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JS BACH – The Well-tempered Clavier Books One and Two BWV 545-593
Michael Houstoun (piano)
Rattle Records RAT D155 2024 (4)

Recording Producer – Kenneth Young
Recorded by John Kim and Steve Garden
at the Symonds Street, University of Auckland Music Theatre

“Not ”Brook” but “Ocean” should be his name.”
(Ludwig Van Beethoven, commenting on the German “Bach” meaning “Brook”)

No recording dates are given in the characteristically austere documentation accompanying Rattle’s issue of this historic recorded undertaking by Michael Houstoun, the first by a New Zealand pianist featuring Johann Sebastian Bach’s legendary “48” – the composer’s twice-completed survey of all twenty-four major and minor keys, each in “prelude-and-fugue” form, making ninety-six individual pieces in all. It’s surely worthy for posterity’s sake to note that the 2024 recording dates for the first of the two books were April 6th to 8^th, and for the second, July 5^th to 8^th  (my thanks to Steve Garden for that information!).

Houstoun has previously played both books of Bach’s monumental work in concert over some years – quick searches I made turned up occasions like a 2016 Adam Concert Room performance in Wellington of the entire Bk.2 as part of the Judith Clark Memorial Piano series, and consecutive-evening performances of each of the two books of the “48” in the Music Theatre of the University of Auckland in May 2017, and again on two October afternoons in The Great Hall, Christchurch Arts Centre, that same year. These works have obviously been in his repertoire for sufficient time to consider and make the decision to commit his oft-sounded-out thoughts about them to a recording.

The notes accompanying this production, written by Houstoun himself, fittingly express what this music means to him, inextricably as a pianist and as a human being, with the singular phrase “a series of bottom lines of incalculable value”. He goes on to discuss both melody and harmony in the light of his quoting Beethoven’s words which describe Bach the “master of harmony” by means which the pianist describes as “the miraculous weaving together” of melody. And he talks about the music’s “sheer pulsation” of rhythm and the sense of an infinite trajectorial energy through which Bach seems at times to “carry us into eternity” (a phenomenon which I vividly recall “drew me in” on my own first hearing of the work, many years ago!). Another of Houstoun’s “bottom lines” refers to the actual “character” of the individual pieces, the pianist maintaining that there is more to each one than being either a “keyboard exercise” or “an amenable grouping of notes and rests” – though as the notes themselves contain no dynamic or tempo markings, much of the “character” which emerges from each piece would be at the performer’s own discretion.

What gives these performances something of a singular flavour is Houstoun’s making available to the listener his own brief impressions of each of the pieces’ separate “characters” – he had previously listed these in the programme notes to his former live performances, citing Debussy’s example with his Preludes of publishing titles or descriptions of the pieces. Hans Von Bulow did a similar thing when performing Chopin’s 24 Preludes, some of which epithets have actually stuck to a couple of the pieces over the years. Though curious to know how many others might have applied such an idea to Bach’s work I could find only one instance recorded of a previous occasion when a pianist had performed the “48” with their own descriptions of each Prelude and Fugue listed in the programme, along with some of the responses to this being done! The latter were, to say the least, varied – I’ve chosen just two  polarising samples below…..

This is a terrible idea. You will burn in the Lake of Fire for even considering such a thing.

If someone doesn’t like this, can they just not read them {the titles}? For me they would give an interesting perspective on the performer’s thoughts.

I find myself happy with the latter reaction, in that, especially in the case of Bach’s unadorned scores, ideal performances would surely feature an amalgam of inspirations, ideas and sounds from both composer and performer. How far the latter chooses to reveal such characterisations as a performer is, of course, a personal choice, as is the listener’s in terms of “taking them on”.

From time to time when listening to these stunningly-wrought realisations of Bach’s ineffable genius from Houstoun, I found myself wanting to go back to other interpretations of certain of the pieces I’d heard – by no means did I want to revert to exhaustive comparisons, but merely to register the extent my previous reactions to the music were here either replicated or modified. I’d listened most often to the sets by Sviatoslav Richter, Tatyana Nikolaeva, Andras Schiff and Angela Hewitt (the latter’s second 2007-8 recording) over the years and was interested to “place” my reaction to Houstoun’s performances in the light of those earlier hearings. What follows below isn’t a track-by-track commentary, but a series of observations from my journey with this new recording, interspersed by memories of detail which, as I recall, gave somewhat different impressions, and which stimulated a desire on my part to “update” my own relationship with this remarkable work.

At the outset of Houstoun’s performance (Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C Major) I was instantly entranced – here was tone, tempo and temperament which seemed ideally suited to the notes, creating a kind of encapsulation of the whole in a single span of music-making, an “exposition”, then a “development” and finally a “recapitulation”, more in an emotional than a technical sense, of course, but particularly apparent in this glowing account, one which when I listened to other performances I found myself continuing to value Houstoun’s as highly as a singular experience.

The contrast afforded by the C Minor Prelude (No.2) is suitably dramatic, with touches of the gothic from the pianist’s closely-worked harmonic shifts in the piece’s cadenza at the end, to which the fugue offers a stern reprove! A marvellous change in colour and momentum is afforded by the following C-sharp major Prelude, like thistledown at play, with gorgeously feathery articulations, tempered by a schoolmistressy kind of following fugue, a-fluster at all the gaiety, but secretly longing to join in. One of the great ones of the set is No. 4 in C-sharp minor (Houstoun calls it “Lamentoso”), its reflective sorrow demonstrative in the Prelude and ritualistic in the fugue, the latter building towards institutionalised grief by the end – Houstoun’s recording is quite a contrast with Angela Hewitt’s “growing from darkness” approach in both pieces, a more personalised kind of sound-world – but how beautifully Houstoun himself “sounds” the fugue’s concluding phrase, here.

My own listener’s introduction to the “48” was with the D Major No. 5, and the late, great John Ogdon’s sparkling playing of it all on a recital disc – such “joie de vivre” in the Prelude, and then beautifully-contrasting “lampoonings” of the piece’s opening notes in the Fugue, “snapping” the two-note payoffs of this response in a way that Houstoun eschews with his less playful pairings (both Hewitt and Andras Schiff follow Ogdon’s ebullience, here) though the new performance still delights with its almost schoolboy exuberance of the whole.

It would take too long to go through all of the remaining pieces of Book One as above, though some I still need to “single out” for their ear-catching effect and the superb finish of their presentation. One such is the following No.6, the D Minor, with a Prelude Houstoun calls “Night Ride”, and to which he brings flowing legato tones that actually suggest a dream-like airborne journey, though I don’t “get” his “Creeping Anxiety” impression of the Fugue, which to me suggests more of a “hall of mirrors”, equally gorgeous in effect but suitably bewildering in its echoings and inversions.
A pairing which surprises with its “weight of sorrow”, following as it does the grandly ceremonial E flat Major prelude and Fugue is the latter’s minor-key counterpart, No.8, with its eloquent aria, and sombre three-part Fugue, all of which Houstoun sustains nobly in a kind of “dark suspense”, a mood which the following E Major Prelude’s contrasting sunniness immediately dispels, especially with its determinedly cheerful Fugue, exactly  like “three village gossips”, the phrase by which Angela Hewitt describes its effect!

Moving onto the second disc, we first encounter the brightly fresh F-sharp major Prelude (No.13), with Houstoun’s title “Playing Around” – not a note is wasted in this up-front and totally engaging reading, the accompanying Fugue having a similarly “open” vocal quality, admirably suiting the pianist’s epithet “Sing”. I also instantly warmed to the vigorously athletic No. 15 in G Major and its attitude-striking fugal companion, with its opening subject’s final “so what?” single note, and its droll inversions which suggest a reply. No.17 pairs a jolly dance with a Fugue known in the German-speaking world as  the ”Cathedral Fugue”, a most attractive coupling, moving from gaiety to a more contained and ceremonial mood, one which in the pianist’s hands here, glows and sings.

In places Houstoun’s playing for me recalls that of Helmut Walcha, the blind German keyboard player of a couple of generations ago, and from whose recordings I learnt some of Bach’s keyboard works, among them the “English Suites” – Walcha favoured steady, largely unvaried tempi whose cumulative effect always seemed to compensate for a sparseness of variety and colour – and I was reminded of this by the G-sharp minor Prelude and Fugue, here, the former sombre, the latter unrelenting (echoing the pianist’s description “A grim tale” in its implaccable delivery). What a joy, then, to encounter its successor, the bright, breezy and beautiful A major Prelude (No.19) with its gorgeously pealing bells in the left hand, and then delight in its zany companion, a Fugue whose trajectories can render the unprepared mind bemused and befuddled before the notes finally scamper into well-drilled lines and dance one’s senses towards the end. Gorgeous playing!

I warmed also (who wouldn’t!) towards the toccata-like No.21 in B-flat major (Houstoun’s title for the Prelude enshrining a somewhat more insistent song than that of Vaughan Williams’ celebrated lark), with the Fugue suggesting some kind of celestial angelic rejoicing at this earthly manifestation of exuberance and freedom. Its antithesis is surely its minor-key equivalent (No. 22), the Prelude music of mourning, which Houstoun, not without reason, styles as “Road to Golgotha” (Christ’s crucifixion-place), here, a lonely and pitiless way, almost Schubertian in a “Winterreise” sense. The five-voiced fugue which follows is superbly essayed here, containing the feeling of a multitude immersed in grief.

Whatever consolation one might seek from any such feeling is duly encompassed, though not so much by the bright-and-bubbly B Major Prelude (No. 23) nor its gregarious Fugue with what Angela Hewitt describes as its “gentle transparency” – surely any such “grand consolation” is the preserve of No.24, the B Minor Prelude and Fugue, one whose performance I first heard by Sviatoslav Richter many years ago, and whose tones and trajectories have haunted me like no other performance since, save for Tatiana Nikolayeva’s similarly-conceived reading. Despite it being one of the few Preludes in the WTC with the composer’s own tempo direction (Andante) one can find recordings of it played at a variety of speeds, from Youri Egorov’s near-static amble to Glenn Gould’s purposeful trot, each with its own orbital kind of ambience – while my preference is still for the expansive Russian-school (Egorov/Richter/Nikolayeva) approach, the other pianists mentioned above (Hewitt, Schiff, Gould) have broadened my perspectives regarding different approaches to the music. Houstoun’s playing of the Prelude here unstintingly aligns with the latter group, thus stimulating further re-thinking on my part of the music’s varied capabilities.

And so we’re brought to Michael Houstoun’s exploration of Bach’s Book Two of his “The Well-tempered Clavier”, which the composer, at this time working in Leipzig as Cantor at the Thomaskirche, built up from various sources with constantly-added revisions, enlargements and transpositions. Book One had been extensively used by the composer in his teaching, and after fifteen years he would have wanted a change, as well as “updating” his own compositional style. But he also wanted to “collect and systematise” his own output, which included revising his thoughts regarding a new collection of pieces in twenty-four keys, and producing something with numerous and significant differences. So, Book Two is longer, the writing is more complex, and has a higher degree of technical difficulty for the performer.

Right from the outset the difference is apparent, with the C Major Prelude of Book Two beginning on the grandest scale, in marked contrast to the gentle simplicity of Book One’s opening. Houstoun’s title “The Universe as a Temple” and his monumental pianism reflects the scale of the composer’s conception here, while the three-part Fugue’s energy and playfulness is characterised as “Invitation to Joy (birthright)”. I loved Houstoun’s delineations of the C sharp major Prelude No. 3 , with its mesmerising harmonic shifts and its energised coda-like “Fughetta”, the latter preparing us for the Fugue proper – a character, this one, with a slightly gauche aspect at its beginning, but flexing its muscles increasingly and creating increased momentum toward the end.

I confess to being surprised by the severity of the C sharp minor Prelude (No. 4), whose sounds I’ve more often heard “breathed” as much as played in places, allowing its lyricism to more readily “touch a nerve” – and the Fugue here I thought also had an insistence I found wearisome by the end. But amends are made with the gloriously ceremonial D Major Prelude, trumpets and drums revelling in Houstoun’s vigorous playing. And what a dramatic change in mood with the Fugue! – Houstoun’s “Alms giving” description is curiously appropriate, with its solemn, reverential air of benevolence.  Contrasts abound, here, as the following Prelude, No. 6 in D minor, bursts upon us with what sounds like vehemence at first but gradually gives way to a gruff kind of drollery – and Houstoun gives the Fugue just enough “schwung” to suggest a kind of musical M.C.Escher study in levitational contrasts before the composer deposits us in our bemused state on ground level once again.

Houstoun is all grace and charm with the E-flat major Prelude (No.7), a lovely Pastorale-like dance, whose Fugue, with its rising fifth was considered in some quarters a synonym for God, and Bach himself considered the key of E-flat major in accordance with “the peace of mind that flows from the Trinity” – in all, a happy concordance of music, composer and interpreter. The straightaway more angular D sharp minor Prelude (No.8) has a different, more obsessive character (I liked Houstoun’s “Agreeing to disagree” description!), its Fugue described by the famed commentator Donald Francis Tovey as an “Aeschylean chorus”, (Aeschulus was a Greek poet who regarded music as an important “extra dimension” in the drama), the music’s intensities here underlined (as Bach was wont to do with his fugues) by successive stretto-like entries of whatever subject.

All of this is then left behind in the most disarming way here, by the Prelude No. 9 in E major, with Bach treating our senses to a beguiling fusion of gentle voices here (some of Houstoun’s most ingratiating playing of the set) and in the old-fashioned fugal “Stile antico” which follows (and, was that a snatch of “Rule Britannia” I heard right at the fugue’s end?). Bach’s invention here has played havoc with my intention of singling out highlights from the set and producing a readable review, as the great moments simply keep coming! – in the wake of the disarming E major work we get an arresting  E Minor Prelude (No.10) with its steady stream of semiquavers occasionally played alongside a long trill, their combination heightening the tensions, and a Fugue which the famous harpsichordist Wanda Landowska described as “combatative and vehement”, which qualities Houstoun does full justice with some superbly-controlled playing.

Definitely worth a mention (and closing the third disc) is the Prelude No. 12 in F Minor, written by Bach in what was becoming the new “empfindsamer Stil” (sensitive style) , made popular by the composer’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel, and demonstrating something of that aforementioned “updating of his (Bach senior’s) own compositional style”. And so to the final disc through which, in the interests of readers being able to “complete the course” I’ll quickly pass, through Houstoun’s winsomely fluent F sharp major Prelude and its attractive gavotte-like Fugue, and the “singing” wistfulness of the following Minor-key Prelude , and its monumental, more stoical Fugue. Houstoun then gives the Master’s eye an engaging glint with the sparkling G Major Prelude and its “toy fanfare” Fugue, before returning to severity with the double-dotted G Minor Prelude (No.16) and its fugal mix of brass calls, repeated notes and grand final gesturings. And mention must definitely be made of the pianist’s masterful control in the Fugue of the following A flat Prelude, penetrating the increasing thickness of the texture with great sensitivity and a sure sense of where it’s all going!

I liked the “galant” style of the following G sharp minor Prelude (No.18) with its delicious chromatic descent in the piece’s middle, and its Fugue taking us into similarly fantastic-sounding byways (with Houstoun clear-headed, as always, as to where he’s taking the listener!). The same qualities help to illuminate the Prelude No.20 in A minor with its constant vertiginous exchange and inversion of themes, dream-sequence stuff that pushes the limits of tonality, especially in the piece’s second half, and in the somewhat zany Fugue that follows (perhaps Bach’s most uncompromising, almost feral in its attitude!) The gently lyrical B flat major Prelude (No.21) and its minuet-like Fugue that follows is part restorative (Houstoun calls the Prelude “Lyric pleasure’ and the Fugue “Persuasive conversation”) and part preparatory for the expected rigours of the work’s final three pieces.

In effect we have already been subjected to the most demanding of the pieces’ travails, as each of the remaining trio is respectively a satisfying summation of rigour, energy and delight (even Houstoun at one point enjoins us to “be of good cheer”!). Beginning with the Prelude in B flat minor (No.22) which has a gently insistent, almost bell-pealing quality, but followed by a more rigorous Fugue bent upon forward motion of both subject and its inversion, we are then taken to the more bubbling and winsome B Major with its “concerto-like” passages that suggest a soloist in places, and with a Fugue that achieves by its deceptively “spare” beginning a wondrously festive air in Houstoun’s hands. But the biggest surprise is the concluding dance-like B Minor Prelude which, though in a “self-contained” minor key has its own particular glow of satisfaction, its buoyancy continued in the Fugue, the sequence as firmly and deftly characterised by Houstoun as his approach to the entire collection. Bach here chooses to conclusively proclaims his genius not with any self-conscious grandeur or brilliance but with humanity and generosity – all are things to which Michael Houstoun responds throughout this set with playing of remarkable technical brilliance and, for me, in most instances regarding the individual pieces, persuasive empathy. Whatever one’s tastes it’s an enterprise whose achievement richly rewards investigation, and as such can be enthusiastically recommended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Orchestra Wellington presents:
“The Jazz Age”

KEITH MOSS – A Kalahari Eclogue
Arohanui Strings and Orchestra Wellington

GEORGE GERSHWIN (arr. RUSS GARCIA) – Porgy and Bess
Deborah Wai Kapohe (soprano)
Eddie Muliaumaseali’i (bass)
Siliga Sani Muliaumaseali’i (tenor)
Signature Choir,
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei – Music Director

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 9th November 2024

Orchestra Wellington, under the directorship of Marc Taddei, continues to bring off presentations whose initiative, innovation and execution continue to engage, astonish and delight audiences, as with the band’s latest endeavour “The Jazz Age”. This concert’s showpiece was obviously George Gershwin’s groundbreaking 1935 folk-opera “Porgy and Bess”, but here done with a difference – a shortened concert performance featuring iconic Hollywood arranger Russell Garcia’s innovative reorchestration of the work for jazz performers, and served up within a framework of a “live” 1930s radio broadcast, complete with announcer, and commercial breaks!

Arohanui Strings perform with Orchestra Wellington and Music Director Marc Taddei at the Orchestra’s latest concert “The Jazz Age”

Included on the programme as an introduction were two other items whose performances featured the recent activities of the Sistema-inspired “Arohanui Strings” trainee pupils, with the older students taking part in the concert’s opening work “A Kalahari Eclogue” by South African composer Keith Moss (currently resident in New Zealand), and then being more-or-less “upstaged” by what music director Marc Taddei aptly called “cuteness” in the form of the Strings’ youngest members coming onto the performing platform, to the audience’s delight!

Taddei’s introduction for the Arohanui Ensemble included a comment concerning the SECOND instance I’ve recently learned of a music educational group in Aotearoa having its funding cut for 2025 by Creative New Zealand (the other being the Wellington Youth Orchestra), continuing what another commentator described as a “baffling” withdrawal of investment in the region’s future artistic development. Not, of course, a priority for our present Government to investigate, one would expect……but on an administrative and supportive level it’s a particularly unhelpful response to the Arohanui Strings Trust’s recent extension of activities in adding brass and woodwind classes for children.

Keith Moss’s “A Kalahari Eclogue” (commissioned by SOUNZ for Orchestra Wellington and Arohanui Strings) suitably evoked a “landscape” here, with the lower strings right at the beginning setting the scene and awakening consciousness from other parts of the orchestra, with ruminatory themes provoking impulses of colour from winds and percussion before developing and voicing their own intensities. A string “chant” was answered by a horn solo, joined by brass ostinato whose insistence brought forth song-like string textures and colourful washes of brass. The figures then interplayed and built to a tremendous climax, capped off and silenced by percussion – having thus encompassed the vastness of the territories, the piece allowed the winds a kind of “and so it goes” comment, an appropriate conclusion to this engaging and evocative piece, and most suitably given a warm reception.

By way of further encouragement for the youthful “Arohanui Strings” players, the orchestra launched into an unnamed Astor Piazzola Tango, before bringing onto the platform the aforementioned junior members of the group – undaunted, they gave us, by turns, spirited and lyrical renditions of “Frere Jacques’ and the classic Maori melody “Hine, e Hine”, before bringing the house down with Offenbach’s famous “Can-can”, firstly at a moderate tempi, and then at Taddei’s insistence, at a far more exhilarating clip! What an experience for those youngsters and for their tutors, to be thus involved in Orchestra Wellington’s inspired presentation!

Came the interval, and while the audience enjoyed its customary walkabout interlude the performing platform was a fascinating hive of activity, with the various groups of musicians’ and technicians’ coming-and-going, accompanied by snatches of jazz-like music, simulating a kind of event set-up and building a kind of anticipatory excitement. It soon became clear that this was a kind of radio-station-broadcast scenario featuring Gershwin’s famous folk-opera – and, being radio, the emphasis was firmly on the music rather than any kind of stage production.

The programme notes told us that we were to hear an award-winning “jazz arrangement” of the work first conceived in 1956 by the legendary composer and arranger Russell Garcia, and made famous world-wide in a recording the following year featuring performers Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong in the opera’s title roles, and conducted by Garcia. It was one of a number of varying presentations of Gershwin’s original folk-opera at that time, which would have been many people’s first experience of hearing those famous “numbers” as belonging to a “whole”, however far removed from the composer’s original.

Clearly, tonight’s performance was a “knockout”, with singing and playing and overall presentation that completely “owned” the idea and its execution – that this was a period-style radio broadcast, all atmospherically set-up with a compere introducing the show and singers who even performed commercials on behalf of a sponsor, along the way! Though there was no “stage action” as such, the show’s compere, tenor Siliga Sani Muliaumaseali’i, adroitly “telescoped” parts of the story’s unfolding with quick-fire narrations in places, and the other singers, soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe and bass Eddie Muliaumaseali’i, took various parts besides the title-roles, all of which they brought off with considerable aplomb. The resourceful “Signature Choir” plotted its course sonorously through various functions, among them a gorgeous vocal quartet’s delightful “commercial breaks”, and several well-focused solo voices contributing to the opera’s roles (the “Honey Man”, the “Strawberry Woman” and the “Devil Crab Man”) besides the group’s heartfelt “Doctor Jesus” prayers, pleas and laments during the storm and its sequel.

Right with the singers all the way was the magnificent Orchestra Wellington, whose playing was, in a number of ways, incredible! The energy, the enthusiasm, the deftness, the timing, the accuracy, and the sheer sound of the orchestra in all its parts was a tribute to the skills of each player, to the ensemble at large and to its indefatigable maestro, Marc Taddei. Shut your eyes and you could have been in any great concert-hall in the world, or so it seemed, in terms of the sound of a crack orchestra seeming to play its insides out. My reaction is, I must admit, tempered by my familiarity with Gershwin’s original “folk-opera” score via recordings I’ve been listening to a lot, lately, and which has left me somewhat disconcerted by the fabled Russ Garcia’s “arrangements” of Gershwin, much of which, to my ears, seemed excessively heavy and in places contrary to the spirit of the original (alternatively, I can’t recall ever having heard any of the “jazz versions” of Gershwin’s work on record, which, I suppose, accounts for my reaction to these things).

So, while I thought what the singers, players and their conductor achieved was stupendous on one level, I came away from the experience with less of the great “love” that I was expecting for some of what I heard – I thought all of the singers suffered in places from accompaniments that were too loud, “laden” in places by brass and percussion sonorities unnecessarily “piled up” by the arranger – as, for example, with Porgy’s touching “When God made cripple he mean him to be lonely” which wasn’t allowed to convey the pathos that I was accustomed to – fortunately Eddie Muliaumaseali’i’s impressively sonorous voice saw him through, as it did with the famous “I got plenty o’ nuttin”. Deborah Wai Kapohe, who was absolutely splendid in the equally well-known “Summertime” had to struggle against the orchestra in places in the great duet with Porgy, “Bess, yo’ is my woman now”, and to my disappointment that wonderful sequence with the words “mornin’ time and evenin’ time”  lost some of its beauty and poignancy, with both singers having to “push” their tones through the orchestral opaqueness that the arranger couldn’t seem to resist. And I can’t imagine why Garcia watered-down what should have been one of tenor Siliga Sani Muliaumaseali’i’s great moments in the work as the rapscallion Sportin’ Life, in removing all of those deliciously zany interpolations (“Wah, doo! – zim bam boodle-oo!” etc…) echoed by the chorus, from the song “It Ain’t Necessarily So”……..

I’m straying into superfluity, now, by highlighting things the performance didn’t do, which for a critic should be beside the point – getting back to what was done, my critical incredulity returns, reflecting upon an achievement of evocation which, if not entirely Gershwin’s, impressed on so many counts, to the point where singers, players and conductor seemed transfixed by their own efforts as the work leapt from the page and into the spaces where we sat, mesmerised by it all – that in itself made for an experience which will resound in the memory for a long time to come.

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
THE GHOST TRIO  –  SCHUMANN, HOLMES, SAARIAHO. RAVEL

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No. 1 Op.63
LEONIE HOLMES – Dance of the Wintersmith (2017)
KAIJA SAARIAHO – Calices (2009)
MAURICE RAVEL – Piano Trio in A Minor (1914)

The Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin). Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

(Andrew Joyce replaces ‘cellist Ken Ichinose for this concert)

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

Sunday, 25^th August, 2024

Review by Peter Mechen for “Middle C”

“New Zealand has so many great musicians that we have decided to have eight concerts” proclaimed the Wellington Chamber Music’s 2024 series website at the year’s beginning. Having been fortunate enough to attend (and review) six of these concerts, I’m finding myself at the conclusion of this, the final one in the series, overcome with gratitude at being able to enjoy so much great music in the company of these – yes, truly! – great musicians! And glancing at the society’s prospectus for 2025 has already whetted my appetite for more….

But, to the business at hand, this final concert! – and to The Ghost Trio’s remarkable metamorphosis via a replacement ‘cellist, Andrew Joyce, stepping into the role for the temporarily unavailable Ken Ichinose, and bringing his own remarkable qualities to bear upon the concert’s two major works by Schumann and Ravel without any discernable hiccups! The composer-lineup remained the same as before, except that violinist Monique Lapins and pianist Gabriela Glapska adroitly substituted two not insubstantial violin-and-piano works by Leonie Holmes and Kaija Saariaho respectively for the original “all-piano-trio” lineup.

First up was Robert Schumann’s adorable D Minor Piano Trio Op. 63, a work which showed how much the composer’s recent absorption of JS Bach’s works (particularly the “Well-Tempered Clavier”) had influenced his thinking, evident in a new kind of expression marked by contrapuntal entwinings and polyphonic voicings well beyond the scope of his other chamber music up to then. The players here responded right from the outset with sombre, forward-thrusting gestures, vibrant lines and strong but always flexible trajectories, continually catching our ears with the music’s on-going subtleties of dynamics and intensities. Monique Lapins had demonstrated for us on her instrument Schumann’s innovative use at one point in the movement’s development section of ghostly sul ponticello bowing accompanied by the piano in its highest registers – when it came in the performance it sounded extraordinary! – it brought to my mind the composer’s well-known penchant for the expression “different realms”, which he himself obviously cherished.

After a couple of “Ready, steady” chords, the players “galloped in” the dotted-rhythm scherzo, the oft-repeated ascending theme cheekily combining whole- and half-note intervals, with the contrastingly graceful Trio a series of ascending and descending figures, almost like the scherzo itself in a more languid, even sleepwalking mode. A different world awaited us with the Langsam mit inniger Empfindung slow movement, the opening violin solo solemn and focused with near-vibratoless tones – the ‘cello encouraging more warmth from the notes, even seeming for a while to “lighten” the violin’s emotional load. The gravitas then returned, here, so exquisitely “voiced” by both players, and with the piano giving discreet and sure-footed support, the instruments gradually reducing their tones to near-silence, and leaving us with only our beating hearts for company for a semi-second of silence…… Schumann then decided to give us as a finale one of his warmest and great-hearted of melodies by way of leading us back into domains of light and joyousness, a mood not unlike that of his Piano Concerto’s finale, albeit here in 4/4 trajectory rather than the Concerto’s 3/4!

Teamwork between the players pinged, clicked and hummed as the theme flowed, skipped, sang and declaimed its way through sequences conveying by turns energy, contentment, mischief and exaltation, each with its particular deftness of touch or vigorous exuberance – I admired things like the will-o’-the-wisp exchanges between Monique Lapins’ violin and Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello, as well as the latter’s beautiful intonation in a high-lying rendition of the movement’s second theme, and (perhaps most especially) pianist Gabriela Glapska’s brilliant dexterity and unflagging strength in holding together and maintaining the flow of the finale’s seemingly boundless energies.

Monique Lapins, who’d introduced the concert’s first item, then added something of a performer’s perspective for us to the programme note written by the composer regarding the concert’s next item. This was a work, Dance of the Wintersmith, by Auckland composer Leonie Holmes, inspired by a Terry Pratchett book for children called ‘Wintersmith”, a fantasy-tale of a young witch whose dabbling in “dark arts” causes worldwide climate disruption that puts humankind in jeopardy.We were alerted to the composer’s requirement that the violinist additionally “vocalises” some of the music, and were told not to be alarmed at the inclusion of such sounds at some point!

The work began with an almost Gypsy-like solo gesture, one with eerily-spaced intervals and chromatic descents, and alternating near-frenetic bowings with mysteriously disembodied harmonics – all beautifully realised! The piano’s entry echoed the atmospheric character of the sound-picture, though the players soon “struck out” with some impactful gesturings – strong pizzicato, followed by scherzando interchanges between the instruments, with the scenario marked in places by a vivid sense of grotesquerie, the “dance” angular and fantastic, its projection almost visceral! – a silence created a moment of mystery which the piano embellished at first, the violinist then quietly humming a melody, and accompanying the vocalising on the violin – the effect was of a kind of lament, a “lost song” looking for some kind of answer or redemption – all very moving, as everything drifted into silence.

Monique Lapins (who on this showing would, I feel, get a PR presenter’s job in any sphere of activity with no difficulty) then told us briefly about the composer of the next item, Kaija Saariaho, and the music we were about to hear – again a work for violin and piano, its title Calices (2009) means ‘calyxes’ in French, and refers to the protective layer surrounding a flower in bud, so that one could here  imagine the violin as representing a spring flower bursting into life. Calices is actually derived from material in Saariaho’s own violin concerto Graal théâtre (1994).

I found this extraordinary quote from the composer regarding the concerto which could well have a bearing on the shape, form and syntax of Calices:

‘I had a kind of vertigo, a fear of high places, when I started this concerto. I played the violin as a child and I loved many violin concertos passionately – and I was afraid to step into this domain.’

The programme note enlarged on this with a further comment by Saariaho herself relating to  this particular time, one involving “frustrated illusions, longing and love”.  Monique Lapins’ and Gabriela Glapska’s remarkable performance reinforced the character of the writer’s description “ the piece ebbs and flows through different moods, from calm and contemplative to violent, with a good deal of tempo fluctuation, and with recurring notes acting as reference points within each section, like a magnet to which the music returns….”

The work was in three sections, opening with a gesture that suggested folk-like, almost oriental influences, which at first belied the violinist’s description of the work as “icy”, but soon established its severities, demanding both percussive exchanges between the instruments and contrastingly isolated single notes from both – we experienced incredibly unworldly-sounding harmonics from the violin in places, and  the pianist occasionally reaching into her instrument’s body to hauntingly activate the strings.

Part Two began with a “falling” set of sequences from the piano as the violin delivered cadenza-like flourishes, the piano creating what one description called “cloud-formations ”as the violin mused throughout repetitive meditations – my notes at this point read  “we are in a fantastic world of improvised fantasy”.  The third part of the work began in agitato fashion, tersely dynamic gestures exchanged but then coming together in a part conciliatory, part “distanced” mood, leaving this listener with feelings more enigmatic than resolved – in that sense similar to the ending of the Fourth Symphony of another Finn, Jean Sibelius.

With the concert’s final item ‘cellist Andrew Joyce provided for us a “from-the-heart” introduction to the work, Ravel’s 1914 Piano Trio, echoing the programme note’s associating the work’s genesis with the outbreak of war in Europe, and Ravel’s desire to be involved despite his poor health and his mother’s anxieties regarding her son’s safety. I particularly enjoyed his reference to the composer’s attested “sobbing over (my) sharps and flats” (in a letter to a friend at the time), commenting that Ravel should have spared a thought for the generations of musicians left “sobbing over those same sharps and flats” when preparing performances of the work! Perhaps the nearest Ravel got to this kind of admission was with the piano writing, which he confessed was ‘too difficult for its composer to play!”

As with Ravel’s great contemporary, Debussy, in his String Quartet, this A Minor Piano Trio demonstrates mastery of classical form but with many individual touches – Gabriela Glapska’s beautiful piano-only opening of the work suggested the composer’s attraction towards the music of the Basque region, the melody at once dreamy and restless, able to express at once great longing and anxiety. The violin and ‘cello octave-doubled string-writing carried this mood onwards until its growing angst irrupted as the instrumental exchanges intensified. Such relief, then, as these energies quickly dissipated to allow the achingly beautiful second subject to appear on the violin, then on the cello and be echoed by the piano – we so relished such a gorgeous dialogue for the strings here, together with such limpid piano notes! And what passions we were then plunged into by the return of the opening theme revisiting its volatile tendencies, the sounds here flung even more energetically across the soundscape by the players, and quelled only by the second theme’s “laying on of hands” return. We were relieved by the violin and ‘cello’s wanting to make peace and, finally, prevailing over the piano’s brooding aspect! Peace, when it finally came, was like balm for the senses.

Obviously I’d got carried away with this first Ravel movement in the Ghost Trio’s hands, but their “characterisation” of the music’s chameleon-like moods was so absorbing and well-rounded, it seemed to squeeze words out of me like toothpaste! The second movement is a scherzo headed Pantoum: Assez vif , and takes its title from a Pantoum, a Malay-sourced poetic form popular with French poets such as Baudelaire, one which repeats and overlaps words and lines in much the same way as Ravel alternates the movement’s first two themes – though I’ve always thought the highlight of this movement is the Trio, during which Ravel cleverly combines fragments of the strings’ scherzo themes (in 3/4) with the slower, more lyrical Trio theme (4/2) on the piano, and all without the music’s heartbeat seeming to falter, the players skilfully maintaining the different time-signatures’ happy co-existence!

The third movement Passacaille: Très large is of course a Passacaglia based on the piano’s opening eight-bar bass line – when played on a string instrument the melody straightaway sounded “folky”, and its return on the piano in a higher register had the same heartfelt effect. Moment then followed breathcatching moment, such as the duetting between violin and ‘cello, the succeeding ‘cello solo, and the rapt concentration of the piano’s final utterances.

Then, not unlike the effect Schumann had achieved earlier in the concert during his G Minor Piano Trio with his strings’ sul ponticello playing and high-registered piano figurations, Ravel’s violinist and cellist respectively played arpeggio harmonics and double-stopped high-fingerboard trills at the finale’s beginning, a melody whose exotic decorative aspect gave it something of an oriental fairytale  character, but then whose irregular time signatures of 5/4 and 7/4 in places added a vertiginous quality to the music’s vigorous and ever-burgeoning sonorities, the players giving their all and achieving an exuberance and euphoria right up to the piece’s no-holds-barred ending.

What an introduction to this work for a first-time listener this was! Nothing much further needs to be said, but “Roll on, 2025” – Wellington Chamber Music can justly feel pride and satisfaction with this year’s efforts on behalf of a grateful public!

 

 

 

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Andrew Joyce (‘cello) and Jian Liu (piano).

J.S. Bach – Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano (BWV1029)
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Six Studies in English Folk Song
Dorothy Buchannan – Soliloquy for Two
Fang Dongqing – Lin Chong
Paul Hindemith – Phantasiestuck in B Major, Op. 8 No. 2
Johannes Brahms – Sonata No. 2 in F Major
Sergei Rachmaninoff. Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor. Op 19. III. Andante

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 9th June, 2024

There’s something reassuring about watching professionals at work. I’m not sure if “reassurance” is the right word, exactly, but I certainly felt some sense of content awe on Sunday, knowing that I was listening to an excellent performance of beautiful music. I adore watching performers of all levels, but there is something special about sitting back and letting the consummate professionals take care of everything.

It was a typical windy Wellington day, so I was very appreciative of the heating in St Andrews. Unfortunately, I sat behind a rather tall audience member, so my view of the cellist, Andrew Joyce, was a tad obscured. Andrew gave a comprehensive introduction to the programme, explaining the poetic background to Buchannan’s piece, the angular sounds of Hindemith and the Romantic ending with Brahms.

From the moment Jian and Andrew begin playing, you know you’re in for a treat of musical excellence. Starting off with Bach’s Sonata in G Minor, the Vivace was energetic and vibrant. It was nice to see the difference in how the two musicians actually moved. Andrew moved his head rhythmically, with a typical cellist intensity, while Jian sort of bobbed along to the piano. I don’t know what it is about a musician’s movement that fascinates me, but I can’t help but notice it. It’s genuinely enjoyable for me when performers actually move with the music. The adagio was rich and moving, with lovely use of vibrato, and gorgeous, even playing on piano. The trills brought a particular tension to the piece which I really enjoyed. The allegro was light and playful, with a great dialogue of call and response. The building of parts and dynamics was rich, and there was never a moment of stillness. The final note of the piece was accompanied by murmurs of awe from the audience.

The Six Studies in English Folk Song followed Bach. I didn’t realise that these studies would be so short, although I probably should’ve inferred that from the title. The adagio, ‘Lovely on the Water’, was very different from the Bach, but absolutely lovely, with a gorgeous, whole sound from the cello. The andante sostenuto, ‘Spurn Point’, felt very romantic: not the movement, but the lovey-dovey feeling, with really nice higher notes. The larghetto, ‘Van Diemen’s Land’, had a deep, almost mournful quality. It felt like the homeward journey of knights after a battle. The lento, ‘She Borrowed Some of her Mother’s Gold’, was lovely, a sort of deep honey. The andante tranquillo, ‘The Lady and the Dragon’, was elegant, gentle and genteel. There was a great moment where the cello faded and the piano took over. I wrote down “a lovely brocade” in my notes. I’m not entirely sure what I meant by that, but it sounds nice. The allegro vivace, ‘As I walked over London Bridge’, was playful and intense, with great ending dynamics.

As a slight devotee to literature, I was very intrigued by Buchannan’s Soliloquy for Two, as it’s based on Robert Frost’s poem, ‘The Road not Taken’. The melody felt philosophical, with a sort of pondering quality to it, while the piano walked along the road, steady but light. There was a lovely clarity of sound in this piece, with both parts balanced evenly in the church’s acoustics.

At the start of the concert, Andrew said some parts of Dongqing’s piece were almost “unplayable.” I was unsure what he meant at first, as it started smooth and lyrical, with some surprising moments of intensity from the piano. However, then there were suddenly lower strings and harmonics, along with pizzicatos, and I understood his starting comments. The speed of the runs were amazing, with intense double stops and pizzicatos. There was really great duo work from Jian as he looked over at Andrew for the right timing of angry chords, adding a real dynamism to the performance. It was not at all where I expected the piece to go. After this intensity, the piece went back to a lovely, quieter melody, and then finished with an attack. It was the piece I wrote down the most for because of how much was happening. It was incredible, I could barely keep up in my notebook.

After the interval, there was Hindemith’s Phantasiestuck. It was beautifully Romantic, a tad unexpectedly so from Hindemith. As mentioned at the start, there were moments with some “angular” sounds, particularly with the unexpected intervals next to an otherwise soaring melody.

The Brahms Sonata was a superb. The allegro vivace had beautiful swells of dynamics. So much was going in this movement, with intense double stopping, then feather-light bowing, then a deep and full melody. The adagio affettuoso had a lovely start with the pizzicato and piano. There was a real sense of movement from Jian on the piano, along with the lovely vibrato from Andrew at the end. The “schero-like” (as noted by the programme) intensity and vibrance of the allegro passionata was brilliant. The allegro molto had a quiet and joyful intensity that built as it continued. The technical skill of these musicians was just amazing. To be honest, I was too swept up by Brahms to write more.

After a rapturous applause, we got treated with the third movement from Rachmaninoff’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, as a little excerpt from their other programme. It’s a classic piano and cello piece, and was lovely to hear live and done so superbly, especially after being on my playlist of favourite Cello pieces for a few years.

I really cannot stress enough how brilliant this concert was. Every note was perfect, the energy was palpable, and the audience was swept away. If you ever get the chance to see Andrew Joyce and Jian Liu perform, I strongly urge you to take full advantage of it.