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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.

Musicam scribo cogito ergo sum! – with a vengeance! – from the remarkable Ghost Trio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki NZ School of Music presents:
The Ghost Trio –
Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio Op 1, No.1 in E flat major (1793)
KELLY-MARIE MURPHY – Give Me Phoenix Wings To Fly (1997)
RODION SHCHEDRIN – Three Funny Pieces (3 heitere Stucke) (1981/1997)

Adam Concert Room, NZ School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, July 13th, 2021

This was a concert that packed a great deal into a short time, an out-and-out “moments-per-minute” affair which encouraged and repaid the listener’s active involvement, but also “came to get you” if you had any thoughts of hanging back as if you were some kind of passive observer! Each of the three composers with the help of some extraordinarily dynamic and impactful, infinitely varied playing from the musicians of the Ghost Trio had things to say that seemed to variously brood, seethe, bubble and burst forth all about the available spaces, so that there was nothing for it but to allow oneself to be taken up and possessed accordingly!

The three works chosen by the Trio to perform each shared something of the “no holds barred” character of the music-making, if markedly contrasted in other ways – ‘cellist Ken Ichinose briefly but succinctly introduced the Beethoven work to us as the latter’s Opus One, remarking that it was obviously chosen by the composer to make the most distinctive and memorable effect on the musical world of that time. In fact Beethoven with these three Op.1 works placed the piano trio on a higher “plane” far removed from the domestic music-making aspect the form had previously occupied, adding a “scherzo” that both expanded the form’s parameters and intensified the dynamism of the music.

Straightaway, Beethoven employed simple means with the greatest possible effect,  a strong opening chord leading to various assertive treatments of a rising arpeggio from all the instruments underpinned by virtuoso runs from the piano. All the while the players emphasised the robust nature of the dialogue, very much an “as equals” kind of discourse, the second subject’s engaging contrasts dynamics and phrasings deliciously enjoyed by all. In the development the Trio enacted the “rising arpeggio meets rising scale – will it work?” scenario with characteristic relish, taking us to the recapitulation, where the music beautifully restated and unravelled, Beethoven having a lot of fun with his “concluding” gestures (Haydn’s influence, here?), telling us “this is it – but not yet!” repeatedly, the playing beautifully po-faced throughout!

Gabriella Glapska’s beautifully-played piano solo at the Adagio cantabile’s beginning made me long to hear her play one of the composer’s sonatas – Monique Lapins’ violin solo and cellist Ken Ichinose’s reply carried the mood forward fetchingly, then continued into ghostly minor-key realms of wonderment, the music “rescued” by a kind of “fanfare of being” from all the instruments. Beethoven allowed us further enjoyment of Glapska’s solo playing and of Lapins’ heartfelt delivery of the violin’s emotive phrases – so much light-and-shade, here! – and with Ichinose’s more circumspect ‘cello tones, putting me in mind of a Florestan/Eusebius kind of contrast between the two (yes, it’s the wrong composer, I know!). And what elfin magic there was in the tenderly-sounded concluding piano/pizzicato notes!

One wonders what this music’s first listeners made of the following Scherzo, with its “Minuet-gone-wrong” opening measures, and the roisterous “all together, now!” passage that followed. The players gave the music all the rustic vigour it needed, particularly digging into the “drone” passages which, here, almost made me laugh out loud! – and then, in complete contrast , the Trio seemed to draw back a curtain on a different scene, a dancing piano set against sostenuto string lines, like a butterfly gently hovering over a sleeping child. Tremendous vigour marked the scherzo’s return – but the players wound down these energies at the dance’s end with disarming ease and charm.

The playfulness of the Presto finale’s “ready – steady – go!” beginning, sounded by the piano’s mischievous “tenth” jumps, wound itself into almost frenetic activity from all of the players, with Glapska in particular hugely enjoying the virtuoso piano writing in general, introducing at one point (and revisiting) an uncanny pre-echo of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody! Both Lapins and Ichinose joined in with the helter-skelter of the writing to stunning effect, the music generating tremendously fiery interchanges before breaking off, becalming, and then reintroducing the “starter’s gun” for another round of fun and games! The music also paid direct homage to Haydn near the end with the piano unexpectedly dancing away in a different key, before all the instruments broke into a cheekily raucous “fooled-ya!” kind of rejoiner and set the trajectories to rights! In all, a tremendously enjoyable and engaging performance of some ground-breaking music!

The name Kelly-Marie Murphy was new to me before I heard this performance of her 1997 piece for piano trio Give Me Phoenix Wings To Fly. She’s a Canadian composer currently based in Ottawa, one whose works have achieved international status, winning prizes in competitions around the world with pieces such as From the Drum comes a Thundering Beat (1996), Utterances (1999), Departures and Deviations (2002) and a Harp Concerto And Then at Night I Paint the Stars (2003).She’s currently writing a Double Concerto for piano and percussion for the Ottawa-based SHHH Ensemble, and has been commissioned to write a Triple Concerto for Trio Sōra and Mikko Frank’s Radio France Philharmonic  Orchestra during 2022.

In a programme note accompanying a previous performance of Give Me Phoenix Wings To Fly Murphy outlined her sources of inspiration for the work alongside the age-old Phoenix from the Ashes myth, each drawn from poetry – firstly, John Keats, from his poem “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again”….

    But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new phoenix wings to fly at my desire

And then, Robert Graves, in a poem “To bring the dead to life”, one I confess I didn’t know….

To bring the dead to life
Is no great magic
Few are wholly dead:
Blow on a dead man’s embers
And a live flame will start.

Murphy elaborated on her fascination with the myth of the Phoenix, and its ability to rise again after its immolation from its own ashes. Describing it as a powerful and relevant image for contemporary life as we humans perceive it, she characterised the process as a kind of way forward, and set out to render it in composition terms. She structured the piece in three movements, calling them fire, bleak devastation and rebuilding – and so emerged the Piano Trio Give Me Phoenix Wings To Fly.

It was only after hearing the music that I came upon Murphy’s programme notes, so that the impression the work made upon me at the concert as outlined below was formed almost entirely through the spellbinding efforts of the Ghost Trio in bringing this extraordinary work into being,  apart from my hearing beforehand pianist Gabriela Glapska’s brief summary of the music’s three-movement scheme. The opening gestures, strident and gripping, transfixed one’s attention, as did the rhythmic trajectories that sprang up almost straight afterwards, at once urgent and oppressive, and with each of the players physically involved in what seemed either like desperate gestures of flight or of falling out of control. The piano’s lowest registers took us to the darkest places, the music’s visceral aspect then burgeoning physically and psychologically with a conglomeration of cacophonies that gradually rose up and suddenly exploded and crashed down onto a single held piano note resonating in the shockingly near-empty aural spaces!

Over these spaces drifted bleak, desolate piano tones, joined by the ‘cello in its high register and then the violin, with stricken and forlorn harmonics. Stratospheric piano-note-clusters floated over low, cavernous held notes, the strings sounding piteously-wrought harmonics, and then ghostly col legno tremolandos – music devoid of shape or living substance. Pitiful  impulses of repeated notes from the piano were answered by heartfelt stratospheric cries from the violin, joined by the ‘cello – the piano chimed and shimmered softly as the strings joined to play long-held mantra-like figures, with time seeming to drift almost into a state of negation or non-being…..

The violin suddenly dug into a three-note repeated figure, joined by the cello, giving the impression of something trying to reactivate or revive – the music began a kind of danse macabre pizz-and-arco-with-piano, the rhythms angular and asymmetric, the instruments wrestling with the material – effortful unisons become exchanged figurations,  everything sounding like desperate attempts at reconnectiveness. The piano danced as the strings interchanged motifs – this phoenix was evidently not one for grand perorations of rebirth, but instead a feisty bird, whose refurbishment was an intensely-wrought, obstreperous and defiant process – making for, in Monique Lapins’ words afterwards, “a wild ride!” And here, what a performance it was of that ride!

Perhaps the concert’s third work was less of a “no-holds barred” than an “unbuttoned” experience, a piece by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who will be celebrating his ninetieth birthday this year. Whimsically titled “Three Funny Pieces” for Piano Trio,  and written in 1997, the pieces are arrangements of earlier works, a 1957 “Humoreske” and two pieces from a “Notebook for Youth” dated 1981, the first of these here called “Conversation” and the second given the title “Let’s Play an Opera by Rossini”. Together, they made a riotous trio! Monique Lapins, who introduced the work, even promised us some singing, which, quixotically, did NOT happen in the Rossini piece but in the final “Humoreske”.

The first piece “Conversation” was a series of desultory exchanges between instruments which seemed determined NOT to communicate or even co-operate, each bent on doing its “own thing” – though at least each waited for the other to complete their “fragment” before beginning each new seemingly random, spur-of-the-moment impulse-gesture. The following “Let’s Play an Opera by Rossini” at first mimicked an operatic “Recitative / Aria” sequence, complete with heroine (violin) and hero (‘cello), – though whether one lampooned or truly invented by Shchedrin, I’m not entirely sure – then suddenly “morphed” into what sounded vaguely like the crescendo sequence from the “La Cenerentola” Overture, at the end of which the ensemble  seemed to fall down a flight of stairs and the playing come to an inglorious stop! Lastly, the “Humoreske”, a mock-processional piece of drollery taking the original “humorous” meaning of the term to bizarre extremes, the players bursting into boisterous song for one of the sequences, and concluding the piece with a loud unison in the wrong key!

All in all, it was one of those occasions at the end of which one might have been tempted to pinch oneself and rhetorically ask in tones of wonderment and disbelief, “And we saw and heard all of that for free? – goodness! – What an absolute privilege!” Indeed!

Monstrous and idiosynchrophiliac goings-on with Stroma at Wellington’s Bats Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma presents:
IDIOSYNCHROPHILIA – Stroma meets invented instruments!

Rosie Langabeer (composer)
Idiosynchrophilia (2021)

Invented instruments devised and built by Neil Feather

Stroma – conducted by Mark Carter
Daniel Beban, Erika Grant, Neil Feather (invented instruments)
Anna van der Zee (violin), Andrew Thomson (viola), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)
Alexander Gunchenko (double bass), Shannon Pittaway (bass trombone),
Todd Gibson-Cornish (bassoon) Thomas Guldborg, Lenny Sakofsky (percussion)

The Heyday Dome, Bats Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 25th July, 2021

The perils of reviewer-conviviality are never so real as when one attends a concert of contemporary music, and sits next to someone in the audience one knows by sight but has never had a chance to talk with seriously, so most pleasantly spends the entire pre-concert time getting properly acquainted, as a result of which one completely forgets to read the concert’s programme notes before the lights are dimmed and the music gets under way!

Being thus plunged into the sound-world of an intriguingly and unconventionally “new” piece of music certainly put me on my mettle, especially as my “reviewing-brief” involved the substance of the presentation and its outcomes and the production of a dissertation of sorts on the same!  I knew beforehand that the concert featured at least three “invented” musical instruments, the work of one Neil Feather (also one of the musicians), for which an accompanying “soundscape” inspired by 1960s “monster” movies had been wrought by composer Rosie Langabeer. The fact that the contemporary music ensemble Stroma was involved also suggested that there would be interactions between these “deliciously idiosyncratic” inventions and conventional instruments of the kind any concertgoer would be familiar with – string, wind, brass, percussion instruments – perhaps!

I wasn’t entirely sure of my ground when it came to thinking about 1960s “monster movies” – though I had lived through that era, I was a timid, largely unadventurous moviegoer, who avoided anything “scary” through being prone to nightmares and other uncontrollable imaginings. I presumed there would be lots of “creepy” sounds with plenty of ominous ambiences and sudden dynamic irruptions designed to stimulate equally calamitous and involuntary bodily mechanisms to do with fright! In order to get more in alignment with the composer in this matter I googled the “monster movies” genre, pondering over what I’d missed in my formative years when reading descriptions such as “atomic mutants, monstrous throwbacks, monsters made and/or controlled by mad scientists, animal-man combinations, scientists who transform themselves into monsters, the various species of resurrected dead, and creatures from outer space, including alien parasites”.

Conversely, when the music actually began I instantly felt on familiar territory – was not that baleful bass trombone sound over sinister percussion a first cousin of Fafner, the mighty giant-turned-dragon from Wagner’s Siegfried? The sequence was repeated, with strings reinforcing the trombone, and on a third repetition Erica Grant began to tremulously activate the Nondo, a large sheet steel string instrument, which was resonated with strikers, and further activated by the rolling of a steel pole across (near invisible) strings stretched from end-to-end , the sounds electronically amplified – in fact I thought at first the pole was magnetised and seemed to “balance itself” mid-air with the help of attracting/repulsing forces! I thought in places of Len Lye’s famous steel-sheet installation in New Plymouth which I’d seen and heard a number of years ago, now, the timbres as remarkable as there but uniquely “here”, and responsive to different kinds of touches from the player, wonderfully cavernous sounds as well as delicate ones.

I ought to remark at this point that audience involvement in these gesturings couldn’t help but be total and visceral, due to the auditorium’s wonderfully-raked seating, giving every person a clear view of what the various players were doing – obviously the venue, which I had never been to previously, is something of a treasure!

The room’s immediacies were underlined when, at one point the wind and string players were goaded into launching a violent, positively seismic tutti, to which another player, Dan Beban, responded with his Vibrowheel activation, impressive in a “miniature” sense to view, and belying its size to listen to – a “Mutt and Jeff” kind of comparison with the voluminous and visibly-impassive Nondo! As the latter was again roused by its player, Erica Grant. the timpani rumbled in a more spontaneously-interactive way, transferring energies towards both the bassoonist and the strings, the latter essaying eerie glissandi whose sense of unease proves a precursor to more demonstrably threatening sounds,  abrasive, fractured, and almost anarchic utterances from trombone, double bass and bassoon.

Diverting the menace somewhat was the activation of the third “invented instrument”, this one by its actual creator, Neil Feather – the Wiggler consisted of four wires stretched horizontally between two metal bars laid flat, creating a Koto-like, or dulcimer-like playing aspect, but with the wires activated by metal rods laid upon or balanced at right angles in the space between the iron bars – the rods were dropped/bounced upon or balanced in between the wires, and allowed to bounce on, and scrape against the same, gently or more forcefully as the scenario required – almost the “music of industry” seemed to resonate from this arrangement, factory-like in its repetitions, but also delicate and natural in its evocation of gentler impulses, a “music is where you find it” realisation…..

As the Wiggler was put through its paces (the ensemble percussionists took their respective triangles for a walk in separate directions at this point, possibly as a dissociative gesture!), the ensemble “crept” its diverse sounds in “under the radar”, with the strings in lament-like mode , a spell broken, intentionally or otherwise with a start-inducing crash from the vicinity of the Nondo, Erica Grant unable to supress a smile at this point as if she’d pre-planned the disturbance.

I’ve not mentioned the presentation’s notable lighting properties up to this point – artfully atmospheric and, I think, gradually morphing between different tones – but suddenly there was a marked change of atmosphere and lighting, and the ensemble immediately struck up a sentimental dance-tune, complete with wire-brush percussion accompaniment, most divertingly and engagingly delivered, the trombonist phrasing the leading melody superbly! The strings took over the tune’s first part and the bassoon and trombone concluded the phrase with some smart dovetailing!

“Time for you and time for me, and for the taking of a toast and tea” the music seemed to say, when another abrupt lighting change and a dissolution of sounds into something metallic and mechanical “flicked a switch” to a kind of “noises off” or “underbelly” scenario. Most disconcerting!  The scenarios then switched backwards and forwards from dance-scene to Nibelungen-like slave-labour industry, with each switch inducing a more desperate and anarchic feeling. A change back to the dance scene then introduced a more “hep to the jive” rhythm, the muted bass trombone sounding what seemed like a reminiscence of a 1960s television action programme, and the bassoonist out of his chair and wielding his instrument like some kind of Grim Reaper with his scythe!

Conductor Mark Carter abruptly left the podium at this point, leaving the musicians at odds with the activated “invented” instruments, whose sounds died away as the lights dimmed for the last time. Altogether it seemed like a kind of dissolution of order, and a leaving of things to nature at the eventual silencing of the machines. Whatever impressions of intent were at large, the audience’s reaction to the performance was unalloyed delight, both at its manifest entertainment value and its idiosyncrophiliac singularity.

Afterwards, at home I read the programme! – it was there! – the ominous awakening of a monster somewhere deep in the underground, followed by its pursuit of a gradual path of destruction through both nature and civilisation, ending in human oblivion. As to the place of spontaneity and improvisation in the work, such was the freedom with which the musicians brought the sounds into being, it all gave the impression of the musicians being “played” by the piece as much as playing it. I was fascinated by the manipulations of the “invented” instruments, even if I thought the Vibrowheel a tad under-represented in the work, compared with the others.

Though I didn’t feel the ‘idiosynchrophiliac” instruments integrated musically with the ensemble’s monster scenario, that perhaps wasn’t the point of what the exercise was all about – what remained in my mind was a sense of spontaneous creation and recreation having random and unexpected outcomes exhibited by all facets of the presentation, from nature’s own “dimension cleft in twain” manifestation of chaos (arguably representative of a virus waiting to strike, as well), to seemingly innocuous if titillating sound ambiences wrought from invented machines – manifestations of unpredictability from which we can each draw our own conclusions.

“The Long Day Closes” – Mozart, with “Evening Music and Lullabies” from the Bach Choir of Wellington

Posted on by Anne French

Mozart Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339
Evening Music and Lullabies by Franck, Brahms, JS Bach, Karg-Elert, Haydn, Lauridsen, Whitacre, Sullivan and David Hamilton

The Bach Choir of Wellington
Music Director:  Shawn Michael Condon
Accompanist:  Douglas Mews
Vocal Soloists: Shaunagh Chambers (soprano), Kate Manahi (mezzo), LJ Crichton (tenor), Samuel McKeever (bass)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Saturday, 24 July 2021

This was a concert of two halves, as they say in rugby. The first half consisted of the advertised Mozart Solemn Vespers, and the second half consisted of ‘Evening Music and Lullabies’, on the basis, I suppose, that Vespers is the evening prayer service, one of the Canonical Hours in the Catholic liturgy, although you wouldn’t find any of these items following a Catholic Vespers. But more of this later.

The liturgical Vespers consists of five psalms, preceded by a chant and followed by the Magnificat, with the doxology (‘Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto…’) at the end of every psalm. Mozart wrote this Vespers for the Cathedral of Salzburg in 1780. It is scored SATB with a small orchestra including two trumpets and three trombones, basso continuo plus organ, but in this case Douglas Mews substituted for everything.

For the first half of the concert, the choir was stationed in the gallery of St Andrews, around the organ. This must have been a bit of a squeeze, because there are nearly 60 of them, plus four soloists. I couldn’t see how cramped they were, though, because I was sitting at the front of the back half of the seating, facing forwards. The front half of the seating had been rearranged to face inwards, separated by a narrow aisle.

I was in St Andrew’s a few weeks ago for the terrific Inspirare concert, where the choir (all 18 of them) sang from the choir loft, but that evening all the downstairs seating faced backwards.  In both cases, putting the choir up in the gallery worked well. Now that St Andrew’s has thrown a cool three million at the organ, we can probably expect more of it. It strikes me that the choir sound is enhanced by singing upstairs, even in a dryish acoustic.

In any event, I was waiting for the choir’s first note with slight trepidation. The Bach Choir was once an excellent choir, but it fell on hard times. ‘What do they sound like these days under Shawn Condon?’ I wondered. Much, much better is the answer. The first phrase of the ‘Dixit Dominus’ was full and confident; the second higher and louder. The choir’s sound had a fuzzy quality, a bit like peach fuzz, which I found oddly beautiful. With a choir of sixty, it’s easier to sing loudly than quietly, and very hard to sing exactly together, so the fuzz was probably the result of dozens of tiny inexactnesses. Still, the opening filled me with confidence. This was going to be a great concert.

And so it proved. There were four soloists supporting the choir, all young singers at the start of their careers. The soprano gets the most work, being given the well-known Laudate Dominum (aka Psalm 117) with the choir as backing group. In this case, it was Shaunagh Chambers who was doing the full Kiri. She is in her honours year at New Zealand School of Music, where she is taught by Jenny Wollerman and Margaret Medlyn. She has a lovely voice for Mozart, bright and agile, and she sang the few florid passages she was granted with athleticism, plus Wollerman-like precision and beauty. But the other soloists were no slugs, even though they had hardly anything to do. I was especially taken with the delicious dark sound of Samuel McKeever, the bass soloist. He is a graduate of Project Prima Volta and recently performed with the NZSO. Tenor Lila Crichton was also great, and mezzo Kate Manahi, like the tenor and bass, a Project Prima Volta graduate, has a glorious voice. They sounded beautiful together in their quartet passages.

Early on the choir’s diction was rather muddy, but it had improved by the time they got to the doxology of the second psalm, Confiteor tibi. The dynamics were somewhat samey at first with a lot of mf and not much else until the third psalm, Beatus vir. Here the soloists sang as a quartet, and the choir’s first entry was a bit pallid after their brilliant tone. The basses begin No 4 Laudate pueri, but the tenors follow straight after. There are currently 12 basses in the choir but only six tenors, yet the tenors sounded gorgeous: they have a completely unified sound, young and fresh, which creates the effect of much bigger forces. The altos, I thought, often sounded underpowered, getting lost in the texture, yet there are 17 of them.

Mozart’s Magnificat in this Vespers is not subtle: word-painting applied by trowel. By the time they got to ‘quia respexit’ the choir was giving it plenty of welly, and the tenor section briefly overblew. But the soloists came to their rescue. Though the women nearly came to grief in ‘dispersit’, they were brought into cohesion in ‘Abraham et semini eius’ which sounded definitive. The soloists led into the doxology, followed by the choir. The tenors were briefly a bit on the rough side – pushing too hard? And then it was over.

The pieces in the second half of the concert were a mixed bag. It opened with César Franck’s setting of Psalm 150, a gorgeous thing, with the choir accompanied by the organ. The work was composed to inaugurate the new organ at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris, and was scored for organ, choir, and orchestra. The aim is to show off the capabilities of the organ, and Douglas Mews did a splendid job; supported by the choir, with fluting sopranos and the men lyrical and majestic by turns.

Next came my favourite work of the concert, a very Brahmsian rendering of ‘Wie lieblich sint deine Wohningen’, the most performed movement from the German Requiem. They sang in great rolling waves of sound, with the altos sometimes getting lost in the texture, and then found again. The basses sounded splendid. The subito piano was dramatic, and the occasional drop in tuning (a loss of energy at the ends of phrases) went almost unnoticed.

Then came an organ and chorus version of Bach’s ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ from BWV 79 which seemed a bit antique after the lush chords of the Brahms, with the choir singing the harmonized hymn tune and the organ providing all the elaborations. I wondered why it was here, out of time and not very ‘evening’ in theme; but before I had formed the thought it was attaca Karg-Elert’s rowdy setting of the same tune as a triumphal march, in case the Bach had put anyone to sleep. It was a magisterial showing off of everything the refurbished organ can do. Douglas Mews must have eleven arms.

The choir moved downstairs, and stood at the front of the church to sing David Hamilton’s ‘God be in my head’, a movement from a mass written for the choirs of Westlake Boys and Girls schools. I was surprised to see that the Bach Choir is older than it sounds. (In my day, the Bach Choir comprised under-35s.) The Hamilton was a capella and more challenging, but they sang it sweetly and simply, heads mostly buried in their scores. Mews came down to join them at the piano for Haydn’s ‘Evening Song’, a rare work for accompanied choir that was not commissioned. But it was one choral part song too many for me. This would have been the moment to use the four soloists, who had sung so little.

Next came ‘Sure on this Shining Night’, a poem setting by the American composer and mystic Morten Lauridsen. Shawn Condon was on home turf now; the dynamic indications were clear, the tuning mostly excellent. It was followed by another popular American, Eric Whitacre (b.1970). ‘The Seal Lullaby’ was originally composed for wind ensemble. Whitacre is beloved of choirs, and it’s likely that no one ever lost money by programming him, although I find him light to the point of weightlessness. But the choir sang with conviction.

And still two more works to go! Arthur Sullivan’s ‘The Long Day Closes’ came next. This too would have been great to give the soloists (although there was already too much music for one concert). Or not sing it at all. Still, there were some great low notes from the second basses.

Finally, the last work in the programme, David Hamilton’s arrangement of ‘Hine, e Hine’, a lovely thing that benefited from the assistance of the soloists singing with the choir. Alas, it was over too fast. All in all, a delightful concert that would have been better if it had been shorter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Purcell’s “Food of Love” at Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul

Posted on by Rebecca Stanton

Wellington Cathedral’s TGIF recital series presents:
HENRY PURCELL – Songs and Duets
Anna Sedcole (soprano) / Helene Page (mezzo-soprano)
Michael Stewart (harpsichord)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Friday, 23rd July 2021

There is a particular pleasure in hearing a duet sung by two voices that are well-matched in timbre, especially when the singers obviously share not only a vocal quality but a musical sensibility and a personal rapport.  Such were the harmonies on offer at this presentation of Purcell songs, performed by old friends Anna Sedcole and Helene Page, and accompanied fluently and unobtrusively on harpsichord by Michael Stewart, the Cathedral’s Director of Music, who also happens to be married to Sedcole — completing the sense of a musical afternoon among friends.  At its best, the concert felt almost spontaneous, as if the three felt a common impulse to burst into song. Such a carefree effect, of course, bespeaks careful and devoted preparation.

The recital opened with “Music for a while” from the incidental music to Oedipus, sung by Page in a warm but austere mezzo-soprano reminiscent of a Baroque recorder. While the vast vertical space of the Cathedral did its best to swallow her low notes, she made a compelling case for the “beguiling” properties of music, which was amply borne out by the next two numbers, “Let us wander” and “Lost is my quiet.” Here we got to appreciate fully how well-suited the two voices were to each other, each striking overtones off the other that showcased Purcell’s harmonies beautifully.  Ornaments and fast-moving passages were clearly articulated for the audience to appreciate.  Next came “If music be the food of love,” showcasing Sedcole’s agile, flute-like soprano.  I especially appreciated her sensitive dynamics (again not easy given the voracity of the space) and bright, clean articulation, so necessary in this music (and the polar opposite of the viscous legato required for the Russian choral repertoire the singer would be performing the following night as a member of the Tudor Consort!).

Page then returned and the two sang a gorgeous love duet, “My dearest, my fairest,” making the most of long, languishing melismas, suspensions, resolutions, and a hocketing “no, no” at the end that recalled bird song (and made one wonder whether a tragic ending was secretly encoded in this otherwise idyllic pastoral-sounding romance.  Having now looked up the play for which Purcell wrote this song, Pausanias, the betrayer of his country: a tragedy by Richard Norton, I find it indeed precedes a scene in which the eponymous hero’s lover, Pandora, attempts to seduce his lieutenant — so Purcell seems to have caught the mood here exceptionally well).

A slight technical malfunction in the harpsichord recalled us to Michael Stewart’s labours at the keyboard, and afforded an opportunity to marvel a second time at the family likeness between Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and the opening bars of the next duet, “Sound the trumpet” (from Come Ye Sons of Art, one of the odes Purcell wrote to commemorate the birthday of Queen Mary II in 1694).  Appropriately jubilant, it was sung with fine rhythm, vigour, and precision, and went with a swing.  The next piece was a total contrast in all but the technical excellence of the performance: the slow, melancholy and poignant “O Solitude,” sung by Helene Page in a tender legato which reminded one of liquid honey, the vocal decorations — mordents and small trills — offered to the listener precise and unhurried.

The final two songs, both duets, were drawn from King Arthur, an opera I’m now extremely curious to see performed in its “Restoration spectacular” entirety.  The first of these, a duet of shepherdesses entitled “Shepherd, shepherd, leave decoying” was the highlight of the program for me: witty and nimble. I would have placed it last on the program instead of “Two daughters of this aged stream” (a song for two sirens), whose more languid tempo and theme (and final refrain of “And circle round, and circle round”) suggested intrigue rather than peroration.  Intrigue, however, was there none; the performers ended their recital promptly at the destined hour, leaving their audience satisfied but not surfeited with Baroque harmonies.

Dazzling star music for “Matariki’ from Gareth Farr

Posted on by Anne French

GARETH FARR – Ngā Hihi o Matariki (world premiere)

Lyrics by Mere Boynton and Ariana Tikao

Mere Boynton reo oro (vocalist) and Ariana Tikao raonga puoro and reo oro

NZSO conducted by Gemma New

 Friday 9 July, 6.30 pm, Michael Fowler Centre

A new work by Gareth Farr is always an event, so it was no surprise to see the Michael Fowler Centre completely full. The stage was completely full as well, with an enormous percussion section hard up against the back wall.

The house lights went down, and the spotlights fell on three cloaked figures standing at the foot of the choir stalls, a man flanked by two women. The woman on the right, Pekaira Jude Rei, began her karanga. It began straightforwardly enough – a message of welcome from the tangata whenua, Te Atiawa ki Te Whanganui a Tara, with some explanation of the significance of Matariki. Then the woman on the left (Rangiamohia Bolstad) continued – a contralto following a soprano – with much more complex language, so I lost the thread pretty fast. She was using an ancient text, or texts, as the programme described her as ‘connector to wisdom from baskets of old’, referring to the kete of knowledge.  Her karanga was long, but no one stirred. Finally, the man in the centre, Te Ahu Jason Hamilton, billed as the Kai Ruruku, Connector to the Heavens, began a prayer. Finally, they sang together, an ancient chant – full of star lore, I’m guessing.

They finished. The effect was arresting, connecting the very modern musical event with the teachings and texts of the ancestors handed down to the present.

The stage lights came up, the orchestra tuned bathetically, conductor Gemma New arrived on the podium, and with a Farr-like chord from the metallophones, the work began.

Ngā Hihi o Matariki (the rays of Matariki, the Pleiades) is a symphonic-length work in seven movements. The programme notes describe it as a ’concerto for orchestra’. It proceeds without a break, but each section begins with percussion, and the two women, vocalist Mere Boynton and taonga puoro player Ariana Tikao, move on stage and off as required.

Matariki, as every school child now knows, marks the start of the Māori new year when it is first seen above the northern horizon in the early morning sky. The stars are also part of the Waka o Takitimu, of which three stars in Orion form the stern of the canoe. The souls of the people who have died in the past year appear now as feathers tied to its stern – a nice example of traditional Māori star lore connecting with Western astronomy, as the nebula in Orion is a place where new stars are being born.

Each of the Matariki stars has a name and significance, and the seven movements of the work are named for nine stars (two sets of pairs). The star lore provides the programme for the piece (although this may have eluded the audience, as there was not enough light in the auditorium to read the printed programme). The first movement, Waitī/Waitā, calls the firmament into being. First the metallophones, then the flutes and piccolo, with the voice of Mere Boynton evoking water, springing from the earth and flowing to the sea. This is water as an act of creation. The lower strings groan into life, as though being born. The muted trumpets stammer a rhythm, answered by a haunting solo from the cor.

The second movement begins with a percussion chord like a clock striking. This is Waipunarangi (or Waipuna ā Rangi), the star associated with rain. The strings do most of the work in this movement, with a wonderful long viola solo, rushing and rushing, finally taken up by the bass trombone and tuba, and the tuned percussion. This is painting with music: it’s all about colour and texture.

The women came back for the third movement, Tupu-ā-nuku (food that grows in the soil) and Tupu-ā-rangi (food that grows in trees). These are the two small stars on the right hand side of the cluster. Mere Boynton’s splendid voice was accompanied by Ariana Tikao on pūtõrino, building to a climax. The fourth movement, Uru-ā-rangi, was all about wind, with the lower brass and lower strings evoking the storm.

And so it went on. For me, the most impressive movement was the fifth, Põhutukawa, in which Boynton’s glorious voice communicated the grief of loss, evoking the memories of treasured people who have died. It is traditional to mourn the recently dead at Matariki, when their souls leave the Earth to become new stars.

By the time we reached the seventh section, Hiwa-i-te-rangi, all about hopes and dreams, Farr was prepared to throw everything at it. The rototoms were drumming complex slit-drum rhythms, plus bass drum and timpani, Tikao arrived on stage with a pūtātara, Mere Boynton opened her throat, and the back of the orchestra went wild. It was a huge and thrilling climax. And then just the voice, and the tinkling sounds of the starlight percussion.

The Wellington audience immediately let out a great shout – the most fervent applause I can remember for a new work. But not just any new work: 66 minutes of commissioned work for orchestra (supported by a long list of donors) by one of our favourite composers for the new national festival of Matariki.

Keeping it all together was the accomplished Gemma New, our rising international conducting star. She is the recipient of the 2021 Sir George Solti Conducting Award, and has for several years been Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. Her list of engagements for the 2021/22 season is extraordinary. And she is not yet 35.

Mere Boynton is the perfect collaborator for Gareth Farr. She and Ariana Tikao provided texts, taonga puoro accents, and provided much of the emotional depth. Boynton’s operatic training ensures her voice has sufficient weight and brilliance to hold its own against the full orchestra. At least some of her material was improvised, and she has terrific stage presence. In short, she was electrifying.

Ngā Hihi o Matariki is more complex than some of Farr’s earlier commissions. It’s not merely an hour of dazzling orchestral effects, but a work that demands a deeper response from its audience. A very fitting work for this reflective and hopeful time of year. I very much hope we can hear this work again – perhaps next Matariki – as long as Mere Boynton is available.

 

 

 

Stylish, varied and compelling – Inspirare’s tribute to Great Britain’s music

Posted on by Anne French

Great Britain: Five centuries of British music

Inspirare

Mark Stamper, Artistic Director

Heather Easting, organ and piano

St Andrew’s on the Terrace,

Saturday, 29 May 2021

This concert was billed as ‘five centuries of British music’, but in truth it was two and a half centuries plus Tallis, or even one and a half centuries plus Handel and Tallis. Nonetheless, it was a stylish concert.

Inspirare is a small choir (18 voices) of mostly soloists. Founded by Mark Stamper five years ago, it gave its first concert on 4 September 2016. Known for its polish, the choir did not disappoint.

The concert began with a work for organ, Herbert Howells’ Rhapsody No 1 in D flat major, played with consummate style by Heather Easting. This showed off the recently refurbished organ nicely, and set the style for the programme to follow.

As was appropriate for a concert featuring so much organ music, the choir sang from the gallery, and the audience was arranged on the usual seating in the body of the church, but facing backwards. This arrangement worked beautifully, ensuring that there were no awkward timing delays between choir and organ. The only downside was that some of the singers were not visible, and the usual rapport between choir and audience was missing. But the sonic advantages made up for that. Placing the choir high in the church, close to the ceiling, meant that the sound was focused and clean, exactly as the music required, rather than becoming muddied between the front of the church and the back wall.

Britten’s Jubilate Deo – what an ohrwurm! – demonstrated a very nice balance between organ and choir, and showed off the fresh, young sound of the choir. They sounded like much Viva Voce in the early years: half the size, but with the same freshness and flexibility, precise tuning, and clear diction.

Thomas Tallis’s slender four-part motet, If Ye Love Me, showed a lovely sustained legato, clean and crisp at the ends of phrases. If it had any fault it was a lack of emotion. The overall effect was beautiful but not fervent, straightforwardly sung as though it was simply a piece of music rather than a musical prayer.

The Tallis was followed by Handel’s monumental Let thy Hand be Strengthened. Like a Ferrari on the open road, the choir responded to Mark Stamper with a full-throated roar, sounding like three times the number of voices. They gave a full Handelian sound, yet were precise in the runs; never florid, always stylish, with superb organ support (standing in for the whole orchestra). Heather Easting’s registrations were delicious, especially in ‘Let Justice and Judgement’, where the pedal line must not overpower the delicate upper register. The altos and basses came in with a smooth legato, and the silvery soprano entry demonstrated perfect balance.

If the concert had finished at that point, I would have gone home satisfied, but the best was still to come. Britten’s Festival Te Deum followed. The work was written in 1944 for the centenary of St Mark’s Church, Swindon, and first performed in 1945. There was a finely graduated crescendo held against the full organ, and the subito piano entry was magical. The tenors sounded young and fresh. The athletic middle section is fast, with a wide tessitura, followed by some jolly vehement singing. The treble solo part was taken by Simon Hernyak, one of the altos. The highest notes were just a fraction too high for her, but Stamper’s choice of an alto soloist was exactly right, because the Inspirare sopranos have a fuller sound than the English cathedral treble.

Staying cheerful, Parry’s I was Glad succeeded Britten. It was written for a coronation and has a big organ introduction. The choir that entered sounded more like Westminster Abbey than a chamber choir. Majestic singing. At times I wondered whether the choir could hold its own against the organ, but they did, with some glorious soprano top notes. Lovely vocal technique throughout.

And then a change of pace. Heather Easting came downstairs to play the piano for the setting of In Flanders Fields by Welsh composer Paul Mealor. This was the highlight of the concert for me. A perfect marriage of music and text, written with directness and simplicity. Inspirare did a splendid job, from the first male entry, tenors joined by the basses singing lightly in the upper part of the voice, and then a ravishing bell-like sound from the sopranos. Wikipedia says that Mealor is ‘considered one of the world’s most performed living composers’, and I understand why. More Mealor, please!

After the Mealor, some Stanford. And I Saw another Angel featured tenor James Asquith as soloist, with a lovely light Evangelist sound, and powerful singing by the women in particular.

This was succeeded by an organ piece by Vaughan Williams, Rhosymedre, placed here to give the choir a short breather, since there was no interval. And straight on into a melodious work by the contemporary Scottish composer James Macmillan, A New Song. There were pretty fluttering and trilling figures in the organ part, with a thicker harmonic texture once the choir entered, with sopranos dominant. The sopranos sang trills against a sustained bass pedal line; then the tenors imitated the effect against the organ’s pedal notes. The structure is strophic, but the changes of texture made it thrilling. The lower soprano sound, once more with that Viva Voce freshness, was beautiful. Like the Mealor, this is a work that deserves to be performed widely.

David Bednall is a prolific young contemporary Brit who has been educated in the English Cathedral tradition and has written many works for church choirs. His 8-part Easter Alleluia featured bass soloist Joe Haddow, who made a gorgeous sound. Bednall cites his love of ‘late twentieth century music’ as an influence on his composition, but though the tonality in this work was complex, the effect was riveting, with lively compound rhythms and some punishingly high soprano notes.

Jonathan Willcocks’ Lacrymosa set a movement from the Requiem Mass text (‘Lacrimosa dies illa’) and did it full justice, with Messiaen-like tonality, lovely text-painting, and a beautiful Pie Jesu for tenors and sopranos. Inspirare did the work full justice.

The last work was by the Welsh Anglican composer Willian Mathias (who taught Paul Mealor), Let the People Praise Thee (Op. 87). Written for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, it started with fanfares from organ and choir and built to a huge crescendo.

And that was it. A most stylish concert of interesting works, well chosen, and presented with exquisite attention to detail. Inspirare’s next concert will be on 4 September in St Teresa’s Church, Karori. Put it in your diary now.