Category: Reviews – Concerts

Rather short and variable concert from university voices and instruments

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music

Victoria Voices: Songs from South Africa, Broadway and Renaissance Europe, conducted by Robert Legg, Andrew Atkins and Thomas Nikora, with Andrew Atkins and Thomas Nikora (piano)

Psathas: Island Songs; Ragnarök Trio (Claudia Tarrant-Matthews, violin; Caitlin Morris, cello; Sophie Tarrant-Matthews, piano)

Pujol: Grises y Soles; Paulo Beillinati: A Furiosa; Guitar Quartet (Royden Smith, Dylan Solomon, George Wills, Jamie Garrick)

Adam Concert Room

Wednesday 30 September, 7.30pm

A small but enthusiastic audience heard a rather short concert (50 minutes, with several longish breaks for changing the position of the piano and other adjustments), the chamber music sections of which were being assessed towards the players’ end-of-year academic results.

The choir was presenting its second concert for the year, under the direction of Dr Robert Legg. It was a much smaller choir than that which sang in May; doubtless it currently being exam. time was the difference between nearly forty and 22. The choir includes students, staff and others associated with the university.

Three African songs began the programme, the first two sung from the gallery above the first-floor Adam Concert Room in the School of Music. It was slightly disconcerting that 7 faces were hidden from most of the audience by a large rolled up projecting screen. These first songs were sung unaccompanied, from memory, and featured splendid tone and projection, although I found the altos rather weak, apart from a fine alto solo, and a tenor one too, in the second song.

For the third song, ‘Hamba Lulu’, the choir descended to the audience’s level, and sang with piano accompaniment from Andrew Atkins. Overall, there was a pleasing sound. This was not difficult music, and the Adam Concert Room acoustic allowed everything to be heard.

John Psathas’s work was a challenge for young players, but one they fully met. This was a later setting of the work; the original was for clarinet, violin and piano. The cellist and violinist (playing an unusually large violin) knew the work so well that they scarcely looked at their scores. It demanded high energy playing, but in this lively acoustic the fortissimos were a bit hard on my ears. There was some difficult double-stopping for the cellist towards the end of the first movement, and again later – but it was performed in most accomplished fashion.

The second movement featured extensive pizzicato for the cellist. The violinist doubled some of the passages with the bow, but this was difficult to hear. The pianist, whose face we could not see through a wall of hair, was thoroughly competent at her demanding part throughout the work.

Voices returned, to be conducted by Andrew Atkins and accompanied in the second item by Thomas Nikora. First was an anonymous medieval drinking song, ‘Vitrum Nostrum’, sung unaccompanied. A very fine solo tenor introduced the piece, and was followed by the choir making a robust sound, and with excellent rhythm and ensemble. There followed Thomas Morley’s well-known ‘Now is the Month of Maying’, which was given a sprightly accompaniment by Nikora. Atkins did a good job in conducting the choir, though some of his body movement was excessive. Generally well-sung, the item suffered from a rather untidy rallentando at the end.

Next up was a splendid guitar quartet, playing two South American works. The first was by Argentinian Máximo Diego Pujol: ‘Grises y Soles’; the second, ‘A Furiosa’, by Brazilian Paulo Bellinati. Of interest to me was the fact that the players did not use the traditional little one-foot stools to help them support their instruments, but instead had support brackets clamped onto the sides of the instruments. Like the earlier trio, the players knew their music so well that not a lot of use was made of their scores.

Both pieces employed a large variety of guitar tones, techniques and timbres. There was a variety of percussive effects, strumming (very little) as well as plucking with fingernails or with fingertips. These techniques and effects conveyed a huge variety of moods, rhythms and tempi in the pieces. The second piece was rather more melodic than was the Pujol. Both were exciting, and demonstrated the skill, precision and preparatory work of the players.

The choir returned to sing two songs from the shows, conducted from the keyboard by Thomas Nikora: ‘Edelweiss’, from The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein, and ‘Sunday’ from Sunday in the Park with George, by Stephen Sondheim. The first was pleasant, but rather passionless (not that it is a highly passionate song!). There was more variety of expression in the heartier second piece.

While the chamber and guitar musicians performed to a very high standard, the choir, and its repertoire, were disappointing, despite a pleasing sound and a good level of accuracy. This concert hardly seemed to be the culmination of four months of consistent choral rehearsal since the last concert, in May. Comparisons may be odious, but… it was a far cry from the university choirs of my time, and the levels they reached performing, for example, as the second choir in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and the splendid à cappella choir’s Mass for Five Voices by William Byrd.

Youthful, exuberant virtuosity – Jason Bae at St.Andrew’s , Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
JASON BAE (piano)

CHOPIN – Four Scherzi
No.1 in B Minor Op.20
No.2 in B-flat Minor Op.31
                   No.3 in C-sharp Minor Op.39
                   No.4 in E Major Op.54
BRITTEN/STEVENSON – Fantasy on Peter Grimes (1977)
LISZT – Venezia e Napoli – Gondoliera / Canzone / Tarantella

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

Sunday, 27th September, 2015

I remember hearing for the first time New Zealand pianist Richard Farrell’s recording of Chopin’s First Scherzo, and being bowled over by the playing’s youthful verve and exuberance.  Similar to Farrell’s in brilliance of execution and youthful élan was the performance of this same work by Jason Bae which opened his Wellington Chamber Music Series recital at St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace on Sunday. For me, in fact, the “shock” of the recital’s opening generated by this young pianist had the effect of a sudden electric charge sent tingling through one’s being, which, of course, was exactly what the composer would have intended.

Jason Bae continued on as he had begun throughout this work, his playing capturing the compulsive “churning” aspect of the figurations, and bringing off the transitions between sections with a fine sensitivity – the central lyrical theme remained slightly “charged”, unable, it seemed to me, to completely relax, brought here, as it had been, in a veritable whirlwind, tempestuous and unnerving!  When it came, the pianist’s reiteration of these agitations heard at the opening simply renewed our astonishment at the fieriness of both music and its performance.

Following this, the tense “question-and-answer” opening phrases of the Second Scherzo were beautifully contrasted, the reply to the darkly-covered beginning ringing and resounding in great style. When repeated, this dialogue took on for me an even more spectral aspect, as if death had made a spoken gesture and been recognized, though Jason Bae’s sensitivity and nimble fingers also kept the passage’s melodic quality stoically to the fore. I liked the pianist’s rich, mellow plunge into the middle sequence’s world – and he did so well with that alchemic transition from those reverential tones back to the recapitulation – a wonderful mini-adventure! Then, in his hands the return to those first exchanges brought out a more rueful, even a somewhat “old friend” quality, after which the interplay of growing tensions culminated in a blistering coda, startling in its power and velocity!

The third Scherzo’s opening was less spectral and sharp-edged than grim and unremitting, dark, terse mutterings followed by angry octaves, delivered with incredible panache! Jason Bae caught the nobility of the contrasting episode, with its beautifully-weighted chords, but seemed to me somewhat at a loss to know what to “do” with the descending filigree figurations, treating them, I thought, as if they were purely decorative. Even when those same noble chords re-emerged decked with darker hues, beautifully voiced by the young pianist, the downward cascadings still lacked, to my ears, any kind of discernible character – strange, when his responses to the music’s other episodes were so sharply and/or richly focused.

After all of this grim, tight-lipped stuff, the relative genialities of the Fourth Scherzo were more than welcome, though Bae seemed more concerned with bringing out the elfin brilliance of the piano writing at the outset more than its good humour. There was breathtakingly delicate playing, with amazing right-hand work in places, the figurations at times just “brushed in”, everything clear as crystal, but light as air and swift as thought.  And the lyrical heart of the work was expressed with legato playing of such loveliness, it seemed churlish to wonder what it was that was in the young pianist’s mind other than the desire to make a beautiful sound. A friend I conferred with immediately after the concert felt much the same thing – that the virtuosity of the playing was breathtaking, but the lyrical moments needed more “character”.

Chopin reputedly said, once, that “if you want to play my music, go to hear Pasta or Rubini” – two of the stars of the opera at the time. Chopin loved the female voice as an instrument (though, surprisingly, he wrote fewer songs than did, say, Liszt), attended the opera regularly,  and befriended opera singers such as Pauline Viadot and Jenny Lind. Though his Nocturnes are celebrated as the most markedly lyrical works in his output, singing lines occur almost everywhere in his other compositions, as witness the central sections of these Scherzi. And just as a singer inflects the melodic lines he or she sings, according to the texts of the songs, so do Chopin’s melodies suggest appropriate dynamic and rhythmic nuance and a range of colour, according to the music’s overall character.

Throughout these Scherzi performances I thought Jason Bae readily captured a sense of the music’s excitement and dynamism, giving the works a wonderful volatile aspect, and a real sense of danger, of encountering the unexpected, and of conquering in places incredibly complex strands of creative impulse and making their intertwining cohere. He was able, as well, to display a gift for realizing a beautiful legato, one which was possible in many instances to enjoy as pure sound (as Chopin was reputed to have enjoyed the female voice or the sound of a violin). Still, in places in these performances I felt the need for more than beauty per se, for a stronger identification with the music’s expression that would give those sounds real intent.

The subjective nature of listening to music enables nine people in a room to add each of their very different impressions of a piece of a music to that of the musician playing it! – ten different reactions to the same piece of music! But I feel that what stimulates this process is the initial recreative thrust given by the performer – without that kind of interpretative commitment  on the part of a player, music can sound incredibly bland, for all the accuracy or surface beauty of its performance.  Bae himself demonstrated such a level of interpretative focus and skill in bringing to us, immediately after the interval,  the programme’s next item – this was Ronald Stevenson’s Fantasy on Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten’s most famous opera.

Ronald Stevenson (whom I think of as Scottish, but who did have an English mother) died earlier this year at the age of 87. Called by commentators one of the great composer-pianists, his output was considerable, including both large-scale works, a huge body of transcriptions, and hundreds of miniatures. Though he’s credited with writing the longest single-movement work in the piano literature (his Passacaglia on DSCH, inspired by Shostakovich), his songs and piano transcriptions are the best-known of his works. Among the transcriptions for solo piano ( the style of Franz Liszt and his operatic transcriptions or “Reminiscences”) is this Fantasy, written in 1977, the year after Britten’s death.

Not dissimilar to Liszt’s Don Juan Fantasy, which recreates for the listener Mozart’s Don Giovanni through elaborating upon a number of scenes from the opera, though not in theatrical order, Stevenson sets about recreating certain subject-themes from “Peter Grimes”, and, unlike Liszt with “the Don” more-or-less following the design of the opera. Crashing chords with plaintive replies immediately evoke angry voices calling the outcast fisherman’s name at the opera’s beginning, followed by agitated, energetic figurations representing rumour and heresay swirling around Grimes’s head, suspected as he is of causing the death of one of his apprentice boys.

We heard the tumult of the storm and in its desolate wake an extended recitative with softly-whispered scintillations of stars in the firmament overhead, piano writing that staggered with its brilliance, sensitivity and sense of evocation. Jason Bae’s performance caught it all, revelling in the tumultuous piano-writing, but then recreating great vistas of silent, pitiless wonderment, as Grimes took the inevitable, tragic steps towards drowning himself at sea. All that was left at the end was the dawn, which the pianist magically brought into being by plucking the piano strings directly, sounding the “Daybreak” theme from the opera in doing so – a few evocatively-sounded Liszt-like chords, and the piece was over – what a work, and what a performance!

To conclude the recital, Jason Bae chose Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli, music composed as a kind of sequel to the composer’s second Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) collection, consisting of impressions from his sojourns in Italy. There are three separate pieces in the work, the first two relating to the Venice (Venezia) part of the title, and a final Tarantella associated with Southern Italy (Napoli).

Beginning with a kind of introduction in which we heard the rhythm of the gondolier’s oar and the rippling of the water, the music intoned a popular song “La Biondina in Gondoletta”, Liszt most interestingly casting the opening music in the same key (F-sharp) as Chopin was to use in his Barcarolle for solo piano. Jason Bae gave us some exquisitely-sounded, shimmering textures throughout this section, voicing the gondolier’s song with great sensitivity, and making the accompanying arabesques scintillate all around the melody, perhaps not with gossamer ease in places, but certainly with sheer youthful delight! I loved the reminiscence of Berlioz’s “March of the Pilgrims” from his Symphony Harold en Italie at the end of the gondolier’s song, Liszt’s chiming notes recalling something of the dying echoes in Berlioz’s work.

The agitated Canzone which followed gave us the darker side of this picture, the music actually based on another gondolier’s song, this time by Rossini as used in his opera Otello – Bae plunged himself and his instrument into this scenario of darkness and despair, leavening things a little in places with some resigned moments of light in the gloom before rechannelling his energies for another irruption which seemed to come out stamping and snorting! – to then immediately break into a tarantella, the “wildest of dances”, the pianist’s fingers flying over the keys, alternating strength and power with delicacy. Respite of sorts came with the cantabile theme, though as the piece gathered momentum, and the “swirl of the girl gone chancing, glancing, dancing” became wilder, some of the melody’s accompanying trajectories began to sound as hair-raising as the tarantella itself. The ending? – it was pure, unadulterated panache on both composer’s and performer’s part, and earned Jason Bae an enthusiastic and well-deserved reception.

We were returned to normality of a sorts by a couple of encores (yes, really! – and I’m obviously showing my age by remarking “and after all that expenditure of energy!”) – neither of the pieces I knew, though I laid bets with a friend afterwards as to their respective identities – the first, I thought sounded like Liszt, the second Rachmaninov! Thus far, neither of us has collected any winnings from the other, though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time……..

Teacher and Pupil for the ages – with Ludwig Treviranus at the piano

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents
Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

Teacher and Pupil – Josef Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven

HAYDN – Piano Sonata in C Major Hob.XVI/50
Andante with Variations Hob.XVII/6

BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.3 in C Op.2 No.3
Piano Sonata No.23 in F Minor Op.57 “Appassionata”

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Thursday, 24th September, 2015

One of the Wellington classical music scene’s great communicators, Ludwig Treviranus, gave an entertaining and thought- provoking recital, “Teacher and Pupil”, featuring music by both Haydn and Beethoven, as the final concert in Hutt Valley Chamber Music’s 2015 season.

With this recital the young pianist completes his second year of a three-year term as Performer-in-Residence for Hutt Valley Chamber Music – his aim throughout his tenure is to present varied and interesting concert experiences for audiences, and share his own joy in performing music that he loves.

As with his Lower Hutt recital about a year ago, he realized these objectives in great spadefuls, which were heaped up for our delight with characteristic gusto. Not for him the obligatory bow to the audience at the beginning, followed by the plunge into the music without ado – his attitude was that here was a group of like-minded people (including a number of children) to whom he could express his thoughts, ideas and feelings convening the music he was about to play.

Opinions will vary among concertgoers as to the efficacy of Treviranus’s friendly, easeful and communicative manner. I know there are people out there for whom ANY talking at a concert by either the artists themselves or the concert organizers is unacceptable, while others welcome the informality and “humanizing” process such an approach instigates. For myself, I’m of the feeling that a little talking , especially when done well, goes a long way, considering that we listeners are at the concert first and foremost for the music.

Ludwig Treviranus was, however, nothing if not determined. Having confessed that his recital’s overall theme was one that interested him greatly through having himself been both teacher and pupil in his music studies and activites, he talked about one of the most famous of these relationships, that which took place between Haydn and Beethoven. For the benefit of both teachers and pupils in the audience, he wasted no time in drawing parallels with what continues today when youth encounters experience.

Each of the concert’s halves was devoted to a particular aspect of the Haydn/Beethoven relationship, the first illustrating the respect Beethoven would have had at first for his venerable master via one of the pupil’s works. Beethoven’s C Major Op.2 No.3 Sonata was a perfect choice, as Haydnesque touches abound in the music, even if there are passages where the youthful Beethoven is palpably demonstrating that he already knows his own mind.

Before this was a demonstration of Haydn’s composition mastery via his wonderful C Major Piano Sonata Hob XVI/50, completed a year or so before Beethoven’s work. Ludwig Treviranus used the word “dazzling” to describe the work in his programme notes – and one really couldn’t do better than that. His performance brought out all that was in the music – its simple quirkiness, energy, humour, strength, subtlety, colour, and great dynamic range. And throughout the first movement the playing gathered up all of these qualities in beautifully-crafted spans, paragraphs of adventure which carried us along, right up to the final chords.

At the slow movement’s strummed, almost bardic beginning I thought I detected a pre-echo of a similar gesture which occurs in Beethoven’s “Tempest'” Sonata – the pianist brought out the music’s attractive melancholic vein with some deft detailing, bringing out, in the music’s “development”, some beautifully discursive touches. By contrast, the finale’s spiky, staccato manner played up the music’s humour, as did the pianist’s body language and (in one or two instances) facial expressions (a wry “where is this music taking me?” look that I thought was of a piece with the playing and interpretation.

So it was, when we moved to Beethoven’s Op.2 No.3 Piano Sonata, it seemed all very much of the same world at various points of the discourse, the “ready to pounce” aspect of the opening bars, the melancholy vein of the contrasting second subject and the skitterish lead-back to the opening mood. I noted Treviranus’s disinclination to play repeats in his concert a year ago, and it was the same throughout this concert (to my regret, in places).

Nevertheless there were compensations in the pianist’s seizure of the mood in the development section, the sense of striving towards something unattainable, the lovely legato which followed, and the élan in moving between these contrasts. The recapitulation kept us nicely guessing for a while as to what the music was about to do, Beethoven following Haydn’s example in playfulness and dynamic surprise – a wonderful modulation at the top of one of the runs sending us all tumbling down the other side of a hilltop into freshly-hued territories (a most magical use of the sustaining pedal!) which, when we picked ourselves up, seemed to uncannily “morph” back into the place where we were (this was all very impressively realized by the young pianist!)

The remainder of the sonata’s performance was of a piece – rich contrasting of the slow movement’s broken-phrased opening with its richly-hued middle section, the playing catching the stillness of it at magical moments, and then the “rolling-down-the-hill” fun of the scherzo, with the all-too-visceral “bump” at the bottom, followed by the lurching, bristling trio, the pianist’s sense of enjoyment reflected in his occasional “riding” of the piano stool! Somewhat more poised was the opening of the finale, Treviranus relishing its touches of insouciance whilst setting out to charm us with grace and style.  And so he did, encouraging the beautiful hymnal middle section to dance, and setting the song-birds trilling full-throatedly up to the unexpected (and rather Haydn-esque!) modulation into other realms, before the final and emphatic payoff.

So to the concert’s second half, which demonstrated in no uncertain terms the divergence of the two composers’ pathways. Haydn’s work was a finely-tailored Andante with Variations in the anguished key of F minor, a kind of “double variation”, beginning with two themes (one in F Major as well) and with variations on both of them. Though “contained” in a structural sense, the music’s expressive qualities lingered in a melancholy way long after the last notes had been sounded, the parameters of feeling imparting a distinctive character to the work.

However, turning from this to Beethoven’s “Appassionata” F Minor Piano Sonata, Ludwig Treviranus took us into what seemed like a completely new world of expression – though written as early as 1805, and while Haydn was still alive, here at the keyboard was sound and fury of hitherto undreamed power, a creative force which threatened to burst through walls and overflow structural confines in its quest to convey what it wanted to say.

Beethoven himself was immensely proud of this work, describing it as a “brilliantly-executed display of emotion and music”. I can’t think of another piece of music that displays a more single-minded and remorseless feeling of pursuing a definite goal, even throughout the work’s less stormy passages – perhaps this is due to the first movement’s second, more lyrical subject actually deriving from the sonata’s opening, and the second movement’s theme-and variations resembling more the resonances of a coiled spring rather than a lyrical outpouring, one which, at its end suddenly unleashes its pent-up energies.

Passages in Ludwig Treviranus’s performance came off magnificently – the opening, for instance, immediately created a dark, brooding ambience whose cataclysmic outbursts – immediately after the portentous Fifth Symhony reminiscences – made someone sitting just in front of me in the auditorium visibly start from their seat! A pity the pianist then had a momentary lapse of memory, omitting several of the jagged ascents before the appearance of the second subject – he seemed to hesitate for an instant, but recovered splendidly to give us a beautifully-coloured second subject (unlike in usual sonata-form practice up to that time, a simple ascending variant of the work’s opening three notes).

Throughout the rest of the movement he was at one with the music’s dynamism, drama and relentless, obsessive spirit – only in the great mid-movement tumultuous keyboard descent did the repeated figurations seem to me a touch mechanical (in fact, his upward-thrusting approach to this passage I had thought splendidly prepared – I simply felt the need for a bit more interpretative “grunt” as the music cascaded downwards – it was one of those moments that didn’t seem quite in accord with the idea that in this work Beethoven was shaping the music’s form rather than allowing form (or, in this sequence, simply gravity) to shape the music…….

Still, the ending of the movement conveyed the creative spirit’s force with more-than-sufficient abandon, the last few notes of the coda leaving us properly agape with breathless astonishment! Very properly, the pianist then brought out the warmth and depth of the slow movement’s tightly-wrought theme, the variations allowing us to breathe again more easily, and enjoy the decorative versions of the theme, albeit atop its fettered energies. But there was no escaping the inevitable – Treviranus caught the eerie, brooding darkness of the unexpected modulatory chord at the end of the movement, again transfixing us with a lightning-flash, and hurling the same notes at us like a “horror fanfare”, before the music was plunged headlong into the swirling depths – what drama and excitement!

It wasn’t a performance of the finale which maintained a crackling voltage from first note to last (as was Michael Houstoun’s in Wellington during 2014 – the most INVOLVED playing I’ve ever witnessed from the latter) – Treviranus gave us intensities in great surges, rather than depicting the music as a remorseless torrent. Even if I felt his overall focus “came and went” through this approach, he managed to re-imbue the music with its essential momentum, bringing the tensions splendidly to a head with the coda.

Opinion is divided among commentators regarding Beethoven’s inclusion of the repeat of the development and recapitulation in the finale – having been “brought up” with a recording that observed this repeat, I always feel as though an essential part of the music has been torn away (including a few transitional bars one wouldn’t otherwise hear at all) if this sequence is cut. Treviranus didn’t play it – one does sympathize with any performer of this music in a live recital on purely physical grounds! – it’s a decision which I regretfully record here, but philosophically accept as part of the interpretation, in this case (adding, perhaps a little unfairly, that for me it was the INCLUSION of this repeat that helped contribute to the success of Michael Houstoun’s aforemetioned magisterial performance of a year ago).

Not wanting to finish a review lamenting something that the performer DIDN’T do, I need to emphasize that Treviranus’s heroic, devil-take-the-hindmost way with the fast and furious coda made for a stirring show of defiance and all-out resolve at the end. And so that we wouldn’t emerge TOO ashen-faced from the recital hall, the pianist gave us a beautifully-breathed palate-cleansing encore in the form of the opening of Schumann’s Kinderscenen.

Guitarist Jamie Garrick in charming, idiomatic lunchtime recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Jamie Garrick (guitar)

(Prelude from Lute Suite in C minor by Bach)
Le départ – Le retour by Napoléon Coste
Études esquises (excerpts) by Gerald Garcia
Julia Florida by Agustin Barrios
Suite del Recuerdo by José Luis Merlin

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 23 September, 12:15 pm

Very unusually for these more punctual days, my train from Wellington’s northern reaches was late and I missed the first piece and some introductory words from the guitarist. I missed the Prelude from one of Bach’s lute suites, in C minor, BWV 997.

Coste’s Le départ – le retour was under way and I found myself in the world of his early 19th century contemporaries, Fernando Sor, Giuliani, or perhaps Berlioz (who also played the guitar and was two years older than Coste), composers with whom I am much more familiar.

Clearly Jamie Garrick is at home with this very singable music, for he can make the guitar sing, weaving through the rhythms, beautifully breathed, like the bel canto opera of the time (Bellini was also a near contemporary). This was an age when the guitar had become very popular, with several composers writing very popular concertos such as Giuliani and Carulli.

The other three pieces were by 20th century composers. The pieces from Gerald Garcia’s 25 Études esquises were quite short. They were divertingly varied in tone and style, from the first fluent piece, the third dominated by repeated notes high on the E string, then a piece with a melody that rose and fell, built on series of discrete and agreeable phrases. Not a monumental, Beethovenish creation but an attractive sampling of only 20 percent of the whole collection.

The recital’s best-known guitar composer followed: the Paraguayan Agustin Barrios. Julia Florida is a barcarolle, written in 1938, late in his life; Garrick played it unaffectedly, capturing the gentle sadness and charm of its melody.

José Luis Merlin, born in 1952, is also a South American, born in Argentina. His Suite del recuerdo, a collection of six short, characteristic pieces of great variety. It opened with an Evocacion , described as sad and nostalgic, which was repeated as the fifth movement, providing a rather gladdening memory (recuerdo) of its earlier exposition, the heart of the suite perhaps, and making the warmest emotional impression. Most of the other pieces were lighter and happier in tone and for the most part the music avoided commonplace guitar devices. Though No 4, Carnavalito, which seemed to depict a fairly sedate carnival, indulged in some characteristic strumming.

Garrick is a talented young player with an unerring instinct for an attractive and imaginative approach to the guitar, and the ability to make music that moves beyond conventional notions of the character of guitar music.

 

JS BACH since the time of Bach – Michael Houstoun

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
INSPIRED BY BACH – Michael Houstoun

JS BACH – Partita No.1 in B-flat BWV 825
ROSS HARRIS – Fugue (for piano)
DOUGLAS LILBURN – Chaconne
SERGEY RACHMANINOV – Suite from Violin Partita (after JS Bach)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Prelude and Fugue No.24 in D Minor Op.87
FRANZ LISZT – Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor (after JS Bach)

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday, 23rd September, 2015

Many people regard Johann Sebastian Bach as the greatest composer who ever lived – he’s certainly one of those “elect” few whose creative musical achievements have in their time and/or since drawn forth the highest and most frequent praise from performers, scholars and ordinary music-listeners. But as such judgements involving creativity are prone to subjectivity and influenced by fashion, it’s impossible to verify “greatness” in any pure, abstract or objective way. More to the point, perhaps is to assess Bach’s “greatness” by the range and scope of his music’s influence upon other creative artists.

The old saying “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” comes well-and-truly into its own when considering Bach’s influence upon music in general. Even during the period immediately after his death, when his works fell into obscurity and his fame was temporarily eclipsed by his sons, most notably Carl Philippe Emmanuel, connoisseurs remained aware of “Old Bach’s” music, and kept it alive – people like the Viennese aristocrat Baron Von Swieten, one of Mozart’s patrons, who urged the composer to transcribe some Bach fugues for string ensemble; and Beethoven’s teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe, who put the eleven-year-old Ludwig onto the Well-Tempered Clavier as part of his tuition.

Bach’s skill as a contrapuntist doubtlessly informed Beethoven’s renowned use of fugal passages in his music – Beethoven reputedly remarked that Bach (whose name translates as “brook”) ought to have been called “Meer” (which means “ocean”). In both his and Mozart’s later music the fugal style a la Johann Sebastian B’s example plays a significant role. Though Chopin never composed any fugues he was a devotee of Bach’s keyboard music, as reflected in the  beautiful clarity of his counterpointed passages (the fourth Ballade containing particularly lovely examples). Liszt and Schumann, also both devotees of Bach, did compose fugues, besides writing numerous passages in their works directly linked with a contrapuntal style (parts of Schumann’s Second Symphony present one example, while the fugue in Liszt’s B Minor Piano Sonata provides another).

Michael Houstoun’s “Inspired by Bach” presentation for Chamber Music New Zealand, sent such spheres of Bachian influence spinning into the 21st century, with Ross Harris’s 2015 work Fugue (for piano), premiered on this very recital tour, and presented cheek-by jowl with another Kiwi’s homage to baroque forms, Douglas Lilburn’s Chaconne (written in 1946). Also in the program was the last and greatest of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and fugues for piano, a work directly inspired by Shostakovich’s hearing of his compatriot Tatiana Nikolayeva’s playing of (you’ve guessed it!) the ubiquitous Well-Tempered Clavier. We heard, too, from composer-pianist Sergey Rachmaninov, who, besides writing a set of piano variations on a theme of Corelli, transcribed several of the movements from Bach’s solo violin Partita in E for piano.

Of course, the “prince” of transcribers was Franz Liszt, whose tireless activities produced works for the keyboard drawn from almost every genre of music of his day. Though known for his “fantasias”, freely-wrought representations of themes and sequences from works by other composers, Liszt also devoted enormous energies to faithful transcriptions of works such as the nine Beethoven Symphonies, simply for the purpose of being able to perform the music in places which had no orchestras. A more-than-competent organist himself, Liszt devoted much attention to the work of Bach, writing original works based on Bachian structures (such as Weinen, Klargen, Sorgen, Zargen, for solo piano), but making transcriptions for the instrument of the Six Organ Preludes and Fugues BWV 543-548, and a slightly “freer” transcription of the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor BWV 542,  the latter work played here.

It can be seen by all of this that the programme as devised was filled with interest and potential excitement – and most fittingly, Michael Houstoun began the evening with the great progenitor’s own Partita No.1 in B-flat  BWV 825. Straightaway we were treated to brightly-focused playing, with trilled ornaments relished to the full, the trajectories steady, but subtly varied, the implied orchestrations apparent but organic – and there was a lovely, romantic-sounding ritardando at the Praeludium’s end. I enjoyed also the chatty, energetic Allemande, with its full-throated voicings, as well as the bumptious and characterful Corrente, the piano’s slightly nasal left-hand register giving this music an attractively varied timbre in places.

Often a form containing great feeling and profundity in Bach’s music, the Sarabande here emanated poise and majesty the first time round, then found a shimmering resonance on its repeat – so very lovely! As for the two Menuets, the first  was given a sturdy, forthright character by Houstoun, who then moved to the second as if in a trance, allowing the music to dream its course, and then returning most tellingly to the opening to complete the ABA structure, thus enabling each dance to highlight the other’s attributes. So to the final Gigue, which has never seemed to me like a Gigue (or “Jig”) at all, lacking that skipping, dotted-rhythm aspect – though in Houstoun’s hands liveliness it certainly had, a kind of molto perpetuo character in fact, breathless and exhilarating!

Ross Harris’s piece Fugue (for piano) seemed to me to “scintillate” fugal form from its insides, the seeds of impulse to my ears growing, sparking and shooting forth notes and their configurations, and creating rich and strange worlds of variegated beauty. It was a soundscape that seemed to constantly reinvent itself, by turns haunting itself with its own ambiences, and providing reassurance through sequences of echo and inversion. The piece spread its amplitude almost by stealth, the figures tightly-woven, but expansively-placed, beautifully resonant bass notes reflecting the light from stars tumbling in the firmament, the irruptions of energy in places almost “Hammerklavier-like” in dynamic effect, and contrasting with the pinpricks of sound softly illuminating moments of stillness. Metrical contrapuntal lines broke free of confines and seemed to cosmically open up the music’s vistas, similar in feeling to those in Beethoven’s Bach-inspired Op.111 Piano Sonata’s finale. Such infinities of space between the sounds! The composer’s “three fugue subjects” certainly brought forth a rich panoply of both connective and otherwise exploratory tissue, the whole given an extraordinary range of strength, transparency and colour by Michael Houstoun’s assured playing.

A chaconne’s musical form is variation over a repeating bass line or harmonic sequence – it was a popular form for Baroque composers, one of the most famous examples being Bach’s  Chaconne from the Partita in D Minor for unaccompanied violin. Douglas Lilburn’s use of the form reflected not only his admiration for Bach’s music but his desire to produce some kind of “testament of faith”, stimulated by a combination of South Island landscape and the composer’s belief in the idea of expressing his feelings in music, putting, as he later described it, “an enormous amount of myself into the notes”.

Originally called “Theme and Variations for Piano”, this work had to wait for its premiere for eight years before ex-patriate New Zealander Peter Cooper took it up and made a broadcast recording of the work from London (he subsequently re-recorded it in the studio for Pye Records during the nineteen-sixties). Since then it’s received several more recordings, including one by Michael Houstoun.

As with the recording, I thought this performance was a tremendous achievement! Houstoun’s playing seemed to me a shade tauter here in concert, compared with the studio reading, more “direct” and outwardly energized, though recognizably the same interpretation, with its bigness of heartbeat and awareness of surroundings set amid the forward momentum. The performance established strongly- focused purpose, but also allowed great wonderment in places, registering the world’s stillness and processes of renewal, so that the strengthening of resolve that welled up out of the visionary moments had plenty of engaging surface excitement plus a treasurable sense of well-being. The playing seemed to me to readily evoke both the observer’s spirit and the essence of what was experienced, however sharply contrasted – now strong and purposeful, now dreamy and ruminatory.

Perhaps the work’s “home stretch” could have done with a touch more rhetoric, a few moments’ added tonal and figurative extension – the ending of the work always seems to me to, in a sense, “ambush” the listener, like a homecoming that’s just around a corner, rather than one glimpsed or sensed from a long way off! – but Houstoun, as he tends to do by sheer dint of focus and concentration in all of his performances, made it work in its present context, leaving us replete at the end with our journeys’ revelations.

Sergey Rachmaninov’s regular complaint was that he had neither time nor inclination to compose, having to live the life of a travelling virtuoso pianist. On the strength of his transcriptions of parts of Bach’s E Major Violin Partita, it’s a pity he wasn’t able to turn his hand to more such transcription work (obviously for his own use as a performer, but for our inestimable benefit as well!). His work demonstrates a composer’s awareness of content as much as a feeling for display, so that in these works the spirit of the original in many places shines triumphantly through the virtuoso brilliance. Each of the three movements were characterfully realized, Houstoun relishing in particular the “Gavotte”, with its mischievous, even suggestive impulses, the music seeming in places to wink knowingly at us before artlessly moving on…….

What a contrast was provided by Dmitri Shostakovich’s monumental conclusion to his Op.87 set of Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, a set directly inspired by the Well-Tempered Clavier! For many people at the recital whom I spoke with afterwards,  Houstoun’s performance of this D Minor pairing of Prelude and Fugue was was the highlight of the evening’s music-making, so overwhelming it was in its cumulative impact. Particularly impressive, both music- and performance-wise, were the contrasts between and the coming-together of the work’s disparate elements, such as the imperious, organ-like opening of the Prelude, and its tolling-bell conclusion, out of which grew the Fugue’s beginnings, the counterpoints in places so very rapt and ecstatic, like a bird singing at dawn, yet leading to a massive, angst-ridden build-up of interactive splendour. The sounds here at once transcended the solo instrument’s range and scope, yet in context felt as all-encompassing as was obviously intended by its composer – stirring stuff!

In a sense the Liszt transcription of Bach’s G Minor Fantasy and Fugue BWV 542 was the recital’s “return” to the world of the master – though the transcription of this work featured some additional melodic embellishment and harmonic filling-out of the Prelude, the Fugue is more-or-less as Bach wrote it (albeit with Liszt’s dynamic markings). After the Shostakovich had overwhelmed us all, I was wondering how this item would actually stand up, in (to “corrupt” a phrase, somewhat) an “Après le deluge, moi!” sense – but transcriber and performer between them ensured that full justice was done to Bach – an act of “double homage”, really. And when it was all over, Houstoun returned to the platform to assist all of us to “return to our lives” with a serene rendition of the Siciliano movement from Bach’s Flute Sonata BWV 1031, a transcription, incidentally, by another great master, pianist Wilhelm Kempff. I confess I had to afterwards seek assistance regarding the identity of this piece, knowing the melody” but not its actual name!                                                               

New Zealand String Quartet’s extensive tour ends in Wellngton, a triumph

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand String Quartet: Russian Icons

Nikolai Kapustin: ‘Fuga’ from String Quartet no.1
Stravinsky: Three Pieces for String Quartet
Shostakovich: String Quartet no.4 in D (allegretto, andantino, allegretto, attacca – allegretto)
Borodin: String Quartet no.2 in D (allegro moderato, scherzo, nocturne: andante, finale: andante – vivace)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman, violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday, 20 September 2015, 3pm

This was the last concert in a tour of 11 towns and cities (there were two concerts in Wellington) in which the quartet performed four separate programmes, incorporating seven different Russian works for string quartet.

The second Wellington concert drew a large audience to the Hunter Council Chamber.  Here was a real chamber – not a church or a concert hall, but a room ideal for chamber music.  Audience members could be close to the players, but the room’s double height meant a favourable acoustic, revealing the full resonance and tone of the instruments and of the music they played.

The short works in the first half were unfamiliar to me, but were interesting. Nikolai Kapustin is a contemporary composer, born in 1937.  His work is heavily influenced by jazz.  The music began with the cello playing a jazzy melody while the other players tapped on their instruments with the wood of their bows.  This was followed by the second violin, then the viola and finally the first violin playing the melody, with the cello now playing pizzicato.

The interweaving melodies became quite romantic, utilising variable rhythms over an underlying pulse.  Driving intensity built up, followed by more jocund phrases.  There were rapid episodes where the sounds made it seem as though each instrument was playing a separate piece of music.  Relatively calmer passages intervened between the frenetic ones.  There was a sudden, amusing ending.

Helene Pohl spoke to the audience about the Kapustin and Stravinsky works before the latter was played.  The composer later arranged the Three Pieces, which were very short, for his Four Studies for Orchestra, where the three were given apt titles ‘Dance’, ‘Eccentric’ and ‘Canticle.  It was explained that the subject of the second was a clown with a limp.

The pieces started with a difficult, hectic, pulsating dance for three instruments, while the viola maintained a steady stream of notes played sul ponticello (almost on the instrument’s bridge).  Then the limping clown showed up, in off-the-beat rhythm.  There was strong pizzicato followed by a charming little violin solo while the others continued the pizzicato.  ‘Canticle’ consisted largely of long, slow, unusual chords with interesting shifts in harmony.  To end there was a short but beautiful section of the instruments employing harmonics (the high notes obtained by touching the strings lightly rather than pressing them down).

Doug Beilman, playing probably his last public concert in Wellington as a member of the quartet (for 26 years), gave a longer introduction to the major work on the programme, the Shostakovich quartet.  He noted that the composer admired Stravinsky, though was forced to have a speech delivered on his behalf in New York that denounced the older composer.  Beilman noted  Shostakovich’s circumstances at the time of writing the quartet, and pointed to the placement of a dance on a Jewish theme as the third movement, at a time when anti-semitism was still rife in official Soviet circles.

The quartet’s opening was quite balmy and cheerful, with full-bodied sound from the instruments, and slow, rich and mellow chords.  The second movement began with a melancholic violin solo, underpinned with dour couplets from second violin and viola.  The cello joined in with deep, sonorous notes, the whole building to a higher pitch of almost excruciating tension.  Closely-spaced intervals spoke of sorrow and distress.  Suddenly the heaviness wore off, as if exhausted, and the three upper instruments seemed to be quietly recovering from the effort.   Rich chords returned briefly, with plaintive plangency.

The third movement opened in bouncy style, with the Jewish folk-influenced melody.  The mood was piquant, not entirely extraverted. Melodies began to soar; added mutes changed the quality and timbre of the sound, yet the music became more frenetic. The folk melody became somewhat insistent before a new melody on viola intervened, with intermittent pizzicato from the other players.  Harsh pizzicato chords took over with the fourth movement, accompanying equally harsh melodies on the violins, then there were very exciting, even disturbing passages.

The instruments were played for all they were worth, demanding much energy from the performers.  Mutes were remounted, and a more peaceful, calming down section ensued.  A considerable emotional journey had been travelled.  This was an outstanding performance.

The work following the interval could not have been more different.  Borodin’s lovely second quartet was introduced by Gillian Ansell.  As she said, it is one of the best-loved string quartets, with famous melodies in the second and third movements.

The composer wrote it for his wife on their 20th wedding anniversary; Gillian informed us that Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten had very recently celebrated the same anniversary (applause).  The sublime, romantic melodies were eminently appropriate for such occasions – and they were composed by someone who was not a full-time composer, but were written when time was available from his scientific job.  The cello part epitomised Borodin, and the first violin, his wife Ekaterina.

The airy, exalted feeling of the first movement certainly elevated my mood.  The interplay between instruments was quite delightful; after the stresses of Shostakovich, this was so relaxing!

The scherzo second movement was sunny and bright, yet whimsical also.  The gorgeous opening melody of the well-known nocturne, was first played on cello, and soon taken up by the first violin, while the others supplied beautiful lower parts.  The romantic nature of the music suggests yearning.  Then the dance-like riposte got into its stride with clarity and cheerfulness.  Phrases from the melody returned at a variety of pitches.  The movement ended with a languorous repeat of the theme.

The finale opens in declamatory style, then there is a high-speed, animated development.  Many enchanting variations on the opening theme follow, with much dynamic variation.

These accomplished players gave us the lot without reserve throughout the concert;  the audience’s enthusiasm was genuine and unanimous.  Four of the most beautiful bouquets could not have been more well-deserved – and another for Helen Philpott, who represented the tour’s sponsors, the Turnovsky Endowment Trust.

This was one of the most satisfying chamber music concerts I have attended in a considerable time.  All the hallmarks of NZSQ – splendid tone, impeccable style, intonation and dynamics and playing with absolute unanimity were there, plus outstanding performance of difficult work.

 

Admirably adventurous piano programme from Jason Bae at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Jason Bae – piano

Liszt: Three concert études, S 144 (Il lamento, La leggierezza, Un sospiro)
Puccini/Mikhashoff: Portrait of Madame Butterfly
Chopin: The four Ballades

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 20 September 2:30 pm

The concert by Jason Bae was one of a nationwide series arranged through Chamber Music New Zealand. He also plays, a different programme (see our Coming Events), on 27 September at St Andrew’s on The Terrace for Wellington Chamber Music.

It is commonly a mark of an intelligent and serious minded musician when he plays entire works and, where it’s feasible, complete sets of pieces. Liszt’s Three Concert Études and the four Chopin Ballades are examples of groups of pieces that benefit from being heard together, and formed the major part of an interesting programme.

Il lamento announces its subject with a series of descending phrases, though with little decorative turns that partly disguise much overt grief. In fact, to my ears, rather than the loss of a loved one, it suggests the sort of emotion one feels at the end of an exciting and happy holiday, when the reality of work and chores looms again; but always tempered by delightful memories, and that was reflected in the somewhat sentimental tune that takes over through most of the study. Bae’s playing was unaffected, free of any rhetorical or theatrical excesses, and he even maintained a fairly limited dynamic range, hardly above a mezzo-forte.

La leggierezza assumes a tone that is, of course, lighter, creating a mood of pleasure, where circumstances have produced an ebullience in the spirit; it was fluent and colourful and though he seemed to hit the notes purposefully, they were never percussive.

And Il sospiro, understandably more popular as a result of its sighing (if I can’t find a better word), mildly reflective tone; again even tone, taking full advantage of the fact that humans have two hands; and loving warmth rather than self-indulgence. The trio of beguiling pieces induced me, at home, to dig out a couple of LPs, one by Katchen, one by Jerome Rose, both in lovely warm analogue sound, in performances that hardly surpassed what I’d heard a few hours before in Waikanae.

One approaches arrangements or transcriptions or paraphrases or reminiscences or pot-pourris of others’ music with caution (I’m still thinking of Liszt of course, though a lot of his are wonderfully heart-warming and exciting). An arrangement, perhaps rather a fantasia, on music from Act II of Madama Butterfly, by an American pianist/composer Yvar Mikhashoff (real name Ronald Mackay), is one of several transcriptions from Puccini operas which have been recorded by Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

It’s a very creditable and attractive piece, with most of the recognisable themes from ‘Un bel di’ and the Flower Duet onward; they captured the spirit of self-delusion and of the character of the opera generally. It seemed to be cast the three parts, like a classical suite, with plenty of scintillating virtuosity that suited Jason splendidly.

Then came the rare chance to hear all four of Chopin’s Ballades played successively. They run almost the full gamut of Chopin’s composing life in Paris from 1831 to 1842, and explore all the moods to be found in his piano music: the delicacy, the achingly melodic, the sentimental, the massive climaxes, the limpid gentleness; from passages that even an ordinary pianist can cope with to the parts where that pianist simply closes the score and gets a recording. I

These were admirable performances, which seemed to be enhanced by close proximity to each other. They are hard work and I sensed that towards the end a little tiredness revealed itself. One sometimes wonders whether it is only musical tradition that permits some disparate groups of movements to be known as sonatas or suites and others, like Schubert’s Impromptus or his Drei Klavierstücke, like Chopin’s Scherzi or Ballades, which are rarely played as a group. But then, the challenge of playing them all in a row might be quite a persuasive reason.

After most of the crowd stood in acclamation, Jason talked his way to playing another tough piece, another opera transcription. Because he judged that not many in the audience might have been familiar with the story of Peter Grimes, he went through it and then played a seven-minute-long Peter Grimes Fantasy by Ronald Stevenson, a pianist and composer who died earlier this year (why is he only a vague name to me?). It’s a fantasy on many of the musical ideas in Britten’s great opera and the sounds he produced created a disturbingly realistic impression of the opera, with recognizable moments like the storm, Ellen’s Embroidery aria, motifs from the last harrowing scene, suggesting the dawn and the sea and the work’s enigmatic conclusion. Towards the end he stood to reach inside the piano to pluck the strings: for once with some musical purpose. Though the place in the opera of the little evanescent motif eluded me, it conjured the uncanny atmosphere that Britten evoked during the depiction of Grimes’s crisis and disappearance.

I found a quote by pianist John Humphreys about Stevenson’s piece: “His seven minute ‘Peter Grimes Fantasy’ encapsulates the essence of the opera in a way that astonished Britten at a private performance in Aldeburgh”.

As an encore it was courageous and in a way, was the most revelatory and memorable piece that we heard in the afternoon. It also revealed something of the breadth, and perhaps the depth, of this young musician’s musical experience and understanding; he is no mere piano virtuoso, but a well-schooled artist with an admirable curiosity, and the entire programme reflected those qualities.

 

 

Admirable cello and piano lunchtime concert by Inbal Megiddo and Diedre Irons

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime at Adam Concert Room
(New Zealand School of Music)

Inbal Megiddo (cello) and Diedre Irons (piano)

Beethoven: Cello Sonata No 4 in C, Op 102 No 1
Brahms: Cello Sonata No 2 in F minor, Op 99

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Friday 18 September, 12:10 pm

In earlier days the university’s lunchtime concerts were on Thursdays, both when I was a student a century ago and when I started reviewing for the Evening Post in the 1980s. It was more convenient for me as for many years Fridays have been proscribed and I have rarely managed to get to them.

The chance to hear cello sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms was too hard to resist however, and I made a momentous alteration to my life to be there.

In his sonata in C, Beethoven takes his usual liberties with the conventional forms that had guided his predecessors. It is unusual in its shape: just two movements, each with a slow introduction leading to an Allegro vivace, each of seven to eight minutes duration. Yet both the Allegro sections, though short, follow reasonably normal sonata form.

Inbal Megiddo opened gently, finding the sort of nasal quality of the D rather than the A string (not that I could see her bowing), which matched the thoughtful character of the melody with its unusual octave leap in the middle; and the two players at once announced themselves as strikingly sympathetic, both with the music and each other: though the piano lid was on the long stick, the cello’s voice was always equal to whatever the piano was doing.

The Andante is only about 3 minutes long and so never suggested a merely brief first movement, establishing its own, perfectly congenial coherence, and it fell silent at just the right moment. The contrast, as the main part of the movement began, was perhaps a little too assertive, rather than simply sanguine. It too is quite short.

The prelude to second movement, Adagio, can be recognised early as a sort of variation on the main theme of the Andante, with its rising octave interval and its improvisatory feeling. The Allegro vivace then begins playfully and it character was illuminated with great confidence and conviction by both instruments. Beethoven’s teasing wit is never far away. There are the odd pauses and the precipitate ending, into all of which both pianist and cellist entered wholeheartedly.

The Brahms sonata in some ways shows greater respect for the classical tradition, even though adopting a more lyrical and romantic tone. And the duo seemed to relish the chance to dig into the big romantic melodies and the denser, almost orchestral textures. Brahms seemed to take pleasure in the warm and deep bass notes – pedal notes – from the cello: one wonders whether those moments hark back to his father’s sounds as double bassist with the Hamburg opera orchestra. The cello’s pizzicato passages in the Adagio were deliberate, even a bit inert, but the general rhapsodic feeling produced a lovely performance.

In the third movement, Allegro passionato, acting as a Scherzo I suppose, Megiddo’s forceful and energetic style set the tone, somewhat at the expense of the beautiful; the beautiful was confined to the middle section which did indeed offer a heart-felt respite. The last movement is one of those rich, Brahmsian creations, where, as I noted above, orchestral sound is close by. The playing by both, obviously in wonderful sympathy with the composer’s aesthetic, fulfilled every Brahms-lover’s expectations.

I was pleased to see a good audience in the Adam Concert Room.

A few years ago, this venue presented serious accessibility problems, with virtually no parking weekdays and infrequent buses. Bus timetables during term-time are now good (non-term-time, still hopeless). I travelled by train and bus from Tawa to Kelburn Parade in about 35 minutes.

So it’s a concert venue that deserves the attention of all serious music lovers with a bit of flexible time at midday.

 

 

,

Technically brilliant, varied and versatile recital by New Zealand Guitar Quartet

Posted on by admin

New Zealand Guitar Quartet
(Christopher Hill, Jane Curry, John Couch, Owen Moriarty)

Djembe by Andrew York
Capriol Suite by Peter Warlock (arr. Owen Moriarty)
Three Short Pieces by Mike Hogan
Percussion Guitar Music: Kalimba, Kangogi, Berimbao by Jurg Kindle
Ratschenita by Jack Body (arr. Owen Moriarty)
Music in Four Sharps  by Ian Krouse
Onslow College Suite by Craig Utting (arr. Owen Moriarty)
Bluezilian by Clarice Assad

NZSM Concert Hall, Massey University, Wellington.

Wednesday 16 September 2016, 7:30 pm

Djembe is based on its namesake, a traditional African stretched-skin drum played with the hands. To reflect these origins, York makes full play of the various drumming abilities of the guitar with wonderfully lively writing, as well as other clever effects like harmonics. York’s passion for this ensemble combination (he is a former member of the renowned Los Angeles Guitar Quartet) shone through every bar. The group effectively exploited its wide dynamic contrasts from the most delicate pianissimo to full throated vigorous ensemble volumes, and it was a great choice to open the programme.

Warlock’s  familiar  Capriol Suite was very successfully arranged by Owen  Moriarty, and sounded most convincing for guitar quartet. The various voices were clearly expressed, and we heard a wide dynamic range that did full justice to the characteristic surges of the work. The playing enhanced the contrasts between the energetic, almost breathless numbers, and the sedate, courtly measures of such movements as the Pavane, and finished with a gutsy flourish in the final Sword Dance (Mattachins).

Wellington-based Mike Hogan’s Three Short Pieces opened with a brief snippet called A Bad Ant, described by the composer as “essentially a rhythmic exercise which focuses on the spaces between the notes, alternating fast flourishes with broad rests”. I found that the stumbling rhythms held very little appeal as a concert offering, sounding frankly like no more than the earlier piano study on which they were based. Song for Mum is another snippet lasting a couple of minutes, but it was crafted in a simple, transparent style, and its gentle delivery from the quartet seemed fresh and attractive. The Ed is a pentatonic number, apparently named for the $5 denomination of the banknote showing Sir Edmund Hillary. Any connection seemed extremely remote and unlikely to me except as a convenient numeric “handle”. The music had no hint of the measured, rock-solid  approach that I associate with Ed Hillary, but was full of lively extrovert energy that was attractive and invigorating in its own right.

Percussion Guitar Music is based on African and Afro-Cuban rhythms and by imitating archaic percussion instruments. Kalimba is the name of an African “thumb piano” (Jurg Kindle). To achieve the Kalimba sound on the guitar the quartet dampened the strings with a bubble wrap insert underneath. Kindle had suggested a handkerchief, but the substitute was very effective, giving a muted, semi-staccato delivery to the sound that in no way diminished the lively and energetic delivery from the group. Kangogi are bells used in the traditional music of Ghana, and the piece used gentle harmonics very effectively to evoke the sound effects, dying away to nothing at the close as though a traveller hearing the chimes were moving gradually out of earshot. Berimbao is scored using a pencil to strike the strings in order to resemble the sound of this instrument, which was first brought to Brazil by slaves from Angola. The three pieces of this suite gave great play to the versatility of sound effects that can be produced by the classical guitar, and was an excellent and interesting choice to include in the programme.

Ratschenita is Jack Body’s transcription of music from a Bulgarian village band. The quartet’s enthusiastic delivery of its lively idioms and energetic 7/8 time evoked milling crowds and busyness in a highly colourful performance that built to an exhilarating climax.

Ian Krouse based his Music in Four Sharps on Dowland’s Frog Galliard. The beautiful renaissance original makes only intermittent appearances that I personally find barely sufficient to provide adequate cohesion throughout the piece. Nevertheless, the quartet did full justice to the wide range of styles it encompasses, from drifting “hymn-like musing” (Krouse) to the build-up of a passionate climax.

Craig Utting’s Onslow College Suite (originally written for six hands on two pianos) has been very convincingly arranged by Owen Moriarty for guitars. The quartet projected the colour  and liveliness of the opening and closing movements most effectively, and provided an evocative contrast in the central Romanza where a wistful melody hovers over the passacaglia theme from the bass of the lower seven string guitar.

Bluezilian comes from the pen of multi-talented Brazilian musician Clarice Assad, “accomplished as a classical and jazz composer, arranger, pianist and vocalist” (Programme notes). Jane Curry said that Assad was the only woman composer of guitar music that she had been able to find, so this is a unique piece in the quartet’s repertoire. It is full of quirky rhythms and pauses, with occasional forays into melodic idioms and episodes of traditional strumming. The tonalities are also highly mobile, contributing to a piece that seems to reflect the many and varied interests of the writer.

The audience was treated to an encore realisation of the traditional Tarantella dance, by a Chilean folk group who were political exiles in Europe. The frenetic music graphically depicted the frenzied dancing of a victim of a tarantula bite, building into a hectic race to the finish, which was carried off by the quartet with a most enthusiastic flourish.

Although there was the occasional uncharacteristic departure from the group’s normal impeccable precision of entries, this was a concert that amply demonstrated the technical and musical skills of the New Zealand Guitar Quartet.  The programme, however, included very little repertoire that showcased the wonderful melodic and romantic qualities of the guitar, which are for me paramount elements of its remarkable versatility. The almost unrelieved scurrying of successive numbers would have been enhanced by the contrast of repose and reflection.

 

 

Beethoven and bravura violin music from Valerie Rigg and Mary Barber at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime concert at Old Saint Paul’s

Valerie Rigg – violin and Mary Barber – piano

Kreisler: Praeludium and Allegro in the style of Pugnani
Beethoven: Violin Sonata No 10 in G, Op 96
Wieniawski: Polonaise brilliante, Op 4

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 15 September, 12:15 pm

I had no knowledge of the programme till I arrived on this sunny, breezy morning, at Old Saint Paul’s, now famous as one of the most beautiful buildings in New Zealand. So that in spite of sightline problems here and there, and acoustic oddities with some sounds, the pleasures to be found just to be there are great. The stained glass creations, among almost an entire suite of stained glass, of Saints Catherine and Cecilia (her, the patron saint of music) side by side on the north wall on my left, can afford comfort for any catastrophe (and I speak not of religious belief or sensibilities).

But here we had a brave violinist taking on a couple of terrifying, virtuoso violin pieces. The performance began with that feeling of tension and suspense that accompanies watching a high-wire act, as Valerie Rigg started the Kreisler. But the thrill of an exciting performance vanished suddenly as conspicuous signs of serious insecurity in intonation and articulation in the playing were obvious, which really continued throughout. The cause I couldn’t guess, but I thought it unlikely that her musical skills had just deserted her.

At the end she went off and Mary Barber spoke about the character of the Beethoven sonata that was to follow and, as Valerie returned, remarked casually that she’d had to replace a string. Ah! What a pity she hadn’t stopped as soon as the trouble emerged and changed the string then!

So the Beethoven went well, with new confidence, even sound, good intonation. There was a nice feeling of rapport between the two players, whose common approach was restrained and modest. It’s always good to observe the pianist in a sonata duet, and both to see and hear the way the pianist, without becoming subservient, watches expressive gestures, careful hesitations by the violinist and matches them sensitively, which enriched the sanguinity and sanity of the long, warmly melodious first movement.

As Mary Barber had observed, the slow movement suggests an exploratory frame of mind with descending arpeggios or scale passages that seemed to be drawing some kind of message from the music but not perhaps arriving.  That’s probably a good way to describe a movement that is not superficially engaging, as the melodies are not among Beethoven’s most memorable. Yet the performance held the attention and the composer’s gifts in creating bewitching music from unspectacular material proved themselves, as well as the perceptiveness of the players. And it’s not as if  it’s a short movement. There’s a tantalising suspense on the enchanting last page that leads to a dark key change, from E flat to the Scherzo and Trio in G minor, which was well expressed.

This is a vigorous but not specially witty movement, though obviously more vigorously characterful than the Adagio. It’s also quite short. The vivid Scherzo is followed by a more lyrical, swaying melody in the Trio section which almost suggests a mazurka.

I had forgotten how attractive the last movement of this last of Beethoven’s violin sonatas was. And the players delighted me, really enhancing the feelings I had at having my memories so splendidly refreshed. On top of the pleasure expressed in the body of the movement, the tempo change in the Coda brought an excitement to the conclusion that was very satisfyingly prolonged.

Then came the Wieniawski which, now, raised no misgivings in me as I knew that Valerie Rigg’s instrument, as well as she herself, were fully able to manage the pyrotechnics. In the event, they played his Polonaise Brilliante at a slightly calmer pace, none of the hectic speed and flamboyance that a dedicated violin virtuoso might adopt. In fact, it was at the more stately, processional sort of speed which is the way the dance must be performed (watchers of the last act of Eugene Onegin will know about that). So the dangers were sensibly minimized really to the music’s benefit. Sure there was the occasional minor missed mark in the wide-spaced arpeggios, and in the inescapable bravura flourishes, and the last section didn’t go perfectly, but in general, intonation, double-stopping, and in fact, the essential spirit of the music were convincingly present.