A solo tour-de-force from violinist Monique Lapins

Posted on by Steven Sedley

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series
MONIQUE LAPINS (solo violin)
A concert for solo violin – music by Georg Philipp Telemann,
Erwin Schulhoff, and Jacob Ter Veldhuis (a.k.a. Jacob T.V.)

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace Church

Wednesday, 8th June 2022

I left this concert on a high, and started composing my notes and comments on the way home in the bus!

One violin, one solitary violinist at the centre of the stage, and a program of music largely unfamiliar to concert audiences; this promised to be an exceptional musical experience. Monique Lapins is a very versatile musician, a member of the NZ String Quartet, of the Ghost Trio with Gabriela Glapska (piano) and Ken Ichinose (cello) and, of the contemporary group, Ensemble Gô. She presented a programme that ranged from the first half of the eighteenth century to the 21st century – all on just four strings!

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1761)
Fantasias for solo Violin – No. 1 in B-flat TWV 40.14 / No.6 in E Minor TWV 40.19 / No. 7 in E-flat Major  TWV 40.20

Telemann, a contemporary of JS Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, was a self-taught and immensely prolific composer. He wrote operas, church music (cantatas and oratorios), orchestral and chamber music, keyboard and other instrumental music (both concertos and works for various solo instruments). Among these were 12 Fantasias for solo violin.

The great violin makers of the age, Nicola Amati and Stradivari in Italy, and Jacob Stainer and the Klotz family in Germany, greatly exploded the potential of the simple fiddle. These Fantasias, like Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas for Solo Violin should be seen in this light, that complex polyphonic music can  be produced, played on a simple instrument with only four strings.

These works, based on elaborations of simple dance tunes and rhythms evolve into major musical statements, involving technically challenging double-stopping and rapid, spectacular ornamentation. Monique Lapins played these with a clear tone that easily filled the hall – she articulated each phrase distinctly so that they each became part of a musical narrative. She played with ease, as if these complex dance fragments had come to her spontaneously.

Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942)
Sonata for Solo Violin (1927)

Schulhoff was a significant Czech composer from the post-World War One years, who experimented with the new styles of music which emerged in the wake of the cataclysm of the war. This Sonata opened with a fast, manic first movement, followed by a slower movement that was tinged with sadness and nostalgia. Then came a scherzo with folksy rhythms, and finally a movement made up of more barbarous sounds of a kind the composer intended would shock the status quo.

The whole Sonata, but particularly the last two movements evoked Bartok’s use of Hungarian peasant songs and dances, but Schulhoff also employed tone rows, the result of the influence of Schoenberg and his school. It is a fiendishly difficult piece, seldom heard; and yet an important work from the 20th Century’s violin repertoire.

Jacob Ter Veldhuis – a.k.a. Jacob T.V. (b.1951)
The Garden of Love, for violin and soundtrack (2022)

Another war, with further destruction of civilisation, and here was another composer of this later time, exploring what others such as Steve Reich were doing with their music. The Garden of Love is a poem by William Blake, whose words here are uttered in sound-bytes, together with others from voices, oboes, harpsichord, bird-song and electronic sound. The violin is here in dialogue with the machine producing these sounds. It must have been incredibly difficult to keep this dialogue going in a convincing manner, but to the great credit of Monique Lapins she did this, so that the audience was at first puzzled and bewildered, but responded to the challenge by the end.

This was an amazing and unique concert, quite unlike other violin recitals. It’s a great pity that Radio NZ’s Concert Programme no longer records concerts like this. There was a time when people could share such musical experiences no matter where they lived, anywhere from Kaitaia to the Bluff., with those who were fortunate enough to live in the main centres Perhaps with the shakeup of Radio NZ and TVNZ room will be found for those whose interests go beyond the latest popular tunes, nostalgia and selected news handouts, even if there is no money in it and no-one makes a profit. There is value in expanding and challenging the interests and cultural horizons of people, citizens, taxpayers, no matter where they live.

Two centuries of Spanish keyboard music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Lorelle McNaughton (piano)
PIANO MUSIC FROM SPAIN

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Sunday, 29 May 2022

Solo piano concerts are rare these days, apart from the occasional lunch time recitals, and Wellington Chamber Music should be complimented on featuring this concert. Lorelle McNaughton studied in Spain with  renowned Spanish pianists and is something of a specialist in performing Spanish music. She has toured Australia and New Zealand with a programme of Spanish piano works and this concert is part of a nationwide tour taking her to many centres right through the country. She played a broad range of Spanish keyboard music from Padre Soler’s two sonatas written in the mid-1700s to Mompou’s little dance of 1941

Padre Soler (1729-1783)

Sonata in D minor R24

Sonata in D-flat R88

Although Soler composed works of many different genre, concertos, pieces for organ, for string, for choirs, he is now mainly remembered for his around 150 keyboard sonatas. They were probably influenced by Scarlatti, who was a generation older, but Soler’s sonatas are more varied in form, and some longer. Playing music written for harpsichord presents special problems for a pianist. Harpsichords are more even in tone, there are no crescendos, no sustained notes, so the phrasing has to stand for these qualities. McNaughton’s meticulous attention paid to the notes made for a clarity that served the music well.

Enrique Granados (1867-1916)

21 Danzas españas Op. 37

          i.”Galante”

          ii.“Rondella aragonesa”

Next came the music of Granados, whose “Andaluza” Spanish Dance No. 5 from this set is widely known, McNaughton, to her credit, instead letting us enjoy two of the lesser-known dances, each of which capture the strong rhythmic character of Spanish music. They have lovely lyrical interludes, but also call for fiery temperamental reading to reflect the abandon of the dance. ‘Galante’ is a type of Bolero dance, gallant and flirtatious, ‘Rondella aragonesa’, is an Aragonese folk dance with wild beat, interspersed by a song-like lyrical passage.

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909)

Book III of Iberia (1907)

  1. El Albaicin

       ii El polo

       iii. Lavapiés

Iberia is one of the masterpieces of the impressionist piano repertoire. It is one of the most challenging works for the piano. This was the first of two groups of pieces performed by McNaughton from the work, each of these three pieces evoking a Spanish city, its festival or song and dance. ‘El Albaicin’ is the name of a gypsy quarter in Granada, known for its singing, flamenco dancing and virtuoso skills on the guitar, tambourine and castanet, realised here by McNaughton with suitable vigour, colour and atmosphere. ‘El polo’ is a sorrowful, melancholic Andalusian song and dance, the pianist bringing a darker, more inward and sombre character overall to the music. Lavapiés is the  boisterous music of an inn in a popular district of Madrid.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Cuatro Piezas Españolas (1909)

  1. “Aragonesa”
  2. “Cubana”
  3. “Montañesa”
  4. “Andaluza”

Falla said that he was trying to express through music the soul and atmosphere of each of these regions of Spain drawing on popular songs and rhythms. ‘Aragonesa’ is in the style of jota, here launched confidently and expansively by McNaughton, ‘Cubana’ here was at first silkier, more suggestive and then playful under McNaughton’s fingers, in the guajiro and zapateado dances,  ‘Montañesa’ quotes from Asturian and Mountain songs, and ‘Andaluza’ uses aspects of popular flamenco forms. Underlying all this could be heard a suggestion of subtle guitar music.

Frederico Mompou (1893-1987)

Canciones y Danzas No. 1 (1921) and No. 6 (1941)

Mompou is best known a a miniaturist, writing short, delicate improvisatory music. He uses traditional Catalan melodies and other Spanish music. These two pieces seemed in McNaughton’s hands like gentle, captivating salon music, spontaneous, straight from the heart.

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909)

Book IV of Iberia

  1. Malaga
  2. Jerez
  3. Eritaña

Like Book III these pieces capture the music of traditional regional Spanish dances. Malaga evokes the style of  malageña (though McNaughton doesn’t have quite the fluency and suppleness of Alicia de Larrocha, here, she negotiates the terrain steadily and purposefully) Jerez is in the style of a melancholic introspective gypsy dance (a beautiful, lovingly-nuanced reading, here), and Eritaña comes from the name of a popular inn on the outskirts of Seville, noted for its colorful flamenco performances.

It was an afternoon of colorful, and technically challenging music. Lorella McNaughton took her audience on a tour of Spanish piano music, from the mid eighteenth to the mid twentieth   century. Her restrained performance, with meticulous attention to the notes, made this an interesting, enjoyable concert.

 

“Packed (and) buzzing” audience acclaim Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s 50th Anniversary Concert

Posted on by Rebecca Stanton

Wellington Chamber Orchestra
Rachel Hyde (conductor)
The 50th Anniversary Concert

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Festive Overture Op.96
GARETH FARR Terra Incognita (2008)
GUSTAV HOLST – The Planets  Op.32

Alan Gibbs Centre, Wellington College

Saturday 28th May, 2022

The Alan Gibbs Centre was packed to the gills, and buzzing with celebratory vibes, for this ambitious concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the WCO. The stage as well was crowded and festive, with past members of the Orchestra making a return to its ranks for this gala programme. In keeping with the mood and the occasion, the programme opened with Shostakovich’s Festive Overture (Op. 96). Written in 1954 for the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution, this party of a piece contains no hint of the shadows and ironies that mark the composer’s more contemplative works – likely because he was given no time to contemplate it: the overture was commissioned at the last minute by the Bolshoi Theatre and had to be ready in three days, with couriers whisking each freshly-completed page off to the theatre to be copied for parts.  The piece opens with an arresting fanfare whose grandeur was slightly blunted by the fact that two of the WCO’s brass players had had to be replaced that very morning due to untimely Covid infections. Here and elsewhere, the brass section struggled heroically on, but with a certain lack of cohesion that reflected the ad-hoc nature of the ensemble. Elsewhere, the effects of Covid (which disrupted the personnel, rehearsal schedule, and timing of the concert itself) were felt more occasionally, with the most supple and resilient ensemble playing coming from the woodwinds.  Rachel Hyde’s crisp, clear conducting was a pleasure to watch, and yielded its best results in the pizzicato section of the work, where a crackling energy and rhythm drove the music forward.

Next up was Gareth Farr’s Terra Incognita (2008), written after a sojourn in Antarctica. Its libretto, by Paul Horan, incorporates excerpts from the diaries of Robert Falcon Scott and Frank Debenham (a scientist with Scott’s expedition), as well as from Tennyson’s Ulysses (Scott’s favourite poem, apparently) and Horan’s own “poetic” reflections on the breaking up of the Larsen B ice shelf. The mood thus runs the gamut from awestruck (“This earth was never ours”) to heroic (“Come, my friends….smite/The sounding furrows”) to elegiac (“Goodbye Larsen B”), as the ice first dwarfs, then kills men, only to be ultimately killed by them. Choristers made up from many Wellington choirs, including The Glamaphones, Cantoris, Nota Bene, Orpheus and others, singing in long static phrases evoked a frozen landscape and acted as a kind of Greek chorus of the “transient strangers” referenced by Debenham, “stunned and stunted” by the mystique of the ice. The foreground characters – Scott, Debenham, and the poems’ lyric speakers – were voiced by Samuel McKeever in a deep, imposing bass.  The flat acoustics of the Gibbs Center, especially when filled with people bundled up in winter layers, did the singers no favours, alas. Nonetheless McKeever’s “Great God! This is an awful place” in the sixth movement – drawn from Scott’s diary – penetrated to the back of the hall, a grim highlight of the sung text.

The piece followed the overall form of a song cycle, without pauses between movements, the textures in the orchestra reflecting and co-creating the mood of each text. A hushed opening movement, “This earth was never ours,” began with glass chimes over tremulous (and slightly out of tune) pianissimo strings, a stylised evocation of cold and cracking ice, gradually joined by the woodwinds and then by the choir on its long, “frozen” chords. This gave way to the contrasting second movement, “Come, my friends,” in which the heroic words of Ulysses, sung by McKeever, were chased about by striving, strenuously rhythmic accompaniment from the orchestra, led by the strings. This in turn yielded to another “frozen” choral movement, “I never knew you” (to an original text by Horan), followed by a very cinematic setting of text from Scott’s diary, “Night light,” which McKeever managed to make genuinely songlike. The fifth movement, “Quiet land,” was heralded (counterintuitively) by a snare drum, with the woodwinds and percussion underpinning a restless setting of Debenham’s text (“Ever moving…ceaselessly circling”), joined by the strings and choir at its climax (“And above all, the dream is here”). A slow, foreboding sixth movement (“Eternal Silence”) juxtaposed Scott’s anguished words with a hushed but strenuous discord in the orchestra and choir, produced by asking each chorister to sing their highest comfortable note. If the mood here recalled Penderecki’s famous Threnody, the seventh and final movement, “Goodbye Larsen B” – elegiac in tone, with lush harmonies in the orchestra – was closer to Górecki. The circular structure that often distinguishes Farr’s works was evident here only in the return of the glass chimes, which seemed slightly incongruous given the narrative of the work, documenting the destruction of the icy wilderness they had evoked at the start. McKeever’s diction, excellent throughout, made it impossible to hide from the rather pedestrian character of the lyrics in this final song. His heroic performance was warmly applauded.

After an intermission, players and audience returned for Holst’s Planets. Covid notwithstanding, the number of musicians onstage amply bore out this work’s generic label, “Suite for Large Orchestra.”  As Holst fans know, the piece’s seven movements proceed in astrological rather than astronomical order: Mars first, then Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Earth doesn’t get a look-in, but was, one supposes, indirectly represented by Farr’s Terra Incognita in the first half.) “Mars, the Bringer of War,” a regulation banger in 5/4 time, was beautifully shaped by Rachel Hyde’s eloquent conducting and went with a swing. In contrast, “Venus, the Bringer of Peace” sounded initially uncertain, with some hesitant entrances and wobbly tuning. As sometimes happens, a collective loss of confidence seemed to set in, infecting each soloist in turn. On the other hand, in tutti passages, especially when playing driving rhythms or conveying a sense of sweeping passion, the orchestra made a magnificently lustrous sound. One might say that they felt more at home in war than in peace….a tempting metaphor for human nature.

“Mercury, the Winged Messenger” featured some lovely woodwind duets and an ethereal “celesta” contribution from the always excellent Heather Easting on an electric keyboard which doubled as the (sadly inaudible against a full orchestra playing ffff) “organ” later on. These were the moments where the triple subdivision of the beat in this movement felt most comfortable; elsewhere, the players could perhaps have used more help in navigating it. The problem of keeping stringed instruments in tune in an increasingly warm and humid hall also asserted itself here; a pause between movements to re-tune didn’t seem to help much.  However, the alternately rollicking and majestic “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” with its maestoso middle section featuring the famous tune later adapted into “I Vow to Thee, My Country,” went with a bang, followed by the colder and more forbidding “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” with its relentless “tick-tock” theme and (slightly unsteady) plodding brass. “Uranus, the Magician” is built on a tension between the rather portentous four-note theme in the brass (later picked up by other instruments) and the mischievous, stomping dance led by a trio of bassoons. It feels rather like a circus parade until the sudden drop in tempo and dynamic fatally interrupts it, preparing the ground for the final movement, “Neptune, the Mystic.”  Some lovely playing from the woodwinds opened this disorienting, genuinely mystical movement, which closed on a hidden chorus of treble voices (supplied by the sopranos and altos of the choir seen earlier in Terra Incognita). 

In a nice touch from a historical perspective, the chorus was conducted by Robert Oliver, not only a veteran singer and choral conductor himself but also the inaugural conductor (1972-74) of the WCO itself.  This 50th anniversary concert thus concluded, fittingly, with two conductors, bookends as it were to the orchestra’s leadership from its earliest beginnings to the present.  This poetic conclusion was not lost on the enthusiastic audience, which rose to its feet to applaud the orchestra as much for its performance of this epic programme as for its half-century of service to the Wellington music scene. A good time having been had by all, it remained only to secure a cup of tea and congratulate the performers.  Felicitations to the WCO on its persistence through five decades of music and two years of Covid to bring this programme to us all.

 

Late afternoon sunlight

Posted on by Anne French

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Aroha String Quartet with Rachel Vernon (clarinet)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Sunday, 1 May 2022

This was the first concert of a new season for Wellington Chamber Music, and the organisers must have been anxious. The pandemic has changed audiences and the business of giving concerts. Would they come?

They needn’t have worried. St Andrew’s was pleasantly full for this delightful concert, featuring Rachel Vernon on clarinet.

The Aroha Quartet have been regular performers here over the years – they were founded in 2004 – and they have their own following. But the pandemic has worked some changes on the Quartet, too.  Concerts were cancelled in 2020 and again in 2021, and cellist Robert Ibell had to take time off after an injury last year. Today Anne Loeser was guesting as second violin, although you would never have suspected, such was the rapport between the players.

Two of the works in today’s programme were familiar: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K 581, and Brahms’s great Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Opus 115. Sandwiched in between these chamber classics was a mysterious little work by Astor Piazzolla, called Oblivion. What could it be?

Mozart’s Quintet of 1789 is a delightful work. Mozart took the clarinet seriously, and helped to establish the instrument as a member of the orchestral woodwind section. He wrote this quintet for the clarinetist Anton Stadler, and subsequently referred to it as the ‘Stadler Quartet’. Stadler played it on the bassett clarinet, which has four additional low notes compared with a standard clarinet. These days the work is usually performed on the clarinet in A flat (and no one is quite sure where those low notes were used, as Mozart’s original manuscripts have never been found).

From the opening phrase of the first movement, the group established their characteristically warm sound, incorporating the deep sonority of the clarinet’s first entry. The balance was beautiful and the phrasing graceful. The cello’s pizzicato passage with the lyrical first violin above set the style for the work: refined, stylistic, beautiful.  The second Larghetto movement unfurls long, long phrases from the clarinet over muted strings. The clarinet is always moving over the more static string passages. There was lyrical playing from first violinist Haihong Liu.

The third movement, Menuetto, is rhythmic and dance-like, with a lovely aria from the clarinet. The middle section, two trios, features some thrilling clarinet playing, first very low, then high, as though to show off what the instrument is capable of. (After all, it wasn’t invented until 1788, the year before Mozart wrote this quintet.) The fourth movement is a theme and variations, which sometimes buried the clarinet in the string texture. There are some fast passages in which the strings chase each other, with the clarinet maintaining a calm presence over the top.

Next came the Piazzolla work. This was fantastic. It began life as film music, written for a film called Enrico IV, which was itself based on the play by Pirandello. But such is the beauty of the writing that the work is often performed as a concert piece, either for bandoneon (as in the film) or adapted for other instruments, including the clarinet, as here. There’s a famous version for string orchestra with Gidon Kremer on violin, another for solo guitar, and even one for two cellos and ice-skater. For me, knowing nothing of these, the string quartet and clarinet version was completely perfect, with loss, longing, and resignation balanced between the voices.

The film is described as a tragicomedy, but tragedy is to the fore in Oblivion. It opens with a weighty and complex sadness, with the clarinet shimmering in and up the scale, first lyrical, then grave. The string writing is passionate, the clarinet calming, a clear true voice. Finally, the cello somehow turns into a bandoneon, with low throbbing from the clarinet before it disappears into a trill. It is a short work. As soon as it had finished, I wanted to hear it again.

If you want to get a sense of this small perfect work, by all means listen to it on YouTube, but you will not experience the beauty of Rachel Vernon’s playing, or the sympathetic accompaniment of the Aroha Quartet.

The last work on the programme was Brahms’s Quintet in B minor for clarinet and string quartet. Like Mozart, Brahms was moved to write a quintet because of the playing of a virtuoso clarinettist. In 1890, no sooner had he announced that he had retired from composing than he heard the playing of Richard Mühlfeld, and promptly de-retired.

This is another well-known and beloved work. For me it shimmers with late afternoon sunlight. That is not to say it lacks drama. There is a moment of passionate agitation in the first movement, yet the darkness is followed by golden light. The second movement is slow and sad, as though the performers are walking, carrying a great weight. The clarinet sings of loss, but also beauty. The third pastorale movement, with its rushing, scurrying strings, allows the clarinet to sing. The fourth movement is a set of variations. It finishes by using the material from the first movement, returning to us the golden shafts of sunlight, falling between the trees. A short duet between clarinet and viola over pizzicato cello, and then a gentle falling into silence.

There are three more performances of this programme. The ones in Rangiora and Thames are probably too far, but if you get a chance to go to Wanganui for their concert on 13 September, take it. A gorgeous first concert to open Wellington Chamber Music’s 2022 season.

Wellington Youth Orchestra – an appealing programme delivered with rich orchestral sound

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:
ELGAR – Cockaigne Overture  (In London Town) Op. 40
BEETHOVEN – Romance for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in G Major Op.40
DVORAK – Symphony No. 8 in G Major Op.88

Soloist: Lucas Baker (violin)
Wellington Youth Orchestra
Mark Carter (conductor)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Saturday, 30th April, 2022

This was a delightful program of very appealing music, appropriate for the young musicians of the Wellington Youth Orchestra. The orchestra has grown in size since I last reviewed their concert in 2019, when they were short of strings. This time there were 26 violins, 5 violas, 6 cellos, 2 basses, and a full complement of winds, brass and percussion, and they produced a rich orchestral sound. The program really tested their skills as a coherent ensemble.

Elgar: Cockaigne Overture, Op. 40

Elgar is perhaps a somewhat underrated composer. He flourished in the shadow of his contemporaries, the great late-Romantic European composer like Richard Strauss. His music stayed within the romantic idiom of rich lush sounds. These days he is best known for his Pomp and Circumstance March that is played every year on the last night of the Proms in England. But he was a major symphonic composer as borne out by his symphonies, and in particular his moving and profound concerti for violin and cello. The Cockaigne Overture was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society and was first performed in 1901. Elgar described it as ‘cheerful and Londony, “stout and steaky” … honest, healthy, humorous and strong, but not vulgar’. It is a rousing piece for a large orchestra, and the young musicians got into its exuberant spirit more and more as the piece progressed. It is a work that needed to be played with youthful abandon and each section of the large orchestra rose to the occasion and brought out the picaresque, colorful character of the work, church bells, Salvation Army band, the sounds of Cockney London.

Beethoven: Romance for violin and orchestra No1 in G Major, Op. 40

The Opus number and the publication date of 1802, suggests that this Romance belongs to Beethoven’s Middle period between the Third Piano Concerto, the Creatures of Prometheus Overture and the Kreutzer Violin Sonata, but its simplicity, more in line with music of an earlier time, suggests that he might have written it earlier. In spirit it is a world away from his dramatic Violin Concerto published four years later. The Romance starts with a four bar introduction of double stops of melodic chords that Lucas Baker played with meticulous clarity, and this clarity of playing was the hallmark of his playing all along, a clear tone, and fluency of articulation. He didn’t try to over dramatize the work which in its simplicity harks back to an earlier age of Mozart. There was no drama, just a beautiful singing tone. The reduced orchestra supported in him style.

Dvorak: Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op 88

Whereas the adjective I would use for the Elgar piece is ‘exuberant’ and for the Beethoven ‘charming’, the word for Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony is ‘joyful’. From the opening melody, played beautifully by the cellos, the symphony radiates warmth and sunshine. Birdsong is played on the flute, and the whole orchestra joins in with a rich sound that exudes a sense of happiness, of being happy to be alive. One captivating melody follows another. There are peasants dancing, a summer rainstorm, and everybody joins in a jubilant celebration. All this requires sensitive playing by the brass and winds – there are trumpet clarion calls, and irresistible melodies for clarinet and oboe, while the flute is always prominent, very clearly and musically played by the principal flutist, Keeon Perkins-Treacher.

All this is challenging for young musicians and they all acquitted themselves superbly. The work hinges on these short solo passages. There is a whole world of late nineteenth century Bohemia in this symphony, with its vigorous folk culture, its colorful landscape and old traditional roots. Perhaps Dvorak tried to capture a world that had flourished, but would soon decline and disappear, something that such of his contemporaries as Mahler, had sensed already. It is a happy world, but not superficially joyous like that of the operetta world of  Johann Strauss and other composers of light music. Perhaps only Mendelssohn wrote joyful music like this, but in a different era and idiom.

Playing such music as part of a large, full symphony orchestra is an enriching experience for musicians and particularly young musicians who are just exploring the riches of music. Mark Carter, the Music Director of the Wellington Youth Orchestra is also Sub-principal Trumpet in the NZSO. He had a great vision for building the orchestra, based on his own experience playing in youth orchestras in the UK. He studied conducting with some of the masters, and has clearly a good rapport with his players. His wife, also in the NZSO, as well as his son, Benjamin play cello in the orchestra. Eleanor Carter also played the organ when organ was needed in the Elgar. It takes special tact and understanding to work with young musicians, and Mark Carter managed to get the best playing from his team. It was a most enjoyable concert for all, musicians and audience alike.

 

Music of our time – Duo Enharmonics and Ensemble Gȏ, at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Duo Enharmonics and Ensemble Gȏ

Music of our time

Monique Lapins, violin, Beth Chen and Nicole Chao, piano, Naoto Segawa, percussion
St. Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday, 20th  April 2022

This was a varied concert of mainly short works by contemporary composers, two New Zealanders, Ross Harris and John Psathas, one Turkish, Fazil Say, and two American, Paul Schoenfeld and Glenn Stallcop. They are hardly household names, but this short concert of about 60 minutes gave us a glimpse of what composers of the present time are writing, although each of the five pieces on the programme were quite different.

String and Wood  (Ross Harris)

Monique Lapins and Naoto Segawa

This short work for Marimba and Violin reminder me of Gamelan music, once popular at the NZ School of Music. The violin was plucked echoing the marimba. It was a duet of the melodic violin used mainly with plucking like a percussive instrument and the rich vibrant gong like sound of the marimba

Five days of the life of a manic-depressive’  (Paul Schoenfeld)

Nicole Chao and Beth Chen

Paul Schoenfeld is an American composer known for combining popular, folk, and classical musical forms. ‘From Bintel Brief‘ and ‘Boogie‘ are the last two movements of a group of short pieces for Piano Duet. From Bintel Brief‘ has echoes of Jewish melodies, but in particular, the feel of popular Broadway musicals. Boogie‘ is a very energetic work endeavoring to capture the youthful frenzy of popular swing or rock dance. Nicole Chao and Beth Chen threw their all into this fiery work.

Sonata No. 1  (Fazil Say)

Monique Lapins and Beth Chen

Fazil Say is a Turkish pianist and composer. This sonata for violin and piano was the major work of the programme. It is in five short movements, with the first movement, ‘Melancholy’ repeated as the final movement. It is an approachable work, but it has its challenges for the performers, the manic second movement, ‘Grotesque’ and the fiercely fast ‘Perpetuum, mobile’ of the third movement. It gave Monique Lapins a chance to shine and show what a fine, sensitive violinist she is.

Matre’s Dance  (John Psathas)

Naoto Segawa and Nicole Chan

Maitre’s Dance is a dance performed by a group of fanatics in Frank Hebert’s science fiction classic, Dune. John Psathas’ piece depicting this dance, became part of the standard repertoire of concerts by percussionists. It is a conversation, or perhaps more appropriately, a duel between piano and a range of percussion instruments, in this performance only a modest range of drums with no tympani. It is entirely based on strong rhythms, though occasionally something resembling a melody was trying to emerge from the keyboard. It is a virtuoso piece for percussionist and pianist alike. It is not for the fainthearted traditionalist, but it is an interesting challenge for those who are prepared to explore new varieties of sounds.

Tarantella from Midsummer Night  (Glenn Stallcop)

Monique Lapins, Naoto Segawa Nicole Chao and Beth Chen

For the final item of the concert we had the whole complement of instruments on stage, violin, marimba, piano with two pianists. Glenn Stallcop is an American composer. The Tarantella is the third movement of a three movement work. It is a colorful piece with an interesting array of sounds, the gypsy sound of the violin, the bell like resonant timbre of the marimba, all underpinned by the strong rhythmic piano part.

This was an important concert, adding a new dimension to the Wellington concert experience introducing unfamiliar compositions and composers. The performance was absolutely convincing, the pieces were superbly played. A great credit to all the four performers who put so much effort into presenting this colorful variety pieces. A larger than usual audience showed their appreciation.

 

 

The Queen’s Closet’s 2022 “Judgement of Paris” a winner

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Queen’s Closet presents:
Opera – THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS  (words by William Congreve)
with music by John Eccles, Daniel Purcell, John Weldon and Godfrey Finger
(a new edition by The Queen’s Closet)

CAST:  Paris, a humble shepherd – Toby Gee
Mercury/Hermes, messenger of Jove – David Morriss
Juno/Saturnia, Goddess of Power – Barbara Paterson
Pallas Athena, Goddess of Victory in War – Rowena Simpson
Venus/Aphrodite, Goddess of Love – Anna Sedcole

MUSICIANS: Leader – Gregory Squire: Violins – Gregory Squire, CJ Macfarlane, Sarah Marten, Emma Brewerton: Violas – Lyndsay Mountfort, Gordon Lehany: ‘Cellos – Jane Young, Robert Ibell:  Hoboys –
Sharon Lehany, Rebecca Grimwood: Recorders – Sharon Lehany, Gordon Lehany: Guitar – Peter Maunder: Harpsichord – Kristina Zuelicke: Trumpets – Gordon Lehany, Peter Reid, Chris Woolley, Peter Maunder: Timpani/Percussion – Larry Reese:

The Queen’s Closet Artistic Director: Gordon Lehany

Foxglove Ballroom, 57 Customhouse Quay, Wellington

Sunday 20th February, 2022

It was all as promised! – “…..With our sense of style and fun we will bring this 300 year-old music to life for Wellingtonians today” ran the Queen’s Closet’s online advertising blurb……..at the conclusion of all the fun and gaiety a roomful of Wellingtonians at the Foxglove Ballroom venue on the city’s waterfront readily testified to the success of this venture with sustained applause and subsequent babblings of excitement and satisfaction at the entertainment’s end. What might have appeared on paper to be a somewhat dusty-and-fusty, quasi-restoration of a musical event that happened a world away in London several centuries ago was here brought to life with confidence, elan and style, an operatic production refreshingly without the myriad theatrical trappings of a conventional staging – sets, lights, and  elaborate costumes – and in terms of cheek-by-jowl accessibility all the better for it!

Originally, “The Judgement of Paris” was the subject of an event set up in 1700 by a group of “patrons of the arts” in London wanting to promote interest in “through-sung” opera in English, a form which, up to that time mostly consisted of works combining song with spoken drama. A “Musicke Prize” was offered to composers for the most effective setting of a libretto of the same name by William Congreve, already an established dramatist of the day. Four composers, John Weldon (1676-1736), John Eccles (1668-1735), Daniel Purcell (1664-1717) – a nephew (?) of the famous Henry Purcell – and Godfrey Finger (ca.1655/6-1730) entered the lists, their works being first performed individually during 1701, then staged in a kind of “grand final” in June 1703. By all accounts the result, an audience choice, caused some acrimony, with the supposed favourite, Eccles, beaten into second place by the least-favoured Weldon, with Purcell third, and an extremely disgruntled Finger placed last!

Only three of the four finished versions survive in score today, Finger’s having been lost, though other music of his is still extant – however, this didn’t deter the BBC Proms in 1989 from restaging what they could of the competition’s “Grand Final” in the Royal Albert Hall with the three extant operas (Anthony Rooley conducted the Consorte Of Musicke and Concerto Koln). Once again the audience was invited to choose the winner – and on this later occasion it was Eccles!

This production enterprisingly reconstructs a single performance of the work made up of selected excerpts from the three different complete scores, and compensates  for the “missing composer” with an excerpt from one of Finger’s extant theatrical works, his 1701 suite for “Alexander the Great”, in this instance an aria “Morpheus, gentle God”. In this way we’re given a resounding “overview” of the achievement of the original enterprise and the individual composers concerned – alas, at that time the currents of the tides of fashion were set against the objectives of the promoters of “English opera”, with the new craze for Italian opera dominating the London scene, and setting in train a dearth of “true” English opera until the early twentieth century.

One of the most helpful features of the Queen’s Closet’s presentation was the accompanying written programme, which contained a good deal of the background information to the work summarised above, and a detailed synopsis of the opera’s plot complete with the individual musical numbers named and paired with their composer. We in the audience thus knew “where we were” at every step of the proceedings, adding enormously to our relish of the story, the characters and their interactions!

Interestingly, if one counts the numbers assigned to each composer in this realisation, Daniel Purcell wins the “musicians vote” by fourteen numbers to John Eccles’ twelve, with John Weldon scoring a discreet five. The unfortunate Godfrey Finger is represented by a single but important number, the first-half closer “Morpheus, gentle God”, no less!

It would take far too long to go through the entire work, commenting on each of the numbers, so a precis of the action will suffice for this review’s purposes – Paris, a humble shepherd, is visited by the celestial messenger Mercury/Hermes, who tells the amazed mortal that the gods wish him to award a golden apple to the most deserving of three important goddesses, Juno, Pallas Athena, and Venus. Paris is overwhelmed at the prospect and fearful for his survival in the face of the goddesses’ attentions, but Mercury assures him of his protection during the process. The goddesses arrive on the scene and each tries to persuade the shepherd to award her the prize. Paris’s response is to faint into a sleep during which Morpheus, God of Dreams is evoked to guide the shepherd in his choice.

The second half begins with Paris’s reawakening and interacting with the three Goddesses, each of whom he asks what she would offer him in return for the apple. Juno tempts Paris with power to rule over men, while Pallas Athena offers the shepherd victory in war. Lastly Venus reminds Paris of the true joy of love, which she promises will be his. As much through exhaustion as reason, Paris chooses Venus as the victor and gives her the apple, to the relief and satisfaction of the gods.

I was charmed by how well the semi-staged aspect of the presentation worked – everybody, musicians and audience, shared the same floorspace in the Foxglove Ballroom, with the singers moving through and around the musicians, spread in a semi-circle, to a rostrum at the left of the acting area immediately in front of the audience. The immediacy of it all made everything come alive, both the formal and more improvisatory aspects of what everybody did, the magic of stage transformation as strong as if in a more conventional theatre, perhaps by dint of the performers inviting its audience to participate creatively by “imagining for ourselves” each character’s fuller ramifications instead of having it all already “done” for us.

Each of the singers conveyed her or his character’s essence easily and naturally, Toby Gee’s “Paris” properly simple, rustic and unpretentious, set at first against the easy suavity and insouciance of David Morriss’s Mercury, the latter’s black-and-white garb a touch Mephistophelean, I first thought, if complete with a “sacred rod” (an umbrella, used with a “Singin’ in the Rain” kind of flair in places to great effect! The three Goddesses  made the most of their respectively singular qualities, Barbara Paterson’s suave, worldly Juno by turns kittenish and commanding as required, making the perfect foil for both Rowena Simpson’s no-nonsense, forthright and ‘spot-on” Pallas Athena, and Anna Sedcole’s softer, sweeter, wide-eyed and winning Venus/Aphrodite. The stage business had a certain homespun quality which I found endearing, in the sense that nothing seemed overlaid, but instead “grew out of” both the music and the dramatic situations in an unforced way.

The singing, too, shared these qualities, in each case the vocal qualities managing to fit the characterisation splendidly – Toby Gee’s Paris sounded consistently and believably overawed in the situation he inadvertedly found himself, making the most of his bewilderment in “Distracted I turn, but cannot decide”, and aided by John Eccles’ engagingly “swinging” rhythms.  I’ve never heard David Morriss sing with greater beauty, agility and tonal variety as here, with his Mercury – and his promised protection to Paris, “Fear not Mortal, none shall harm thee!” was suitably bolstered by some wry “umbrella-semaphoring”, to hilarious effect.

Each of the goddesses shone whilst vocally plying their respective virtues and powers – Barbara Paterson’s Juno was at her most imperious with Eccles’ “Let Ambition fire thy Mind”, the voice ringing out, bolstered by the other characters in the music’s reprise, to a most exciting and invigorating string accompaniment. Equally authoritative was Rowena Simpson’s Pallas Athena, with bright, pinging notes supported by stirring work from trumpets and drums as she sang “Hark, hark, the glorious voice of war!”, with the following Handelian “O how glorious ‘tis to see!” further underlining the warlike sentiments.

After such entreaties it was a relief for the finer sensibilities to encounter Anna Sedcole’s Venus imploring Paris to listen to her very different message with, firstly Eccles’  “Stay, lovely Youth” (accompanied winningly by recorders, ‘cello and harpsichord), and then Weldon’s “One only joy mankind can know”, the latter becoming a kind of “Ode to Joy”-like chorale with the other singers joining in – heart-warming! – and if that wasn’t sufficiently disarming, then Sedcole’s singing of  Purcell’s “Gentle Shepherd”, with a delicate guitar accompaniment, was the “piece de resistance” which disarmed Paris (and the rest of us!) completely – the rest, as they say, is – um, history! – with the shepherd completely undone and gladly bestowing upon Venus the golden apple –  Paris’s “I yield” made a particularly moving and solemn impression, the voice alternating phrases with a hoboy, while  guitar, ‘cello and harpsichord murmured in attendance.

There remains to extol the virtues of the band – most authoritatively led by Gregory Squire, the players delivered in spadefuls what seemed to me the essential character of each Symphony, Sonata movement and vocal accompaniment, be it grand or intimate, energetic or graceful. Perhaps the “shared space” venue had something to do with a ready quality of infectious enjoyment, evident in the relish with which each number’s singular quality was delivered by the players – the strings en masse stirred the blood in so many and different places (from stern grandeur to energetic abandonment throughout Eccles’s “Let Ambition fire thy Mind”, for example) as did the thrills and occasional spills of the trumpets, all adding to the excitement and stirringly supported by Larry Reese’s timpani (in the same composer’s music for Pallas Athena – ‘Awake! Awake! Thy spirits arise!” and “Hark, hark! – the glorious voice of war!”). Contrasting most beguilingly with all this were the gentler, softer accents of the recorders, the hoboys, the guitar and ‘cello, invariably partnered by Kris Zuelicke’s eloquent harpsichord continuo, in much of the music for Paris (Finger’s “Morpheus, Gentle God”, where the singers’ voices are echoed by the recorders; and Venus’s appearance to Paris, coloured beautifully by recorders and the continuo instruments).

I, for one, would hope to hear more along these lines from the Queen’s Consort, whose efforts brought to life a world of musical and dramatic expression we don’t often get to experience in such a vivid and well-rounded way – very great honour to all concerned!

Taioro – words and music of Aotearoa New Zealand at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series 2022 presents:

TAIORO – A new ensemble (2021)  presents New Zealand Chamber Music with Poetry,
for speaker, viola, cello and piano

(“TAI, the tide. Representing the ebbs and flows of tangaroa and the energy that we ourselves hold.
ORO, to resound or resonate, and the word used for a musical note.”)

Music by Antony Ritchie, Alfred Hill, Douglas Lilburn and David Hamilton

Sharn Maree Cassady – poet and speaker
Donald Maurice  – viola / viola d’amore
Inbal Megiddo – ‘cello
Sherry Grant – poet and piano

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington

Wednesday 16th February, 2022

This lunchtime concert at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace furthered what’s become a refreshing change of late for ears inundated in the past with “standard” repertoire and presentations – a recital of words and music from a recently-formed group, Taioro, presenting works whose origins and inspirations stemmed from our own place, Aotearoa New Zealand.  Of course, there’s an impressively-growing body of work already emanating from our own composers, with names too numerous to mention; and with contemporary performance groups such as Stroma occasionally emerging in concert with some stimulatingly ear-prickling sounds. The challenge for these composers and musicians is to keep up the momentums, fostering continued interest in “our” sounds and our singular ways of doing things.

While some of the works presented today could be almost deemed “historic”, with music by Alfred Hill (1870-1960) and Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001), along with poetry by ARD Fairburn (1904-57) and James K.Baxter (1926-72), we heard also music by living composers Anthony Ritchie and David Hamilton (the latter present at the concert), in tandem with poetry written by both the concert’s presenter, Sharn Maree Cassady, and pianist Sherry Grant, along with another poem “Stone Woman” written by Christchurch poet Bernadette Hall and set to music by Anthony Ritchie – it was, all-in-all, a judicious mix of past and present creative endeavour!

We began our listening with Anthony Ritchie’s wonderfully storm-tossed Allegro tempestuoso for viola and piano, taken at a real lick by Donald Maurice and Sherry Grant. Amid the sparks generated by the playing I heard an exotic flavouring or two in the piece’s harmonies and the folksy rhythmic drive, emphasised also by the viola’s “eastern” kind of melodic line in a slower, expressive middle section. The performers adroitly brought out the numerous different characters in the music’s widely-ranging explorations, bluesy one moment and then whirling and vertiginous the next – after all the sound and fury, the performers brought the piece to its somewhat amiably halting conclusion.

A second piece by Anthony Ritchie was titled In Memoriam, the music dedicated to the life and passing of a woman called “Angela”, whose AGEA motive the piece featured was demonstrated on Donald Maurice’s viola beforehand. This was a beautiful-sounding work, the violist playing variants of the “Angela” theme over a kind of threnody from the ‘cello (a gorgeous tonal outpouring from both string-players, here, the music brief but extremely moving). We heard also a piece Ritchie had named after a poem by Bernadette Hall, entitled “Song – Stone Woman”, the music seeming almost anecdotal in effect, rhythms “jamming” in an improvisatory way and accompaniments wry and loose-limbed. The poem was read simply and almost conversationally by Sharn Maree Cassady, Hall’s style as a poet seeming to lend itself to such treatment.

Thanks, it seems, to some vagary of the venue’s particular acoustic, I had to strain to hear much of this spoken content of the presentation at the concert, though I was sitting almost right at the front, albeit on the opposite side from where the speaker, Sharn Maree, was placed. After the concert I checked with the person sitting next to me, and she said she also had difficulty hearing the words accompanying firstly the Alfred Hill tribute piece, and then both of Douglas Lilburn’s tribute pieces to ARD Fairburn and James K.Baxter (the latter two including the poets’ own poetry). The music, by contrast, seemed to present no problem – about which circumstance I thereupon wrote a “draft review” of what I had heard, and contacted the performers outlining the  difficulties I’d experienced.

I would, of course, have far preferred to have heard more clearly Sharn Maree Cassady’s comments in situ (all delivered seemingly in similar poetic style) regarding all three of the “past” personalities, belonging as they did to eras which had different attitudes, values and modes to our present PC-dominated world.  At the time, the music provided ample compensation, but I was still aware I was missing an integral part of things. Project co-ordinator Donald Maurice thereby arranged most kindly for me to view and hear the entire concert as it was videoed, something which I have just finished watching. To my delight speaker Sharn Maree’s words in the recording came over perfectly clearly, enabling me to truly take in each of her poetically-expressed responses to the texts associated with the chosen pieces that made up the concert.

Though Alfred Hill’s piece that was presented had no accompanying text, his numerous interactions with Maori during his time in New Zealand were well-documented, giving Cassady sufficient material to craft a response to Hill’s work, words and philosophies. The poetry of ARD Fairburn (1904-57) by turns swashbuckling, wry and romantic, and definitely from an age which more contemporary attitudes would almost certainly find in places at best old-fashioned, and at worst with racist and sexist overtones – so it was no surprise to find in her reply to James K.Baxter (1926-72)  a far more sympathetic and shared acceptance of certain values in both the poetry and regarding the ethos of the man in popular legend, than in her reaction to Fairburn’s verses.  This was underlined via a nicely-flowing and readily-nuanced reading of Baxter’s poem Sisters at Jerusalem, followed by a response begun with a whimsical “May I call you James?” from Cassedy, prefacing her reply.

The  music of Alfred Hill’s chosen was simply  called Andantino, one which I later discovered was a transcription for viola and piano of the slow movement of the composer’s Viola Concerto. Like everything I’ve heard of Hill’s, the work had a distinction and a surety of touch which Donald Maurice’s and Sherry Grant’s playing enriched and ennobled with their rich, heartfelt tones. The piece’s ending had its own singularity – an exquisitely-voiced modulation Into “other realms” before the voices found their way back to the home key at the end.

Douglas Lilburn’s “salute” to Fairburn began with a lovely mantra-like piano figure whose sound for me exerted considerable emotional pull, like a seabird’s song calling a traveller home, one whose response in the hands of ‘cellist Inbal Megiddo matched such feelings with beautifully-projected tones, the feelings truly “grounded” by the piano’s deep-sounding pedal-points and the cello’s joyous life-dance, one that eventually brought forth ringing bell-like resonances at the piece’s conclusion. Just as resonant in its own way was Lilburn’s tribute to James K.Baxter, beginning with a ritualised exchange of bugle-like calls between viola and piano that put one in mind of a walking song, one that engagingly broke into a 5/4 dance, replete with energy and humour – at the revelry’s height the dance cried off with the piano’s deep-throated call to attention, bringing the viola back to the by-now nostalgic bugle-like calls from the beginning, the energies having come full circle and brought us home once more.

With the work of David Hamilton our concert returned to the here-and-now with a world premiere of a work for narrator, viola d’amore and piano “Avec amour” (With love). This was Hamilton’s setting for those instruments of the words to a poem by Sherry Grant, the concert’s pianist. Unfortunately the programme I picked up at the concert’s beginning was missing its inner section with the poet’s text printed in full, so that I struggled throughout to pick up “shreds and patches” in tandem with the ongoing musical discourse, the instruments often masking the words.

I thought the music both soulful and  piquant at first, then more declamatory and bardic as the way was prepared for the narrator. The poem’s words seemed to describe some kind of conceit, idealistically describing something perhaps as imagined as real, which the sounds of the viola d’amore and the piano reflected – all framed by the  phrase “a true rarity in this age”. The setting gave the discourse and their sounds a somewhat detached air in places, a feeling that the music’s epilogue reinforced for me, leaving a “do I wake or sleep” kind of impression at the end. It was a piece that I wanted to hear again immediately afterwards, as there was a dreamlike air about it all that seemed to defy direct engagement – one could “drift” rather than properly engage (and I wasn’t helped by not having the words available to read and follow in situ.) The voice’s diffused sound gave its timbre an almost instrument-like quality, another strand to the argument, another layer to the textures…

Having (a) procured a copy of the poem’s words, and (b) been kindly sent by Donald Maurice both a full script and a copy of the finished video, I was able to more justly “relive” the concert’s experience and, hopefully make proper recourse at last to the efforts of all of the performances, in particular this, the concert’s final item. Described by narrator Sharn Maree Cassady as “a tribute to the viola d’amore”, the work began with a recitative-like passage for the viola d’amore before being joined quixotically by the piano, the speaker then adding to the narrative strands as if the words were threads weaving their way through a sound-tapestry. At the verse’s end the music reflected on the meeting of hitherto free spirits and the tremulous attraction of unchartered emotional waters. Sharn Maree Cassady’s delivery weighed every word patiently, precisely, almost dispassionately, letting the music delineate the impulses, and the “ancient brilliance so unexpected, yet familiar in every turn, in each corner”.

Winsomely, the piano responded to the viola’s quizzical utterances, opening a vein of longing,  towards the igniting of the “infinitely burning desire” to the point of conflagration, the voice again the serene, objective observer, letting the heat of the “feverish pair of flaming swords” pass as if sunlight had suddenly broken through clouds, and then been again obscured…. the moment was here celebrated with incisive piano chords and then, prompted by the speaker’s words, “together we sing in joy”, moved on by the viola into an exchange of here-and-now fulfilment from both instruments…….the “song” became both rapturous and exploratory, the sudden upward modulation at the speaker’s words “Avec Amour” taking the listener to “different realms” beyond experience, transcending the usual “order” of things, even to the point of calling Cupid, the God of Love, to question with the “true rarity” of emotion beyond reason. Sharn Maree Cassady’s tones here evoked “time-standing still” ambiences, as the poem’s words, the viola, and the piano all appeared to take up the “feel” of the music’s opening once more, as if we had journeyed right around the sun – but, (as TS Eliot observed) “never the same time returns”, which was attested by the coda, with its different, more valedictory feeling.

We were asked at the concert’s beginning not to applaud between numbers, as the proceedings were being recorded. Aside from my frustrations at the time, I loved the concert and its sounds and the care and commitment with which the performers obviously brought these things to us for our enjoyment, and am so grateful to Donald Maurice, and to Antony Donovan, the recording engineer, for allowing me access to  the video recording in order to get the “full picture” of what the performers were able to achieve.

William Berry – a “young lion of the keyboard” at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WILLIAM BERRY PIANO RECITAL

(In preparation for the National Piano Competition 2022)

  • performing the following three 30-minute programmes:

Programme 1: Scriabin – Trois Etudes op. 65 Beethoven – Sonata in E major op. 109 Albeniz – Triana William Berry – On Edge

Programme 2: Haydn – Sonata in B minor Hob. XVI:32 Rachmaninoff – Sonata in Bb minor op. 36

Programme 3: Carl Vine – Sonata 1 Chopin – Polonaise-Fantaisie op. 61

St-Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 30th January, 2022

I was invited to attend this concert merely as a listener rather than as a reviewer; but the playing of eighteen year-old William Berry, a finalist in last year’s National Competition, calls, I think, for some comment by way of appreciation of what I consider to be the young performer’s tremendous talent. The competition he’s about to take part in stipulates two thirty-minute programmes of music chosen by the pianist – so one presumes Berry will either perform two of the three thirty-minute sequences of works he presented to us this afternoon, or else rearrange the items into the desired framework, depending upon which he thought came off best in performance.

Looking at the three different programmes presented by the pianist, I thought they each provided a judiciously-balanced range of repertoire which allowed him to demonstrate his capabilities to their best advantage. The first programme began with Scriabin’s Trois Etudes Op.65, the opening study all fantasy and vertiginous impulse, featuring in particular beautifully-feathery right-handed work, the whole balancing mercurial whimsy against both abandonment and circumspect inwardness. This was followed by a long-breathed meditation, one whose notes for the most part resembled exquisite stalactite-like progressions, though the latent energies flickered tantalisingly a couple of times before returning to the piece’s essential quietitude. As for the third etude , Berry breathtakingly set the opening fleet-fingered figurations against the heavier, more insistent shouts which eventually won the day with a spectacular ascending flourish at the piece’s end.

In its own way the world of Beethoven’s Op.109 E major Sonata sounded as distinctive as Scriabin’s, the evocations of each of the movements as singular and “from the air” as those of the Russian master we heard, written almost a century later. Berry gave the opening movement the free space that both the first flowing notes and the contrasting expansive rejoiners themselves suggested, impulses which alchemically made firstly poetry and then grandeur out of motion. While I thought he risked taking the swagger out of  the march-like second movement by taking it all a shade too fast, the rushing torrent that the playing evoked suited the work’s free-spirited aspect as admirably. I was sorry the repeats in the “theme and variations” were not observed, as I felt we seemed to move more quixotically than ecstatically through some of the movement’s treasurable mood-changes (I particularly wanted to hear again that wonderful “delayed modulation” sequence in one of the variations, but had to be content with this more-than-usually austere view of things, if beautifully played. But Berry made amends with his heartfelt treatment of the contrast between the “trills” sequences and the return of the movement’s quietly ecstatic chordal opening at the sonata’s end.

How thrilling to hear a piece from Albeniz’s Iberia , the colourful and evocative Triana, with its distinctive flamenco rhythms and textures characteristic of gypsy music. Berry warmed to this music from its deceptively dainty beginnings, investing the sequences with increasing textural and colouristic girth, and arriving at the piece’s middle section with considerable relish, the trajectories readily inviting the “big tune” to dance, Berry’s sure-fingered playing beautifully augmenting the textures with all kinds of tactile harmonic clusters that distinctively and irresistibly flavour the music.

We heard one of Berry’s own compositions to conclude this part of the programme, a short but hair-raising piece entitled On Edge. The music opened flowingly at first, before entangling its lines in what seemed claustrophobic fashion, with figurations shouldering one another aside as fresh impulses sprang forth, the whole gathering itself up into a scherzando section of considerable brilliance and excitement.

A Haydn Sonata (Hob.XVI:32 in B Minor) proved an excellent choice to begin the second thirty-minute section of the recital – the opening music was delivered with wit, point and schwung, giving the dynamic and textural contrasts proper dramatic life, especially in the movement’s second subject. The composer didn’t disappoint with his development sequence, enabling us to enjoy as much as did the soloist the garrulity of the repeated figures and their burgeoning interactions. And what a heartwarming homecoming here under Berry’s fingers to conclude the movement!

An attractive Menuetto was gracefully and winsomely brought into play, the opening contrasting startlingly with a middle section that seemed to fancy itself as some kind of feisty toccata for a few measures, before returning abashedly to its former manner. Continuing its litany of surprises, the work’s finale then straightaway began a kind of “cat-and-mouse” fugue, one which drew upon ever-burgeoning reserves of energy to produce a brilliant effect via Berry’s scintillating fingerwork, ideas shouldering one another aside with freshly-wrought impulses, before surprising us all at the work’s conclusion with a nicely-timed throwaway ending!

Because of Berry’s boldly-conceived programming, I enjoyed the juxtapositioning of Haydn’s and Rachmaninov’s treatment of sonata form in this segment of the concert as much as anything I heard this afternoon. Here we were able to experience a no-holds-barred arch-romantic approach to a traditionally classical format made to work from ”within” as effectively, for me, as did Haydn’s in its own context. Interestingly, Berry chose to perform Rachmaninov’s 1913 “original” version of a work he was to extensively revise in 1931 – regarding the revision, the composer himself wrote: – “I look at some of my earlier works and see how much there is that is superfluous. Even in this Sonata so many voices are moving simultaneously, and it is so long. Chopin’s Sonata lasts nineteen minutes and all has been said……” To this day pianists and commentators argue whether Rachmaninov’s alterations to the work are to its advantage, whether they eliminate unnecessary material and tighten up the structure, or whether they are a mutilation which upset the work’s formal balance and thematic argument.

My own feeling is that the first two movements are superb in their original versions, but the finale doesn’t for me sustain its overall level of creative flow to the same extent, relying over much on a certain rhetorical flamboyance which requires white heat in performance to really make work. Most astonishingly, William Berry’s passionate commitment to the cause carried us all away, riveting  our sensibilities and leaving us imbued with the music’s fervour of expression and its composer’s unique sense of a world in the turmoil of change. I loved the slow movement’s long-breathed resonances here, Rachmaninov personalising his deep identification with the ambiences he loved, those of ritual, song and music simply in the air of his native land.

The one piece across the three programmes which for me didn’t quite “fire” was in the last group, and the very last work Berry played in the concert proper, Chopin’s enigmatic Polonaise-Fantasie Op.61 – his reading here seemed almost too fluently-propelled to my ears, smoothing out some of the music’s rhythmic girth which connects with its native earth vis-à-vis the dance, and as such leaving a somewhat under-characterised impression.  I wondered whether the Chopin’s proximity to Berry’s brilliant performance of Carl Vine’s Piano Sonata No. 1  (part of which I had previously reviewed in a concert more than a year ago – https://middle-c.org/2020/09/wellington-entrants-shape-up-for-the-national-junior-piano-competition-finals/) had resulted in the former’s more circumspect manner being somewhat over-galvanised in the slipstream of such brilliance, coruscation and crackling voltage as evoked by Vine in his Sonata and realised here by the performer.

To tumultuous applause Berry took his final bow, then returned to play us an encore, characteristically, something off the beaten track and filled with interest – it was a piece of Nikolai Medtner’s, one of his numerous skazka (translated; “fairy tales”) this one Op.20 No. 1. It wasn’t something I knew, but the piece sounded very like Rachmaninov (he and Medtner were contemporaries)……it made for a satisfying and sonorous conclusion to a wide-ranging recital.

I feel certain that everybody present would want to wish William Berry all the best in his forthcoming competition – judging by the no-holds-barred aspect of his playing for us throughout the afternoon he seems sufficiently fired up so as to give it all his best shot.

 

Ali Harper’s Circa Theatre tribute to the extraordinary Carole King

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Carole King  – A Natural Woman

Ali Harper (vocals)
With Nick Granville (guitar), Scott Maynard (bass), Francis Meria (piano)
and Francis Leota (guest singer).

Producer(s) – Ali Harper, Iain Cave (Ali-Cat Productions)
Music arrangements – Tom Rainey
Lighting, sound design and operator – Rich Tucker
Costume design – Roz Wilmott-Dalton, Ali Harper

Circa Theatre, I Taranaki St., Wellington

Saturday 22nd January

If you’re like me, you’ll still have a headful of songs playing away in your cerebral jukebox which instantly bring back nostalgic memories of different eras, but in many cases have neglected the “fine detail” of actually knowing who WROTE some of these songs…….well, if that’s so, then singer Ali Harper’s latest presentation “A Natural Woman” at Circa Theatre (which opened on Saturday night) is a “must see” for you!

The music and its presentation here felt for me like a series of oceanic currents which caught me up and swept me along through music’s wider vistas, leaving me at the end somewhat dumbfounded at both the force and unexpected variety of songwriter Carole King’s creative genius. Of course I knew her name (automatically bracketing her with Jerry Goffin, her husband and writer of her song’s lyrics for almost twenty years of her career, up to 1968), and was certainly aware of her most famous recording, the album “Tapestry”, which appeared in 1971 (but which I never bought or got to know, to my great regret, being too enamoured of her friend Joni Mitchell’s music at the time). But what I didn’t grasp was the extent to which King wrote songs that other people made famous – or made other people famous!

I could go through Ali Harper’s show and pinpoint the epiphanous (both retrospective and “then-and-now”) moments, but thought I would leave such delights of belated recognition for those, like myself, who relish such things in situ apart from the ones I simply HAVE to mention! Of course, to Carole King’s fans, aware of her far-reaching and resonating influence, each song Harper presented here was a gem, to be re-exhibited and relished all over again, including several I didn’t really know, and therefore couldn’t, in perhaps the show’s most touching moment, respond to the singer’s ready invitation to “join in” with the lyrics of “You’ve got a friend”, which was also a hit for King’s colleague James Taylor in 1971. Now, had I bought that “Tapestry” LP back in the 1970s (along with those Joni Mitchell albums!) I would have been able to sing along with the rest!

Harper opened her show in atmospheric style, with a sultry rendition of the opening words of one of King’s most iconic songs “I feel the earth move” (the song that opened her “Tapestry” LP), then gradually and excitingly building up the music’s trajectories with the help of her accompanying musicians into that captivating state of physicality that’s part of her work’s whole-heartedness. Harper’s generous acknowledgements of the contributions made by pianist Francis Mena, guitarist Nick Granville and bassist Scott Maynard throughout the evening drew attention to the occasion’s celebration of musicianship per se in a way one couldn’t help feeling King herself would have very much endorsed and enjoyed.

This show largely followed the format and style of a previous Ali Harper “special” featuring the life and work of songwriter Burt Bacharach, though a significant difference was that the musical accompaniments here were generated “live”, with, midway through the show’s first half, another singer added to the vocal mix, the sweet-voiced Francis Leota, duetting with Harper in some of the numbers, and adding to the vocal support provided by the band throughout. As with Bacharach, Harper could use her subject’s songwriting output as material illustrating the latter’s lifestory; though King’s activities (however belated) as a performer of her own songs enlarged in scope the means by which her “presence” was evoked. Ali herself took over the piano for the accompaniment of one of King’s songs, “Lay Down My Life”, remarking wryly at the number’s end that it was the first occasion on which she had accompanied a song on the piano on a stage, and that she had a further 25 shows to get her fingers properly into shape before the season’s end!

Apart from the pleasures of composer-discovery in the case of a number of well-known songs, I was as intrigued by hearing a number of King’s compositions I didn’t know at all and really liked – I’ve already mentioned the heartfelt strains of “You’ve got a Friend” – and responded with, firstly, as much relish to the Joni-Mitchell-like “At this time in my life” as to the later and more confident “Natural Woman”, and then to the deeply-touching “Child of Mine”, a beautiful meditation on the significance of parenthood – all performed by Harper (the latter a vocal collaboration with Francis Leota) with a certain frisson resonating further as Harper spoke of her own admiration for King and her singular qualities of courage and determination in the face of life’s difficulties.

The show’s title “A Natural Woman” summed up this sympathetic and squarely-faced portrayal of King throughout her various career, taking in her stride significant personal highlights and setbacks, and bringing out  the heartfelt, almost confessional nature of her songwriting, and subsequently her performances. The breakup of her first marriage to Jerry Goffin was a turning-point for King, leading her reluctantly to focus on building a parallel career as a performer, to which end the release of “Tapestry” in 1971 succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, topping the US sales charts for a record-breaking fifteen weeks. In it she repossessed some of her own songs such as “It’s Too Late” and “Will you love me Tomorrow”.  And, three subsequent marriages produced altogether four children for King, here giving the song “Child of Mine” an extra fillip of emotion in its significance.

Harper’s was, for me, more of a retrospective tribute to Carole King than a re-evocation of her as an on-stage personality – I was a little surprised at this, considering the effect of her incredibly moving recreation of another icon, Doris Day, in an earlier show, in which we seemed to be taken right into Day’s world with Harper herself on that occasion seemingly infused with her subject’s charismatic persona. Here, conversely, she seemed to take pains to emphasise parallel worlds of then and now, telling us, for example, that King’s record-breaking release “Tapestry” appeared the year that she, Harper, was born. True, the dresses Harper wore (a different one for each half) seemed to me most apposite, straight from the ‘70s, and whose effect augmented those moments when in direct vocal flight the singer seemed suitably (and satisfyingly) possessed with her subject’s singular focus, one triumphantly embodied by the title given to the evening’s presentation.

Sadly, the advent of the Omicron virus would seem to already indicate a marked effect upon A Natural Woman’s season, with future shows (at time of writing) continuing to require vaccine passes and face masks, but also limiting audience numbers per performance, due to social distancing. The performances are scheduled to run until February 22nd, so people who intend to go (or have already booked) should contact Circa for updates and clarification without delay.

To Ali Harper and her colleagues, on- and off-stage, all the best for the show’s continuance under these trying circumstances! To my mind, both the material and the performances fully deserve whatever interest and attention is still possible!