NZSO National Youth Orchestra 2014 tackles showpieces with a will

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
NZSO NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA 2014

Conductor: Alexander Shelley
Assistant Conductor: Gemma New
NYO Composer-In-Residence 2014: Sarah Ballard

RICHARD STRAUSS – Don Juan Op.20
SARAH BALLARD – Synergos (World Premiere)
RICHARD STRAUSS – Also Sprach Zarathustra Op.30

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, Friday 18th July

ASB Theatre, Auckland, Saturday 19th July

This year the NZSO National Youth Orchestra is fifty-five years young – it’s a Gilbertian kind of paradox that the orchestra seems, with each passing season, just as youthful, energetic, enthusiastic and capable as ever!  Here on Friday evening last week were some of New Zealand’s finest young musicians brought together in the time-honoured manner for a short rehearsal period, before shaping up for their first concert in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre. With two famously brilliant late-romantic orchestral showpieces on the programme plus a newly-conmmissioned work by the orchestra’s composer-in-residence Sarah Ballard, the concert was set to be something of a blockbuster.

Things couldn’t have gotten away to a more thrilling beginning with the opening of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Don Juan, the first of the two pieces commemorating the composer’s two-hundredth birthday this year. British conductor Alexander Shelley didn’t “spare the horses”, getting from the young players oceans of vigour, colour and red-blooded commitment in realising the music’s infectious excitement and sheer bravado – impressive stuff from a twenty-four year-old composer! Romantic feeling there was a-plenty as well, with several superb solos delivered from within the opulent orchestra textures, solo violin and winds covering themselves with glory.

I wasn’t altogether surprised by the playing’s brilliant and whole-hearted qualities, having attended a number of concerts from recent years given by the orchestra, and invariably being knocked sideways on these occasions by the sheer impact of the music-making’s elan and range of expression. The 2009 performance of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, for example, remains for me an unforgettable occasion, the performance as thrilling as I’d ever previously encountered of that work, either “live” or on disc, one most fittingly marking the orchestra’s fiftieth birthday.

But this concert seemed to me to present just as challenging a prospect in a different way – from a listener’s point of view these two Strauss works appear to demand just as much brilliance and energy as does any Mahler Symphony, or orchestral work by Bartok or Debussy, but along with an additional degree of tonal weight and depth that “goes with the territory”. More so than with the other composers mentioned, Strauss’s works are, perhaps along with Scriabin’s, the most sumptuously-orchestrated of his era, requiring players to generously pour forth their tonal resources, and frequently occasioning the command “all you have!” from conductors.

I wasn’t worried by a couple of momentary ensemble spills that accompanied the thrills throughout the concert – but I was concerned that these youthful players would be able to summon up enough breadth and depth of sound to put across the sheer physical impact of this music. It wasn’t so crucial during Don Juan, whose music has for much of the time a volatile, quicksilver urgency that relies on brilliance as much as, if not more than, weight. As I’ve said, these players, guided by Alexander Shelley, threw themselves into the fray and realized all the music’s glittering energy with great elan.

Among those who acquitted themselves splendidly were clarinettist David McGregor and oboist Thomas Hutchinson – the latter in particular made a beautiful thing of his famous solo in Don Juan depicting ‘the red-headed woman, Donna Elvira”, an embodiment of the “Ideal Feminine”, making the Don’s frenetic drive towards a kind of fulfillment seem even more precipitous and his decline and death more shocking – here properly and chillingly realized!

A different kettle of fish was Also Sprach Zarathustra (“Thus spake Zarathustra”), Strauss’s response in orchestral terms to the thoughts and philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche. A more epic, and longer-breathed work, its textures every now and then pointed to the orchestra’s relative lack of both size and tonal resource. Perhaps the long string-melody soon after the very beginning of the work most obviously illustrated this shortcoming – the first few measures were beautifully negotiated by the solo strings, but the relative smallness of the sound of the full section thereafter stressed a need for more tonal weight and vibrancy.

Happily, these few moments were outweighed by the impact of the playing of the more vigorous passages in the score. The famous opening came off splendidly – despite there being no pipe organ at hand  in the MFC (whomever it may concern, please note the “veiled” reference here to the need for restoring the Wellington Town Hall to circulation as quickly as possible!) Conductor Alexander Shelley kept things moving, allowing timpanist Sam Rich his wonderful moment of glory, while not pressing too hard on trumpeter Matthew Stein and the other brass players, who helped bring off a magnificent musical sunrise. Another heartening and joyous sequence was that of the Dance Song, solo violinist Jonathan Tanner leading the dance with easeful charm (some particularly lovely individual notes from his instrument!) and infectious gaiety.

So, the Strauss works can be said to justly represent another musical landmark in the orchestra’s distinguished history. But what of the concert’s new work, the “world premiere” of Synergos, written by the orchestra’s 2014 composer-in-residence, Sarah Ballard? The short response is that I and my various cohorts at the concert thought the work a brilliant display of descriptive orchestral writing, employing instrumental timbres and colourings to stunning effect. One friend (an experienced concert-goer) went so far as to admit to me that he was prepared to patiently “sit through” the work as a way of getting back to the “real” music afterwards – but to his surprise he enjoyed Sarah Ballard’s finely-crafted collection of orchestral “noises” much more than he thought he would.

This twelve-minute work achieved a great deal in a short time, being a kind of three-part exploration of instrumental timbres and tonal hues associated with each of two colours, red and gold, and of their eventual “synergos” or coming together. I thought the opening of the work extremely kinetic, and very “edgy” as regards the instrumental extremes of timbre and tone being employed. The opening sequences were arresting – scintillations of percussion, strings playing right at the “edge” of their tone, heavy brass growling, winds in a ferment, cackling like witches – a bedlam-like orchestral canvas! Being not particularly colour-oriented in my own thinking, I found myself inclined to characterize what I heard so far as being of a vibrant, active quality – by instinct seeking and forming a “behavioural” more than an “appearance” description.

By contrast I thought the second part of the work had a more open, broader-browed manner, the string-tones seeming to resonate or widen to reveal spacious aspects, the wind notes burning like stars in the ambient firmament, the harp-notes sprinkling showers of gently-scintillated warmth. The figurations sounded at ease with themselves, ready to cohere with whatever timbres or colours might be thus activated – the effect wasn’t unlike the ambience surrounding one of those huge, slowly-revolving reflector-spheres which collect and configure as much as reflect and scintillate.

So the opening scenario drew from the composer’s set of responses to red, or, as she called it “Alizarin”, while this latter sequence explored the contrasting effects of considering gold, or “Aurum”. My younger companion at the concert was delighted at being able to recognize the contrasting features of the two “colours” (she afterwards admitted to being attuned to colour in music, and was thus receptive to what Sarah Ballard’s work was exploring). What I found fascinating was what then followed – the amalgamation of the two parts, the synergos of the piece’s title.

Individual lines, figurations, punctuations and impulses began to push their way through, up and out of the textures, the breathy, toneless brasses awakening the winds, and finding their own voices, the two different ”waves” of occupancy eyeing, shouldering and pushing one another around a bit at first, displaying the prerequisite “attitude” as part of the synergistic process, before finding their places in the new order of things. I was left with a feeling of awe at the work’s conclusion, as if I’d been of some kind of journey which defined the nature of my own temporality in the face of the timelessness evoked by the tinkling glockenspiel at the piece’s end.

Very great credit to composer and conductor and musicians for a remarkable quarter-hour’s music, one which added to the overall enjoyment and fascination of 2014’s distinctive NZSO NYO occasion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dalecarlia Quintet in a third and different programme in Greater Wellington

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Music Trust
Dalecarlia Clarinet Quintet (Anna McGregor, clarinet; Sofie Sunnerstam, violin; Manu Berkeljon, violin; Anders Norén, viola; Tomas Blanch, cello)

Anthony Ritchie:  Purakaunui at Dawn (2014)
Ross Harris: Fjärran (2012)
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op.115

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 13 July 2014, 3.00pm

Two New Zealanders resident in Sweden and three Swedes made up the unusual complement of this quintet, come together pretty recently to replace the programmed Antithesis Quintet.

Before we could assess whether this had any effect on the quality of performance, we were treated to a prologue from the Glazunov Quartet, made up of four young people from Hutt Valley schools, who were runners-up in the Wellington Regional final for the New Zealand Community Trust Schools Chamber Music Contest.  These fine young performers (two girls and two boys) played two of the eponymous composer’s ‘Five Novelettes’.

The first was slow and meditative, while the mood of the second was fast and spirited, very rhythmic, featuring pizzicato, but then reverting to the modal tonality and themes of the first piece.  The playing was cohesive, warm, and yet sad.  The players exhibited good tone and balance. There were a few aberrations of intonation and attack, but nevertheless, the performance was very fine.  I was particularly struck by the splendid viola player.  Variations of dynamics were executed confidently and well.  These young people have a bright future ahead of them if they choose to continue with music, and chamber music’s future is in good hands.

Anthony Ritchie’s work was commissioned for this tour.  It describes dawn at Purakaunui, a seaside village near Dunedin and was most effective, especially for the clarinet; the strings were sotto voce much of the time.  It was an evocative and pleasing short work, the clarinet in splendid form playing the part of a bellbird.

Ross Harris’s work, whose title means ‘something far away, elusive, to be understood only in fragments’ was a little more problematic.  The very fact that the musical fragments were not connected made the work so elusive and apparently without shape or structure that it made me think of Yeats’s words “…the centre cannot hold…”.  The composer explained before
the players began that the work used the opening bar from the Brahms quintet.  This link seemed to survive only briefly.

The opening featured lots of disconnected melodic fragments, and plenty of prominence was given to the clarinet, which was beautifully played by Anna McGregor.  The work was much more sombre than Ritchie’s, and more angular, but exploited the agility of the clarinet.  As with much music (not only contemporary), one would need to hear it more than once to fully appreciate it.  It was played with commitment, and absolute rapport between the players.  The tempo was slow in the main, but there were a few quick sections.

There were many interesting phrases and passages, but it was hard to get an idea of structure, or where the music was going.
I felt that the piece was rather too long; the lack of tonal security and structural shape palled for me.  A loud section preceded the pianissimo ending.

What immediately struck me at the opening of Brahms’s wonderful quintet was that this was a performance in which each part could be clearly heard.  The smaller venue than that to which we have been accustomed made this truly chamber music. The delicious harmonic twists had full impact in St. Andrew’s.

Although this is a familiar work, the performance was never predictable; nuances passed between the players, and the gorgeous tone of the clarinet was produced with much subtlety – indeed, this factor was true of the other instruments too.

The opening allegro was robust and spirited, and, in the words of the programme note, was ‘notable for its blending of the instrumental sounds’.  The adagio was rendered in a somewhat more solemn manner than I have sometimes heard it; i.e. slower, and with much delicacy.

The andantino was joyful and sparkling, while in the finale, drama interspersed the beautifully modulated quieter variations
Piquancy gave way to the final variation’s haunting nature, the mood built up by subtly varying dynamics.

Considering that the group have only been together as a chamber music ensemble for  a short time, the blend and unanimity were most commendable.  The audience showed high appreciation at the end of the concert.

 

 

NZ Opera’s LA TRAVIATA charms in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZ Opera presents:
Giuseppe Verdi’s LA TRAVIATA

Cast: Lorina Gore (Violetta) / Samuel Sakker (Alfredo Germont)
David Stephenson (Giorgio Germont) / Rachelle Pike (Flora)
Jarred Holt (Baron Douphol) / Andrew Grenon (Gastone)
Kieran Rayner (Marchese) / Wendy Doyle (Annina)

Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus (director – Michael Vinten)
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Emmanuel Joel-Hornak

Director: Kate Cherry
Assistant Director: Jacqueline Coats
Designer: Christine Smith
Lighting: Matt Scott
Choreography: Jesse Wikiriwhi

St.James’ Theatre, Wellington

Friday 11th July 2014

(subsequent performances 13th, 15th, 17th, 19th July)

Call it what you will – an operatic masterpiece, a tried-and-trusted favorite, or a sure-fire tear-jerker – La Traviata again exerted its considerable emotional and theatrical “pull”, this time on the hearts and minds of an appreciative audience at the St James’ Theatre on Friday evening.

This was opening night of the production’s Wellington season, the Opera Company having first taken the show to Auckland a few weeks’ previously, to a good deal of acclaim. From the moment the curtain rose during Orchestra Wellington’s playing of the properly frail and tremulously-sounded Prelude, one’s attentions were properly caught and held fast. And this was due to a production whose direct and coherent accord between sounds and imagery was brilliantly established at the outset and never seriously faltered throughout the evening.

One didn’t realize until the final act the full significance of the brief opening vignette and its setting, played out during the Prelude. Violetta, the opera’s heroine, clothed in ghostly sick-bed-like garments, rose from either sleep or death and confronted the image of herself, resplendent in gorgeous red, dressed for a party and waiting for her guests – the figures were separated by the parameters of a giant glass cube, one which served throughout both to give a theatrical kind of “shape” to the action, and to represent the boundaries confining the characters in the drama.

Here the wraith-like Violetta, next to a fallen chandelier lying at an awkward angle on the floor, was outside the cube watching herself through the glass as the beautiful courtesan she once was, the “fallen chandelier”, one supposes, representing her spent radiance, a kind of glory come to grief, and a contrast with the cube’s suggestion of a beauty in a gilded cage.

The Prelude having sounded its last few soft notes, the ghostly Violetta departed, the chandelier was slowly lifted, and the cube revolved around to its open side – the party could now begin! Throughout the evening the production demonstrated a similar sharply-etched focus on the story’s essentials which allowed the music and the text to suggest to the observer whatever elements of time and place seemed most appropriate.

For instance, I thought the cube a brilliantly-employed structure in this respect, facilitating the different “character” of each of the acts, while binding the overall story together with certain themes suggested by its physical appearance. Thanks to expertly-modulated lighting, the structure’s sparkling glitter, both in a reflective and transparent sense, at once glamourized and laid bare the shallowness of the social interactions of the First and Second Acts which defined Violetta’s world as a courtesan, while those same transparencies underlined the vulnerability of her and her lover Alfredo’s situation, their desire to start a life anew together thwarted by pressures exerted by their all-too-publicly-proclaimed union.

So, while Act One and the second scene of Act Two were all glitter and sparkle, their counterparts expressed vastly different scenarios – the opening scene of Act Two evoked a house in the country, the cube beautifully allowing a suffusion of light throughout Violetta’s and Alfredo’s living-space, via glowing backdrops of panels featuring flower patterns saturated with bright, warm orange hues. As the scene proceeded, and Violetta’s happiness was gradually turned to despair and grief the backdrop colours changed, orange fading and giving way to blue – so simple and yet so affecting!

As for Act Three, we were suddenly presented with that opening, Prelude-accompanied vignette once again, with Violetta (the real Violetta, this time, ill, and close to death) in her ghostly, sick-bed garments lying next to the fallen chandelier, this time one of several of varying sizes, the surrounding hues having no warmth, no comfort. The cube, of course conveyed the privacy of a bedroom, but also the sense of something skeletal, stripped of flesh, bare and unremitting. What radiance occasionally flickered did so coldly and mercilessly – the sense conveyed by the scene was of a place of departure (“Alone, from this world…..”).

All of this wonderful work by the “creative team” (sorry – an awful phrase) deserved to be matched by stellar musical and theatrical performances from the performers both on stage and in the orchestra pit – and by and large the singers and musicians delivered the goods. In fact, musically, I thought this Traviata very satisfyingly of a piece, with the cast, conductor and orchestra players exhibiting a kind of rapport that never lost its “charge”, and in places positively radiated across the footlights and into the auditorium. One constantly sensed a kind of fusion among singers and instrumentalists tingling along the whole spectrum of musical impulse.

This was no better exemplified than by episodes like the frisson of heartless gaiety generated by the chorus of party-goers’ farewell to Violetta in the First Act, by the superbly-realised clarinet solo accompanying Violetta’s letter-writing in Act Two, and then by Violetta’s affecting declaration to Alfredo of her love for him – soprano and orchestra at full stretch, here – at the end of that scene. Then in the following scene came Alfredo’s and Violetta’s very different but equally gut-wrenching condemnations and protestations, strongly supported by supporting voices and orchestra, and in the final scene, the chilling depth of the death-tolling basses and baleful brass when Violetta gives Alfredo her portrait as a gesture of farewell at the work’s end.

So – what about those singers, then? Again, I thought they were musically very satisfying – Lorina Gore as Violetta I fell for in almost every way, singing and acting, as she seemed to do, with every fibre of her being charged with impulsiveness and commitment. Hers were high notes which poured out emotion – not just beautiful noise – and together with her Alfredo, tenor Samuel Sakker, she brought out the music’s great tenderness as well as its raw feeling. That was what I enjoyed most about hers and Sakker’s interaction – a sensitivity when duetting, almost an innocence of interaction (more of which, shortly).

I must mention Gore’s exciting high E-flat at the end of “Semper libre”, one not sanctioned by the composer, but not inappropriate, given Violetta’s euphoria in response to Alfredo’s attentions. It’s a note that singers tend not to try, mostly wisely (in my favourite non-Callas recording of the work, conducted by Carlos Kleiber, the gorgeous Roumanian soprano Ileana Cortrubas makes a brave if squally attempt at the ascent in an otherwise beautiful performance; though I must point out that Callas herself made several all-out, heart-in-mouth launches into the vocal stratosphere at this point in her various recordings, always effective, if not note-perfect!)….in Gore’s case I thought it again not the loveliest sound but an intensely musical, intense and dramatic one, a risk well taken!

I enjoyed Samuel Sakker’s Alfredo increasingly as the evening went on – I thought his singing accurate and musical to begin with, but not especially lovely – however, he either grew on my sensibilities or his tone warmed and sweetened as the story and character developed. He certainly had sufficient vocal heft for the role, but I was especially charmed by the tenderness of much of his duetting with his Violetta – especially touching were some of those First-Act exchanges, the sweetness and slight awkwardness of the boy-meets-girl scenario nicely-caught.

Unfortunately, that was where it all seemed to stay all through the evening as regards any hint of sexual chemistry between Violetta and Alfredo – their “clinches” in the succeeding acts were, to put it mildly, too chaste by a country mile, their body language conveying to each other (and to me) little of their singing’s animal passion or any hint of mingled physical intensity. Perhaps such reserve ran in the family in Alfredo’s case, as his father, Giorgio Germont, played by David Stephenson, came across as an intense and strongly focused, upright character, but ultimately something of a dry old stick – his physical response to Gore’s heartfelt “Embrace me as if I was your daughter” was out of its time, regulation PC to a fault. To be entirely fair, the gesture was of a piece with the character’s manner, business-like and unsentimental, even if Verdi’s music for Germont père suggests layers of warm feeling left physically undisturbed by Stephenson’s accurately-sung, but dry-voiced and rather detached stage portrayal.

Without wishing productions to indulge in what seems a current penchant for excessive bodice-ripping evidenced in some recent opera DVDs I’ve seen, I do feel that Traviata is a work in which one can’t underplay a certain level of romantic passion on the stage – in this case, as the saying goes, it surely comes with the territory. Lest I be accused of making too much of this, I quote a contemporary critic of the work who wrote, “The love depicted by Verdi is voluptuous and sensual, totally lacking in that angelic purity found in Bellini’s music….” I would think that says it all, really…..a certain abandonment in the lovers’ passion, a degree of rawness in their mutual desperation as the tragedy takes hold – neither state was, for me, given sufficient expression by the characters.

However, such was the musical strength of this production, the physical coyness of certain of these stage interactions didn’t fatally spoil our delight – the chorus work, by comparison, had terrific gusto in almost everything they did, apart from one or two “wandering strays” at a couple of points – especially praiseworthy were, I thought the sequences during the second party scene where firstly the women (as gypsies) and then the men (as matadors) of the chorus had different character dances to perform while singing, both of which came off splendidly, with touches of real panache! But the more conventional opening party scene also had plenty of musical bite and energy, the groups swirling around and about most satisfyingly while singing of their life of pleasure, and making their vapid progress from party to party.

Underpinning all of the musical trajectories from the pit was Orchestra Wellington, responding to conductor Emmanuel Joel-Hornak with, by turns, sensitivity, whole-heartedness and vigour. I’ve mentioned some of the most telling instrumental touches, but must pay tribute to maestro Joel-Hornak’s pacing of the work and to his flexible and sensitive direction of his singers during the music’s many tenderly heartfelt moments – his was the kind of direction that always seemed to give the music the time it needed and the musicians sufficient space to realize the same.

A friend who’s a bit of a “Traviata-buff” came with me to the performance – “A marvellous card-game scene! – I haven’t seen or heard better!” he exclaimed, afterwards. “But those two (Violetta and Alfredo) didn’t seem to know one another terribly well!” We hadn’t actually conferred, being too busy with ice-creams and friends at half-time – but he obviously felt the same way as I did. It would be interesting to learn what other people felt – like beauty, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. But I’m sure the strength and conviction of the music-making would have, for most people by far, enabled this production to carry the day, with great credit to all concerned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gunter Herbig at Old St.Paul’s – the next best thing to a siesta……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

OLD ST.PAUL’S LUNCHTIME CONCERT SERIES presents:
Gunter Herbig (guitar)

Music for guitar from South America
Works by Reis, Piazzolla, Fleury, Barrios and Pernambuco

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon,

Tuesday, July 8th, 2014

Gunter Herbig strode into the performing-space of Old St.Paul’s radiating waves of energy and purpose, as if he was about to perform some kind of feat considerably more spectacularly death-defying than give a guitar recital of music from South America. He thanked us all for “braving the elements” in coming to the church to see and hear him play, and hoped that we would, by the end of the concert have thought it all worthwhile.

Herbig is a native of Brazil, born of German parents, who spent much of his childhood in Portugal and Germany. Having such a cosmopolitan cultural background, has, he reckoned, given his music-making an interesting and personalized mixture of influences which he treasures. He certainly gave every indication throughout  the concert of “owning” the music he played, communicating to us his regard for the sounds as having a living value.

By way of telling us both about the music on the programme and the circumstances of his getting to know it, Herbig made the works come alive both as sounds and as evocations of places and moods and ideas. His anecdotes, filled with information and spiced with droll humor, gave each work a richer context  that enhanced our understanding of the pieces. And his playing had all the character and virtuoso skill that the music required to “speak” to us.

Herbig began with two works by Dilermando Reis, perhaps the most well-known Brazilian guitarist of modern times, one who performed the compositions of JS Bach, Barrios and Tárrega, as well as his own and other works by Brazilian composers. Reis recorded many of his own works, among them the second of the pair of waltzes that Gunter Herbig played today, Se Ela Perguntar. 

First up, however, was Ternura, a lovely, quixotic work, filled with insinuation and sensuous figuration, having a kind of spontaneous, almost unpredictable course. The second work I thought rather Chopinesque, or perhaps a Latin American version of the same, alternating between physical and emotional, purpose and reflection. Both were winningly-voiced, the player always responsive to the variety between ebb and flow, movement and stasis.

Astor Piazzolla’s music, little-known outside the South American continent until the last decade of the twentieth century, has become synonymous with the distinctive voice and infinite variety of the once-infamous dance, the tango – Piazzolla’s nuevo tango was scorned at first by traditionalists, who objected to his fusion of the dance with both classical and jazz elements, but his radical style eventually won acceptance. Gunter Herbig briefly entertained us with a story of how he encountered Piazzolla’s music for the first time, before demonstrating via his playing of two of the composer’s tangos the extent to which he had been “grabbed” by this music.

First came Adios Noniño (translated, “Farewell, Father”), written in 1959 shortly after the death of the composer’s father. Percussive and timbre-driven at the work’s beginning, free and flexible in rhythm and harmony, the piece seemed to present a sensibility filled with changing emotions, a kind of continuum of instability, but one on an inevitable course towards some kind of awareness as a result of experience. The visceral aspect of the music I found compelling and in places exciting, even unsettling, though I wasn’t sure why on this first hearing, not knowing the work’s circumstances. As a piece of “pure” music it certainly made an effect in Herbig’s hands.

I thought the second tango, Verano Porteño,  a more “road music” kind of work, less inward and circumspect, more “out there” with a stronger rhythmic trajectory that seemed to cover plenty of physical ground. Again the music had a percussive element, the player required, as before, to strike the instrument in different ways, by way of underlining the pulse of things, the music’s heartbeat. Not all of the music was thus enslaved – recitative-like passages and incidental glissandi and other kinds of timbral slides punctuated the flow, the guitar used like a kind of all-purpose folk-orchestra, especially towards the piece’s end, with all kinds of deft percussive touches.

By way of contrast, Gunter Herbig played three more “conventional” tangoes, two by the eminent and much-travelled Argentinian guitar virtuoso Abel Fleury, and one by Paraguyan-born Agustin Barrios. Fleury’s two pieces sounded so “clean” and straight after Piazzolla’s far more discursive worlds of experience, a contrast perhaps akin to hearing music by almost any of Beethoven’s contemporaries next to the former;s late quartets!  However, Barrios’s work Don Perez Freire had a more personalized aspect, the listener imagining some kind of portrait of a kind of Latin American “Beckus the Dandiprat”, somebody worldly-wise and energetic, and perhaps a little garrulous but with real charm to boot – a man, one suspects, well acquainted with the pleasures of dance and movement.

A second piece by Barrios, Julia Florida (Julia Blossoming), a work dedicated to one of his students, Julia Martinez de Rodriguez, was a different kind of portrait, by turns graceful and impulsive, quickilvery and lyrical. Subtitled “Barcarola” it had moments reminiscent of the music of Faure, with a wistfully beautiful melodic line. The program was , in a sense, rounded off by the final programmed piece, written by Joao Pernambuco, a founder of the Brazilian choro style. Pernambuco’s output was virtually salvaged  by people like fellow composers Heitor Villa-Lobos, who transcribed many of the pieces, and later Dilermando Reis, who performed many and recorded several of Pernambuco’s works. We heard the latter’s Sons de carrilhoes (Song of the Bells), an attractively lyrical toe-tapper of a piece, a happy and joyous conclusion to the recital.

However, Gunter Herbig then played for us an encore, by way of sympathizing with the realities of many of us having to return to work from the concert, rather than, as he put it, “taking a siesta”! Of course, our sensibilities had been having a great time cavorting around and about imagined realms where such practices as siesta were part of the daily routine. So we were given Leo Brouwer’s Berceuse (Cradle Song) as an extra moment of magic, a gentle kind of farewelling to this gorgeous array of music.

 

 

Scandinavian and New Zealand players unite wonderfully for the two greatest clarinet quintets

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society

The Dalecarlia Clarinet Quintet:
Anna McGregor (clarinet), Manu Berkeljon (violin), Sofie Sunnerstam (violin), Anders Noren (viola) and Tomas Blanch (cello)

Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A, K 581
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op 115

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 6 July, 2:30 pm

I understand that the Waikanae Music Society asked for and got a programme other than those that the promoters of the New Zealand tour (Chamber Music New Zealand) was offering. Both Chamber Music Hutt Valley and Wellington Chamber Music settled for either the Mozart or the Brahms plus ‘fillers’ in the first half.

This concert was first advertised as the Antithesis Quintet, which might have referred to the programme, sub-titled ‘Concert of Opposites’. But as a result of an injury sustained by one of the string players, the personnel was changed and subsequently the name, to Dalecarlia. The players are members of the Dalasinfoniettan orchestra, based in Falun which is in the region of Dalecarlia (Dalarna in Swedish) in central Sweden.

For the record, the original material that we posted on Coming Events on this website, listed the following members: Anna McGregor (clarinet), Hilda Kolstad Huse (violin), Sofie Sunnerstam (violin), Fanny Maréchal (viola) and Katrine Pedersen (cello).

Neither the interview with Eva Radich on Upbeat on Friday nor the websites we’ve looked at touched on the reasons for the three personnel changes and the name change.

I’d been at the Lower Hutt concert and had been impressed by the Mozart quintet but at Waikanae, from the very opening, there was something different, in the extraordinary beauty and gentleness of the clarinet’s rising phrase, and the same feeling of greater care and finesse from the strings. The pianissimi were breathtaking, from all the players.

I wondered whether the quite different acoustic might have explained what I felt was a more fine-grained and penetrating performance (still jet-lagged at Lower Hutt?). It has been customary to criticise the hall as a cavernous sports stadium but, apart from the sound becoming more dim for those seated far from the stage, the sound now is clear, seeming to enhance the distinct timbres and articulations of the individual instruments. I really relished the sound.

Naturally, the exquisite second movement, Larghetto, prospered is this space where the clarinet is very centre-stage, and it was possible to delight in Anna McGregor’s rapport with the strings (remarkable given that the group has really been together such a short time); I am often given to thinking as I listen to music of great beauty, that it is the most overwhelmingly beautiful creation ever, and this was indeed one of those times. And the Menuetto and Trio were not far behind: beguiling, unhurried, with long passages for strings alone, the first violin (Sofie Sunnerstam) producing a lean yet satin-smooth tone.

The last movement is in the theme and variations form, though the variety that Mozart introduces makes one quite overlook the fact that we are hearing the same basic tune over and over. The third variation, in A minor, gives the viola (Anders Noren) a gorgeous minute of exposure, a premonition of the longer Adagio of the fifth and last variation. These gracious slow phases seemed to me the most awesome moments of the work, though it ends with a restorative Allegro coda: just perfect.

Fancy getting the Brahms Quintet in addition, in the same concert! That will also be played at the Wellington Chamber Music concert at St Andrew’s this coming Sunday, along with pieces by Ross Harris and a Swedish composer.

Brahms makes a much more concerted work from his resources than Mozart had. Clarinet and strings play together, singing their distinct parts in more complex five-part ensemble. For this, the two violins changed places: Manu Berkeljon was leader here. At Lower Hutt I had felt that her violin blended slightly better in the ensemble, but at Waikanae I could not make such a distinction, though Sofie’s instrument sounded a little lighter in tone, lending a welcome contrast between the two.

Compared with the sunny, delighted mood of the Mozart, composed just two months before he died, Brahms, in B minor, sounded a great deal more weighed down by the burdens of the world (though his death was still six years off), with almost anguished passages in the first movement. Violins had the opening phrase of the first movement, but the clarinet opens the sombre Adagio with its three descending notes, leading to one of Brahms’s most beautiful, elegiac melodies; its stillness was transfixing.

The players handled the brief third movement, a disguised Scherzo, giving no pause for meditation. Like Mozart’s, the last movement is a set of five variations; it’s led by the cello (the excellent Tomas Blanch) into deeper waters, not to be misled by the tempo marking Con Moto.  Again, considering the shortness of their time together (though most of them are used to collaborating in the chamber orchestra in Falun), I was moved by the integrity, of their playing, of the same mind, exploring Brahms’s essentially serious nature through the complex strands of the Finale and finding profundity as well as enchantment in it.

The loud applause from the 350–plus crowd proved that the Waikanae Society had not been wrong to seek both these great works – after all, why not when you’ve travelled 20,00km to play them?

 

Wellington Chamber Orchestra – nostalgia, high spirits and adventure

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

LILBURN – Aotearoa Overture
HAYDN – Symphony No.99 in E-flat
SIBELIUS – Symphony No 1 in E Minor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra
Vincent Hardaker (conductor)

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

Sunday, 6th July 2014

Perhaps it’s awfully “New Age” of me – but I do like to make up some kind of all-purpose phrase to use as a heading, when writing a review of any concert. It actually provides a framework upon which one can hang aspects of an overall purpose for the music-making, even if it’s largely in the ear of this particular listener as it were. Of course, this “ear of the listener” is the true reality of any concert – we listen to and respond individually, not collectively, to music, however much we might like to compare notes (whoops!) afterwards.

This concert resisted my first attempts at finding a phrase that would adequately sum up the music played – I finally hit upon the idea that the ostensible “odd composer out” of the trio, Josef Haydn, could, in fact, be equated with his two youthful companions, Sibelius and Lilburn, on the score of being similarly “young at heart”. There’s certainly nothing in this particular Haydn Symphony to suggest anything other than youthful spirits and unflagging energy, qualities in abundant supply, of course, in each of the other works on the program.

So, on that score I’ve been able to link, however tenuously, both music and composers for this Chamber Orchestra presentation. Douglas Lilburn’s well-known Overture “Aotearoa”, which opened the concert, was written specifically for a “New Zealand Centenary Matinee” in London in April 1940 – the orchestra’s own programme note was, I thought, somewhat misleading in using the word “sadly”, when referring to the Overture being performed in London first of all, as it was that particular centenary soiree which specifically prompted the work’s creation and gave the young composer the opportunity of it being actually performed. It was, incidentally, Lilburn’s final compositional act of his student years in London, as he left shortly after the concert for New Zealand.

But to the present performance!  – and here I have to take my metaphorical hat off to conductor Vincent Hardaker and the orchestra players for a splendid performance of the work. Right from the first pizzicato-and-woodwind chord, it seemed to me that a certain quality was “there”, that the sounds made by the players brought to mind that unique character remarked upon by New Zealanders who heard that first London performance – “It’s Cape Reinga!”, one ex-pat Kiwi listener was heard apparently whispering to the other, during the work’s introduction!

What impressed was the evocation of the music’s character throughout – tones and textures by turns shimmered, sparkled and roared, as the interaction of sunlight, water and wind with rugged coastlines and towering mountains was brought to the mind’s view. True, there was a lack of really soft playing from the strings in certain places, and some of the composer’s characteristic whiplash rhythmic figurations occasionally lacked the last word in precision – but the spirit was at all times palpable, which, for me was more important than soulless accuracy.

I also liked Vincent Hardaker’s actual “shaping” of the music, particularly the way he allowed the central section of the work a little more time and space in which the sounds could expand and create a contrasting mood with the predominant allegro. It actually made the work “bigger” than I’d ever heard it played before, opening up the music’s realms during that particular sequence, and making the reprise of the allegro even more spine-tingling than usual. I’ll risk bias by particularly praising the winds for their characterful playing throughout, even if all sections of the ensemble had their moments of glory.

After this, the first movement of the Haydn Symphony (No.99 in E-flat) just didn’t seem to ignite, even in the wake of an introduction which showed some promise – the allegro which followed pushed the ensemble beyond the players’ manipulative capabilities, even if the music’s spirit sounded right in certain places. Better presented was the slow movement, written by the composer as a heartfelt tribute to a deceased friend. The strings prepared the way for some lovely work by the winds, the music then leading the players through some darker, tenser moments and as suddenly back into the sunlight once again. Notable, too, was the quasi-military sequence with properly stuttering brass and complaining winds, towards the end.

Anyone brought up on an “older school” of Haydn-playing (Beecham, Klemperer, Walter) would gasp and stretch their ears at what seem like the breathless “authentic” tempi at which today’s ensembles take some of this music. Hardaker’s tempo for the Minuet practically turned the music into a Beethovenian scherzo, most of which the players coped with, apart from some blurred figurations. A good thing the conductor relaxed the tempo a little for the Trio, though things were still pretty edge-of-the-seat lively for the players.

Fortunately, the finale was played largely for its wit and drollery, the conductor encouraging his musicians to enjoy their interactions, and letting individual voices “speak” (such as the oboe’s crescendo on the held note shortly after its entrance). We enjoyed the composer’s seemingly endless inventions as one orchestral group followed the other in a kind of tag-music game, demonstrating some adroit ensemble playing in the process.

Things moved up a few notches for the Sibelius Symphony after the interval – and the work got away to the best possible start with a stunningly-played clarinet solo from Robert Ewens, followed by passionate, soulful string-playing. Wind and brass gave stern responses, resulting in a mighty climax (the timpani slightly ahead of the beat, but the spirit certainly present!). There being no harp for whatever reason, a piano was used (the player nervous-sounding at first and misreading the opening rhythm – but things soon settled down), the winds setting to and “carrying” the atmosphere, one or two sluggish entries brought up to speed by the others.

The movement’s evocations of Nordic landscape and weather were conjured up with a will, strings digging into the reprise of their gloriously juicy lines, winds enjoying their icy-fingered chromatic descents, the brasses covering themselves in glory in places, and the percussion putting the final dusting of snow on the peaks! – though I did find in places the timpani too loud – I couldn’t hear the final string pizzicati at all, beneath the rattle of those skins, exciting though the noises were.

Such a gorgeous slow movement! – the lullabic character of the music was nicely caught by strings and winds over murmuring brass, though the harp was sorely missed in places. Occasionally I thought the winds TOO forthright, though the plangent tones weren’t out of place, even if the nicely-played solo ‘cello was somewhat overpowered in such company. The beginning of the allegro was well-managed, the rhythms dancing, the lower brass snapping at the dancers’ heels, amid great shouts and cymbal crashes, the strings maintaining the “howling wind” aspect well – the calm returned suddenly and effectively, the conductor taking all the time in the world with the music, giving room for his players to express the utmost tenderness and serenity – well done!

The timpanist made the most of his big moments in the scherzo, leading the way with those treacherous off-beat entries which everybody seemed to manage, along with the fugue-like passages for winds and strings, though I could swear the brass missed an entry at one point. Fortunately they were all there for the Trio, the horns in particular making lovely sounds, inspiring the winds to reply in kind, even if the oboes sounded a bit overbearing. The scherzo’s reprise culminated with an excitingly well-managed accelerando at the end, which all concerned must have enjoyed!

And so to the finale of this epic work! Singing strings and snarling brass with winds close at hand, at the start, made a good beginning. More lovely work by the strings with their recitatives and with the winds at the start of the allegro – conductor Hardaker steadily and surely building the galloping excitement with his players. I was surprised by how quickly he moved the second “big tune” along, giving the pianist little chance to make an impression with his “harp” entries. The lower strings shone with some agile “scurrying” work at the allegro’s return, then helped the rest of the strings to push the rhythms along, the brasses flailing the textures, heightening the energies and stirring the blood! At conductor Hardaker’s speeds, the aforementioned “big tune” had more urgency than majesty, and the brass seemed to run out of puff trying to keep up, though they rallied for the final few shouts of defiant triumph.

In all it was a performance that, for all its orchestral fallibilities, gave us the work’s essences – and parts, such as the work’s opening and the last few pages of the slow movement, were most satisfyingly and memorably realized. Together with the Lilburn those were the concert’s highlights for this listener – places where the music wasn’t overly “pushed” but allowed to articulate its character and truly engage the skills and sensibilities of the musicians. On this showing, I look forward to hearing more of Vincent Hardaker’s work with this orchestra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dalecarlia Clarinet Quintet – getting the music through….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
The Dalecarlia Clarinet Quintet

Sofie Sunnerstam, Manu Berkeljon (violins)
Anders Norén(viola), Tomas Blanch (‘cello)
Anna McGregor (clarinet)

Emmy LINDSTRÖM – Song for Em (2006)
Anthony RITCHIE – Clarinet Quintet (2006)
W.A.MOZART – Clarinet Quintet K.581 (1789)

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Thursday July 3rd, 2014

“A concert tour of the new and old from the northern and southern hemispheres” was the entirely apt, refreshingly hype-free description of the undertaking which produced this concert at Lower Hutt earlier this month – Anna McGregor, New  Zealand-born clarinetist, was originally supposed to tour New Zealand with the Antithesis Quintet, a group she had founded in 2010 while studying and working in Sweden. Due to injury incapacitating one of the players, things were rearranged, post-haste, with two of the original quintet, Anna McGregor and Sofie Sunnerstam (violin), joining some of the principal players in the Swedish ensemble, the Dalasinfonietten, Falen, with whom McGregor has been on contract.

One of these was another New Zealander, Manu Berkeljon, originally from the West Coast, and an experienced orchestral violinist, having worked with groups in New Zealand, Australia and Europe. She’s currently Associate Principal 2nd Violin in the Dalasinfonietten. The new group, called the Dalecarlia Clarinet Quintet, was completed by Anders Norén (viola) and Tomas Blanch (cello). The group brought the original Antithesis Quintet programme content with them, including the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets as well as Anthony Ritchie’s 20006 Clarinet Quintet.

The group chose to open their concert with the kind of item that the redoubtable Michael Flanders (of “Flanders and Swann” fame) might have described as “helping to get the pitch of the hall” – this was an unashamedly romantic piece by one Emmy Lindström, called “Song about Em”, a darkly-swaying piece with a discernible melody whose repetitions charmed without complication – rather like a light piece by, say, Alfven.

Sterner stuff hove to immediately afterwards, in the guise of Antony Ritchie’s Clarinet Quintet, written to mark the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. We were advised by the programme notes that Ritchie took “motivic ideas from (Mozart’s) Quintet, but without direct reference until the third movement”. Though there exists the proviso that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, it seemed from the music, to me, that Anthony Ritchie had something else on his mind – the music occasionally was stalked by other shades, Bartok and Shostakovich having, to my ears much more of a resonant presence than did the near-divine Wolfie…..

The work began evocatively, a clarinet solo brooding darkly amid ghostly rustlings from the strings, leading to some quixotic declamations and the beginnings of motoric rhythms, begun by the strings and added to by the clarinet – edgy contouring, explosive accents and tight, highly-strung harmonies.

Moments of repose were given little room as the instruments took up the rhythmic trajectories once again, this time tossing the figurations between one another, tones and timbres beautifully playing off one another, each instrument at certain points raising and asserting its particular voice. I liked for instance the swaying, sighing violin line throughout one episode contrasting with the bouncy, driving rhythms underneath, before the voices were gathered in for a toccata-like ensemble, whose plain speaking obviously exhausted all participants, abruptly leading to the movement’s end.

Unisons from the strings fragmented into individual lines, leaving the clarinet to rhapsodize and ruminate, at the slow movement’s beginning. The strings persisted, the sounds becoming declamatory as an impasse was reached, the lines clustering together, prompting what seemed to resemble techno-timbres, the strings hissing and scratching, still trying to bring the rhapsodizing clarinet into line! The strings then drew deeply and “attacked” their chords, after which they worked through an intensely-wrought and closely-knit passage, gaining a truce with the clarinet and settling all issues when the latter followed the strings back to their movement-opening gestures at the very end. I got the feeling that this music had intuitive more than formulaic motivations for the sequences and instruments to be doing what they did – very Mozartean in that sense, I thought……..

I enjoyed the Nielsen-like oscillations of the finale, passing from instrument to instrument, and backdropping birdsong figurations from the clarinet taken up by the violins and intensified, making for sound-vistas whose barriers seemed gloriously expanded as the music went on. The players seemed to my ears to really “take” to the writing, building up Shostakovich-like intensities and creating a feeling of combatants at a tournament, before the music enigmatically gave up its ghost. As for the aforementioned Wolfie, he may well have been flitting between and around some of the phrases, but neither myself nor a musician friend with whom I sat caught any kind of pre-echo of the work we were going to listen to after the interval – we obviously needed a different kind of listening wavelength……

Still, the experience sharpened and focused one’s listening sensibilities, enabling a keener appreciation of the performance of the Mozart which followed, pre-echoes or no pre-echoes! I liked the slight “huskiness” of the string tones at the beginning, a sound with a distinctive character, not excessively and blandly moulded, one against which the clarinet’s liquid outpourings strongly and distinctively contrasted. The chording supporting the second subject had lovely “squeeze-box” timbres, perhaps enhanced by the Lower Hutt venue’s dry-ish sound, though any suggestion of restricted tones was soon dispelled by the ensemble’s lively dynamic range, from the softest breathings to fully assertive chordings at some of the cadences. I also liked how the players conveyed the sense of coming to this music for the first time, even when making the repeats – their sounds had a fresh, exploratory quality, probably as much to do with listening to one another as playing the music.

Surely the slow movement of this work contains some of the most heavenly utterances devised by a human being! – Anna McGregor’s playing of the opening had at once a purity and a warmth which suggested some kind of concourse between this world and the divinity of whatever persuasion – occasionally I wanted the first violin to sing a little more ardently in response, but only as a personal preference – there was no doubt as to the sensitivity of the interchanges. This could be heard as well in the deftness of the playing’s “touching in’ of darker hues before the final cadence. Then, a quicker tempo than I was normally used to for the Minuet made for the liveliest of contrasts, and some beautifully characterized sequences – for example the appropriately chalk-and-cheese Trios. First came a strings-only affair, sombre, edgy and unsettled, and a bit later the clarinet-led melody which is, of course, one of the world’s charmers.

From all of this one could presume that the theme-and-variations finale would go swimmingly – and so it proved, from the opening’s engaging “strut” of the strings, through the variants of rhythm, texture and mood presented by the different episodes, among which featured a kind of “lover’s complaint” from the viola. At the conclusion of the following “gurgling clarinet” section, whose playfulness between the instruments greatly delighted us all, a surprisingly strong and arresting modulatory swerve brought things to a sudden halt, allowing, after a luftpause, a beautifully-poised adagio to cast its spell, courtesy of Anna McGregor’s gorgeous tones. With such playing in mind one readily forgave the clarinettist a dropped note or two in the final phrases of the Allegro coda.

I’ll risk both chauvinism and ungraciousness by remarking that it was a pity we didn’t get to hear Anthony Ritchie’s other “programmed” piece (listed as a “possible” encore, but remaining a “might-have-been”) “Purakaunui at Dawn”. I think I would have preferred it to the somewhat bland Lindström work. Still, the two major quintets were the thing – and local audiences obviously owe Anna McGregor a debt of gratitude for hitting upon a way of getting around the troubles which befell the original tour arrangements, and enabling us to experience the work of such a fine group of musicians.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baroque Voices – resplendent 20th birthday offerings

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BAROQUE VOICES – 20th Birthday Concert
Music from 20 years of performance

Baroque Voices
Pepe Becker (director)
Douglas Mews (harpsichord, organ, piano)
Robert Oliver (bass viol)
Daniel Becker (guitar, percussion)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday, 28th June 2014

Wellington’s Baroque Voices celebrated twenty years of music-making with a concert on the last Saturday of June given in the same inaugural venue, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, in Hill St., Wellington – a splendid place for music-making by vocal ensembles.

It was a truly epic and resplendent affair – perhaps a trifle overlong for listeners and performers alike, though the presentation certainly succeeded in bringing to the fore a sense of the variety and depth of repertoire the ensemble has tackled since its inception. Music Director Pepe Becker, in the programme accompanying Saturday’s concert, outlined something of BV’s history, in the process setting down something of the extent of the ensemble’s range and sympathies regarding performance.

In those twenty years the group’s personnel has markedly changed, the only original BV members remaining being Peter Dyne and Pepe herself. But though singers have come and gone, the performance standards have been maintained, judging by the invariably enthusiastic reviews the group has received. I’ve been going to their concerts for at least ten of those years, and have always been delighted with both the repertoire and its presentation.

On this occasion I actually thought that the ensemble warmed increasingly to its task as the evening progressed, becoming more relaxed and better-focused, though I did get the feeling that the group had worked harder on some of the pieces than on others. Given the range of repertoire covered in the concert this wasn’t really surprising – in fact it was amazing that the group maintained the levels of accuracy and energy that they did, especially towards the end. We would, I think, have been more than satisfied with about four-fifths of the items – especially given that a few of the choices seemed to me a tad insubstantial compared with some others.

But any more comment along these lines would sound curmudgeonly – faced with such generosity of performing spirit one feels far more inclined to celebrate what was done with the group’s usual skill, refinement and panache – which was, in fact, most of the programme (all of the bits I would have wanted to keep!). These alone were in themselves worlds of delight and wonderment, and their performances worthy exemplars of the ensemble’s quality.

The concert’s very beginning in a sense paid homage to the venue, which repaid the gesture with appropriate resonance and ambient warmth – the singers came in from the church’s congregational entrance behind the audience, Pepe Becker leading the way and singing, purely and rapturously, Hildegarde of Bingen’s haunting plainchant O Euchari, with the other singers humming in the style of an accompanying hurdy-gurdy. It all made for a William Blake-like “augury of innocence”, of wonderment such as one might experience as a child at a rare and mystical ritual – a moment of magic!

Baroque Voices followed this with another special moment – a performance of the very first item sang by the ensemble at that inaugural 1994 concert. This was Monteverdi’s madrigal Ch’ami la vita mia (That you are the love of my life), from the First Book of Madrigals, for five voices – a sonorous, flexible performance with moments of pure quicksilver. Of course Monteverdi’s music subsequently became a major focus for the group, presently exploring the entire series of Madrigals, and having already performed, most brilliantly, the resplendent 1610 Vespers in 2010 (can it really be four years ago?). Two other Monteverdi madrigals were presented in the concert’s second half, contrasting the composer’s later (Second Practice) style, accompanied by continuo instruments, with his earlier practice, using voices only.

Another particularly fruitful undertaking for the group has been the commissioning and premiering of no less than thirty-five new works (to date!) by local composers. A number of these drew their initial inspiration from existing works, or from texts set by composers already in BV’s repertoire. We were “treated” to four instances of this during the evening, all of which the group had previously performed, two from Jack Body, one from Mark Smythe, and one from Ross Harris, as well as more “stand-alone” works by Carol Shortis and Pepe Becker herself.

Jack Body’s Nowell in the Lithuanian manner followed a lovely, properly austere three-part performance of the anonymous 15th Century English carol Nowell, sing we – Body’s work, from 1995, was a setting for four voices, with the interval of a second dominating the music, making for a resonant and repetitive antiphonal exchange of excitable impulses tossed back and forth in a kind of minimalist-folksy way, sounding fun to perform, as it certainly was to hear.

More resplendent and declamatory was the same composer’s Jibrail (the Islamic word for Gabriel), here performed immediately after its Latin equivalent “Veni Creator Spiritus” – we heard the Latin chant sung antiphonally by two groups, most of whose members then re-formed in a semi-circle as a gong ritualistically sounded (played by Daniel Becker), the singers chanting the word Jibrail, and capping the growing vocal intensities by picking up and activating hand-held gongs, as if the tintinabulations were spreading through the world like wildfire.

This wasn’t exactly conventional vocal or choral music, but was a demonstration of how a creative imagination can at times defy convention and produce something that really works by its own unique lights – rather like Beethoven introducing voices to symphonic structures, which no-one had ever dared do before him. It’s also a matter of having the versatility to employ non-conventional means for expressive or creative purposes, which composers like Jack Body have demonstrated on many occasions.

A different kind of creative inspiration produced a work by composer Mark Smythe (Pepe Becker’s brother, incidentally), from music originally written for rock band.This was a setting of an anonymous Latin text A solis ortus cardine (From the far point of the rising sun) which Voices first sang as per Nikolaus Apel’s fifteenth-century Kodex (collection), in which version the lines had a gorgeous “floating” quality, the effect being of several plainchant strands beautifully interwoven.

Mark Smythe’s setting followed, employing an electric guitar as a kind of ground bass (the premiere of this work in 2005 used voices only, the guitar being a more recent addition, played here by Daniel Becker), and assigning to the vocal parts the “rock” song’s main melody supported by harmonies from the guitar parts. The result was rhythmically catchy, and harmonically attractive, having what I think of as a kind of oldish, modal flavour in places, with ear-catching modulations. I also enjoyed the purity and sense of freedom and space evoked by those stratospheric vocal lines drawn by Pepe Becker and Jane McKinlay.

A composer whose music has always intrigued and delighted me is Carol Shortis, who’s written a number of commissioned works for BV. Each of her works has seemed to me to inhabit its own world, with nothing generalized or taken for granted; as with the work presented in this concert, five settings of Japanese “death-poems” called Jisei, which Baroque Voices premiered in 2010. Typically succinct and intensely focused “final thoughts”, the poetry required similarly precise, sharp-edged sound-impulses which would “inhabit” the words, and vice-versa – and Carol Shortis’s music seemed to speak, sigh, sing and breathe with the verses to a remarkable extent.

Except that I thought the second Jisei, Senseki’s “At last I am leaving” could have been sparer of tone, more distilled in its realization (evoking more sparingly the “rainless skies” and the “cool moon”), I thought the performances evocative and finely-drawn. I enjoyed especially the third setting, Gesshu Soko’s “Inhale, exhale”, with its wonderful oscillations, and soaring lines describing the flight of arrows through the void. And the wordless realizations of the concluding Jisei, the letter “O”, were appropriately remote and self-contained, a final exhalation of breath closing the symbol’s circle.

Ross Harris contributed a work via a Baroque Voices’ commission in 2009, a setting of the anonymously-composed hymn Ave Maris Stella  (Hail, Star of the Sea). The ensemble again “prepared” the audience by performing a mixture of the plainchant verses with parts of another setting by Guillaume Dufay, a wonderfully tingling, ambience-stroking activation. Ross Harris’s work was itself described by Pepe Becker as “sumptuous”, doubtless as a result of her having previously performed the work – its premiere, in 2009.

I enjoyed the music’s oceanic evocations, sounds patterned like recurring waves, the voices interlocked, and the lines clustered – but then I thrilled to the growing intensities of sounds at the words “Qui pro nobis natus tulit esse tuus” (Who, born for us, endured to be thine), and a corresponding rapt, haunting withdrawal of tones and colour at “Ut videntes Jesum semper collaetemur” (That, seeing Jesus, we may forever rejoice together). And both the joyous affirmation of “Summo Christo decus Spiritui Sancto” (Honour to Christ the Highest, and to the Holy Spirit) and the deep, sonorous closing pages were intensely moving.

I ought to mention Pepe Becker’s own work, the Kyrie from her Mass of the False Relation, a title which had me intrigued until I read about the particular compositional device employed by the composer – the substitution of a sharpened or flattened note, a “false relation” of the original, sometimes in juxtaposition with the actual original, the harmonic tensions and clashes making for highly expressive results – colourful and piquant in places, tense and edgy in others, the listener waiting the whole time for lines and harmonies to resolve. I liked the “hollow cluster” effect of the “masquerading relatives” towards the piece’s end, during the final “Kyrie”.

I’ve unashamedly concentrated on the New Zealand composers and their works written for Baroque Voices, in this review – the concert contained a number of other delights which time and patience preclude a mention. But I mustn’t forget to pay tribute to the continuo musicians, Douglas Mews, who moved adroitly between harpsichord, piano and organ, as the items required, and Robert Oliver, whose bass viol playing was, as always, a delight. These two players have especially supported Baroque Voices down the years, almost to the point where any concert by the group wouldn’t seem quite the same without them.

To my mind, this concert reaffirmed both Baroque Voices’ and director Pepe Becker’s status as national treasures. These are musicians whose efforts help us find and nurture expression for whomever and whatever we are, occasionally, as here, holding our efforts up against the rest of the world’s by way of reaffirming both our identity and our individuality. May Baroque Voices continue to do the same on our behalf with distinction for at least the next twenty years!

 Click on this link to comment and discuss the review on Reddit!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO under Venezuelan conductor triumphs with essential German and Russian masterpieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Payare with Alisa Weilerstein – cello

Schumann: Manfred Overture, Op 115
Prokofiev: Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, Op 125
Mahler: Symphony No 1 in D

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 27 June, 6:30 pm

A couple of highly promising young musicians whose existence have so far escaped my attention appeared with the NZSO on Friday.  Rafael Payare is the product of Venezuela’s Sistema musical organisation that involves young people seriously in classical music, and has already given rise to one of the most illustrious young conductors, Gustavo Dudamel. Payare is obviously following a similar path.

He is married to Alisa Weilerstein, the cello soloist who played the Prokofiev.

It was easy to see how the orchestra has responded to Payare’s approach both to them and to the music; starting with the overture, Schumann’s Manfred. Apart from Shakespeare, only two English writers have become big business in other parts of Europe: Byron and Scott, and for composers in particular. Byron attracted Berlioz, Donizetti and Verdi, Liszt and Tchaikovsky. Schumann too who was drawn to Byron’s verse drama, Manfred. Byron dismissed Manfred, written in 1817, as something eccentric and untheatrical, writing that he didn’t know whether it was good or bad. He called it ‘mad’ and wrote that he had rendered it quite impossible for the stage. In spite of that, Schumann composed not just an overture but other pieces of incidental music for the play, suggesting that he did envisage that it might be staged. I don’t know whether it was. There was a good deal more contemporary dramatic literature in Germany in the early 19th century than there was in Britain.

The central attraction of the piece was a kind of supernatural being who lives with the guilt of an unnamed crime (it was no doubt that which attracted both Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, in his little-played Manfred Symphony). Byron wrote it in Venice after fleeing England after the exposure of his relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh.  It was the product of the age of Faust Part I (and the character Manfred owes something to Faust in fact – yes, I did read it many years ago) and other works of the Sturm und Drang era including Schiller’s Die Räuber, and the English Gothic novel.

I had not heard the Manfred Overture for many years and wondered whether its strong impression on me would still exist. It was, and very much. Schumann’s account of the subject is taut, melodically strong, portraying the hero’s sombre, disturbed character, and this performance was arresting and excitable, giving Schumann the most persuasive account one could hope for. It’s scored for a normal orchestra, double woodwinds, except for four horns which lent a fine dramatic resonance. The conductor handled the unexpected turns with panache, particularly the mock anti-climax at the end.

Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto was played by the NZSO with German cellist Alban Gerhardt about six years ago, in what I recall as a fire-eating performance, feverish, with pretty fast speeds.

Here there were smaller string numbers (12, 10, 8, 8, 6) and an otherwise conventional orchestra.  The cellist in the open phase did not project her sound very strongly, but her instrument carried the essentially lyrical solo writing engagingly, contrasting with the more sombre orchestral scoring, dominated by its repeating, stolid rising theme that opens the piece. It’s an arresting and dark rather than an ingratiating work however, even though the energy of the Allegro movement is compelling and there’s plenty of more conspicuous playing for the cello.

Most of those I spoke to, unfamiliar with the work, did not find it engaging, which was my own reaction when I first encountered it many years ago. A merely routine performance will never do: its enjoyment demands a highly persuasive performance, to turn what at first seems dry, rather laconic, melodically obscure music into a work that has some real emotional integrity, even at times, excitement. For example, after the cadenza in the middle of the Allegro the orchestra returns to a pulsing cross-string passage that is emotionally gripping, like the sound of a hammering steam train at high speed.

The second is the longest movement and seems to contain the widest variety of moods and speeds, and it’s here that a driving propulsion and a sense of purpose emerged, powerfully inspired by Payare’s direction of the orchestra. Though the last movement begins with what can only be described as a real melody, first-time listeners can be forgiven for sensing a severity and unforgiving character in the work as a whole, and that initial impression can be hard to shake off even as very interesting developments and quite memorable sounds create a work of art that is strong and original without recourse to alienating avant-garde techniques.

It’s quite a tough work nevertheless; and there was no doubt that the relationship between conductor and cellist lent the performance a special energy and displayed a belief in and an affection for the music.

Then came Mahler’s First Symphony. The orchestra reassembled after the interval, at full strength (which I discuss later). It opens with the most uncanny, ethereal sounds, such as no symphony at that time had approached in any way, an exploratory feeling, as off-stage trumpets and then cuckoo sounds on clarinet suggest a pastoral scene, reinforced by one of the most beguiling Wayfarer songs; and quotes from other songs, his own and ‘Frère Jacques’. From the very first, the orchestra created a sound world that was vivid and full of character.

For a first symphony, it is impressive both for its individual character, its novelties of shape and structure and in the size of orchestra used. Much of that character derives from its evolving growth and the revisions which the programme note covers to some extent – born as a five movement symphonic poem in two parts, begun when Mahler was 24 and first performed in Budapest when he was 29. That version included a movement known as Blumine (Flower piece) lifted from an earlier work most of which has been lost. That one movement, found in 1966, had been between the first and second movements when it was played in Budapest in 1889 and again in 1893 and 1894. The Budapest version was called ‘Symphonic-Poem in 2 Parts’.

Between the Budapest performance and the revision for Hamburg in 1893 Mahler added the name Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen (From the Life of a Lonely-one). Just before the Hamburg performance the name Titan was added, though he made it clear that it was not in any way about Jean Paul’s novel. But he removed that title after the Hamburg performance in 1893 and there is no reason for it to be so-called now. (Titan, published in 1800-03, is a somewhat wild, Romantic novel a prominent feature of which is its beautiful and evocative nocturnal landscape descriptions, a feature that can be easily visualised in the symphony).  The third performance was in Weimar on 3 June 1894. Here, the Blumine movement was deleted.

The orchestration of the Budapest version was conventional for the time, with double woodwinds and four horns, but by the 1893 Hamburg performance Mahler had supplied it with three of each woodwind instrument.

For Weimar in 1894 Mahler increased his winds: four each of the woodwinds, and 3 additional horns making a total seven horns. There are two sets of timpani as well as additional wind instruments to lend extra power in climaxes, mainly in the last movement. It still included the title from Titan.

The present form was only arrived at for the fourth performance in Berlin in 1896 when the title Titan was deleted and it was named for the first time, ‘Symphony in D major’.

Its provenance from a tone poem contributes to its greatness and its permanent place in the repertoire: a miraculous combination of imagination and narrative with the structure and discipline of the traditional symphony. This explains the remarkable originality of this first symphony, but it hardly accounts for the confidence its composer displays in handling very disparate materials and the triumph of creating a soundscape that met initially with strong criticism but which really assured its eventual and permanent success. It is that strong, original voice, along with a very rich melodic gift, that has kept it among the most popular symphonic works.

But music does not play itself, and it proved the ideal subject for a young conductor with exceptional energy as well as great musical imagination and the ability to inspire an orchestra that sometimes shows a certain resistance to the efforts of young, gifted, ambitious conductors. This time the orchestra was very obviously won over.

The other aspect of this and of Mahler’s other earlier works is the absence of any impact from the horrors of war, which were to affect to a greater or lesser degree, most composers who lived beyond the second decade of the 20th century. Mahler knew no wars. (There might be no wars to account for the more complex emotional landscapes of the later symphonies, but an increasingly tortured life can explain that).

He was only ten when the short but awful Franco-Prussian war took place and died three years before World War One began. I often contemplate the enormous emotional gulf between Mahler and the composer who was probably most influenced by him – Shostakovich, who grew up surrounded by the effects of the Revolution and then lived through Stalin’s terrors and the Second World War.

Out of the long peace that had brought the Austro-Hungarian Empire to its condition of decadent complaisance, the artist could indulge in the self-absorption that gave rise to Freud and a bit later, Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Salome, and compose a finale ending in huge triumphalism, with horns and trombones standing to point their instruments into the audience in an uproarious spirit of invincibility. And the house went wild, with far more noise and clamour than reticent Wellington audiences usually allow.

 

The lyrical and the spectacular from Thomas Gaynor at TGIF Cathedral lunchtime recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Thomas Gaynor – organ

Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 541
Bach: From the Leipzig Chorales: “Schmücke dich”, BWV 654 ; Trio super: “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend”, BWV 655
Saint-Saëns: Fantaisie in E flat; Danse macabre
Widor: Organ Symphony No 6 – Allegro (1st movement)

Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 27 June, 12:45 pm

This year is the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Wellington’s Anglican Cathedral, and so the concerts staged this year celebrate that.

This particular recital was apparently organised by the late John Morrison, who, among many activities that helped the arts, particularly music, to flourish in Wellington, was chairman of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Wagner Society. Your reviewer, as a member of the society, wants to record that link.

I arrived as Gaynor was about four minutes into the Bach Prelude and Fugue, the sounds thrilling about the great space of the cathedral. I’d missed the Prelude but the fugue was proceeding with energy and, given the great reverberant cathedral, was emerging with as much clarity as was consistent with the character of dense contrapuntal music and the need for it to resound in a way the echoed what Bach saw as life’s enigmatic meaning. There was an elasticity in the tempo and a familiarity with the capacities of the organ illuminated the music through well contrasted registrations.

Two pieces from what are known as the Leipzig Chorales followed: they are among the relatively few purely organ compositions written at Leipzig, BWV 651 – 668. “Schmücke dich” (‘Deck thyself’), a beautifully calm piece in which Gaynor played the prominent chorale melody on a distinct stop in sharp contrast with the comforting, weaving, quaver accompaniment. And the ‘Trio Super’ “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend” (‘Lord Jesus, turn to us’) followed without a break. I can find no explanation of the term Trio Super; its character was very similar to the preceding piece with the vocal line played, again, on a more prominent stop than the accompaniment (not being an organ expert, just a lover of the instrument, I hesitate to guess at the names or ranks of the myriad stops).  It was joyous and lively, moving colourfully through a number of keys.

In some ways the leap of 150 years or so from Bach to Saint-Saëns’s seemed less remarkable than the dates might have suggested; a commentary on Bach’s sophistication rather than any conservatism in Saint-Saëns. His Fantaisie in E flat is one of his earliest works (1857, age 22), evidently before he had developed any particular melodic individuality; after an unobtrusive opening, it struck out bold and fluent, demanding of the player plenty of virtuosity and Gaynor’s employing of a colourful range of stops allowed detail to be heard clearly.

Then came the most spectacular piece on the programme – the very popular Danse Macabre which I’d never heard played on the organ before. It’s had several incarnations: it began as a setting of a poem by Henri Cazalis with piano accompaniment, then came the orchestral tone-poem, with a violin replacing the vocal line; it was transcribed for piano, famously by Horowitz, and the standard organ version is by Edwin Lemare. Lemare’s arrangement exploited the organ’s most flamboyant characteristics and the organist’s skills and flair: it called for the most unusual individual stops and combinations thereof, re-creating the spooky effects, the dark rushes of all-stops-out of the climactic crescendo. In fact, the organ version seemed to capture the unearthly, dehumanised feeling of the piece even more dramatically than is possible with the orchestra, and Gaynor lost no opportunity to overwhelm us.

Charles-Marie Widor was ten years younger than Saint-Saëns, and so impressed the latter that he appointed Widor his assistant at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, age 24, in 1869, and the next year lobbied for his appointment to St Sulpice, in which the famous organ-builders, Cavaillé-Coll, had built their most spectacular organ; Widor was there till 1933.

The Toccata from his Fifth Symphony is his most famous piece. But here we had the welcome chance to hear something from another symphony, the first movement of the 6th. Quite a lot of rhetorical writing, clamorous flourishes, hectic turbulence, then arresting chorale-like passages, all adorned in authentic registrations that illuminated the intriguing contrapuntal writing and the variety of tones and colours that are there to be enjoyed.

Gaynor will spend the northern summer at courses in France and Germany before returning to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester for further post-graduate studies. Quite a large audience heard this recital and will have been highly impressed both by his committed and virtuosic playing and the chance to hear the wonderful resources of the organ being fully extended.