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Enthralling and disturbing – NZ Opera’s take on Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw”

Posted on 03/10/201923/10/2019 by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents:
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – The Turn of the Screw
(libretto by Myfawny Piper, after the novella by Henry James)

Conductor: Holly Mathieson
Director: Thomas de Mallet Burgess
Designer: Tracy Grant Lord
Lighting: Matthew Marshall
Assistant Director: Eleanor Bishop

Cast: Anna Leese (Governess)
Jared Holt (Prologue/Peter Quint)
Madeleine Pierard (Miss Jessel)
Patricia Wright (Mrs Grose)
Alexa Harwood (Flora)
Alexandros Swallow (Miles)

Members of Orchestra Wellington
Leader: Justine Cormack
Piano/celesta: David Kelly

The Opera House, Wellington

Thursday, October 3^rd 2019
(Wellington: Saturday. 5^th October

Auckland: 18^th, 20^th, 23^rd October)

It’s difficult to think of another opera whose overall theme, story-line and characterisations are more interlaced by ambiguities as Britten’s The Turn of the Screw – the story on which the opera is based, Henry James’ novella of the same name, carries its own versions of much the same kinds of imponderables, though the opera seems, if anything, to further complicate and intensify the issues. The story tells of a young woman securing a job as governess of two children in a remote setting, only to feel with increasing conviction that the ghosts of a former valet and governess in the house are attempting to “possess” the minds of her young charges for their own purposes.

A critic in 1898 called Henry James’ work “A deliberate, powerful and horribly successful study of the magic of evil”, a judgement that has since been channelled into various critical streams regarding both novella and opera – firstly, that the governess is protecting the children from evil as presented by the ghosts; secondly, that the governess is “imagining” the ghosts, and is thus herself a danger to the children; and thirdly, that the story is purposefully ambiguous in not allowing the reader to decide between these viewpoints. The opera seems to uphold the third course, by ultimately refusing to ascribe blame for the narrative’s ultimate tragedy of the ending to any one cause or party, and leaving us with James’s own dictum, “Make the reader think the evil, make him think it for himself, and (one is) released from weak specifications”.

Mfawny Piper’s libretto gives the ghosts (both mute presences in James’s story) their own voices, well-wrought inventions which enable some background to the past – in particular, these “flesh out” something of the housekeeper Mrs Gros’s knowledge and judgement of each of the characters. She expresses this to the governess, most damningly of the former valet Peter Quint who, in the housekeeper‘s words “made free” with everyone, including one of the children, the boy Miles. Productions of the opera have, since the premiere in 1954, not unexpectedly moved from presenting an out-and-out “ghost” story, and “gone with the times”, by turns reinterpreting the work with Freudian depictions of a frustrated spinster bringing a fevered imagination to bear upon the scenario, fresh awarenesses of issues such as sexual exploitation and corruption of children, and gay “subtexts”, one example of the latter citing the celebrated recitation of Latin nouns by one of the children to the governess, as a “schoolboy list of phallic expressions”.

To its credit, the current production avoids any gross representation of any of those standpoints (as some ego-ridden contemporary opera presentations of any of the standard repertoire mercilessly and deleteriously indulge themselves in), and instead hints at possibilities, leaving its audiences in a state of wonderment (a version of James’s “leaving it to the reader”), which personalises reactions to the details of the events and their outcomes, thus creating far more interesting theatrical situations for people to “take away” from and ponder what they’ve witnessed. An example of this was the scene in the second act where the governess (Anna Leese) sits with the half-undressed Miles (Alexandros Swallow) on his bed, the young woman bent on competing for the boy’s attentions with the marauding ghost of Peter Quint (Jared Holt). The governess’s obvious “longing” for the affections of the children’s guardian (as witness her demeanour when previously reading aloud what she had written in a letter to him) has sublimated into a version of the same longing for affection from Miles – here the dialogue suggested more the talk of lovers who need something from one another than of adult-and-child interaction, yet with the physical boundaries between the two (just) maintained.

In this respect, Anna Leese’s portrayal of the emotionally constrained and psychologically besieged governess – in thrall to a man (her employer, the children’s guardian) she has never met but is bonded to by a sense of duty permeated with her own Molotov-cocktail mix of fantasies involving his approval and her own self-worth – was incredibly finely-crafted. Together with her director, Thomas de Mallet Burgess, she built with great subtlety and whole-heartedness a character with endless depths of longing and anxiety, her voice running the gamut of expressiveness as regards its different versions of beauty and presence. Her singing, though not always entirely clear in terms of diction, gave voice to a character whose sincerity we might not have doubted but whose capacity for self-knowledge and decisive action seemed difficult to fathom, right up to the work’s unnerving conclusion. We left the theatre still carrying a relationship with her that resonated in a somewhat disturbing and unresolved manner – and within our consciousness of what we’ve witnessed echoed most hauntingly that phrase of W.B. Yeats’ from his poem “The Second Coming”, here given by Mfawny Piper to the ghosts to sing separately and together, pertaining to the children, but ultimately to all of us – “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”.

The governess’s dramatic foil was Patricia Wright’s sonorously-delivered assumption of Mrs Grose, the housekeeper, a long-time servant at the house – a plainly-spoken, simple woman, great of heart, but conscious of her position and lack of education in comparison to the governess. Both singers negotiated this governess/housekeeper relationship with great pliancy and spontaneity, conveying the fragility of things at the point near the story’s climax where the housekeeper took the girl Flora away as if losing faith in the governess’s ability to protect her. I thought Wright’s announcing to the latter (with what seemed like some strangely grim satisfaction) that her letter to the children’s guardian was not delivered, had all the portents of doom required, even if her character at that point was only a messenger.

The ghosts, Jared Holt’s darkly dangerous Peter Quint, and Madeleine Pierard’s compelling, positively gothic Miss Jessel, were introduced as “presences” long before they actually appeared – their silhouetting on a diaphanous stage-curtain at first underlined their “in the mind” aspect, but their presence was soon made all too tangible at subsequent moments. Jared Holt’s melismatic calls of Miles’ name produced a “frisson” of compelling unease, while Madeleine Pierard’s relatively darker but still riveting tones summonsing Flora gave a more sinister impression of rising from below (perhaps from the lake waters in the house’s grounds). Holt relished the quasi-heroic music of self-portrait, his words styling him as “ the riderless horse” or the “hero-highwayman”, images associated with unfettered action and feral freedom – Pierard’s darker, more piteous music tied in with her character’s equating with “wronged women” of earlier times. The two ghosts brought matters to a head between one another superbly in their evocation of a shared past, one in which Quint was the wrongdoer and Miss Jessel his victim, uniting only in their common purpose of seeking “a friend”, Quint desiring Miles and Miss Jessel wanting Flora.

No praise can be too high for the on-stage work of the young singers playing the roles of the opera’s two children here in Wellington – Alexa Harwood’s Flora and Alexandros Swallow’s Miles. Neither could be faulted regarding what seemed to me like their total identification with the characters, as if they had each stepped into their respective roles and filled them out from within. Musically, too, each sang like both the angels and the mischief-makers one knows children are capable of appearing to be, all the while. Alexa Harwood’s Flora most convincingly wove her stage movements into the fabric of her singing performance, while Alexandros Swallow, his Miles more often the follower than the leader, matched his stage-sister at every turn, both through gesture and voice, bringing also his considerable theatrical skills to precisely-honed fruition in miming complex piano-playing patterns most convincingly. Each in their different ways conveyed the effect of the drama’s potential for harm upon his or her own character, to profound effect – remarkable performances!

I feel compelled to make the point that, though the opera was sung in English, a good deal of the text I found hard to follow, almost always when the voices were under pressure or singing in ensemble – a number of people I spoke to afterwards confirmed that they would have appreciated surtitles to better serve their understanding of the plot’s finer detail. The clearest enunciation came from Jared Holt in a piano-accompanied Prologue (the opening of a “written account” of the governess’s story) which he delivered in the role of a narrator. In my experience this loss of clarity is a common phenomenon with higher solo voices singing in the vernacular in a large venue – so, in making the difference for listeners between (a) a merely-pleasant-sounding and (b) a “made-more- intelligible” utterance I feel this would be something that everybody would surely want – having said all of this, I find myself wondering how singers themselves feel (felt?) about it?

Initially I was disappointed that the chamber ensemble accompanying the singers was set so far back on stage, almost as a kind of “noises off” accompaniment, having enjoyed so much the vivid interactions between voices and prominently-placed instruments in various recordings I listened to – in the course of the opera’s action I modified this viewpoint to an enjoyment and appreciation of the atmospheric ebb and flow of Britten’s scoring throughout the work. There was certainly no real lessening of impact during the opera’s most forceful moments, once our ears had gotten “the pitch of the hall”, and the quieter, more distant moments had a tragic beauty whose irony gave even more of an edge to the story’s overall impact.

The instrumental playing (largely members of Orchestra Wellington, led by violinist Justine Cormack), and complemented by pianist David Kelly (whose stylish solo accompanying Jared Holt’s narration opened the work) was directed with precision, verve and enthralling atmosphere by New Zealand-born conductor Holly Mathieson, whose work I hope to hear again before too long. I did want to SEE the players play, but as I’ve said the scenario called for a different conception which worked powerfully in its own way.

I couldn’t fathom at first why Alexandros Swallow (who sang Miles) was the first to appear on stage at the work’s beginning UNTIL he sat down at the piano and APPEARED to begin to play the aforementioned solo that accompanied the tenor to begin the opera – and then I remembered he was to play the piano in one of the opera’s later scenes (Variation XIII) – both sequences were superbly played by the ACTUAL pianist David Kelly (and brilliantly mimed on stage by the young singer!). There were various divergencies of movement and stage placement from what I was expecting, all of which I thought worked save for the appearance of a bed pushed in for no apparent reason at the beginning of Act Two. The rest flowed with irresistible momentum!

Finally, this was a production that looked good and convincing, and maintained a kind of unity throughout – perhaps the scene by the lake during which Flora encounters Miss Jessel didn’t have much “outdoor” ambience, being kept under the omnipresent pall of darkly-inclined variants of illumination that marked nearly all of the scenarios! Still, Matthew Marshall’s lighting generally held us in thrall, scene by scene, by turns revealing and concealing, reassuring and malevolent, warm and chill, delicate and laden, the ambiences working well with designer Tracy Grant Lord’s “framed” portals which gave the spaces at once telescopically-extended vistas with oddly claustrophobic effects – “black holes” of imaginary space in which the characters play out life’s illusions. Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess, together with his assistant Eleanor Bishop, presided over a lucid, if challengingly ambivalent scenario of interaction between the players in the drama, encouraging the essences and their contradictions as expressed in people’s motivations for doing what they do – for ostensible good or evil, or for ends that accord with Peter Quint’s desperate enjoiner to Miles – “You must be free!” Like anything (and this is perhaps Britten’s (and James’) ultimate message – such freedom comes at a price.

Morton Trio shines in a concert of variety and splendour at Lower Hutt

Posted on 07/08/201912/08/2019 by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
MORTON TRIO – Music by Kenneth Young, Szymanowski and Brahms

Arna Morton (violin) / Alex Morton (horn) / Liam Wooding (piano)

KENNETH YOUNG – Trio for horn, violin and piano (2007)
KAROL SZYMANOWSKI – Mythes for violin and piano Op.30
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Trio for horn, violin and piano Op.40

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 7^th August, 2019

I’m sure that gruff old conservative Johannes Brahms would have been delighted had he known that the music for his Horn Trio would leap over both a whole century and continental and oceanic distances to figure, however fleetingly, as a delightful string of vigorous reminiscences in an Antipodean composer’s work for the same forces! Upon hearing the finale of Kenneth Young’s work at this concert I wondered whether he’d composed the piece especially for the Morton Trio to play in tandem with Brahms’ work on this occasion, though a glance at the programme indicated that the music was written as long ago as 2007. Still, it came up as freshly as new paint in the hands of this group, two of whose members, incidentally (Arna and Alex Morton), had been Young’s students while at the NZ School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington.

On the face of it a horn might seem an impossibly heroic, out-of-doors instrument for chamber music, inextricably associated with vigorous adventure rather than refined, intimate discourse – the sheer scale of the instrument’s potential for strength and power would pose an absorbing set of challenges for any composer wanting to set it alongside any chamber-like forces. Young’s writing didn’t shirk the instrument’s propensity for strength and vigour, while allowing the instrument another of its properties – a “spacious”, open-ended quality, further enhanced by “stopped” or muted notes, Tennyson’s “the horns of elfland faintly blowing”. In fact instruments such as horns
enable chamber music to break those “refined, intimate discourse” stereotypes, and accord the genre its full-blown stature and potential for expression.

Which is what Young’s work did so engagingly, the dialogues animating as the music progressed, the horn rasping in places, the violin responding trenchantly and the piano deciding to “wade in” – the toccata-like exchanges that ensued featuring each instrument at full stretch, expressing the sailent features of the ensemble’s character, before the music turned towards each instrument in turn. So, the violin commanded the stage with a cadenza-like sequence, featuring lovely double-stopped intervals, followed by the piano, its notes spacious and ambient, its mood relaxed and dreamy, inviting both its companions to respond in duet, the horn’s ear-catching stopped notes echoed by the violin, the piano scintillating impulses somewhere in between.

In its single movement, the music readily explored the contrasting moods and ambiences of the instrumental combinations, the music’s “character” swinging between attitudes in what seemed entirely “organic” rather than contrived ways, deliciously “jogtrotting” at one point, working up enthusiasm to the point of abandonment at another (the horn sounding the alarm at the violin’s gypsy-like antics), then subsiding into further dreams, with the horn noble and distantly heroic once more, the violin responding with gentle, fragrant tones. Suddenly, there it was (Brahms himself might have snorted, “Ha! Any jackass can see that!” all over again!) – I shall, however, risk stating the obvious by registering the “there it was” as the music’s “reminiscing” of the German composer’s main theme in the finale of HIS Horn Trio, the eponymous instrument leading the way! The horn’s encouraging both violin and piano to rumbusticate freely helped vary the pace and mood with some more reflective material, before returning to the Brahmsian fragment, tossing it about with great glee and tremendous elan! What a life-enhancing work it proclaimed itself to be, and especially in these youthful hands!

One of the twentieth century’s chamber masterpieces, Karol Szymanowski’s three-movement work Mythes for violin and piano was played next by Arna Morton and Liam Wooding. IN three movements, the piece draws from its subject matter on Greek mythology, the writing for both instruments replete with complicated harmonies, complex articulations and light, delicate textures, shimmering and vibrant. Szymanowski himself said he had, along with the violinist Paweł Kochański, created with “Mythes” “a new style, new expression of violin-playing, a truly epoch-making thing”, everything “a complex musical expression of the inspiring beauty of the myth”. In the first myth ”The fountain of Arethusa”, we heard flowing waters as the music’s main lines of expression, a spring formed by the goddess Artemis out of the fleeing form of the nymph Arethusa, rescuing her from the advances of the river-god Alpheus.

Rippling textures from the piano activated the stream waters, the violin’s sinuous and silken lines disturbed by the water’s agitations, both instruments so “focused” on their own sound-worlds, yet alchemically ‘entwined” – haunting harmonics from the violin, floating over the piano’s rippling explorations, the delicacies from both instruments building into agitations, the playing here so very visceral and involving! We sensed the effect of the nymph’s transformation, as the spring waters seemed to melt into the impulsive flowing of the whole, the violinist’s extraordinary range of textures and colours breathing more freely over the watery ambiences at the end.

The second myth depicted the unfortunate Narcissus, a full-throated opening from both players, the piano almost Ravelian and bluesy-sounding, the violin radiant, wonderful, long-breathed lines! The double-stopped passages suggested watery reflection as the unfortunate youth caught sight of his own image, the excitement and interest growing, the ecstasy here palpable, the violin surging, buoyed up by the piano’s weight and tone! The double-stopping returned, somewhat eerily, like a “fixed” state holding us in thrall, the music’s ending poised, beautiful and disturbingly static.

Angular and vigorous exchanges marked the opening of the third piece, a sense at once of urgency and abandonment, in the composer’s depiction of the god Pan chasing the nymph-like Dryads about the woodland – agitated figurations from the violinist, fleet-fingered scamperings from the pianist, building up to a tremendous, swirling climax – terrific playing! And what a change overtook the scenario with the evocation of Pan’s flute, here so dreamily conjured up by violin harmonics and gentle, limpid piano sounds, everything mesmerised by the god’s playing. Then, what amazingly quixotic changes of mood and colour in the music, over the final section! – at the very end Pan’s pipes again hold everybody in thrall, until with almost conjurer-like guile, the god and his playmates vanish! A stunning achievement, I thought, from these two performers!

Back came all three players for Brahms’ Horn Trio, a work written by the composer to commemorate the death of his mother in 1865. Brahms had actually played the horn in his youth, so was well-versed in the instrument’s poetic, “woodland-evocation” qualities, much in evidence in this work’s opening movement. The opening idea, begin by the violin is echoed most evocatively by the horn, a more agitated section “driven” by the piano providing a telling contrast to the lyricism of the work’s opening – these two different sections dominate the movement, strongly underlining the music’s elegiac quality, as much by the poetry of the playing here, as by the characterisation of the quicker, more troubled music. In the Scherzo which followed we enjoyed the players’ energies, the rhythmic angularities brought out for all they were worth, the teamwork between the three players most exhilarating to watch and listen to – the Trio gave us a tender, nostalgic contrast, rhapsodic in feeling and warm-hearted in effect, throwing into relief the elan and buoyancy of the playing in the scherzo’s return.

Sombre, mournfully-sounded piano chordings began the deeply-felt strains of the Adagio movement, the instruments sounding a gently-voiced lament, the horn then beginning a ritualised contrapuntal passage which the other instruments joined – as the music gradually intensified, the music’s pace quickened and agitated the music’s surfaces before subsiding almost as quickly, leading us back to calmer, more tranquil realms. Straightaway, the finale gathered us up irresistibly and danced us along its exhilarating, sometimes madcap course – the group’s rhythmic zest and tremendous thrust carried the day right into and through the various sequences, the horn having its moments of unfettered “whoopery”, while playing its part in the music’s overall “give and take”, and helping to give this young ensemble the distinction of being a force to be reckoned with.

The Children – redefining well-being as responsibility, at Circa Theatre

Posted on 07/04/201907/04/2019 by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
THE CHILDREN – by Lucy Kirkwood

Directed by Susan Wilson

Catherine Downes (Rose)
Carmel McGlone (Hazel)
Peter Hambleton (Robin)

Set Design – John Hodgkins
Lighting – Marcus McShane
Sound – Oliver Devlin
Costumes – Sheila Horton

Circa Theatre, I Taranaki St., Wellington

Tuesday 2^nd April, 2019

Enigmas abound in this award-winning 2016 play by British playwright Lucy Kirkwood, here presented by Wellington’s Circa Theatre, and brought to everyday life by art-that-conceals-art performances from the three actors, Catherine Downes, Carmel McGlone and Peter Hambleton, in tandem with similarly naturalistic, almost self-effacing direction from Susan Wilson – a worthy New Zealand premiere production.

Firstly, the play’s title leads one to expect that the subject, theme, story, etc., will feature, if not directly, eponymously younger people than those we encountered right throughout the evening’s presentation. Yes, during the action we were told a good deal about the eldest child of two of the characters, Hazel (Carmel McGlone) married to Robin (Peter Hambleton), though very little about the other three children. But it turns out that this child, Lauren, is less of a flesh-and-blood dramatic character than a representative factor in the issue that the play almost teasingly and certainly intriguing takes its time to reveal. The “children” of the play’s title eventually materialise, but not in the shape or form or context we might expect.

Then there’s the context of the whole thing – set on England’s Eastern Coast, the character’s interactions are played out in the wake (we are told, and made startlingly aware of by a couple of disturbing “extrusions” of human fluid) of some kind of nearby nuclear accident (Kirkwood’s play was written as a reaction to the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, caused by an earthquake and an accompanying tsunami). For the three characters, the “accident” mentioned in the play effectively changed their career-paths as nuclear phycisists, as it destroyed the power plant where all three of them were working – Hazel and Robin have (for various reasons) stayed in the neighbouring area, while Rose (Catherine Downes) went to live and work in the USA). For some reason, they’re now back together.

Finally – in broad brush-stroke terms – there’s an air of long-suppressed and barely-disguised acrimony generated by the reunitement of the threesome and their portrayed interactions – here the writer plays with our expectations and sensibilities most intriguingly, imparting to each of the characters a resonant “identification-with” set of quotients in the situation, both inherited and further enlarged. Has Rose returned merely to re-ignite an affair with Robin? Has the bond between Hazel and Robin been gradually undermined by various life-events to the point of vulnerability for both? Just what is it that motivates this ground-shift on Rose’s part?

All of this evolved in a slow-burning sort of way, despite the “surprise punctuation” of Rose’s bleeding nose, seen right at the play’s beginning, but then seemingly forgotten, as the characters circled around and in and out of each other’s worlds. Rose curiously seemed familiar with the locations of things in the house – a footstool found unhesitatingly under a chair and the drinking glasses in the right cupboard – and Hazel appeared increasingly disconcerted by Rose’s presence and pronouncements, in particular the latter’s provocative “wanting to lick a man” confession going down less than enthusiastically with her companion!)

With the arrival of Robin, Hazel’s husband, home from his work on the farm, the tensions tautened, with Robin heartily proposing he open the parsnip wine by way of celebrating Rose’s arrival, and then sending Hazel to answer the ringing ‘phone, during which time he lost little time in making “advances” to the visitor, which were gently repulsed – was this, then, the “nub” of the drama, a commonplace marital betrayal revealed for what it was? Hazel’s revelation to us that she figured Rose HAD been in the house before, and that she knew of Robin’s and Rose’s affair seemed then to gradually but effectively deflate that particular scenario. So, where did things go from this point?

Adroitly, Kirkwood then introduced an idea whose message runs counter to the last forty years’ worth of mainstream thinking, and to the last hundred years of frantic industrialisation before that – the idea of a generation of people demonstrating responsibility, by doing something to clean up the environmental messes they themselves had created, rather than leaving future generations to do so. In answer to Robin’s half-serious remark to Rose, “So you haven’t come to seduce me?” the latter wryly replied, “No, you haven’t aged very well” – before telling him that she had returned to go back and work at the power station, and that it was her responsibility – she needed to come back and try to “clean up the mess”- not leave it to younger people who have families and their lives still to live.

What resulted from this statement and Rose’s subsequent invitation to both Robin and Hazel to “join her” in her mission formed the “near-divine-comedy” which followed – in an interview I watched AFTER seeing the play Kirkwood made it clear that she wasn’t interested in creating a theatrical scenario featuring younger people ACCUSING their elders of creating environmental chaos and leaving it for others after them to clean up – she sought instead the idea of demonstrating responsibility and awareness in a world where individuals often feel powerless – like children, in fact – which the playwright stressed was the gist of the play’s title, the fact that the characters themselves are the children, in the state of what it is to be a child in their powerlessness.

What they all do in the face of Rose’s proposal is individually and collectively run a gamut of emotion and subsequent action and interaction that “work out” their stances, expectations and fears – this “working out” includes physical confrontation (more blood), scenes of recrimination, sequences of music and dance, and even yoga routines, all mirroring either stances, enlargements of consciousness or shifting of attitudes, come what might from it all. It has something of the ancient idea of “in death there is life” about it all, perhaps the “children” within each of these extremely flawed individuals finding themselves again and in their own unique versions of selflessness achieving their true purpose.

No praise for each of the performers can be too high – they inhabited, in fact, burgeoned within their respective roles, drawing us into identifications with this and that aspect of their characters with surprising sympathy and lasting resonance. These “everyperson” qualities were reinforced by costume choices that fitted each character like a glove, and supported by set designs which underlined the strictures of their situation. Both sound and lighting effects brought potent reminders of these same territories, transporting our sensibilities to “other realms” as surely and as resoundingly as anything I’ve recently seen at Circa. Director Susan Wilson, along with everybody else involved with this production, would surely have been well pleased with both its intrinsic impact and its reception.

(Until 27^th April 2019)

Michael Endres surrounds Schubert with varied companion pieces at Mulled Wine concert

Posted on 10/03/201911/03/2019 by Lindis Taylor

Mulled Wine Concerts

Michael Endres (piano)

Handel: Minuet in G minor, HWV 434
Schubert: Sonata in D, Opus 53, ‘Gasteiner’, D 850
Ravel: Jeux d’eau
William Bolcom: Etude No 12 ‘Chant à l’amour’
Gershwin: Four song transcriptions: Embraceable You (trans. by Earl Wild), Someone to watch over me, Looking for a Boy, I got Rhythm)

Raumati South Memorial Hall, Tennis Court Road

Sunday 10 March, 2:30 pm

The first of this year’s Mulled Wine Concerts, organised by Mary Gow, usually in the Paekakariki Memorial Hall, took place in the South Raumati Hall because the other is undergoing earthquake treatment. It was a fine beginning to the year, musically, but was subject to sound problems (as does the Paekakriki hall to a less degree), broad, hard surfaces that present difficulties for a pianist. It’s easy enough to say he should play more quietly, but dynamics are as deeply embedded in a pianist’s performance as the notes themselves and other aspects of articulation. When I spoke to him afterwards, he himself referred to his efforts to deal with the acoustic.

One is there however, to enjoy the performance in as positive a way as possible, and that was not hard.

The programme was interesting, with three out of the five pieces unfamiliar, at least in a concert setting. Handel’s Minuet, as with a lot of his music presents problems for the non-specialist: his output was so enormous in quantity and variety and its cataloguing seems more complicated and problematic than the works of any other composer.

The Wikipedia entry on Handel’s works shows this piece as the fourth part of a Suite de pièce in B-flat major, HWV (the Handel catalogue: Händel Werk Verzeichnis) 434, a minuet in G minor.

This was an arrangement by great German pianist Wilhelm Kempff. As Endres wrote, it’s Romantic in character, and it sounds of the 19th rather than the 18th century. His playing had a wistfulness, seeming to avoid emphasis on its rhythm. And the piano responded to Endres’s approach, far removed from the sound of a harpsichord, for which it was presumably written.

To Gastein with Schubert
With no pause, Endres launched into Schubert’s Sonata in D (No 17 in some editions, but Deutsch No 850, and ‘Gasteiner’ because it was written the spa town, Gastein, in the Alps south of Salzburg). The contrast was quite as dramatic as the pianist had clearly intended: passionate, full of energy, tonally and rhythmically varied, with many modulations. Sure, at times it was a bit overwhelming in the dry space; Beethoven’s presence was audible in the piano treatment and the almost orchestral density of the scoring, if not in the music itself which was clearly enough Schubert.

The essentially rhapsodic nature of the second movement, Con moto, might have suggested a relaxed rhythm had Schubert not provided the title, and with its quite markedly contrasting sections, it is hardly a typical ‘adagio’-like slow movement.

The Scherzo picked up, in a more energetic spirit, the dotted rhythms that characterised parts of the previous movement, and here the pianist’s virtuosic skills were fairly dramatically exploited. Those unfamiliar with the piece would probably have, like me, been surprised at the greater familiarity of the first theme of the last movement, and engaged by the constantly changing character of the piece, and Schubert’s originality of composition for the piano.

If that major composition was clearly the centre-piece of the concert, the second half was less challenging and surprisingly disparate. There are scores of brilliant performances of Ravel’s Jeux d’eau out there, but there were some rather individual aspects in Endres’s playing; splashing water had charming tinkling effects in the first pages, while the music later suggested rather fearful and formidable torrents, a more dangerous water game than pianists usually play with Ravel. The acoustic shortcomings of the hall were the last things on my mind, hearing this stunning performance.

I’ve heard some of William Bolcom’s songs, but had never encountered the set of Etudes from which he played No 12. I was attracted by the pianist’s comments in an email prior to the concert: “a magnificent example that contemporary music can be enticing, spiritual and very rewarding to play and listen to as opposed to so much of today’s ‘sound art’, which has often little to say despite its myriads of notes and highest complexity of its scores.” My thoughts too, reinforced after hearing Bolcom’s interesting, far from hackneyed or unoriginal piece, so persuasively played.

That feeling was perhaps deliberately exemplified in the set of four song transcriptions by Gershwin. They were certainly opportunities for spectacular piano playing, reminding one of the more virtuosic jazz pianists – perhaps not Art Tatum, but possibly Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett or Bill Evans. Only ‘Looking for a Boy’ escaped me as I don’t know it; but the arrangement of ‘I Got Rhythm’, built excitingly to a fine, quite prolonged exhibition of Endres’s idiomatic feeling for the jazz area of popular music.

And he ended with a very unfamiliar piece by Ottorino Respighi, Notturno, which would hardly suggest the composer of Pines of Rome or the Botticelli Triptych. It ended a delightful recital of some off-the-beaten-track music.

I hope that this move away from the Paekakariki hall by the sea is not prolonged and that the interest of the forthcoming programmes attracts the usual good audiences, wherever they might be.

Camerata’s latest “Haydn in the Church” concert – joyous antiphonal splendours, heart-rending beauties and al fresco hi-jinks!

Posted on 13/12/201817/12/2018 by Peter Mechen

Camerata presents “Haydn in the Church”

J.S.BACH – Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, Strings and Basso Continuo BWV 1043
Soloists – Anne Loeser and Malavika Gopal (violins)

J.S.BACH – “Erbarme Dich, mein Gott” (from St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244 )
Soloist – Maaike Christie-Beekman (soprano)

Josef HAYDN – Symphony No.8 in G Major “Le Soir”

Camerata, directed by Anne Loeser (violin)

St.Peter’s-on-Willis-St., Wellington

Thursday 13^th December, 2018

I couldn’t remember when I’d last heard JS Bach’s Double Violin Concerto “live” when first posting this review – thanks to violinist Anne Loeser, who reminded me of a 2012 performance by the NZSO strings, I’ve had to sheepishly modify my previous “never before live” declaration; but, to my shame, it gets worse! – I actually reviewed the performance in Middle C! Oh, dear! – I’m dumbfounded as to how I could have forgotten the occasion, particularly as it featured not only the violin-playing of the wonderful Vesa-Matti Leppanen, the NZSO’s concertmaster, but the considerable instrumental skills of the then Music Director of the orchestra, Pietari Inkinen, as his violinist partner! People who wish to revisit that auspicious occasion, in addition to confirming what seems to be oncoming decreptitude on my part may do so by clicking on the following link – https://middle-c.org/2012/11/js-bach-and-mahler-worlds-of-sensibility-from-inkinen-and-the-nzso/ – where they will find what seemed to me to be an interesting idea at the time (perhaps as befits a concert with a double concerto) a “double” review!

Nevertheless, despite my having to admit to witnessing “twice as many” performances in Wellington of the concerto in recent times as I previously had thought, I still maintain that baroque music of this kind has, during my concert-going life, become more what one might call “specialist” repertoire, which I believe isn’t generally to its advantage in terms of dissemination to a wider audience in the concert hall. There are so many baroque masterpieces which symphony orchestras used to perform than seem now of late confined to “period performance” situations, governed by strictures which frown upon any attempts to realise the music away from certain prescribed conditions.

Of course it’s wonderful to encounter presentations which attempt to replicate actual instruments, player numbers and playing styles from this music’s era – but our attempts to slavishly reincarnate these actualities in an exclusive manner would probably be viewed with astonishment by the average Baroque composer, who might think it odd to have his or her music thus perpetuated, instead of being treated more as a “living entity” of work. For reasons too elaborate to go into here at great length, I feel that the “purist” approach to music performance of any era has its pros and cons, and that Baroque composers would possibly have been far more interested in hearing what subsequent ages did DIFFERENTLY with their music rather than merely having it religiously replicated.

In any case, one only has to look at the extent to which these people unhesitatingly “borrowed” music from themselves and from one another to pick up on an intensely pragmatic attitude to the whole business held by composers, performers and audiences alike. Obviously, getting on with the prime concern of making music was paramount – and when something new came along, such as the fledgling pianoforte, for example, people such as JS Bach were straightaway interested in it (not uncritically, it must be said), rather than bent on rejecting it as merely “newfangled”.

I’m beginning to hear the “banging a can” aspect creeping into this diatribe, so I’ll stop – but I’ve always loved the reported comment of Sir Thomas Beecham, who, upon being told of the publication of a new edition of Haydn symphonies, immediately remarked, “Are they scholarly, or musical?” In principle, my feelings exactly – and what better over-riding consideration could one apply to any kind of activity that involved music?

All of this has very little to do with Camerata itself and the group’s performances, which I found by turns, joyously, heart-rendingly and exhilaratingly musical! From the very beginning of the Bach Concerto, when Malavika Gopal’s violin brought in the lower-end instruments of the ensemble, to be thereupon answered by Anne Loeser’s like instrument together with the higher-toned players, the music fairly crackled with exuberance and open-heartedness, the playing judiciously alternating energy with warmth, and strength with subtle nuance. The St.Peter’s Church acoustic instantly gave us back an amalgam of resonance and clarity which played its part in lifting the music up towards what seemed for this listener all-too-brief transports of pleasure and contentment.

Gopal’s violin again led the proceedings in the work’s heavenly slow movement, her warm, open tones followed by Loeser’s more nuanced sounds, the latter’s flecked with half-lights and barely-concealed impulses, the pair’s combination imparting a fascination in the blending of their exchanges, highlighted all the more by the reduced accompaniments, one instrument from each section providing a sensitive supporting network. The whole resembled a kind of celestial vision on earth, one which, as with the first movement, we all wished could have endured for longer.

Of course the composer recognised the need for a “return to life” after these transports; and the ensemble certainly took him at his word, with playing in the finale whose attack and rhythmic swing had an exhilaration, almost a risk-taking element that brought me to the edge of my pew! Though when compared with the serenity of the first two movements the trajectories suddenly seemed almost “turbocharged” (the opening three-note figure sounded almost like the gruff warning bark of a guard-dog!) the control of the ensemble under Anne Loeser was exemplary, the notes “clicking over the points” with breath-taking precision. I still thought the music as much “combated” at this speed as “relished”, the various exchanges equally daring as they were joyous expressions of energy.

No greater a contrast could be imagined as with the programme’s next item, the aria “Erbarme Dich, mein Gott” from Bach’s St.Matthew Passion, sung here by Maaike Christie-Beekman (described in the programme as a “soprano”, but variously elsewhere as a “mezzo” – the aria, incidentally, is listed as one for alto, or counter-tenor, in most recorded performances.) Despite all of these potential variables it seemed as if Christie-Beekman’s voice was one that could do almost anything, and certainly at her first entry, immediately conjure up the beauty and gravitas of delivery required by this aria. With Anne Loeser’s introductory violin solo finding a “dignified sorrow” in which to project the voice’s emotion, it was left to Christie-Beekman to float those opening phrases so very beautifully but capture also a kind of desolation of utterance – these are, of course, the words of the disciple Peter in the wake of his denial of Christ after the latter’s seizure, words which carry with them all of Peter’s guilt and shame, and here made to resonate down the singer’s long, richly filled lines to telling effect.

Throughout, ebb and flow of opposing emotions tugged at our heartstrings, here from the singer, there from the solo violin, the words pleading for mercy amid despair and sorrow – I thought Christie-Beekman and Loeser made the piece an intensely living experience, constantly and judiciously focusing and “colouring” their tones with hues that expressed these very conflicts, and thus making both texts and notes real for the listener, throughout what is surely one of Bach’s most sublime utterances.

In a different way to that which took place in the concerto, what happened next seemed like a kind of absolution in the wake of such a deep and profound outpouring of emotion – Christie- Beekman returned to the stage after acknowledging our appreciation of her Bach performance, explaining to us that the opening movement of the Haydn symphony we were about to hear was based on an air by Gluck in his opera-comique Le diable à quatre (The Devil to Pay), “Je n’aimais pas le tabac beaucoup (I didn’t like tobacco much)”, and that she would sing it for us! She translated the aria’s words for us, to the effect that she was a young woman who didn’t like being told what to do by a husband – hence she smoked cigarettes! Her accompaniment was largely pizzicato strings, the delicacy of the sounds ironically adding to the “tongue-in-cheek” stroppiness of the character and the scenario – all beautifully characterised and absolutely delightful!

And, of course, when the Haydn Symphony began, there was the saucy minx flaunting her stroppiness all over again in the music for our delight! – (however un-PC it may sound, I admit I ENJOYED writing that phrase!) – seriously, the music was here given a different symphonic urgency and drive than in Maaike C-B’s delicious rendering! This was, of course, the third work in the composer’s “Morning, Noon and Night” trilogy of symphonies, No.8 in G Major “Le soir”. Violins in thirds sounded the “Gluck” theme at the outset, one which went on to dominate the movement, the winds having a turn with it as well. The horns displayed plenty of flair, the instruments joining with the winds to help cap off the opening sequence most effectively. Both the bassoon and the double bass had great fun as well, counterpointing these and the development’s various goings-on with much relish, before the horns returned at the movement’s end with exuberant phrases, the spills as exciting and rustic-sounding as the thrills!

Two violins “duetted” the slow movement’s opening, answered by the lower strings and the bassoon – the solo ‘cello relished a moment of glory before the pair of violins again joined forces, resonating their phrases across a sea of interactions, the antiphonal effects gorgeous! More melancholy strains sounded across the face of things in the development, with the gentleness of utterance led by the solo violin briefly tossed sideways in favour of some muscular unison string figurations, which just as quickly subsided – the solo cello then shared some of the crepuscular-like glory with the violin, with lovely work from both players.

A spirited, striding Minuet indicated that the evening was far from over, however, with the horns making their presence felt and the distinctive oboe sound adding colour to the mix. The brass and winds exchanged major/minor moments, with the contrasting dynamics hinting at winsome echo effects. Most engaging was the gemütlich-sounding Trio, with some fantastic solo playing from the double-bass, finishing high up on his top string – after which the Menuet returned with renewed vigour, the players taking care in sounding the repeatedly-echoing final phrase of the dance throughout as redolently as at the end.

Scampering tremolandi figures from the strings launched the excitable presto finale of the work, one depicting a storm, and inspiring tremendous energy and attack from all, complete with flashes of lightning (flute) and rumblings of thunder (tremolando strings)! A “development” section took over the opening sequence and hurled it into a new space, joined by “whirling dervish” strings and whooping horns, and with the solo cello managing a special “moment” amid the lightning flashes and grumblings, and just before the horns raise their voices for a do-or-die concluding flourish.

At the finish, I was about to turn to my partner and say to her that I wished they’d done all of the repeats, when to my surprise and delight Anne Loeser announced that they would repeat the final movement! – just the job, I thought, as the music most satisfyingly whirled its way through the tempestuous moments for a second time, giving us an enriched sense of the piece’s infectious energy and dynamism, and leaving us marvelling at the composer’s flair and originality. What joy to have an ensemble such as Camerata performing such things for our pleasure, and in such a natural and unselfconscious manner, simply, one suspects, for the sheer delight of making music – for that, it deserves to be regarded as a “treasure” by those in the Wellington region who love live music-making, a treasure that one hopes will endure for many years to come.

Eternity Opera sings triumphantly once again at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse – Puccini’s Madam Butterfly

Posted on 16/11/201822/11/2018 by Peter Mechen

Eternity Opera presents:
PUCCINI – Madam Butterfly (Opera in Three Acts)
(libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa – sung in English)

Cast: Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San) – Hannah Catrin Jones
Pinkerton – Boyd Owen
Sharpless – Kieran Rayner
Suzuki – Laura Loach
Goro – Declan Cudd
The Bonze – Roger Wilson
Kate Pinkerton – Jess Segal
Mother – Ruth Armishaw
Cousin – Tania Dreaver
Aunt – Sally Haywood
Imperial Commissioner – Minto Fung
The Registrar – Chris Berentson
Yakuside – Garth Norman
Bridesmaids – Milla Dickens / Beatrix Poblacion Cariño
Butterfly’s son – Leo McKenzie

Orchestra: Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (leader), Vivian Stephens, Emma Colligan, Sofia Tarrant-Matthews (violins), David Pucher (viola), Brenton Veitch (‘cello), Jessica Reese (double-bass), Tjaša Dykes (flute/piccolo), Merran Cooke (oboe/cor anglais), Mark Cookson (clarinet), Leni Hoischen (bassoon), Shadley van Wyk (horn), Bruce Roberts (trumpet), Madeleine Crump (harp), Natoko Segawa (timpani/percussion)

Conductor: Matthew Ross
Director: Alex Galvin
Producers: Emma Beale and Minto Fung
Designer: Jennifer Eccles
Costumes: Sally Gray
Lighting: Haami Hawkins
Repetiteur: Bruce Greenfield

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

Friday 16^th November 2018

Eternity Opera’s presentation at Wellington‘s Hannah Playhouse of one of the most famous of all grand operas, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, used a reduced orchestral accompaniment, a “rhyming” English translation of the Italian, and cut one of the more colourful episodes in the work’s Second Act, albeit involving the brief appearance of a “lesser”character. And yet, despite these diminutions of the original, the piece worked its usual theatrical and musical magic, thanks to a production which incorporated the visceral energies and sharply-etched focus of the orchestral playing under conductor Matthew Ross’s clear-headed direction, and the direct, openhearted involvement of all the singers, principals and chorus. Director Alex Galvin’s clear and unobtrusive shaping of both detail and completed picture ensured that the singers gave us the essentials of the piece and consistently and powerfully brought their characters to life, musically and theatrically.

From the outset we got incisive, involving playing from the musicians, conveying these essences as much through sheer will and imaginative purpose in the absence of the usual “weight of numbers” which give the piece such power at the climaxes. In fact I can’t recall a moment during the performance when I found myself longing for the thrill of a full Puccini orchestra doing its “thing”, so involving was the presentation of the fabric of sounds in its more intimate context here.

When it came to the arrival of the characters on stage I was struck by the vivid quality of each of the voices, the opening exchanges between Goro, the Marriage-broker, and Pinkerton, the U.S.naval officer putting across their phrases easily and distinctly. Boyd Owen’s Pinkerton had instant surface-engaging “well-met, fellow” quality of utterance, while Declan Cudd’s Goro was as much “real-estate agent” in his characterisation as anything else (reflecting the production’s 1950s setting), his tones having the suavity one associates with that profession, but less of the spiky, Goro-like busy-bodyness we usually enjoy from the character. Laura Loach as Suzuki, Butterfly’s handmaid, vocalised beautifully at the outset, nicely mingling the character’s awkwardness and deference with a singer’s clarity and warmly-expressed tones.

It took me a while to register that the English translation was a ”rhyming”one, so readily did the words seem to flow without any overtly self-concious “striving for effect” that renderings in English of opera libretti often have – the discourse between Pinkerton and his friend Sharpless, the American Consul (played and sung sensitively and sonorously by Kieran Rayner), flowed easily and naturally throughout, and led up to Pinkerton’s jingoistic “America forever” declaration with irresistible exuberance. Both Owen and Rayner differentiated their characterisations with many a telling remark, response and gesture, even if the “full-on” aspects of their singing tended to emphasise at cardinal points the somewhat “cheek-by-jowl” nature of our listening-space!

This lack of spaciousness in the acoustic made for a slighty different problem in regard to off-stage voices“, notably the entry of Butterfly’s retinue (“heard from the path outside”, says the direction in my libretto) which to me sounded much too close at their first entry, reflecting the lack of backstage space – though I thought using the stairs leading up from the lower level in the foyer might have done the trick, instead….we lost that initial sense of fragility in Butterfly’s character, having her voice so immediate from the beginning. However, despite such strictures, the scene then unfolded beautifully and touchingly, with the “ordinariness” of Butterfly and her cohorts underlined by the modest 1950s garb worn by the various relatives, all at that point in history, presumably, trying to be “Western”.

As Cio-Cio-San (Butterfly), Hannah Catrin Jones looked and sounded the part, the fragility of the instrumental accompaniment serving to underline her self-effacing quality, though her vocal personality was extremely well-focused throughout. Only when the voice was put under any kind of pressure did I register a vibrato which she soon managed to incorporate for me into her “sound”. I thought her portrayal believable and sympathetic, her rapport with whomever she was on stage warm and wholehearted, and her solo scenes stamped with a touching amalgam of vulnerability and strength that enabled the listener to take on a sense of her life-blood coursing the whole time through her being.

The Bonze’s startling entry (Roger Wilson wondrously menacing of voice and manner, almost Commendatore-like, in fact, as Butterfly’s uncle), come to condemn her for renouncing her “true religion”, effectively tore Cio-Cio-San’s world apart, alienating her from her family and placing her almost completely in the hands of Pinkerton, who, despite the intensity of feeling generated between him and Butterfly during the ensuing “love-scene”, subsequently abandons her. Cio-Cio-San’s isolation was here underscored in a different way, of course, by the excision of that aforementioned Second-Act scene in which she is wooed by Yamadori, a rich Japanese Prince, eager to add her to his coterie of wives, and which offer she rejects, remaining faithful to Pinkerton, despite his callous behaviour.

In a similar fashion to that in Verdi’s “La Traviata”, the opera’s core is found in the exchange between the heroine and a friend or associate of her lover, in this case, Sharpless, the American Consul (Kieran Rayner), who’s sceptical of Pinkerton’s intentions towards Cio-Cio-San from the beginning. The scene of his interaction with Butterfly came almost in the wake of the latter’s magnificently-realised “Un bel di” (sorry, I mean, “One fine day”!), Catrin Jones giving her all in thrilling fashion, with again, the relatively lightweight orchestral support delivering oceans of intensity in support of the singer. One would think that whatever followed would be something of an anti-climax, but Catrin Jones and Rayner exhibited such warmth and flow of feeling towards one another’s characters, that we were soon caught up in the interchanges and “moved on”, more than ready for the next stage of the drama.

This came, of course, with Butterfly’s fear and anxiety at the thought of being abandoned, mingled with the hope that hers and Pinkerton’s child (born and raised in secret) would bring them together again. The sudden arrival of an American warship, denoted by a cannon-shot, sent everything into a state of frenzied suspension, Butterfly commanding Suzuki to strew every flower about the house “as close as stars about the heavens”, and bringing the child to wait with her for Pinkerton’s arrival. I thought Catrin Jones’ interaction with the young Leo McKenzie as Butterfly’s little son simply charming and warmly whole-hearted on both sides, the heroine in the process excitedly and determinedly setting up her “welcome” to her long-absent husband, and preparing to wait for “as long as it takes”.

My one disappointment of the evening was the staging of the beautiful “Humming Chorus” which followed – I thought its enchanting, if bitter-sweet effect underdone by uncharacteristically fulsome stage-lighting. It seemed to me the waiting figures were “transfixed” in a strained and uncomfortable state of rigidity at odds with the music’s organic presentation of an overnight vigil spent amid a mass of conflicting impulses shaped in the direction of somebody’s long-awaited arrival. In the context of the production’s whole, the sequence was something that for me didn’t knit music and stage together with the same sure-footed focus as the rest did.

Still, the final act was, in a word, terrific! – though at times for us in the audience almost claustrophobically so in that small space! Pinkerton’s arrival, with Sharpless, and with Suzuki as Butterfly’s would-be “protector” created enormous tensions and outpourings of emotion, Boyd Owen’s remorse as Pinkerton pushing against the threshold of pain, albeit expressing HIS anguish rather than any real concern for the hapless Butterfly, leaving Sharpless and Suzuki to do what they could for Butterfly instead – the somewhat thankless part of Pinkerton’s American wife, Kate, who accompanied him to the house, was expressed in dignified and graceful fashion by Jess Segal, her presence adding to the almost palpable psychological torture inflicted on Butterfly as she realised, upon entering the room and encountering her visitor, the truth of her situation.

Again, though wanting in sheer tonal heft, the playing of the orchestra in support of Butterfly’s final scene was properly overwhelming in its capacity for generating tension, helped immeasurably by the singer’s fearlessness in addressing the writing’s full-throated outpourings of unmitigated despair. These were the moments where nothing needed to be held back, and Catrin Jones certainly carried our sensibilities along with her towards the inevitability of that moment when she plunged her character’s life into existence’s oblivion.

Altogether, I thought the production a remarkable demonstration of the power of heartfelt and concentrated focus from limited resources to conjure up whole worlds of feeling and imagination. Very great credit to Eternity Opera and all associated with the production, for making opera’s star shine so very brightly once more at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse.

(Until 24th November)

Great performances of unfamiliar Bartók and major Dvořák introduced by young geniuses

Posted on 27/10/201831/10/2018 by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Christopher Park (piano); joined by Arohanui Strings (Sistema, Hutt Valley), led by Alison Eldredge

Simon Eastwood: Infinity Mirror, for Arohanui Strings
Smetana: The Moldau (Vltava from Ma Vlast)
Bartók: Piano concerto No 1
Dvořák: Symphony No 8 in G Op 88

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 27 October, 7:30 pm

Each year, one of Orchestra Wellington’s concerts is embellished by a contribution from Arohnui Strings, the Sistema-inspired children’s orchestra based in the Hutt Valley. They took their places at the beginning of the concert in the place of most of the regular strings of Orchestra Wellington, interspersed by a few of the professionals to lend some body to the sound. The nerves and excitement of the young players infected the audience too as they opened the concert, under conductor Marc Taddei, with Simon Eastwood’s Infinity Mirror, commissioned for them by SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand music). The string elements were sympathetically scored for the young players while there was supporting music from marimba, xylophone and timpani, creating a happy ensemble. It was followed by Dvořák’s Humoresque (which is actually No 7 of his eight Humoresques, Op 101), and the young string players clearly relished the chance to play an actual classic of the repertoire.

That was followed by Alison Eldredge leading a dozen or more very young musicians across the front of the stage to play the famous last section of the William Tell Overture, plus a Maori item. All of which occupied about half an hour. As a result the concert lasted till about 10 pm.

Denis Adam
In his opening words, Marc Taddei spoke about the death last week of the man who has for several decades been one of New Zealand’s most important benefactor of the arts: Denis Adam; and he dedicated the performance of the Dvořák symphony to his memory. There have been obituaries in the press and references from all those indebted to his Foundation’s generosity, acknowledging his wide-ranging philanthropy. Middle C must add its name to those by recalling that the Adam Foundation was the leading financial supporter of Middle C when it began in 2008, to enable a website to be created and for the reviews to be collected and printed.

At a more personal level, the Adam Foundation gave funding to support a concert series that I had undertaken: two series of lunchtime concerts, in 2000 and 2002, during the New Zealand International Arts Festivals. It will be recalled that daily lunchtime concerts were an important part of the early festivals, from 1986 to 1998. When the festival in 2000 dropped these popular concerts that gave prominence to New Zealand musicians, I decided to tackle the job, along with my wife, Jeanette. We were very lucky to find a talented manager and planner in Charlotte Wilson (now a RNZ Concert presenter), who in the space of about three months did most of the organising and negotiating with fifteen groups of musicians.

The series was very successful, and a surplus was carried over for another series in 2002. It too ended with a modest surplus which has been used to support classical musical enterprises since then.

Vltava
The grown-up musicians then took over, with a piece that was my first love as a nine-year-old, hearing it played in the then ‘Broadcasts to Schools’ which had the important effect of implanting classical music sounds, permanently, in unprejudiced, receptive minds: Smetana’s Moldau, the German name of the river which later became known by its proper Czech name, Vltava. The performance captured the moods of the river as it passed through Bohemia’s countryside and towns, but it struck me that it hadn’t had quite the studied attention that either the Bartók or the Dvořák music demonstrated next.

Bartók
In most ears Bartók’s music can sound more alien and unapproachable than that of any other Balkan/Central European composers (it had not been that way with Liszt whose music has come to be denigrated as not truly ‘Hungarian’). Interestingly, while other composers used the indigenous music of their country in a recognisable framework for listeners in western Europe, Bartók took the more challenging route, sacrificing easy popularity by treating the Magyar music of his country in ways he felt were faithful to its non-Western character.

His first piano concerto was not a work of impetuous, iconoclastic youth as Prokofiev did; Bartók was 45 when he wrote his first concerto (and you might feel that he should have been over his impulse to shock and upset; many great composers were dead by that age!). However, it is a useful weapon in the armory of an adventurous young pianist like Christopher Park; in his hands it was utterly committed: brilliant, fearsome and astonishingly idiomatic.

For the orchestra and conductor, however, the challenge would have been of a very different order; because of its technical and interpretation difficulties it’s rarely performed. Geoffrey Norris, in a Gramophone article a couple of years ago speculated about its treatment:

“Are the concertos rarely performed because they are not popular, or are they not popular because they are seldom performed? In a pragmatic sense, the comparative sparsity of performances could well be explained by finance or, at least, by the demands of orchestral schedules. Particularly in this straitened age when rehearsal costs have to be ruthlessly budgeted, the hours needed to get the First Concerto up to scratch could be punitive. Even present-day British orchestras, acknowledged for their swift, reliable sight-reading, have been known to find a first run-through of the First Concerto troublesome. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is said to be a doddle by comparison.”

In the light of that view of the concerto’s (he’s speaking, mainly, of the first two) difficulties, here we had a part-time orchestra with very constrained rehearsal time, tackling it.

Piano Concerto 1: 1st movement
While it opens with chilling ferocity, reminiscent of parts of The Rite of Spring, that is not the prevailing character of the piece, for after the hard-hitting piano and timpani and the fierce response from brass, convention is acknowledged with sombre bassoons, bass clarinet, and strings in staccato melodic snatches that offer sign posts that are not hard to recognise when they reappear.

Bassoons soon supply an almost conventional tune and later, they offer a hesitating, rising motif all of which contribute to a structure whose parts become recognisable, almost old friends later on.

I’m tempted to say that the piano has the hardest time of it, but then Christopher Park had had an intensive relationship with it for much longer than the orchestra. He had become its master, hitting all the right keys at the right time, as well as capturing its radically non-western idiom as if he’d lived with it from childhood. For Marc Taddei and the orchestra, in spite of the limited time (equals ‘funding’) available, the music’s alien character seemed of little consequence; almost masking its extraordinary success in keeping pace and meeting the technical difficulties. Each time I was tempted to think a passage wasn’t too challenging, I would be struck by another fearsome orchestral flare-up that demonstrated both Taddei’s impressive grasp of the entire work and our orchestra’s real acumen.

Though I’ve listened to recordings of the concerto, this was my first live hearing and the impact of the real thing was a revelation: the orchestration, the careful, studied employment of particular instruments, to far greater purpose and deliberateness than in much 20th century music.

At the start of the 2nd movement, a discreet side drum presages the piano and one by one, timpani, snare drum, cymbal; then very specific percussion; after a couple of minutes, a lone oboe then a clarinet, flute, bass clarinet, cor anglais, but no strings at all. Though not a conventionally contemplative movement, these sounds stayed with me in the most haunting way. But it was of course Christopher Park’s piano that perpetuated the sense of astonishment, for his feat of memory to start with, for his technical panache and profound intellectual grasp of Bartók’s musical idiom and intent.

An entirely new energy emerges as the 3rd movement, launched by various drums, muted trombones, then the piano; again, always in the limelight, commanding wonderment. The orchestration is always precise, deliberate, and this imposes special demands on players, as more general, indiscriminate scoring can conceal smudges; I won’t say there were none but the energy and tempo were of far greater importance and a matter of both astonishment and delight.

Applause was enthusiastic, and Park played an encore, from an utterly different planet: the 20-year-old Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor (Lento con gran espressione), Opus Posthumus.

Dvořák: the Eighth
The common ground for this year’s series, the last five of Dvořák’s symphonies: No 8 followed after the interval. That distance was vital to settle the head and emotions after the extraordinary impact of the Bartók. No 8 is in the sanguine key of G, not subject to painful soul-searching or grieving. The opening, after the calm introductory cellos, then trombones, released its alternating tuttis and folk-tune like themes in a delightful way. Here was a focused energy, that was perhaps a bit lacking in Vltava; the brass was vivid with precision and clarity, and the strings, perhaps not at quite the strength that a Dvořák symphony demands, were splendidly secure.

But their playing of the lovely woodwind-led second movement, Adagio, was both dynamic and poetic; I always especially loved the slow descending scales on strings with a pensive oboe; the long, near-silences that mark the movement seemed exactly in tune with the composer’s spirit; and there are disturbed moments, of unease, atmospheric horns, throbbing strings. It’s a movement rich in changing emotions: for me the Adagio is the very centre of the work; until, that is, we reach the striking and moving parts of each of the other movements.

As so often with third movements, even one as charming, a sort of waltz, as this, its first phase opens peacefully, followed by the more pensive, though equally beautiful second part – a sort of ‘Trio’ to a traditional Scherzo. Every movement has its striking contrasts between unsullied delight and long moments of uncertainty, regret; and all these phases were clearly and vividly created in a great performance. So the last movement, after its brilliant trumpet fanfare drops to a slow, stately episode with the orchestra’s cellos biting into their rising arpeggios; but suddenly bursting with brio as the whole orchestra creates its own driving version of that arpeggio. The last movement is full of variety, yet with just the right amount of repetition and reflection, with a limpid clarinet handling it wistfully as the end approached.

If I have suggested that earlier parts of the symphony held the greatest intellectual and emotional interest for me, hearing the work live in the hands of Taddei (without score before him) and the orchestra, after many years without the opportunity, bringing it to a heart-warming conclusion through its disparate last movement, renewed my understanding of the wonderfully inventive and universal character of the Eighth Symphony.

Choral concert to celebrate new digital organ at Cathedral of Saint Paul

Posted on 13/10/201817/10/2018 by Rosemary Collier

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Nice and tidy.

Inspirare’s partnership with Youth Choirs a resounding success

Posted on 15/09/201821/09/2018 by Peter Mechen

ILLUMINATIONS – Inspirare Choir, directed by Mark L.Stamper

PAUL BASLER – Missa Kenya
Richard Taylor (tenor) / Rachel Thomson, piano / Shadley van Wyk, horn
Jacob Randall, James Fuller, percussion
Wellington College Chorale / Men of Inspirare

IMANT RAMINSH – Missa Brevis
Maaike Christie-Beekmann (mezzo-soprano)/Rachel Thomson, piano
Queen Margaret College Chorale / Altissimi, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, Karori
Women of Inspirare

JOHN RUTTER – Mass for the Children
Pasquale Orchard (soprano) / Daniel O’Connor (baritone)
Orchestra – Rebecca Steel, flute / Merran Cooke, oboe /Moira Hurst, clarinet
Leni Maeckle, bassoon / Shadley van Wyk, horn / Vanessa Souter, harp
Vicky Jones, bass / Michael Fletcher, organ / Grant Myhill , timpani
Jacob Randall and James Fuller, percussion
Wellington Young Voices / Metropolitean Cathedral Boys’ Choir
Inspirare

also featuring:
Z.RANDALL STROOPE – Tarantella
Helene Pohl, violin / Peter Gjelsten, violin
Hayden Nickel, viola / Rolf Gjelsten, ‘cello

CRAIG COURTENAY – Ukrainian Alleluia
Arr.JACKSON BERKEY – Cibola
Tejas Menon, TJ Shirtcliffe, guitars / Rachel Thomson, piano

Wellington College Chorale / Men of Inspirare

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Saturday 15^th September, 2018

This second concert that I’ve attended which featured the voices of Inspirare, a choir founded by their director, Mark L.Stamper, couldn’t have been more different from the first one (an inspirational performance of Sergei Rachmaninov’s All Night Vigil earlier this year), but was equally impressive in achieving what it had obviously set out to do. In the same venue as where the previous concert had held its audience spellbound, here was something more akin to a true community event, or even a school prizegiving, but with the intent of demonstrating to all and sundry what singers of all ages could achieve in tandem by dint of hard work and inspired direction.

A glance at the credits above will give the reader an idea of the variety of forces involved in this presentation – in itself it’s a tribute to both the organising skills and the visionary scope of Stamper that the different strands worked together so well. Though the audience was made up largely of people connected with the performers, a good many, like myself, were there primarily for musical reasons, drawn by the prospect of hearing repertoire which, if not familiar, certainly looked and sounded innovative and exciting, and especially if performed with a similar level of skill and intensity to that which for me made the Rachmaninov work so brilliantly.

It took but a few seconds of the opening item, a work by Z. Randall Stroope called “Tarantella” (curiously, not the usual 6/8 “spider-dance” tarantella rhythm one usually encounters in music so named), for us to register the performance commitment of the young singers of the Wellington College Chorale, the voices arrestingly full-toned from the beginning, and maintaining the rhythmic energies of the music’s running trajectories with great excitement, aided by handclapping and choreographic body movements, reflecting the adroit angularities of the accompaniments from the string players. I especially enjoyed the singers’ synchronised nodding heads indicating canonic or fugal entries, towards the piece’s conclusion.

We then got some sombre unaccompanied alleluias from the lower voices at the beginning of Craig Courtenay’s “Ukrainian Alleluia”, the tones beautifully hued with no lack of variety – the basses rich and sonorous, the tenors sweet and true. A lovely cascading effect was to be had at certain inner trajectory points (one of them finishing with an unscheduled slamming of a door somewhere that didn’t however disturb the singers’ flow, nor ruffle the harmonic clusters of the lines in the slightest!)….

An arrangement of the song “Cibola” brought out stunning attack on the song’s first note, thrown out by the singers almost defiantly – then, to rolling guitar accompaniments, the word “Cibola” was tossed every which way with remarkable dexterity, accompanied by vocal exclamations which added to the variety of colour and texture. Altogether these three works covered a lot of ground in both vocal and instrumental spheres, reflecting the conductor’s interest in variety and innovation as a means of securing maximum involvement in the music-making.

The same group of voices then prepared to present the first of the three major works on the programme, the “Missa Kenya” by Paul Basler. The composer worked as a teacher at the University of Kenyatta in Nairobi, thus coming into contact with a Kenyan vocal tradition whose elements he incorporated into his work, fused with Western traditions. We thus had a solo singer with chorus using elements such as what theorists term “call and response” and “call and refrain”, with the soloist and chorus sometimes overlapping. One would expect African folk music in general to be rhythmically rich, with rhythms sometimes playing alongside or against one another; and so it was here, particularly so in Basler’s treatment of the “Gloria”.

Originally written for mixed choir, the version of “Missa Kenya” performed this evening was for male voices only, with the Credo and Agnus Dei omitted. A strong unison beginning which had already showed off the strength and richness of these voices in “Cibola” was again employed at the “Kyrie’s” beginning, though broken soon after into different lines, ritualistic and dance-like, and underpinned by the composer’s instrument, the horn, and piano and percussion, though concluding with a return to more declamatory vocal gestures, counterpointed by the horn writing.

The “Gloria” I thought wonderfully “jivy”, the solo tenor and the choir exchanging phrases, and interspersing more declamatory passages. I liked the idea of the tenor (Richard Taylor) being more a “voice from the choir” rather than pushed too far to the front, even if his voice was occasionally swamped – he put across a true and songful account of his phrases, and the exchanges gave a more spontaneous feel to the music’s folk-like style. More ritualistic was the “Sanctus”, here joyful and bell-like, with the voices answered by splendid piano scintillations, the horn joining in with the voices in the raising-up of tones on high, most evident and celebratory in the “Hosannas”! Splendid!

There was a “changing of the guard” for the next item, Imant Raminsh’s “Missa Brevis” being sung by various female groups, the Queen Margaret College Chorale, Altissime, from Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, all with the women’s voices from Inspirare, along with soloist mezzo-soprano Maaike Christie-Beekmann, and accompanist Rachel Thomson. Though written for a children’s choir, the work could also be sung by women and children. Beginning with the “Kyrie”, the work opened beautifully with a canonically-repeated “Kyrie” phrase, before the soloist entered with “Christe” – all very impassioned, with the choir supporting the soloist and the top notes made by the children’s group simply breathtaking in effect! When the “Kyrie ” returned with its canon-like phrases, the mezzo-soprano sang a descant-like line in accompaniment.

Contrasting with this was the “Gloria” with its toccata-like piano introduction, generating great expectation and excitement from the voices, rising to a pitch with Glorificamus te. Christie-Beekman’s rich mezzo gave us a heartfelt Gratias agimus tibi, answered by the choir, after which the heart of the movement was laid open with the sombre processional beginning at Qui tollis peccata mundi by the soloist, accompanied wordlessly by the choir up to Miserere, where the choir repeats Qui tollis – all very dark and intensely moving, with the concentration beautifully sustained, and reaching a climax with Miserere nobis, after which the prayer occasioned a brief calm, here, blown away by the attention-grabbing Quoniam, whose agitations led to a dancing fugue at Cum sancto spiritu, the singers exulting more and more vigorously until reaching a joyous Amen!

The Inspirare women’s voices added their strength and colour to the “Sanctus” – all most mellifluously realised, other-worldly in atmosphere, with stratospheric swayings and celestial harmonies thrown into relief by a dancing Hosanna in excelsis. Christie-Beekman’s voice ennobled the “Benedictus”, with Rachel Thomson’s piano practically orchestral in its support, while at the Hosanna’s reprise the music simply “took off”, giving the church’s acoustic a proper workout!

“Agnus Dei” was a properly concerted effort, solemn at the beginning, with the idiom straightforwardly melodic, and, quite unexpectedly, what sounded like a solo oboe accompanying the voices most affectingly at the repeat of the opening. Christie Beekman led the third “Agnus Dei” into Dona nobis pacem, the children’s choir positively radiant-sounding when joining in, contributing to a resounding and moving conclusion from the whole ensemble.

In welcoming us back for the concert’s second half, Mark Stamper reiterated a request for the audience to allow the separate Mass movements of what was to follow to continue uninterrupted, and to save its applause for the end – part of the initial confusion was, I think, having the three separate pieces at the concert’s beginning, which as stand-alone works each deserved audience acclamation, but then got us into an “applaud everything” mode. The message, diplomatically worded, was re-received, and, I think, understood.

So, to the “Mass of the Children”, a work completed by John Rutter in 2003. Associated with the loss of his son in an accident in 2001, the work represented at the time a kind of “return” to the life of a composer, but also a tribute in tandem to his “formative” experience as a pupil of Highgate School chosen to sing in Britten’s War Requiem under the baton of the composer himself. Rutter wanted to create something that might replicate a bringing together of children and adult performers “in a similar enriching way”. This performance thus brought together the Wellington Young Voices, the Metropolitean Cathedral Boys’ Choir and Inspirare with two young soloists, soprano Pasquale Orchard and baritone Daniel O’Connor, and a chamber orchestra.

A radiant, Respighi-like opening to the work brought forth luminously shimmering instrumental textures, introducing the children’s voices, not with the Kyrie, as is usual in a Mass, but with lines from a seventeenth-century hymn written by Bishop Thomas Ken – “Awake my soul and with the sun”, after which the adult choir sang the “Kyrie” – here the flowing lines reminded me in their manner of Faure’s Requiem, with its fluent blending of lyricism and impassioned declamation. The children’s voices sang “Christe Eleison”, with accompaniments I found glittering, and a touch spectral, followed by the return of “Kyrie Eleison” with soprano and baritone joining with the choir, Pascale Orchard’s voice here strong and vibrant, and Daniel O’Connor’s sonorous and steady. At the end the organ made a deep, resoundingly satisfying impression.

Growing in energy and light, the “Gloria” rose from the depths, its rhythmic trajectories enlivening the performers and their words, children and then adults echoing the opening cries, then revelling in the jazzy angularities leading to Et in terra pax with its cherubic bell-like chants for the children’s voices. Soprano and baritone exchanged phrases at Domine Deus Rex caelestis with the music at Filius patris taking on the character of a floating ostinato as the music arched its way through Qui tollis peccata mundi, the lines nicely balanced by the soloists throughout right up to Miserere nobis. A vibrant return to life came with Quonian, the music jazzy and energetic in these performers’ hands, carrying us away with its exuberance to the end.

The gently glowing wind arabesque-like solos brought in the “Sanctus” presented by the choir like a gently-tolling bell, the voices rising to impassioned tones at the Hosannas, and again from the Pleni sunt caeli onwards. What a gorgeous panoply of wind sounds accompanying the children’s singing of “Benedictus”, itself so affecting with those innocent, ethereal tones – such drama in the contrast between adult and children’s voices, here! As the soloists sang the Benedictus as a duet, the instruments provided heart-easing counterpoints to the music’s simple intensities.

If the impression thus far was of a composer who preferred light to darkness, the grimmer, haunted opening of the Agnus Dei dispelled the notion for the setting’s duration – the organ’s tones of disquiet, the haunted strings and winds, and the chromatic lines of the voices in their Agnus Dei utterances instigated currents of lament that gradually built to great waves, reinforced by tubular bells sounding a tocsin of gloom – perhaps one might regard the introduction at this point of the children’s choir with an angelic setting of William Blake’s “Little Lamb who made thee?” as much an unsubtle contrast as a masterstroke (critical opinions vary on the topic!), but the very sound of the voices here acted like balm to the sensibilities, irradiating the gloom with light and hope, until the music again darkened as the voices took up the repeated pleas of Miserere nobis.

Came the work’s final section, the “Dona Nobis pacem”, beginning with somewhat Elgarian string-phrases, and a baritone solo (supported by beautifully-turned wind solos), Rutter setting the words of a prayer “Lord open thou mine eyes that I may see” by Lancelot Andrews (1555-1626) to a nicely-turned melody, delivered confidently and strongly by Daniel O’Connor, then enabling the soprano to affectingly carry the melody further with different words, those of a 5^th-century text called St.Patrick’s Breastplate.

The work’s final section featured the adult voices (choir and soloists) reiterating the words “Agnus Dei” and “Dona nobis pacem” while the children’s voices soared above the chant with Thomas Ken’s “Glory to thee, my God this night” set to Thomas Tallis’s well-known canonic melody, the music gently subsiding into silence at the end, everything, as throughout the work, most sensitively balanced and controlled by Mark Stamper.

There could be no doubt as to the commitment and involvement of all the musicians throughout this ambitious presentation, one whose on-going strength of purpose, depth of interpretation and skill of execution represented a resounding and well-deserved tribute to the various choirs and choir directors involved, to the soloists and instrumentalists, and to Inspirare Choir and Mark Stamper, its “inspirational” Music Director.

Orchestra Wellington – a “Golden” beginning to its 2018 season

Posted on 09/06/201813/06/2018 by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
GOLDEN CITY – Music by Mozart, Bartok and Dvorak

MOZART – Symphony No. 38 in D major K.504 “Prague”
BARTOK – Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938)
DVORAK – Symphony No. 5 in F Major B.54

Amalia Hall (violin)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 9th June, 2018

Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei got their 2018 season off to an arresting start with a concert of three resplendent-sounding works, one whose effect simply got more and more celebratory and engaging as the evening went on. Aiding and abetting this state of things was the welcome presence of guest Concertmaster Wilma Smith, and a goodly-numbered audience whose support for the orchestra was richly rewarded. First came what I thought an exciting and vital, if in places a tad frenetic, reading of the Mozart “Prague” Symphony, followed by two absolutely stellar performances, firstly, of Bela Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto, and then of a concert rarity, the Fifth Symphony of Antonin Dvorak.

The inclusion of this latter work is, of course, part of a series featuring the “great” Dvorak symphonies, beginning with this F Major work which Dvorak had written in 1875. It was first performed in 1879 as Op.24, but the publisher, Simrock, wanting to invest the work with increased status to boost sales, brought out the work in 1888 as Op.76, despite Dvorak’s protests. After Dvorak’s death no less than four earlier unpublished symphonies were discovered, necessitating a complete renumbering of the canon – up to that time, and for a long while afterwards, for example, the “New World” Symphony, which we know as No.9, was called No.5. Though worthy of the occasional hearing, the earlier symphonies each have fewer “moments per minute” than do the final five, though there have been many recordings made of the complete set.

Getting the evening off to a vigorous start was a performance of Mozart’s bright and energetic “Prague” Symphony, so-called because of the composer’s happy association with the city over the years, beginning in 1787, when a concert organised for his benefit included this newly-composed Symphony. Prague was, at that time, known as the “Golden City” – Zlatá Praha (Golden Prague in Czech) – due to its many towers and spires, some of which were reputedly covered in gold – hence the concert’s title. Also, Bohemian wind players were regarded as Europe’s best, and Mozart’s exemplary writing for winds in this work was very probably with such players in mind. Another unusual feature of the work for its composer is its three-movement structure, Mozart having always written a Minuet for his Viennese audiences. The likely explanation is that Prague’s musical public were accustomed to the three-movement form, as evidenced by the work of other symphonists whose music was performed there at around that time.

Looking back over my previous impressions of Marc Taddei’s Mozart conducting, I note great enthusiasm regarding a 2014 performance of the late G Minor Symphony, one which brought out the music’s strength and darkness through trenchant and insistent orchestral playing. I was therefore looking forward to his interpretation of the “Prague”, an expectation which was straightaway galvanised by the symphony’s opening, with forceful timpani, winds and brass (foreshadowing the opera “Don Giovanni”) tellingly contrasted with an attractive plaintive quality in the string phrases. The syncopated rhythms of the allegro’s opening swiftly and directly thrust the music forward, the playing having a dynamic character whose nicely-judged balances allowed each section a “voice”. Taddei swept the music’s momentum along through the development section, again beautifully dovetailing the elements of discourse – only a lack of real girth to the string tone in places (too few players for this venue!) prevented the performance from really taking wing.

Mozart cleverly combined slow movement and minuet-like impulse in the middle movement, probably conscious of the Prague audience’s usual fare of three-movement symphonies! Here there was sinuous sweetness in the strings’ chromatic figurations at the opening, answered by strong, purposeful winds, the playing both graceful and forthright. The composer’s awareness of the quality of Prague’s wind players was also reflected in the prominence allowed the winds throughout, a character here readily given sonorous and well-rounded purpose by the Orchestra Wellington players and their conductor.

As for the finale, the deftly-sounded introduction led to a virtual explosion of energies whose exhilaration and excitement, while befitting the presto marking, seemed to me to almost rush the music off its feet in places. The players coped magnificently, but I thought Taddei’s speeds allowed less humour than breathlessness in certain passages (the “cat-and-mouse” passages of the development, for example), and tended to turn the music’s chuckles to excitable babble, which, of course, still made the music “work”, though in a more extreme way to that which I preferred. In fact the big outburst mid-movement here sounded to my ears more angry and terse than I’ve ever previously heard it, though it did make more sense of a remark I encountered made by one commentator, who said that Mozart sounds in places in this movement more like Beethoven than anywhere else in his music. While not convinced wholly, I still took my metaphorical hat off to Taddei and his musicians for their bravery and daring at tackling the music so fearlessly!

Leaping forwards over a whole century, the concert then took us to the world of Bartok, in the shape and form of his Second Violin Concerto. The soloist was Amalia Hall, normally the Orchestra’s Concertmaster, which was why Orchestra Wellington had procured the services of Wilma Smith in the role on this occasion, a most distinguished substitute! It was of course Wilma Smith who brought another of the twentieth century’s most significant violin concerti to Orchestra Wellington audiences two years ago (goodness – how time flies!) – which was Alban Berg’s “To the Memory of an Angel” Violin Concerto. Now, courtesy of Amalia Hall (and presided over by Wilma!), it was the turn of Bartok, with a work that was regarded by the composer as his “only” violin concerto, an earlier work (1908) having never been published by the time of the composer’s death.

From the concerto’s richly evocative beginning Amalia Hall seemed to “inhabit” the music’s wide-ranging moods, seeming equally at home with both the work’s evocative beauties and rapid-fire volatilities – she addressed the atmospheric warmth of the opening folk-tune with full-bodied tones, along with plenty of energy and “snap” to her phrasings. Throughout she seemed to encompass whatever parameters of feeling the music sought to express, in complete accord with conductor and players. And the music was extraordinary in its variety, by turns lyrical, quixotic and whimsical, and grotesque bordering on the savage – the composer’s seemingly endless invention meant that we as listeners were in a constant state of anticipation, ready to “go” with the soloist’s lyrical inwardness, sudden whimsicalities or flashes of brilliance as required. The orchestra, too had plenty of surprises for us, Taddei and his players evocative in their lyrical support of the soloist and brilliant and biting in their more combatative exchanges – some gloriously raucous sounds were produced by the winds and brass at appointed moments!

The slow movement was launched by the solo violin over magically-realised string textures, a beautiful melody eventually taken up briefly but wholeheartedly by the strings in Kodaly-like fashion. Again, the soloist made the themes and their variants throughout the movement her own, rhapsodising over pizzicato strings throughout one sequence, then joining with the winds and the harp to create a stunningly lovely fairyland ambience within another. The more quixotic variations also came off well, also, firstly a slithering theme played by the soloist over uneasily shifting orchestral chords, and then a playful march drawing delicately pointillistic exchanges between violin and orchestra, Hall’s playing throughout beautifully combining poise with real and constant presence.

The orchestra impatiently plunged into the finale’s opening bars, to which assertiveness the soloist replied with a sprightly folk-dance-like figure, the subsequent cross-exchanges leading the orchestra into almost “road music” for a few glorious measures. Though the music refused to settle on any one mode for too long, Hall and the players rode the wave-crest of its restless spirit, tenderly realising the gentler, soulful evocations while eagerly tackling the more physical interchanges. Some of the orchestral tutti passages seemed to anticipate the “Concerto for Orchestra”, such as a toccata-like passage mid-movement capped off by the brass with infectious enthusiasm. Though not possessing the world’s heftiest tones, Hall addressed the more trenchant passages of her interactions with what seemed like remarkable strength and dexterity, enough to be hailed as a worthy hero by the orchestral brasses, before her final flourishes swept upwards to join the work’s final brass shouts! What an ending, and what a performance!

What would have been, a relatively short while ago, something of a musical curiosity was the final work on the evening’s programme, Dvorak’s Fifth Symphony, now widely accepted as the first of the composer’s nine completed examples of the genre to display his genius consistently throughout. I can recall reading about the work in “Gramophone”, encountering an ecstatic review of conductor Istvan Kertesz’s 1965 recording with the London Symphony, one which contained the words “….the expression of joy so intense it brings tears…..” All these years later, I still share that reaction whenever I get the chance to hear this work, and listening to Orchestra Wellington’s performance with Marc Taddei was certainly no exception.

Right from the beginning we were beguiled by the music’s mellifluous tones, wrought by the work of the orchestra’s clarinettists, whose welcoming calls established the symphony’s breathless beauty and ineffable charm, a quality which was maintained throughout the work by the obvious care and affection bestowed on the music by the conductor and players. Vigorous and dramatic gestures abound throughout the music, though the whole was bound by the captivating strains of that clarinet-led opening. Incidentally, this was clarinettist Moira Hurst’s final concert as section leader in the orchestra, the work a fitting vehicle for demonstrating something of the beauty of her playing – fortunately for us she will continue working with the orchestra as an Emeritus player.

As well as enlarging the work’s range of expression with its sombre opening theme on the lower strings, the slow movement also demonstrated the composer’s growing instrumental and structural mastery – here was evidenced a transparency in the scoring, which, despite the playing’s intensity, maintained a luminous clarity throughout. And hand-in-glove was a rhythmic fluency between the music’s different sections, a graceful dance-like trio lightening the seriousness of the movement’s opening. Taddei and his players brought the two sections together easefully and coherently, adding to our pleasure.

Another transition involved the second and third movements, the former’s initial phrase “summoned” by wind chords and then redeployed as a statement of growth and change, taking us away from seriousness to a prospect of something more positive and engaging – suddenly the scherzo had grabbed us by the hand and was running with us down the hill, through grassy paddocks of pastoral delight, amid laughter and sunshine! As expected, there was also a trio section here, one which the winds led us towards with smiles and enjoinings to “let ourselves go!”, if only for brief moments, until we were back with the boisterous scamperings of the opening, whose bright dream came to an end all too soon.

In a sense the finale lacks some of the spontaneity of the preceding movements, though its structuring “grounds” the work as a symphonic statement, the agitated opening idea developed at length by the composer, before being contrasted by a “sighing” counter-subject. Taddei didn’t leave any room for uncertainty, pushing his players along, while giving ample space for the more lyrical episodes to develop their own character. Dvorak modulates his material amply, before returning to his opening music, but quells the agitations momentarily with a gorgeous oboe solo, as well as allowing strings and winds to reintroduce poignant echoes of the symphony’s very opening. These felicities, so tenderly given voice with some sensitive playing, were then lost to the whirlwind of excitement of the work’s coda, Taddei and his most excellent company “giving it all they had” for a properly grandstand finish! After this we were left in no doubt as to the prospective delights of the Orchestra’s remaining 2018 concerts – roll on, the rest of the Dvorak symphonies!

Category: Uncategorized

Enthralling and disturbing – NZ Opera’s take on Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw”

Auckland: 18^th, 20^th, 23^rd October)

Morton Trio shines in a concert of variety and splendour at Lower Hutt

Wednesday 7^th August, 2019

The Children – redefining well-being as responsibility, at Circa Theatre

Tuesday 2^nd April, 2019

Michael Endres surrounds Schubert with varied companion pieces at Mulled Wine concert

Sunday 10 March, 2:30 pm

Camerata’s latest “Haydn in the Church” concert – joyous antiphonal splendours, heart-rending beauties and al fresco hi-jinks!

Thursday 13^th December, 2018

Eternity Opera sings triumphantly once again at Wellington’s Hannah Playhouse – Puccini’s Madam Butterfly

Friday 16^th November 2018

Great performances of unfamiliar Bartók and major Dvořák introduced by young geniuses

Saturday 27 October, 7:30 pm

Choral concert to celebrate new digital organ at Cathedral of Saint Paul

Saturday, 13 August 2018, 7 pm

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