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Cantoris Choir resonant in Rutter and determined in Durufle….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Cantoris Choir presents:
DARK AND LIGHT
JOHN RUTTER – Gloria
MAURICE DURUFLE – Requiem

Cantoris Choir,
conducted by Thomas Nikora
with Jonathan Berkhan (organ)
and Samuel Berkhan (‘cello)

St,Peter’s-on-Willis Church, Wellington
Saturday, 9th September 2023

Two markedly different but satisfyingly complementary works were presented at St.Peter’s-on-Willis on Saturday night by Cantoris Choir, conducted by Thomas Nikora. The concert had been plagued with difficulties, due to various people’s unexpected incapacitation for various reasons, but the show went on in the time-honoured manner, to everybody’s great credit under the circumstances!

The first half consisted of John Rutter’s “Gloria”, which I had seen and heard  Cantoris perform before – in April of 2019, to be exact – a concert I remember had the choir in confident and vigorous form on that occasion. I’m presuming that tonight’s concert was affected by the difficulties alluded to above, though Thomas Nikora was able to steer his voices safely and sonorously through all but the most angular and demanding moments. Rutter’s three part work emphasised the joyousness of the text at the outset, Joinathan Berkahn’s organ-playing at the beginning setting the scene with a couple of majestic irruptions of sound and adding resonance to the choir’s opening unison “Gloria in Excelsis Deo”, I liked the composer’s differentiation between celestial splendour at the outset and the “more suitably earthbound” contrast with the humbler “et terra pax” , and also the jazzier return to the opening, with an emphasis upon the word “Deo” at the end.

Straight away the piping organ tones at the beginning of the next part reminded me of Christopher Smart’s cat Jeffrey, in Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb”. The voices rose with the words “Domine Deus Rex Caelestis” while the organ tripped merrily on, (in places the work almost had an “organ sonata with vocal obbligato” kind of effect!) before the vocal lines descended nicely with hushed tones at “Qui tollis peccata mundi”, including a “splinter group” of voices who had retreated to give an evocative  “cry from the wilderness” impression. Together with the words “Qui sedes ad Dextram Patris ”, the sweetly-intoned “Miserere nobis” hauntingly echoed to the end.

The vigorous opening of the finale, underpinned by the organ, featured the “Quoniam” with its repeated “tu solus” acclamations of “You alone” driving the music on, the phrase tossed about the choir with surety in preparation for the build-up to the “Cum Sanctu Spiritus” and leading on to the fugue-like Amens”, the dancing rhythms propelling everything forwards, conductor and singers finding more radiance as the music proceeded, if also showing the stain of Rutter’s insistent demands in places. However,  over the final pages of the work and concluding with the reprise of the “Gloria”. the voices acquitted themselves splendidly.

IN this world of two distinct halves the Durufle Requiem certainly occupied the darker side of the sphere as per the programme’s title, though the work itself certainly doesn’t take us to the same degree of Dante-esque terror via  theatrical and cataclysmic “Dies Irae” sequences, as did both Berlioz and Verdi in their respective “Requiems” – like the Durufle work’s “twin”, which is the Faure Requiem, the scenario presents the idea of faith as the “ultimate answer to the mystery of life after death” with the concluding “In Paradisum”, a sequence not used by either Berlioz or Verdi. Durufle’s work also differs from Faure’s in that the composer sought to replicate the style of Gregorian chant, rather than invent his own themes, as Faure did. Thus we are conscious all through Durufle’s work of the influence of the ancient chants, giving this Requiem a unique kind of character, at once a timeless and a universal sense of origin.

A great opening organ chord! – and straight away the Cantoris voices drew us into a world that at first seemed more like plainchant than in Faure’s eponymous work, with the men’s voices steadily intoning the “Requiem aeternam” – a lovely effect was the women’s voices floating over the top, the voices coming together beautifully for “et lux perpetua”.   The “Kyrie”, which followed immediately, sounded like plainchant which I myself could remember singing long ago at Mass! Durufle’s contrapuntal lines  merged here into radiant outpourings over both Kyries and Christes. The “Domine Jesu Christe had a sombre beginning on the organ, the women beginning the “Domine Jesu Christe” chant-like tones before the choir burst out vehemently with “Libera eas de ore leonis” (Deliver them from the mouth of the Lion), then continuing with even more stress-wrought pronouncements – “Ne absorbeat eas Tartarus, ne cadat in obscurum” – (Lest Tartarus swallow them up and they fall into darkness” ) – and the organ going almost beserk with agitation as well! (those of us not hugely familiar with the words really needed the text at hand to follow what was being  expressed specifically, though one of course naturally concluded from  encountering other requiems that the scenarios being described were anything but sweetness and light!)….the women’s voices which then  invoked St.Michael’s guidance did restore some order! – and their “Quam olim Abrahae” further renewed a sense of faith and hope “….into the holy light which once you promised to Abraham and his seed….”

The male soloist who then came forward did well with his “Hostias et preces tibi, Domine” (We offer to you, Lord), the organ plumbing the expressive depths in support – and several women members of  the choir suddenly retreated further into the sanctuary and intoned from the distance their lines once again, before returning – an atmospheric touch!

The “Sanctus” so beautifully swirled into one’s hearing by the women’s voices, like cascading water swirling deliciously all about, with lovely organ accompaniments! When it came to the Hosannas the men did so well, their voices forthright and joyous, suitably inspiring the remaining voices to add their cries to the acclamations. the Benedictus adding to the swirling motions, albeit very briefly. With the  following “Pie Jesu” a solo ‘cello (played by Samuel Berkhan) accompanied a soprano voice, a lovely melody shared between the two – very low for the singer at first, but the voice sounded freer and happier in its subsequent “soaring” mode.

A purposeful beginning by the organ launched the “Agnus Dei”, with the women’s and then the men’s voices taking their turns, then dovetailing the sonorous lines as the piece proceeded, creating  gorgeous harmonisings as the “Dona Eis Requiems” were intoned, along with a breathtakingly lovely “Requiem sempiternam”.  Falling organ note-cluster-harmonies then introduced the “Lux Aeterna”,  again reminiscent of Gregorian chant, before intoning haunting single-note lines, interspersed with the organ’s improvisatory-like recitatives – the single note chantings suggested a possible air of finality and impending peace, one however roughly broken into by the organ’s summonsing of the  forbidding-sounding  “LIbera me”.

The men pushed the lines along what seemed a torturous way, assisted by the women’s voices; and the solo baritone re=entered, a little unsteady at first then finding his voice, with the most fearful of the work’s texts given tongue at this point, the men confronting the “Dies Illa/Dies Irae” warnings throughout the “no-souls’ land of the music at this point,.Finally,  the choir grasped onto their reprise of the “Libera Me” with appropriate conviction and beseechment.

It was given the organ to wreathe from the uneasy calm the strains of “In Paradisum”,  the voices tentative at first, and then with “Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat”  (There may the chorus of angels receive thee) the music seemed to find its path amid the suspended chaos, and beckon all to follow.

Those of us who might have expected to encounter a kind of dutiful reminiscence of Gabriel Faure’s earlier work found ourselves at the conclusion of Durufle’s work forced to consider the proper implications of what we had just experienced – a masterpiece in its own right, forged and performed with some difficulty but plenty of singular and enduring purpose from all concerned……..

Worlds of difference and sympathy – rapturous Beethoven and Saint-Saens from the Wellington City Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra presents
BEETHOVEN and SAINT-SAENS

BEETHOVEN – Violin Concerto in D Op.61
SAINT-SAENS – Symphony No. 3 in C Minor “Organ” Op.78

Helene Pohl (violin)
Max Toth (organ)
Wellington City Orchestra
Rachel Hyde (conductor)

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

Saturday 24th June, 2023

Small wonder that this concert drew what seemed like a full house to St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church in Wellington on Saturday afternoon. – not only were the two featured works on the programme sure-fire drawcards, but each presentation had the kind of “ädded value” that made their pairing difficult to resist.

The lately-renamed Wellington City Orchestra’s second 2023 outing was this time with the much-respected Rachel Hyde taking her turn on the podium. First up was Beethoven’s adorable Violin Concerto, with great interest centred around the soloist, none other than Helene Pohl, the leader of the internationally renowned New Zealand String Quartet. Having heard Pohl lead her ensemble with enormous distinction through complete cycles of the composer’s string quartets I was naturally intrigued to hear how she would tackle the very different role of a concerto soloist, albeit in the same composer’s music .

What first grabbed my attention.however, was the sharply-defined focus of the orchestra’s introduction to the work, once the slight uncertaincy of the timpanist’s opening strokes had passed – Rachel Hyde secured finely-wrought dynamic contrasts between tutti and chamber-like passages with solo wind lines imparting great character. It was playing that created great expectancy regarding Pohl’s first, ascending-octaved entry, her tones beautifully “growing” out of the orchestral ambiences that had preceded the solo violin’s arrival.

I loved the “elfin” quality of Pohl’s tone throughout, with its shades of expression whose every utterance seemed to simultaneously evolve from whatever she had previously played and respond to whatever solo or ensembled phrases accompanied hers. Her instrument’s voice had a silvery quality which took on a more burnished- golden aspect in places where Beethoven’s thoughts were at his most profound, then returning to a diaphanous quality when, in places, dancing with similarly delicate orchestral solos. For their part, Hyde and her players both supported the soloist and took the lead when necessary, splendidly initiating and controlling the tensions leading up to the tutti outbursts leading to the movement’s solo cadenza.

Pohl’s sounding of this was like a prayer, chordal-like ascendings, followed by playful duettings of themes, and heroic passages in thirds, before her summonsing of the orchestra once more, true greatness in her playing of the melody’s valediction, and of the single note which sang out so purely at the top of the phrase’s final contouring – exquisite!

Hyde got her string players to sound the slow movement’s first trance-like phrases with wonderful “innigkeit”, horns, and then clarinets confidently taking over from the strings and preparing the way for the soloist’s birdsong-like rhapsodisings. Even more rapt was the movement’s central section, Pohl’s playing resembling a kind of hymn to existence, even more so when orchestral pizzicati provided an enchanting backdrop for the solo violin’s spell-weavings.

An orchestral call to arms, and a short, cadenza-like flourish from the soloist brought in the work’s finale, the orchestra taking a while to settle into the soloist’s rhythm, possibly the result of the players having, like the rest of us, “blissed out” during the heavenly Larghetto! Pohl took it all in her stride, alternating a characterfully rustic treatment of the main theme with more quixotic-like poise when repeating the same an octave higher. Then, in the more pensive minor-key second subject, the line was delivered with great emotion, ably supported by the bassoon – and, when the opening returned Hyde seemed to have reawakened her players so that they were with their soloist all the way, building those horn and wind fanfares into a mighty cadenza-welcoming shout! This was one to which Pohl responded with a cadenza I wasn’t as familiar with as I could have been, but which, using material from the finale itself, built quickly and spectacularly to the point where the orchestral cellos and basses were INVITED to make a “what do we think?” comment on the proceedings! – duly satisfied, soloist and orchestra here exchanged, syncopated, inverted and brought things to a by-then ecstatic close!

During the interval that followed, I gleaned. from all sides of where I was sitting. that things had been extremely pleasing thus far, the performance having created a suitable buzz in the minds of my neighbours, young and old. It seemed to augur well for what was to follow next, the orchestra having meanwhile “growed” some extra personnel for the second-half performance of Camille Saint-Saens’s well-known “Organ” Symphony, an undertaking obviously sparked by the not-too-distant (April 2021) refurbishment of the St.Andrew’s church organ.

I was a bit surprised that the organist for this occasion, Max Toth, was not given a special mention in the printed programme – though to be fair Saint-Saens’ work is not a “concerto” with a star soloist, but a “symphony”, and with works described as such individual instrumentalists’ names are normally mentioned only in orchestral listings of players. And the organist’s name was certainly there, even if the noise he conjured up from his splendid instrument was out of all proportion to his modest rank-and-file listing – a minor matter, and certainly in the light of the “special ovation” he was accorded at the piece’s end, at the prompting of Rachel Hyde herself…

As to the piece we were about to hear, Saint-Saens once remarked of himself that, as a composer he produced music as an apple tree produced apples, though he obviously meant he had great facility, and not that he considered his work facile and repetitive. The “Organ” Symphony was something of a biological “sport” for its time – the only reference I have found to a previous use of the organ in an orchestral symphony (1877) is by the nearly-forgotten Austrian composer Johann Ritter von Herbeck (1831-1877), though the fame of Saint-Saens’1886 work spawned a number of imitators, most of them French!

Right at the beginning, Hyde and her players opened up the work’s spaces, the strings’ first floating chords answered first by the oboe and then the flutes, their upward phrases drifting into what seemed like a void, but sparking a response from pizzicato strings and winds which suddenly and excitedly awoke the rest of the strings whose tumbling, chattering phrases spread through the textures galvanising the entire orchestra.

Hyde’s direction imparted just enough urgent impetus for the movement to maintain its course and for the players to keep the syncopated rhythms together, which they did most impressively throughout. And I enjoyed the occasional bedecking of the textures with detailed impulse, such as the tuba making its presence “tell” for a moment of glory, along with the brass and timpani, in underlining the importance to the work of the composer’s use of the “Dies Irae” variant by capping the climax of the excitement with great elan.

The slow movement was beautifully “prepared” for by pizzicato strings and brass, the organ establishing the requisite mood for the strings to fill the spaces with gorgeous tones, then allowing the wind and brass the chance to sing the same melody, the organ judiciously providing the transitions between the different orchestral forces’ sequences. Apart from some slight imprecision between the string “voices” in the duet-like-like sequences, the players delighted us with the beauty and focus of their playing of the movement’s gorgeous outpourings. At first I thought the organ pedal during the lyrical theme’s last great reprise not robust enough, but its deliciously tummy-wobbling aspect began to tell as the music soared to its conclusion – moments of glorious, ultra-Romanticism, capped off by the authentic-sounding reediness of the organ’s registrations at the end.

In terms of commitment from the players and cool-headed control from the conductor, the symphony’s Scherzo was for me a highlight of the performance (also bringing back vivid memories of my days as a percussionist, and our orchestra in Palmerston North tackling this work!). Strong, vibrant attack at the opening was capped off by on-the-spot timpani, and vibrant playing from the winds – Hyde kept the tempo steady, allowing her players room to shape and “point” the rhythms. As for the Trio, it was very properly a riot of impulse every which way, with the piano’s tumbling figurations adding to the excitement. The players did so well with these vertiginous rhythms and syncopations – while not every detail was perfect, the few spills simply added to the excitement and dare-devilry of the whole.

Both the Scherzo and the opening of the Trio were repeated, the latter dominated by the brass, with the winds capering all about underneath, and the strings steadying the euphoria with some meltingly beautiful playing, joined by the winds and brass, with the “Dies Irae” ominously sounded by the basses below – after all of this one could easily forgive the not-quite-together wind chord which prefaced the finale!

The voices awaiting within those organ pipes to sound their utmost simply burst forth magnificently as organist Max Toth activated the instrument! How emotional it all seemed, with the C major melody (the much-lauded “Babe” tune as garnered for use in the eponymous movie!) firstly stealing in via the strings and piano duettists underpinned by the deep organ pedal notes, then allowed its full magnificence with organ and orchestra each given its head, cymbal crashes, bass drum thwacks, brasses and all replying to the organ’s splendour! The strings made a sterling job of their fugal passage which followed, taken up vociferously by the brasses and then quelled by the lines being allowed to soar and “float” by the strings and winds, as a respite from the energies and excitements already unleashed and still to come. Enough to say that the performance of the rest fully expressed the “cri de coeur” of the composer: – “I gave everything to it I was able to give! – what I have here accomplished I will never achieve again….”

It seemed fitting that, right at the end Rachel Hyde gave the last voice to the organ, allowing the instrument to hold the final chord for a few moments after the orchestra had ceased playing (a gesture I’d not previously heard made in this work, but which certainly had its effect – not unlike the organ chord which continues sounding at the end of the opening (!) of Richard Strauss’s tone-poem “Also Sprach Zarathustra”). But the glory was as much the Wellington City Orchestra players’ and conductor’s as the organ’s, and of course the music’s. Both composers and their respective works were on this occasion certainly done proud.

16 Best Real Estate Chatbots of 2023

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

How Real Estate Chatbots Can Nurture Leads From Lukewarm To Hot

real estate ai chatbot

I’m also hoping to see better native integrations and higher levels of customer service. MobileMonkey had a kind of cult following so we’ll see if Customers.ai can keep loyal customers happy. Imagine the amount of paperwork it would have taken had you documented each and every reply of each and every lead you have interacted with.

AI will not remedy all our real estate woes – Financial Times

AI will not remedy all our real estate woes.

Posted: Thu, 02 Mar 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

While they can make your life easier in many ways, there is still a lot of work to be done in setting up and maintaining the chatbot’s knowledge base. Its “emotional” capacity is also limited to the amount of emotion and personality you give it. But perhaps the most common (though occasionally entertaining) challenge is bots’ high capacity for misunderstanding.

Qualify sales leads

But with a real estate chatbot, you can offer basic responses and help to clients 24/7. Chatbots can work day and night, weekdays and weekends, to support customers reaching out for immediate answers. Real estate chatbots don’t take breaks and can support multiple customers simultaneously. They can take over simple tasks from real estate teams, such as answering common questions, collecting contact details, and promoting rental listings. Using a real estate bot lets you indirectly connect with more prospects and engage them in a conversational way. AI chatbots excel at understanding customer preferences and delivering tailored recommendations.

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These algorithms browse through market data, property characteristics, and historical trends. They can even predict what will be the future value of the property. If you’ve ever tried your hand at an auction, you know it’s not for the faint of heart. Chatbots can provide real-time auction updates, including current bids, time remaining, and even facilitate the bidding process, making it more accessible. In an increasingly globalized world, offering support in multiple languages is a massive plus. Chatbots can effortlessly handle this, breaking down language barriers and expanding your market reach, fast and without burning a hole in your wallet.

INDUSTRY

Chatbots are already well-known for helping provide a 24/7 service, seven days every week and through the holidays. And the easiest way to suggest they follow you on social media is through AI chatbots. After a chatbot conversation, give the user a chance to follow your different social media accounts and promote your brand. I can integrate AI chatbots with platforms like Botpress, Stack, Zapier, Manychat, and VoiceFlow. These platforms enable seamless interactions on websites, messaging apps, and social media platforms. We at OneClick have over 8 years of experience in real estate chatbot app development solutions.

real estate ai chatbot

Incorporating chatbots in your current applications or websites can save you time, improve efficiency, and offer better ROIs. All professionals in the real estate sector whether they are real estate agents or negotiators, rental managers, or even condominium managers can use these new technologies easily and effectively. While tons of agents are advertising on Facebook and Instagram these days, many skip over one of the best lead generation opportunities. Lead enrichment means is gathering and adding additional data to a lead profile. This builds a complete picture that you can use to qualify leads and be more informed about the ones you choose.

Integrate it into your website and allow the customer to leave feedback for further improvements. An AI chatbot will help you keep records and data of a customer for future references, which is a puzzling task if done manually. With an efficient chatbot, your lead generation figures will boost dynamically. In case of any error or breakdown, you can contact your development partner to make it right.

Bonus points to Customers.ai for the deep analytic reporting on website visitors so that you get to know your audience and tailor your content better. Some agents might get tripped up by some of the integrations, but since the customer service is something Tidio prioritizes, they should be able to help troubleshoot. The Professional plan costs $41 for 1 user and 300 sessions per month. Users on this plan will be able to customize their chatbot, access a message inbox as well as audience and session analytics. With MobileMonkey, you can automate your online sales outreach and generate high-quality leads that convert. Chatra is a cloud-based chat platform focused on creating solutions that help small businesses sell more.

Benefits of Using a Real Estate AI Chatbot

Read more about https://www.metadialog.com/ here.

The Bach Choir of Wellington – ambitious and imaginative ANZAC concert

Posted on by Roger Wilson

DURUFLE –  Requiem
– and  music for ANZAC Day.

The Bach Choir of Wellington
Directed by Shawn Michael Condon

Sinéad Keane – mezzo soprano
William McElwee -baritone
Lucas Baker – violin|
Eleanor Carter – cello
Douglas Mews – piano & organ

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Saturday 22 April 2023

(Guest reviewer – Roger Wilson)

The Bach Choir, an important component of Wellington’s musical life for the past 55 years, is in good heart. Under the astute direction of Shawn Michael Condon the overall sound made by 50-odd voices is well integrated, intonation and the balance  between the parts good. It was easy to see that the choir has been well rehearsed with considerable attention to detail, but it has to be said that in the notoriously cavernous acoustic of Wellington Cathedral of St Paul it was sometimes more a matter of seeing people doing all the right things rather than always hearing the benefits. A pity, because this was an enterprising and interesting programme. Were it not for needing the organ close by it might have been worth turning the pews round and placing the choir in the gallery against the west wall.

The first half of the concert comprised a selection of pieces selected with themes appropriate for ANZAC Day, remembrance of the fallen, contrition, a longing to escape the horrors of war, praise of the saviour, grief for the separation from a beloved, a reflection on mortality and jubilation at the vision of a better world post-War. Some of these works  were very  familiar, especially Elgar’s We will remember them, a setting of Binyon’s For the Fallen, and Parry’s account of Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar, others new to most listeners. None was more effective than contemporary composer Thomas LaVoy’s The Last Letter, a poignant  farewell written by an American Civil War soldier to his dearly loved wife. The performance was much enhanced by the addition of a baritone soloist, William McElwee, which ensured that the all-important text was declaimed with a clarity difficult for the choir to achieve  in the circumstances. Another highlight of the half – even occasioning spontaneous applause – was the fifth movement, Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus,  of Messiaen’s visionary Quartet for the End of Time, composed and first performed in a German prison camp. The duet for cello and piano was beautifully played by Eleanor Carter and Douglas Mews who observed the difficult instruction ‘Infiniment lent, extatique’ scrupulously. In the  preceding Parry work Lucas Baker’s solo violin also sounded beautifully in the space.

Perhaps less successful, despite the choir’s best efforts, was Tallis’ motet O sacrum convivium, anglified to I call and Cry to thee, where the clarity of the musical lines was harder to distinguish. Another living American composer, Craig Carnahan, supplied a wonderfully exuberant Armistice 1918, War poet Siegfried Sassoon’s Everyone suddenly burst out singing,  to end the first half with enthusiasm.

The second half of the concert was Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, really the only work for which the French composer is remembered. It was commissioned by the collaborationist Vichy régime in 1941 and completed in 1947 so it is also very much wartime music. The original commission was for a symphonic poem but Duruflé decided instead on a requiem, eventually dedicated to the memory of his father, but it might well also be for the fallen in World War II. A church musician all his life, Duruflé used a great deal of thematic material from the Gregorian chant of the Mass for the Dead, skilfully interwoven with his own harmonies. The ghost of Fauré and his Requiem with the whiff of incense are never far away. Both composers deliberately avoid the terrors of the Day of Judgment, such a feature of other Requiems, stressing rather tranquillity and rest, and the configurations of both French Requiems, for all their differences, are also similar, even to the apportioning of solo voices (Offertorium, Pie Jesu and Libera Me). Duruflé’s work, conceived for a large church, lent itself  to Wellington Cathedral’s particular properties and such is his skill as an organist that one does not miss the full orchestral version. With its sinuous Gregorian lines, the choral singing of the Requiem, underpinned by the masterful Douglas Mews on the organ, worked convincingly in this cathedral, and the Bach Choir did composer and conductor proud. William McElwee took the baritone solos tidily and Sinéad Keane sang the Pie Jesu with stylish commitment.

This was an ambitious and imaginative concert, despite some reservations about the building, well conceived and executed to a good-sized audience.

NZSO under New management

Posted on by Anne French

‘Style and Substance’ – NZSO’s Immerse 2022 Festival

Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 77
Tabea Squire Variations
John Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony

Hilary Hahn, violin

Gemma New. conductor
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 6 August 2022

This was the second concert of the Immerse series, and the second outing of the acclaimed
violinist Hilary Hahn with the NZSO under the baton of Gemma New, its newly appointed
Artistic Adviser and Principal Conductor. The house was almost full, with such a happily
expectant air that everyone must surely have been here on Thursday for the first concert of
the series.

Gemma New is a local girl made good – only 35, but already with a long list of appointments
and accolades, including the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award. She has been called ‘one of
the brightest rising stars in the conducting firmament’, and she is becoming famous around
the world for her precision and the expressive beauty she draws from her orchestras. Hilary
Hahn is one of today’s great violin virtuosos, with three Grammys and a huge global
following. Putting them on the programme together for three concerts must have seemed to
the NZSO a masterstroke of genius and good fortune.

Brahms’s Violin Concerto was Hahn’s suggestion. She first recorded it at the age of 21 with
the Orchestra of St Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner. That youthful recording
has been named one of the eight great recordings of the work (ahead of one that was my
favourite 40 years ago, David Oistrakh with the French National Radio Orchestra under Otto
Klemperer). It was Gemma New who suggested the two works to accompany it because,
she said, they ‘had a Brahmsian quality’. Not many people would make that observation of
John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony and fewer of the Variations by Tabea Squire. But
that is the world of Gemma New, in which the exquisite and the unusual are two faces of the
same coin.

From the first bar, it was clear that Gemma New’s Brahms was a very different work. Gone
were the sludgy textures and blurred rhythms I had by heart from the Oistrakh/Klemperer
recording. The NZSO is under New management.

Hilary Hahn’s first entry was electrifying. She has been performing this concerto for more
than half her life, and yet she made it as fresh and exciting as it must have been when
Brahms’s friend Joachim played it for the first time.

New kept the NZSO to a restrained dynamic range for much of the time. In a recording, the
balance between violinist and orchestra can be addressed by microphone placement and
engineering. In the concert hall there is a constant threat that the violinist will be
overwhelmed by the orchestra – the concerto is scored for four horns, two trumpets, and
timpani, after all. Not so here. New is known for her meticulous attention to detail, and the
NZSO obliged with beautiful, shapely, thoughtful playing.

The audience was so moved by the monumental first movement that most of them
applauded at the end of it. I almost joined in, because of the huge gratitude I felt for Hahn’s
superb playing. In the third movement, Allegro giocoso, orchestra and soloist danced for
sheer joy. At the end, most of the audience was on its feet. Hahn took four curtain calls
before coming back to play the Sarabande from Bach’s D minor partita as tenderly as you
could wish.

Gemma New introduced the works for the second half of the concert with evident relish. She
loves new music. In 2010, as soon as she graduated from the Peabody Institute in Maryland,
she formed the Lunar Ensemble to perform new music. Together they premiered 30 works in
six seasons. New’s Carnegie Hall debut in 2013 included works by John Adams and Andrew
Norman.

‘I think Brahms would have liked Tabea Squire’s theme and variations,’ New told us
confidently. The work is a deconstructed set of variations on a sixteenth-century pavane,
‘Belle qui tiens ma vie’ – deconstructed, because the theme doesn’t fully appear until right at
the end (although it is sneakily previewed by the horns and there is a wisp of it audible in the
strings about halfway through). I expected this teasing treatment would soon become
frustrating; but Tabea Squire’s orchestration was clever and the ideas never flagged. The
theme finally made its proper appearance at the end, played by alto flute, piccolo, and cor
anglais with the tenor drum underneath – a nice twist on the recorders and drum she
originally scored it for.

Twenty years ago, when Hilary Hahn was starting to make her name on the concert stage,
Gemma New and Tabea Squire were first and second violinists in Wellington Youth
Sinfonietta. A remarkable journey so far, and much is yet to come.

The final work in the programme was John Adams’ monumental and troubling Doctor Atomic
Symphony (based on his newsreel opera of 2005, about the Manhattan Project and the first
atomic bomb test in New Mexico). The symphony condenses many of the musical ideas of
the opera into 25 minutes of inventive and emotionally shattering music. The symphony calls
for a large orchestra, with a huge batterie (xylophone, tubular bells, timpani, bowed drums,
thunder sheet, tam tam, celeste, tuned gongs…) and more tuba solos than you might
imagine (Andrew Jarvis, Scott Frankcombe). It is a monumental work, terrifying and deeply
troubling. At one point Dave Bremner (Principal Trombone) stands to bark orders
(channelling General Leslie Groves). The emotional heart of the piece is Robert
Oppenheimer’s aria from the opera, a setting of one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, ‘Batter
my heart, three person’d God’, beautifully played by David Johnson (Guest Principal
Trumpet).

This was a stupendous concert. The NZSO has never played better than this. If you are
reading this review before the last concert of the three, on Sunday 7 August, do not hesitate.
If it’s too late for that, you can’t afford to miss Gemma New’s next outing with the NZSO. She
is an extraordinary talent, and her knack for exciting programming is so very welcome.

An Eastern European smorgasbord at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Steven Sedley

St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series presents:

Music for Cello & Piano from Eastern Europe

Josef Suk: Ballade & Serenade Op 3 for Cello & Piano  (1898)

Witold Lutoslawski Grave Metamorphoses for Cello & Piano (1981)

Bohuslav Martinů Sonata No 2 for Cello & Piano.  (1941)

Robert Ibell (cello) and Rachel Thomson (piano)

St. Andrew on the Terrace

Wednesday, 22 June 2022

We are very fortunate in Wellington to have artists of the calibre of Robert Ibell and Rachel Thomson. They are both very versatile musicians. Ibell is the cellist of the Aroha Quartet, a past member of the NZSO, and now he plays with a number of different ensembles. Rachel Thomson is an accompanist, associated with many local artists. They presented a program of largely unfamiliar works from Eastern Europe. I am giving here a brief account of this, their recent cello-and-piano recital  for the historical record.

Josef Suk: Ballade & Serenade Op 3 for Cello & Piano

This is an early work of Suk. Ibell and Thomson gave the opening sombre Ballade plenty of emotion and intensity, following this with a playful Serenade. Both movements required soulful playing by cellist and pianist alike. They brought out the melodious, approachable character of the work most successfully.

Witold Lutoslawski:i Grave Metamorphoses for Cello & Piano

This was written more than eighty years after the previous piece. A lot had happened to the world and music in those intervening years – two world wars, and the disintegration of the received ideas of what music should sound like. Lutoslawski uses the first four notes of Debussy’s opera, Pelléas and Mélisande which then becomes the metamorphoses, the transformation, the breakup of the notes into different rhythmic configurations. At the end of the piece the four-note configuration from Pelléas returns.  Ibell’s and Thomson’s playing rose splendidly to meet both the technical and musical challenges posed by this work.

Bohuslav Martinů: Sonata No 2 for Cello & Piano

It’s good to hear Martinu’s music being played more frequently in concerts. This substantial sonata was written in 1941. The war was at its most brutal early stages, and Martinů’s Czechoslovakia was no more, causing him to seek refuge in the United States. He wrote this major work, which is essentially in the traditional three movements. The first movement is vigorous and energetic, the second is full of passionate longing with a gorgeous lyrical cello line, and the finale makes use of strong rhythms suggesting Bohemian peasant dances.

This, in tandem with the other works, made for a stimulating concert, and brought to us seldom performed music that was well worth hearing. I thought there was a real sense of fine partnership between Robert Ibell and Rachel Thomson throughout. Their playing was thoroughly convincing demonstrating what sounded like real affinity with this repertoire. For their committed efforts these two musicians deserve our gratitude.

 

 

 

 

Financial Statement Analysis: How Its Done, by Statement Type

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

the financial position of a company

The long-term debt number on the balance sheet is an aggregate number, which pools all the debt issued by the company. The details of the figure are found in the notes section, which breaks down the debt by issuance. The note provides important details like maturity, interest rate, and other terms of debt.

the financial position of a company

In general, both internal and external stakeholders use the same corporate finance methodologies for maintaining business activities and evaluating overall financial performance. Basic analysis of the income statement usually involves the calculation of gross profit margin, operating profit margin, and net profit margin, which each divide profit by revenue. Profit margin helps to show where company costs are low or high at different points of the operations. business advisor job description In some cases, you may need to undertake a fairly detailed financial analysis because you are looking for additional capital in the form of loans or investors. The lack of any appreciable standardization of financial reporting terminology complicates the understanding of many financial statement account entries. There’s little hope that things will change on this issue in the foreseeable future, but a good financial dictionary can help considerably.

What is the approximate value of your cash savings and other investments?

The main difference between the two methods is that GAAP is more “rules-based,” while IFRS is more “principles-based.” Both have different ways of reporting asset values, depreciation, and inventory, to name a few. The presentation of a company’s financial position, as portrayed in its financial statements, is influenced by management’s estimates and judgments. In the best of circumstances, management is scrupulously honest and candid, while the outside auditors are demanding, strict, and uncompromising. Whatever the case, the imprecision that can be inherently found in the accounting process means that the prudent investor should take an inquiring and skeptical approach toward financial statement analysis. Financial ratios help you make sense of the numbers presented in financial statements, and are powerful tools for determining the overall financial health of your company.

the financial position of a company

Financial statements provide investors with information about a company’s financial position, helping to ensure corporate transparency and accountability. Understanding how to interpret key financial reports, such as a balance sheet and cash flow statement, helps investors assess a company’s financial health before making an investment. Investors can also use information disclosed in the financial statements to calculate ratios for making comparisons against previous periods and competitors. Understanding the basics of financial statements provides investors with valuable information about a company’s financial health. Investors can use key reports, such as a balance sheet, cash flow statement, and income statement, to evaluate a company’s performance, helping to make more informed investment decisions. Financial statements play a vital role in maintaining the integrity of the financial system and promoting trust between companies and investors.

The income statement generally starts with the revenue earned for the period minus the cost of production for goods sold to determine the gross profit. It then subtracts all other expenses, including staff salaries, rent, electricity, and non-cash expenses, such as depreciation, to determine the earnings before interest and tax (EBIT). Finally, it deducts money paid for interest and tax to determine the net profit that remains for owners. The income statement shows a company’s financial position and performance over a period by looking at revenue, expenses, and profits earned. It can be created for any period using a trial balance of transactions from any two points in time. Financial position is the current balances of the recorded assets, liabilities, and equity of an organization.

How Do I Better Understand The Financial Position Of My Company?

Each of these three sections tells us a unique and important part of the company’s sources and uses of cash over a specific time period. Wolters Kluwer is a global provider of professional information, software solutions, and services for clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. Browse our list of top accounting firms and learn more about their services in our hiring guide.

  • Second, vertical analysis compares items on a financial statement in relation to each other.
  • Regardless of the size of a company or industry in which it operates, there are many benefits of reading, analyzing, and understanding its balance sheet.
  • Furthermore, the interest rate on the debt is 5.45%, which is higher than the 4.56% rate in the previous year.
  • Upgrading to a paid membership gives you access to our extensive collection of plug-and-play Templates designed to power your performance—as well as CFI’s full course catalog and accredited Certification Programs.

Current assets or current liabilities are those with an expected life of fewer than 12 months. If you borrow money from a bank, you have to list the value of all of your significant assets, as well as all of your significant liabilities. Your bank uses this information to assess the strength of your financial position; it looks at the quality of the assets, such as your car and your house, and places a conservative valuation upon them.

What are the advantages of financial statement analysis?

While accountants and finance specialists are trained to read and understand these documents, many business professionals are not. An ability to understand the financial health of a company is one of the most vital skills for aspiring investors, entrepreneurs, and managers to develop. Armed with this knowledge, investors can better identify promising opportunities while avoiding undue risk, and professionals of all levels can make more strategic business decisions. Just like the accounting equation, the assets must always equal the sum of the liabilities and owner’s equity. This makes sense when you think about it because the company has only three ways of acquiring new assets. Long-term liabilities are debts and other non-debt financial obligations, which are due after a period of at least one year from the date of the balance sheet.

  • If you aren’t sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.
  • Review the key financial statements within the context of the relevant accounting standards.
  • Each financial statement is also analyzed with vertical analysis to understand how different categories of the statement are influencing results.
  • This information is recorded in the balance sheet, which is one of the financial statements.

It shows its assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity (essentially, what it owes, owns, and the amount invested by shareholders). Current liabilities are the company’s liabilities that will come due, or must be paid, within one year. This includes both shorter-term borrowings, such as accounts payables (AP), which are the bills and obligations that a company owes over the next 12 months (e.g., payment for purchases made on credit to vendors). Accounts receivables (AR) consist of the short-term obligations owed to the company by its clients.

Consolidated Statements

The Bank has said it is watching closely for signs of inflation persistence from pay growth and prices in the services sector. For example, if an outlet expects their reported capacities to be sold next year, the level of inventory will fall while the amounts of cash will rise. If the inventory value of an outlet goes down by 10%, but sales saw an increase of 15%, this is a sign that they are managing their inventory relatively well. It can be sold at a later date to raise cash or reserved to repel a hostile takeover. Some liabilities are considered off the balance sheet, meaning they do not appear on the balance sheet.

For example, a high equity ratio (the ratio of equity to total assets) suggests that a company is in good financial shape. Some elementary accounting concepts have been touched upon in this short balance sheet discussion. At each stage, there is an emphasis on total assets equaling total liabilities (including the capital). GAAP sets accounting guidelines and standards that companies must follow when preparing financial statements, whereas IFRS takes a more principles-based approach. Both conventions differ in how they report asset values, depreciation, and inventory.

What is the Statement of Financial Position?

Knowing how to work with the numbers in a company’s financial statements is an essential skill for stock investors. The meaningful interpretation and analysis of balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements to discern a company’s investment qualities is the basis for smart investment choices. Alone, the balance sheet doesn’t provide information on trends, which is why you need to examine other financial statements, including income and cash flow statements, to fully comprehend a company’s financial position. A balance sheet, along with the income and cash flow statement, is an important tool for investors to gain insight into a company and its operations. It is a snapshot at a single point in time of the company’s accounts—covering its assets, liabilities, and shareholders’ equity. The purpose of a balance sheet is to give interested parties an idea of the company’s financial position, in addition to displaying what the company owns and owes.

When you recognize your employer is struggling, you can take steps to either demonstrate your worth or seek employment elsewhere. Receivables form an important part of WEF’s balance sheet, as they represent sources of cash flow. Though the balance sheet does not include an exclusive note for receivables, the note regarding financial instruments gives a breakdown of receivables by age. Based on the note, only about 3.5% of receivables in 2019 were late, which indicates the high quality of receivables. By comparing the company’s market value to its book value, investors can, in part, determine whether a stock is under- or over-priced. The market-to-book multiple, while it does have shortcomings, remains a crucial tool for value investors.

Steadfast Wellington Chamber Orchestra brings off an exhilarating concert to finish an eventful year

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

R.STRAUSS – Wind Serenade for 13 instruments
VIVALDI – Double Flute Concerto
ARNOLD – English Dances (Set One)
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No. 2 in C Minor Op.17  “Little Russian”

Kirstin Eade and Bridget Douglas (flutes)
Ian Ridgewell (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday, 12th December 2021

Congratulations right at the outset are in order to whomever devised such a scintillating programme for the Wellington Chamber Orchestra to finish this remarkably unpredictable year of years with!  It certainly was one that made up in part for earlier schedules being plagued by the vagaries of Covid-19 and the resulting ripplings of disruption! Here we were freely delivered plenty of satisfyingly full-blooded excitements and festive revelries, side-by-side with contrasting episodes of great beauty, resonant circumspection and purposeful action – a living, breathing entity of life-giving expression!

A lot of the credit must go to conductor Ian Ridgewell, whose direction of much of this eclectic range of music was focused and very much to the point, directly and unfussily intent upon bringing out the music’s “character” in each of the pieces presented. I liked how the conductor left the flute duo of Bridget Douglas and Kirsten Eade entirely free to interact with the continuo instruments in the Vivaldi Concerto’s slow movement as if sharing amongst themselves some exquisite chamber music!  Just occasionally elsewhere I felt a slight “tug” of discrepancy between the conductor and his players, most notably in the Tchaikovsky Symphony’s Andantino movement, the strings in particular wanting to push the march rhythm along more tautly in places – and there were dovetailing difficulties aplenty between orchestral sections in the same work’s treacherous Scherzo movement that required watchful shepherding from the podium!

The concert began most winningly with the early (1882) Richard Strauss work for winds, the piece a kind of homage by the seventeen year-old composer to Mozart’s own Wind Serenade in B-flat Major for the same number of instruments (Mozart’s work is sometimes performed with a string bass, sometimes with a contrabassoon), one obviously a model for Strauss.  I thought the performance by the WCO winds a most affectionate one, a beautifully easeful opening, with the contourings of melodic lines both gorgeous-sounding and characterful, and the different dynamic levels of the music consistently producing ear-catching results. I particularly liked the sonorous contribution of the tuba to the music’s foundations, and relished the crunchiness of the harmonic changes that accompanied the oboe’s lead-in to the piece’s second half. The ensemble’s blend grated ever so slightly once or twice in places during the latter half, but the final paragraph of the work, with its beautiful ascending flute-line, was most felicitously essayed by all concerned.

I was surprised to learn that the Vivaldi Concerto for two flutes and strings was the composer’s only essay for this combination, particularly as the soloists Bridget Douglas and Kirsten Eade amply demonstrated the manifold delights of the work’s seemingly endless invention, aided by some on-the-spot playing from the WCO strings in the outer movements. Straightaway the music captivated one’s attention with its gaiety and exhilarating energies, the dynamics placing solo-instrument delicacies alongside rumbustious tuttis that made the most of both the contrasted and concerted sounds. Though short, the work added a dimension of intimacy with the player-directed slow movement (simply flutes and continuo – two ‘cellos and a harpsichord), beautiful canonic writing alternating with passages in thirds – exquisite in effect!

Ian Ridgewell returned to direct the finale, consisting of more gallivanting and frolicking in Vivaldi’s most ingratiating style, though closer attention also heightened my appreciation of both the composer’s and the players’ skills in realising the singular beauties of the music’s interspersing of solo, chamber and ripieno sequences. It all demonstrated how the composer’s justly famous “Four Seasons” concerti ought to be a “starting-point” and not merely a “one-work” experience for the Vivaldi listener!

To my great delight, Bridget Douglas and Kirstin Eade acknowledged the concerto’s brevity by way of playing us an encore, the final movement from a work by an American composer, Gary Schocker, Three Dances for Two Flutes and Piano, one divertingly subtitled Coffee Nerves, Prestissimo! It’s a very bluesy-vigorous piece with driving rhythms for the flutes in unison lines breaking occasionally into thirds, and with the piano (played by Heather Easting, who had also contributed the harpsichord part in the  Vivaldi concerto’s continuo) punctuating the discourse with droll interludes – also one of the flutes (Kirstin’s on this occasion) indulged in startlingly “ornery” deviations, which were “coaxed” back into seemliness by the other flute – an interesting relationship between the two!

Malcolm Arnold’s invigoratingly breezy English Dances (the first of two sets of four of these) came next, works I’ve always loved for their colour, energy and original inspiration (the melodic invention throughout is the composer’s own, rather than the pieces being orchestrated versions of English folk-songs). I greatly prize a set of these richly and lovingly recorded by Arnold himself, though Ian Ridgewell’s direction took a rather more direct and vigorous view of the music, the opening Andantino’s bell-like awakenings on the move here right from the outset, and a central section sounding like a fairground in the middle of the countryside! If a shade raucous in full tutti, this could be put down to the effect of a largish orchestra playing in a smallish venue. Amends were made by lovely descending wind figurations at the piece’s end.

More chimings, this time vigorous and arresting, were brought into play throughout the second movement’s Vivace, with great work from the horns and winds throughout, the brasses capturing the music’s roisterings most excitingly, and the tutti filled with ear-catching detail.  The following Mesto (“sad and pensive”) flipped the mood of the sounds into melancholy, with tremolando strings, harp and bassoon joined by strings in a most authentic-sounding folk-melody, the wind-choir also making the most of their expressive opportunities, a strongly-focused mood beautifully sustained throughout by the players.

The final dance, Allegro Risoluto, allowed conductor and players to really let their hair down, the uproarious opening “nailed” by the brasses, here, punctuated by squawks of approval from the winds, catching the music’s unbuttoned and celebratory mood – I particularly loved the sound of the tuba’s star turn, egged on by the winds! The whole performance resounded with high spirits and jocularity, the composer here mercifully untroubled by the mental storms and stresses which throughout his life beset his sense of well-being.

A similar sense of well-being over-riding troubles and anxieties also permeates Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony which took up the concert’s second half. Called the “Little Russian” (though not by its composer) because of the frequency of its use of Ukrainian folk melodies, the music has a joyous energy throughout, which the playing readily capitalised upon, coming to fruition in the final movement with its racily colourful variations on a folksong called “The Crane”. I particularly enjoyed the “Russian Sailors’ Dance”-like energies of the strings in places, along with the finely-played antiphonal brass calls punctuating the blending of the finale’s two themes, and the skitterish sequence which featured the piccolo (beautifully played) and the other winds towards the work’s end, immediately prior to the tam-tam stroke which calls the band to order for the work’s “give it all you’ve got” coda!

The horn-playing at the symphony’s beginning beautifully set the atmosphere, carried forward by soulful wind-playing, building the tensions towards the allegro’s snappy beginning, both winds and strings excitingly on the button! Ridgewell kept things on a tight rein throughout, getting good ensemble from the players, though I thought he might have allowed the second allegro subject a bit more breathing-space, the players sounding a little “pushed” here and there. However, the lead-back to the horn’s repeat of its opening solo was nicely controlled, the playing leaving us eager for more.

The March was beautifully brought into being, even if the strings seemed to want to slightly push ahead of the winds’ pointed drolleries – when the march rhythms resumed after the heart-easing middle-section, some of the opening “swagger” seemed by then flattened out, but the grandly ceremonial utterance of the “tune” was brought off nicely by strings and brasses. The Scherzo was a mixed bag, with the dovetailed syncopated figures struggling at times to “fit themselves in” – however the Trio worked beautifully, with the winds enjoying themselves, the flutes being especially on the ball (a lovely solo over pizzicato strings), and with clarinets, oboes and bassoons in full accord.

Altogether, a most successful concert, and a heart-warming way to conclude a somewhat troubled season – and how encouraging to be given notice of the orchestra’s plans for 2022 as well, consisting of four varied concerts, the first commemorating the band’s 50th Anniversary season! One wishes all involved in the undertaking the very best for it!

 

“Roxy” at Te Auaha, from WITCH Music Theatre – a whirl of visceral impressions from Tinseltown’s golden age of movie musicals

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Witch Music Theatre and Te Auaha presents:
ROXY – A New Hollywood Cabaret

Featuring: Nick Erasmuson, Jason Chasland, Emily Burns, Bailea Twomey, Aine Gallagher, Jade Merematira, William Duignan, Fynn Bodley-Davies, Zane Berghuis, Rebecca Ansell, Lane Corby, Jared Pallesen, Pippa Drakeford, Patrick Jennings, Katy Pakinga, Glenn Horsfall, Rachel Te Tau, Allegra Canton, Thomas Laybourn, Karli Holdren, Björn Aslund, Emily McDermott, Jackson Cordery

Musicians: Sue Windsor, Steve ‘Shack’ Morrison, Rachael Hinds, Bec Watson, Emma Salzano, Jonathan Woolley, Zane Berghuis, Ben Hunt, Brendan Agnew, Fynn Bodley-Davies

Directed by Ben Emerson and Greta Casey-Solly
Music directed and Arranged by Hayden Taylor
Choreography by Greta Casey-Solly, Leigh Evans and Briar Franks
Costume Design by Emma Stevens
Set and Technical Design by Joshua Tucker
Lighting Design by Shanell Bielawa
Sound Design by Patrick Barnes
Produced by WITCH Charitable Trust – Briar Franks, Joshua Tucker, Charlotte Potts, Patrick Jennings and Ben Emerson

Te Auaha, 65 Dixon St., Poneke (Wellington)

Wednesday, 8th December, 2021

“Reimagining the Golden Age of the Silver Screen” ran the blurb announcing ROXY – A New Hollywood Cabaret, a no-holds-barred delivery of a collection of classic movie-musical hits, which certainly lived up to its publicity in terms of its sheer visceral impact – “…a rip-roaring revue, fuelled by an exhilarating fusion of musical theatre, drag, dance and circus” indeed. The directors of the show, Greta Casey-Solly and Ben Emerson described working on this production as putting together “a liberating love-letter to movie musicals, the world of entertainment, and a collective celebration for Wellington Musical Theatre”, continuing the high-impact trademark of WITCH production “Love-letter” tributes to genres and eras, in this case “some of Hollywood’s most memorable musical moments, prolific people and the unforgettable tales of Tinseltown”.

At the outset, we were casually, even voyeuristically drawn into an unmistakably cabaret setting, with dancers waiting for the cameras to roll and the band to strike up and galvanise a growing air of expectancy. Though from where I was sitting I found Nick Erasmuson’s voice as the eponymous “Roxy” difficult to understand at times, his energetic “drag” characterisation never flagged, and his “Get Happy” with the dancers developed plenty of charisma. As the programme didn’t match the characters’ names with the items each one performed I had little idea regarding who was singing what, but “Almost like Being in Love” introduced a singer who began the number sweetly, allowing us some welcome dynamic variation, though the orchestra and soloists let rip with the following “Big Spender”, the burlesque-like figurations being given plenty of “grunt”, building the number’s suggestive crescendi towards tidal-wave overbreakings.

There was certainly nothing half-hearted about Hayden Taylor’s arrangements or his direction of the songs, even if I felt the volume levels seemed too ready to push the needle into the red, giving an unrelieved effect too quickly in places. For this reason I welcomed the “Singin” in the Rain” number, enjoying the cool quirkiness of the singers armed with unopened umbrellas, and the “rain” being represented by snow-flakes! A “wanabe” girl turned up next, advancing a kind of story, being told “Show us what you’ve got” and re-entering in a tight red dress, flanked by snappy choreography from the dance ensemble for “The 20th Century Fox Mambo” – foot-tapping stuff! I hadn’t heard “We’re in the Money” for many years, and the solo vocalist excitingly built the song into something of a “screamer”, producing some fantastically “zinging” high notes!

A “blonde bombshell” soloist appropriately informed us in suitably raunchy accents that “Diamonds are a Girl’s best Friend”, emphasising the character’s brashness as much as her seductiveness, but generating plenty of energy, and impressively morphing into the dance-troupe’s movements – excellent choreography, readily capturing the eye! The next song “Black and Gold” was marred in places by a bass line that frequently “ballooned” as if over-modulating, and inhibiting the soloist’s voice at first until she “found” a different register and made her presence felt – though her triumph was short-lived, as she had to compete with a sensational turn from an acrobat who, far above the stage-floor, floated, bounced and rolled on and around two hanging strands of material, the dare-devilness of it all quite upstaging the singer (who got her revenge by brandishing a pistol, and shooting the hapless high-wire performer when he once again reached terra firma)!

I didn’t know any of the first half’s last three numbers, the final item bluesy and with a terrific “swing”, unashamedly cranking up the sounds’ physicality, the ensemble making the most of the “first-half-closer” licence to bring the house down with “Push da Button”, everybody working at full throttle, and leaving us breathless with such all-pervading displays of energy.

The second half began more promisingly with a “cool’ beat depicting a sultry atmosphere! – people moving around, setting the stage for the well-known Ann Miller original/”Kiss me Kate” number, “Too Darn Hot”, a great introduction and building up with plenty of dynamic variation – though the upping of the tempo ironed out the subtleties the singing remained focused and the dancing took me back to the “swing” of the original show – a great start to the half! The return of the athletic acrobat provided more breath-taking diversion, before the entry of the “new starlet” from Act One gave us a song “Movin On”, with great singing, and choreography to match.

I liked the “fetching couple” cameo act of MC Nick Erasmuson with his partner, framed by the dancers’ creatively eating and playing with popcorn while watching “Science Fiction, Double Feature” – its relative stasis emphasising the volcanic energies of the boys’ number that followed – “Don’t say yes until I finish talking” – the joys of an entertainment producer! Nothing, however, prepared us for the onslaught that followed in the guise of “The Hot Dog Song”, the incredibly raunchy portrayal of the singer “knowed no bounds of taste or decency”, in keeping with the total abandonment of the presentation and its subject, a “tour de force” of unashamedly risqué expression!

I thought the accompanying energy levels for “Sit Down, you’re rockin’ the boat!” seemed to overwhelm the performer at the beginning, but the dynamics seemed to synchronise better as the song, progressed, the choreography “framing” the vocalist’s efforts helping the number’s trajectories to properly expand. After this, “Swings both ways” featured a chorus of angels “watching over” the beautifully-vocalised attraction of two young men for one another – a nice touch, poignantly set against the following “I’ve found a new Baby”, the woman vocalist duetting teasingly with the “agent”, before opening the voice-throttle and saturating the space with heartfelt emotion at the end – lump-in-throat stuff! – and when set against “Losing my Mind”, a double-whammy emotional journey of two halves – a late microphone placement hampered the latter singer’s initial lyrics, but, in tandem with a beautifully-played saxophone counterpoint, the mood was caught and held touchingly and strongly.

More booming bass tones didn’t mar the dance chorus’s superb work (great choreography by Leigh Evans) introducing “Let’s Be Bad”, the energies carrying the day, leaving a kind of valedictory atmosphere into which which MC Nick Erasmuson “conjured up” the singer of “Over the Rainbow”, who gave a free and spontaneous-sounding rendition during which the intensities were very beautifully “growed” into full-blooded outward flow.

I didn’t recognise the final number “Lady Marmalade” (my head-count of recognised items was lamentably low throughout!), but the song was accorded the kind of treatment we’d come to expect from what we’d witnessed thus far, a veritable orgy of full-on involvement from all concerned and which, at the end, produced a veritable explosion of physically demonstrative audience appreciation totally in accord with the ambiences we’d been subsumed by throughout.

While I found myself craving for more “shape” in the realisation of many of the numbers, more light and shade, and more playfulness and irony and sentiment, and greater “spaces” into which these contrasts could be set and savoured, I couldn’t help thinking that mine was a somewhat old-fashioned view of performance, and that what seemed to be required here, and which was freely given, was a markedly “visceral” result, of the kind that could induce a kind of tactile euphoria, heart-and soul stuff, rather than any once-removed kind of in-situ reflection. Of course, there were moments in which this state was achieved, but they were quickly moved on – appetites on my side of the footlights seemed ravenous and were, by my reckoning, most satisfyingly sated.

I would have liked to have credited the individual performers in the separate numbers, but the programme wasn’t particularly helpful to someone like myself who couldn’t make the connections with the different names and the items in which they performed – so I’ve listed all the performers, in the hope that they’ll all “find” themselves mentioned here by what they did – I “dips me lid” to them all, along with the people behind the scenes who had a part in making the show so irrepressibly impactful – in a word, WOW!

An Orchestral Feast Showcasing a Rising Star – Peter Gjelsten (violin) with the Wellington Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Rebecca Stanton

The Wellington Youth Orchestra
with Mark Carter (conductor)
and Peter Gjelsten (solo violin)

BEETHOVEN – Overture to “Egmont” (Op. 84)
TCHAIKOVSKY – Violin Concerto (Op. 35)
BIZET – Farandole from L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2

St. Andrews on the Terrace

Sunday, 10 October

Livestreamed and archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCG9f1OeXk

Pre-concert interview with Peter Gjelsten on RNZ Concert’s Upbeat:

https://www.rnz.co.nz/concert/programmes/upbeat/audio/2018815593/peter-gjelsten-plays-tchaikovsky

An atmosphere of excitement pervaded St. Andrews as the sold-out Alert Level 2 crowd sorted out its seating arrangements for this much-anticipated season-closing concert showcasing the winner of WYO’s 2021 Concerto Competition, Peter Gjelsten, in Tchaikovsky’s famous violin concerto.  I carefully mulled my seating options — either up in the gallery with many of the cognoscenti, or downstairs in the front row within stabbing range of the principal cellist (Jack Moyer, who heroically overlooked my tactless proximity) — and opted for the latter, more exciting place close to the thick of the action.  There were plenty of fireworks to look forward to, with three well-known and majestic pieces on the program.

First, however, some orchestra business was to be conducted: acknowledgements and encomia for Tom Gott, the outgoing chair of the Wellington Youth Orchestras Board, whose name has been given to a large silver cup which will henceforth be awarded annually to, and inscribed with the names of the Concerto Competition winners.  Aside from being heartwarming, this raised anticipation for the concerto performance to come — but first, the orchestra (sans concerto winner) treated us to a performance of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture.

The stately, portentous opening chords of this overture are thrilling to hear live, and the orchestra sounded as if it was thrilled too, playing with conviction, confidence, and fire.  The string players seemed unafraid to get athletic for the loud bits, and the woodwinds held their own in reply, making for a crisp, well-balanced sound.  Shapely phrases and nicely observed dynamics emerged from under Mark Carter’s elegant, efficient conducting.  It’s clear that he and these players are very comfortable with each other and communicate with ease.

With “Egmont” as entrée, the audience prepared for an equally delicious main course: the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. I first heard this concerto 25 years ago, at the 1996 “Stars of the White Nights” festival in St. Petersburg.  Tickets being cheap and my Russian host family somewhat unfriendly, I tried to go out to concerts every night without too much regard for what was on the programme — and thus it was that I happened to end up hearing the Tchaikovsky concerto on two consecutive nights, with two different orchestras and two different soloists.  On first hearing, I was unmoved.  The music seemed showy but not interesting, and the harmonics and interpolated high notes in the first movement sounded so crude and approximate that I was almost offended to be subjected to them.  (I won’t say who I think the offending soloist was because I’m not 100% sure and can’t find the notebook where I wrote it down!)  The next evening, I returned to the same hall and, after a few moments of déja vu, realized I was hearing the same piece as the night before, this time played by Gidon Kremer.  It was electrifying!  From this experience I learned that, while this concerto is indeed flashy and even macho in places, it falls flat as a pancake without careful attention to phrasing and, especially, intonation.

Fortunately these are particular strengths of Gjelsten’s, as we soon found out.  In an interview the day before on RNZ Concert’s “Upbeat” programme, he had cited Augustin Hadelich’s recording of the concerto as a particular source of inspiration, and the influence was palpable both in his sweetness of tone and in his phrasing which brought out the character, and the lovely melodic material, of the solo line.  Gjelsten also plays with a physical freedom and looseness that is lovely to watch.  Throughout the first movement, he seemed to take its many and diverse technical demands in stride while also feeling totally at home in the music.

A particular pleasure of this concerto is the relationship between the soloist and the orchestra, and in particular the moments where they join each other.  Famously, the piece opens with a melody in the strings that never returns; pretty in its own right, it suggests that we might be in for some sort of pastoral scene, with the woodwinds suggesting a few clouds appearing in the strings’ sunny sky, but before the day takes on any settled character, along comes the solo violin like the Messenger in a Greek play and says something like “Hey, guys, let’s play THIS ONE,” starting up the first movement’s main theme.  Immediately attentive to this charismatic newcomer, the orchestra falls in with his proposal and starts singing back-up, as it were. The same thing happens with the second theme, until after a few minutes of development (featuring some lovely bubbly solo runs for clarinet and flute; overall, the WYO’s woodwinds were excellent) everyone joins in triumphantly on a majestic tutti statement of the main theme, one of the most satisfying moments in any concerto.  In fact it’s so satisfying they do it again a few minutes later (Tchaikovsky never being one to waste an effect he was pleased with, though he obviously had tunes to spare).

There follows the cadenza, not only technically devilish but also challenging to make music out of — as my 1996 experience attests.  I loved Gjelsten’s rendition.  The technicalities of it seemed to disappear — I never felt a gap between the player and his instrument, but rather a sense of complete ease, as though the music was coming directly out of the performer via the violin rather than being coaxed from the latter by the former. The fireworks here — including super-fast runs ending in super-high harmonics — are inevitably impressive but not inevitably pleasurable; Gjelsten’s playing was both, and led beautifully into one of my favourite moments of the entire concerto, the soloist’s culminating trill on a high A that magically transforms from a show-off move into a demure pedal note in the background as the flute comes in with a sweet-voiced restatement of the main theme.  If it were a Disney movie there would be small birds flying around the players’ heads.

After this, things gradually pick up steam again (I have a mysterious scribble in my notes about a particular repeated motif reminding me of Philip Glass; I think this might have been around bar 293), collecting energy for the solo vs. tutti triple-f race to the finish.  The audience REALLY wanted to applaud here, but most of us reluctantly restrained ourselves.  It felt a bit like watching someone land a series of triple axles without cheering, but decorum must have its due I suppose.

Early listeners of this concerto felt that the second movement was the only one Tchaikovsky got right, in between the “unplayable” first movement (Auer) and the “brutal and wretched jollity” of the third (Hanslick).  Hanslick presumably liked it because it didn’t sound “Russian” to him, though I can’t imagine why not; the opening chorale in the woodwinds especially is reminiscent of the nostalgic, sorrowful yet resolute music Tchaikovsky wrote to represent Rus’ under the Mongol yoke in his Moscow Cantata.  One thing this movement IS very good for is giving the audience a moment to breathe and notice that behind the soloist there are other instruments in the orchestra; most notably the woodwinds, who did some lovely playing here. I particularly enjoyed the bassoon solos, but flute and clarinet also shone, emerging and re-merging in brief duets with one another or with the solo violin. We had a few minutes to savour their interplay and the orchestra’s and conductor’s beautiful dynamics before diving headfirst into the breathless “Allegro vivacissimo” third movement.

Here again one hears genuine dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra, with the violin once again saying “Let’s play THIS one!” (or perhaps just “Let’s DANCE!”) to the orchestra, whose various sections play, clap (pizzicato strings; rhythmically bowing cellos), or sing (droning basses, various lyrical counterpoints in the woodwinds) along, adding their own spin on the material and suggesting different moods as it develops (though the violin’s irrepressible will to dance always re-emerges sooner or later).  There are two official themes here but many distinct melodies; the woodwinds, who again did thoroughly delightful work here, get their own “verse” of the song, bringing a slower tempo and a lyrical melancholy before once again getting swept into the dance.  The sinuous “inverse descants” by the clarinet and bassoon in the Quasi Andante section were especially lovely.  And of course we finished on a satisfying loud fast bit — this orchestra sounds absolutely terrific on loud fast bits — and were finally allowed to clap.  This took some time, as the audience had a lot of pent-up admiration to expend.

As it turned out, so did the orchestra, and they took their feelings out on the Farandole movement of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite No. 2.  This piece is a regulation banger, and the orchestra played it accordingly, with the same verve and panache as the tutti sections of the previous works.  It made for a suitable dessert after the Russian banquet cooked up by Tchaikovsky, and a nice way to reunite Peter Gjelsten (now sitting in the back row of the first violins) with the rest of the team. In fact, one of the most enjoyable things about the whole concert was feeling this sense of teamwork among the performers; in these days of international superstars one rarely gets to hear a concerto played by a violinist with his home orchestra, conducted by their own musical director.  One felt this in the lightness of touch Mark Carter was able to bring to his conducting, in the soloist’s sense of ease, and in the generosity of the orchestra’s response to the soloist.  Overall a very worthwhile way to spend a Sunday afternoon and a magnificent first outing for the new Tom Gott Cup.