Beethoven’s and Michael Houstoun’s “Les Adieux” – for now…….

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Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
Michael Houstoun – Beethoven reCYCLE 2013
Programme Seven “Les Adieux”

BEETHOVEN – Sonata in F minor, Op 2 No 1 / Sonata in G, Op 79
Sonata in E flat, Op 81a ‘Les Adieux’
Interval
Sonata in E minor, Op 90   / Sonata in C minor, Op 111

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Michael Fowler Centre,Wellington

Monday 11th November 2013

This was the final concert in Michael Houstoun’s Beethoven reCYCLE 2013 project, which has encompassed the composer’s entire output of 32 piano sonatas, presented in forty concerts, spread across ten centres. The atmosphere of eager anticipation in the Fowler Centre was almost palpable from an audience of some 600 listeners who were clearly devotees not only of Beethoven, but of the artist too.

The concert opened with the first published piano sonata and ended with the final one, written nearly 30 years later. Despite being an early opus, the F minor work is nevertheless full of the drama, beauty, and individualism that we associate with Beethoven’s mature output, and he was indeed already a highly successful pianist and composer in Vienna when he wrote it. Michael Houstoun’s reading was fresh and vigorous, and immediately engaged the audience for the journey through this ambitious programme.

The G major work is a captivating gem, its three brief movements more in the scale of a sonatina than sonata. Houstoun fashioned a wonderful balance between the poetic central Andante and its encompassing outer movements, in an interpretation that offered a lightness and transparency to the ear.

The E flat sonata “Les Adieux” was dedicated to a friend and pupil of Beethoven’s, the Archduke Rudolph. When this patron left Vienna in 1809 to avoid the French advance and bombardment, Beethoven wrote this very personal work with movements entitled The Farewell, The Absence, and The Return. No other Beethoven sonata has an explicit programme like this, and the work has a sense of acute personal involvement, intimately and richly expressed. Houstoun embraced this with moving artistry, particularly in the central Andante expressivo.

The E minor sonata, with only two movements, is reputedly a love story for Count Moritz Lichnowsky, to whom it is dedicated. He had successfully wooed an opera singer, and wedding bells were in the offing, but the first movement seems to capture the moods of  early courtship – the passion, hopes, doubts, even despair, of initial discovery and tentative advancement…….. Conversely, the second movement conveys a sense of profound relief, and the serenity of a rich, mutual understanding finally established.  Houstoun explored all these aspects with a sensitivity that conveyed a particularly special and personal affinity with this work.

The C minor sonata Opus 111 sits within the works usually labelled “late Beethoven”, yet to me it is much more immediately engaging and accessible than, say, some of the late string quartets. The first of its two movements opens with a Maestoso section that then moves into Allegro con brio ed appassionato. The following Arietta is marked Adagio molto semplice e cantabile, and it finally fades away with a beautifully crafted coda resolution. Houstoun’s artistry captured every mood, and conveyed throughout a telling sense of profound fulfilment– as though aligning a deep satisfaction derived from the mammoth reCYCLE undertaking with similar sentiments encapsulated as Beethoven penned his final sonata work.

It seems churlish to harbour even a single reservation about this wonderful concert, but there were a few things I would have liked to hear done differently. Throughout these sonatas there are the characteristic extended periods of high speed, sometimes frenetic, finger passagework, often at a forte dynamic, which Houstoun presents in unbroken sweeps of uniform sound. My preference is for a much more rigorous rhythmic articulation of individual figures and motifs within these passages – which can enable the listener to hang onto the phrasing structure while never losing sight of the overall architecture which always underpins them. Also, these works offer an incredible dynamic range, and I would have appreciated more exploration of the pianissimo region, which the Steinway used here has well within its capacity.

But perhaps the single element I most missed was silence – encapsulated in Debussy’s telling comment “Music is the silence between the notes.” After each statement of a new phrase or subject I craved that infinitesimal spacing that enhances absorption by the senses. And even more so between movements, where a moment’s breath would enable the listener to comprehend fully the artistry of Houstoun’s playing just past, before embarking with him on his journey forward.

Houstoun’s extraordinary achievement and musicianship in presenting the entire reCYCLE project was acknowledged with huge appreciation by a unanimous standing ovation at the end of the concert, where he stood showered in clouds of glittering ticker tape spewed from two confetti cannons overhead, and was presented with a gigantic rich red bouquet. It was a brilliant and memorable moment in Wellington’s music making scene, and an inspired way to celebrate an extraordinary partnership between the artist, the supporters, and Chamber Music New Zealand.

Bravo all!

 

 

 

Concert No 6 of Michael Houstoun’s triumphant return to Beethoven

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Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: Concert No 6
No 4 in E flat, Op 7
No 14 in C sharp minor, Op 27, No 2 ‘Moonlight’
No 15 in D, Op 28 ‘Pastoral’
No 31 in A flat, Op 110

Michael Fowler Centre

Sunday 10 November, 5pm

Let me go back three decades.

This series celebrates Michael Houstoun’s 60th birthday, and the 20th anniversary of his earlier cycle, in 1993.

It is also the 30th anniversary of a momentous step for music in Wellington. In 1983, as Charlotte Wilson quotes from the Introduction to the 1993 programme, the Wellington Chamber Music Society, inspired by its chairman Russell Armitage (and indeed the whole committee), took a bold step. With some opposition from the national federation of chamber music societies, the predecessor of Chamber Music New Zealand, the society inaugurated a series of Sunday afternoon concerts; in the first three years they were held in the Victoria University Memorial Theatre, attracting good crowds, enticed in part by free mulled wine in the interval.

The original impulse was to enable us to hear chamber music that a) demanded less familiar groups, such as sextets or nonets, and music for woodwind and brass instruments, and b) would give performance opportunities to local players – up-and-coming players – who were largely neglected by the then Music Federation of New Zealand.

In that first four-concert series, in June/July 1983, the Wellington society engaged Michael Houstoun for a Beethoven recital; he played the Op 10 no 3, along with the Pathétique and the Appassionata.  (The success of that series inspired a further short series in October; and an important new music series had been launched!) In 1984 Houstoun played Op 2 No 3, Op 78 and the Waldstein, and so on annually thereafter. In 1986, the year of the first International Festival of the Arts, the concerts moved from the university to the Concert Chamber – the original 600-seat chamber upstairs in the Town Hall.

The annual Beethoven recital from Michael Houstoun was a regular high point, and the goal was set to play all the sonatas. That goal was reached by the early 1990s.

Armitage then proposed a re-packaging of the entire sonata canon in a dedicated festival over the space of three weeks.  It would take place in the Ilott Concert Chamber in the newly strengthened and rebuilt Town Hall.  They ran from 3 to 24 November 1993, on Saturday and Wednesday evenings.  I was at all the concerts and reviewed five of them for The Evening Post; Gillian Bibby reviewed concerts four and five. For me the chance to hear Houstoun in this series was one of the most remarkable privileges in my reviewing career.

Houstoun took his series over the following months to Auckland, Napier, Christchurch and Dunedin.

But it was not the first complete Beethoven cycle in New Zealand. I had clipped a letter from The Listener of 19 March 1994 that recalled a series in Dunedin in 1968 by Hungarian pianist Istvan Nadas when he was artist-in-residence at Otago University.

However, to the matter in hand.
This time, it was Chamber Music New Zealand itself that took up the baton, with elegant and generous acknowledgement from Euan Murdoch of the many sponsors and other individuals as well as the staff of CMNZ who created these repeat performances, that attracted here an audience of more than 600.

Each recital was carefully constructed to balance early and late, famous and unfamiliar, to offer contrasted moods and, for those with perfect pitch, satisfying key relationships. The latter were hardly evident in a programme that had Op 7 in E flat next to the Moonlight in C sharp minor, and the Pastoral in D before Op 110 in A flat.

The E flat sonata is less familiar, without quite the emotional warmth or the electrifying drama of the famous ones.

I was slightly uncertain about the sound I was hearing on Sunday. Seated well to the left, the piano’s sound in the first sonata seemed a little unfocused, which I put down to the sometimes wayward acoustic in certain parts of the MFC, but could have been imperfections in the piano voicing.  Nevertheless, Houstoun’s impetuosity and rhythmic energy in the Allegro molto rapidly overwhelmed technical matters, and the fine subtlety of dynamics, the hint of rallentando towards the middle section and the ever-changing patterns of the music focused attention on the music’s essential grandeur and inventiveness.
In any case, moving to a central position after the interval I found the sound perfectly balanced and coherent.

No mood remains constant through any movement, portentousness and wit in the Largo, gaiety and moments of repose as the major-minor key switch enlivened the scherzo-like Allegro. Finally, the last movement breaks the predominant triplet rhythms of the first three movements, though the speed, now in duple time, seemed otherwise to change only slightly.

The Moonlight stands in dramatic contrast to the Op 7 as its moods, really in all three movements, remain constant, but it didn’t mean that the all-too-familiar first movement was monotonous; all manner of minuscule tempo changes, rubato, the teasing obscurity of rhythms in the vacillating triplets. The insouciance that Houstoun brought to the Allegretto was free and heart-easing and it made the reckless speed of the flawless last movement all the more astonishing.

The Pastoral sonata is far from ‘pastoral’ in the usual sense; none of the names bestowed on the sonatas had Beethoven’s sanction and it’s surprising that such an inappropriate name as this has continued to be used. In fact, not all editions use it: my Augener album does not. Written just after the Moonlight, it takes an entirely different path that for me creates a very strong and interesting musical character; Houstoun’s playing elevated its stature well above the merely picturesque, to a work that is purposeful, with impressive formal strengths as well the most engaging thematic inventions. The Andante created a cloistered feeling, 2/4, squarish in shape after the 3/4 rhythm of the Allegro, and hinting at some sort of mechanical movement. If you still seek something of the outdoors, it might be found in the last movement which opens in a fanciful mood but is laced with bravura passages of sweeping scales and arpeggios. Houstoun’s playing would have surprised any doubters of this sonata’s originality and enchantment, and it reinforced my own admiration and delight.

All three of the last sonatas have a place in music that has to be likened to religious revelation and for an increasingly secular society, it is music of this kind, as well as the most transcendental poetry, drama and prose fiction and visual arts that have come to be seen as a fully satisfying substitute for religion.
Though all three are uniquely different one from another, all are masterpieces.

The first movement of the Op 110 opens with a melody that is of quintessential beauty in the quite untroubled key of A flat major, calling up a unique spiritual state, reinforced by its repetition and elaboration that is comparable to the chanting of religious ritual. The ethereal atmosphere emerged from the stillness of Houstoun’s performance, a stillness mirrored by the sense of peace and repose that his demeanour at the keyboard expressed, utterly undemonstrative, without gestures, merely the medium for the music itself.

And though the second movement, Allegro molto, is a startling change, with just a near modulation into D flat in the middle, it was in perfect accord with the nature of what went before. Then there was the remarkable recitative that leads to the lamenting Arioso which the programme notes explain, quoting Antony Hopkins, as suggesting that Beethoven here expresses frustration at the inadequacies of his musical resources: a theory that seems to me to belittle not just this sonata, but Beethoven in toto.

I think it’s allowed to express the composer’s profound grief at the entire human condition, at the inadequacy of the human spirit in dealing with the cruelties and evils of the world as well as the despair he faced through deafness and the ailments that would soon kill him. Yet that’s not Beethoven’s conclusion. The sonata ends with an extraordinary fugue that breaks off to return to the Arioso before accelerating to a final peroration, which Houstoun created in a spirit of almost overwhelming exultancy.

An exultancy that found voice in another clamorous, standing ovation. Thank you Michael Houstoun and Chamber Music New Zealand.

 

“Un spectacle fantastique” from orchestra and fireworks

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New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
“Fireworks and Fantasy”

Britten     The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23
Berlioz     Symphonie Fantastique Op.14

Piano : Plamena Mangova
Conductor : Julian Kuerti

Michael Fowler Centre,

9th November 2013

Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra received its first performance in 1946, when the LSO under Sargent also performed it on film for distribution to British schools. It became one of the best known British works of the C20th, and is certainly one of Britten’s most accessible and appealing compositions. It is based on a resounding theme from Purcell’s incidental music for the play Abdelazer, which Britten used as the basis for a fascinating set of variations. Conductor Kuerti and the entire orchestra launched into the imposing opening statement of the theme with an enthusiasm and breadth that immediately captured the audience, followed by each instrumental section in turn adding fresh richness and colour. The subsequent variations explore an astonishing variety of instrumental mood, timbre and techniques, and each section or soloist took up the baton with great relish for the task. The writing showcased the outstanding skills and musicianship of the NZSO players, and the sheer fun they had playing this brilliantly inventive music was infectious. The closing fugue and final tutti statement of the Purcell theme was awesome and it had the audience bringing the house down.

Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto Op.23 is another well loved work, and the choice of gifted Bulgarian pianist Plamena Mangova was an inspired one. She was in total technical command of the very demanding score, and her musicianship explored an astonishing range of dynamics, moods, and sensitivities in a way that drew the audience into the wonderful intricate conversations that Tchaikovsky creates between pianist and orchestra. Under Kuerti’s unobtrusive baton they together moved seamlessly from contemplative passages of exquisite delicacy to the most dramatic full-bodied tuttis. The climaxes were full of richness, warmth, and riveting bravura while never straying into the overblown or bombastic. The woodwind principals were again a standout feature of the performance.

The following interval was timed to allow patrons to flock out and watch the annual Guy Fawkes’ fireworks display provided by the City Council in the nearby arm of the harbour. Wellington turned on a breathlessly calm, balmy spring evening and crystal clear skies for the event, which fittingly endorsed the festive atmosphere of the music making. An opinion reported earlier in the Dominion Post was that Guy Fawkes celebrations are now outdated baggage from our colonial past, and that the fireworks display would much more appropriately mark some indigenous festival like matariki, the Maori New Year. Quite apart from the difficulty that matariki falls in the depths of winter, when low cloud, drizzle, and freezing southerlies are the norm, it is not clear to me why the pakeha settlers of Aotearoa are expected to truncate their historical references, while the Maori are not. Surely, in another millennium we, and our many local ethnic groups, will seem like a bunch of settlers that stumbled ashore on almost the same day…….

Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique occupied the second half of the concert. Subtitled An episode in the life of an Artist, it is grounded in Berlioz own romantic experience. An intriguing programmatic work, it charts over the course of five movements the angst of a young musician desperately in love with a woman who embodies all he idealises and longs for. His early dreams and passions, and the disturbing images of his beloved that haunt him, are explored by Berlioz in the two initial movements with exquisite artistry, using a recurring idée fixe. Kuerti elicited a wonderfully sympathetic interpretation from the orchestra and again, standout beauty from woodwind principals. The third movement exchanges between first oboe and cor anglais were profoundly moving and breathtakingly accomplished, and set the tone for the dark unravelling of the plot in the last two movements. The expanded brass and percussion came wonderfully into their own, capturing ominous and brutal moods alike with equal intensity, and enriching the power of the maniacal tutti conclusion. The full house was blown away and, undeterred by a long evening’s listening, brought the conductor back repeatedly to express their appreciation.

This programme might be labelled by some as unashamedly populist, but in my view there is every good reason to provide such a chance to enjoy some of the great classics. It is an effective and rewarding  way to showcase the full resources of this wonderful symphony orchestra that our taxes provide, and to enjoy the outstanding musicians we are privileged to hear in our own home town.

 

 

Schubert’s “Trout” engaging despite wayward balances

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Schubert: Quintet in A, Op.114 “The Trout”

Violin – Yid-ee Goh / Viola  –  Konstanze Artmann / Cello  – Jane Young
Bass   – Paul Altomari / Piano  – Rachel Thomson

St. Andrew’s on the Terrace

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Schubert’s Trout Quintet is not often heard live in Wellington, yet it would have to be one of the best loved works of classical chamber music. The good turnout for this concert reflected that, which would have been rewarding for the ensemble, who were highly polished and technically well in command of the score. The work was written by the young Schubert, aged only 22, as a thank you gift to the wealthy amateur cellist Sylvester Paumgartner, who sponsored weekly summer musical salons at Steyr in the Austrian Alps. Schubert had soon become the centre of attention there in the summer of 1819, and the work was composed after his return to Vienna.

The score exudes the carefree delight of friends gathered to make music in a relaxed salon environment, and St. Andrew’s offers Wellington a very sympathetic setting for such a situation.

The opening Allegro vivace is announced with a dramatic tutti chord, followed by the first subject beautifully set for the violin. The movement was not far advanced however, before the imbalance between the instruments started to prove profoundly frustrating. From the balcony where I sat, the violin and piano were heavily dominating, the viola and cello recessive, and the bass at times barely discernable. The statement of the magical second subject seemed far too aggressive from the piano, and the inner voices simply did not provide the clarity of rhythmic locomotion with which Schubert underpinned and energized it. This quintet is largely an intricate conversation between equal voices, but the cello needed to be heard more, and the bass to provide a much more audible, secure foundation. The viola adopted all too effectively the Cinderella epithet sometimes applied to this instrument, when in fact its part, and that of the cello, are undoubtedly written to be heard and appreciated.

The same frustrations dogged the following Andante where the dominance of the violin and piano continued. Since this work was written for a salon situation in the early nineteenth century, the use of a modern concert grand can put the pianist on the back foot from bar one. So it requires careful adjustment if the sound is not to be overly bright, and risk overshadowing the deceptively simple but powerful inner rhythms and melodic lines. Closing the piano lid would have helped, as would some preliminary sound tests in the auditorium. The exuberant Presto and delicate Trio that follow were better balanced and came into their own much more successfully.

In the next Andantino Theme and Variations, Schubert invites each player to caress and elaborate the wonderful Trout theme from his lied, which was a particular favourite of his patron Paumgartner. The violin gave a loving opening statement of the beautiful melody, though he was not given the support from the lower strings that could have lifted it to another plane. Unfortunately the busy and energetic variation that followed was launched from the piano at a level that smothered the rich and throaty counter-statement of the theme given to the bass, and in the following viola variation one again struggled to make out its theme through the volume of piano and violin. The cellist played the final variation very poetically, but needed more sympathetic support from the other players. My distinct impression of this movement was that there had been far too little concentration on establishing how each player was to act out their role within the ensemble as a whole, and how each role could be most musically enhanced by the supporting textures. The simple but exquisite theme is developed by Schubert in extraordinarily complex and subtle ways, yet it felt as though the ensemble was walking across a carpet of fantastic autumn colours without noticing what was underfoot.

In the straightforward and vigorous Allegro giusto Finale the balance was much better, though the piano was still often far too loud in forte passages. But the movement was played with a convincing gusto, and it was clear from the final applause that the audience had really appreciated the opportunity to hear a live performance of this much-loved work. It was good to know that the group would play the work again at St. Ninian’s Church in Karori two days later..

My colleague Rosemary Collier comments: From my seat three rows from the front downstairs, the imbalance was not so marked – there was more of  a salon-like distance between me and the performers, and it was probably an advantage not to be above the level of the piano.  Nevertheless, I did find that cello, bass and viola seemed to be somewhat in the background aurally, especially the latter two instruments.

Aroha Quartet fills the Futuna Chapel with impressionist and colouful music

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Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Blythe Press – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello)

Shostakovich: Two Pieces for String Quartet
The White Haired Girl by Yan Jinxuan, arranged for string quartet by Zhu Jian’er and Shi Yongkang
Debussy: String Quartet in G minor

Futuna Chapel, Friend Street, Karori

Sunday 3 November, 2pm

Prefatory note: The Aroha Quartet leave in December for their second tour to China where they will play in the spectacular new Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, and to Zhongshan. They will have with them works from six countries including China and New Zealand.

This initiative, the Sunday concert series at the Futuna Chapel, to make good use of an architectural gem that was saved from the attentions of developer/vandals a decade ago, began last year and shows every sign of survival and even flourishing. The disposition of seating is perhaps not ideal, and one’s normal expectation of the shape of a church needs a little adjustment: which part is the nave and which a transept or alcove? Seats/pews are placed at right-angles with the ‘sanctuary’ at the place of convergence. A slab-like ‘altar’ occupies most of the raised sanctuary which means musicians sit at floor level with impaired visibility from back rows.

But the sounds, which are actually the main thing in music after all, are clear and full.

The players had set us a little test. We all listened sympathetically to the first piece in the programme: the Chinese string quartet arrangement, presumably. My notes commented on the fact that even in the period of the Second World War as the Japanese were steadily devastating and slaughtering both soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilian people, there was little outward sign of a distinctive Chinese flavour, let alone anguish, in the rather gentle music; and the first episode ended with a long warm note on the viola.

But then a second part continued with spiky, pizzicato, satirical sounding, like a polka. Ah!!! I know this – it’s Shostakovich; they are playing his Two Pieces for String Quartet first.  The first piece is the elegy that Katerina was to sing in the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, lamenting her boring life; it came to the stage in 1934 with an infamous sequel. Though I’ve seen the opera three times over the years, I didn’t recognize it.  The second piece, a Polka from the 1930 ballet, The Age of Gold, composed before the evils of Stalinism had reveled themselves; it is a satire of the decadence of capitalism and Western politics. Shostakovich made the arrangement in 1931 for the Vuillaume Quartet (Vuillaume was a most famous, 19th century French luthier); long before Shostakovich had written his first string quartet.

So we came to The White Haired Girl. Haihong Liu introduced it and Robert Ibell took us through the musical motifs that mark the various episodes: a tale of a poor young girl, persecuted by the cruel landlord but eventually rescued by the Red Army which was fighting the Japanese invaders.

The White-Haired Girl (Bái Máo Nǚ) is a Chinese opera and ballet, the music by Yan Jinxuan; later it was adapted to ‘Beijing Opera’ and for a film. The first opera performance was in 1945; the film was made in 1950; the first Beijing Opera performance was in 1958 and the first ballet performance by Shanghai Dance Academy, in 1965.

I should really not have mistaken the first piece in the concert. We have reviewed it previously. Peter Mechen wrote a review of a performance at St Andrew’s in October 2010 and I reviewed one in June 2012 at Paekakariki. Accordingly, it was no surprise that the quartet handled it confidently, making no apology for its distinct European musical characteristics, while weaving the Chinese elements colourfully and idiomatically. The musical narrative is based on motifs representing episodes of the story: the north wind, the red ribbon, day turning to night, joining the Eighth Route Army (against the Japanese invaders) and so on. Unlike the typical western classical string quartet, the individual instruments seemed to be expected to draw attention to themselves without ostentation, and it allowed viola and cello, especially, to shine. Certain effects lent themselves predictably to a film sound-track: marked dynamic contrasts, tremolo effects for moments of alarm or terror, sudden fortissimo chords depicting violence.

Though it might sound a bit unsophisticated to some western ears, its success within the idiom and musical culture of China was clear, as was the comfortable manner of its performance.

At their Mulled Wine concert at Paekakariki last year the Aroha Quartet also played the Debussy quartet.  I would be less than honest if I pretended to claim that their performance here was better or worse than last year’s: I don’t remember as well as that. This was simply extremely comfortable and idiomatic, sounding at once spontaneous and thoroughly ingested.

Their dextrous dynamics always reflected the sense of the music; in the second movement long-breathed, summery violin strokes alternated with the lively rhythms generated by pizzicato. They players understood what Debussy meant by Andantino, doucement: it was almost breathless, quite still, with a beguiling melody launched on the viola and passed on to the others in turn, and became a kind of recitative, flowing absent-mindedly, without bar lines.

The fourth movement began very quietly, rather more modéré than that word might suggest, but it simply increased the delight as the mood livened a couple of minutes later, becoming warm and opulent.

 

Festival Singers and Cantoris – Choirs for all Seasons

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Festival Singers of Wellington and Cantoris Choir
Cloudburst – Celebrating the seasons

Musical Director: Brian O’Regan

Spring
Eric Whitacre – Alleluia
Brahms – Wie Lieblich sind deine wohnungen
John Tavener – The Lamb
John Rutter – For the Beauty of the Earth
Summer
King’s Singers –  I’m a train
Robert Applebaum – Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day
Moses Hogan – Elijah Rock
Morten Lauridsen – Sure on this Shining Night
Autumn
Joshua Shank  Autumn
Eric Whitacre – Cloudburst
Winter
Ralph Vaughan Williams – The Cloud Capp’d Towers
R. Thompson – Stopping by woods on a snowy evening
Brahms – Waldesnacht
Chris Artley – O Magnum Mysterium 

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

Friday, 1st November 2013

This concert was a joint performance between Cantoris Choir and Festival Singers of Wellington, both of whom are directed by Brian O’Regan. The programme was built around Eric Whitacre’s iconic work “Cloudburst” as part of a journey through the seasons that featured choral works from different ages and genres.

Opening the evening was Moses Hogan’s Elijah Rock, a riveting Negro spiritual that ventures almost into rap territory. It was an ambitious first choice, but was carried off with total panache and technical command by the combined choirs, who immediately engaged the audience with their enthusiasm and polish. The following Cloud Capp’d Towers of Ralph Vaughan Williams was a total stylistic contrast, beautifully rendered, again by the joint choirs. How canny of Brian O’Regan to choose this pair of opening numbers– two genres that are just about as far apart as can be, yet each finishing on the note of meeting one’s Maker. In the spiritual the singers literally hurtle through the Pearly Gates, shouting “Comin’ up Lawdy, I’m comin’ up Lord”, while in the latter the voices fade away into nothingness as “our little life is rounded with a sleep”. Masterful programming………

The Festival Singers then presented a bracket of three numbers by Rutter, Artley and Lauridsen. With loving phrasing, dynamics, and exemplary balance between the voices, they beautifully conveyed the great mystery of the manger scene and a sense of wonder at the beauties of earth and sky. This theme was rounded out by a combined choir rendition of Brahms’ – Waldesnacht (Woodland night), regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Romantic choral repertoire. Its nuances were sympathetically delivered to convey the profound sense of peace and tranquility that Nature can provide as a balm for weary limbs exhausted by the “insane anguish” of everyday life.

Eric Whitacre’s Cloudburst was the central piece in the programme, and rightly so. It involved both choirs, piano, percussion band, and the seven players of the Tinakori Hand Bell Choir. This is an exciting work which uses a wide variety of vocal and instrumental effects to convey all the sound sensations experienced in a cloudburst– everything from the whispering pitter-patter of the first gentle raindrops to the auditory assault of a torrential downpour, complete with thunder from the band. The vocal writing is very percussive and instrumental in places, and the singers gave it their all to great effect. They formed an excellent ensemble with the instrumentalists that resulted in a highly evocative performance.

The combined male voices next presented R.Thompson’s setting of Robert Frost’s 1922 poem Stopping by woods on a snowy evening. The pianist, Jonathan Berkhan, and choristers together captured most evocatively its magical imagery of the rider stopping between the woods and a frozen lake on the darkest evening of the year. The expressive harmonies were beautifully balanced, and the diction quite the clearest and cleanest of the entire evening. Bravo gentlemen!

Joshua Shank’s Autumn, sung by the combined choirs,  explores a wonderful metaphor where the falling leaves of autumn represent that final descent we all must make. The singers made the most of the expressive dissonances and showed beautiful control, especially in the final lines And yet there is One/ Who holds this falling/ in his hands/ With infinite softness.

 The jaunty King’s Singers’ number I’m a train was a dramatic contrast, with its characteristic clever vocal effects, rhythms and wordless train soundtrack puffing energetically along. The singers were obviously having a ball, and demonstrated yet again their great versatility in switching between widely different genres.

Cantoris presented the next two numbers by Applebaum and Tavener. The setting of Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet eschews any hint of the saccharine, reflecting rather the devastation and heartache of Applebaum who wrote it to mark his daughter’s untimely death. The sometimes raw a cappella harmonies express the dark side of this wonderful poem, and they were movingly rendered by the singers. Tavener’s work was given an equally beautiful reading which tellingly captured the wide-eyed delight of a child talking to the lamb in its Softest clothing, woolly, bright.

The choirs combined again for the final two numbers, the first being Brahms’ How lovely are thy dwelling places from his German Requiem. This was sung with a piano reduction for accompaniment, a format I had never heard before. The singing was entirely competent, but the amputation of the orchestra had a devastating effect on the performance. Never can it be said that Brahms was here composing a vocal work with orchestral accompaniment. The two elements are never conceived separately, but are part of an intimate relationship which can no more be split asunder than can a pair of dancers. I believe that the stature of this masterful work must be respected and its exquisite music left intact, even at the cost of its being omitted from programmes where an orchestra is not available.

Eric Whitacre’s Alleluia is a far cry from the usual finale romp that this title often suggests. It is rather a subdued, contemplative work set for choir with male and female soloists. Those voices floated poetically through the choristers who in turn beautifully shaped their own interweaving melodies. The whole effect was one of peace and calm, and serene conclusion.

Festival Singers and Cantoris  are exceptionally fortunate to have found a director of Brian O’Regan’s experience and competence. He produced an exemplary concert that gave obvious pleasure to singers and audience alike, and I trust that Wellington can look forward to plenty more in the future.

 

Owen Moriarty – challenging but rewarding guitar recital

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Owen Moriarty solo guitar recital
St. Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series

Carlos Rivera Whirler of the Dance(1970)
Schubert Lob der Thranen arr. Johann Kaspar Mertz (1797-1828)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Nocturnal Op.70
Manuel Ponce (1882-1948) Sonatina Meridional

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

Wednesday 30th October 2013.

This was a rare and welcome opportunity to hear classical guitarist Owen Moriarty in solo performance, as the majority of his Wellington concert appearances are in ensembles. To open the programme he chose two movements from Rivera’s suite Whirler of the Dance. The initial Evocation is a “solemn, personal prayer” (Rivera) whose ambience Moriarty expressed in a reverential and contemplative mood. The following Dance is a complete change, being based on vigorous African dance rhythms, and using tense contrasts between Pizzicato and Ordinario playing. Moriarty did justice to the whole gamut of expression embodied in the two selected movements, but they were not particularly easy listening. Their structure, especially that of the Evocation, was not easy to grasp, and at first listening their wandering tonalities never seemed to be quite adequately established.

The second item was a Schubert song Lob der Thranen (In Praise of Tears) arranged by Mertz, a C19th guitarist and composer.  Its melancholy mood, artistic melodic writing and subtle chromaticism were given a beautifully poetic reading, with a real sense of authenticity. This was enhanced by the smaller period guitar that Moriarty used for this number – apparently a fortuitous discovery in Alistair’s Music in Upper Cuba St!

2013 is the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, and the next item was his Nocturnal Op.70, the only work he wrote for the instrument, and now a bulwark of the classical guitar repertoire. It comprises eight short movements in which Britten uses as the main theme Dowland’s song “Come, heavy Sleep”. Each is a variation which develops a unique character, representing a different phase of sleep. It is a very evocative work which tellingly expresses the elusive and ambiguous sensations of human sleep – the melodies often incomplete, the tonalities barely defined, often with wide contrasts from one mood to the next. This is not a work that the listener can readily “grasp” as a musical experience, and that is doubtless its genius, given the theme and nature of its founding document.

The final work was Manuel Ponce’s Sonatina Meridional, written at the prompting of his friend Andres Segovia. It embodies a variety of Spanish idioms in the composer’s characteristic way, and comprises three movements: Campo (country), Copla (a popular Spanish song) and Fiesta (festival or party). The idioms were a little more accessible and the tonalities more familiar than in the other modern works played earlier: its two outer movements are vigorous and energetic, the central one a gentle contrast, with the character of each being clearly captured in this performance.

Moriarty gave some relaxed and interesting commentary about the works he had chosen, their context and background, and made one particularly interesting observation – that he preferred to avoid playing works that others frequently performed. It’s not hard to see why a creative and innovative musician like Owen Moriarty might feel this way, but the performer is only half the equation in a concert. Particularly in solo recitals, there needs to develop a close rapport between audience and player which is key to an enjoyable musical experience. That can be promoted by apposite commentary, but of equal importance is the programme selection. It is not an accident that even the most avant garde concerts often include at least one familiar and well loved work.

Wellington has enjoyed all too few guitar concerts till recent times, and players like Owen Moriarty and his various ensemble groups have done wonders in redressing the imbalance. But there is still a way to go in attracting a healthy following, and there is no shame in re-playing some of the great classics that most educated listeners would recognize. The aim of music making is surely to broaden the experience of listeners by leading them to discover a new area of musical enjoyment, but I suspect the content of this recital was somewhat uncompromising for many. The classical guitar repertoire is so rich that it deserves wider acceptance, and a little give-and-take in the selection of works can only assist that process.

That said, it was a privilege to be at this recital, and to have one’s mind prised open by the musicianship and technical command that Owen Moriarty brings to all his work. I hope there will be more opportunities in future to hear him in solo mode.

Intelligently constructed programme exquisitely sung by Lisette Wesseling

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

TGIF lunchtime recitals at the Cathedral
Lisette Wesseling – soprano, with Richard Apperley – organ and Michael Stewart – piano

Music by Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Glanville-Hicks, Finzi and Sondheim

Cathedral of Saint Paul

Friday 25 October, 12:45 pm

The Anglican Cathedral is now running two classes of Friday lunchtime recitals. The monthly organ recitals are ‘Great Music’ (even if they are played on the Choir or the Swell manual) and there are others, just called ‘brief recitals’, which are also often at the organ.

I’ve heard Lisette Wesseling several times over the years, though I seem not to have written reviews of the performances. As well as singing in the Cathedral Choir she has, I imagine among much else, sung solos in Bach’s B Minor Mass and a concert that included both Bach’s Magnificat in D and Jesu meine Freude.

Lisette is blind and you will find material on her website and other websites which also discuss what she feels is a much more troubling burden – stammering. Her degree in psychology (as well as music) no doubt helps to make her comfortable in openly exploring her difficulties and her continuing efforts to deal with the stammering; blindness is an affliction for which there are well understood ways by which a ‘normal’ life can be led. But look at the BSA website (www.stammering.org/stammeringblindness.html‎), where she writes in answer to the question which is more difficult: “The answer I give usually surprises people: stammering is much more difficult to live with than blindness.”

Last year, at the production of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, I was not amused at the depiction of Vašek as a figure of fun, inept and stammering. But that’s how librettist and composer conceive him: what should a director today do with the role? Much like directors’ dilemma with roles like Monostatos who was treated in 1791 by Da Ponte and Mozart very differently from the way he might be today.

Thus she reads both the notation and the words in braille as she sings; though it struck me that with the enhancement of other faculties that blindness develops, her memory would have made reading the score unnecessary.

Here is a bright, accurate, distinctive voice that was demonstrably at home in all the musical style that this short recital covered, from late baroque to Broadway musical. She began with two early 18th century pieces by Vivaldi and Handel. The programme leaflet gave no details of the pieces beyond the bare name of the song or aria.

Both the first pieces were accompanied beautifully by Richard Apperley at the chamber organ. The Vivaldi, the first movement of a sacred motet, Nulla in mundo pax sincera, RV 630 (“In this world there is no honest peace”) is a delightful aria in an almost dancing rhythm, light and high, seeming to be written for her kind of voice, and, as with so much Vivaldi, one is astonished that earlier generations ignored the huge quantity of his music that is so rich in melodic invention.

The same goes for the Handel  aria, Süsser Blumen Abaflocken, one of his German songs (Neun deutsche Arien), HWV204, called in Hyperion’s CD note, “a sensual evocation of the scent of Amber flowers, in which the middle section describing the soul soaring heavenwards bears a resemblance to Cleopatra’s ‘Piangerò’ from Giulio Cesare”. Lisette’s high notes truly relished the range she was called on to inhabit, and I loved the cathedral’s long echo here, giving me more of the voice than she was actually producing.

Mozart’s Idomeneo is no doubt more familiar to opera-lovers than to those who may have come across the previous two songs. ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ (‘Pleasant Zephyrus’), sung by Ilia in Act III. This too revealed a happy, summery atmosphere as Ilia, the daughter of Priam, the defeated King of Troy, sends her love to Idamante, son of Idomeneo the King of Crete. It was yet another song brimming with hope and joy which Lisette obviously relishes and performs in a voice coloured with happiness. The accompaniment here was by Michael Stewart at the piano.

Frühlinsglaube, Schubert’s setting of a harmless lyric by Ludwig Uhland, is also filled with the delights of Spring (‘Faith [or belief] in spring’), one of the best-known, happiest, most guileless songs.  Here her voice floated easily, revealing an instinctive affinity with the Lieder genre.

Next was a song by Gerald Finzi: ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As You Like It. This was perhaps the only song in the programme that suffered a little from the acoustic, calling for faster speed and given more to harmonic variety which a reverberant acoustic tends to muddy.

But it provided a nice link with the next song, in imitative Tudor/Stuart style.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) was one of Australia’s earliest woman composers (along with Margaret Sutherland and Miriam Hyde) and her music has found its way into the mainstream of Australian music. Her music is accomplished and attractive, demonstrating an approach that owes much more to contemporary European models than to anything that might suggest Australia.  You can find this song on You-Tube: ‘Come Sleep’ is a setting of a poem by playwright John Fletcher (of ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’, and a collaborator with Shakespeare in Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen) and the setting suggests the style of the Tudor/Stuart composers.

Finally, a song from one of Stephen Sondheim’s most popular works, Into the Woods, which inter-twines Grimm fairy stories. ‘No one is alone’ presents a comforting message along the obvious lines, at the end of the musical. There’s a gentle swing as the melody moves easily in short phrases which Lisette sings with all the clear unpretentiousness that is Sondheim’s secret.

This series of concerts hasn’t yet taken off in terms of audience support. The Cathedral does not have quite the convenience and welcoming atmosphere that St Andrew’s does.

But we should hope that the attention given to the series over the years by Middle C might eventually persuade Wellingtonians whose Fridays weigh heavily on their spirits that here is the answer.

 

String students from the School of Music gain public performance experience

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Undergraduate string students of the New Zealand School of Music:

Music by Bach, Beethoven and Shostakovich

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 23 October, 12:15 pm  

Even when great music is not played by top musicians with immaculate technical skill, it can be warmly delightful.

Regulars who enjoy Wellington’s various free (or nearly free) lunchtime concerts are not simply those who can’t tell the difference between the good and nearly good. They just love the music. This was one of the occasions when almost all the playing was both technically accomplished and, more importantly, played with love and understanding.

Caitlin Morris opened with the Prelude to Bach’s First Cello Suite. Her playing tended to lengthening of certain notes to a slightly exaggerated degree, but her handling of dynamics was careful and sensitive to the inner spirit of the music.

Violist Aidan Verity played an adaptation for her instrument of the Allemande and Courante from the Fourth Cello Suite, in E flat. Not quite as well mastered (there was a wee stumble in passing from the one movement to the next which clearly affected her confidence), she made a convincing case for the work’s performance on the viola, and her programme note points to a recent scholarly view that Bach may have been writing for the slightly smaller violoncello da spalla.

Most impressive, perhaps of the three solo performances was Julian Baker’s playing of Sarabande and Gigue from Bach’s solo Violin Partita in D minor. The Sarabande was spacious and well paced though some of the rhythmic ornaments might not have been handled with perfect elegance, but the Gigue was confident and fast, impressing with the confidence with which it maintained its speed, and managing very well the ticklish decorative rhythms.

The two other items involved more than one player. Beethoven’s Romances are not, I suspect, as familiar today as once they were. (My early acquaintance with the F major Romance, Op 50, may not have been typical. I indulge a reminiscence…  In my upper sixth year (now year 13) year I had an August holiday job with the late and lamented Wellington Competitions (1970s R.I.P.), part assistant stage managing and part assisting the adjudicator in the gallery of the old, upstairs Concert Chamber of the pre-rearranged Town Hall. He was John Longmire, minor English composer and pianist, and friend and biographer of John Ireland. This Romance was performed more than once by competing violinists and I was in love with it.  Anyway…)

Violinist Alina Junc and pianist Choong Park did a charming job with it, occasional slips in the violin’s handling of ornaments and intonation notwithstanding. The pianist maintained her partnership in sympathy with the violin; it was not altogether clear to me why the slightly enigmatic end missed its mark, but let me hope that this performance might encourage its resuscitation in general affection.

The last movement, Allegretto, of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio, Op 67, was played by Junc and Park together with cellist Xialing. As other performers had done, Alina spoke helpfully about the piece before starting with the staccato and pizzicato gestures, sensitively and confidently.  It became a highly impressive demonstration of the three players’ grasp of the work’s background and inspiration, the lamenting Slavic melody becoming a powerful climax expressing pain and grief.  The audience were in no doubt that they were hearing a performance of great conviction and power, and the trio were loudly applauded.

 

Momentous first Wellington concert by 40-year-old Tallis Scholars

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tallis Scholars conducted by Peter Phillips

Tallis: Loquebantur variis linguis; Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli; Allegri: Miserere; Arvo Pärt: Nunc dimittis; John Tavener: The Lamb; Byrd: Ave verum corpus and Laudibus in sanctis; Tallis: Spem in alium (with 30 local singers)

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Monday 21 October, 7:30 pm

Foreword
Some interesting facts have emerged with the first visit to New Zealand in the forty years of the Tallis Scholars’ existence. Even though director Peter Phillips was married in Wellington (at Old St Paul’s as he told Eva Radich on RNZ Concert’s Upbeat programme on Monday), as a result of his friendship with distinguished Wellington musicologist John M Thomson, the choir never visited New Zealand. Yet this will be its seventh visit to Australia and it has toured Japan 14 times. How can we manage these things better?

New Zealand has a particularly strong choral tradition and its youth choirs have toured with great success, winning in international competitions. But it seems to be no one’s brief to get overseas choirs or vocal ensembles here. The same is true for orchestras large and small, unless they initiate a tour themselves. The New Zealand International Arts Festival, in its great early years, has been almost the only body to fulfil this role (recall the Hilliard Ensemble and I Musici, in recent years).

Evidently, this tour by the Tallis Scholars was inspired by John Rosser, director of Auckland’s Viva Voce choir, and was brought to fruition through Chamber Music New Zealand in partnership with the New Zealand Choral Federation and support from the Deane Endowment Trust. CMNZ has from its beginnings in the late 1940s collaborated with its sister Australian chamber music organization to get world-class chamber groups here. But there has been no comparable organization whose concern is to bring choirs, or even individual singers here.

The task of gathering thirty additional voices and rehearsing them for the performance of Tallis’s Spem in alium was in the hands of John Rosser, Karen Grylls and Timothy Noon.

In the good old days the NZSO used not only to bring its soloists to play with the orchestra, but saw to it that they gave solo recitals where they could be fitted in to the orchestra’s schedules. That, sadly, seems to have stopped: no doubt they don’t pass the cost/benefit test, now that price rather than value is the criterion. (One of the enlightened measures of the former communist regimes was the maintenance of a state organisation to manage cultural visits in both directions, even though usually with a heavy political hand).

Is it too much to hope that, since private initiative is not working, such a body, arms-length from, say, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, might be set up to perform this important role? Or to encourage the Choral Federation to undertake these activities with the promise of Creative New Zealand grants such as provided to Chamber Music New Zealand?

A comment from Chamber Music New Zealand
After sending this piece to CMNZ, Chief Executive Euan Murdoch has replied, enlarging on the extent to which they already promote singers and vocal ensembles. We confess, while recalling the performances by each of the named groups and singers, that we had not put the picture together, as Euan has now done, pointing out the way CMNZ has been casting its net more widely in recent years.

Here is Euan Murdoch’s comment: 

“Regarding your comments about a CMNZ-type organisation to tour singers and vocal ensembles, it’s not really necessary. That’s what we already do. If we had more resources, we’d do more! I am a firm believer that chamber music encompasses instrumental and vocal ensembles. That’s why over the last five years or so we’ve toured The Song Company twice, Voices NZ chamber choir, Jonathan Lemalu, the Pierards, Jenny Wollerman and Anna Leese. Many of these artists have been supported by the Deane Endowment Trust who share our vision for showcasing the best NZ has to offer alongside the best that the world has to offer. The 40-part motet project with the NZCF was a prime example of this.”  

The Concert
The Cathedral of Saint Paul was sold out for this second concert in the New Zealand tour: Christchurch on Saturday, Auckland and Napier in the following days. I had a seat in the Choir gallery above the west door and it was a splendid position both visually and aurally.

It was a very well thought-out programme: three of the best-known renaissance choral pieces and other pieces that were sung so clearly and dramatically that the audience was no less engrossed and enraptured by the less familiar. The first sounds of Tallis’s Loquebantur variis linguis, (‘The Apostles spoke in many languages’) voices weaving polyphony, expanding in the long echo of the cathedral, were awesome. Though there were only ten voices, and one focused at times on individuals even when many were singing, the combined effect was balanced, in beautiful accord and giving an impression of a strong and weighty choir of much greater size.

Palestrina’s great Missa Papae Marcelli (dedicated to Pope Marcellus II who reigned for a mere three weeks in 1555) was a marvellous study in the refinement of choral writing; without overstatement, each part of the mass was characterized with subtle attention to the sense of the text. A tenor opened the Gloria with its first exclamatory words to be echoed by the full choir; understated dynamic shifts kept the ears and mind alert to what was going on. The ‘Qui tollis’ verses were a contrast (though the words were fairly clear even when the whole choir was singing energetically, it might have been helpful for those not familiar with the Catholic liturgy, especially in Latin, for the drift of the text to have been summarized in the programme notes), soft and prayerful, words enunciated with clarity, and ending with richly textured male voices.

Such emotional expressiveness kept the liturgical drama alive, especially in the Credo where the words ‘Crucifixus est’, were illustrated poignantly in slow and lamenting phrases. Voices inhabited a disembodied, airy space, less varied dynamics and with legato lines in the Sanctus. In contrast, hushed women’s voices brought an ardent quality to the blessing expressed in the Benedictus.

Finally, in the Agnus Dei, gentleness pervaded, leading to full polyphonic richness in the near ecstatic tone of the sustained harmonies that ends the movement, somewhat echoed in the repeat that served to enrich the whole experience.

After the interval Allegri’s Miserere offered an interesting disposition: a solo tenor in the pulpit, four singers at the rear of the sanctuary and the other five at the front of the choir stalls. Even at the distance I was from the singers, the acoustic contrasts so presented seemed to add to the spiritual significance of the piece. The phrases of the high soprano that seem to yearn heavenward as it reaches top C, had a singular intensity that was as moving to a non-believer as to a traditional worshipper.

There followed a pair of contemporary pieces: Arvo Pärt’s Nunc dimittis, (‘Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine’, or ‘Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, Lord’) written to sound well in an acoustic such as this, was expressed initially in phrases of small range, spiritual, but soon intensified with some urgent exclamations at triple forte in more complex harmonies.

John Tavener’s The Lamb, his setting of the Blake poem, was a good companion piece, from a composer commonly linked to Pärt by the title ‘holy minimalist’. Women’s voices opened in unison singing and then in piquant harmony; men’s voices join half way through, bringing the scene down to earth somewhat, with its steady line of undulating crotchets: one of his most popular and delightful works, this exquisite singing was a shift to a beautiful pastoral view of religious belief.

Two short motets by William Byrd (Tallis’s pupil) brought us back to the choir’s home ground; the Ave verum corpus (‘Hail, true body’ [of Christ]) uses the voices in alternating phrases to create a peaceful interlude, a genre known as a ‘gradual’, between parts of the Ordinary of the Mass. Dynamics rose and fell, rarely departing from the steady four-part writing throughout.

Laudibus in sanctis Dominum celebrate supremum (to give the first line in full; it’s a paraphrase of Psalm 150, ‘Praise the Lord’ or, to connect with familiar Latin versions, ‘Laudate Dominum’). More upbeat than the previous piece, the ensemble, starting with sopranos, and adding altos, tenors and basses one by one, sang with a certain grandeur and joyousness as conveyed in the repeated little five-note up-and-down motif, and making much of the complex rhythms.

The Forty-part Motet
The singers went off so that arrangements could be made for the arrival of the thirty additional voices to sing Tallis’s 40-part motet, Spem in alium (or in full, ‘Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te’ = ‘I have never put hope in other than you’).  Peter Phillips had told Eva Radich about the hazards of having to rely in the countries they visit on extra singers having been well coached, confessing to several minor catastrophes over the years. But he’d said he had no misgivings here, and indeed, apart from some quite expected a lack of complete clarity of diction, nothing went wrong. Here, much more than usual rests on the conductor in giving cues and keeping things in line; his task was relatively free of stress.

My first hearing of this, as well as, for example, the Missa Papae Marcelli, was from The Tudor Consort under Simon Ravens, whose inspiration for establishing his choir, which still flourishes, was undoubtedly the Tallis Scholars. At their concert in March 1992, I think in the context of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, it was in this cathedral, also jam-packed, the choir was driven to sing the entire work a second time as encore. It remains a moving and vivid memory.

(An aside: you’ll be fascinated to look at The Tudor Consort’s website which lists a complete archive of their performances since 1986).

I think I have heard at least one other performance in the intervening years but I cannot trace the choir or the time.

For the present Wellington generation however, Spem in alium became familiar to hundreds through the audio display at the City Art Gallery a few years ago when 40 speakers were arranged in a circle, each carrying one voice, though with slightly recessed sounds of all the others within range.

In addition to those performances, Wellington has been fortunate in having a sufficiently big population of knowledgeable music lovers to maintain several choirs that have made all the important renaissance music familiar to us.

So this audience knew what they were going to hear and were suitably enraptured. They clapped and stood, refusing to leave till the choir returned for a third time and repeated the last phase of the piece (from bar 104). Searching afterwards for somewhere to have a drink, at the only watering hole open nearby, Rydges Hotel, I ran into several people who’d been there; recognizing each other by programme in hand: all sharing Cloud Nine. This momentous experience was perhaps the most memorable musical event of the year.