Category: Reviews – Recordings

Yvette Audain and friends “in the groove” – a new CD

Posted on by Peter Mechen

YVETTE AUDAIN
GROOVES UNSPOKEN

Featuring Yvette Audain (saxophone)
With: Hong Yul Yang (piano)
Katherine Hebley (‘cello)
Damon Key (soprano sax)
Donald Nicholls (tenor sax)
Nicola Haddock (baritone sax)
Zyia-Li Teh (tenor sax)
Andrew Uren (baritone sax)
Anthony Young (conductor, “bulletproof petals”)

Tracks: Grooves Unspoken / Hazine (Treasure) / Meditations upon Nasreddin Hoca
Hold Fast / An Irksome Vengeance / bulletproof petals / A Charleston Kick With Steel Caps

The CD launch at “Meow”, Edward St., Wellington

Featuring Yvette Audain (soprano sax, clarinet, recorder, Irish whistle)
with Jonathan Berkahn (piano and accordion)

Sunday, October 19th, 2014

Yvette Audain modestly commented beforehand that what would make her night would be at least TWO people in the audience for the launch of her CD “Grooves Unspoken”. Well, she got her wish and more, besides – not a great deal more, but those of us who were there were caught up in the creative and recreative web and waft of the music and its performance. And with the surroundings and amenities available at “Meow” in Edward Street in Wellington, we wanted for nothing as we listened to and grooved along with both Yvette and her fellow-performer Jonathan Berkahn – the latter had told me before the performance that he was still getting to grips with some of the material, but to my ears this wasn’t evident in his playing, versatile musician that he is!

The two musicians pretty well replicated the first four tracks on Audain’s CD, Jonathan Berkahn “filling in” more than adequately for the pianist featured on the CD, Hong Yul Yang in the title piece “Grooves Unspoken” and also the lovely “Meditations Upon Nasreddin Hoca”. The other two tracks featured the composer herself, demonstrating her versatility in playing both saxophone and clarinet. The former instrument evoked plenty of exotic ambience and colour in a piece called “Hazine” (Treasure), while the latter’s tones paid homage to Audain’s own part-Scottish ancestry in “Hold Fast” (the McLeod family’s motto!), mixing plenty of melodic fluidity with equal amounts of rhythmic vitality.

Hearing these four tracks “live” gave oceans of extra atmosphere to my later listening to the CD – the choreography of interaction, the physical gesturing and the direct contact with the tones and timbres of the instruments in question came back readily to my subsequent listening sessions. The CD had been planned beautifully as regards order, the sounds  of each track seeming to effortlessly give way to each instance of organic flow or marked contrast as it happened. Most appropriately the album (as did the evening) began with a piece of unashamed homage to a past giant, whose music Audain acknowledged as a formative experience – this was Dave Brubeck, whose signature album “Time Out” had obviously made a telling impression, judging by the “echoes” present in Audain’s beautifully-constructed piece, very appropriately named “Grooves Unspoken”.

From this we were taken elsewhere, to places replete with Middle-Eastern flavours and gypsy-like impulses. This was the aforementioned “Hazine”, a patient, measured and evocative creation whose character gradually shed its rhythmic carriage in favour of freer, more ambient sequences of figuration – spaces opened up via long-breathed notes and occasional pitch-bending, all of which conjured up a real sense of time passing, almost Omar Khayyam-like, into oblivion.

Not quite as overtly exotic, but as suggestive regarding different moods and realms was “Meditations Upon Nasreddin Hoca”. The work was made up of a number of ritualistic exchanges between piano and saxophone (again, Hong Yui Yang was the CD’s excellent pianist) – voices striving to unite but separated by distance or circumstance. A wide-eyed opening evoked a soul contemplating “the inverted bowl we call the sky”, one that was partly delighting in, partly despairing at the star-clusters and their loneliness. Whatever answer it was that came from the lonely spaces took the form of an invitation to dance and exult, which piano and sax did, revelling in the interchanges, before again seeming to part company. I loved the smoky lower register of Audain’s instrument, even if she very briefly seemed to lose her line to breathiness on a single high note, but recovering almost immediately and taking up with the piano once again. Throughout the two instruments would contrive to separate, join and separate again, bringing something new to each exchange after tasting their individually-wrought moments of disjointedness. The final exchange, an Eastern-flavoured dance, by turns sinuous and angular, re-established the “together but different” character of the interactions throughout, concluding with an exciting and confident flourish.

“Hold Fast” took its name from the motto of the Scottish McLeod clan, to which the composer’s grandmother belonged. The opening sounded a kind of clarion call, perhaps a summoning of the said clan, replete with Scottish snap and pipe-skirl, the declamations occasionally giving way to startling moments of rhythmic impulse, complete with occasional foot-stampings. One of Audain’s earliest compositions, the piece aptly honoured a tradition of both song and dance.

I loved the title “An Irksome Vengeance” and thought the combination of clarinet and ‘cello most splendidly explored the ensuing timbral concoctions, as well as staying true to the composer’s aim of keeping a basic pulse to the fore. I can’t really speak for musical currencies such as “post-grunge” and “progressive rock”, but thought that the music’s dynamism and knees-and-elbows angularities were, to say the least, arresting. And I thought the liveliness of the exchanges didn’t let up, even through the more lyrical sequences. Fantastic playing by both Audain and the ‘cellist Katherine Hebley – the ending itself was a treat, a masterpiece of po-faced comedy. One assumed the “vengeance” in question had by that time been wrought, or, alternatively, tossed aside as too “irksome” for any further consideration!

All three of the final trio of pieces on the CD seemed to me to particularly command the attention – the second piece, “bulletproof petals”, scored for a quartet of saxophones, sounded an outlandish note at the beginning, before taking a five-note figure and “deconstructing” it with no little glee. A wistful phrase was solemnly passed around the group, though like children told to be serious, splutters and giggles ensued. The wistful phrase returned, this time more formally and contrapuntally, and just as it seemed something imposing and grand was welling up out of the growing confidence, the splutters and giggles returned – one was left with unanswered questions, such as, “Was the “thick skin” of the composer’s explanation of the piece too easily penetrated?” and “Did the creative resolve buckle under the weight of derision too soon?”

But my favorite piece on the album had to be the final one, “A Charleston Kick with Steel Caps”, a piece that never let up in its “swing”, through different tempi and rhythmic trajectories – in fact, so involved was the CD’s “live” audience with the performance that they were ready to applaud at the first hint, midway through, of a final cadence, all too ready to deprive themselves of a wonderfully raucous buildup to a characteristically upbeat throwaway ending. I thought the music had the spirit of the times – a trifle Kurt Weill-ish in places, even, as well as its composer’s fingerprints on things like the derivation of the accompanying rhythms of the final section of the dance from earlier in the work – organic thinking which involved all of the instruments in melodic, or motivic as well as harmonic contributions to the whole.

Briefly, I thought the disc’s contents a happy amalgam of “entertainment” and “provocative” pieces – in this respect I thought particularly well of the last three works on the CD, culminating in, for me, a piece that seemed to sum up Yvette Audain’s achievement in making her playing such a gift to all kinds of sensibility. This is not to under-appreciate the other, earlier pieces, just as bagatelles, divertimenti and serenades are the sunnier sides of deeper purposes. “Grooves Unspoken” is a delight, an uninhibited and unashamed self-portrait of creative impulse that Audain can be justly proud of.

(Visit Yvette Audain’s website at www.yvetteaudain.com for further information)

Jenny McLeod’s “Peter Pan” music on Naxos

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by JENNY McLEOD

The Emperor and the Nightingale (narrator and orchestra) / Rock Concerto / Three Celebrations for Orchestra

The Emperor and the Nightingale: Helen Medlyn (narrator) / Kirstin Eade (solo flute)

Rock Concerto: Eugene Albulescu (piano) / Bridget Douglas (flute)

Conductor: Uwe Grodd

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

 NAXOS 8.572671

After the splendid concert given by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra featuring Jenny McLeod’s The Emperor and the Nightingale as part of the NZ International Festival of the Arts Series, it was interesting re-adjusting one’s thoughts towards an audio-only presentation of the work, included on this splendid recent CD. In fact, coming back to it in the wake of the concert enhanced my enjoyment of both experiences, and stimulated a lot of thinking regarding the respective merits of sound and vision as communication tools in themselves.

Jenny McLeod has herself been a nightingale of sorts, one whose song has taken a variety of tones, characters and intentions over a compositional career which has seen her delve into and work through a number of stylistic preoccupations. Formative studies in Europe with Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen advanced her early avant-garde impulses, alongside of which she was able to identify and explore aspects of this country’s bicultural heritage with music-theatre works like Earth and Sky (1968) and Under the Sun (1970).

She concerned herself for a while with attempting to integrate popular styles of music into classical forms (e.g. her Rock Sonatas for piano), but then became interested in an innovative harmonic theory propounded by Dutch composer Peter Schat, the “Tone Clock” Theory. McLeod based a number of her compositions on this method. More recently she has become involved with writing church music for use by Maori groups, an involvement which led her to being asked to write a piece about an historical event involving an ancestor of Whanganui Maori, Hohepa Te Umuroa (the result being the recent NZ International Arts Festival opera Hohepa).

Here on this new CD, it’s McLeod’s “popular neoclassical” period that we’re largely concerned with, music whose approachability would surprise anybody whose experience of the composer’s work hadn’t included her “pop-influenced” output. As McLeod herself put it in her program notes, “this is the music of a composer who for a time refused “grow up”, declaring that writing and performing music should be “enjoyable”…”

That enjoyment comes across in spadefuls throughout McLeod’s setting for narrator and orchestra of Hans Christian Anderson’s famous story The Emperor and the Nightingale. The Arts Festival concert referred to above paired the work with perhaps the most well-known of “narrator-and orchestra” stories, that of Peter and the Wolf with music by Prokofiev – though comparisons were scarcely in order, as the latter was completely reworked, dispensing with a narrator and featuring an animated film to present the story along with the music.

In McLeod’s Anderson setting, Helen Medlyn’s storyteller-delivery bars no holds, her projection as vivid and as wholehearted as if she were performing the piece for a packed auditorium – rather than overpowering the listener in a domestic environment, I found the larger-than-life characterizations she evokes a perfect match for the orchestral panoply with its multifarious colorings and textures and its extremes of loud and soft, weight and delicacy – in fact her voice is used as another orchestral instrument, and the Naxos recording comes to the party most satisfyingly (unlike some other “speaker-and-music” recordings I’ve heard which seem to deny the participants any sort of sonic relationship!)

McLeod cleverly differentiates the music for the “clockwork” as opposed to the real nightingale: the clockwork bird’s melodies are proscribed, angular and turning in on themselves, as opposed to the freer, more improvisatory figurations of the real bird – and the sense of everybody “taking-up” the mechanical tune is splendidly conveyed, with weight and colour. It’s all the more shocking, then, when the clockwork begins to malfunction, and the bird’s song ceases – the music characterizing the emperor’s resulting malaise could have come from Kodaly’s Hary Janos.

I’m pleased flutist Kirstin Eade is credited in the booklet with the flute solos depicting the nightingale, because they’re wonderful – gorgeously turned, and deftly characterized with so many colourings. Alongside her, the orchestral detailing, so magically and unhurriedly wrought by the composer, is here beautifully realized by the NZSO’s contingent of star players.

Three Celebrations for Orchestra date from 1983, though the work was revised by the composer a couple of years ago. The opening “Journey through Mountain Parklands” is classic “road music” at the start – sounds which push forward and throw their ambiences in all directions, defining the range and scope of what’s to follow.  It’s all gloriously tonal and accessible, with strands of texture that arrest the ear, such as the saxophone solo lines, which lead to gentler,more settled evocations before the scene’s underlying grandeur takes over again, percussive textures adding their voices to the driving momentums.

Nostalgia informs the gentler second movement, an invocation of Pukerua Bay, near Wellington. A kind of wistful tenderness winds through the opening, the music allowing for occasional irruptions of pleasure and excitement – would Malcolm Arnold have written in a similar vein had he visited the country and concocted some “New Zealand Dances”? The third episode has the title A&P Show –  the opening a riot of glittering energies, combining the bustle of visitors with the strut and swagger of performers and showpeople – there are Copland-esque, rodeo-like touches at one point! The music allows for both reflection and purposeful impulse, with the final pages generating plenty of colourful activity, the “rodeo-motif” prominent again just before the whiplash close.

Last on the disc is the Rock Concerto. The music actually began life as a “Rock Sonata” for solo piano, written for the gifted seventeen year-old pianist Eugene Albulescu at the instigation of his teacher, Bruce Greenfield; but Albulescu subsequently requested that McLeod recast the work as a concerto. McLeod calls aspects of the music “very much of our own time”, while referring in both spirit and style to composers of earlier times – “distant friends” as she calls them.  The spirit of Gershwin colours some of the more reflective, lyrical moments of the work, though I confess to finding other parts of the writing surprisingly slight of expression. McLeod warns the listener, it’s true, that “those in search of something deeper and darker must look elsewhere…”

Not so the middle movement – subtitled “Elegy for Charlie French” (a friend of the composer’s who died of Aids), the music gradually colours its deceptively simple opening with darker hues, the expression eventually reaching a point of utterance whose candor and sobriety are appropriately moving. The darknesses dissolve somewhat, as the poise of the opening returns, though l liked the bitter-sweet strands the composer threaded though the utterances of the closing pages.

The finale is all angular energy – the composer marks the music allegro giocoso, and translates it herself as “swinging and robust”, an apt description. In true pragmatic, Baroque-composer fashion,  McLeod indicates that each of the movements of the work can be played independently. Is it all too much of a good thing? One senses that, as with whatever she was engaged with, McLeod was “on a mission”, the music enthusiastically encouraging her dictum “it should be enjoyable”. And there will be plenty of music-lovers prepared to go along with that.

 

 

 

 

 

Tribute to Kurt Sanderling from ICA Classics

Posted on by Peter Mechen

KURT SANDERLING (1912-2011)  – a great maestro

BRUCKNER – Symphony No.3 in D Minor (CD)

Kurt Sanderling (conductor) / BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra

(recorded Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1978 – the disc also includes an interview with Kurt Sanderling)

CD ICAC 5005

SCHUMANN – Symphony No.4 in D Minor / MAHLER – Das Lied von der Erde (DVD)

Kurt Sanderling (conductor) / BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Soloists: Carolyn Watkinson (mezzo-soprano) / John Mitchinson (tenor)

(recorded Royal Albert Hall, London, 1988

DVD ICAD 5042

Available from ICA Classics at www.icartists.co.uk/classics

Kurt Sanderling, who died last year in Berlin at the age of 98, was a name known to me from my formative days of record-collecting, through his 1950s recording made with the Leningrad Phllharmonic of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony – one of those early cotton-stitched white-and-yellow panelled Deutsche Grammophon LP covers with the composer’s facsimile autograph scribbled across the central vertical yellow panel (all very tasteful and esoteric, obviously aimed at the “discerning” record buyer of the time).

Sanderling worked with the legendary Yevgeny Mravinsky as assistant conductor of the Leningrad orchestra for eighteen years, from 1942 until 1960, when he took on the task of rebuilding the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, returning to the country he had left in 1936 because of his Jewish ancestry. As well, he became for a number of years conductor-in-chief of the Dresden Staatskapelle. But it wasn’t until 1970 that he first conducted in the UK, developing a relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra after he deputized at a concert for an indisposed Otto Klemperer, and then in 1975 appearing for the first time with the then BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the BBC Philharmonic). He conducted the latter group often, making his Proms debut with them in 1982 with Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

In 1981 Sanderling made his only visit to New Zealand, conducting the NZSO on a couple of occasions, most notably in Brahms and Shostakovich, of which I saw and heard the former concert (I wish I’d heard the Shostakovich as well, which drew forth clusters of superlatives from the local critics).  I well remember the imposing, authoritative figure on the podium in the Town Hall, head held high, magisterial glances and flowing gestures holding the players in thrall and producing from them glorious sounds throughout the Brahms First Symphony. Interestingly, it was Sanderling’s ability to get first-rate sounds out of orchestras not quite in the top rank that was a significant feature of several of the many tributes I read after his death – and my memory of the NZSO concert he conducted certainly confirmed that judgement.

Now, thanks to the new audio and audiovisual ICA Classics label (go visit the label’s website at www.icartists.co.uk/classics to get an idea of the riches being made available) two previously unreleased “live” recordings of Sanderling’s work as a conductor have appeared, an audio-only of Bruckner’s Third Symphony and a DVD of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, both with the BBC Philharmonic. I’d not previously encountered any of the conductor’s Bruckner, but had heard the 1981 BBC Mahler Ninth with the same orchestra – so I was delighted upon hearing both of the new recordings that Sanderling seemed as much at home with those big, rolling Brucknerian symphonic paragraphs as Das Lied’s more overtly varied, coloristic and volatile Mahlerian outpourings.

I began my listening with Bruckner, a performance of the Third Symphony recorded in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in April 1978 (presented here on ICAC 5005) at which time Sanderling had been a guest conductor with the orchestra over three seasons. The interpretation is strongly-etched, both energetic and supple, suggesting that the rapport between conductor and players was a well-established one. There’s a Klemperer-like strength and grain to the tones and textures, a straightforwardness to the big, Brucknerian rhetorical gestures, such as the declamatory unison which caps the symphony’s very first crescendo. Sanderling keeps it all moving, as if obeying some kind of primordial pulse beneath the music’s surface, the steadiness having a cumulative, organic effect entirely avoiding any kind of rigidity.

Even if one is occasionally reminded that we aren’t listening to the Vienna Philharmonic or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, there’s a far more cherishable sense of experiencing music-making that doesn’t deliver a glib or mechanical phrase. There are one or two momentary ensemble glitches – the strings have a less-than unanimous moment at the beginning of the development section, for example – but the playing is every bit as good as one might expect from a live concert, and the brass in particular are, in my opinion, superb.

Between the movements the microphones are left on, allowing the audience atmosphere to register and preserving a “live” continuity throughout the work. Again, there’s a beautiful unhurriedness about the playing in the slow movement, suggesting, in between evocations of elemental grandeur, long-breathed natural undulations doing their thing and encouraging the listener to connect with the music’s ebb and flow. What one realizes at the movement’s end is how Sanderling has build up the tensions and concentrated feelings of the sounds right throughout, investing the last few pages with a truly valedictory feeling, the horns’ held notes at the end the stuff of planets and stars – this is conducting and playing that feels to me as though it properly “owns” the music.

The scherzo’s pointed urgencies are put across with plenty of stamping girth, the earthiness of the playing carrying over into the trio, putting the countryman in dancing clothes and holding his rough edges temporarily in check. There’s an even greater contrast at the finale’s beginning, where we get playing of dangerous whirling exuberance, whose energies gradually give way to the insinuations of the ländler, one decorated by a chorale-like theme on the brass (Bruckner described this episode once as “life’s gaiety standing side-by-side with death”). Sanderling gets the orchestra to play the unsettling, syncopated second subject theme with tremendous power and agitation, as he does the recapitulation of the opening, with its chromatic variants that sound so like the final pages of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, when the River Rhine overflows its banks. Everything – the reprise of the Ländler, its interruption by the jagged syncopations, the magnificent lead-back to the symphony’s opening theme (triumphantly in the major key, with the brass again playing their hearts out) has a compelling inevitability. The audience’s applause is thunderous – and rightly so!

Abruptly, we are taken to an interview with Sanderling at the symphony’s end, a fascinating ten-minute picture of a musician whose authority and clear-sightedness comes across in his speech as unequivocally as his music-making. He speaks of his early years in Germany, his early experiences as a repetiteur at the Berlin State Opera, of his admiration for Otto Klemperer during those times, of his having to leave because of his Jewish ancestry, and his departure for Russia, leading to his first conducting experiences and his subsequent collaboration with Evgeny Mravinsky in Leningrad. He talks about Haydn and Shostakovich and Mahler, and has interesting things to say about all three, including the latter’s “triumvirate” of musical farewells. Interviewer Piers Burton-Page chooses his questions well and allows Sanderling plenty of room to give his answers sufficient breadth and depth.

ICA scores equally well with the Sanderling DVD presentation, which, in addition to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, features the Schumann Fourth Symphony from the same Proms concert, in July 1988 (incidentally, more than ten years after the Bruckner CD performance). Watching Sanderling at work confirms what one heard on the Bruckner CD, the conductor’s confidence and authority inspiring powerful and committed playing from his orchestra players, though not in a martinet-like way, as was the style of his great mentor at Leningrad, Mravinsky. Like his own hero, Klemperer, Sanderling at work looks formidable, but he’s also animated and expressive in places, giving as much the impression of coaxing what he wants from his players as imposing on them a determined will.

The Schumann Symphony leaps from the players’ instruments with a will – not surprisingly, there’s a Klemperer-like steadiness about it all, a dark, brooding introduction and a powerful, clearly-articulated allegro, the music’s exuberance breaking out in the movement’s coda to exhilarating effect. I liked Sanderling’s underlining of the continuities between the movements, each luftpause enough to gather both breath and strength before the music plunges into a new episode without lack of continuity. Sanderling gives his players time and space to float the slow movement’s phrases across the bar-lines to wondrously lyrical effect, the trio graced by some sensitive solo playing from the orchestra’s leader. I liked the players’ pointing of the Scherzo rhythms – plenty of tonal “girth” in this dance, set against the trio’s graceful and gossamer difference, the latter leading to the finale’s grandly ritualistic introduction, filled with strength and inevitability. Though lacking the last ounce of physical excitement, the cumulative effect of Sanderling’s direction invests the work’s ending with thrilling power and purpose.

As for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, it’s a performance that reaches out and grasps the music’s greatness, with everybody, soloists, orchestra and conductor completely caught up in the intensities generated through the composer’s fusion of music with his chosen texts. Both soloists are wonderful, tenor John Mitchinson a winning combination of philosopher, poet and inebriate, and Baroque specialist mezzo Carolyn Watkinson giving us a touchingly vulnerable view of the world’s beauties and disappointments. She’s perhaps a shade dry-eyed and distant in the closing stages of the “Abschied”, an approach that rivets one’s attention without overtly tugging at the heartstrings. Also, to my ears, she occasionally phrases ever-so-fractionally under the note, though never in a way that gives rise to serious alarm – what’s of paramount importance is her whole-heartedness, her investing of each phrase with meaning and involvement. Sanderling and the orchestral players support their singers with both solo and ensembles lines of great beauty and sharply-wrought focus, making every description of time, place and emotion a meaningful one. The camera-work is excellent, as it was throughout the Schumann symphony, balancing the overall with the specific to great effect, and giving a sense of everybody’s contributions to things which truly reflects the nature of a concerted effort on behalf of the music.

One comes from both experiences of Sanderling’s work here, audio and visual, with a sense of having encountered greatness. For most people music exists as sound rather than on the printed page, making the performer an essential component of that combination which produces great performance art. Sanderling and his musicians deliver the music’s greatness in all cases, to splendid and satisfying effect. I, for one, am now anxious to explore more of ICA’s issues, on both DVD and CD – this, for me, couldn’t have been a better introduction to the company’s catalogues.

Website: www.icartists.co.uk/classics

Georgina Zellan-Smith – fond piano memories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REMEMBRANCE

– and other favorite piano pieces

Georgina Zellan-Smith (piano)

 Ode Records CDMANU 5101

I must confess my first reaction upon receiving this CD was of surprise that so gifted an executant as Georgina Zellan-Smith would expend so much of her energies on “faded trifles” such as these. Especially in the wake of the same pianist’s excellent Beethoven/Hummel CD, whose interesting and unique compilation of repertoire “enlarged” the piano-playing world for me, I thought this collection seemed, by comparison, somewhat surplus to requirements, replicating many such “Great Piano Melodies”  or “Gems of the Piano Repertoire” kind of presentations.

What I didn’t take into account was the pleasure to be had from listening to a sensitive and insightful interpreter cast fresh light on these pieces. Being the child of a piano teacher, I had every note, every phrase of both “Remembrance’ and “The Robin’s Return” indelibly etched upon my musical memory, albeit refracted through the all-too-fallible fingers and youthful sensibilities of my mother’s piano pupils. I fancy she would occasionally have pushed them off the piano stool in frustration and actually demonstrated how certain passages would go, which would account for my having more-or-less musically coherent memories of each piece – and in the case of “Remembrance’ probably augmented by performances on the radio of people like Gil Dech.

Georgina Zellan-Smith plays each of these opening “flagship” pieces with what I can only describe as exquisite taste – she fuses a judicious amalgam of bright-eyed clarity with occasional dollops of ambiently-yellowed sentiment; and in each case the result is, for me, well-nigh irresistible. Apart from a slight mis-hit in “Remembrance” she makes every single note tell. The same goes for the following item, the ever-popular “Rustle of Spring”, one of the great “light” pieces of piano music, here conjuring up even more childhood memories, so that, like Dylan Thomas’s boyhood self in his story “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, I’m forced to plunge my hands into the piece’s snowfall of notes and come up with whatever I can grasp – such is the compulsion of the resonances unlocked by this music.

Christian Sinding’s lovely seasonal piece reminds me, along with Edward McDowell’s “To A Wild Rose”, of other miniature works whose elegant craftsmanship has ensured their immortality – another example, though not on this recording, is Debussy’s “Clair de lune”. In all of these pieces the music’s intrinsic qualities reward in some way even the most interpretatively bland performances. “Rustle of Spring” in particular has a certain “layered” quality beneath the exquisite harmonies, allowing different performances to uncover whatever their interpretative capacities can realize. Sinding cleverly plays with both major and minor modes throughout, knowing when to flood his textures with sunbeams and when to drift the mists back through the sound-vistas – it may be unashamed emotional manipulation, but I dearly love it. Georgina Zellan-Smith’s performance of Sinding’s piece takes its time at the outset, gradually allowing the Spring’s impulses to awaken the textures, though her unhurriedness meant that some of the left-hand figurations lack the occasional touch of volatility and energy. Still, if pressed I would state a preference for her way to the rather more superficially exciting, but often somewhat mechanical renditions by other pianists I remember hearing.

Grieg’s “To the Spring” evokes seasonal change more ritualistically, though the piquancy of both textures and harmonies can’t help but exert a gradual spell upon the listener. A casual hearing suggests that Zellan-Smith plays the notes “straight” at the outset, but if one listens and breathes the phrases with the pianist, one feels their varied pulsations, sensitively and subtly delineated. Even more abstracted is the same composer’s “Papillon”, or “Butterfly”  as it’s called here, the angular delicacies of the creature’s flight being less quicksilver and gossamer, and more studied under Zellan-Smith’s hands, like an oriental etching on a screen or fan, exchanging volatility for grace and elegance.

There are too many pieces to fully comment upon individually – some are predictably engaging as performances (Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca”, for example), while others lie in wait to snare the unsuspecting in nooses of delight (Liadov’s “A Musical Snuff Box” for one). Albert Ketelbey’s “In a Persian Market” is a rip-roaring success, here, its quaint chocolate-box exoticism given a bit of extra grunt by the pianist in places with strongly-etched rhythms and glowing harmonic colorings. Another success is Handel’s eponymous “Largo”, here completely avoiding the treacly ooze generated by numerous Victorian arrangements for organ and orchestra, in favor of a clearly-etched cavatina-like outpouring of lyricism, far more in keeping with Handel’s original, from the opera “Serse”. And I loved hearing the Paderewski Minuet again (I used to listen to Jose Iturbi’s 78rpm recording of the work, which was on the “B” side of Iturbi’s recording of THE Prelude by Rachmaninov). Zellan-Smith’s delight in the dance comes across as sprightly as with any polonaise.

In short, far from sounding like “faded trifles”, a lot of the pieces re-emerge as glowing gems in Georgina Zellan-Smith’s hands, with everything nicely characterized and differentiated. From the sultry indolence of Mendelssohn’s G Minor Gondola piece we’re taken to the scented elegance of the Russian night with Anton Rubinstein’s Romance, for example; and while the third of Franz Liszt’s Consolations creates whole vistas of refined romantic sentiment, its old-worldliness sets off Kiwi composer Douglas Lilburn’s bright, breezy, out-of-doors Prelude which follows, to perfection. While I thought Auguste Durand’s Waltz a bit of a long haul, I was delighted with another old friend, Gabriel Morel’s Norwegian Cradle Song, amply prepared for with a beautifully-modulated performance of the Adagio from Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata.

A beautiful and simple rendition of Princess Te Rangi Pai’s “Hine e Hine” leads to the disc’s final item, “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, by James L. Molloy, one of these songs whose main tune is familiar, but which brings with it a verse-refrain that I don’t recall, possibly through not having ever heard it. The music’s delivered with the poise and grace that distinguishes the playing throughout. Touchingly, Zellan-Smith has dedicated the CD to the memory of long-time music retailer Murray Marbeck, whose idea instigated this project, but who died before its completion. Recorded in the Music Theatre at Auckland University by Wayne Laird, and released by Ode Records, the excellently-caught piano sound rounds off a venture whose artistic success has, I freely admit, set my ears attuned to the strains of an oven-timer, about to signal that my humble pie is cooked and ready to be eaten.

 

Stop Press: Georgina Zellan-Smith is giving a recital in Wellington at a house-concert on Tuesday 22nd November: seating is limited, so e-mail mgeard@windowslive.com for booking information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO concludes its Sibelius Symphony cycle on Naxos

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SIBELIUS – Symphonies: No.6 in D Minor Op.104 / No.7 in C Major Op.105

Tone Poem: Finlandia Op.26

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Naxos 8.572705

Sometimes, when listening to performances of music one knows and loves, one has to try to come to terms with interpretations markedly different to one’s own ideas. Common sense suggests that this is a healthy process to take part in – and, after all, to expect uniformity or even conformity of music-making or listening across different performances would be unrealistic, let alone undesirable. And music-making which goes against the grain of one’s expectations or particular tastes surely adds to the fascination of the whole business. 

So, am I writing a music review, here,  or some kind of philosophical rant? It’s just that, in as many instances as there are recordings, I’ve recently worked my way as a listener through performances of all of the Sibelius symphonies from Pietari Inkinen and the NZSO which have, by turns, delighted and frustrated me. Therefore, before inflicting yet another maddeningly ambivalent set of opinions upon Middle C’s readership, I think it’s about time I addressed the issue of the reviewer’s sensibilities before dealing with the intrinsic qualities of the music-making.

My own formative experiences with music criticism were with 1960s issues of the magazine Gramophone; and once I’d gotten over my period of unquestioning and unshakable faith in the opinions expressed throughout those erstwhile columns, I began to develop some independence as a reader and consumer of these opinions. There were some reviewers whose judgements I invariably trusted, finding instances where my experiences with recordings they reviewed seemed to me in accord with what they’d written. But I soon began to feel (youthful arrogance?) I could think critically for myself; and even reached the stage where, with two or three of the  reviewing “regulars”, I would unhesitatingly investigate the things they didn’t like and studiously avoid those they heaped praise on. In other words my sensibilities seemed attuned to some opinions, and in conflict with others.

But, like Pontius Pilate in the Gospel stories, who declared to Jesus Christ at one point, “What is Truth?”, I’m now inclined to shy away from absolutes – any comment I might dare to make as a critic is assigned no more status than that of “opinion” regarding music performances – and so it is with my remarks concerning these Inkinen/NZSO Naxos recordings of Sibelius. As for the particular disc under review, containing the Sixth and Seventh Symphonies of the Finnish Master, as well as his considerably earlier work Finlandia (Naxos 8.572705), I find myself, as with the others in this series, liking most things about the performances, but having to scratch my head and ponder the reasons for the music being expressed in certain ways at particular points.

By way of making further confessional gesturings, I ought to declare that I’ve been violently in love with the Sibelius Sixth Symphony even since encountering, more than forty years ago, Anthony Collins’s 1950s Decca recording (in glorious mono) with the London Symphony Orchestra. The Seventh Symphony I intensely admire, but don’t love as passionately, except when listening to Colin Davis’s amazing Boston Symphony performance; but I admit I never tire of hearing rattlingly good performances of Finlandia (my benchmark being the flamboyance of Sir John Barbirolli and a fired-up Halle Orchestra). So – in vying with these noble resonances, how do the new performances sound? And could I imagine them working equally well on their own terms?

The opening of the Sixth Symphony on the new disc sounds to my ears as if the instruments were recorded a shade too closely, the textures distractingly “edgy”, with insufficient space around and about the different strands – it makes for a slightly claustrophobic effect, one also very brightly-lit. I did get used to the sound, partly because there was so much else to enjoy – the tempi are beautifully paced by Inkinen, nicely-breathed throughout the opening, and infectiously propelled with the arrival of the allegro (the “molto moderato” allows the music time to speak with sufficient resonance). The various “pedal-notes” from winds and brass accompanying the strings’ “endless figurations” throughout the movement make for wonderful ambient colour-changes as the music surges forwards, towards a darkening of the textures as the lower strings dig into what seems like the very ground underfoot. I was hoping Pietari Inkinen would get his brass at the end to gradually intensify their ascending phrase-notes to imitate a crescendo, which, however, they don’t do – but the sounds are nevertheless nobly wrought.

At Inkinen’s beautifully-measured tempo the slow movement is for once just that (often there’s confusion over metronome markings, here), gradually unfolding with beautiful dignity and gradually-burgeoning textures, as things turn from air into water and finally into solid earth at the climax (the brass allowed some welcome “attitude” here which they’re unfortunately denied in other places in the symphony) – but this is a beautifully-realised performance. So, too, at the beginning, is the bucolic scherzo, even though I thought its dotted rhythms a bit too tightly-clamped in places – and, those delicious interactions between strings and wind need, alas, sterner interjections from the brass, I feel, than those we get here – Sibelius did talk abut the work’s “rage and passion”, which Inkinen, it seems, will have little truck with, both here and at the very end of the movement, where I feel the brass ought to be able to properly snarl, giving warning of what’s still to come (Collins’ LSO brasses from the 1950s are wonderfully goosebump-forthright, here!).

Again, Inkinen finds the “tempo giusto” at the finale’s beginning, at first a wonderful feeling of some kind of ritual unfolding, followed by a hitching up of garments and dancing at the allegro molto, Inkinen managing the music’s occasional swirling crescendi beautifully, though for my taste not allowing timpani and brass enough scope for expressing the exuberance and energy that the cadence-points cry out for – even that final vortex-like dissolution of energy and impulse could have done with a bit more snarling force (the composer’s “rage and passion” again needing a proper voice). But Inkinen makes eloquent amends with his players throughout the movement’s epilogue – the lines sing, the rhythmic patterns dance and the textures glow, with the final string phrases almost sacramental in their expressive beauty and purity.

A longer pause between the two symphonies on the disc would have been welcomed – however, in just a few seconds, the Seventh Symphony’s opening timpani-strokes (prefiguring the opening of the later tone-poem Tapiola) sound, followed by those giant’s upward steps into the “different realms” of a world-weary composer’s imagination. A wide-ranging work, despite its single movement and relatively compact structure, it contains music of both sunlight and shadow; and Pietari Inkinen’s patiently unfolding way with the first episode balances the pastoral with the epic,allowing the hymn-like themes to sing as if from the mountain-tops. Then comes the first of three majestic trombone statements (a commentator called them “peaks along a mountain range”), and though beautifully voiced, I thought the player’s sound not sufficiently “epic” – too smooth, too “civilized” to conjure up vast spaces, real or imagined. But Inkinen’s grip on things doesn’t falter, moving with impressive surety from the bleak despair of the trombone tune’s aftermath to the playfulness of the scherzo-like scamperings which follow.

The second trombone statement suggests something more baleful and threatening, introduced by swirling strings and supported by forthright echoing brasses and winds. There’s an almost heroic restraint about the playing at first which holds the listener back from being plunged immediately into a maelstrom of doubt and darkness – but there’s a powerful cumulative effect at work, so that by the time horns and timpani voice their defiance the threat of chaos is met head-on and for the moment, overcome. It’s almost Ein Heldenleben country we now find ourselves in, strings and horns echoing heroic-like motifs that speak of valorous deeds and triumphal homecomings, of romance and rest for the weary (all in a bracing Nordic C Major, of course, instead of a glowing Straussian E-flat!). But triumphs are short-lived for this Sibelian hero – Inkinen and his players vividly plot the ever-increasing urgencies and agitations (marvellous playing from both strings and winds, here – although I did wish for stronger timpani at one point), taking us to the huge crescendo that ushers in the final trombone solo, again nobly played, but I thought still needing just a touch of “bite” in the phrasing, to truly ring out. However, orchestral support burgeons promisingly, the textures both jagged and epic, building to what ought to be the composer’s most intense cry of pain in all of his music – ah! – not quite, as it turns out, here…..still, the anguish is sufficient to strongly register and release waves of resonant poignance to the resignation of the coda.

Right at the end Sibelius recovers his strength and resolve sufficiently to voice a final gesture of defiance – a kind of “Finnish Amen”, darkly launched and heroically wrought. Inkinen and his musicians give it heaps of dignity and nobility, making a sonorous conclusion to a finely-conceived performance.

I would have put Finlandia elsewhere on the disc, preferring to sit in silence at the symphony’s end. But there it is, waiting, ready to cheer us all up once again, we who’ve been immersed as listeners in oceans of Sibelian reverie, angst and stoic resignation. The performance takes its time to do so, Inkinen possibly hearkening back to the work’s original title “Finland awakes”, by way of demonstrating a kind of “sleeping giant” at the beginning (compare the startling opening attack of, for one, Barbirolli’s Halle Orchestra brasses, on a famous 1960s recording). Timpani and snarling lower brass help matters, and the strings dig into their first phrases with a will.  Matters energize once the stuttering trumpets galvanize the work’s introduction into action (I liked Inkinen’s  bringing out of the lower strings’ “seething” textures shortly afterwards), and strings and timpani give plenty of initial impetus to the music’s driving force.

This reviewer’s niggardly opinion apart, people will perhaps enjoy being “cleansed” at the disc’s end by such a life-affirming expression of joy and energy. And this Naxos recording, the last of Pietari Inkinen’s and the NZSO’s Sibelius cycle, needs, I believe, to be investigated – though the expression “Vive la difference” isn’t Scandinavian, it’s entirely apposite. For these are performances that may not completely satisfy all listening sensibilities, but they will certainly fascinate and engage, and might even (as in my case) win you over.

Dream team together on record – Trpčeski, Petrenko and Rachmaninov

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – Piano Concertos 1-4 / Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini

Simon Trpčeski (piano)

Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Avie Records

AV2191 (Concertos 1, 4 / Paganini Rhapsody)

AV2192 (Concertos 2, 3)

Avie Records and its NZ distributor Ode Records will have pleased Wellington concertgoers enormously with a recent pair of CD recordings (available separately) featuring pianist Simon Trpčeski and conductor Vasily Petrenko in the music of Rachmaninov – all four Piano Concertos and the Rhapsody on Theme of Paganini. Of course, both Simon Trpčeski and Vasily Petrenko have been recent guest artists with the NZSO, though not performing together – Trpčeski gave us Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, and Petrenko conducted the orchestra in a recent concert featuring Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with Michael Houstoun as soloist. So the CDs represent a “coming-together” of different strands of impulse from these concerts, pianist, conductor and composer. While the absolute stand-out performance of the set is that of the Fourth Concerto, these musicians bring plenty of feeling and enviable skills to each of the works on the two discs, if not quite emulating the performance-intensity levels which I enjoyed at each of the concerts I attended.

Trpčeski and Petrenko approach the First Concerto as though they’re making no allowances for its status as a relatively youthful work (Rachmaninov was 18 when the concerto was completed, in 1892, though he revised the work extensively in 1917, expressing some latter-day astonishment at the Concerto’s “youthful pretensions”). In fact Rachmaninov soon realized he couldn’t remain in Russia with the Communists in control, and therefore had to face the prospect of earning a living in exile as a virtuoso pianist – so reworking his concerto’s “youthful pretensions” gave him an extra piece to add to his projected concert repertoire.

Right from the start, Trpčeski and Petrenko stress the work’s big-boned contrasts – those boldly stated flourishes from orchestra and soloist at the beginning have real “bite”, throwing into bold relief both the liquid flow of the opening theme, and the rapid scherzando-like passages which follow. Trpčeski‘s playing has plenty of flint-like brilliance, if not as volatile and alchemic as the composer’s on his recording (but nobody else’s is!), and Petrenko conjures from his Royal Liverpool Philharmonic players gloriously Russian-sounding tones, rich and resplendent in one episode, elfin and volatile in the next, heart-rending and melancholic in a third. One senses, too, a piano-and-orchestra partnership of equals, with all of the creative interactions and tensions that such a relationship implies.

I liked Trpčeski‘s Scriabin-like fantasizing on the slow movement’s first page, the playing creating sounds borne upon the air, with Petrenko encouraging his players to evolve the sounds almost by osmosis, allowing the soloist to climb through the textures with his figurations. And scenes of Imperial Russia come to mind as the music’s rhythmic trajectories kick in with the clipped horses’ hooves, the jingling harnesses on the sleigh and the wind-flurried snow-flakes skirling as the string sing a soulful melody. Only in the finale did I feel Trpčeski‘s playing a trifle under-voltaged in places, lacking some of the electricity of Stephen Hough’s blistering fingerwork on a rival Hyperion set of the concertos (Hyperion CDA 67501/2). Petrenko’s is a darker orchestral sound for Trpčeski than Andrew Litton’s is for Hough, though the romance of the second subject group is beautifully realized on the newer recording, the canonic dialoging between instruments as tenderly lyrical as any. Finally, some whiplash-like irruptions of energy from the orchestra galvanize the soloist as the music races to its brilliant conclusion.

After the resplendent performance I heard Petrenko conduct of the Fourth Concerto with Michael Houstoun and the NZSO, I was surprised and fascinated to encounter a somewhat leaner orchestral sound from the Liverpool Orchestra as recorded by Avie – what remnants of romantic sweep Rachmaninov allowed to remain in his composer-armoury by this stage of his creative career were certainly brought out full-bloodedly in Wellington, but seem less in evidence on record. Instead, Petrenko keeps things lean and tightly-focused in Liverpool, details very much to the fore, the result being a steady steam of interactive dialoguing between orchestra and soloist, the attention on the musical thoughts and ideas rather than any guide’s exposition of it. It did make the big moments in which the soloist did dominate more telling, such as the archway of the big central climax, with its gorgeously bluesy Gershwin-like tune on the strings, though the subsequent mocking laughter of the brasses resonated all the more in such a climate of restraint. Trpčeski‘s playing throughout is of a piece with the orchestra’s, focused and flexible, taking a partnership role as often as seeking to dominate. The result is a strongly-balanced exposition of the music, the sensitivity of Trpčeski‘s dialoging with the winds in the melancholic epilogue to that big middle section a clue to the stature of this performance as a powerfully expressive partnership of equals.

Pianist, conductor and orchestra build the haunting, melancholic tread of the slow movement towards a climax whose pain and sorrow, though momentary, pierce the heart of the listener, as much for the heartbreak of the subsequent bars as for the shock of the sudden onslaught. As for the finale, again Trpčeski‘s playing may yield points to Stephen Hough’s performance in sheer vertiginous brilliance, but here it’s the interplay with Petrenko’s ever-responsive Liverpool players that catches the ear again and again. Critics who damned this music at its premiere on the grounds of Rachmaninov’s “old-fashioned” style must have made up their minds about the work before they even heard a note – for this is a composer who, despite his own distaste for the avant-garde and his omni-present inner resonances of Imperial Russia, was certainly listening to what was happening around him. Bartok, Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel are all there at the finale’s feast, even if the fare remains bitter to the taste, flavoured to the end with the composer’s own anguish in exile from his beloved native land. Rachmaninov’s trauma at the work’s reception by the critics was such that he cut the Concerto heavily, rewriting some passages and (ironically) lessening the work’s “new look” aspect – it’s worth tracking down either Alexander Ghindin’s or Yevgeny Sudbin’s recordings of the Concerto’s original version (respectively, on the Ondine and BIS labels) to experience the extent of the composer’s thwarted achievement.

By the time he came to write the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini for piano and orchestra, Rachmaninov had, I feel, come to terms some of the way with his situation. His frequently-expressed grief at his refugee status had become less overt in his music than, perhaps by way of compensation, a delight in brilliantly sardonic, in places almost diabolical accents,  though he would still produce incomparable episodes of melancholic lyricism (his Third Symphony, completed two years after the Rhapsody, is a kind of emotional counterweight in this regard). The Rhapsody was the first work he wrote in a new home, the villa called “Senar”, on the shores of Lake Lucerne. As befits its virtuoso leanings it uses a similar theme to that used by Brahms in HIS “Paganini” Variations, albeit for solo piano. Unlike the hapless Fourth Concerto, the work was an instant success with the public, the composer’s pleasure at this tempered with the worry of having to perform it. Oddly enough, there’s a tenuous New Zealand connection with this work through the famous choreographer Michel Fokine, who wrote to the composer from Auckland in 1939 (Fokine was touring the country with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet at the time) asking permission from Rachmaninov to adapt the work for a ballet to be called “Paganini” – the composer subsequently agreed, and “Paganini” received its first performance at Covent Garden that same year.

Trpčeski and Petrenko play the score, it seems to me, with ears for its structural qualities, rather than its surface brilliances and coruscations. Up to the first appearance of the “Dies Irae” theme (Variation 7 – Meno mosso,a tempo moderato) the music treads steadily, the orchestral colours dark and weighty, the piano having more “glint” than out-and-out brilliance – something of a contrast with Stephen Hough’s more elfin volatilities, matched with a brighter, more effervescent orchestral presence from Andrew Litton and his Dallas Symphony players. Trpčeski is chunkier and earthier, and his accompanying orchestral colours to my ears more Shostakovich-like (a nicely guttural clarinet in Variation 12, having more time, at Petrenko’s tempo, to “colour” its melody). One could hazard the comment that Trpčeski and Petrenko give the music a more Russian-sounding outlook, very like Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tsar Saltan music in the splendidly swaggering Variation 14, though Stephen Hough again finds extra sparkle in the succeeding piano-only Allegro. I like the homage Rachmaninov pays to Prokofiev in Variation 16’s Allegretto (straight out of the latter’s ballet Romeo and Juliet), Andrew Litton encouraging particularly spectral shudders from his strings, while Petrenko’s Liverpudlians are robuster, fuller-bodied phantoms. In the lead-up to the famous Eighteenth Variation, I found myself preferring Hough’s and Litton’s rather more atmospheric Allegretto, more spacious and Gothic, the sostenuto winds almost ghoul-like, not unlike Respighi’s Catacomb phantoms in his Pines of Rome, though honours are pretty even when the big tune comes around (the “Paganini” theme simply inverted and slowed down, can you believe it?).

And so it goes on – Hough and Litton bring out the glitter and volatility of the concluding sequences with more quicksilver than Trpčeski and Petrenko, whose energies have a darker, more elemental quality. But both rides to the finish are madcap ones, risk-taking ventures, with alarming accents and angularities aplenty, as well as passages whose harmonic explorations leave those of the worlds of the Second and Third Concertos far behind. At the beginning of the last variation of all, Trpčeski and Petrenko out-point their rivals in deliciousness, but as the patternings intensify, it’s simply neck-and neck at the finish. Trpčeski throws away the last phrase deadpan, like a good poker-player, while Hough etches it in with just a hint of a raised eyebrow.

Turning to the second of the Avie discs, containing the aforementioned remaining concertos, the listener enters a world filled with multitudes of ghosts of past performances, whose resonances are liable to rise up and haunt and even overwhelm all but the most intrepid and determined new interpreters. Happily Trpčeski and Petrenko are adventurers of that cut and cloth, and the opening paragraph of the C Minor Concerto (No.2) is a strongly-wrought statement of intent, couched in deep, rich tones, and propelled with striding energy. Vasily Petrenko loses no chance to support his pianist with emphatic touches from his players that stress the depth of feeling and purpose of it all – his lower strings, for instance, sing a rich counter-line to Trpčeski‘s simply-voiced second subject melody, echoed beautifully by the oboe shortly afterwards. The musicians tend to make the music’s transitions flow, rather than go for high-contrast changes of tempo and mood  – but the excitement nevertheless builds up impressively towards the movement’s “great moment”, the return of the opening theme on sweeping orchestral strings, the soloist reinforcing the music’s trajectories with a triumphal counter-melody.

The second movement opens enchantingly, strings, Trpčeski‘s piano and the winds taking turns to weave undulating patterns of finely-spun emotion, the music’s ebb and flow and brief irruption of energy easily and naturally brought into being.  After Petrenko’s terse opening to the finale the music expands with explosive energies towards climaxes, furious piano playing initiating steadily growing momentums which the strings-and-piano fugato gathers up and races towards the release of the big tune’s reappearance.The scherzando passage is galvanized by Trpčeski each time he joins the fray, culminating in a spectacular keyboard flourish and a grand and forthright final statement of the tune – glorious!

And so we come to what many people regard as the greatest of all Romantic piano concertos, the “knuckle-breaker”, as pianist Gary Graffmann used to describe it – otherwise known in the business as “Rack 3”. For a time the territory of only the boldest and most fearless of pianists (the likes of Horowitz, Janis, Gilels, Malcuzynski, Lympany and Van Cliburn, as well as New Zealand’s Richard Farrell – but, unaccountably, NOT Sviatoslav Richter), the general rise in technical piano-playing standards (though not in actual musicianship) has seen many more pianists than one could have ever imagined taking the piece on, with, alas, generally unmemorable results – given that the work still remains an enormous challenge, so that anybody who actually attempts the piece really deserves Brownie points for trying.

At first, Trpčeski‘s and Petrenko’s way with the music seems small-scale, their delivery of the opening episode emphasizing the first theme’s beauty while playing down its rhythmic undercurrents.  However, it’s part of the longer view – when the lower strings take up the tune, Trpčeski‘s increasingly insistent accompanying figurations awaken the music’s urgencies. And what a glorious sound Petrenko encourages from his strings, and how subtly both musicians build the music through the first appearance of the concerto’s most memorable melody, shared by the piano and the orchestra, in turn, to the grand, romantic sweep of the moment’s climax.

The central episode again relaxes the tension surrounding the opening tune’s reprise – those underlying energies are kept down by Petrenko, allowing chattering winds to interact with the pianist’s nervous utterances, and only encouraging the music’s pulses to beat with any edge and force when rising out of the ambient detail to match and contour the piano’s combatative intentions – impressive control, but lacking, I thought, that suggestion of abandonment which would have brought out the encounter’s sense of the participants risking all and plunging into the fray. Trpčeski chooses the heavier, more chordal of the two cadenzas Rachmaninov left, and builds up a splendidly majestic weight of tone and fury of purpose. Beautiful wind-playing answers the soloist’s near-exhausted ruminations, and my only real disappointment is that pianist and conductor don’t make something more “charged” of the “bells across the meadow” episode before the opening tune’s final reprise brings the movement to its expectant close.

At the slow movement’s beginning, I’m always reminded of my first recording of this concerto, Byron Janis’s with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony – still memorable for Janis’s coruscating pianism and for Munch’s fervent encouragement of his strings at this point in the work. Petrenko’s players sound just as committed, the dying fall as the strings awaken the piano one of the work’s most expressively full-blooded moments. Trpčeski‘s and Petrenko’s account of the dark waltz-like episode is poised and veiled, as though concealing feelings too candid to fully display, though the strings subsequently stress the underlying heartache just before the finale’s electrifying opening flourishes. Trpčeski is suitably volatile and impulsive, here, and the steady-ish pace adopted for the “galloping horse” motif allows the orchestral tutti more weight and cumulative force. I’ve heard the scherzando episode played more delicately and impishly by other pianists, but Trpčeski brings out its nocturnal aspect nicely, and the lead-in to the great moment of the first movement’s memorable second subject is as charged with emotion by the players as one would want – for me, a definite performance highlight.

Apart from what I thought sounded like a strangely “clipped” reprise of the orchestra’s “galloping horse” motive, the remainder of the concerto gets the utmost romantic treatment, with all the proverbial stops pulled out – Trpčeski‘s pianism has all the weight and brilliance required, and Petrenko draws from his players the full panoply of orchestral splendor, the sounds making handsome amends for those momentary “lean-and-hungry” equestrian impressions. In sum, though I didn’t find the music-making throughout these discs as consistently “electric” as I did in the concert-hall from this pianist and conductor, that’s as much a commentary on the nature of the “live-versus-recorded” music-listening experience. It’s one I’m glad to have had both ways with these truly splendid artists, here together playing such marvellous music.

Boris Pigovat’s Requiem – a stunning CD presentation

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REQUIEM

Works by BORIS PIGOVAT

– Requiem “The Holocaust” / Prayer for Violin and Piano / Silent Music for viola and harp / Nigun for String Quartet

Donald Maurice (viola)

Vector Wellington Orchestra / Marc Taddei

also with Richard Mapp (piano) / Carolyn Mills (harp) / Dominion String Quartet

Atoll ACD 114

This recording commemorates the first performance outside the Ukraine of Boris Pigovat’s Requiem, given by violist Donald Maurice, with the Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei, on November 9th, 2008 at the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington. The composer, whose grandparents and aunt were victims of the Babiy Yar tragedy in 1941, when thousands of German Jews were massacred in cold blood by the Nazis, had wanted for a number of years to write a work dedicated to the Holocaust, thinking originally of the standard Requiem format, with soloists, choir and orchestra. Then Yuri Gandelsman, the then principal violist of the Israel Philharmonic asked Pigovat to write a work for him, and the composer decided he would tackle a piece for viola and orchestra, writing in the style of a Requiem. He completed the work in 1995, but it wasn’t premiered until 2001, as Gandelsman, who intended to give the first performance, was prevented by circumstances from doing so. However, the situation was eventually resolved, most appropriately, by a concert planned in Kiev commemorating the Babiy Yar tragedy, to which Pigovat successfully offered his score for performance.

The composer regarded the cancellation of the original performances in Israel as “the will of Providence”, as it meant the work would be performed for the first time in Kiev, near the tomb of his family members who were killed at BabiyYar. Added poignancy was generated by the co-operation between the Israeli Cultural Attache in Kiev and the city’s Goethe Institute which resulted in the famous German violist, Rainer Moog, being asked to play the solo viola part. This concert took place in October 2001. Eight years later, the work was performed here in New Zealand at a “Concert of Remembrance” (commemorating the 70th anniversary of “Kristallnacht” – The Night of Broken Glass – a pogrom carried out against German and Austrian Jews in retaliation for the assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a young German/Polish Jew in November 1938). The concert featured, along with Pigovat’s work, a performance of Brahm’s German Requiem, and was sponsored by a number of groups, among which were the respective Embassies of the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Israel. As well, Boris Pigovat himself was able to attend the concert, thanks to the support of the Israeli Embassy.

Now, there’s a further chapter in what has become an ongoing story – this features the recent invitation made to violist Donald Maurice to give the work’s first-ever performance in Germany, on October 15th at the final gala concert of the International Viola Congress in Wuerzburg. The performance commemorates, in turn, the 70th anniversary of the Babiy Yar massacre, and will be given by Maurice with an orchestra from Duesseldorf.

However, before making this journey, Maurice will again perform the work on the actual day of the tragedy, September 29th, in the Wellington Town Hall with Kenneth Young and the New Zealand School of Music Orchestra.  Also performing will be Israeli ‘cellist Inbal Megiddo, playing Bloch’s Schelomo. As well, John Psathas’s Luminous and Anthony Ritchie’s Remember Parihaka will give a New Zealand flavour to this commemorative program. I believe the concert is included under the umbrella of a “Rugby World Cup Event” – if so, one salutes the organizers’ enterprise!

Atoll Records deserves the heartfelt thanks of people like myself who weren’t able to attend that Wellington performance of the Requiem in 2008 for making the recording commercially available. It was at the time splendidly captured by Radio New Zealand’s David McCaw and his engineer Graham Kennedy – as one might expect, the music generated plenty of visceral impact, all of which comes across with startling force in Wayne Laird’s transfer to CD. It presents soloist Donald Maurice, with conductor Marc Taddei and the Wellington Orchestra  working at what can only be described as white heat – the coruscations of parts of the Dies Irae movement are searing, to say the least – and the effects upon listeners in the hall must have been profoundly disturbing in their impact.

The Requiem has four movements, each of them given Latin subtitles, a ready context, despite their non-Jewish origins, for listeners accustomed to pieces which use similar kinds of headings for individual movements (works by Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, and Faure for example) – the four movements are Requiem Aeternam, Dies Irae, Lacrimosa and Lux Eterna. Pigovat considered these parts the most suitable for his overall purpose in writing what he called “a tragic orchestral piece”. Despite his work being completely instrumental, some of the composer’s motifs and themes in the work are derived directly from the words of texts – for example, the first theme of the Dies Irae on trombones fits with the words of the first verse of this famous thirteenth-century Latin poem; while the Jewish Prayer, Shma Israel, Adonoi Elokeinu, Adonoi Ehad inspired a recurring theme in the work, first appearing in the epilogue of the Dies Irae, and in subsequent places, such as in the viola solo at the very end of the work.

The opening measures of Requiem Aeternam bring about vistas of space and eons of time, into the centre of which swirls an irruption of dark, threatening unease. But the solo viola takes up the chant-like line, by turns declamatory and meditative, its discourse supported by various orchestral motifs and atmospheric textures. Donald Maurice’s solo playing vividly captures the music’s gamut of supplicatory emotion, while Marc Taddei and the orchestra provide an accompaniment richly-mixed with ambiences of faith and trust, doubt and fear. From Ligeti-like string-clusters come sudden intrusions of light and energy, menacing, gutteral-throated strings and ghoulish figures on what sounds like a bass clarinet. Deep, seismic percussion ignites an outburst that galvanizes the whole orchestra, and brings the solo viola into conflict with forces of darkness. A portentous, doom-laden motif rises in the orchestra, challenged further by the viola, which is soon overwhelmed by a rising tide of pitiless-sounding, all-enveloping brutality, reinforced by crushing hammer-blows. Stoically, the viola remains steadfast, giving vent to its anguish, but still raising its voice to heaven at the close.

There are some famously apocalyptic settings by composers of the “Dies Irae” poem, and Pigovat, though not employing the actual words, certainly aligns himself with the movers and shakers of heaven and earth, such as Berlioz and Verdi. Slashing string lines introduce the “Dies Irae” movement, leading to orchestral outpourings whose force and vehemence will, later in the movement, readily suggest the imagery suggested by the term “holocaust”. After the initial maelstrom abates, the solo viola attempts to plead with the forces of darkness, but is repeatedly beaten down, its desperate energies to no avail. Pigovat was strongly influenced by a novel Life and Destiny by the Russian-Jewish writer Vasiliy Grossman, containing passages describing Jews’ last train journey from imprisonment to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Some of Shostakovich’s more harrowing motoric orchestral sequences come to mind in places, over the top of which the brass shout cruel repetitive utterances. Out of a searing, incandescent chord-cluster thrusts a beating rhythm, the composer suggesting the pulsing of a great number of human hearts, a rhythm which loses strength and dies.

Harsh, strident bells sound the beginning of Lacrimosa, the viola sharing in the pain and horror of what has just been experienced. The composer notes, most appositely, that “It is possible to shout with strong anger, or to groan powerlessly, or to go mad, and only then appear tears……” and Maurice’s virtuosic playing at this point conveys all of these feelings and more besides. A timpani-led processional begins the process of ritualizing the grief, somewhat, but underlines the bleak nihilism of the scenario, reinforced by a doom-laden tam-tam stroke. Then the orchestral strings offer consolation amid the despair, horns as well paying tribute to those destroyed as well as acknowledging those left behind. As the music slips without a break into the Lux Eterna, lights softly begin to glow amid the sound-textures, and there’s an almost lullabyic feel to the music’s trajectories.The viola speaks again, its voice dark-toned and grief-tainted, but calling for a renewal of faith in the human spirit, and a rekindling of hope for the future. The instrument re-establishes connections and interactions with various orchestral voices, their tones no longer expressing fear, hate, and cruelty, but intertwining with the soloist’s voice in search of a better, more understanding place for everybody in the world (the final exchanges between viola and dark-browed brass and percussion speak volumes, as the work closes).

The three pieces accompanying the Requiem on this disc all have connections or commonalities of some kind with the major work. The first, Prayer, for viola and piano, probably has the closest relationship with Requiem, as it was written when the composer had finished the latter’s Lacrimosa and was preparing materials for the fourth part, Lux Eterna. The music thus breathes much the same air as does the Requiem, with one of its themes actually used in the Shma Israel section of Lux Eterna. Donald Maurice again plays the viola, and, together with pianist Richard Mapp, gives an extraordinarily intense reading of the work. Its opening measures are meditative and hypnotic, the piano resembling a tolling bell at the outset, beneath the viola’s quiet song of lament. From the darkest depths of their interaction spring impulses of lyrical flow, gentle and undulating at first, then more impassioned, Maurice’s bow biting into his strings and Mapp’s monumental chords imparting an epic quality to the mood of grief and suffering. The undulations return, their tones gradually dissolving into mists of quiet resignation and fortitude – altogether, a beautiful and moving work.

Silent Music is scored for viola and harp, a felicitous combination of complementary tones and timbres, one I’d never before imagined. Written in 1997, after the Requiem, the piece commemorates the practice in Israel of people lighting candles for burning at places where there have been fatal terrorist attacks, one such occasioning this piece. The music’s beauty almost belies the composer’s sombre intent, though towards the end of the piece some repeated agglomerations of notes on Carolyn Mills’s harp grow through a disturbing crescendo towards a moment of intense pain, whose feeling resonates throughout the concluding silences.

Intensities of a different order are unashamedly displayed throughout the final work on the CD, Nigun, for String Quartet, though the piece finished far more quickly than I expected, due presumably to an error of timing recorded with the track listings (instead of a nine-minute work, the music came to an end, a tad abruptly, at 5’00”.  Boris Pigovat originally wrote this work for string orchestra, the string quartet version appearing for the first time on this CD. The composer’s intention was “to give expression to the tragic spirit which I feel in traditional Jewish music”. It’s certainly not a happy work, being, in psychological terms, assailed by anxieties at an early stage in its progress, the composer using the quartet’s antiphonal voicings to create a kind of overlying effect, as textures pile on top of, or slide beneath, other textures. Figurations and tempi intensify as the piece proceeds, the Dominion Quartet’s players “blocking” their sounds together for some marvellously massive-sounding chords, before continuing what feels like a fraught interaction, mercifully worked-out in the time-honored manner, but leaving one or two sostenuto voices to gradually expel their last reserves of breath and melt their tones into the stillness of the ending.

Not only does this recording deserve to be heard and savored, but the oncoming Town Hall concert (September 29th – see above) featuring the Requiem, should be an entry on everybody’s calendar. If something of the spirit of this recording can be replicated (albeit with a different orchestra and conductor) the occasion will be stunning, unmissably spectacular.

A new generation’s Lilburn, from Atoll Records

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DOUGLAS LILBURN – Violin and Piano Works

Elizabeth Holowell (violin)

Dean Sky-Lucas (piano)

Cameron Rhodes (speaker)

Atoll ACD 941

(….apologies for the length of this review! – PM)

If there’s ever a composer who seems to have been “rediscovered” by a fresh generation of performers, then Douglas Lilburn is the one, his music seeming to appeal as readily to today’s young players as it did to many of the composer’s similarly delighted and steadfast contemporary champions.

New recordings of many of Lilburn’s major works have appeared over the last few years, a couple of these projects containing substantial returns (Dan Poynton’s landmark survey of the composer’s piano music with Trust Records, for example). No less an important body of the composer’s work consisted of music for violin and piano, much of which recorded by the musicians for whom the works were written at the time. Now, thanks to a brilliant recently-released disc on the Atoll label featuring Australian violinist Elizabeth Holowell (currently living and working in Auckland) and her fellow-countryman, the multi-talented Dean Sky-Lucas displaying his skills as a pianist, a group of these works have been brought together on a single recording for the first time. With the help of New Zealand actor Cameron Rhodes, the musicians were able to perform Lilburn’s musical tribute to a number of New Zealand poets who were his contemporaries, Salutes to Seven Poets, in conjunction with readings of exerpts from those poems which provided the original inspiration for the composer.

Previous recordings of all of these works include violinist Ruth Pearl and pianist Margaret Nielsen’s recording for Kiwi Records of the 1950 Violin Sonata. Ruth Pearl was the work’s original dedicatee, along with pianist Frederick Page, with whom she performed the music for the first time. Unfortunately, this is but one of many landmark recordings of New Zealand music locked in the limbo that is Kiwi Pacific Records, at present, awaiting some kind of saviour – considering the unique heritage value of these historic sound-documents, I think they’re worthy of urgent attention at the highest level. The Douglas Lilburn recordings in this particular archive are but one of the many which desperately need reactivation.

Other recordings can be found among broadcast archives of this and other works, the 1950 Violin Sonata, well represented by partnerships such as Ronald Woodcock (violin) and John Wells (piano) in 1976, Peter Walls and Margaret Nielsen in 1982, David Nalden and Bryan Sayer in 1984, Tim Deighton, also with Margaret Nielsen in 1989, and Natalie Tantrum and Stephen de Pledge in 1992 (and there are probably others).  Salutes to Seven Poets has been well-championed by violinist Dean Major (see also the Waiteata Music Press listing below), broadcast performances featuring partnerships with Rae de Lisle (1989), and David Guerin (1990), while the earlier Violin Sonata in E-flat (1943) was recorded for radio by Dean Major and Rae de Lisle in 1985. Incidentally, the same artists recorded in the studio (the date isn’t listed) another of Lilburn’s Violin Sonatas, in C Major, which the composer completed in 1943 before he tackled his E-flat Sonata of the same year.

On Jack Body’s Waiteata Music Press Label (the disc’s catalogue number WTA 009), violinist Dean Major and pianist Rae de Lisle can be found performing Salutes to Seven Poets with a compelling generosity of spirit and feeling for atmosphere and colour. On this recording there are spoken commentaries by the composer, quoting but a few lines of each of the poems, as well as recording some brief impressions of the work and creative personality of each poet, unlike on the new Atoll recording, where reader Cameron Rhodes gives us part of the text of each poem.  Only some momentary less-than-ideally steady intonation in No.4, the Salute to M.K.Joseph, breaks the confidently-woven spell of Dean Major’s playing, while Rae de Lisle’s keyboard conjurings of feeling and imagery via rhythm and colour remain treasurable. The recording pronounces itself essential for the composer’s contribution alone, however more “complete” a performance concept the newer Atoll disc might present. The disc is available for a song from the Waiteata Music Press at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University, or from the Centre for New Zealand Music (SOUNZ), both in Wellington.

The new Atoll disc begins with Salutes, so that the first sounds we hear are the mellifluous tones of actor Cameron Rhodes’ voice. The business of marrying speech with music on record seems in most cases I’ve heard to be problematic, the stumbling-block invariably being a lack of commonality of ambience between what’s spoken and what’s played (a particularly alienating example of this was the recent NZSO Naxos disc of Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which the melodrama actors’ voices really did sound as if they had been recorded in a completely different “space” to that of the orchestra). For me, it’s important when listening to something like this to feel (however illusory, in fact) a sense of unity, of spaces being shared and contact between impulses being made – and the Atoll recording, though registering a slightly warmer “background” for the musicians, makes the connections between speaker and players as satisfyingly as anything I’ve heard. These are powerful realizations, with Rhodes’ intense readings of the poetry followed by Elizabeth Holowell’s richly-committed string tones intermeshed with Dean Sky-Lucas’s fantastic keyboard work. It all makes rather more concentrated and focused a unity than the Waiteata Music Press performance, LIlburn’s own commentaries and wider-ranging interpolations wryly leavening the intensities of Dean Major’s and Rae de Lisle’s equally committed playing. A pity the booklet-notes writer for the Atoll CD slightly fudges poet A.R.D.Fairburn’s name by interpolating his more familiar “Rex” (one or the other format would have done) – but then to apply the same treatment to an unfamiliar-sounding “Ronald A.K.Mason” borders on the pedantic.

What’s important is that a sense of the composer’s involvement with poets he knew personally is captured by the performances, the result, of course, being a kind of synthesis of such impressions formed by Lilburn’s own personality – and Holowell and Sky-Lucas are both able to command an attractive “balladic” quality about their playing which speaks both of vivid recollection of treasured interaction, and a parallel sense of time having passed on. Listening to both performances alerts one to different intensities sought by the players – Dean Major and Rae de Lisle project a focus suggesting an all-consuming immediacy (listening to the opening of the Andante tribute to Keith Sinclair, following his Although you have floated the land, one can feel how those latent intensities are brought out – searingly by Major, in places, compared to Elizabeth Holowell’s richly-toned but more dispassionate view). Following Michael Joseph’s A shepherd on a bicycle, a delicious amalgam of the ordinary and the fabulous, Holowell and Sky-Lucas concentrate on pastoral beauty rather than rustic energies, the violin-playing more secure than Dean Major’s in places, though he and Rae de Lisle conjure up a stronger rhythmic sense of a mustering, the day-to-day business of the farmer. As for the Copland-esque tribute to James K.Baxter – Upon the upland road I find myself going between Holowell’s and Sky-Lucas’s more easy-going wayfarer, who takes things pretty much as they come, in true Kiwi fashion; and Major and de Lisle’s more impulsive wanderer, given to bouts of day-dreaming and spontaneous irruptions of energy.

Most characteristic of all in a compositional sense are the repeated-note patterns with which the piano begins the Allegro commode tribute to Kendrick Smithyman. Dean Sky-Lucas fashions a beautifully pulsating piano trajectory along which the haunting repetitions flow, and over which Elizabeth Holowell’s violin can soar, sometimes spectacularly, as with her confidently-addressed octave ascent, giving rise to thoughts of other poetry – “…as a skeet’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding rebuffed the big wind….” – the way Holowell’s line sweeps and soars at that point would do justice to the greatest verses. At first, I didn’t like Cameron Rhodes’ somewhat jerky, limp-rhythmic delivery of R.A.K. Mason’s Song of Allegiance, preferring in my mind’s ear an ironic vain-glorious display of goose-stepping bravado, with imaginary drums flailing as if in mockery of the poet’s presumption. But subsequent hearings have suggested other kinds of ironies, more slowly, but surely appreciated, and the musical tribute’s evocation of a kind of “man alone” aspect, suggests artistic fortitude and stoic control, and allowing only towards the end of the piece a brief display of furrowed-brow emotion.

Holowell and Sky-Lucas plot this course unerringly, again, managing to suggest whole worlds more of words and ideas, were tongues to be allowed to utter thoughts. Those who knew the struggles Lilburn experienced as a composer in a land largely unresponsive to such efforts would have recognized, in the ritualized lament of the music, the voice of one crying in the wilderness (“…toil I on, with bloody knees…”), dignity giving way only briefly to anger and despair at the very end. Dean Major and Rae de Lisle are more direct, harsher and sharper, but in a way that ironically gives the almost Mahlerian concluding cry of anguish somewhat less impact upon the whole, despite its agglomerated weight of utterance.

The final, overall “Salute” to all of the poets has a different spoken prelude in each performance. On the Waiteata disc, the composer acknowledges in a few words the overall contribution of all seven poets to his creative inspiration; while the new Atoll features Cameron Rhodes’ reading of Allen Curnow’s poem To Douglas Lilburn at Fifty. Each is perfectly in accord with its own overall performance ethos, Curnow’s poem laconically exploring the implications of a milestone in the life of a creative artist, which the music then succinctly parallels with out-of-doors tones so dear to the composer’s heart. Holowell and Sky-Lucas are lighter-footed, even airborne in places, the violin-playing a touch more elegant, somewhat less laden than Major’s “wrung” notes, though he and de Lisle, true to their overall interpretative focus, project an intensely visionary quality whose resonances aren’t easily forgotten. We listeners are enriched in having both performances to experience and enjoy.

The other works on the Atoll disc have no commercially available alternative versions, though many people will remember Ruth Pearl’s recording with Margaret Nielsen of the 1950 Violin Sonata on a Kiwi LP (SLD-32), the disc still kicking around second-hand shops, awaiting adventurous explorings by enthusiasts.  This still sounds well, the violin and piano images a bit more left-and-right than on the newer recording, but with the instrumental timbres nicely intact. Ruth Pearl was a powerful player, and her lyrical lines soar with plenty of heft, deftly supported by Margaret Nielsen’s warm, flexible piano sound – a lighter touch than Dean Sky-Lucas’, but capable of summoning up reserves of tone when needed. Pearl and Nielsen are more quixotic and volatile throughout the allegro, occasionally tightening the pace and creating whirls of energized excitement. Margaret Nielsen’s chords at the beginning of the largamente episode are glittering stalagtites of suspended sound, the mood dramatic,and the detailing ruggedly etched. There’s no release of tension with the allegro, which drives forward irresistibly in Pearl’s and Nielsen’s hands, the focus firmly fixed, the goal unequivocal, Pearl’s violin occasionally under a bit of strain, but realizing the drama and intensity of it all. Her and Nielsen make something almost sacramental out of the lyricism of the last couple of pages.

On Atoll, Dean Sky-Lucas’s opening unfurls a spacious ambience, one into which Elizabeth Holowell’s violin projects a rhapsodic and varied line, the players beautifully etching in the colour and texture changes as the music enlarges its picture. Bucolic energies bubble forth with an allegro whose inventiveness leads the ear on through a rhythmic and thematic garden of open-air delights, the playing delightfully alfresco in both its energy and its resonance – a beautiful sound. The largamente section that follows is notable for Holowell’s eloquently-realised line (so many felicitous detailings) shining like a sea-bird’s wings over the top of a deeply-hued oceanic blue-green, the line dipping and soaring, spreading widely and closing up into a fine thread, moving now towards, now with, now away from its surrounding ambient body. When the allegro returns violin and piano play a game of hide-and seek in different guises, an attractive, genial folkish element energizing the themes before sinking into a realm of repose and reflection, the piano’s hymn-like foundation drawing elegant flourishes of an almost ritualistic kind from the violin, the instruments forging a sound-discourse of nostalgia-tinted instinctive wisdom. I played both versions all again, immediately I’d finished first time through, and was moved as profoundly each time, as much by the emotional surety of the argument as its beauty and variety.

And for the rest, Holowell and Sky-Lucas have the field to themselves, at least for the moment. The biggest surprise is the Othello incidental music, accompanied by a few exerpts from the play, read with great verve and emotional variety by Cameron Rhodes. The violin-and-piano combination works well as a “dramatic” vehicle, the violin having enough bright resonance to convey fanfare-like ceremony, and the piano limitless resources of colour and ambient warmth. After Cameron Rhodes’ savagely sardonic exposition of Iago’s plans to bring about Othello’s downfall, the somewhat chiruppy Allegro risoluto seems an inappropriate response, but all is made good by the melancholy beauty of the playing of Lilburn’s remarkable Willow Song. Distinctive in a different way is the following Interlude, emotionally ambivalent and unsettled, its ruffled poise mirroring the turmoil of the tragedy about to be enacted. Rhodes puts his everything into Othello’s final speech – “….of one that loved not wisely but too well….”, a fraught moment which the Finale (andante) distils in gravely circumspect tones. Rarely do repetitions of theatrical lines wear as well as does music, however expertly delivered – and the separate tracks on the CD enable the listener to enjoy the music alone for its own sake.

Finally, another big, richly satisfying listen – Lilburn’s Sonata in E-flat for violin and piano, dating from 1943. Does the key bring out the best in composers, I wonder? – it’s certainly a sound that gets the blood flowing, as is the case here, with a juicily-voiced opening violin statement supported by rich piano undulations, the mood both heroic and rhapsodic. On first hearing I was swooping and soaring with Elizabeth Holowell’s violin in a kind of ecstasy, and therefore disappointed to hear the instrument break off its discursive flight (none too elegantly, at 2’07” – as though Orpheus had momentarily dropped his lyre…), considering the rest of the movement’s wonderfully-spun lyrical flow. But what worlds the composer subsequently takes us to – Holowell may have played the hushed stratospheric figurations leading up to the luftpause at 5’54” with more purity of tone on other occasions, but surely never with quite such “innigkeit” as here. Lilburn’s characteristic “modal” harmonies time and again disarm our sense of place, the air about us bringing, by turns Debussy-like fragrances, then surges of earthier impulse, the musicians’ generous outpourings enabling we listeners to share a richly-detailed emotional journey. Throughout this movement I had the sense of sharing the sound-world of a young composer with a great deal of both accumulated and on-going thought and emotion to let out to the world.

We exchange warmth for cool melancholy at the slow movement’s beginning, though there’s warmth welling up from the instruments’ lower reaches as the music proceeds. Holowell brings out the folksiness in places in the writing, her fiddle double-stopping and droning with flavorsome focus, then expanding and soaring over Dean Sky-Lucas’s resonantly grumbling and tintinabulating keyboard voices. The folk-lament flavour carries the music to the finale’s beginning, a call to action from the piano, Sky-Lucas’s sparking finger-work gathering up Holowell’s responsive tones in a dancing web of interactive strands (the same dancing delight Lilburn was to give to the finale of his first Symphony a half-dozen years later). But Lilburn widens the music’s scope as he proceeds, revisiting the first movement’s rhapsodic gesturings with enviable exploratory flair, string harmonics vying in places with explosive piano irruptions, the young composer revelling all the while in his kaleidoscopic shifts of harmony, the energies and impulses of the playing gathering up and carrying one’s sensibilities along quite irresistibly to the pay-off – an exhilarating listening experience.

I enjoyed such a great deal about this disc, from the quirky attractiveness of the frontispiece illustration (a painting, The Four Kings, by Auckland artist Chuck Joseph) to the wholeheartedness of actor Cameron Rhodes’ evocations of both the various New Zealand poems and the Shakespeare Othello exerpts – but my overriding feeling is gratitude to Atoll Records for capturing in true-to-life, state-of-the-art sound such an inspired partnership between two wonderful musicians, enabling a number of important works by New Zealand’s greatest composer to be heard to their inestimable advantage.

An Angel Released – music by Eve de Castro-Robinson

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Eve de Castro-Robinson – RELEASING THE ANGEL

with: David Chickering (‘cello) / Tzenka Dianova (piano)

Vesa-Matti Leppānen (violin)

Lyrica Choir of Kelburn Normal School, Wellington (director: Nicola Edgecumbe)

Blade / Trilogy (kinetic sculptures by Len Lye)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra / Conductor: Kenneth Young

Atoll ACD 141

(recorded in the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington)

Listening to the very opening of Releasing the Angel, the first music track on composer Eve de Castro-Robinson’s new, eponymously-titled CD from Atoll Records, leaves me “on-the-spot smitten” by the music’s attractive tactile quality. How readily those shimmering orchestral sounds fly towards and wrap themselves around and about my ears! – and how, just as tantalizingly, they fall away, leaving the voice of a solo ‘cello floating in those same spaces. This is, of course, the voice of the “Angel”, a personification inspired by a quote from the great Michelangelo, whose words “First it was stone, and then I released an angel” could be regarded as a metaphor for any kind of creative artistic activity.

In the case of the present recording, the ‘cello is that of the work’s dedicatee, David Chickering, associate principal ‘cellist of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. These artists premiered the piece in 2005, at a concert which I attended, being at the time similarly enthralled by the inspirations of both the work and its performance. Interestingly, I thought the orchestral resonances surrounding the ‘cello just as “charged”, the fashioning of the angel happily breathing life into its context. These “enfolding” ambiences give tongue according to their own lights, at first rhapsodizing, and then becoming more dynamic and rhythmic in their gradually-energised spaces, developing a kind of ritualistic processional,with exotic-sounding themes and instrumentation. After some excited tremolandi the ‘cello indicates it wishes to perform the act of final release, with the help of a few orchestral ecstasies, and a repeatedly whistled motif from the soloist. Suddenly, but timelessly, there’s peace with the then and now, and for the ages. As what happens when one reads Huckleberry Finn, one leaves the spell of this music  with similar regret.

A significant aspect of this new release of Eve de Castro-Robinson’s work is the compositional ground it covers for the composer, the oldest work dating from 1987 – Peregrinations, for piano and orchestra, actually written as part of the composer’s doctorate, though revised by De Castro-Robinson in 1990. Despite it being what she calls “an old work” she values its representation of “signature sounds and compositional predilections”. I was fortunate enough to hear this work, played by Dan Poynton with the NZSO in 2006 – but for now, the pianist on the new recording is the superb Bulgarian-born Tzenka Dianova, whose energy and focus gives the writing that wonderful sense of spontaneous re-creation which accords brilliantly with the work’s overall raison d’être.

The work’s got a Ravelian beginning, growing out of what seems primordial material, impulses striving upwards towards the light, then stimulating an incredibly toccata-like frenzy in the orchestra which spawns all kinds of energies – there’s a kind of spontaneous impishness at work, here, in line with what the composer calls her “musical journey….a setting out on an expedition whose destination may not be clearly defined.” So, alongside the pre-planned musical landmarks, there’s an omnipresent sense of things wanting to go in unexpected directions. Out of a becalmed episode comes a violin solo (Vesa-Matti Leppānen), which in turn inspires a flowing cantilena from the strings, opening up the vistas of the orchestra and allowing space for an imposing tremolando to spread across the orchestral landscape. What’s remarkable about de Castro-Robinson’s writing is its transitional skill, an almost osmotic ability to move organically to and from extremes of colour, texture and rhythm. The result is a journey through the landscapes of the mind that sets a momentous feeling in places, against a quixotic and volatile spirit. Right to the end of the piece the “expect the unexpected” principle both keeps our interest and leaves us wanting more from each episode, thanks in part to the total identification with the work demonstrated by pianist, conductor and orchestra.

De Castro-Robinson’s music takes on a polemical edge with Other echoes, the one work on this CD previously recorded commercially, in this case by the Auckland Philharmonia and Nicholas Braithwaite, as part of the orchestra’s “Fanfares for the New Millennium” project of 1999. The music, featuring the imagined calls of the extinct huia as well as the threatened kokako, highlights the dangers for wildlife species posed by human activity; and continues to exert its power to disturb and awaken feelings regarding the issue. Its counterweight on this CD is the heartwarming These arms to hold you, written in 2007 for the Royal New Zealand Plunket Society on the occasion of its 100th birthday, and featuring a collaboration between the composer and poet Bill Manhire. De Castro-Robinson felt a special affinity with Plunket because of her involvement with the organization at the time of the birth of her son, Cyprian, to whom the work is dedicated. It was the first collaboration of hers with the poet, and the first music she’d written for a children’s choir, here, the Lyrica Choir of Kelburn Normal School in Wellington, directed by Nicola Edgecumbe. I’m quoting (without permission) from the composer’s own words, here, from a message she very kindly sent to me regarding the making of this CD………

“A lot of emails to’d and fro’d between Bill and me, and I grew to love his economical approach to the texts which included phrases drawn from a selection of his friends’ Plunket books: fit and well, bonny babe, two teeth, four teeth, crawling now, motions normal, on the move, etc which was delightful to set for the kids in a chantlike style.  Bill’s Lullaby, “Here is the world in which you sing, here is your sleepy cry, here is your sleepy mother, here the sleepy sky…Here is the wind in branches, here is the magpie’s cry…here are these arms to hold you, for a while” was particularly inspirational. Every time I hear my setting of the phrase ‘here are these arms to hold you’, I get a great lump in my throat. That’s what originally told me to use that phrase as the work’s title, and Bill agreed…it was the emotional heart of the text.”

Whosever idea it was to bring in the children’s choir from the distance, as it were,the voices running, laughing, chattering and bubbling with joy at being children, as it were, deserves a special mention in despatches. It makes for the most heartwarming introduction to the music, which is already infused with the magic of a child’s first sensations, and carries readily over into the motoric chanting of “It’s a boy – it’s a girl”, complete with hand-clapping, the music then gravitating, with de Castro-Robinson’s accustomed skill to a lullaby mode, the tones open and spacious, not unlike Elgar’s in parts of his “Sea Pictures”. There are instrumental quotes from nursery-rhyme tunes, and more chantings, this time from comments out of those Plunket Books, phrases that would have resounded in the memories of parents who had such records kept of their babies’ progress throughout those early years.

Concluding the disc with what, in fact, sounds practically like a hiss and a roar, is Eve de Castro-Robinson’s orchestral tribute to Len Lye, the New Zealand-born kinetic artist, sculptor and film-maker. The composer aptly describes the work Len Dances as “quite a romp, lots of dance tunes and so on…” Written in 2002, parts of this work will reappear in de Castro-Robinson’s opera LEN LYE, which will premiere in September next year at the Maidment Theatre. A feature of the work I really like is the use of the sound of some of Lye’s actual kinetic sculptures – Blade, the great twanging blade and cork ball most people associate with him, and Trilogy.

The opening of the work is all motoric and metallic impulse, awakening something that resembles a human pulse – gradually rhythms coalesce and settle into popular dance-forms – the Charleston leads the way, followed by something from Latin America – wonderfully sleazy work from solo clarinet and lower brass, and a gloriously vulgar trumpet. But the clarinet isn’t finished, and sparks off further energies, the percussion taking over and providing a rhythmic framework for the glorious sounds made by some of Lye’s sculptures, in particular, Blade and Trilogy, whose reverberations and resonances have the last word.

I’m certain that the enormous amounts of energy, spirit and technical skill emanating from this production come from the scenario generated by what de Castro-Robinson describes as “three days of intensive, dedicated recording by the magnificent sound-machine that is the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra – a composer’s dream!”. Obviously everything came together, musicians and technicians producing a notable sound-document of which everybody involved with can be justly proud. My only complaint – a small but reasonably significant one – is the lack of documentation in the production regarding recording dates and venue (uncharacteristic for Atoll). In every other respect (including the wonderful frontispiece illustration taken from a painting, Birds, by Peter Madden) this is a disc that proclaims a standard for contemporary music’s presentation. Everybody should hear it, and especially those who think they don’t much care for contemporary New Zealand music – there’s an angel waiting to be released in each one of them as well!

Brahms piano trio and Czech duos at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Breaking free from the Chamber – van der Zee, Mitchell and Mapp

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

Janáček – Sonata for Violin and Piano
Martinů – Sonata No.2 for ‘Cello and Piano
Brahms – Piano Trio No.2 in C Minor

Anna van der Zee (violin) / Paul Mitchell (‘cello) / Richard Mapp (piano)

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 20th March 2011, 3pm

Many of my most memorable musical experiences come from unexpected encounters with either unfamiliar compositions or stunningly good performances. In Wellington, these days, one expects at most concerts certain levels of musical understanding and technical accomplishment, but that still leaves plenty of stratospheric spaces for performances which take the listener to those out-of-the-ordinary heights that can’t help but enlarge and enrich one’s view of existence in general. This was a concert with many such moments.

I don’t wish to give the idea that these musicians normally don’t impress with their playing, though I have to say that in ‘cellist Paul Mitchell’s case I thought his work on this occasion exceeded in overall terms of accomplishment anything I’d previously heard him do. I’d heard Anna van deer Zee’s work previously as a member of the Tasman String Quartet, and remember enjoying her musicality in that context, somewhat removed from the realm of a virtuoso violin sonata, as here. As for Richard Mapp, I’ve always had the highest regard for his piano-playing in different settings, be it collaborative or soloistic – which is not to say that I’m never surprised and delighted by what he’s able to achieve out of the blue, as it were.

But this, I thought, was a special concert, one in which the musicians infused their material with oceans of appropriate character – fiery energy and deep concentration (Janáček and Martinů) and robust strength and romantic warmth (Brahms). And what a stunning opening to the concert it was, with the Janáček Sonata’s fiery, volatile declamations hurled at us by both violinist and pianist, only for the music to revert to the most confessional and intimate utterances without warning – such tenderness sitting alongside blazing statements and searing lines! I thought the playing simply terrific, encompassing both strength and vulnerability, handling the composer’s characteristic sudden switches into contrasting moods with great aplomb. Van deer Zee and Mapp caught the second movement’s folksy lyricism, swapping melodic lines with wonderful dexterity and, in van deer Zee’s case, beautifully true intonation.

The scherzo-like third movement set an invigorating “stomping” character at the opening against a more heartfelt trio section (these players characterized everything so vividly), while the finale’s epic treatment of tragedy cast the instruments almost as protagonists in places – the violin occasionally savaging the piano’s more long-breathed music with brutal interjections, the music in between time creating a mood of desperate and uncertain yearning for peace and harmony, constantly under threat. The players achieved an intense, heartbreaking flow of feeling at one point, but one which the echoing of the movement’s opening quickly dissolved, as if waking us from a dream and returning us to a harsher reality.

Martinů ‘s second “Cello Sonata, written in the United States after the composer had fled the Nazi invasion of Europe, is a kind of “New World” chamber sonata, containing numerous echoes of his Czech heritage. The first movement has a slightly “haunted” quality, folkish lines punctuated by episodes of great agitation, with textures for both instruments richly wrought. Mitchell and Mapp played into each other’s hands throughout quite masterfully, the focus of the ‘cello line matching and mirroring the piano writing to perfection. Together these musicians made something special out of the funeral-like Largo, recreating a whole world of sorrow and disquiet, galvanized by some virtuoso playing from the pianist leading to a most heartfelt and desperate entry from the ‘cellist – fantastic playing, completely “inside’ the music. The finale’s opening, combatative exchanges between string pizzicati with “attitude” and jagged piano writing, never let up, fusing lyricism with rhythmic energies, the players readily capturing a sense of “flight”, of desperate movement towards a kind of freedom in sadness and anger.

After these heart-on-sleeve utterances, the Brahms Piano Trio seemed at first a model of classical decorum – as well, the composer’s writing (strings often in unison) tended in the opening movement to play down the inherent warmth of this instrumental combination, so that we got an athletic, sinewy sound, focused and lean-textured. Occasionally I found the piano a shade overpowering in this movement, and wondered whether the player or the acoustic was to blame. This wasn’t so pronounced in the subsequent movements, the slow movement’s songful variations bringing the players’ tones together in a beautifully balanced outpouring of melody. The Scherzo’s wonderfully delicate, slightly “spooky” opening tones were beautifully realized, the warmer, more relaxed second subject was given plenty of character by the players, rising to something approaching heroic utterance at its climax, and switching to a Mendelssohnian feeling at the return of the opening, much relished by the musicians.

Hugo Wolf once complained of Brahms, “he can’t exult” – a judgement that this music surely and triumphantly denies. The musicians captured the flow of things right from the start, enjoying the occasional chromaticisms and contrasting them with a more chunky and bucolic character in other places. Richard Mapp’s playing I found terrific, establishing the kind of momentum which swept everything before it, his fellow-players matching the excitement right to the music’s joyous conclusion. Altogether, the concert gave us music-making of a high order, reminding us all over again (if needed) of the depth of talent to be found among our local musicians – such wealth, and at the disposal of our pleasure.