Ensembled delights from the NZSM Saxophones at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series 2015
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Saxophone Orchestra

The players:
Ryan Hall, Reuben Chin (soprano sax)
Genevieve Davidson, Laura Brown (alto sax)
Giles Reid, Elizabeth Hocking, Nick Walshe (tenor sax)
Graham Hanify, Kim Hunter, Simon Brew (Baritone sax)
Director – Debbie Rawson

The music:

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA – Tango Suite for Saxophone Quartet
ROGER MAY – Sax Circus for Saxophone Orchestra
PHILIP BUTTALL – Eclogue for Saxophone Orchestra
ANTONIN DVORAK (arr. Doug. O’Connor)

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

 Wednesday 27th May 2015

There’s more “classical” music written for the saxophone than you might think exists – after all the instrument has been around since 1846, and as such is more “established ” than its twentieth-century prominence in jazz might suggest. Still, there remains an “exoticism” about the instrurment’s particular sound for classically-attuned ears such as mine(!), and one which I find particularly exciting whenever I hear it, be it solo, in a chamber ensemble or in an orchestral context.

So, I found myself looking forward to the NZ School of Music’s Saxophone Orchestra presentation at St.Andrew’s. I wasn’t REALLY expecting to hear my favourite pieces for the instrument, Eric Coates’s Saxo-Rhapsody, and the opening movement of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, with its haunting middle  section “owned” by the instrument – both, after all, have orchestral accompaniment. But I was hoping for something comparably luscious, albeit on a smaller scale.

The concert began with Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Suite, played by a sax quartet, two movements of Latin “soul”, at the outset with lovely, distinctive timbres, particularly the lower echelons – a gentle melancholy, wistful in character, the music embroiled in what sounded like some private emotion. The players balanced everything beautifully, allowing the middle voices their easeful, engaging trajectories, the phrasings never having to be forced or over-cooked to make the music’s point.

Though hearing Debbie Rawson’s spoken introductions  was a difficulty in the venue with a microphone that was a “sometimes thing”, I did register the programmme rearrangement from what was printed – so that we got Roger May’s madcap Sax Circus next, three additional players appearing like Cheshire Cats for the performance, and immediately making their mark with a kind of jolly circus opening to the music.

Enormous fun was generated on both sides of the performer/listener divide, poking huge holes in the gauze through which the sounds galloped and romped and our appreciation (I’m sure) registered. Our popcorn was forgotten as we were regaled by a baritone sax kick-starting a rumbustious gallop, which divertingly morphed into subsidiary episodes, as far-removed as elephantine ploddings, but returned us to the energies of the opening by the end.

Philip Buttall’s Eclogue restored our sonic equilibriums with the piece’s patiently-unfolding, almost ceremonial tapestries of sound, giving the soprano sax the melody atop beautifully-balanced osmotic harmonies. Then it was the alto saxes’ turn with the tune, as the sopranos counterpointed with high-wire variants – all very beautiful and deeply-felt.

To conclude the programme came an arrangement of the Dvorak Serenade for Winds, the work of somebody called Doug O’Connor – and even more players turned up for this item! So it was a very merry company indeed, which began the work, led by Debbie Rawson, the opening Tempo di Marcia barely able to contain itself in the excitement of the occasion. Amid all the thrusting energies I did feel it all needed a bit more “Moderato”, as something of the music’s bucolic swagger was sacrificed at such an insistent tempo. With the movement’s coda came the breadth that I was hanging out for, a glow settling over the playing, the musicians given the elbow-room to voice their phrases beautifully, right to the end.

The following Minuetto had all the grace and charm necessary for the music to bloom, the ensemble creating some lovely colours, and beautifully droll accompaniments, readily evoking the dance – but wow! – at what a lick the music’s “trio” section was taken! – hats off to the players for managing their notes without falling off the musical tightrope! Exciting, but for me just a bit of a blur, more breathless than truly exhilarating – to my mind relying a little too much on sheer speed rather than rhythmic “pointing” to be truly delicious!

This arrangement having omitted the original work’s Andante con moto movement, the players went straight into the Allegro molto finale – here most thankfully not rushed off its feet, but at a tempo that gave the players time to articulate their phrases with a sense of fun, rather than sheer desperation – the main tune was jolly and rumbustiously delivered, and the “gurgling” accompaniments were a delight! I was reminded of the story I heard of a wind player’s remark about playing Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, that “you just waggle your fingers and hope for the best!”. But these young players seemed to have no such fears, so exuberant and whole-hearted were their own finger-wagglings!

Dvorak’s marvellous finale has as well, of course, a delicious accelerando passage, a quasi-pompous return to the work’s opening, and an exciting coda, complete with stirring fanfares, all of which were delivered with great élan. So, it was pretty wonderful stuff from the ensemble, the student musicians having obviously, from this showing, been expertly schooled, and thus made ready to take their instruments and make a great and pleasing noise in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSM Piano Students impress at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series 2015
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Piano Students

Joy Sun – BEETHOVEN : Piano Sonata No.18 in E-flat Op.31 No.3 (Ist Mvt.)
SCHUMANN-LISZT – Widmung

Choong Park – RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No.2  (Ist.Mvt.)

Hana Kim – SCHUBERT – Impromptu Op.90 No.2 in E-flat

Nicole Ting – BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.30 in E Op.109 (Mvts. I and II)
CHOPIN – Scherzo No.2 Op.31

Xing Wang – DEBUSSY – Children’s Corner (Suite)

(NZSM Piano tutor: Jian Liu)

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Tuesday 26th May 2015

What a pianistic feast this was! – more appropriately so for a lunchtime concert, with nothing given us that was too large-scale or difficult to digest easily. Which is not to suggest that the repertoire chosen by the students was anything less than challenging, both technically and interpretatively.

Each of the performers impressed with their intense involvement in the music-making – I felt they all to a creditable extent made music from “inside” their particular pieces, and conveyed a sense both of enjoyment of detail and awareness of the music’s overall “reach”, allowing each quality to readily speak.In every instance the music’s “character” was to some degree conveyed most readily.

I was unaccountably hampered during the concert by not having a pen that worked, and was thus unable to make notes as “reminders” for later – my apologies if my remarks seem not as detailed as is usually the case. Fortunately each of the students had a distinct “way” with his or her playing, which I found helpful as well as refreshing and exciting.

Joy Sun began the concert with a sympathetic and sensitive reading of the first movement of Beethoven’s Op.18 E-flat Sonata. She shaped the music beautifully, giving the impression of “going with” the work’s explorations as much as driving the music’s course herself – nothing was unduly forced, and her aspect at the keyboard was fluid and organic.

I was similarly impressed with her shaping of Liszt’s equally loved-as-maligned transcription of Schumann’s song “Widmung”, stressing the poetry and lyricism ahead of the music’s more obviously virtuoso aspects, especially in the latter stages. Her building up towards the “grand manner” from the central episode’s gentleness was nicely managed, as was the work’s quietly-ecstatic conclusion.

More poetry, this time of a brooding, Slavic kind came from the expert fingers of Choong Park, playing the opening allegro agitato from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Sonata. It all came to life in this performance most vividly, from the opening downward plunge, through the gentler D Major episodes, before building up to the tremendous evocations of churchbells that were a trademark of the composer. Choong Park seemed completely at home in the work’s textures, and his patient unfolding of the music suited the piece’s improvisatory aspect, allowing it to unfold as night follows day.

A welcome antidote to such intensities was provided by the sparking, rippling performance by Hana Kim of Schubert’s delectable Impromptu Op.90 No.2 in E-flat. One or two tiny hesitations apart, the pianist kept the “spin” of the piece going most beguilingly throughout. She allowed the more declamatory “trio” section enough heft and space to point the contrasts before gliding, gossamer-like back into the reprise of the diaphanously-woven opening.

As with the recital’s first two items, the contrast with the next pianist and repertoire (Beethoven’s Op.109) was almost palpable. Nicole Ting was a “big” player with grandly-conceived gestures, some of which provided thrills and spills of an almost palpable order, though nothing unremarkable in the context of the pianist requiring the music to achieve its fantastic, virtuoso character. What inaccuracies and breakdowns there were in her playing could have been attributed to nerves as much as a “throwing caution to the winds” aspect (which I really enjoyed), and certainly didn’t conceal the fact that she “knew” how the music ought to go, even if she occasionally snatched at phrases in the Op.109’s second movement. I relished the wholeheartedness of her playing amid all of the thrills and spills.

And the Chopin Scherzo which followed was a tour de force – here was a young player already “tagging” these classic pieces of music as if wanting to create a brave new world of her own. Once more I felt invigorated by her approach, being put in touch by her with the piece’s originality and power and inherent danger. Of course, one can achieve these things with a lower attrition rate than here, and I would hope she would be able to eventually achieve even more “finish” in her presentations – though ideally, not at the expense of those qualities which enable the listener to sit up and take notice of what the music is actually trying to say.

Finally, fluent, and sparking playing of a high order was given us by Xing Wang, with Debussy’s delectable “Children’s Corner” Suite. Apart from a tendency to rush the music in places (she made, for me, a little too much of the “mechanus” aspect of “Dr.Gradus ad Parnassum” and could have entrusted the effect more to the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the music’s natural “spin”, rather than to speed) she evoked these childhood vignettes with real feeling,  dreaming sweet dreams with Jimbo, for example, and also dancing exuberantly with the snowflakes.

Again, I thought Golliwog’s Cakewalk a bit too mechanical – there’s a delicious drollery to be found in these rhythms which she will one day take the risk and put her trust in, and not perhaps feel the need to crank the piece along quite so much, which includes more playfulness in the piece’s ending.

Piano tutor Jian Liu expressed his pleasure to me at the recital’s end in working with these students – he was obviously proud of what they’d achieved, and of what they’d be able to go on and do, just as surely. The students’ enjoyment of and imaginative individual approach to what they played, was, I thought, a great and nicely-realised tribute to his tutorship and own example.

 

 

 

 

Guitar students deliver impressive performances in spite of relative inexperience in tough field

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Showcase Week at St Andrew’s

NZSM Classical Guitar Ensemble (Joel Baldwin, Toby Chadwick, Jake Church, Amber Madriaga, Lucinda Ng, Emma Sandford, Royden Smith, Dylan Solomon, George Wills)
and the NZSM Classical Guitar Quartet (Church, Smith, Solomon, Wills)

Music by Tylman Susato, Andrew York, Piazzolla and Jürg Kindle (the Ensemble); and Bizet and Boccherini (the Quartet)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Monday 25 May, 12:15 pm

The first of the four programmes arranged by the enterprising manager of the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts, Marjan van Waardenberg, with the New Zealand School of Music in an effort to draw more particular attention to the school’s contribution to Wellington, downtown.

As was to be expected, the audience was somewhat smaller than that for the usual Wednesday concerts, but it was by no means an embarrassment. Guitars, though still not quite classical mainstream, have a strong appeal, especially when they play music that has survived in the repertoire for a century or so, including much music of the Hispanic world that seems to invite transcription ‘back’ for the instrument that probably inspired its creation: Albeniz, Falla, Barrios, Villa-Lobos, Tarrega, Brouwer…

This programme really offered none of that, apart from a transcription of Piazzolla’s Primavera Porteña. It opened with a set of three Renaissance dances by Tylman (Tielman) Susato who lived from around 1515 to 1570. (So this might be around his 500th birthday). He was a calligrapher and printer in Antwerp, the first in the Netherlands to use moveable type for printing music. Antwerp was a leading centre of printing in the first century after its invention by Gutenberg. (Last year I spent a fascinating three or four hours in the Plantin-Moretus Museum of printing in Antwerp).

Susato was also a composer of motets and masses as well as chansons and dances, either arranged or original tunes. Here we had dances: a Pavane, Gaillard and Ronde. Their arrangement left the Pavane in what I felt was a somewhat ponderous state, though dynamics were carefully and enjoyably studied; the triple time Gaillard and the more lively Ronde, felt better adapted for dancing.

Andrew York’s two pieces were quietly interesting, the first, Pop, starting with chords that hinted at Theodorakis’s sirtaki, or hasapiko, from Zorba the Greek, but soon went its own way. Brajamazil had a comparably quiet pulse, that used the eight-part ensemble in two parts, one providing a repeated riff, under a tune that varied somewhat; all played with the same care for ensemble as the set of Susato dances. It may have been the acoustic, but I missed something of a resonant bass that might have underlain the rather uniform quality of the whole ensemble.

Piazzolla’s Primavera Porteña (originally for bandoneon, violin and guitar I suppose) is an attractive and fairly well-known piece, partly in triple time, but often rhythmically obscure (to me), which the ensemble played skilfully. Finally, a couple of pieces by a composer I had not heard of, Jürg Kindle, entitled Funky and Techno, which Jane Curry suggested (if I heard correctly) represented a style of music that had only brief vogue. Funky needed precision, solid rhythm as well as a certain freedom; it was rather a work in progress.

Techno perhaps suffered from the limitations of what it was imitating, but the attempt to invest it with a little sophistication left it somewhat morbid.

The large ensemble was then replaced by a quartet of the four more advanced players. They played arrangements of three of the dances from Carmen, which had the advantage of deriving, at least, from the home of the guitar. Rhythms were reasonably lively though again they suffered through the care and restraint with which they were played. The first, Aragonese, essentially a rather elegant, restrained dance, was the least handicapped by that sobriety; so it expressed that dignity quite well. But the Seguidilla which Carmen dances in high frustration as she faces Jose’s timidity, his overwhelming fear of letting go, his sense of duty to the army, was a tough one. At this stage, these players were not really up to capturing the sexuality that the dance expresses.

They ended with an Introduction and Fandango by Boccherini which lay quite well for the guitars. Though the Introduction passed without much impact, the Fandango came off well since it was drawn from the famous guitar quintet La retirata di Madrid. Throughout, their obvious pains over notation precision and dynamics were always conspicuous, and the performances showed proper attention to the basic challenges that face players of this instrument, in these not always very rewarding pieces, from which there is nowhere to hide.

 

An evening’s enjoyment of wonderful things in Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin)
Julia Joyce (viola)
Andrew Joyce (‘cello)
Diedre Irons (piano)

HAYDN – String Trio in G Major Op.53 No.1
FRANCK – Sonata for Violin and Piano (1886)
BRAHMS – Piano Quartet in C Minor Op.60

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Monday 25th May, 2015

The programme devised for this concert certainly made the most of the music and the performers, as well as pleasing the audience no end – having works for variously two, three and four musicians provided plenty of variety, while the performances established and maintained levels of skill, intensity, beauty and enjoyment that would have graced a recital platform anywhere in the world.

On the face of things, hardest-working of the quartet of musicians was violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen, usually concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, but here as fully involved in duo, trio and quartet partnerships, his playing a common and unifying thread throughout the evening’s music.

And what colleagues he had! – two of his orchestral colleagues, both (like Vesa-Matti) leaders of their particular sections in the NZSO, violist Julia Joyce and ‘cellist Andrew Joyce (partners in real life, of course), and the incomparable Diedre Irons at the piano – all, incidentally, local musicians!

The Haydn Trio began with a variation movement, lovely, lilting phrases, the dance firmly, but also winningly characterized – the composer again and again showed his inventiveness in creating delightful discourses from such deceptively simple material, with each instrument getting its chance to cheekily counterpoint the basic, unprepossessing theme. Then in the second and final movement, the pace quickened to a scamper, punctuated by pauses and dynamic contrasts – now tender and touching, now brilliant and decorative, the trio’s teamwork exemplary.

A good thing I’ve never grown tired of hearing Cesar Franck’s deservedly well-loved Violin Sonata – because, despite its technical difficulties and emotional “stretches” it regularly comes up in recital programs. Here, for me, the most fascinating aspect of the performance was the interaction of what might have seemed like two temperamentally different musicians, charged by cosmic circumstance with bringing the work to life.

While admiring the elegance and skill of Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin playing on the occasions I’ve heard him demonstrate his art, I’ve always though of him as a cool, somewhat detached and “contained” player – different sorts of qualities one would expect of an ideal interpreter of this work. And now, here he was, about to perform it with a colleague whom I’ve long regarded as one of music’s greatest and warmest communicators, pianist Diedre Irons.

As it turned out, each player was a near-perfect “foil” for the other in this music – and in any case the composer’s history as a “young virtuoso lion” of the keyboard meant that the writing’s focus often swung towards the pianist – no mere “violin with accompaniment” with this work! This fusion of styles I thought enriched the performance, with whole episodes seemingly given over to each player’s strengths and beautifully weighted by both in overall terms.

What did delight me the most, however, was hearing the violinist respond to his partner’s red-blooded manner at appropriate places – so full measure was given to the exhilaration of the second movement’s concluding measures, as well as the “deeply-dug” recitatives and the inwardness of the introspections in the slow movement. And I loved Vesa-Matti’s “full-bow” treatment of the return of that movement’s “big tune” in the finale – which moment, of course, Diedre Irons’ playing magnificently orchestrated, before scampering back down the hills towards the more circumspect undulations of the opening, and the ritual of its final canonic dance.

All hands came upon deck for the evening’s final work, Brahms’ epic C Minor Piano Quartet. Though this was the third such work written by the composer, and with a later opus number than its companions, the three quartets were sketched out at the same time – the C Minor work reflects Brahms’ involvement with the Schumanns, Robert and Clara, from the time that Robert had been committed to the asylum.

Brahms took twenty years to work through his various and contradictory feelings regarding what the music was trying to express. Originally set in C#Minor, the work’s key was changed to C Minor, Brahms developing his feelings from those of a hopeless lover (C#Minor was E.T.A.Hoffman’s famous character Kreisler, one whose influence on Schumann was evident in his piano suite “Kreisleriana”), to heroism amid struggle (exemplified by Beethoven’s frequent use of C Minor). These two feelings make themselves known, cheek-to-jowl, right at the pieces’ beginning, with the piano’s octaves (forceful expression) and the string’s “dying fall” motif perhaps representing characters in the drama to follow.

Drama it certainly was here, in huge shovelfuls, with powerful outbursts of concerted energy having their say, before giving way to a beautifully-extended and lyrical second group, weaving the opening descending figure into the argument in both minor and major modes, as well as contrasting the tragic with the heroic. The players, together and separately, conjured up massive trenchant utterances in contrast to the tenderness they also found in more lyrical moments, a beautiful exchange between viola and violin causing the piano to sing with the utmost pleasure in response.

The piano leapt first into the scherzo’s fray before the others took the plunge – though the music seemed uncertain whether to exult or snarl in places, the group roller-coastered all of us up and over the movement’s formidable hill-crests in exhilarating style. And no sooner had we regained our breath than the loveliest ‘cello-playing one could imagine was upon our ears courtesy of Andrew Joyce, introducing the slow movement with sounds that fell as gratefully as sunbeams on previously storm-tossed flowers of the fields.

Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin then added to our pleasure with its own voice  extending the melody in duet with the ‘cello. Not to be left out, the viola deftly and mellifluously duetted with each of its string-partners, Julia Joyce’s tones as transparent as a violin’s in places, and as mellow and mysterious as a cello’s in others. And Diedre Irons surely and sweetly marked the  piano’s place in the movement’s “continuous melody” by a tenderly-phrased reprise of the melody as sensitive and atmospheric as any.

Urgency and anxiety drove the ensemble at the finale’s beginning, the piano’s “perpetuo mobile” breaking off only momentarily for some hymn-like chords from the strings which were picked up and swept away once again in the maelstrom of it all. The players caught the “throes” of the music at its heart, by turns skittish and impulsive, with the sinuous lines frequently losing their momentum and having to regroup their energies – what intensities were carried through by the drive of the piano figurations and the sonorous string utterances!

One felt at the end a kind of “haunted relief” in the music, besides some Brahmsian exultation – ironically, the kind of ambivalence that Schumann would have recognized, as befitted his own struggles with life and art. A great and moving performance, then, of stirring, deeply-etched music, part of a rich and variegated evening’s enjoyment of wonderful things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Impressive semi-staged Elijah from Orpheus Choir, Orchestra Wellington and superb soloists

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington and Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor); Frances Moore (staging director)

Mendelssohn: Elijah

Martin Snell (Elijah), Lisa-Harper-Brown (widow), Maaike Christie-Beekman (Angel), Jamie Young (Obadiah), Archie Taylor (Boy); voice students of New Zealand School of Music,

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 23 May 2015, 7.30pm

I found this performance of Elijah entertaining, inspiring, and of a very high standard.  So did the large, attentive audience, who responded enthusiastically.  After the performance, I heard many favourable comments.

The first thing that struck one coming into the auditorium was the huge screen behind the choir seats.  However, it was not used for projecting images, but was simply suffused with colour.  The colour chosen varied with the mood or location of the various sections of the oratorio.

Martin Snell came on, in business suit but without a tie, and sang the words of the introductory oration, then while the orchestra played the Overture, the choir wandered in, wearing casual clothes in white or light colours, which I took to denote a Middle Eastern setting – but this made it curious that the soloists were dressed in modern garments.  It was good to see the choir appearing to have personalities, rather than being in their usual dour black, which makes the members fade into the background. Bright lighting enhanced the visual effect.

The orchestra members were placed on low platforms, to be above the action on the front of the stage.

Martin Snell immediately impressed; he was in fine voice.  In a radio interview he had said that he had sung the oratorio numbers of times in its language of writing: German, presumably in Germany and Switzerland, where he is based.  (This rather gives the lie to Roger Wilson’s assertion in his excellent programme note, that it ‘is seldom performed in Germany’.)  Snell therefore found it quite difficult, he said, to fit the English words to the notes.  However, that was not apparent.  Except that he sang entirely from the score.  In their much smaller roles, Harper-Brown used it some of the time, but Maaike Christie-Beekman not at all.

After performances in the 1950s and 1960s, the Orpheus Choir sang the work in 1971, and then not again until 1999, when there was a semi-staged performance, when Rodney Macann, dressed in sackcloth, sang the title role entirely from memory, moving round the stage in dramatic fashion.  However, apart from several other soloists being in costume, that version bore little relation to this semi-staged version.

Some of the choir were initially disposed at the front of the stage as a semi-chorus (where they could not see the conductor), before later taking their places in the main chorus.  The orchestra set the atmosphere well.

Brent Stewart conducted clearly and decisively, although it seemed to me that in the first half he was conducting with his hand, the baton being merely an extension.  However, in the second half he found his baton technique.

Almost throughout the performance, the projection of words by both soloists and choir was good – but I was sitting fairly near the front.  All the soloists sang as the real professionals most of them are; this applied also to a couple of the NZSM students who had minor roles of some significance: Katherine McIndoe and William McElwee.  It was most impressive to observe the resonance Martin Snell obtains by using the resonators of the face to assist in delivering the goods.

The orchestra’s every note, rhythm and dynamic seemed to be in place.  This was true of the choir also; I only observed one false, stumbling entry in the whole work in which, after Elijah, the choir has most to do.

I was tempted to say that this was Martin Snell’s night, such is the size of his role and the quality of his performance.  That would be unfair – it was also the choir’s and the orchestra’s night.  Snell handled the high tessitura of most of his role with aplomb – and got an opportunity to use his low notes in the quartet ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord’, one of the most beautiful moments, with its solo quartet sections and intervening orchestral passages.

There were a few judicious cuts in the work, to bring the length down, but the only number I really missed was the felicitous ‘He that shall endure to the end’.  It would have been another demonstration of the huge variety of Mendelssohn’s writing; his ability to move from rousing to contemplative, to delicate, from chorale-like harmony to fugue.  In the delicate category was the lovely trio ‘Lift thine eyes’, sung by a women’s semi-chorus – in this case, the NZSM students, as angels, sited in the left gallery.  Here, I felt there was insufficient lightness, blend, or ethereal textures.

Elsewhere, they produced lovely tone, balance and blend, although I found them insufficiently impassioned as the priests of Baal (re-costumed in black) compared with the following chorus from
the full choir.  One feature of the choir’s singing was that fortissimo passages were sung with lively tone that was still pleasant on the ear, for example, in ‘Woe to him!  He shall perish’.  In contrast was the delicious ‘He, watching over Israel’, all calm and dignity.

The full choruses were splendid, as was Lisa Harper-Brown, in her roles as widow and soprano soloist.  Jamie Young, the tenor, was a little uneven.  In his first solo, ‘If with all your hearts’ he was fine, apart from a couple of strained higher notes.

Action there was, but it seldom distracted from the music, and in fact added drama and interest.  The inherent drama in the music and words was demonstrated, in a naturalistic way.

Elijah’s solo ‘It is enough!’ featured a solo cello that both precedes the sung aria and continues through it.  This was exquisitely played by Brenton Veitch.  Another delightful instrumental solo was for oboe, in Elijah’s aria ‘For the mountains shall depart’.

Archie Taylor performed his role as the boy more than satisfactorily.  He had to act as well as sing; his voice was clear and true.

The famous solo ‘O rest in the Lord’ was beautifully sung by Christie-Beekman, without being made too sentimental.  The orchestral accompaniment was a marvel of delicacy and subtlety.  I was horrified to see in the printed programme (but not in Roger Wilson’s note) ‘Oh rest in the Lord’ – using the feeble exclamation instead of the ‘O’ of invocation.

The chorus, appropriately, have the last word, singing ‘And then shall your light break forth’.  Who said Mendelssohn was not a genius?  In my book he was, and this triumph of a performance was another proof; the opera he never wrote.

The production involved movement for the choir as well as for the semi-chorus and soloists; all this was a lot of work for a one-off performance.

 

School of Music Orchestra wins audience delight with demanding programme

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Te Kōki New Zealand School of Music

Smetana: Vltava (‘The Moldau’, from Má Vlast)
Ginastera: Harp Concerto, Op.25
Lilburn: Diversions for String Orchestra
Shostakovich: The Golden Age Suite Op.22 (Introduction, adagio, polka, danse)
NZSM Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young, with Jennifer Newth (harp)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday, 19 May 2015, 7.30pm

Once again, the audience was treated to a very demanding programme brought off with skill and panache by the NZSM orchestra, with the help of quite a number of guest players.

It coupled the familiar with the unfamiliar.  The opening piece from Smetana’s Má Vlast was familiar, but seldom programmed recently, within my hearing.  It provided a good work-out for a student orchestra.  There was plenty of scope for the flutes at the opening, and soon for the other woodwinds.
A quieter second section featured strings, flute and harp, with subtle brass support, in a delicious representation of the flows of the great river Vltava.  The grand theme returns in the last section, in more excitable mode, with full brass and percussion.  This was a very creditable performance.

Ginastera’s harp concerto was completely new to me, and it was interesting to read the programme notes describing the history of its first performance.

Amazingly, Jennifer Newth, who has recently graduated with first class honours in music, played the complex solo part without the score.  The harp must surely be the most difficult instrument to be found in a symphony orchestra, yet this accomplished musician played with apparent ease the most demanding passages, using a range of techniques, described in her programme note as ‘pedal slides’  (which I observed – the sound continued to change even though no fingers were on the strings) ‘harmonics, whistling sounds, ‘falling hail’ glissandi and gushing chords.

Along with her virtuoso playing rising to the composer’s demands, there were considerable challenges, for the large percussion section, which were fully met, including plenty for xylophone to do.

In the first movement, a dreamy slow melody was particularly attractive, while in the second movement a modal melody performed on various instruments was notable.

The third movement’s extended harp solo demonstrated the huge range of the harp’s capabilities, and those of the performer, as described above; its final section began with an enormous glissando, something the harp can do so magnificently.  The percussion was in its element with complicated technical work; the xylophone was a good counterpart, with its wooden quality, to the ethereal nature of the harp sound.  There was little brass in this work – just two trumpets in the last movement only, but a celeste, along with frequent suspended cymbal vibrations, contributed to the exotic atmosphere.

This was a bravura performance, and the audience’s response was appropriately prolonged and enthusiastic.

Ginastera was a hard act to follow, but the early Lilburn work proved to be a pleasant interlude between the more intense and exciting works for full orchestra.  The writing for strings was delightful.  After a lively sparky opening, the second movement was contemplative, with nevertheless, as in the first, lots of pizzicato.  The third section was faster, with repeated quavers, while in the fourth some discords that became typical of Lilburn’s writing appeared, but there was little of his later very prevalent dotted
rhythmic figures.

The final movement featured leaping figures at various levels of pitch – then a sudden ending.  The Diversions proved to be a most enjoyable work, and was played with verve and splendidly rich tone.

The Shostakovich work provided both humorous content and sufficient technical requirements to live up to the effect created by the Ginastera work.  The programme note described the scenario of the ballet for which the music was written: a worthy tale of the superiority of the Communist ethos over that of Western nations, as worked out through the visit of a Soviet football team to a Western city.

Shostakovich’s satirical writing could be interpreted as ‘getting at’ the capitalist West – or deriding the very scenario and the ideology behind it.  It gave rise, in these four movements, to some hilarious musical expression.  Not that it was easy; it is hard to imagine a student orchestra even20 years ago tackling such demanding music as this.  It employed full orchestra (but no harp).  I find brass plus piccolo and percussion playing at forte or beyond far too loud in this venue: a very resonant acoustic in a no particularly large church.  Perhaps there is no alternative.  The orchestra has played in Sacred Heart Cathedral, which is only slightly larger and with an equally lively sound.

Please, Wellington City Council, get on with strengthening the Wellington Town Hall, or respond to former Councillor Rex Nicholls, who through his letter in Dominion Post, called for the hall to reopen.

After a rousing introduction, the highlight of the work, viz. the second movement was an extended slow piece that was most affecting, and contained much of interest, not least the appearance of bass clarinet and particularly the solos on soprano saxophone by Genevieve Davidson, and also solo violin from the orchestra’s leader, Laura Barton.  Later, there was gorgeous playing from solo clarinet and solo flute.

The third movement reverted to the jocular mood apparent in the first; the polka was good fun, with a wonderful tune for the xylophone and a sardonic popular song from the trombones.  The Danse finale revealed great precision of rhythm at considerable speed.  But it was so loud that the audience’s applause sounded quiet by contrast.

Nevertheless, all concerned should be thoroughly pleased with their efforts, as the audience was.

 

 

Auckland Ensemble in delightful programme at Waikanae, but need time to mature in ensemble and articulation

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Auckland Ensemble (Caroline Almonte, piano; Leo Phillips, violin; Serenity Thurlow, viola; Edith Salzmann, cello)
(Waikanae Music Society) 

Mozart: Piano quartet no.1 in G minor K.178 (allegro, andante, rondo allegro)
Brahms: Piano quartet no.3 in C minor, Op 60 (allegro non troppo, scherzo: allegro, andante, allegro comodo)
Schumann: Piano quartet in E flat major, Op.47 (sostenuto assai – allegro ma non troppo, scherzo: molto vivace – trio I – trio II, andante cantabile, vivace)

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 17 May 2015, 2.30pm

An interesting and attractive programme did not, nevertheless, attract as large an audience as has attended many of the Society’s concerts.  Was it the welcome fine, sunny weather after so much rain recently that proved more enticing than sitting in a hall?

Edith Salzmann, formerly cello teacher at Canterbury University, is now teaching the instrument at the University of Auckland, where violist Serenity Thurlow is also teaching.  Leo Phillips (UK) is a visiting tutor at the same university, and Caroline Almonte (Australia) is giving master-classes there.

The Mozart work is quite a well-known one, but despite the first movement being played slower than I have heard it before, it seemed to find the Ensemble less than cohesive as a group, especially in the tone department, in the first movement. The viola tone disappointed, and for my taste, there was excessive slurring of the melody line on the violin; I would expect a crisper articulation for Mozart, and fewer intonation wobbles.  Pianist Caroline Almonte’s playing was delightful, and beautifully articulated. The andante featured some fine playing, and the lively allegro movement demonstrated more uniformity of tone, therefore blend.  However, it also revealed some of the same faults of articulation and intonation as the first movement, and in the latter part of the movement all three stringed instruments were slightly under the note at times.

The Brahms work I was not particularly familiar with.  A fiery opening led to a more tranquil section, soon disturbed by more vehemence, to be followed by more tranquility.  In this work the viola tone was stronger and warmer.  Certainly, this is a Romantic work, while the Mozart is Classical, implying a different approach.  The cello pitch disappointed periodically. The scherzo of the second movement was full of verve and dynamic changes, to the point of sometimes being abrasive.  The beautiful andante with its wonderful opening cello solo with soft piano accompaniment sang like a mellifluous song.  It puzzles me why Brahms never wrote a cello concerto.  He is reputed to have said, on hearing Dvořàk’s cello concerto ‘If I’d known a cello concerto could be like this, I would have written one’, or words to that effect.  Yet both this and the wonderful cello solo in his second piano concerto seem to cry out for being part of a concerto. 

Later, the piano takes up the theme; this was played in a delightfully delicate manner, then was joined by the cello with a lovely depth of tone and expression, to be followed by the other strings.  The movement seems to express nostalgia and deep feeling. The allegro finale introduces a violin solo with piano accompaniment.  Again there were intonation glitches – not major, to be sure.  The other strings join in boisterously, before a chorale-like passage, the melody and harmony gently spelt out over a rippling piano accompaniment, before the excitement returns.  Reiteration of the cello theme from the previous movement, including on the piano, and variations thereon gave interest and variety to this movement.

Schumann’s marvellous piano quartet has special significance for me, so I was greatly looking forward to a live performance of it.  After a spooky, sotto voce chord, we are immediately into the four-chord theme that dominates the movement, in both solemn and jocund moods.  (Did Sibelius consciously or unconsciously base the opening of his famous soulful hymn-like theme in Finlandia on this tune?)  The pianissimo on the piano was both chilling and thrilling. 

The Schumann work found the ensemble much better blended.  The scherzo and its two trios were joyous, and skilfully played.  As the programme note put it, “nimble with a sense of urgency.” The andante features a sublime melody on viola and violin, later tellingly repeated on the cello.  For this movement, the cello had to re-tune her bottom string from C to B-flat, and then tune it back to C for the vivace finale, which was a brisk and busy movement.

This was a wonderful programme, but I was disappointed in its execution.  It seems that this group of players have not had enough time together to ‘jell’; their situation is very different from established quartets such as the New Zealand String Quartet, where blended tone is marked.  My remarks about intonation perhaps need to be seen in light of the temperature.  Unusually for this hall, I found myself cold after the first work, and had to add a garment earlier discarded.  The heaters were put on in the interval, and this improved matters; they were not left on for the last work, but this was not necessary.  It may have been that the players’ fingers were cold, and that this affected intonation and articulation.

When the members of the ensemble took their bows, Caroline Almonte gestured to the piano, revealing her delight in playing on the Society’s Fazioli grand piano.

 

Storms, remonstrations and resolutions from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
INTO THE STORM
Music by Britten and Sibelius

BRITTEN – Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes” Op.33a
– Violin Concerto Op.15
SIBELIUS – Symphony No.2 in D  Op.43

(at the concert’s beginning, the orchestra played a short piece written by Jack Body, the New Zealand composer who died the previous Sunday, in Wellington – this was the fifth movement Non posso altra figura immaginarmi  of Body’s Meditations on Michelangelo for violin and strings.

Anthony Marwood (violin)
Thomas Søndergård (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 16th May 2015

Everything seemed to fall into place throughout this concert, one of the most finely-planned and beautifully-realised evenings of orchestral music-making I’ve ever heard from the NZSO.

Central to its success was the degree of rapport I felt coursing between the players and conductor throughout. Thomas Søndergård, making his debut with the orchestra, secured playing at once clearly focused, finely proportioned and satisfyingly expressive in each of the works presented.

To begin, the orchestra paid a tribute to composer Jack Body, who had recently died. The piece chosen was hardly elegiac, but had instead an appropriate vigour and energy, just as Body himself would most likely want to be remembered. This was an exerpt from a work for strings and violin Meditations on Michelangelo, the fifth movement Non posso altra figura immaginarmi (I cannot imagine another figure) – marvellously scored music, with overlapping figurations, dynamics and timbres giving the listener plenty of antiphonal and textural excitement.

A more sombre note was struck immediately by the opening measures of Benjamin Britten’s first “Sea Interlude” from the opera Peter Grimes, a sequence depicting Dawn, but with the ocean as the chief protagonist, with beautifully-projected surface detailings, underpinned by ominous swellings of oceanic power. Sunday Morning introduced a human element to the scenario, with church bells rhythmically counterpointing various people’s to-and-fro movements in between irruptions of of clamorous activity – a particularly sonorous church bell here sounded a somewhat menacing note towards the piece’s end.

I thought the conductor’s tempo at the beginning of the third Interlude Moonlight a shade brisk at the outset, taking a while to capture a nocturnal version of the opening Dawn seascape, but succeeding in delivering a sense of that oceanic power again waiting to swell up in anger and crush anything caught in its mesh of unbridled fury. This of course came with the final Interlude, the Storm, here a savage unleashing of the forces suggested in places by the previous sequences, Søndergård properly challenging the players at a frenetic, no-holds-barred tempo. From the trumpet’s shrill clamour to the tuba’s tummy-wobbling pedal point blasts, the brass timbres “spoke” with terrific presence and excitement, assisted readily by the timpani – those contrasting moments of exhausted stillness just before the final onslaught made all the greater an impression in the midst of such elemental ferocity.

What a richly-wrought work the same composer’s Violin Concerto is! – the first movement was presented here as a bitter-sweet journey into realms of great beauty and nostalgia, everything held together by the opening motif played on the timpani. I immediately thought of Walton’s music with the entry of the strings, the writing having a similar bitter-sweet quality, as with the soloist’s first “endless melody” cantilena. Though Anthony Marwood’s tone wasn’t as richly-upholstered as I was perhaps expecting, his focus and purity of line was something to savor throughout. I loved the Ravel-like fanfares played first by the violin and then, following an exhilarating downward plunge by the strings, taken up by the brass, as if a character from the composer’s ballet “The Prince of the Pagodas” was about to arrive.

How beautifully Marwood played the languorous solo that followed, gorgeously accompanied by the orchestral ambiences, leading to a deeply-throated ritualistic march, the strings soaring and the soloist playing the opening timpani motif – so atmospheric, so delicate and tremulous as the music stole to the movement’s end. And what an exhilarating change we were plunged into with the scherzo, the soloist’s Prokofiev-like ascending solo line danced over scampering rhythms, towards a “trio” section, orchestral hammer-blows leading to a more circumspect “trio” section featuring discourses between the solo violin and the winds, followed by a breath-catching cadenza, here quite superbly voiced by the soloist, and  evocatively leading into the final movement’s Passacaglia.

We were quite literally spell-bound as the theme began deeply and softly on the trombones beneath the solo violin’s rhapsodizing, then spread like the rays of a rising sun throughout the rest of the orchestra, the structures shaped like ranges of mountains. The music was, by turns stern and dark (brass and timpani), then warm and yielding (strings and oboe), a sense of ritual becoming more and more apparent, energized in places by things like rapid solo violin triplets (excitingly done!) and rapid variants of upward scales, the different sections exhilaratingly counterpointing their rising and falling lines. Having been impressed by the music’s grandeur and solemnity, we were then taken to more valedictory realms by the concluding Andante lento sequence, the solo violin rhapsodizing both sorrowfully and stoically over muted brass and wind chords whose resonances seemed to stretch forwards into the unknown – I thought the performers “held” this elegiac quality with utmost concentration and skill right into and through those heartfelt silences.

Having thus been emotionally wrung-out by the Britten, we were able to replenish our oxygen supplies at the interval in time to square up to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s epic Second Symphony. In conductor Thomas Søndergård’s hands the music balanced this long-breathed character with plenty of rhythmic verve and a good deal of sensitive lyricism. The first movement, notable for a kind of “hide-and-seek” game which the composer plays with his own rhythmic and lyrical fragments, was here beautifully realized, the different figurations adroitly juxtaposed, contrasted and then mellifluously brought together, making for a pastoral scenario depicting both sparkling detail and more rugged, far-flung spaces. I thought the players’ detailings of these scenarios were everywhere exemplary.

The sterner, altogether more tragic ambiences of the second movement were allowed plenty of space to unfold – the dramatic pauses that abounded in this music helped build the tension and uncertainty regarding the narrative’s direction. Sibelius was apparently inspired by the legendary Don Juan when writing this music, though the dark, foreboding moods created by some of the episodes evoked a rugged landscape as readily as a swashbuckling hero’s premonition of death. The ambiences swung from brooding uncertainty and looming tragedy to calmer, more settled ambiences and then back again. All of this was splendidly realized by Søndergård and his players, the dynamic contrasts, antiphonal figures and and rhythmic variants delivered with flair and sensitivity – in fact a single brief brass “fluff” was the only mishap I noticed throughout the music’s volatile and complex journeyings.

I enjoyed the “bristling and spilling over” aspect of the scherzo, Søndergård encouraging his strings to throw themselves and their instruments at the music and take risks by way of conveying near-uncontrollable excitement – and what a contrast was provided by the trio, with gorgeous, lyrical sounds coming from the winds and reinforced by the strings, before the sudden reprise of the scherzo’s opening shattered the repose, with the brass  this time taking the lead. Søndergård excitably pushed along the “transition music” leading towards the finale, then drove both string and brass ostinati figures stirringly towards the first of the movement’s two “big tunes”, here delivered muscularly and full-throatedly on the strings. The counter-melody, at first “teased out” of string murmurings on the winds was here rolled along splendidly, giving way firstly to some hymn-like utterances and then a fugato-ish figure begun by the ‘cellos, and building up with growing energy and force through the entire orchestra until bursting forth on the strings (wonderful horn accompaniments!) as a reprise of the first big tune! I loved it – such a splendid and pivotal moment!

But, of course, it wasn’t the work’s conclusion – and Søndergård became like a man possessed, driving his forces with even more of a will, firstly through the counter-melody’s almost Bolero-like repetitions to its revelatory minor/major key change, and then into the coda and the return of the first “big tune”, the entire orchestra here playing its collective heart out, and giving its all with its conductor and for the composer – if not the most grandly epic performance I’ve heard, it was certainly one of the most exciting ones! What really endured in my memory was the playing’s focus, its unerring direction, and the “sheen” on the sound of every instrumental section throughout the whole concert – performances that one imagines would have had the composers’ shades nodding with contented approval.

 

 

Cenerentola brilliant in every aspect – principals’ singing and acting, orchestra and chorus, production, sets and costumes from New Zealand Opera

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Opera

Rossini: La Cenerentola, or La Bontä Trionfa (in Italian with English surtitles)

Directed by Lindy Hume, with Musical Director Wyn Davies, Orchestra Wellington, Freemasons NZ Opera Chorus (Wellington), soloists Sarah Castle, John Tessier, Marcin Bronikowski, Ashraf Sewailam, Andrew Collis, Amelia Berry, Rachelle Pike

St. James Theatre

Saturday 9 May 2015, 7.30pm

While writers may disagree concerning whether La Cenerentola (Cinderella) is a comic opera, there is no doubt that New Zealand Opera played it as such, with much humorous activity.  Perhaps some of the symbolism and solemnity of this moral fairy tale was lost in the process, but the rich variety of visual and aural delights made for a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.  The version of the story used by Rossini’s librettist Jacopo Ferretti was certainly not as grim as that by the brothers Grimm.  It was not until comparatively recently that this opera was seen as a masterpiece comparable to the composer’s The Barber of Seville and The Italian Girl in Algiers.

Gioacchino Rossini was indeed a precocious talent, as the title of the essay in the programme by Peter Bassett declares, having written numbers of operas while still in his teens.  But not quite as precocious as the dates 1817-1868 shown above his portrait opposite the essay would indicate.  1817 was the date of the composition of Cenerentola.  Not Rossini’s date of birth, which was 1792.  The opera comes at the midpoint of Rossini’s opera-writing career: it was his nineteenth opera, and there were 19 to follow over the next decade, after which he wrote no more operas.

The Director’s decision to set the story in Dickensian London led to marvellously detailed and evocative sets from designer Dan Potra.  The opening set, seen by the audience as background to various high-jinks during the overture, was a huge library, obviously in a great house.  It returned at appropriate points through the story, doubling at one point as the wine cellar in the prince’s palace – when, as if magically, several book shelves transformed into wine-racks, liberally stocked with bottles, including (according to the ‘revised’ libretto shown in surtitles) Cloudy Bay!  Above the highest shelves were portraits of past British monarchs; thus the audience was immediately informed of the locale.

Among the entertainments during the overture was the showing on a screen in a gilt frame of a series of portraits (photographs from the nineteenth century or early twentieth) of prospective brides for the prince, who is under pressure to get married.

The overture is one of the best-known parts of the opera, and its liveliness was rendered with proficiency by the orchestra, under the opera’s musical director, Wyn Davies.  (Too often, including on radio, is it implied that he is there just to conduct the orchestra.  Not at all; he directs all the musical aspects of the production, including all the singers.)

Rossini’s usual good humour and ability to entertain an audience were immediately in evidence.  This joint production with Opera Queensland had much going for it, including not least a cast of principal singers who were uniformly of the highest standards, not excluding the two young New Zealanders as the step-sisters.

The scene transformed, through London fog, to a street view of Don Magnifco’s well-stocked emporium, where the opening duet from the step-sisters, Clorinda (Amelia Berry) and Tisbe (Rachelle Pike) takes place.  At the beginning, they sounded occasionally unsure, but this was soon overcome, and was about the only vocal problem (and a minor one) in the entire performance.

As Angelina (Cinderella), Sarah Castle was immediately impressive, in her first aria: a song in a simple folk-like idiom, about a king who decides to marry an innocent, beautiful but poor young woman for her goodness, rather than marrying for rank, title or money.  The subtitle of the opera means ‘Goodness Triumphant’.

Castle had the coloratura style required for Rossini’s florid writing to a ‘t’, and she and prince Don Ramiro (John Tessier) really lived the parts, as did the excellent Dandini (Marcin Bronikowski).  This character in particular, resplendent in a red suit while he was posing as the prince, and the sisters also, were required in this production to overact, or shall we say act up for laughs; this they did fully.  If at times this gave a vulgar tinge to the production, it obviously lived out Lindy Hume’s conception of these characters.

The many ensembles were excellent, disguising their considerable vocal difficulty.

The male chorus, through numbers of changes of costumes and roles, was energetic and well-voiced.  Some of its members were dressed as women, though obviously being men, most sporting beards.  This added variety not only to their appearance, but to the acting required.  Their set pieces were splendid, not to mention the typical Rossini patter songs, which require such vocal, verbal and labial agility.

Andrew Collis sang and acted his part of Don Magnifico… well, magnificently.  His movement, facial expressions and general deportment spoke of an older man, and one with ideas of improving his station in life.  No wicked step-mother in this story, but a cruel and vain step-father.

Ashraf Sewailam as Alindoro was outstanding, both vocally and in characterisation.  He had the right degree of magnanimous dignity, and his singing was a delight to hear.  However, it did bother me that, as a dignified tutor, he wore his top hat too far back on his head – a symbol of a scoundrel, which he certainly was not.  The hat should be worn squarely on the head (likewise the ‘lemon-squeezer’ military hat).  But so often in dramatic productions (and at other times) one sees them perched towards the back of the head.  (It was noteworthy that on Anzac Day Sir Jerry Mateparae wore his correctly.)

Costumes and props were numerous, colourful and appropriate, given the chosen setting.  Although this version of the story involved bracelets rather than the glass slippers (or should it have been fur?) that we are accustomed to, at a suitable moment when Angelina was being robed for her wedding, Don Ramiro placed new slippers on her feet – a nice touch.

The show was beautifully lit, and there was opportunity for some extraordinary effects, including during a storm with lightning, the chorus the while waving its umbrellas, bedewed with visible raindrops.

This was certainly a production requiring much acting, and also dancing, a particularly amusing sequence being when the chorus danced at the prince’s palace, with suitable seriousness.  The choreographer for this and other dance episodes was Taiaroa Royal.  At this point I thought I felt a slight earthquake – and then the word, and the actions of people suffering from one came up in the opera (to excess, of course!).  On consulting GeoNet later I found that there was a 3.4 quake west of New Plymouth at about the right time.  Did I feel it, or was it precognition?

Two other scenarios were used: the spacious grounds of the prince’s palace, bedecked Capability Brown-style with ornamental trees, which proved useful both because they could be moved, and because characters could hide behind them.  The perspective effect in this scene was beautifully achieved.

An unacknowledged keyboard player (perhaps Wyn Davies?) accompanied the recitatives that opened the second Act; meanwhile lots of stage business involved undressing and dressing Don Remiro as he sang a magnificent aria that included several wonderful high notes.  In this instance, I did find the amount of acting by members of the chorus detracted from the impact of his beautiful singing.

The delightful sextet a little later is one of the high points of the opera, as the main characters amusingly roll their r’s, particularly in the word ‘gruppo’ (knot) which they utter numerous times to describe the tangled web of relationships and characters, particularly the transformation of the ‘valet’ into the prince, and vice versa, and the transformation of Angelina into the prince’s betrothed.

The final scene of the opera took place in front of and on the balcony of the prince’s palace.  It appeared remarkably like the central section of the façade of Buckingham Palace.  It was created by conveniently turning around Don Magnifico’s emporium.

Every effort was made to extract humour from the opera, but pathos and seriousness were not absent, particularly in Angelina’s role.  The underlying themes of the exploitation of servants and the effects of the class system were not entirely lost.  Sets and costumes alone were a feast for the eyes; the singing and orchestral playing made up a feast for the ears.  Congratulations are due all round, not least to set-builders and costume-makers.

The season continues in Wellington on Tuesday 12 May at 6pm and Thursday 14 May and Saturday 16 May at 7.30pm.  The Auckland season opens on 30 May.

 

 

NZTrio’s fascinating collaboration with three young composers in a range of their and other contemporary works

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music New Zealand in New Zealand Music Month
collaboration with SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music) and NZTrio

Conlon Nancarrow: Sonatina (piano)
Ravel: Pièce en forme de habanera (cello and piano)
Webern: Four Pieces, Op 7 (violin and piano)
Alex Taylor: burlesques mécaniques (piano trio)
Ligeti: Cello Sonata
Ravel: Sonata for violin and cello (movements 1 and 2)
Claire Cowan: ultra violet (piano trio)
Salvatore Sciarrino: Capriccio No 2 (violin)
Ligeti: Cordes à vide (piano)
Webern: Three Little Pieces, Op 11 (violin and piano)
Karlo Margetić: Lightbox (piano trio)

NZTrio (Sarah Watkins – piano, Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 9 May, 4 pm

As a contribution to New Zealand Music Month, Chamber Music New Zealand, together with SOUNZ, developed a concert programme for NZTrio that would give the job of selecting the works to three young composers. So each selected three or four pieces, including one of their own, and at the start of each bracket, one of the members of the NZTrio read a short apologia by the composer, sketching his or her philosophy of composition.

At the end of this review you will find an appendix containing the words from the three composers who have curated this concert.

Alex Taylor’s choice
Alex Taylor introduced his choice, referring to his belief that music should challenge, disturb and cause discomfort rather than simply enjoyment; certainly an objective that seems common enough among composers of the modern era. (are you too an old fogie puzzled by the use of the word ‘groove’ which Taylor used, that one has heard in a pop music context, unenlightened?) Nancarrow was famous as a composer who came to feel that it was an advantage to remove an ‘interpreter’ from process of bringing his music to listeners, composing on to piano rolls for the player piano, and it is those that I am familiar with. But I had not come across this Sonatina, an early work, said to be the last he wrote for performance on an ordinary piano, prepared later for the player piano. It exhibited the characteristic sounds of his later pure player piano compositions. His very recognisable style suggests to me a dehumanised, dissonant Scarlatti, Ives-indebted, jazz-inflected, sometimes amusing. However, none of its technical challenges bothered Sarah Watkins.

The only mainstream composer represented in the concert was Ravel – twice (pace Webern, only eight years younger, but separated spiritually from him by a half century). The decisions on the programme were of course a collaboration between the three composers, as is noted in the appendix. Ravel’s Pièce en forme de habanera, originally entitled Vocalise-étude en forme…, was here played by cello and piano (in April I heard a visiting flutist play it) where Ashley Brown took care with its lyrical characteristics as well its bravura flights. In the light of Taylor’s manifesto, was it a surprise to find this charming, perhaps ironic piece among his choices?

Webern’s two pieces together, were probably of shorter duration than most of the other single pieces. One can listen to (though not come to grips with) his entire oeuvrein a few hours, and these, for violin and piano, were typical of his highly economical, compressed utterances, violin and piano often inhabiting separate domains though in whole-hearted accord and commitment.

The contributor of the first bracket, Alex Taylor, offered his burlesques mécaniques, the longest of the four pieces, involving the whole Trio for the first time. It comprised ten pretty short pieces that the composer described in his notes as ‘ a rather extroverted collection of grotesque miniatures … dances … mechanised, electrified…’. They were identified by names that were sometimes pertinent, sometimes difficult to recognise, titles that were not all that common in ordinary musical literature, like ‘a spanner’, ‘tumbledry’, ‘anglegrinder’, ‘scaffold’, but the main title had warned us. The writing for the instruments was hectic, though there were ‘stuck’ moments, a series of spaced piano chords; the character of the three instruments became important elements in the portrayal of each piece.

Claire Cowan’s bracket
Ligeti’s Cello Sonata was Claire Cowan’s first piece, which I’d heard only once before, in Wellington: it’s a fairly accessible, tonal work, drawing fleetingly on folk music, written before his escape from Hungary in 1956 to find refuge(?) with the Darmstadt/Stockhausen school. For many, like me, music written by composers who had comparable experiences, sometimes induces the feeling that some of the constraints of Soviet hegemony were not all bad, obliging young composers to master their craft based on the old masters and on popular music, as all composers had in previous eras. In any case, this was a fine, energetic, indeed virtuosic performance by Brown and Watkins.

The second Ravel work was the first two movements of the less familiar Sonata for Violin and Cello, written in the early 1920s, coloured to some extent by the prevailing return to aspects of the classical style.  Ravel’s music is almost always welcoming, full of delights and intelligent pleasures.

Claire Cowan’s own piece, commissioned by CMNZ, ultra violet (our young composers seem to have an e e cummings proclivity; is it a sort of mock humble demeanour?), written for the full Trio, plays with the phenomenon of ultra-violet light, beyond the normal range of light frequencies visible to humans, but ‘seeable’ by various creatures including the ‘most lusciously hued crustacean in the world’, the mantis shrimp. She extends this to the realm of sound, ‘navigating a musical landscape … on a journey to create and discover colours beyond the edges of our visible spectrum’. And so, the music made use of harmonics, very high, very quiet, but comforting, with strains of beauty, hinting at the sounds of contemporary minimalists of the Baltic rather than American kind.

Karlo Margetić’s contribution
Sicily-born Salvatore Sciarrino’s Capriccio No 2 for solo violin, dedicated to Salvatore Accardo, was Karlo Margetić’s first choice. It began with harmonics, very high, very fast, very detailed, hinting at the natural world with magical bird-like sounds: a startling performance by Justine Cormack.

Margetić’s second offering was Ligeti’s Cordes à vide, the second study from his first book of piano Études dating from his post-communist period, bringing the concert full-circle, back to Nancarrow’s influence. Though for piano, the title means ‘Open strings’. Ostensibly inspired by Nancarrow’s polyrhythms and African music, those features were so integrated in the music that its impact was as a piece that pursued its own inevitable evolution in an interesting organic manner.

The second Webern of the afternoon was his Three Little Pieces for cello and piano, Op 11. Characteristically, a lot of silence between cautious, economical though evocative notes offered by the two instruments, cello muted. Though the second piece, ‘Sehrbewegt’, began at least, exhibiting a sort of normal, agitated energy for 20 seconds or so before retreating to the composer’s customary notational frugality. In spite of this admirably sympathetic performance.

My life with Webern began when I saw, 60 years ago on the back corridor notice-board of what is now called the Hunter building (housing both the entire arts and law faculties) of Victoria University College (let me be accurate), what I took to be a misspelling of Carl Maria von…’s name in a notice about a Thursday lunchtime concert in the Music Department. In the intervening decades, his constricted emotional palette and what I feel as pretentiously minute expressiveness has never much touched me.

Finally Margetić’s own music, Lightbox, a word of which I have had to ask the meaning. I liked it, from the violin and cello opening, soon joined by the piano: a busy, varied story with touches of familiar, idiomatic harmonies and evolutionary processes; they helped to keep grounded a listener who needs one foot on firm familiar ground allowing the other to shuffle confusedly through an unmapped landscape. The composer’s remarks about the ill-assorted nature of the instruments of a piano trio were illustrated in occasional surprising outbursts by the piano, separating it from the generally happy duetting of violin and cello. The result was indeed, in the composer’s own words, ‘an unexpected and strangely beautiful assemblage’.

Jack Body
Next day, Jack Body died; he was an unparalleled inspiration to composers, musicians, music lovers and the arts world in general throughout New Zealand and in many exotic places. No student composer not only in Wellington, but also throughout New Zealand can have been untouched by his manifold talents, his example, openness, humanity and generosity. Though I was never close to him, whenever we met, I felt that his very own sympathetic nature, his warmth, induced feelings in me of greater generosity and tolerance, certainly of affection towards him. I never detected the slightest antipathy that might have existed for one who had sometimes expressed misgivings about aspects of the direction and character of contemporary music.

 

Appendix:

An overview describing the concepts adopted by the three composers, from Alex, Karlo and Claire:
“While this programme may look eclectic and forbidding on paper, in practice it draws together a range of threads that connect the three New Zealand composers. We have built an overall framework rich with contemporary resonances, within which each New Zealand work has its own mini-programme and narrative arc. We have tried to pack the concert full of energy and stimulation for any audience.
“We have decided against choosing standard repertoire piano trio works, most of which have only a tangential relevance to New Zealand composition in the twenty-first century. Instead we have broken up the trio into solos and duos, building up the ensemble for each third of the programme.. This approach provides textural relief between the ensemble pieces and helps to build continuity through each section of the programme.  The shorter accompanying pieces create dialogue and draw focus towards the longer (New Zealand) works.
“All of the composers we have chosen are highly individual but linked by a strong concern with colour and texture. Within this there are two general stylistic themes: continuations of the modernist tradition (Webern, Nancarrow, Ligeti, Sciarrino, Taylor, Margetić); and concern with older forms, especially dance forms and folk music (Ravel, Nancarrow, Ligeti, Taylor, Cowan). Two pieces in particular accommodate both of these ideas – Nancarrow’s Sonatina, with its echoes of hyperkinetic Jazz idioms (Art Tatum?) and foreshadowing of Ligeti’s etudes, and Ligeti’s Cello Sonata, taking traditional folk melodies as a springboard for discursive play.”  

 

Here are the texts of the short introductions from each of the three composers read by members of the trio before they played the works each had chosen:

Alex Taylor says::
Artistic expression in today’s world is not simply about beauty and emotion. It is not an easy way to pass the time. It’s about the discursive and the disturbing, the ephemeral and the offensive. I go to a concert to be jolted out of my everyday perspective. That’s what we’ve attempted to do in creating this programme. To give you a jolt. But also to give you a platform for exploration. To find your own way through. To get you started, here are a few threads to pull on.
First, modern vs. postmodern: there’s an interesting dialogue here between the desire to create something new and the desire to repurpose something old. Composing is a dialogue with tradition, but also a dialogue that leads outside of that tradition. Engage with the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Second, groove vs. gesture: some of these pieces rely on a groove to drive them forward. Some deliberately resist grooving, treating music as a collection of finely sculpted objects rather than a continuous rolling landscape. Some take the idea of groove or gesture and altogether confound it.
Third, straight vs. camp: although there’s some profound, deep music here, it’s also an opportunity for play, superficiality, artifice and irony. Perhaps not everything is what it appears to be.
So rather than asking you to sit back and relax, I’d encourage you all to lean forward and draw your own connections through this very special programme.  

Claire Cowan says:
I chose Ravel and Ligeti to stand shoulder to shoulder with my new work to represent my continued inspiration and fascination with colour. Ravel, the masterful French colourist; and Ligeti, whose solo cello work showcases the cello’s versatility beautifully (and I suppose I am biased, being a cellist myself). It reminds me of the Bach solo cello suites in its clarity of gesture and emphasis on melodic lines. It just goes to show – composers can have fun adopting other composer’s sensibilities; challenging expectations while at the same time also being true to themselves. Ultimately I think we write what we need to write, for ourselves..my composition is both my craft, my survival and my therapy!

Karlo Margetić says::
In some ways, the works that precede my piece form an exposition of its basic building blocks. All are transparent in texture, and simultaneously manage to be elegant and completely unrelenting in their approach. I’m quite drawn to music that has this continuous, unrelenting quality, from the cycles of fifths that form the bulk of Ligeti’s Etude, to the minutely varied repetitions in Sciarrino’s Caprice that make it feel as if time has been suspended. Writing Lightbox was like getting lost inside a maze designed by M.C. Escher, complete with impossibilities, improbabilities and optical illusions. I hope you will all enjoy being lost in it too.