Illuminating the Bard – sonnets for a 450th birthday

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Sonnet Lumiere – light on Shakespeare, man of mystery

Jane Oakshott and Richard Rastall
of Trio Literati

Soprano Pepe Becker
Lutenist Don King

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul, Lady Chapel

Sunday 12th October 2014

This performance was a celebration of Shakespeare’s sonnets on the 450th anniversary of his birth. By happy chance the two actors were in New Zealand during the 50th anniversary celebrations of Wellington’s Cathedral of St. Paul, and as part of those, they had devised a programme to “perform from Shakespeare’s sonnets and other works with sidelights on his mysterious life, some original pronunciation and a few surprises”. There were 16 sonnets in all, grouped according to The Arts, The Seasons of Life and Love, Beauty, and Love.

These brackets were punctuated with extracts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, and Hamlet and interspersed with some favourite songs and lute music that lent a most appropriate Elizabethan flavour to the hour. The choice of venue was just perfect for this scale of performance, with the exquisite Gothic timber structure of  diocesan architect Frederick de Jersey Clere (1856-1952) providing a most sympathetic ambience. Coupled with Ray Henwood’s quite wonderful one-man Shakespeare programme in the Lady Chapel in August, Wellington has been extraordinarily fortunate in recent offerings from the Bard.

The sonnets and extracts from Shakespeare’s plays were given a most dramatic and engaging delivery, using just a few key props to enhance them. These two experienced actors had judged the scale and acoustics of the chapel with consummate skill, drawing the audience into an intimate yet vivid experience of each piece. Likewise the lute projected warmly and clearly into the space, with a clean crisp delivery underpinned by a truly sympathetic musicianship.

Pepe Becker’s stylistic idioms were entirely appropriate, and her love of this Elizabethan music very apparent,  but her voice could be almost too penetrating at times. No doubt most listeners would have been familiar with the words of the well known songs selected, but the diction was sometimes a struggle to discern. That said, the duo with Don King proved a most rewarding contribution to the programme.

The first musical item was a lute setting of the anonymous air Greensleeves, which was gently and beautifully played by Don King, and served to establish the whole performance very firmly in its time. The next was a duo setting by Robert Johnson (c1583-1633) of Ariel’s song Full Fathom Five from The Tempest. The duo drew us deftly into the world of a composer and lutenist  of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras, who worked with Shakespeare and provided music for some of his later plays.

There followed an anonymous setting of the Willow Song that set the scene for the gravediggers’ discussion about “Is she to be buried in Christian burial?” from Hamlet. The actors’ humble rustic accents sat wonderfully with their undisguised distaste for the  ecclesiastical privileges enjoyed by the nobility.

Three sonnets on Beauty followed, then one of the “surprises” billed in the programme. It was Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, in sonnet form, about something that has long puzzled many people – Shakespeare’s bequest of his second best bed to his wife Anne Hathaway. It is such a gem, that I must include it here in full:

Anne Hathaway

by Carol Ann Duffy from The World’s Wife (1999)

‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

The next songs were Where the bee sucks, again set by Robert Johnson, and Thomas Morley’s O mistress mine, both bracketed with six sonnets on Love. Again the lute and voice gave a faithful delivery of these lovely numbers to round off the duo contribution.

Don King’s final item was a lute setting of Will Kemp’s Jig in which he very aptly set the scene for the Envoi “If we shadows have offended” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. These rounded out a quite delightful hour of wit, sorrow, song, verse and prose, put together in a most rewarding marriage of music and drama. The Lady Chapel was virtually full, and I’d wager that all headed home with that indefinable glow that is the gift of true artistry.

 

 

 

NZ Opera’s “Don Giovanni” in Wellington enthralling

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Opera presents:
Mozart: Don Giovanni

Cast:
Don Giovanni: Mark Stone, Leporello: Warwick Fyfe, Donna Elvira: Anna Leese
Donna Anna: Lisa Harper-Brown, Don Ottavio: Jaewoo Kim, Commendatore: Jud Arthur
Masetto: Robert Tucker, Zerlina: Amelia Berry

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus, Orchestra Wellington,
Conductor: Wyn Davies,

Director: Sara Brodie

St. James Theatre

Saturday, 11 October 2014

 

Much has been written about what is probably the world’s most continuously
successful opera: Mozart’s Don Giovanni. That it continues to draw in the crowds despite the misgivings of various ‘experts’ over the years is tribute not only to the variety and virtuosity of the music, but also to the characterisation in Lorenzo da Ponte’s sometimes denigrated libretto.

This opera is notable for many things; the complexity of the vocal writing is certainly one of them. Another is the complexity of the plot. All the characters contrive to find themselves in bad situations from which they manage to escape, just in time. Except for Don Giovanni at the end; his final come-uppance was delivered in this version with a dramatic twist that was in accord with the contemporary production.

There were numbers of features in Wyn Davies’s conducting, Sara Brodie’s production and John Verryt’s sets that made this production of Mozart’s great opera stand out from others one has seen. In no particular order, features were: plenty of fast-paced action and music, the use of the revolving stage making for quick changes of the sets, the 21st century setting, the contemporary English of the surtitles (e.g. ‘creep’ to describe the Don), and the uniformly high standard of the lead characters’ singing and acting.

Setting the story amongst shabby ‘low life’ gathering places rather than in palazzos and piazzas was a surprise. The Hotel Commendatore, and the Hotel Ottavio, plus the Libertino’s ‘Nite Club’ allowed for much comic business, particularly the latter venue. The use of cellphones, tablet, and a modern Red Cross-style rescue team were ‘verismo’ features, 2000s-style.

These were hardly incongruities in terms of the setting; what was incongruous was having the cast doing contemporary formless slow jogging about to Mozart’s delicious music designed for quite different dances; this left me feeling disappointed and deprived – though it is hard to know what else could be done, given the contemporary setting. The pole-dancers in the background were no more or less incongruous.

The well-produced programme featured not one, not two, but three excellent essays, by John Drummond, Nicholas Reid and John Pattinson. Another commendable feature of this production was that apart from two very fine singers from overseas (Mark Stone from UK and Warwick Fyfe from Australia), the principals were all New Zealanders.

Those tremendous, portentous opening chords from the orchestra set the scene for a dramatic evening of opera. From the overture onwards, the orchestra played with great verve and panache, always ‘on the ball’, every instrument making a marked contribution to the whole.

The curtains opened on a dark set revealing the night club, a homeless man endeavouring to bed down in its vicinity (this on the day following World Homeless Day), and the brusque treatment he received – these all came to mean something in the ensuing drama.

The first character to reveal himself is Leporello, with Warwick Fyfe in fine voice, and with much nuance in his acting. Under Sara Brodie’s direction he was not so much of a buffoon as in some productions. His ‘Catalogue Aria’ in Act I was brilliantly performed. The catalogue was held on his cellphone, which he manipulated with sweeping gestures (a little impractical, I would have thought, to have a document with 2065 entries, on a tiny device!). Only in the final scene, his contribution could not be clearly heard.

The appearance of the Don introduced us to the splendid singing of Mark Stone. These demanding roles were well under the belts of the two gentlemen; Mark Stone was very much the persuasive seducer, his voice ready for the variety of timbres demanded by the different aspects of his character portrayed in the company of his would-be conquests, of his denouncers and of his servant. His big arias were sung with lots of swagger where appropriate, and sure vocal technique – masterful. The delightful Canzonetta with mandolin, ‘Deh vieni alla finestra’ was ingratiating and sung with great variation and subtlety in the voice.

Lisa Harper-Brown’s Donna Anna was at first rather overwhelmed by the orchestra, from where I sat. Her voice was at times rather shrill; I agree with William Dart’s comment in his New Zealand Herald review that she ‘showed some vocal straining’; words were not clear and her acting was stiff much of the time. This could be taken as characterisation of a woman whose father had just been murdered, but I wasn’t persuaded. I found her costume rather unbecoming for a tall woman. However, her final recitative and aria ‘Crudele…’ sung to Don Ottavio was very richly rendered.

Anna Leese’s Donna Elvira was wonderful – relaxed, her voice and words always clear, her acting natural and effective, she fulfilled the role superbly. Her entire portrayal was very strong and dramatic, commanding in both acting and singing, and her final aria was fabulous. As the Commendatore (a role he also played in Wellington City Opera’s 1987 production) Jud Arthur has the right bearing, and certainly the right voice: a deep, resonant bass, which he uses superbly well.

Don Ottavio (Jaewoo Kim) is criticised for being wooden, or not an adequate character, or other such phrases. However, he is written as rather a ‘wet’, and his apparently unsympathetic attitude probably stems from the fact that as a nobleman he could not believe that another nobleman would perpetrate such an act as murder. Kim has a lovely voice, and I did not find him inadequate, given the character he was portraying. He and Lisa Harper-Brown evoked the shocked, grieving couple very well. His ‘Il mio tesoro’ was a pleasure to hear.

Amelia Berry (Zerlina) had a few rather uncertain notes early on, but she soon settled down, and revealed not only splendid tone with a variety of timbre, but also her acting and characterisation were uniformly very good; she was really ‘in’ the role. Her singing blossomed, not the least when she produced a magical high C at one point. Her ‘Batti, batti’ was ingratiatingly lovely. Robert Tucker’s Massetto was a rather sturdy, stodgy character, but given to some fine acting and singing, though his voice was not always strong.

Of the many familiar arias in the opera, the singers gave great account, on the whole.I found the Don’s ‘Là ci darem la mano’ a little too slick. Maybe this was to depict his nature (and experience!), but would it persuade a young woman?

As if Mozart did not produce wonderful orchestral sounds and textures, superb solos and telling recitatives, where he excels in this opera is in the ensembles. The first quartet was just splendid, with the variety of emotions between the characters portrayed with sensitivity and skill by the singers. The trio early in Act II was another gorgeous ensemble; there were particularly lovely nuances in Anna Leese’s singing. The sextet in the middle of the Act was wonderfully well done, the drama conveyed through each part; the brilliance of Mozart’s writing here is quite breathtaking.

Summing up, it must said the production made less of the comic and more of the dark, even gothic and tragic in the story than do some productions. There was lots of loud and not a great deal of soft. However, characters were brilliantly portrayed, while the action and stage business kept things interesting. The chorus, like the orchestra, were uniformly first-class, and had plenty of stage business and acting, always carried out convincingly. All involved deserve hearty congratulations.

Among the many notable production touches were the scaffold beside the Hotel Ottavio, that enabled the Don to climb close to Donna Elvira’s window; the sight of the maid through the window as she went through Elvira’s bag, finally removing money.

The nice connection between the homeless man and the Commendatore should not be given away in a review, nor should the dramatic stunt that despatches the Don. The ending sextet was a commendable conclusion, following which the audience erupted in enthusiastic response, thoroughly deserved. We were privileged to attend such an enthralling, high quality production of Mozart’s great work.

Further performances are on 16 and 18 October at 7.30pm.

Orchestral spectaculars from the NZSO – and a 2015 sneak-preview

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

JANÁČEK – Sinfonietta
BRETT DEAN – Trumpet Concerto
MUSORGSKY (orch. Ravel) – Pictures at an Exhibition

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Dima Slobodeniouk (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Wellington

Friday 10th October, 2014

I thought it happy and appropriate that the second half of the NZSO “Bold Worlds” Wellington concert on Friday of last week was prefaced by several of the principal players telling us something about the 2015 orchestral season (details of which had just been released), and specifically what each of them was particularly looking forward to taking part in.

So we were able to hear concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen telling us about the various 2015 concerts involving violinists, including reappearances by Hilary Hahn, Baiba Skride and Anthony Marwood, plus a concert featuring the first appearance of Janine Jansen with the orchestra. Vesa-Matti also talked about Sibelius’s Four Legends, conducted, naturally, by Pietari Inkinen – and mentioned that he would also, at some stage, be revisiting Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending”.

Principal flute Bridget Douglas then took over, expressing her delight at having played all the Beethoven Symphonies, and at the prospect of taking part, with pianist Freddy Kempf, in performances of all five piano concertos next year. She told us about us about her scheduled performance of the Ibert Flute Concerto with the 2015 National Youth Orchestra, along with a new work by the orchestra’s composer-in-residence, Salina Fisher. She also mentioned the return of Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko, with the Mahler Fifth Symphony, as another highlight.

Then it was the turn of Principal Trombone Dave Bremner to wax enthusiastic about his favourites from the coming season, naturally enough focusing upon his eagerly-awaited partnership with the world-famous trombone virtuoso Christian Lindberg, the latter conducting Jan Sandström’s Double Trombone Concerto “Echoes of Eternity”, Bremner citing the exercise as “proof that men CAN multi-task”, then afterwards drawing our attention to the orchestra’s centenary tribute to the work of Douglas Lilburn, via his Second Symphony.

Having suitably whetted our appetites for the coming season the players returned to their places to await the arrival of guest conductor Dima Slobodeniouk. How fitting it was that, having told us about some of the orchestral highlights of the coming year, the players then pulled out all of the orchestral stops in giving us terrific performances of two favourite orchestral showpieces and a spectacular new concerto for trumpet and orchestra, the latter with one of the world’s great soloists, Håkan Hardenberger!

First on the  evening’s program was Leos Janáček’s grandly festive and excitingly virtuosic Sinfonietta, a work that’s as exciting to watch being performed as to hear, thanks to the writing for brass choir which begins and ends the music, and which is often delivered by players placed either antiphonally or (as here) in a group separated from the remainder of the orchestra. Janáček began writing music for a gymnastics festival at Brno, in his native Moravia, intending to compose a number of fanfares to mark the occasion – but his imagination gradually took charge of the original idea, and he found himself overwhelmed by a mixture of patriotic fervour (the work was dedicated to the Czechoslovak Armed Forces) and parochial feelings (apart from the opening fanfares, each section of the work celebrates a landmark in the town of Brno).

Also informing the music is the composer’s incredible native exuberance, additionally fuelled by his late-in-life infatuation with a married woman, Kamila Stosslova, almost 30 years his junior – many of his important works come from the period of his “idealized” relationship with Kamilla, who was obviously a kind of “Beatrice” to the composer’s “Dante”, an archetypal Muse.

All of this would have gone for very little had the performance by the orchestra, directed by their striking current guest conductor, Dima Slobodeniouk (a name which led me to make wild and inaccurate first-guesses as to his nationality, which was Russian!) faltered or hung fire in any way. Placed in the gallery at the rear of the main orchestra, the brass consort began the work, pinning back our ears with some fantastic playing, bringing out that hint of barbaric splendour which, alas, is sometimes smoothed over in performance. This all took place in tandem with Larry Reese’s thrilling, on-the-spot timpani contributions, the sounds ringing around the proverbial rafters most excitingly and satisfyingly.

The rest of the work brought in the main body of the orchestra, each movement vividly characterized by instrumentation which, in Janáček’s characteristic way, often exploited the extremities of tonal and timbal characteristics of the groups – thus the treble instruments of the orchestra often shrieked and squealed most excitingly, while the lower reaches menacingly loured and rumbled. Performances which don’t bring out this sense of striving to push of the sounds in certain places simply don’t do the composer or his music justice – and thankfully, Dima Slobodeniouk seemed to understand and readily engage Janáček’s particular demons in that respect.

So, in the second movement (The Castle at Brno), the strings joyously chirruped their vigorous figurations over brasses that muttered and rumbled, in between sequences of great lyrical beauty. Similarly demonstrative was the fourth movement (appropriately titled “The Street”) with its festive trumpet-calls, invoking all kinds of responses from the rest of the orchestra, involving gruff, big-boned bass strings dancing heavy-footedly and orchestral bells ringing out almost in alarm at the summons. I liked, too, the boyish “tumble-down” orchestral phrases, winds squawking in roguish pleasure at the unseemliness of it all, energy and laughter paramount.

These two movements were such a marked contrast to the third, middle movement (evocatively called “The Queen’s Monastery”). At the beginning all was melancholy, the tuba mournfully intoning a pedal-note over which the strings and then the winds sang what seemed like a lament, broken only by extraordinary flourishes from the winds in a handful of places – when questioned about these by a worried flute-player, the composer apparently emphasized that the irruptions need to sound “like the wind”. But the most marked contrast came with the music’s middle sequence, the pent-up energies firstly hinted at by the brass, and then, after a brief restatement of the opening by the strings, suddenly unleashed, to the alarm of the strings and the orchestral bells – what larks were here! – riotous goings-on amongst the brasses, with whooping horns, bumptious heavy brass and scintillating trumpets making the most of their “moments”, despite the frightened squawks of the winds!

A gentler, more folksy beginning to the final movement from winds and strings gradually built in strength and tension towards the great moment when the brass at the rear, summonsed by a clarion call and a cymbal crash, rejoined the orchestra with the work’s opening fanfares, this time underpinned by whole-orchestral counterpoints. I confess that I did want the conductor to broaden the music slightly as it drove towards its resplendent final chords, but he chose, just as excitingly, to maintain the momentum until the very final peroration – what a noise, and what an overwhelming effect! Even the somewhat ungrateful acoustic of the MFC was activated, shaken and stirred by all of this, with the players’ efforts and their conductor’s magisterial direction receiving justly-deserved acclaim.

Straight after Janáček’s far-flung ambiences, our ears were freshly-syringed by the opening of Brett Dean’s Trumpet Concerto, an evocation, it seemed, of huge machinery being activated piece-by-piece, begun by woodblocks and metallic scintillations, and building through an enormous crescendo, a cavernous bass line underneath the more superficial figurations suggesting some kind of gigantic ship being launched. Having activated his orchestral forces, the composer introduced the trumpet, played here by Håkan Hardenberger, by repute one of the world’s best on the instrument. He was the “superhero” of the composer’s conception, his music brooking no interference, and very much “in charge” of things until his downfall, delineated by the dying flight aspect of the lines at the movement’s end.

The second movement, given the title “Soliloquy”, presented a more meditative mood, the “draining away” of energy and colour reminding me of some of Salvador Dali’s paintings of melting objects. The trumpet played long lines trying to stem the downward flow, but was itself caught in the torpor of it all – all seemed decay and disillusionment. The trumpeter’s attempts to energize his world – last-ditch attempts at rallying fanfares – seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the orchestral basses take up the chromatic downward figurations. All the soloist seemed to be able to do was salute the passing of things, and wait for some kind of redemptive force to appear.

It came with a muted trumpet call which seemed to awaken a distant response in kind from within the orchestra, one which grew in detail and resonance – rather like the opening of Respighi’s “Appian Way” sequence from “The Pines of Rome” the voices were distant and representing mere possibility at first, remaining muted and disembodied, but with impulse and ambience beginning to mushroom into something. As the interactive dialogue between trumpet and orchestra began to flourish and establish itself, a distant march-like rhythm suddenly began, beautifully “placed” by the composer from with the existing textures. This quickly took on a course of its own, set in opposition to the trumpet and orchestral discourses, the music building up to an incredible climax, most theatrically brought to an unexpected close by a stratospheric note from the trumpet and a dismissive whip-lash phrase played by the solo violin – what an ending!

We need an interval to doubly realign our ears after those two works! – In that respect the “sneak preview” of the 2015 season was doubly welcome, as it helped “close off” what had been before, in preparation for Ravel’s take on Musorgsky’s tribute to the work of one of his dearest friends. It’s a work that’s too well-known to have to comment on each section, here, but the “pictures” and their interspersed “promenades” were again notable for their sharply-etched characterizations, the conductor seeming to me to pay particular attention to the nuancing of the string lines in places, to the point where the textures exhibited all kinds of characterful fibres, enough to remind one of human speech – one of the composer’s obsessions, of course.

My only criticism of the conductor was that he seemed to elongate many of the pauses between the pictures, breaking the continuum of the voyage. Yes, the pictures are self-contained – but Musorgsky himself abruptly “butted-together” pairs of them, sometimes incongruously, as one would experience when disparate pictures in galleries are hung next to one another. The composer also “filled in” some of the pauses between the pictures by the use of “promenades” music derived from the work’s very opening, a melody that changes in mood and feeling in relation to different parts of the gallery. Elsewhere, pictures aren’t linked by anything except silence – and I found the silences in some cases stretched by the conductor so far as to take us away from the experience. A pity, because I found myself having to re-establish myself in the gallery a number of times instead of simply being taken from picture to picture, in what should have been a sequence of unbroken enchantment.

But as for the orchestral playing – well, it was of a vividness and impact that meant that one was very quickly returned and imbued with the pictorial and emotive force of whatever music was being performed – it was the best possible advertisement the orchestra could have devised for its up-and-coming programme next year. And I do hope to encounter both conductor Dima Slobodeniouk and trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger again in concert, before too long. It was wonderful to experience an evening of music-making so distinctive and engaging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soloists add distinction to NZSM Orchestra concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī NZ School of Music presents:
FROM GENEVA TO KNOXVILLE

BRAHMS – Tragic Overture
TCHAIKOVSKY – Violin Concerto in D
BARBER – Knoxville: Summer of 1915
BARTOK – Dance Suite

Xin (James) Jin (violin)
Amelia Berry (soprano)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra
Kenneth Young (conductor)
Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Thursday October 2nd, 2014

In the wake of a couple of crackingly good recent concerts given by the NZSM Orchestra and its intrepid conductor, Kenneth Young, I found myself eagerly looking forward to this particular evening’s presentation. The programme followed the orchestra’s policy of mixing the familiar (Brahms, Tchaikovsky) with the less-frequently performed (Barber, Bartok), the repertoire obviously designed to present the student musicians with a wide range of technical and stylistic challenges.

For a number of reasons, it seemed a nicely-balanced choice of items. The documented love-hate relationship between Brahms and Tchaikovsky as personalities gave the concert’s first half an extra frisson of contrasted expression. Then, the excitement and exhilaration of difference continued throughout the second half by a shift of focus twentieth-century-wards, with Barber and Bartok.

The prospect of hearing an exciting young soloist  Xin (James) Jin play a popular work like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto would have drawn many people to the concert; and while Samuel Barber’s music (apart from his ubiquitous Adagio) wouldn’t have perhaps quickened pulses in the same way, the presence of ANOTHER soloist (soprano Amelia Berry) would, I’m sure, have been enticing – a singer or instrumentalist performing with an orchestra has a theatricality which is always of interest, in addition to whatever it is they’re performing.

Well, as it turned out, the concert was fabulous in parts – and interestingly enough the “soloist-and-orchestra” sequences stole the show! The concerto got one of the most exciting performances of the solo part I’ve ever heard from Xin Jin, while soprano Amelia Berry’s rendition of Barber’s achingly nostalgic setting of childhood memories “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” touched our hearts in a completely different way.

Neither performance was perfect in all respects – in the concerto, the orchestral support for the soloist was heartwarming in the lyrical passages, but didn’t really ignite in some of the more vigorous “brandy-on-the-breath” parts of the finale. In the Barber work the unfortunately overbearing acoustic of the venue meant that Amelia Berry’s words were often hard to decipher, the very “up-front” tones of the orchestral playing working against vocal clarity, gorgeous though her singing “sounded” throughout.

As for the two other works on the programme, the playing was in places spectacularly fiery, but again, thanks in part to the acoustic, had an uncomfortable “unrelieved” quality – I found the Bartok, in particular, hard going in places for this reason, the orchestral sound too confrontational for comfort, to my ears. A pity that both of this orchestra’s recent concert venues, the Cathedral and St.Andrew’s Church, are simply too “tight” – both acoustically and physically! – to accommodate orchestral performance easily,  and full-on works like the Bartok Dance Suite exacerbated the problem.

The experience reinforced my feelings of frustration and anxiety regarding the present non-availability of the Town Hall for orchestral concerts of this kind. These musicians’ efforts deserve far better than having merely makeshift venues in which to perform, in short, places in which they can be heard to their best advantage, instead of being compromised.

So it was that I found the performances hard to accurately judge in some aspects – for example I found the central section of the Brahms “Tragic” Overture too insistent-sounding, missing that sense of quiet, stricken numbness, an almost spectral tread of growing unease which swings like a pendulum between despair and dignity, and which provides a contrast with the outer parts of the work. I did think that Ken Young pushed it along dangerously quickly as well – the results were certainly tense and knife-edged, but any “inner” reflection of tragedy wasn’t brought out, and the music for me lost some expressive breadth as a result.

The acoustic wasn’t so much of a problem in the Tchaikovsky work, as the composer’s orchestral writing is relatively lean in any case, allowing his soloist’s tones to readily come through – although Young and the orchestra certainly took pains to facilitate this quality throughout most expertly. I thought the first two movements brilliantly successful, the excitement generated by all concerned towards the end of the first movement positively scalp-prickling, and deserving the spontaneous burst of applause at the movement’s end!

We got some beautiful solo playing in the slow movement from both the violinist and the accompanying wind players – but when it came to the last movement, I thought Xin Lin’s astonishingly expressive energies and spontaneous irruptions weren’t sufficiently matched by the orchestra, though I did appreciate Ed Allen’s horn-playing in the “Russian Dance” sections. Somehow the whiplash timing of the orchestral interjections didn’t come off with enough élan, and that cumulative tutti just before the soloist’s final entry unfortunately hung fire – it’s all rhythm and timing, the players needing to throw themselves at the notes and be damned to the consequences! Still, the response of the audience to it all (and particularly to the soloist) was rapturous at the end, and deservedly so.

The Barber work, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” is something of a concert rarity, here – I know Leontyne Price’s recording, but had never before heard the work live. It’s a setting of passages from author James Agee’s novel “A Death in the Family”, depicting a small boy’s recollection of summer evenings at home with the family. Barber described his work as a “lyrical rhapsody” and dedicated the music to his own father, who was ill at the time the piece was being written. It was premiered in Boston in 1948 by the singer Eleanor Steber.

I caught some beautifully vocalized sequences from the soprano, almost all in the quieter passages – the opening descriptions of people sitting on their porches, rocking gently, the gentle depiction of the night as “one blue dew”, and the very wind-blown Elgarian orchestral passages  during which the singer describes the family spreading quilts and lying under the stars. We clearly heard the heart-rending “May God bless my people”, and, at the return of the lullaby the comforting “Sleep, soft, smiling, draws me to her”.

Throughout the rest I registered the music’s emotions but couldn’t hear what was being sung – Amelia Berry’s voice, sweet and bright as it was, simply couldn’t couldn’t free itself from the orchestral fabric whenever the dynamics increased. We needed those words! – they would have fitted onto a single program page, avoiding any kind of disruptive turn-over – or else they could have been projected onto a screen. It would have increased our enjoyment of the performance hugely, even though the general nostalgic mood of the piece was movingly caught and held by soloist, conductor and players.

Bartok it was, to finish, and it certainly made an impact! The orchestral playing in places was some of the best of the evening – just as well, because when projected outwards with any kind of force it was a pretty unrelenting sound-picture! The first piece had more of a droll aspect, dark, galumphing rhythms alternating with big, blowzy textures, reminiscent of the “drunken peasant” depictions in the same composer’s “Hungarian Sketches”. The infamous second movement, with its laser-beam brass glissandi, nearly lifted the cathedral’s roof, an onslaught relieved only temporarily by the harp in conjunction with strings and winds. I liked the “Hungarian hoe-down” aspect of the third movement, and appreciated the respite afforded our sensibilities by the “molto tranquillo” fourth movement, with its nicely-realised exotic, almost Iberian atmospheres.

But golly! – what a riot of a finale! As I’ve said, it was almost too much in places, though undeniably exciting, the rhythms, textures and colours changing without warning, the overall mood of the piece capricious and volatile. It left us a bit winded, I think, everything in the sound-picture a bit claustrophobic in effect, but still exhilarating, in between gasps! There was no doubting the commitment and skill of the players, spurred on by Ken Young’s boundless energies – perhaps it wasn’t the most elegant finish to a concert, but the sounds were those which stirred the blood most satisfyingly. In all, great stuff from the NZSM Orchestra!

Saxophone feast from the New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by admin

New Zealand School of Music Saxophone Ensembles
Artistic Director: Debbie Rawson

J. S. Bach Aria: Erbarme dich, Mein Gott for Saxophone Sextet (Arr. R. A. Moulds)
Soloists: Reuben Chin, Katherine Maciaszec
Nigel Woods Schwarzer Tanzer for Saxophone Quintet
Karen Street Tango for Saxophone Quintet
T. Albinoni Concerto in D Minor for Soprano Saxophone: Grave-Allegro-Adagio-Allegro.(Arr. D. Rawson)
Soloist:  Reuben ChinJean Rivier Grave and Presto for Saxophone Quartet (1966)

W. A. Mozart Rondo Alla Turca for Saxophone Sextet (arr. M. Mijan)

Sopranos: Reuben Chin, Debbie Rawson
Alto: Kim Hunter
Tenors: Katherine Maciaszec, Nick Walshe
Baritone: Graham Hanify

Old St.Paul’s lunchtime series, Wellington

Tuesday 30th September 2014

The Bach aria which opened this concert must be one of the most sublime vocal duos ever written, and it has been sung with breathtaking beauty by all the great oratorio artists. Hence it has to be a very demanding challenge to achieve a successful transcription for saxophones. The power of the original is such that I found it impossible to banish that version from my mind, and hear the saxophone transcription entirely on its own merits. However, it was very adequately played by both soloists and others, and Reuben Chin’s soprano sax tone was smooth and pleasant, never hinting at the sharp edge that is commonly heard in pop sax playing. But the music did seem somewhat hurried to do justice to the grace and beauty of its melodic lines. I wondered if Reuben had listened to some of the great vocal renditions, shaped as they are by periods of piano relief, with each phrase delineated by those momentary breaths, both physical and musical, that allow each phrase to be absorbed and confirmed by mind and spirit.

The Nigel Woods number, translating as “Black Dancer”, recalled the idioms of Kurt Weil and the Berlin nightclub scene of the 1970’s. The schmaltzy tunes were passed between the various instruments, with Graham Hanify’s baritone sax melodies being particularly throaty and seductive. The group obviously relished the music, and it offered a completely different perspective from the previous work on the possibilities for sax ensemble writing.

Karen Street’s Tango also sat very comfortably for the quintet, displaying the benefit of her own wide professional experience as a sax player. The score captured very successfully the laid back, louche mood of the tango, but she cleverly interrupted this with a brief central, highly animated section before lapsing back into slow seduction. Again the players drew the listeners into their obvious enjoyment of the music.

The Albinoni Concerto was a transcription Debbie Rawson did in 1979 after she heard overseas a riveting trumpet solo performance. Her saxophone version proved remarkably effective, with Reubin Chin giving a very polished delivery, marked by sensitive slow movements. The solo part sometimes needed more “space” to be heard through the supporting ensemble in the first allegro, but the balance in the final allegro was good.

Jean Rivier is a noted French composer whose contributions to the classical saxophone repertoire are much prized by players. The harmonic idioms in this work are very interesting, and the opening Grave was given due elegance and style by the players. The Presto makes considerable technical demands, with some very tricky rhythms, challenging unison sections and high speed passagework, all of which were pulled off with exemplary skill.

The transcription of Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca took off at an almost hectic gallop, possibly fuelled by exam nerves which tend to ramp up the tempo! (This concert was being assessed as part of university course requirements). Much to the players credit, there was barely a concession to snatching a breath, and most of the notes made it! It was a spirited end to an excellent, entertaining concert, offering a window into a repertoire that I imagine few regions of the country have the opportunity to enjoy. Wellington listeners clearly appreciate this, as there was an excellent turnout on a day when many might have been tempted to soak up the wonderful spring sunshine  outside.

Debbie Rawson is once again to be congratulated on the way she is nurturing and expanding young talent in this tertiary course, not to mention all her numerous other endeavours in the woodwind and band worlds.

 

 

 

Old St.Paul’s lunchtime series, Wellington

Tuesday 30th September 2014

Youth and experience: organ-playing at St John’s, Willis St.

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Organ Recital at St. John’s Church

Bach: Toccata in D minor BWV 565
Couperin: Selections from one of his Masses
Franck: Chorale no.3, in A minor
Moritz Deutsch: nos. 9-12 from Twelve Preludes on Old Synagogue Melodies
Mozart: Adagio and Allegro for a Mechanical Clock, K.594 (arr. D. Halliday)
Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B minor BWV 544

Chelsea Whitfield and Dianne Halliday (organists)

St. John’s Church, Willis St., Wellington

Sunday 28 September 2014

It was interesting to be treated to a recital by two female organists, one a young student, the other long-experienced and highly expert.  However, the latter is currently a student too, working towards a doctorate (Doctor of Musical Arts) at Victoria University.

In St. John’s Church, with its fine wooden architecture, both external and internal, sits a splendid organ which needs some money spent on it to keep it in good playing order.  The series of recitals is one of the ways in which  the church is trying to meet that need.  It is a Lewis organ: Lewis and Company was an important firm of organ builders founded by Thomas Christopher Lewis (1833-1915), one of the leading English organ builders of late 19th century.

The organ, perhaps demonstrating its need of some restoration work, was a little out of tune in places on Sunday.

Chelsea Whitfield is an organ student at the New Zealand School of Music, but began learning the organ at 15.  She played first the well-known Bach Toccata in D minor.  It was probably nerves that accounted for quite a number of ‘fluffs’ in this piece – playing something so well-known compounds the difficulty, and also playing an instrument with which she would not be so familiar (she plays mainly at St. Paul’s Cathedral).  Of course, every organ is different in ways far more profound than is true of any other instrument, and it can take time to get to know a new one.  She chose a very suitable registration, nevertheless.

François Couperin’s Pièces d’orgue consistantes en deux messes (Pieces for Organ Consisting of Two Masses), were written around 1689–1690 when the composer was 21.  The pieces chosen from the first Mass, written for parish churches (many of which have splendid organs, of which I have recently had first-hand experience) gave variety of tempi, mood, and registrations.  There was a little blurring of notes on the flutes early on, i.e. they were not cleanly fingered.  But this was a rare aberration in Chelsea’s performance of the attractive music.  It was good to hear the different colours of the organ, as described in the titles of the pieces: ‘Recit de Chromhorne’, ‘Dialogue sur Le Trompette du G. C. [Grand Choir?] et sur la Montre’, the latter being the French name for Diapason.

Chelsea seemed very at home in this repertoire, and also in the Franck Chorale that followed.  This composer is not my favourite, but the Chorale was a brilliant piece well played – an exciting and highly competent performance.  The gradual build-up of volume and the selection of bright-sounding stops kept the work out of the mire into which Franck’s Chorales can fall.  There was plenty of contrast, and many tricky passages and turns were well mastered.  It was a fine rendition.

Dianne Halliday’s first pieces were something new to me, and I suspect to the rest of the audience too.  As I discovered in France, and as Dianne described, synagogues in some European countries have had organs for a long time, and music was written specifically for them.  Moritz Deutsch lived from 1818 to 1892, in Germany.  The first two of the pieces was written for the festival of Rosh Hashanah, and the next two for Yom Kippur, both festivals taking places around this time of year, as Dianne explained (in a voice projected so as to be easily heard, despite not using a microphone).

The first was rather ‘square’, with an improvisational feel to it; the second prelude brighter and without that improvisational character.  No.11 was solid, rather like a church chorale, but with some interesting chord progressions.  Nos.11 and 12 both began in the bass, on pedals.  No.12 was very bright, with contrasts.

Dianne’s arrangement of Mozart’s piece for an even more mechanical instrument than the pipe organ (in reality a minute pipe organ mechanically operated) had its delights.  The charming adagio was followed by a fast allegro with lots of trills.  The use of a 2-foot stop perhaps equated to the high tones of the tiny pipes of the original, and made for a brilliant, almost bird-like tonal quality.  The last section was quiet on flutes, and without the bright top.

Playing Bach was a great way to end the recital.  What ample interest Bach built into his organ music!  In his company both Franck and Mozart seem dull (no reflection on the arranger of the latter’s piece!)  Bach’s progressions, counterpoint and cadences promote a mood of certainty and cheerfulness – yes, even in a work written in a minor key.  The complexities of the fugue held no fears for Dianne Halliday’s capable technique.  Some of the harmonic modulations would be astonishing even if Franck had written them.

While organ recitals never attract a large audience (except the free ones that were held in Wellington Town Hall, of happy memory), there was a respectable number present to take in the diversity and interest of the programme and its performers.

Tests of character – Wellington Chamber Music recital from Ludwig Treviranus

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music 2014 presents
Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

PAUL SCHRAMM – Nine Preludes
MAURICE RAVEL – Miroirs (Reflections)
SERGE PROKOFIEV – Three Pieces from “Romeo and Juliet”
MODEST MUSORGSKY – Pictures at an Exhibition

Wellington Chamber Music Concerts 2014
St Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 28th September

Midway through pianist Ludwig Treviranus’s recent St.Andrew’s recital I was ready to tell anybody who would listen that this was shaping up to be a concert in a thousand – the Paul Schramm Preludes represented for me a major pianistic discovery, and I’d never heard parts of Ravel’s Miroirs played better by anybody, in concert or on record.

Of course, I needed at that stage to bear in mind one of the exchanges in Carl Sandburg’s anecdotal poem The People, Yes – the one where the city slicker asks the farmer, “Lived here all your life?” and the farmer replies “Not yit!” – that there was, at the half-way point, still a lot of musical  water still to pass under the pianistic bridge, and that I had better, like Carl Sandburg’s farmer, remain circumspect until all had run its course.

As it turned out, I thought the young pianist wasn’t able to recapture the “first fine careless rapture” of those first-half items after the interval – in  contrast to the elegance, finely-wrought detailing, deep evocation and well-tempered exuberance of the Schramm and Ravel items, neither the  Prokofiev “Romeo and Juliet” pieces nor Musorgsky’s epic traversal of an intense friendship, “Pictures at an Exhibition” seemed to my ears  sufficiently “owned” by Treviranus, despite some wonderful moments in each of the works.

So, I thought it was very much a “concert of two halves”, with the pianist seeming to give his all right from the start, and then, faced with the  complexities of the programme’s second half, perhaps running out of steam a little. It appeared also as though the post-interval items were  here prepared less thoroughly and meticulously than were the Schramm and Ravel works. The Musorgsky in particular lacked surety in places –  not only were there a number of finger-slips and lapses of memory but some of the sequences weren’t focused, weren’t “held” with enough through-line to fully transport us into the world of the particular impressions of time, place and the composer wanted to convey.

I was somewhat surprised that “Pictures” didn’t have the whole of the second half to itself, as it’s of reasonably “stand-alone” length and has a wide range of expression, needing nothing to act as either filler or foil. Generous though Treviranus was in giving us the scenes from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet, I thought their back-to-back positioning with “Pictures” actually detracted from our concentration and focus upon the latter. It’s a work that, I think, cries out for “stand-alone” placement in any concert, especially as it’s really a kind of ritual, with an inevitability of advancement shared by all great works of art. Part tragedy, part celebration, it’s a unique amalgam of descriptions and emotions, gathered together by the circumstance of one individual’s painful and debilitating loss of a friend.

Enough! – various pianists of my acquaintance have testified as to their own love of excess when young, armed with energy to burn, with generosity of nature, and with oceanfuls of delectable, mouth-watering repertoire to play and enjoy. As the conductor Sir John Barbirolli once said, referring to ‘cellist Jacqueline du Pre’s whole-hearted, super-charged music-making – which he loved, but which some critics found too fulsomely expressed: “When you’re young  you should have an excess of everything!” Sir John adding, “you have to have something which you can pare off and refine as you grow older….”

So – there we were at St.Andrew’s Church, in the company of the personable Ludwig Treviranus, smilingly welcoming us to the recital and telling  us his thoughts about each group of pieces he was about to play. This was all very much of a piece with his music-making, delivered as if it  were the most natural thing in the world to do. Particularly interesting to hear about was his discovery and advocacy of the Paul Schramm  Preludes, a project derived from his involvement with a collection of New Zealand piano pieces in a volume “Living Echoes – The First 150  Years of Piano Music from New Zealand”, researched and edited by Wellington teacher Gillian Bibby.

Paul Schramm, along with his wife, Diny, arrived in New Zealand in the late 1930s as refugee émigrés from Germany. Making their home in the  capital, they brought considerable musical skills to Wellington, Paul as a performer and Diny as a teacher – activities which the war years all but curtailed, treated as they were like aliens by the establishment for the duration. Paul left New Zealand for Australia after the war, where he died  in 1953;  but Diny remained in Wellington and continued to teach here for many years afterwards.

Schramm’s Nine Preludes reflected his own musical tastes, influenced as the writing was by Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, and  Scriabin. It seems the pieces were conceived as a set of nine, or perhaps even ten, though “Number One”  was missing when the original discovery of the music was made in the Alexander Turnbull archives. A later search turned up another Prelude – perhaps the missing one, perhaps another altogether – so that today we got the original number of pieces, whatever the origins of the first of the set.

Though derivative in style and content, each of the pieces, with Ludwig Treviranus’s vividly-projected and sharply-focused advocacy, sparkled with the glint of rediscovery and impinged their essences upon the memory. Analysis of each piece and its performance  would fill a book, so I’ll content myself with remarking on a couple of the pieces and their juxtapositionings. First came the the imposing and  impressively-wrought “Biblical rhetoric” of the writing in the opening Prelude “On the Death of a Great Man: FD Roosevelt 12th April 1945”,  complete with echoes of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. It was a piece whose direct appeal to the emotions contrasted immediately with the  following “Satyr’s Dance”, a mischievous, spikily-harmonised part-waltz-part-scherzo, the pianist making the most of the interplay between  massive, Prokofiev-like momentums and Ravelian delicacies.

I particularly liked the “Ritual Dance of a Javanese Warrior”, a dark-hearted waltz flecked with glinting colours, cruel in its “snapping” figurations  and remorseless harmonies, its effect made all the greater in retrospect through being followed by “Hommage a Scriabine”, with its  shimmering textures and insinuating modulations. Perhaps along with the Debussy-like “Glittering Thirds” it’s the most unashamedly imitative,  as Schramm’s titles, of course, do readily suggest. I admit I did wonder about Treviranus’s performance of the Seventh Prelude, “Distortion of a Viennese  Waltz”, though, as Schramm’s original subtitle for the piece (quoted in the programme) was “arrogantly performed by a German General Staff  Officer”. As played here, I thought the pianist largely ignored this directive – the performance was far too musically sympathetic and lilting in  manner to evoke any kind of arrogance or brutality!

From these marvellous pieces we went on to Ravel’s “Miroirs”, where more pianistic riches awaited our ears! – Treviranus brought out almost  everything one could wish for in the music – the opening of “Noctuelles” (Night Moths) all impulse and feathery excitement, the textures wrought of magic, and the subsequent evocations of night sublimely realised, the darkness suggestive rather than sinister. “Oiseaux tristes” featured a different kind of ambience, the pianist able to tellingly “place” the birds’ calls in the silences, stressing the solitariness of the listener’s experience.

But I thought the performance’s most sublime moments were in the following “Une barque sur l’ocean” (A boat on the ocean)  – Treviranus conjured from his piano some of the most beguiling keyboard sounds imaginable, the playing suggesting as readily the oceanic depths as the surface play of light and air on the waves, everything – even the glissando – gorgeously “touched in”. He brought out Ravel’s utterly seductive interplay of melody and figuration in a finely-activated liquid flow, and with almost lump-in-throat delicacy as the ship passed by, leaving only impressions on the memory.

That same delicacy of utterance and feeling for atmosphere was evident in the final piece of the set as well – “La Valée des cloches” (Valley of the Bells). Pianist Robert Casadesus was quoted in the programme notes as having been told by Ravel that “the piece was inspired by midday bells in Paris”. However,  the music has never seemed that way to my ears – nor, I think to those of Ludwig Treviranus, judging by the almost crepuscular ambience he wove with and around the sounds. These bells were more nostalgic and dreamlike than real, middle-of-the-day angelus-bells, activated by deft stroke-making on the part of the pianist, the oscillations continuing to enchant the imagination’s ear long after the actual sounds had ceased. I thought it simply lovely playing.

No, I hadn’t forgotten the jester and his morning song (Alborada del gracioso)! – we got some exciting playing from Treviranus, just missing, I thought, the last ounce of rhythmic “swagger” through a shade too quick a tempo, but still capturing plenty of thrust and volatility of the opening, and enabling a great flourish at the end of the first section. But the expressif en recit of the middle section was where I would have liked a more marked contrast with the livelier outer sequences, a freer, deeper, canto-jondo-like feeling of a singer caught and held by some deep emotion, interrupted by the physicalities which come back at the piece’s end. But I realise that I’m quibbling, here – it really was marvellous playing!

Still, after these stellar feats of re-creation, I sensed that the pianist had begun to tire, and his focus lose its edge. Prokofiev’s famous “Montagues and Capulets” sequence from the “Romeo and Juliet” ballet certainly strutted its stuff with real menace, arrogance and swagger, and the ghostly ambience of the trio section was well-caught, as the disguised Romeo and his friends sneaked into the Capulets’ Ball. But the impish fun of “The Young Juliet” needed a lighter touch throughout to REALLY scintillate, and the opening “Folk Dance” had some untidy figurations in-between the episodes of young-braves’-bravado from both of the warring families.

Following this came Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” – and there were moments from Treviranus of brilliance and rapt insight into a unique world of contrasted expression. These were flung, teased and dragged across the surface of a creative canvas with great panache – the opening picture, Gnomus, for one, gave off a gorgeously volatile and unashamedly malicious aspect, one whose acerbities set “The Old Castle” into rich, darkly-lit relief. I also thought “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle” a pair of vividly characterized gentlemen, one assertive and overbearing, the other wheedling and pathetic. And, as a double-whammy kind of crowning conclusion to the work, the witch Baba Yaga’s wild rides were savagely and outlandishly celebrated, her music spectacularly disintegrating against the bulwarks of “The Great Gate at Kiev” with its pomp, splendor and introspective moments of ritualistic piety.

However, it was, I thought, for the pianist, still a work in progress – a number of uncertainties inhibited the kind of breathtaking identification with the music that had characterized Treviranus’s earlier playing of “Miroirs” and the Schramm pieces. Just to take one example – I’m certain he will, in time, delve more deeply into and relish the stillness that marks the transition from those stark, remorseless structures of “Catacombs” to the mystical revelations of “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” – the place where the composer was, for a few moments, reunited in quiet ecstasy with the spirit of his dead friend, Victor Hartmann, the artist of the “Pictures”.

Of course, Musorgsky’s tragedy was that, even while celebrating his friend’s memory he was on a downward path to an alcohol-soaked oblivion which put a premature end to his own life and creative career – sobering (sic) thoughts indeed, and especially with which to conclude this celebration of a major pianistic talent here in Wellington.

 

SMP Ensemble – Sound Barrel a “lucky dip” for this listener!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SMP Ensemble presents:
SOUND BARREL

Music by:
CHRIS CREE BROWN, HIROYUKI YAMAMOTO,
JASON POST, GIACINTO SCELSI,
BEN GAUNT
Graphic Scores by:
TOM JENSEN, LYELL CRESSWELL,
SCILLA McQUEEN

Special guest artist:
KANA KOTERA (euphonium)

SMP Ensemble:
Karlo Margetic, Richard Robeshawe, Reuben Jellyman
Cordelia Black, Tabea Squire, Sam Vennell
Chris Wratt, Anton Killin, Jason Post

Adam Concert Room,
Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 26th September 2014

That enterprising and congenitally provocative performing group, the SMP Ensemble presented a characteristic program for our delight and fascination at the Adam Concert Room last Friday evening.

Every piece on the program brought its own specific amalgam of spontaneity and thoughtfulness to bear on both the recreative process and the audience’s receptivity – a kind of “expect the unexpected” ethos whose attendant challenges, bewilderments and satisfactions truly “spiced up” the evening’s music.

I must admit to a certain level of self-generated bravado in writing these words, gobsmacked as I was by the effect of some of the sounds that I heard, experienced and watched being made throughout the evening. Particularly thought-provoking were the items featuring graphic scores, each of which was displayed clearly and spaciously (excellent and audience-friendly visual displays were a feature of the concert), giving us some unique insights, both cerebral and instinctive, regarding that mysterious, often nebulously wrought “womb of interactivity” that exists between composer and performer – and, of course, by extrapolation, each listener.

It was very much a case for me of being faced with music for which I had relatively little previous reference in terms of being able to make judgements and draw conclusions based on what I saw and heard. I found myself going back to points of revisiting of my own “formative responses” to sounds, well before my current ostensible crop of expectations relating to conventional classical music. I was reminded, again and again, by what I heard the SMP players do, of my first encounters with things that were world-enlarging, both in terms of timbre and colour and texture, but also in terms of structure and organization and juxtapositioning.

In short, I was “undone” to a large extent by the concert, and this is a record of the ensuing impressions I received from the music while in that partly delightful, partly precarious state.

The concert began with a piece by UK composer Ben Gaunt, one whose basic idea interestingly “resonated” within me – that of “Sympathetic Strings”, ambiences created by material that resonates as a consequence of other materials being “played” – of course stringed instruments do have this very particular on-going quality, whether intentional or incidental. Gaunt carried this idea over to having sounds generated by performers whose creative imaginations “resonate” as a result of what they hear other performers do. The performance was directed by Jason Post, whose own music was to make an appearance in the concert’s second half.

The Ensemble’s formation at the beginning visually expressed a kind of Newtonian “action” and “reaction” process, with clarinet, double bass and violin to the right of the performing area, and an accordion, violin and percussion set antiphonally to the left. The music began with beautifully-floated, nocturnal-like lines from clarinet, double bass and violin, occasionally punctuated by irruptions from the left, as if worlds were colliding and rubbing along each other’s edges. Of a sudden all hell seemed to break loose, in particular from Karlo Margetic’s clarinet, which seemed to be expressing some kind of musical apoplexy, a process which led to the player actually collapsing and having to be revived by a violinist – was this a mere theatrical touch, or an organic consequence of the “sympathetic” pressures brought to bear on the performer by the music?

Christchurch composer Chris Cree Brown’s “Sound Barrel” gave its name to the concert, but amply characterized the music we heard, scored for euphonium and fixed media playback. We were first introduced to the guest soloist, Japanese-born Kana Kotera, obviously a virtuoso of her instrument, judging by the timbal and coloristic command she was able to exert upon the euphonium’s sounds, ranging from cavernous, tuba-like grunts and galumphings to honeyed-tone croonings. “Elephantine Dreams” could as well have been the piece’s title, as the fixed media playback gave a definite “narrative” context for the soloist to muse upon Quixotic-like adventures, alternating between the fantastical and the extremely visceral.

Poet and composer Cilla McQueen’s work “Rain” added a graphic visual element to the evening’s proceedings, the ensemble “playing” two of the composer’s semi-abstracted “graphic scores” – works of art in themselves, of course! It was a colourful assemblage of instruments indeed! – a ukulele played with a painted stick, a double-bass, bongo drums played with sticks that had soft felt heads, a violin and an accordion – and some kind of tube with a piece of chain attached. The composer/artist’s  second score had a more recognizable kind of contouring, in the shape of a fern frond about to unfold. More obviously rhythmic at the piece’s beginning than was  the first realization, this piece seemed to me more ritualistically or ceremonially conceived than the first one – perhaps a more public as opposed to a previous private acknowledgement of the psychology of weather. Instruments such as a gong advanced a feeling that the second graphic score invited a more structured and kinetic approach to the composer’s own inspiration

Wellington is currently playing host to composer Hiroyuki Yamamoto, from Japan, here on a three-month composer residency – his piece “Ginkgo biloba”, written for solo euphonium set the player a number of technical challenges and difficulties, designed to show off the particular qualities of the instrument, and the virtuosity of the player. Beginning with a kind of definitive euphonium statement of declaration, Kana Kotera seemed to “own the work” – she adroitly moved from her opening “calling card” mode to the piece’s “real” business, setting sostenuto lines against staccato impulses, the music’s momentum gradually building, the animation increasing and the ratio of introspection diminishing.

Some of the composer’s explanations I understood – microtones and multiphonics, for example – but “half-valve” defeated me! – I assumed it was some kind of “shortening” technique used to alter pitch and timbre, and would have been used by the soloist as part of the extraordinary array of speech-like intonations throughout the piece, in which mouthing and tonguing would have had a significant part to play. Her timbral and coloristic capabilities on the instrument were in fact astonishing, the potentialities she unlocked for expression fulfilling almost to excess the prescription expressed by the composer that the sounds needed the kind of inherent ambiguity which suggested and demonstrated their basic instability.

More graphics accompanied Lyell Cresswell’s “Body Music” – appropriately dedicated to Jack Body (who was present at the concert) at the time of his fiftieth birthday (how time flies!) – here were great flourishes of exuberance, the sounds fluid and dynamic, the liquidity of the textures advanced by the use of a celeste. I took from it a kind of celebration of human physicality and impulse, the music shaping form and characterizing movement in sound. The actual graphic score appropriately displayed a human shape packed tightly with notes, a depiction of a truly musical being!

Giacinto Scelsi’s 1976 work “Maknongan” brought back Kana Kotera, eager to explore with her euphonium the Italian composer’s refined, somewhat austere world of limited notes inflected with microtones. Called by one commentator “the most focused and abstract work Scelsi ever composed”, the piece was also one of  the composer’s very last works. The euphonium’s rich sound seemed to me to “humanize” the composer’s characteristic austerities (well, as with the ones I’d previously heard, anyway!), the soloist furthering the process by employing a stylish hat with a paper rose in the hat-band as a kind of “mute” for the instrument! As these things often do, the mere sight of the hat performing this function enhanced the aural effect!

The work, true to the composer’s style, revolved around a single note, the music’s explorations of associated notes (octave-plus-one leaps, various microtonal “shifts”  and numerous timbal contrasts) creating a kind of centre for the work upon which we listeners could focus. As with any sound, constant repetition alone gradually changes the ambient receptivity – this, together with the numerous variants, aural and visual, made for a kind of  micro-journeying of transformation within the piece’s surprisingly short span. The piece was written for “any bass instrument”, thereby inviting further conjecture regarding what kind of sound-world a string bass, for instance, would create – all very intriguing!

More work for Kana Kotera and her trusty euphonium, with Jason Post’s “yatsar”, a work for the instrument and electronics. The composer alerted us to the meaning of “yatsar”, a Hebrew word for fashioning or shaping, as would a potter fashion a vessel from clay, which is, of course, a well-known biblical metaphor for God’s creation of man. This idea was expressed by breath to begin with, the player blowing tonelessly through the interment, while the electronically-contrived ambience suggested pulsations of rhythmic movement amid a kind of “white noise”. The euphonium’s notes seemed to my ears to be recorded as well as played “live” – whether or not “looped” I wasn’t sure. I imagined that the interaction between “real” acoustical sounds and the electronic ambiences might have represented a kind of relationship between creator and the fashioned object.

What to make of Tom Jensen’s “What is it?” which followed, a piece for solo violin played by Tabea Squire? – perhaps the rhetoric of the title is its own best description, given the composer’s own quasi-nihilistic notes regarding (a) the initial creative urge, (b) the self-characterised “chaos” of mind from whence the impulse sprung, © the resulting graphic score, (d) the title-question which arose from the score, and (e) the doubt as to the actuality of that same question (and by extrapolation, every previous step in the process)! And was the work a suitably portentous, grandly-conceived, groaning-under-its-own-weight, aesthetically convoluted series of existential sound-structures, unerring in its progress towards self-annihilation? – after all, JS Bach’s Chaconne from his D MInor Partita, a work also for solo violin, was able to create a whole universe of structured sounds and potentialities.

Perhaps, in direct opposition to Bach’s “order in the midst of chaos” sublimities, Tom Jensen took us on a journey via Tabea Squire’s violin, into the dark heart of disorder – the “toneless tones” of the opening section was almost an “all is vanity” exposition of sounds left to cohere in the minds of the listener, with no direction from the composer as to how this “ought” to be. The sotto voce middle section brought to ear wraith-like voices, whose conflagrations of approximate pitch suggested an order and structure on the edge of day-to-day conventions, the occasional irruptions of tone like flint-sparks in the darkness. This all seemed to intensify in a concluding section whose “do I wake or sleep” disembodied ghostings had, I felt, taken me into the throes of my subconscious – an extraordinary evocation.

It needed John Adams to come to my rescue at the concert’s end, by way of a work called “American Standard” – a deconstructionist approach to popular American music forms. This was the first movement of that work, a March, called “John Philip Sousa” but with none of the celebrated March King’s wonderful tunes and swaggering rhythms – instead, the composer instructs that the musicians employ “a plodding pulse, with no melody or harmony”, in fact the inverse of what Sousa would have intended. The program note quoted Adams as saying that the piece sounded “like the retreat from battle of a badly-wounded army”. So it was a kind of subversion of original intent (like all good parodies, of course), this one being particularly disconcerting in effect, due to its dour, non-celebratory aspect, and its brief displays of angst (the occasional groan/shriek).

As TS Eliot observed, “not with a bang, but with a whimper” came the concert to its end – extraordinary stuff, and definitely not for the faint-hearted in places! I thought the playing used a kind of “unvarnished” quality to an engagingly spontaneous effect. Also effectively managed were the technical aspects of the presentation – I thought the screening of the graphic scores was a marvellous thing to do, indicative of the ensemble’s willingness to put itself out there and communicate its stuff – food for thought for all of us!

 

 

 

 

 

NZSM Classical Guitar students square up to a challenging recital

Posted on by admin

New Zealand School of Music presents:
NZSM Classical Guitar Students

Lunchtime Concert Series
Old St.Paul’s, Wellington.

 Tuesday September 23rd, 2014

This brief concert was a welcome opportunity to hear again the talents of the NZSM Classical Guitar students under the tutelage of director Dr. Jane Curry. The full ensemble consisted of fifteen players, of whom four were guest members from the School’s pre-tertiary programme. The recital comprised a wide variety of works that spanned the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan lute music, the Baroque, and the 19th and 20th centuries.

The initial work, for full ensemble, was Three Distractions by Richard Charlton (b.1955). The first two short numbers involved lots of complex, irregular and syncopated rhythms, while the third was  marked by angular atonal writing with many percussive effects. It was a challenging piece, where the complexities were well handled and the integration of the large ensemble was excellent.

Then followed two duo numbers, firstly The Flatt Pavan and Galliard by John Johnson (1550-1594) who was one of the fathers of the “Golden Age” of English lute music. The characteristic graceful Elizabethan writing was well balanced by George Wills and Jake Church, with musical phrasing and good dynamic variation. The following Jongo for Two Guitars (1989) by Brazilian composer Paulo Bellinati was a total contrast where rhythmic complexities and clever percussive effects were also very effectively realized.

The bracket was completed by a duo version of Manuel da Falla’s unmistakable Spanish Dance which was given a very competent reading, though the quietest dynamics tended to disappear in the church’s acoustic, and some slightly untidy passagework popped up occasionally between the two players.

The next bracket comprised works for guitar quartet, with players Royden Smith, Dylan Solomon, Amber Madriaga and Christopher Beernink. The first work was Toccata by Leo Brouwer (b.1939), a Cuban player-composer who often combines “traditional forms with energetic, rhythmic flare resembling Cuban folk and street music. Brower’s compositional style is unique, consisting of a multitude of different sounds, techniques and cultures.” (programme notes). The Toccata was certainly busy with all of these, yet it somehow failed to grasp me in an integrated experience  that engaged the ear and led one on a musical journey. Its technical challenges were certainly met head on by the quartet, but some essential dimension seemed to have eluded the composer’s pen.

The next work was a transcription for guitar quartet of the opening sinfonia from Bach’s Cantata BWV 29 Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir. Bach himself wrote three versions of this movement – the first for solo violin (in BVW 1006), then the cantata sinfonia scored for orchestra, and finally a transcription for solo lute (BVW 1006a). I have not heard this last, but I felt that this guitar version was simply not able to do justice to the wonderful contrapuntal writing. Its very life blood derives from the gutsy, incisive attack and timbre offered by bow, reed or trumpet, and the guitar can simply not produce this.

There may well be merit in pedagogic versions that test the technical capacities of players (which were very adequately demonstrated here), but it does not sit comfortably in a concert programme. However, this particular recital was serving as an assessed element of the university course, so the parameters are somewhat different.

Spin by Andrew York (b.1958) was next on the programme. It was a work that challenged the players with tricky rhythms shifting between 7/8, 3/4 and 4/4, and with complex busy writing, all of which they handled with technical aplomb. I felt however that the intricacies of Spin would have been given greater shape and meaning by a wider dynamic range and more thoughtful phrasing.

The final work in the programme was Folguedo by Afro-Brazilian guitarist/composer Celso Machado (b.1953). Scored for guitar orchestra, it was billed as “a gem of a piece [in] the canon of large guitar ensemble repertoire”. It proved to be just that: the first of the two movements was immediately attractive, featuring a guitar solo introduction which then blossomed into ensemble writing that was presented with pleasing balance and dynamics. The second movement involved a considerable complexity of rhythms, textures, interweaving lines and harmonies, which were all handled pretty competently. Once again I felt that the challenge of the technical demands tended to be uppermost in the performers’ minds, whereas a greater exploration of the dynamic possibilities would have considerably enriched the music.

But having said that, the work was presented with a verve and enthusiasm that was shared by all the ensembles heard in this recital, a feature which has marked all the concerts I have heard from this tertiary programme. The Old St. Paul’s venue offered a very suitable acoustic and ambience which further enhanced the privilege Wellington audiences enjoy from hearing the fruits of this excellent NZSM endeavour.

 

 

 

New Zealand String Quartet – soirée in a salon

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet presents:
SALON SERIES 2014

Programme No.1
JS BACH – “Air” from Orchestral Suite No.3 / MOZART – String Quartet in C K.157
TCHAIKOVSKY – Andante Cantabile (from String Quartet No.1)
SHOSTAKOVICH – Polka (from “The Golden Age”) /CHOPIN (arr.Balakirev) – Etude Op.25 No.7
GARETH FARR – Mambo Rambo (from String Quartet “Mondo Rondo”)
PUCCINI – Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) / SCHUBERT – String Quartet in E-flat D.87
BARBER – Adagio, for String Quartet / DVORAK – Waltz Op.54 No.2
bonus item: NATALIE HUNT- Data Entry Groove

New Zealand String Quartet
Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman (violins)
Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Prefab Hall Cafe, Jessie St., Wellington

Sunday, 21st September, 2014

I’ve reproduced above the entire programme played by the New Zealand String Quartet at its second Wellington “Salon Series” concert, to give readers who weren’t there an idea of the range and scope of the music performed – there was, literally, something for everybody, as the group’s intention was to put together a presentation that would charm the ear of the newcomer to chamber music as well as intrigue and delight the devotee with some out-of-the-ordinary arrangements for string quartet of repertoire from other genres.

I thought that, on all counts – content, style, ambience, setting and (not least of all) performance – the occasion was a great success. The venue – the Prefab Hall Cafe, in Wellington’s Jessie St. – helped give the venture the informality which the musicians wanted (Helene Pohl compared the occasion to the soirées which regularly featured at the salons of the early nineteenth-century). Things were further enlivened by the presence of significant numbers of young children accompanying parents and caregivers. The youngsters wriggled a bit during the more abstracted pieces, but their attentions were captured and delightfully ignited in places by the Quartet’s engaging delivery of a number of roisterous, ear-tickling items.

In overall terms the “bill of fare” had a pleasing lightness of touch, countered only by the seriousness of Samuel Barber’s well-known Adagio (as Douglas Beilman pointed out in his introduction to the piece, here played in its original form for string quartet!). Elsewhere, there was dignity (Bach’s G Major Air), charm (Dvorak’s Waltz Op.54 No.2) and romance (Balakirev’s arrangement of Chopin’s Etude Op.25 No.7, Tchaikovsky’s “Andante Cantabile” and Puccini’s “Crisantemi”), with some gorgeous high-jinks by way of contrast, from Shostakovich, Gareth Farr, and a late addition to the programme, a piece by up-and-coming New Zealand composer Natalie Hunt.

Two extended works completed the picture, both extremely happy choices, in each case the product of youthful exuberance and flourishing creative powers. In the first half, from 1772 came the third (K.157 in C Major) from a set of six string quartets by the seventeen year-old Mozart, called the “Milanese” Quartets through the young composer being in that city at the time, and simultaneously working on his opera Lucia Silla. After the interval we heard another complete quartet (which, to my surprise, I knew well) by the sixteen year-old Franz Schubert, dating from 1813 but published posthumously – it’s known as No.10 in E-flat, and by the Deutsch catalogue as D.87.

So, from the moment the players descended the stairway of the cafe’s mezzanine-floor, 1930s motion-picture style, we were enveloped in a veritable glow of contentment, and then, after quartet leader Helene Pohl had warmly welcomed us to the “salon”, held in thrall to the music-making. What better way to begin than with JS Bach at his most beguiling, the famous “Air” from the Third Orchestra Suite responding beautifully to the ministrations bestowed by four solo instruments? – the expressions of delight and wonderment upon the faces of some of the children sitting close to the musicians amply mirrored the enchantment of the sounds.

Being by this stage some way from childhood, the seventeen year-old “Wolfie” obviously knew what he was about – his C Major Quartet which followed featured a spirited and energetic set of first-movement exchanges, followed by an Andante whose deeply-felt beauties hinted at greater things which would follow in later works. It was here I noticed, especially in the work’s slow movement, that all the “bloom” of tone came more from the instruments themselves and not from the room – though not impossibly so, the ambience was dry-ish, and underlined by a “roomful of bodies” soaking up the sounds as gratefully and greedily as they could manage.

Once our ears got the “pitch of the hall” we could work and interact with the instruments at where they were and what it was possible for them to do. We were actually sitting so close to the musicians that such considerations mattered less that they mighty have in more “normal” concert surroundings. Thus the fun and gaiety of the Mozart quartet’s finale completely took us over, no small thanks to the playing’s infectious energies, conveying almost medicinal doses of enjoyment.

Tchaikovsky’s “Cantabile” is, like Samuel Barber’s aforementioned “Adagio”, also part of a complete string Quartet, in this case the first of the Russian composer’s three completed works in this genre. As with Barber’s work, this single “Andante Cantabile” movement has taken on a life of its own, most often in a string orchestra arrangement. Gillian Ansell, when introducing the work, told us how the great novellist Tolstoy was reputedly moved to tears by this music, disarmed by the composer’s clever alternation of a Russian folk-song with one of his own original melodies.

The same Tolstoy was to later famously rebuke the youthful Sergei Rachmaninov for writing music that was “not needed by anybody” – goodness only knows what the musically cranky author of War and Peace would have made of Shostakovich’s work! The Quartet’s inspired rendition of an arrangement for strings of the “Polka” from the ballet “The Golden Age” was a kind of show-stopper, instruments (and instrumentalists) taking up the composer’s invitation to “let their hair down”! To choose one instance – I’ve never heard a viola make the kinds of guttural utterances that at one point came from Gillian Ansell’s instrument! Younger audience members especially were agog throughout, relishing every outlandish squawk, crash, rustle and roar!

Still more surprise came with Mily Balakirev’s setting of a Chopin Etude (Op.25 No.7), Rolf Gjelsten’s ‘cello greatly relishing being given the piece’s original left-hand melody, and the other three instruments the right-handed figurations – all very Baroque-ish in spirit, if more Romantic in character. After this came a return to “original” string-quartet material, with Gareth Farr’s wonderful “Mambo Rambo”. The last movement of a String Quartet titled “Mondo Rondo”, the music has a definite exotic flavour – the composer has described the music as “like a drunk at a dinner party”, ie, continually falling over itself. Given the marked Middle-Eastern ambiences of the piece, the music certainly sounded if not drunk, at least high on hashish!

An interval allowed us some pleasant breathing-space before we were summonsed back to listen to Puccini’s lovely “Crisantemi” (Chrysanthemums). Written in 1890, the writing readily evoked the world of operatic duetting between soprano and tenor – in fact Puccini reused some of the material in his opera Manon Lescaut, written three years afterwards. More cheerful and lively was Schubert’s youthful String Quartet D.87, a work that I happened to know well, with its lovely opening echo-like phrase-endings and lyrical sequences which followed. The Scherzo featured a po-faced opening octave-plunge, and a cheeky, single, vagrant Haydnesque note, a kind of “ready now?” gesture, just before the beginning of each new paragraph, as well as a gorgeous “gondola-song” trio, filled with feeling.

I thought the “father of the string quartet” had a hand in the gorgeously played slow movement as well – here, elegance combined with song over the opening paragraphs, while repeated-note sequences tightened the piece’s tensions over the central sequences. But the finale capped off the pleasure for me –  a wonderful “cross-country chase”, with all kinds of terrain, gentle and angular, making its mark on the music’s rhythmic trajectories – in this performance the repeated-note sequences had real “point”, a physicality that readily suggested the character of that rhythmic progress, its territory and attendant delights and surprises.

Came the Barber “Adagio”, with the Quartet’s playing bringing forward as much angst as sorrow and reflectiveness – here, I felt the solo-part individual voices somehow had more tension and focus than in the more “cushioned” string orchestra version that I’ve gotten used to. Only with those searing near-stratospheric lines at the climax did I remember the sound produced by a string orchestra having anything like the intensity of a performance such as this. At a concert it was the kind of thing which required something else to come to our immediate emotional rescue (as Helene Pohl said immediately afterwards – “Well we can’t leave you feeling like that!”) – and Dvorak’s music was just the job.

This was a Waltz, listed as Op.54 No.2, a rousing, declamatory violin solo at the beginning getting the dance under way with an energetic whirl and a flourish! – what charm, what gaiety! – “an expression of joy close to tears” wrote one commentator of the Bohemian composer’s music, and this waltz was no exception, one to which the players gave their all, and roused our spirits to a state of joyous exhilaration. But that wasn’t all! – what Helene Pohl called a “bonus track” was thereupon served up to us for our “outward bound” delight, a piece by Natalie Hunt called “Data Entry Groove”, music which required the players to undertake certain stretching exercises while waiting for their turn to play, just as computer programmers would periodically do to avoid stress, fatigue and repetitive strain injury!

The piece was quirky, jazzy and entirely therapeutic, and a gift for Rolf Gjelsten, whose “star turn” on the ‘cello was acknowledged, jazz-solo style, by Helene Pohl, and by appropriate and responsive  applause. It left all of us in an excellent and energized frame of mind, perhaps putting back a lot of what the previous day’s General Election would have drained away, one way or another. Thank goodness for music in times of national crisis – but more to the point, thank goodness for the New Zealand String Quartet! – we were truly appreciative of the various skills and communicative warmth of the players, bestowing on us what seemed like a string of exquisite gifts, entirely for our pleasure.