better appreciation of what one had heard.

Outwitted opened the concert. It embodied a pithy, humane lesson: “He drew a circle that shut me out / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. / But love and I had the wit to win / We drew a circle and took him in.” Advice perhaps for dealing with forms of fanaticism and cruelty today… Though its message is probably clear and pungent enough, the quasi-polyphonic setting, with voices used in striking combinations, demonstrated the rich possibilities of a centuries-old form to enhance a message for today.

The plainchant antiphon followed, nicely preparing us for the far more complex sounds of the Taverner mass. It is interesting that this wonderful mass by Taverner, so complex and musically elaborate, was written before the great works of Tallis and Byrd and all the better known English composers of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. Written for six voices – treble, alto (called ‘mean’ in the literature), two countertenors, tenor and bass – it is a work that offers challenges of all kinds to a conductor and singers; the mastery of balances between the parts and the sheer virtuosity demanded. Though the six voices (the choir consisted of 20 singers) weaved around the chant with wonderful skill, creating transcendent harmonies, each remained splendidly distinct.

One of the recurring delights, if not sources of wonderment, was the sustained high register demanded from the counter-tenors, with two voices in particular emerging as striking soloists – Richard Taylor and Phillip Collins – as well as from the trebles who are also required to maintain long, brilliant and very high passages. Soloists from the trebles and altos were also vividly conspicuous, though never detracting from a seemly liturgical spirit – Jane McKinlay, Anna Sedcole and Andrea Cochrane. There seemed to be something very modern in Taverner’s ability to create music that was not just technically impressive but also generated through long spans of polyphonic inspiration, an emotionally exciting response in the audience (if I may suggest that others responded as I did).

After the Gloria, Mews played Taverner’s In nomine and in the second half, after the Sanctus of the Mass, a second In Nomine by Robert Johnson. Though arguably not an instrument well adapted to music conceived for a Renaissance organ, he chose stops that were clear and sharply varied, and avoided generating anything resembling the tumult of a great Romantic organ.

The In nomine is curious. I read in Peter Phillips’s notes accompanying the Tallis Scholars’ recording of Taverner’s music, the following: “Originally in a spirit of wanting to flatter Taverner by copying him, composers of every generation up to that of Purcell, and including Purcell himself, tested their contrapuntal techniques by basing music on the ‘In nomine’ section of the Benedictus of Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas (‘Benedictus qui venit IN NOMINE Domini’)”.

John Sheppard’s two settings of Adesto Sancta were sung between parts of the Mass, comprising verses alternately in plain chant by men’s voices and polyphony: not as elaborate as Taverner though the polyphonic verses were delivered with great brilliance. His two settings for six voices of the Libera Nos, in which Ravens’ beat marked the slow minims of the music reflecting the plaintive nature of the words, concluded each half of the concert.

Though the Tudor Consort has enlightened and entertained Wellington audiences with revelations of early music (as well as music of other periods) for thirty years, for this special anniversary concert Simon Ravens chose works, most notably the great Taverner mass, which are important and mark a return to the heartland of the choir’s origins: perfectly appropriate for such an occasion. These memorable and moving performances fulfilled the hopes and intentions of the choir and its inspiring founding director and will undoubtedly rate as one of 2016’s musical highlights.

 

Happy Christmas concert from Nota Bene at The Prefab in Jessie Street

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Nota Bene Chamber Choir, conducted by Mark Dorrell

Prefab Hall, Jessie Street

Thursday, 17 December 2015, 6.30pm

From the moment I arrived in a packed Prefab Hall, standing room only, and found the last seat thanks to a friend signalling to me, I was in an informal atmosphere of enjoyment. Well over 150 people were present, a good 40 or so of whom were standing round the walls.

The seating was arranged on three sides, the choir performing from the other side. This hollow square arrangement made for good sight lines, and a feeling of everyone being involved. Acoustically, the hall was fine, not being low-ceilinged, and having plenty of timber around.

Mark Dorrell gave informal introductions to many items, and for those that were accompanied, he played on a tolerable electronic keyboard.

The choir immediately impressed in the first of several carol arrangements by Sir David Willcocks, with its strong tone and excellent legato singing. This was ‘Birthday Carol’, a bright and jolly opener to the concert.

The beautiful Czech carol ‘Rocking’ made a complete contrast, with its gentle lullaby character. It was followed by what was possibly a New Zealand premiere: ‘If ye would hear the angels sing’ by Peter Tranchell (British composer, 1922-1993). It featured soloist Joe Haddow, in a piece that began gently, then broke into fortissimo, then subsided to piano at the end. A charming carol – but Sir David would not have approved of the emphasised ‘thuuh’ – he believed in throwing away this unimportant word, and pronouncing it as a less prominent ‘thi’.

A modern setting of the well-known ‘Angels from the realms of glory’ was next. The tune was varied and interesting, and very vigorous.

The audience then had its turn, singing with the choir ‘Once in royal David’s city’ and ‘The first Nowell’. All the carols in which the audience participated were sung with energy and panache, and a thoroughly good sound.

Poulenc’s setting of ‘Hodie Christus natus est’ is another joyous song, and the choir sang it unaccompanied. The music is quite tricky, with a good deal of staccato. The tenor tone in this and the following carol was occasionally a little raw. However, words throughout were very clear. The next was also by a French composer: ‘Hymne à la Vièrge’, by Pierre Villette (1926-1998), and also unaccompanied. It was a contrast with the previous carol, having long legato lines, but great dynamic gradations. The French pronunciation was good.

Also a French carol, but in an English translation and arranged by an Englishman (who was an early mentor in Mark Dorrell’s musical life), John C. Phillips, ‘Listen to the sounds in heaven’ featured attractive singing from the women, in what was quite a tongue-twister, and whistling from the men. Mark Dorrell gave it a lively ‘pom-pom’ accompaniment.

The audience had its chance again in ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ and in a loud and hearty ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’, with the Willcocks descant.

A modern carol was ‘Jesus, springing’ by noted British choral composer (and former member of the famed King’s Singers), Bob Chilcott. Like the late Sir David, Chilcott has visited New Zealand. Mainly accompanied, this was an appealing carol, with interesting harmonies. ‘Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’ by John Gardner (1917-2011), another British composer had a very bouncy setting. Here, I missed the resonance of the piano in the partly accompanied piece. Nevertheless, it had considerable appeal.

After the interval, we were into the more light-hearted part of the Christmas repertoire. Leroy Anderson’s ‘Sleigh Ride’ had received a jovial arrangement. This item was accompanied; I noticed that, presumably because Mark Dorrell was accompanying rather than directing many of the items, the choir members tended to be stuck in their copies, not looking up. This limits the communication with the audience.

The world premiere of an amusing parody, entitled ‘Deck the porch’, was next. The words were by John Smythe, who was present, and had won a competition in the New Zealand Listener with his Kiwi take on a traditional Christmas carol. It required clear diction; I got most of the words. The refrain was ‘Come and have a barbecue and bring your togs’.

A change of mood gave us John Rutter’s setting of Shakespeare’s words ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’. (A topical parody could be ‘Blow, blow, thou Wellington wind’). It featured, as well as fine singing, a lovely ‘piano’ introduction and accompaniment. There followed a medley of popular Christmas pieces, in which the audience joined, with noticeably good attention to rhythmic details. ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’ was followed by ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas’ and ‘Jingle bells’.

The choir gave us Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, in a multi-part arrangement for unaccompanied choir (this had the choristers looking up more) that was most effective, then ‘Be a Santa’ from a show entitled Subways are for Sleeping, by Jule Styne (1905-1994). Four male soloists from the choir helped bring out its verve and fun, as did the several changes of key.

We all know the ‘Twelve days of Christmas’, but ‘Twelve days to Christmas’ from She loves me by Jerry Bock (1928-2010; Fiddler on the Roof) was a hilarious look at the human tendency to leave everything till the last minute, seen from the point of view of workers in a department store.

After the audience had its turn in ‘Silent Night’ and ‘O come all ye faithful’, perhaps the two most popular carols, the choir sang ‘A merry Christmas’ (that’s the one about figgy pudding) to end. But the audience demanded more, so a repeat of ‘Be a Santa’ made a good way to end the concert.

Throughout, much precision in enunciation was required and supplied, so that the audience could enter fully into the entertainment, and everyone went away happy.

 

Messiah with the NZSO – age cannot wither, nor custom stale….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
MESSIAH (Handel)

Nicholas McGegan (conductor)
Anna Leese (soprano)
Sally-Anne Russell (mezzo-soprano)
Steve Davislim (tenor)
James Clayton (bass)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
NZSO Messiah Chorale
Mark W.Dorrell (chorusmaster)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 12th December, 2015

NZSO boss Chris Blake understandably waxed lyrical in a welcoming programme note over the orchestra’s espousal of a fourth consecutive year’s presentation of Messiah, this time round in the expert directorial hands of renowned Baroque exponent Nicholas McGegan.

In terms of audience response, the near sold-out house spoke for itself – and while Messiah seems to draw people in like no other, the presence of McGegan, star soprano Anna Leese, and a hand-picked choral group, the NZSO Messiah Chorale no less, would have in this instance fuelled plenty of extra interest.

Of course, the work itself is like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra – “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”, a state of things partly due to the music’s inherent perennial freshness, and partly to its Baroque origins. In keeping with the times, Handel and his composer contemporaries had an intensely pragmatic attitude towards music and its performance, one which put any ideas of posterity and its judgements far behind more immediate and practical concerns.

In the case of Messiah these concerns brought into being different versions of the work based on early performances in different locations and with different performers, hereby giving the music something approaching a schizoid pedigree. No single “authentic” version of Messiah exists, the composer both instigating and sanctioning many optional settings of the individual numbers, as well as re-ordering or even suppressing certain of these to suit different circumstances.

The Handel scholar Winton Dean underlined this point in no uncertain terms in a 1967 article in London’s  “The Musical TImes” discussing two recently-published editions of the work, stating, somewhat combatatively – “There is still plenty for scholars to fight over, and more than ever for conductors to decide for themselves – indeed, if they are not prepared to grapple with the problems presented by the score they ought not to conduct it.”

For this reason every separate performance of the work is something of a listening adventure (and the same goes for almost every recording). Surprises, delights and disappointments for listeners are thus inevitable components of these experiences, as each person waits for his or her “favourite” numbers. Many of the latter are, of course, guaranteed their place, and rightly so – but there are a goodly number whose presence in any given performance simply can’t be taken for granted – and surprises of this nature do occur.

One such surprise for me happened in this performance – the removal of the central section of the aria He was despised, sung in this case by a mezzo-soprano. I didn’t notice until afterwards that the text in the programme omitted the words from “He gave his back to the smiters” to the end, so that all we got was the deep-felt, meditative opening, one described by historian Charles Burney as having “the highest idea of excellence in pathetic expression or any English song with which I am acquainted”.

Of course, what normally heightens the pathos of this whole opening is the contrast with the central section and its jagged, insistent treatment accorded the words. Not, I fear, on this occasion, the opening being left to speak for itself. Another truncation (though one not quite so injurious) was in Part Three, which brought us a tad hastily to the final “Worthy is the Lamb” and its linked “Amen” chorus – options taken in other years such as the duet “O death, where is thy sting?”, the chorus “But thanks to God” and the aria, “If God be for us”  were not on this occasion used.

Conductor McGegan was certainly no slouch, driving the music along in appropriate places, achieving, for example, with the help of his soprano a wonderful frisson of orchestral excitement in the music leading up to the Heavenly Hosts singing “Glory to God”. For me there were one or two places he could have allowed a bit more rhythmic space for his choir to “point” their words – His yoke is easy, for example, whose quicker sections were, I felt, a bit smoothed out in effect. But, at one hour and fifty minutes’ playing-time, though it was, I think, the shortest Messiah I’ve ever attended, it was nevertheless a tribute to the sheer focus and concentration of the performers that the work retained its sense of grandeur and visionary sweep right through to the end.

Throughout the orchestral playing was terrific, the faster music tingling with tensile excitement at the strength and flexibility of the melodic lines, with the various counterpoints well served by their different voices. And the slower music to my ears floated and blended some lovely hues, for example in the gentle radiance of He shall feed His flock. Individual players distinguished themselves – trumpeter Michael Kirgan’s bright and shining The trumpet shall sound, and timpanist Larry Reese’s alert, detailed, and (in the Amen chorus’s final measures) resplendent contributions, to name but two of the stand-out examples.

The hand-picked NZSO Messiah Chorale (presumably a kind of one-off assemblage of some of the capital’s best voices) made a brilliant impression throughout, obviously reflecting the quality of their preparation with Mark Dorrell, until recently the Orpheus Choir’s Music Director. Though with fewer numbers than groups we sometimes get in the work, this choir put across the text with whatever quality was required for each sequence – energy, brilliance, warmth, reverence, or sheer grandeur – and the voices certainly weren’t spared by their conductor in places, whose tempi would have, in places, challenged their capabilities to the limit.

What struck me was the sheer focus of the sound throughout all sections, a quality which came to the fore most forcefully in places like the opening of Surely He hath borne our griefs, the opening declamations in themselves resembling scourge-blows upon Christ’s body, but registered just as tellingly in quieter moments such as the opening of Since by Man came death. In this way the different “characters” of the music emerged, underlining the work’s aforementioned capacity to continually surprise and delight.

Naturally, the four soloists have an integral part to play in this process – and each afforded pleasures of different kinds with their eager responses to the words and the beauties of their singing. If I say that I thought the voice of mezzo-soprano Sally-Anne Russell seemed in places to struggle to convey enough body of tone to make her words really “live”, it’s no reflection on her actual voice and stage presence, which I enjoyed – I merely think that the low-ish tessitura of those particular numbers needs a “proper” alto voice to put them across with the force and focus the music requires. Interestingly enough, the decision not to perform the central section of He was despised  worked in her favour, as she was able to tackle those affecting opening declamations (some unaccompanied) with great feeling and presence, and not have to then “fight” to be heard over the orchestra in the “He gave his back” sequences.

Tenor Steve Davislim began with a sweetly-projected Comfort Ye, more lyrical than heroic at the outset, though his tones took on the required heft for the “Prepare ye the way of the Lord” sections. But I thought he really shone in places in the work’s Second Part, conveying pity and empathy in places like All they that see Him, and Thy rebuke hath broken His heart in stark contrast to the chorus’s brutal He trusted in God – wonderful, dramatic  stuff!  And I’ve sung bass James Clayton’s praises in this music before (though not in Middle C), and needs must do so again – he gave the impression of “owning” his music completely. I did think the music’s transition from darkness to light in For behold, darkness shall cover the earth was a little rushed under McGegan’s direction, and therefore slightly less of a visceral experience than was Why do the Nations? during which conductor, orchestra and singer nailed all of its energy and excitement, with skin and hair flying all over the place!

Wellington audiences have been fortunate in hearing sopranos of the calibre of Anna Leese and Madeleine Pierard in recent years in this work, doubly so when considering how different the experience of hearing each one is – which, of course, is how it should be! After the Pastoral Symphony, Anna Leese’s vocal purity was put to perfect use when evoking that first Christmas Night, with celestial frissons of radiant light and angelic singing scattered across the firmament. She then scintillated through the coloratura of Rejoice greatly before taking it in turns most effectively with Sally-Anne Russell to deliver the two-tiered He shall feed His flock/Come unto Him, each singer playing her part in the creation of an ambience of hypnotic beauty.

As for that ultimate declaration of faith and confidence I know that my Redeemer liveth, Anna Leese certainly delivered – the tones were ravishing, the words were crystal-clear, and the manner was assured and encouraging. In tandem with the splendidly-realised Halleluiah  the sequence generated a marvellous kind of aura of transcendence, which continued right to those apocalyptic final moments, featuring every voice, instrument and impulse at full stretch. And, of course, who would want it to be otherwise?

To sum up, it was a splendid demonstration of the power of music as a renewable force, one which all over again inspired performers to give of their best and listeners to connect with and appreciate their efforts – what a treasure, and what good fortune for all of us concerned!