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A Brace of Troubadours – “Fabulous Guitars” from Caprice Arts

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Charlotte Yates (voice and guitar)

Owen Moriarty and Christopher Hill (guitar duo)

Music by Charlotte Yates, Andrew York, Astor Piazzolla, Isaac Albeniz,

Radames Gnatali, Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel de Falla, Paulo Bellinati

Congregational Church, Cambridge Terrace, Wellington

Friday 6th November 2009

One would have thought, on the evidence provided by this concert, that time couldn’t have been better spent than listening to the dulcet tones of music for guitar (in fact, mostly TWO guitars!). After all, no less a musician than Frederic Chopin was credited with saying at one time, that “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar – save, perhaps, two…”. Despite such impressive recommendations, only a handful of people took up Caprice Arts’ invitation to hear a concert of music for (mostly) guitars and for guitar and voice, given by songwriter and performer Charlotte Yates, along with guitarists Owen Moriarty and Christopher Hill, in the Congregational Church along Wellington’s Cambridge Terrace. As with the previous week’s concert with Peter and Mary Barber and Annabel Cheetham, the venue and the small attendance suited the intimate nature of the music and the music-making, but part of one couldn’t help but wish for greater audience numbers and a rather larger-scaled “ebb-and-flow” between performers and listeners.

Charlotte Yates began the programme and immediately invited those of us who were there to “come and sit closer”, a gesture which warmed the ambience and drew us all more closely into the proceedings. She sang three songs from a recent CD “Beggar’s Choice”, the first a ballad-like song “Under Black Water”, reminiscent of Joan Baez’s way with similar repertoire, and a second song “Lost – Blue”, a love-song lamenting the end of a relationship, the emotional angst of the piece expressed by astringent vocals and syncopated rhythms. A third song used words by NZ poet Hone Tuwhare, a poem entitled “Mad”, Charlotte Yates bringing out the heavy beat of the poem’s pulse in her setting, and again using syncopated accents for expressive effect – I had trouble catching the words at times, due to the almost orchestral weight of tones and timbres the singer drew from her guitar.

Owen Moriarty and Christopher Hill began their first-half bracket of items with a contemporary work, Andrew York’s “Sanzen-in”, a piece inspired by the composer’s visiting a temple in Japan, The music had a kind of canonic feeling, accentuated by the exchanges between the instruments, everything beautifully and subtly voiced. Interestingly the sounds weren’t pentatonic, and so avoided any feeling of pastiche, bringing out what seemed an inward, individual response to the experience by the composer. We were then whisked a good half-a-world away to the Iberian peninsular, and to Isaac Albeniz’s evocation of “Sevilla”, played here at a quick, challenging tempo, but with tremendously adroit articulation, the players negotiating the many little touches of rubato with near-perfect ensemble, apart from a momentary hiccup at the reprise of the opening section. Next were two pieces by Piazolla, the first, “Zita”, a transcription of a piece for larger ensemble, featuring a spiky opening with astringent harmonics and syncopated accents, and in places generating terrific momentum. The second piece “Whisky” was a scherzo-like dance movement, woven of gossamer thread at the opening, digging into a more trenchant middle section, and then quixotically going into a kind of “twilight zone” of deep thought, before gradually reawakening and revitalising the textures and rhythms. Most entertaining.

Charlotte Yates returned after the interval with two more songs from the “Beggar’s Choice” CD, performing these with the engaging informality that one would perhaps encounter in a club or a bar. Described as a “gentle pop” number, the first song delineates a fruitless search somewhere in Spain for a flamenco club, while the following “Blood Red Moon” in classic ballad style, described the effect of the previous year’s lunar eclipse – a stirring number , delivered with great panache and whimsy, of all of her performances, the one I responded to the most readily and pleasurably.

The Guitar Duo took up the reins for the concert’s remainder, beginning with a piece honouring a composer written by another composer – Radames Gnatali from Brazil paid homage to his composer-peers in a four-movement suite, each part dedicated to a colleague or mentor or inspirational figure. Here, the Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth was honoured with a movement entitled “Valsa”, a piece that began with attractive flourishes and introductory gesturings, before leaning into a waltz-rhythm with a lovely, sinuous melody. Contrasts were afforded by exciting accelerandi and occasional breathtaking sotto voce voicings, the ensemble between the two players, supple, flexible and tensile throughout, bringing off the piece’s ending with winning poise and elegance. Perhaps the most popularly well-known composer for guitar is Joachim Rodrigo, whose “Tonadilla” was next played, a work written for the husband-and-wife guitar duo of Alexander Lagoya and Ida Presti, names I remembered from my early days of record-collecting. This was a wonderful piece, engaging and wide-ranging across three movements – a scherzo-like beginning with pinging “wrong-note” harmonies, a “Minuetto Pomposo” whose droll rhythms give way to a baritonal trio melody spiked by ascerbic chords, and a concluding allegro vivace, a deceptively lazy beginning setting the scene for more astringent harmonic clashes and declamatory posturings, everything nicely “debunked” by the return of the attractively relaxed trajectory of the music.

Another well-known Spanish composer is, of course, Manuel de Falla, whose Spanish Dance from “La Vida Breve” figures in all kinds of instrumental arrangements, but works beautifully for two guitars. This was a more restrained, less overtly macho “take” on the music which I thought brought out a more volatile and elusive quality, the notes flickering like firelight, and the tones not so much threatening in places as strong and certain, but with a sense of power in reserve. Finally we were given another Brazilian work, “Jongo”, by Paulo Bellinati, a piece whose “game-of-chase” aspect between the instruments and occasional percussive effects (quite elaborate at one point) provided a brilliant and entertaining finale to the programme. After such guitaristic fireworks, the Duo generously played an encore to settle our pulse rates, a lovely “Evening Dance” by Andrew York, whose “American in Japan” piece we had already enjoyed in the programme’s first half. A pity more people weren’t present to witness this “triumph of the guitars”, fully living up to the sentiments expressed by the concert’s title.

Eugene Onegin straight from the heart…

Posted on by Peter Mechen

TCHAIKOVSKY – Eugene Onegin
an Opera in Three Acts
Libretto by the composer, after Pushkin

NBR New Zealand Opera
The Genesis Energy Season

Cast: Anna Leese (Tatyana) / William Dazeley (Eugene Onegin) / Roman Shulackoff
(Lensky) / Patricia Wright (Madame Larina) / Kirstie Darragh (Olga) / Martin Snell (Prince Gremin) / Wendy Doyle (Filipyevna) / Andrew Glover (Monsieur Triquet) / Roger Wilson  (Zaretsky)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus
Vector Wellington Orchestra
Conductor: Alexander Polianichko
Director: Patrick Nolan

St James Theatre, Wellington: 10th Oct 2009 to 17th Oct 2009

One of the loveliest of all operas, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, a setting of Pushkin’s tale of innocent ill-fated love, received a strongly-conceived and finely-executed production from NBR New Zealand Opera on the opening night of its 2009 Wellington season at the St.James Theatre. Its pivotal stage-figure was soprano Anna Leese in the role of Tatyana, the girl who at the story’s outset declares her love for the opera’s eponymous hero, and then, having been wounded by his rejection of her, marries someone else. For this role of Shakespearean range and depth a consummate artist is needed, and as a singer Anna Leese has developed into just that – throughout, her voice for me vividly evoked all of the various moods and developments of the character, every utterance recreating a young girl’s romantic dreaminess and impulsiveness at the story’s beginning, and a deepening of womanly understanding as the story’s tragedy unfolds.

Occasionally I thought her stage movement needed more fluidity, matching what the music was doing (parts of her well-known Letter Scene I thought too static, where she seemed confined by her writing desk, instead of spontaneously expressing with her movements what she was singing) – but her voice alone conveyed so much of what her character needed that such criticism seems quite ungracious. She conveyed to us all of her bitter disappointment and disillusionment at Onegin’s rejection of her, and went on to develop strength and resolve as a worldly-wise woman at the story’s end, as, after admitting to Onegin that she still loved him, she in turn spurns his belated declarations of love to her.

William Dazeley’s baritone provided a near-perfect foil for Leese’s Tatyana, with singing and acting that captured the essentials of Onegin’s character, his aloof charm and supercilious arrogance in the early part of the story, and his growing disillusionment with life and final despair at losing Tatyana forever at the opera’s thrilling denoument. This was great theatre, made possible by the sheer commitment shown by both singers to their roles, and underpinned by full-blooded playing from the Wellington Orchestra under Alexander Polianichko. Earlier in the story, where Dazeley’s Onegin was elegant and contained, Russian tenor Roman Shulackoff’s Lensky was all youthful ardour and boisterous spirits, readily demonstrating an impetuousness of manner that was to bring about his own tragic death at the hands of his friend.

As Olga, Kirstie Darragh sang winningly, though I thought her stage-character needed a bit more flirtatious spunk in order to convincingly drive her lover, Lensky, into the jealous rage that pulsated the story’s heart of darkness. By contrast Patricia Wright was superb in every way as Madame Larina, Tatyana’s mother; and convincing cameo roles were also taken by Wendy Doyle as the nurse, Andrew Glover as Monsieur Triquet, and Roger Wilson as Lensky’s duelling second, Zaretsky. A show-stopping appearance in Act Three was that of bass Martin Snell as Prince Gremin, his aria extolling the virtues of Tatyana, his young wife deeply sonorous and beautifully touching.

Occasionally the chorus was hampered by a stage set that crowded its movements, as in the Act Three Polonaise, where the use of chairs by the company did nothing except make the setting seem even more claustrophobic – though, as with the second-act Waltz, the movement  of the dancers gradually cleared the oppressive spaces and opened up the vistas. The Wellington Orchestra seemed to make heavy weather of parts of this score, and took time to “settle” under conductor Alexander Polianichko, with strings occasionally sounding unhappy in exposed passages and winds sometimes fallible in ensemble work – still, conductor and players got things together sufficiently to deliver the drama’s knockout punch in the final scene with thrilling impact, supporting the singers to the utmost.

The production had the virtue of recreating a scenario approximating to the work’s original conception, one which the audience had not a whit of trouble relating to or getting involved with. I occasionally found the visuals cast unduly on the dark and sombre side – the monolithic columns at times seemed more appropriate to something like “Aida” or Act Two of “Die Zauberflote” than to a Russian country estate – but in general I thought director Patrick Nolan did a wonderful job, working with Bernie Tan’s lighting to make creative use of the space and reflect the emotional complexities of the drama. A case in point was the work’s brief overture, during which Onegin was shown reflecting on his life and its troubles and complexities. For a first-timer’s encounter with the work, NZ Opera’s production must have been a great experience, and if not faultless in every respect, could hardly have been more satisfactorily or enjoyably presented by all concerned.

Blythe Press, violin, in Chausson, Prokofiev and Pärt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chausson: Poème, Op 25; Prokofiev: Five Melodies for violin and piano, Op 35b; Pärt: Fratres

Blythe Press (violin) and Emma Sayers (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 23 September 

Don’t ever overlook the lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s! Of course, they vary widely, in genre, between instruments and voices and sometimes other things, in musical experience and skill, but more often than not, there’s a real treat in store.  

Every so often a concert comes along that deserves a much bigger crowd and perhaps a more prestigious venue, though that’s a factor I fight; for one thing, it is being used as a principal criterion by The Dominion Post for publishing music reviews, with some unfortunate results.

Wednesday the 23rd was a special one.

I’ve been observing Blythe Press, violinist from the Kapiti Coast, since he was a notable performer in the Schools Chamber Music Contests. After starting studies at Victoria University he gained sufficient awards to enable him to complete a music degree at Graz, in Austria. His record of competition triumphs is already, at 20, impressive.  

I fancy this is my first hearing of Chausson’s Poème, in the piano version. It sounds so different, with the violin standing tonally more distinct when accompanied by the piano (I cannot find a piano arrangement listed in Chausson’s entry in New Grove or on the Internet: it must be a publisher’s arrangement).

Yet its warm romantic spirit remained intact in the hands of these two players; nothing sentimental, or exaggerated, but rather, taste, sincerity of expression, and a considerable technique – I mean of both players – that was unobtrusive, and at the disposal of the music. It consists of several short sections, thematically linked but varying in character, and each, even the somewhat light-weight section hinting at the salon, emerged with honesty, in this context.

Prokofiev’s Five Melodies are a surprising product of the composer’s years of exile, this written in California. No hint of the wild young man of forbidding dissonance and ferocious technical demands, these pieces are to enjoy, and their choice could well serve to remind listeners that not all music after the first World War sought to poke the audience in the eye.

Yet they are by no means child’s play, though Press made them sound fairly plain-sailing. Nevertheless, the melodies would hardly have arisen in the imaginations of earlier composers, such is the strong personality of Prokofiev’s music and Press negotiated all the writhing, complex lines.  

Prokofiev is not a composer to be in the proximity of, say, some of his English contemporaries, who might sound flaccid and insipid in the same room (are my prejudices showing?). The playing of both musicians was arresting and their virtually flawless and riveting performances simply held the audience – bigger than normal – spell-bound.

As if two small masterpieces were not enough, the pair then played what has become one of the best–loved chamber pieces of the past 30 years. Fratres is an extraordinary piece in several ways, one being its non-specific instrumentation; its original incarnation was for string quintet and wind quintet, but the version played here is one of the most effective, allowing its clear musical character to emerge independent of the crutch of colourful combinations. Press’s fast opening cross-string arpeggios established his authority at once, and with the emphatic piano chords, a wonderfully gripping experience held the audience. The mystic passages that followed evoked the monastic atmosphere that Pärt sought, monks moving about dark gothic aisles, and finally the piano chords punctuating the violin’s great oratorical statement, were so impressively and movingly expressed by these two instruments.

Jenny Wollerman at Wanganui Spring Festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The vocal parts of The Wanganui Spring Music Festival (intended for publishing n New Zealand Opera News)

Five concerts by Jenny Wollerman (soprano), Murray Khouri (clarinet), Simone Roggen (violin), Edith Salzmann (cello), Petya Mihlova and Phillip Shovk (piano)

Royal Wanganui Opera House

Saturday 12 to Monday 14 September 2009

This review may be very belated; and it was not an opera festival, but because it was a rather important initiative which could in future encompass opera (perhaps in association with the regular January New Zealand Opera School), it report is justified.

At this first festival the vocal aspect was represented by operatic soprano Jenny Wollerman.

It happened in one of New Zealand’s most charming old opera houses, a wooden building dating from 1899, familiar to many opera-lovers who attend the concerts of the Opera School.

Nelson has been New Zealand’s top classical music festival town since 1992; next to Nelson as a festival candidate is Wanganui: its history; its river, a good museum, one of the country’s best art galleries, it was spared the worst impacts of 1980s growth with many century-old buildings (though too many are still being lost), and of course there’s the 1899 opera theatre.

Wellington clarinetist Murray Khouri has been running a small, successful chamber music festival in Bowra, a small town south west of Sydney.

A year or so ago Murray decided to try a similar festival in a comparable New Zealand town. Wanganui seemed to have the necessary attributes. The sort of town that, in the northern hemisphere at least, appeals to festival crowds.

Though this first one failed to attract the crowds it deserved, particularly from the city itself, perseverance will pay off.

Naturally, the festival was dominated by chamber music, splendidly played by the top-line artists assembled, including Khouri himself, particularly striking in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

There were five concerts over the weekend, The players were three New Zealanders, an Australian, a Bulgarian and a German resident in New Zealand; Every concert held something special.

Wellington soprano Jenny Wollerman is too little heard in her home town; many of the songs that she sang in her recital, by Mozart and Schubert, were familiar but the experience of hearing them sung with such intelligence and charm, and so delicately accompanied by young Bulgarian Petya Mihneva was like hearing them for the first time.

The Mozart programme was a striking demonstration of the composer’s role in the creation of the German Lied tradition, to show that Schubert did not emerge from nowhere, but that the ‘through-composed’ song that Schubert mastered, existed in a song like Das Veilchen. If Abendempfindung was one of her most beautiful performances, the most striking was the passionate ‘Als Luise’ (K520).

But her programme also showed Mozart as predecessor of the French mélodie, with ‘Oiseaux, si tous les ans’ and ‘Dans un bois solitaire’ (which I heard later, in the Adam Festival in Nelson, from Swedish mezzo Catrin Johnsson). French song was slower to develop because there was no Schubert in France at the time; but a decade or so later Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été was the catalyst (pity he didn’t write as many as Schubert).

Jenny’s evident aim was to show Mozart’s polyglot character, and her recital concluded with a couple of Italian songs: ‘Ridente la calma’ and ‘Un moto di gioia’, which at once seemed to adopt the colour of the contemporary Italian opera.

The Schubert half of the programme likewise showed Wollerman’s characteristic intellectual curiosity. After that most gorgeous of all songs, An die Musik, which she lit with seductive, complementary body-movement, there was delight, pensiveness (with ‘Du bist die Ruh’), passion, engaging narrative (Die Einsame) and simple pleasure in the familiar Die Forelle and Gretchen am Spinnrade.

Though this first festival could have been better supported, it will surprise me if Wanganui’s attractions and the chance to hear top-rate musicians in great and beautiful music does not bring much bigger audiences in future. Make a diary note for next year’s festival!.

 

The Tudor Consort – an afternoon of choral filigree

Posted on by admin

J.S.BACH – The Six Motets BWV 225-230

Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Saturday September 12 2009

Review by Anna McGregor

Seats were scarce at St Andrews on the Terrace on Saturday afternoon as the Tudor Consort presented their programme of six motets attributed to J.S. Bach. Admired by generations of musicians, these works have been described as ‘a pinnacle of absolute vocal music’, and greatly influenced the choral music of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms. This was a rare opportunity to experience all six works in succession and provided the listener with a unique platform to compare the facets of each.

Under the direction of Michael Stewart, the Tudor Consort produced a well-blended and clean sound, successfully negotiating highly demanding vocal lines with stamina. The 21-strong ensemble split into two antiphonal choirs for the first half of the programme, opening with Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225), accompanied by Douglas Mews on chamber organ and Emma Goodbeheere on baroque cello. The balance and colour between the choirs was well matched, enabling the ensemble to smoothly interplay during alternating passages. Unfortunately the continuo was often overwhelmed – subtleties of articulation and timbre may have become more apparent with the addition of a small string section.

The group re-united in the second half for the centrepiece of the programme, Jesu, meine Freude (BWV 227) with soloists Anna Sedcoe, Erin King, Andrea Cochrane, Richard Taylor and Richard Walley emerging from within the ensemble. Almost in defiance of its conception as a funeral motet, this is a colourful and highly emotive masterpiece as well as a gauntlet of textural demands for any ensemble. The Tudor Consort shifted with ease and breadth of expression between highly contrapuntal fugues to reduced chamber sections to strident but lyrical chorales.

What better way to spend an afternoon than fully immersed in Bach – credit to the Tudor Consort for fantastic programming and a very fine performance.

Wellington Regional Aria Contest: Dame Malvina Major Prize

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

Wellington Regional Aria Contest Final: Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society; Adjudicator: Angela Gorton. Finalists: Rose Blake, Kieran Rayner, Amelia Berry, Elitsa Kappatos, Olga Gryniewicz. Pianists: Catherine McKay and Emily Mair

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Sunday 23 August 2009

In recent years what used to be the Aria Contest of the Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society has struggled to survive. For many years it was The Evening Post Aria, but after The Dominion and The Evening Post merged in 2002, the paper dispensed with that responsibility. It has now been taken under the wing of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation and the first prize is now a generous $4000.

That being so, it was surprising that there were only five entrants to the aria competition, compared with more than 20 in some earlier years. There was a clash with the aria contest in Dunedin and there were other apparently competing events that prevented many singers from other parts of the country from taking part this year.

The adjudicator was Angela Gorton. The accompanist Catherine Norton who gave the most sensitive support to all but one of the singers; Emily Mair accompanied Kieran Rayner.

All singers were between 20 and 22 years of age, and all but one of them had appeared in the New Zealand School of Music’s production of Semele.

The first contestant was Rose Blake who was the alternate Semele. She chose Marzelline’s aria from Fidelio, ‘O wär ich schon mit dir vereint’. It is usually hard to take the first position in such a contest and nervousness and probably inadequate warming up affected her voice which, though proving quite strong, was tight and her phrasing uneven. It was no surprise that her second aria, ‘I’ll take no less’, from Semele, found her in much better shape, more practised and confident in her gestures as a result of the stage experience.

Kieran Rayner, who had sung the role of Athamus in Semele, made a singular impression at once, singing the aria ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähne’ from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, letting the audience realize that there’s more to it that the familiar Marietta’s Lied. He showed a naturally attractive voice, with comfortable delivery, never under pressure. His second aria showed similar accomplishment, from a contrasting opera style, Ambroise Thomas ‘other’ opera, Hamlet: ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ (not something that you’ll find in the Shakespeare version). He sang with flair, in good French, his rhythm, phrasing and dynamics all under fine discipline. I had no doubt that he would be hard to beat in this small field.

Amelia Berry was the Semele that I saw on the opening night but she refrained from making use of that experience. She sang the charming, lyrical aria ‘Ruhe sanft’ from Mozart’s unfinished opera Zaïde and later, ‘Una voce poco fa’ from The Barber of Seville. She failed to articulate the top notes in the Mozart; perhaps her choice had taken her out of her natural register, or perhaps it was simply nerves. So I was not surprised with a more comfortable performance of her Rossini, lying a little lower though with more bravura, which she carried off with agility and accuracy. In this it was easier to gauge the quality of her voice, and I thought she might win one of the prizes.

Elitsa Kappatos did not have a role in Semele. Though she chose pieces that are very familiar, pieces that make considerable demands, her performances were creditable. ‘O mio babbino caro’ was a little shrill, but her intonation was accurate and she made a nice personal impression. She gave herself every advantage in the Habanera from Carmen, with an appropriate costume, she refrained from excessive gestures, yet carried off the confident, strong-willed, mezzo role with a certain flair.

Olga Gryniewicz had made a vivid impression in Semele, as Iris, and she chose one of her main arias in the contest: ‘Endless pleasure’. It was a shade less striking here, removed from the theatrical setting, the line a little too staccato, and her voice monochrome. But she did well to tackle Norina’s fine, coloratura aria from Don Pasquale, ‘Quel guardo il cavaliere’. Her voice coped with its high, airy, innocent character, her Italian was good, and rhythmic sense – rubato – well cultivated. She draws attention as a spunky, characterful singer; but an underlying strain is audible, reflecting a voice production difficulty.

Nevertheless, I had thought she would get a mention among the prize winners.

Angela Gorton awarded the Dame Malvina Major Foundation prize and the prize for the singer displaying the most consistent standard, as well as the Jenny Wollerman award for the best song or aria in French to Amelia Berry. Kieran Rayner was given the Rokfire Cup for the most outstanding singer in the senior vocal class and the Robin Dumbell Cup for the singer with the most potential. In effect he was runner-up.

Finally, I must draw attention to the longstanding devotion to the aria contest’s survival by its almost single-handed manager, Betty Bennett, for the Hutt Valley Competitions Society. It is high time that others concerned with singing in Wellington took a share of the responsibility for the contest. Contests may not be favoured in certain quarters but they still represent, in a career that is based in public performance, an important way to gain attention in a frighteningly competitive scene.

Let us remember that Wellington’s own competitions society collapsed in the 1970s; since then the society in the Hutt Valley has filled the gap. It must not be allowed to stumble.

Pia Palme – Austrian Connections from Caprice Arts

Posted on by Alan Wells

Pia Palme (contrabass recorder), Dylan Lardelli (guitar), Bridget Douglas (piccolo), Ben Hoadley (bassoon), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Donald Nicolson (piano), Philip Brownlee (synthesizer), Niky Clegg (vocalist).
SOREN EICHBERG: “4 Pieces for Bassoon and Piano”;
PIA PALME: “AXE.WHO.TREE”, “Noneuclidian Playgrounds”;
DANIEL DE LA CUESTA: “Fachwerk”;
PHILIP BROWNLEE: “The Length of a Breath”, “As if to Catch the Fleeting Tail of Time”;
MICHAEL NORRIS: “Amato”;
JACK BODY: “Aeolian Harp”;
THIERRY BLONDEAU: “Non-Lieu”.

Salvation Army Citadel, Friday 14 August 2009

This concert organized by the enterprising Caprice Arts Trust featured an adventurous array of contemporary music.

At the more conservative, conscientiously-constructed end of the spectrum, Denmark’s Soren Nils Eichberg’s “4 Pieces for Bassoon and Piano” effectively showcased the artistry of their commissioner, New Zealander Ben Hoadley. Much of the first piece involved the bassoon in a dialogue with itself across its different registers, from deep and mellow to high and plaintive. The second was a lively unison dance for both instruments. In the third, the piano set up a stalking funeral march beneath the bassoon’s lugubrious lament, while the fourth was rather like a busy “Bumblebee” for bassoon.

Towards the opposite extreme, Austrian Pia Palme’s “AXE.WHO.TREE” employed almost all the available resources to create a complex, changing sonic environment which included water-like electronic sounds, minimalistic piano chords, and the vocal agility of Niky Clegg. The result had something of the feel of free improvisation (a little too much so for my taste).

Palme is not only a composer: the Viennese virtuoso also plays the contrabass recorder. Her Swiss-made Kueng instrument, standing at over two metres tall, resembles nothing so much as an orphan organ pipe (and the organ is, after all, basically just a consort of recorders with delusions of grandeur). This modern adaptation of a medieval prototype is perhaps the most recent addition to the woodwind sub-bass range, joining some (less common) members of the saxophone family, the more established contrabassoon and contrabass clarinet, and (from the 1980s) the contrabass flute. The soft sound of the instrument benefits from discreet amplification, which makes it ideal for use with electronics. Palme’s other composition (a premiere), “Noneuclidian Playgrounds”, included guitar and electronic transformation of the giant recorder, and progressed to hatch a surprising drum-beat rhythm at the end.

The contrabass recorder was heard to good effect in the solo “Fachwerk”, from the Mexican-Austrian Daniel De la Cuesta. A strict palindrome, it began (and, of course, ended) with the “pizzicato” effects of tonguing, developing into a high-register melody with a low pitched accompaniment, and on to a pivotal core of multiphonics and organ-like depth.

Wellingtonian Philip Brownlee’s 2009 “The Length of a Breath” showed another side of the contrabass recorder, challenging Palme to produce exquisitely soft, mellow notes over the wide range of the instrument. Along with his other premiere in this concert, “The Length of a Breath” marked a welcome return to composition for Brownlee. Also written this year was the even more impressive “As if to Catch the Fleeting Tail of Time” for an ensemble of piccolo, bassoon, viola, guitar and piano. Here Brownlee’s timeless world of carefully placed gestures, unsuspected colour blends, and delicate Webernian klangfarbenmelodie distributed among the players, was enough (just) to sustain one’s interest, despite any perceivable thrust of forward momentum. (One intriguing technique was a microtonal scale achieved by successively plucking a guitar string while simultaneously pitch-bending it.)

Another premiere from another Wellingtonian was Michael Norris’s 2008 “Amato”. As sensitively rendered by pianist Donald Nicolson, this proved one of Norris’s most immediately attractive works to date, as it evolved from its rarefied opening to gradually fill the keyboard space out to its extremities, on towards a fortissimo explosion, and then to a mysterious close.

Jack Body’s “Aeolian Harp” from 1979 is almost a classic, in its versions for violin or cello. Somewhat rarer was the recension for solo viola performed by Nicholas Hancox. A study in harmonics, this piece evoked a wind-harp playing the most primordial of all scales.

“Non-Lieu” by French composer Thierry Blondeau also began as an essay in harmonics, expertly elicited (in rapid-fire staccato) from the guitar, by Dylan Lardelli. Further techniques introduced within this ingenious (if overlong) composition included live detuning with the tuning pegs, closely-beating intervals, and, during Lardelli’s theatrical exit (reflecting the interest in the use of space found also in Blondeau’s piece for a “moving chamber orchestra”), swinging the guitar to produce Doppler-effected pitch changes.

Pinchas and Players – Wellington’s Zukerman Experience

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Pinchas Zukerman (violin) / Jessica Linnebach (violin)
Jethro Marks (viola) / Ashan Pillai (viola)
Amanda Forsythe (‘cello)

KODALY – Duo for violin and ‘cello Op.7
BEETHOVEN – String Quintet in C Op.29
DVORAK – String Quintet in E-flat Op.97

Wellington Town Hall, Wednesday 12th August 2009

Known primarily as one of the world’s top virtuoso violinists, Pinchas Zukerman has also developed a reputation as a chamber musician, firstly in association with Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pre on recordings of music by Beethoven; and more lately with a group formed by the violinist in 2002, the Zukerman Chamber Players. Here in New Zealand for the first time to take part in “The Zukerman Experience”, the NZSO’s latest concert series, Pinchas Zukerman is also on tour with his group for Chamber Music New Zealand, taking with them two programmes nationwide. Wellington concertgoers heard the first of these programmes at the Town Hall on Wednesday evening.

In the programme, a quote from English critic David Denton summed up fairly what we heard from the group, with their programme of Kodaly, Beethoven and Dvorak – Denton talked about the Players’ “self-effacing musicianship never standing between the listener and the composer”, a sentiment which seemed to be echoed in the comments of people I spoke with who had also attended the concert. I would agree entirely, while at the same time wondering why on some occasions this self-effacement on the part of performers, often set up as an ideal by connoisseurs and critics, can in fact short-change the musical experience. In relative terms, the performances throughout by the Group were extremely classy; and in at least one instance, that of the Kodaly Duo, I felt thoroughly caught up with the music-making, finding the performers’ engagement with the sounds an enthralling experience. Elsewhere, I felt one step removed, as it were, as if a gloss or a sheen had been applied to the beautifully-finished product, keeping me in the bystander realms, the “spectator-line” in front of the art-work placed a little too far back, as it were.

So, what was different about the performance of the Kodaly Duo that engaged me to an extent that made the experience a stand-out one? First of all, there was a sense, right from the first note, that both Zukerman and his ‘cellist partner, Amanda Forsythe, were living the music – the interplay between them was palpable, the authoritative, “digging-in” opening giving way to a wonderful sense of the players exploring the sound-spaces and stimulating each other’s sensibilities, both using pizzicato motifs to goad the other into responses both of the utmost delicacy and beguiling richness. Then there was the sheer variation of tone-colour, gossamer figurations set by turns alongside full-blooded outpourings, the sounds at times resembling that of a string orchestra, the cellist with simple arpeggiations ravishing our senses with the glorious tones of her instrument.

The slow movement featured song-like sweetness at the outset, but with a central section whose character was almost surreal, as if a gentle dream had suddenly been hijacked by phobia-ridden angst, the tensions gradually melting-down with lovely Aeolian-harp-like strummings from the ‘cellist, and rapt responses from her duo partner. The finale began gloriously, with Zukerman and Forsythe generating an exultant, rhapsodising mood, then plunging into the dance, alternating dark, earthy Hungarian rhythms with more stratospheric flights of fancy, the episodes growing out of one another. I got the feeling that both musicians were throwing themselves into the intricacies of interaction and contrast that the music affords, with a wonderfully adrenalin-led burst of energy at the coda, leaving behind the concert-hall ethos and revelling in a richly-detailed out-of-doors spirit that left us exhilarated.
After these intense out-of-door explorations, the Beethoven Quintet seemed to inhabit another world of sensibility altogether. At first I liked the contrast set up by the more “orchestral” feel of the ensemble, but as the work progressed I began to miss in the playing that sense of involvement with the music that Zukerman and Forsythe had exhibited so tellingly during the Kodaly. Throughout the first movement I kept wanting the ensemble to “dig in” a little more to the string textures, perhaps at a slower, more “pointed” tempo. Interesting that I found the work as a whole somewhat reined in considering that the same composer at this time (1801) was working on other,  more revolutionary pieces that were challenging classical norms and structures in different genres such as the piano sonata (the Op.27 Sonatas, and the “Pastoral”).

I liked the contrasts afforded by the slow movement, the development section “breaking out” from the constraints of the opening, and the players nicely catching the humour of the “false ending”, at what seems like a concluding cadence suddenly plunging back into the turmoil, before slowly restoring a sense of calm. But contrary to the programme note’s description of the Beethoven finale as “pure drama”, I thought the ensemble brought out the music’s urbanity and elegance more than any kind of elemental connections. Detail was beautifully filled in, from the elfin ambience of the tremolando accompaniment at the opening, to the deftest of violinistic touches from Zukerman himself in the more withdrawn Andante episodes; while the Players obviously revelled in the music’s pacy minor-key sections, delivering the notes with plenty of snap and polish, and nicely contrasting the polarities of activity and circumspection throughout. Still, for me, the impression remained of a performance that never really “let go”, so that the Beethoven we were presented with remained a drawing-room composer, albeit an interesting and occasionally surprising one.
The Dvorak Quintet is justly regarded as one of the great glories of the chamber-music repertoire for string instruments – and in a sense, Zukerman and his Players performed it like that, with beautifully-modulated tones and tight rhythmic control throughout, allowing the work’s greatness as an absolute piece of music to shine through, even if there were no folk-singers intoning the tunes and clogs stamping to the rhythms. If my bias extends towards a performance ethos of this kind of music that makes earthier connections than we heard from these musicians, I’m not denying the virtuosity and beauty of tone that emanated from the Wellington Town Hall stage throughout. The musicians gave full-throated voice to the work’s lyrical opening, and expertly spun the syncopated rhythms of the ensuing allegro. Brilliant though their playing of the scherzo was, I missed the chunky “folk-fiddle” ambiences of my mind’s ear, and thought some of the music’s character had been ever-so-slightly dulled with too generalised a response. The Players came into their own with the hymn-like measures of the slow movement, lines gorgeously intertwined, and contrasting sections beautifully characterised, the ‘cello-playing from Amanda Forsythe always ear-catching, especially in the major-minor contrasts of some of the movement’s variations.

The work’s finale bottoms out a bit compared with the other three movements, its contrasting rondo-like episodes needing strong characterisation to provide sufficient contrast with the all-pervasive jig-rhythms of the principal theme. I thought the ensemble gave the music plenty of energy, but didn’t sufficiently “colour” the contrasts enough for there to be a real sense of “homecoming” at the return of the jig-like rhythm each time. But the movement’s conclusion was exhilarating, with dotted rhythms giving way to triplets and building the excitement towards the last, grand lyrical statement – and even if this was delivered more with drive and rhythmic purpose than full-throated joy, the excitement kept us buoyed up right to the end.
Pinchas Zukerman and his Players responded to the warmth of the audience’s appreciation with a movement from a work in the group’s “other” programme, the Andante movement from the Mendelssohn B-flat String Quintet, a supremely elegant coda to an absorbing evening’s music-making.

NZSO: Melnikov with Brahms, Wigglesworth with Britten

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Sinfonia da Requiem (Britten), Symphony No 90 in C (Haydn), Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15 (Brahms)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Wigglesworth with Alexander Melnikov (piano)

Michael Fowler Centre, Friday 17 July 2009

Mark Wigglesworth’s is a name that has been conspicuous on the European scene for a couple of decades: a visit to New Zealand has been long awaited. Alexander Melnikov is younger (though he played with the NZSO in 2001) but his live performances and recordings have already gained him a prominent place among the pianists of our time.

Brahms’s First Piano Concerto has the scale and substance of a symphony which is why it took the place usually accorded to ‘the big symphony’ in the second half; written before he was 25, it has imposing structural strength and speaks with a weight that seems mature far beyond his years; it seems an even more profound work than his second concerto written 20 years later.

Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem opened the concert, and the reaction of several friends after the performance was: ‘How come I’ve taken so long to discover this major symphonic work’. Why indeed, when there are really so few generally accepted great symphonies written in the last 70 years, isn’t it in the regular repertoire? It doesn’t have all the formal trappings of a symphony in the 19th century sense, but it is an extended work though not long in clock time, with three movements of varying mood and shape; interesting things happen, singular sounds arise at every turn, developments that stack up with the most cultivated processes in the symphonic tradition.

A commission from the Japanese Government on the eve of the Second World War when Britten was in America, the symphony was, in any terms, a strange and naïve response on his part.  Who could have thought a Christian Requiem suitable for celebrating the 2600th anniversary of the imperial Japanese dynasty? Was it some kind of adolescent try-on? One wonders whether, if he had written this music, inspired by the same ideas, but had simply called it an Imperial Symphony, or something, with no religious reference, it would have been happily accepted.

Incidentally, it was commissioned and written in 1940, but rejected as an insult to the Emperor, a year before Pearl Harbour. The programme note’s statement is misleading, referring to its performance – implying the first – at Boston in 1942 (after Pearl Harbour); it was first performed in New York on 30 May 1941 (before Pearl Harbour).

On this occasion at least, its overt character – in memory of his recently deceased parents – was an appropriate reason for the performance to be dedicated to the memory of Seddon Bennington who had died in the Tararuas a few days before. For that, the start of the first movement – Lacrymosa – with terrifying timpani hammerings was powerfully expressive, with alternating cries from bass instruments, then a passage of lamenting underpinned by a funereal tread. First I have to remark how different, and more histrionic, was this performance than those of Britten himself conducting in either of my two LPs: first, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra (1953) and, much more vividly, the New Philharmonia (1964).

And speaking of recordings, it’s a pity the orchestra hadn’t waited for Wigglesworth before committing a performance to a rather ordinary recording for Naxos a few years ago.

Who knows whether Britten would have approved some aspects of the highly coloured, muscular performance by the NZSO? For Wigglesworth the music was driven by intense emotion that created an overwhelming impact.  The large and virtuoso forces were well used: six horns, two harps, an E flat saxophone, an important piano part. It was in fact the first time, after Our Hunting Fathers of 1936 for voice and quite large orchestra, that Britten had employed the full resources of a big symphony orchestra, and his command is remarkable. I recall Christopher Palmer commenting that virtuoso orchestral writing of this kind – he referred to both Our Hunting Fathers and the Sinfonia – was unknown in England at this time. Whatever else he may have felt about the Japanese, Britten must have assumed that a first rate orchestra was available.

The second movement, Dies Irae, starts echoing the galloping ride to Hell at the end of La damnation de Faust – perhaps he was aware of the omnipresence of the Dies Irae plainchant in Berlioz’s work: it was all highly energised. And at the other extreme; there’s a sleazy saxophone passage, and increasing chaos, hinting at the finale of Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony with its hard hitting xylophone rifle-fire. But Stravinsky is also there.

The last movement, Requiem Aeternam, is dominated by a calm lamenting that suggests a sea-scape such as Britten later created in Peter Grimes, a long, quite exquisitely played passage with harp, flute, bassoon and other solo instruments creating a magical atmosphere that was slowly dispersed as the conductor crept towards a restrained crescendo of calm grandeur.

I hope it left the audience, as it did me, with the conviction that here is a 20th century masterpiece whose beauty and power needs no apology whatsoever.

The programming of a little-known Haydn symphony – No 90 – was an odd move and the 200th anniversary of his death was not really sufficient justification for a work that hardly persuaded us of its unjust neglect, in spite of a scintillating performance. Peter Walls’s interesting programme note made as good a case for it as possible, but even with my strong predisposition in favour of Haydn, I did not find its interest level very great, in terms of melody or of melodic development, falling short in a feeling of musical substance, and of old-fashioned emotional response. The string playing was always piquant and the theme and variations in the slow movement offered attractive opportunities for wind players, though there was the odd fluff in the brass.

But more than anything, it seems to depend on Haydn’s penchant for throwing down false trails. That was its character well before the practical jokes in the last movement where twice a closing cadence fooled the audience into premature clapping. The shapes of phrases in the first movement were teasingly off-centre, and the Minuetto had ended in typical mid-sentence. So we should have been prepared for another, different, game in the last movement, but most of us were not.

When there is so little Haydn being played in his anniversary year (what a contrast with the Mozart over-kill in 1991!), something more indisputably great or really worth discovering was called for; perhaps one of the best London symphonies or a genuinely interesting one from his Sturm und Drang period would have better fitted the bill.

The Brahms concerto was a thoroughly authentic, grandly dramatic reading, not just on the part of the piano but also from the orchestra, which the conductor electrified right from the overpowering first attack from timpani and bass instruments, and through the long introduction that asserted the orchestra’s place as the more than equal partner of the piano.

When Melnikov made his discreet, self-effacing entry after three and a half minutes, it was almost with trepidation, doing nothing to deflect attention from the orchestra’s command of the music’s grandeur. But he was soon contributing his own stentorian double octave scales to the fabric that the orchestra had already described.

That was not to say that the orchestra dominated the scene, for the conductor’s obvious solicitude for the pianist’s careful rubatos and tempo changes allowed Melnikov a full share in the symphonic drama that this mighty canvas pungently unfolds across its fifty minute span. In the several quasi cadenzas Melnikov took his time, particularly in the spacious and lovely Adagio. There, often with beautiful partnering from oboe or horns; his right hand created delicate, luminous traceries, against murmuring strings.

One remembered that this movement was really a romantic message to pianist Clara Schumann, who, after Robert’s death in 1856, presumably invited a willing Brahms to continue to be a close friend, helping to look after domestic affairs and the children.

The last movement offered more conventional scope to pianist as virtuoso, running into big romantic cadenzas, adorning pretty wind passages with delicate piano figures, articulated with great clarity; and then relishing the decorative, keyboard-long runs. The orchestra (nearly) always kept in step with the deceptively tricky rhythms, though there were a couple of points when, in the midst of a fortissimo climax involving virtually everything on the stage, I wondered whether pianist and conductor were flying blind, in an aural sense. .

Aivale meets Leontyne ‘n Ella

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Leontyne ‘n’ Ella: two legends, one voice 

Aivale Cole (soprano) and David Wickens (piano) 

Town Hall, Thursday 16 July 2009 

Winning the Lexus Song Quest propelled Aivale Cole towards a career in England, and the money will help. But it takes a lot more and so this concert was a ‘benefit concert’ in all but name (see www.aivale.com). 

Eight big opera arias in the first half (Leontyne Price), and ten (including an encore) jazz and Broadway items in the second (Ella Fitzgerald). 

Aivale made her dramatic entrance with the two arias that clinched the Song Quest: Rintorna vincitor from Aida with every ounce of anguish at the hideous dilemma she is presented with at the opera’s start, and Es gibt ein Reich from Ariadne auf Naxos, where Ariadne not just pines for but demands death, her voice leaping huge, spine-tingling intervals with pin-point accuracy, commanding the entire hall with her ferocious emotion. 

So it continued, with a self-pitying Vissi d’arte (Tosca), a violence, suppressed with white-knuckled rage in Elvira’s Mi Tradi from Don Giovanni, and the fierce loyalty that Fiordiligi swears in Come scoglio (Cosi fan tutte) like I’ve never heard before. And the opera section ended, not with the usual pretty Summertime from Porgy and Bass, but the despairing My man’s gone now.  

The second half began as she walked up an aisle, for a triumphant performance of what is little more than a ditty: A Trisket a tasket (though an Ella one, to be sure). It became a hilarious party piece, with the help of pianist Wickham.  She threw herself into Cole Porter’s Too Darn Hot, rauchiness nothing daunted; I loved her voluptuous low notes in the Arlen/Mercer Come rain or come shine; the comic flair, brilliantly understated, in To keep my love alive and her relishing the verbal wit of It’s delovely – another Porter classic.  

Her pianist David Wickham accompanied with a rare sympathy, his notes planted exquisitely, a fraction before or after Aivale’s. But it was surprising to realize that the odd resonance in the piano was the result of the quite unnecessary amplification. 

It was more acceptable in the second half which was the province of Ella Fitzgerald’s repertoire, where Aivale too used a microphone, though it actually constricted and nasalized her vocal quality. The unthinking use of amplification for popular music of all kinds always seems to me a sad succumbing to the uncultivated tastes of the young and the unlettered: Aivale put it aside for I had myself a true love, her last song, and it was fine. 

A great audience – the hall three-quarters full – celebrated her rise and vociferously wished her success.

(this review was printed, little changed, in The Dominion Post)