Amici Ensemble in fine performances at Waikanae

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Amici Ensemble (Donald Armstrong and Cristina Vaszilcsin, violins; Julia Joyce, viola; Rowan Prior, cello; Diedre Irons, piano)
(Waikanae Music Society)

Enescu: Sérénade Lointaine (trio for piano, violin and cello)
Mahler: Piano quartet in A minor
Mozart: Piano quartet in G minor, K.478 (allegro; andante; rondo)
Brahms: Piano quintet in F minor, Op.34 (allegro non troppo; andante, un poco adagio; scherzo: allegro; finale: poco sostenuto, allegro non troppo)

Waikanae Memorial Hall

23 September 2012, 2.30pm

An interesting programme performed by fine musicians is always an attraction – even on a gorgeously sunny, warm day in spring.

The Amici Ensemble is a variable feast, under the leadership of Donald Armstrong.  This time it comprised a piano quintet, but the music played varied from three-strong, through four-strong to five-strong (no pun intended, Donald!)

George Enescu’s brief Serenade was a tuneful work, well worth an airing, while the other shorter work, Mahler’s quartet, was a surprise in that it was little like Mahler’s later music.  Nonetheless, it was a very attractive work, Schubertian in parts.  It was written when Mahler was 16 to 18 years of age, and is incomplete.

The Mozart piano quartet chosen, one of only two the composer wrote, was a familiar work.  As the programme note stated, ‘here the piano takes an equal role rather being simply a continuo instrument discreetly backing the strings.’  This gave full rein to Diedre Irons’s pianistic abilities; her performance was bright and lively.  However, some inaccuracies in the lower register, and a general lack of sparkle in the strings meant the quartet had less impact than it should have.

After the interval, Brahms’s monumental quintet.  It features an exciting opening, followed by lovely contrasts, with plenty of power.  All the instruments displayed marvellous sonorities.  Again, there were a few inaccuracies – not severe, but too many.  Phrasing was beautifully done.  A slow passage in the first movement produced attractive timbres.  As usual, in this quintet Brahms extracts the maximum from his material.

The second movement is serene, but with plenty of melodic and harmonic interest, and dense textures at times.  The scherzo has a spooky start, before the grand march commences.  The movement becomes tempestuous with the fugato; the tone of the instruments was not always coherent.

The finale features another quiet opening leading up to a dramatic sequence of syncopated entries for the strings.  A gypsy melody begins on cello, then is taken up the other players.  Many contrasted passages in a powerful development are solemn and tension-filled.  There is passion towards the end, then a tragically gentle mood before a robust finish.

A well-filled hall appreciated the playing of an interesting and satisfying chamber music programme from the players, who are all, apart from Diedre Irons, members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

 

Zephyr – breaths of fresh air

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand

Zephyr Wind Quintet

Music by Elliott Carter, Gareth Farr, Carl Nielsen, Darius Milhaud, Ross Edwards, Gyorgy Ligeti

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 23rd September

What a joy when one literally stumbles across a piece of music that then becomes a favorite! I didn’t even know wind quintets existed when, way back during my formative music explorations in the Palmerston North Public Library (what an Aladdin’s Cave of a place!) I chanced across an LP recording by the Philadelphia Wind Quintet. “Nielsen”, it said on the cover – and “Barber” as well, if I remember rightly. The Nielsen was, of course, that composer’s Wind Quintet, the very first music of his I ever heard – and I loved it right from that first bassoon phrase, with those chirpy, out-of-doors responses tumbling over one another, as if for the sheer joy of being breathed into life and set in motion.

Since then, I’ve acquired several wonderful recordings of the Nielsen, my favorite being the Melos Ensemble’s characterful 1960s performance for EMI – but live performances have, until this concert , eluded me. I can imagine being more than content had the Zephyr Wind Quintet played only the Nielsen work at their recent concert, as it was such a benediction to hear it “live”, let alone played so magnificently by the ensemble.

However, it was my good fortune to have the work “framed” in concert by a number of attractive and contrasting pieces by other composers , who also seemed to know a thing or two about writing for winds. Beginning the program was a work by Elliott Carter, the music having a similar kind of instant appeal to that of Nielsen’s – perhaps busier and more densely-textured, but  just as inclined towards lyricism. As with Nielsen, a droll sense of humour was never far away, with strongly-characterised episodes in the music used as “foils” for one another, deep tolling bells at one point enlivened by birdsong, with subsequent wind-flurries setting the cat among the pigeons.

A second part, allegro giocoso, clicked some even higher voltage-switches on, setting in motion rapid-fire momentums which delighted the ear, whether settling upon an individual instrumentals line or registering the contrapuntal dovetailing. The music argument seemed to intensify, as if a lot of people at a dinner-party were shouting at one another, trying to make individual points at all costs, before the host, with a shrug of the shoulders and a disarming word or two, defused the argument and bade everybody goodnight.

Gareth Farr’s Mad Little Machine which followed was a Zephyr commission for the group’s current tour – aptly titled, the piece brought out bags of “attitude” from each of the instruments, expressed both in individual and concerted ways. Right from the opening cavortings of the bass clarinet, which both astonished and alarmed everybody else, there was energy and bite as flourishes of impulse from all the different voices were tossed between the group.

The near-constant motoric, syncopated rhythms generated crackling energy, unexpectedly allowing a”luftpause” mid-work before setting off again even more mad-headedly, the figurations wild and angular, and the combinations amusingly bizarre  (piccolo and bass clarinet amusingly “spooking” one another, at one point). It all came to an abrupt end, not with a bang, but with a squeak, to everybody’s great delight. Wonderful, too, that the composer was present, applauding the performance as enthusiastically as HE himself was being applauded!

After these exertions, the Nielsen work seemed to come from another world, lyrical, spacious and bracingly “outdoor” in feeling. The composer wrote the quintet for the Copenhagen Quintet, with the individual characteristics of each player very much in mind. In fact, had he lived longer, Nielsen might have completed his promise of writing individual concerti for each of the Quintet members – as it was he finished only two of the larger works, for flute and then for clarinet. We have left only the Quintet to give us the barest of glimpses of the remaining three players’ personalities.

Apart from one or two vagrant notes and a slight ensemble hesitation when beginning the final grand statement of the first movement’s ascending opening melody, the playing was spick-and-span, flexible and alert, throughout the work. The performance, I felt, concentrated more on the music’s fluency than its occasional quirkiness and pungency – those evidently characterful and volatile personalities who helped inspire the work were mostly on their best behaviour this time round.

I wondered whether the Town Hall acoustic told against some of the work’s immediacy, the sounds integrated almost to a fault, so that we were denied some of the spikiness of Nielsen’s writing. Beautiful details, such as Ed Allen’s first solo in the opening movement, were wonderful, but the strands of colour and texture in ensemble seemed “tamed” in those voluminous spaces. In a smaller hall we would undoubtedly have enjoyed a more flavoursome sound-picture.

The finale, with its frequent solo and duo passages, here most tellingly enabled the players to be themselves, the “wandering in the wilderness opening” featuring plenty of wind-blown freedom and acerbic calling-to-order, while each of the variations following the beautiful hymn-tune (Nielsen’s own setting of a chorale “My Jesus, let my heart receive thee”) created its own intense colour-and-texture experience to wonderfully expressive effect. This tune first appeared in a sing-song 3/4 rhythm, but its reprise at the very end was as a grandly processional 4/4, at once celebratory and humbly moving. (The interval, immediately afterwards, allowed me and others plenty of space to savour it all further!).

Back afterwards for Darius Milhaud’s entertaining suite La Cheminée du roi René, a seven-movement work originally written for a film about an historical ruler from Milhaud’s own Aix-en-Provence, one which brought out the composer’s own piquant response to evocations of earlier times. The movements were all very short, but each made a distinct impression of specific things, processionals, morning songs, entertainers and entertainments. The musicians successfully captured and brought to life these charming vignettes, concluding with a Madrigal-nocturne, whose dream-like rituals gradually faded with the sounds of ancient fanfares at the end.

Strange to hear echoes of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony in Ross Edwards’ work Incantations, with calls sounding across a crepuscular landscape at the outset. Wild horn-whoops and all, the atmosphere captured by the players set the scene for the second movement’s insect-like molto animato, one whose repetitive figurations tightened into a kind of naturalistic ritual chant, to almost claustrophobic effect – whew! As for the finale, the sounds seemed almost filmic to me, primordial at the start, then developing mesmeric rhythms that gathered up hymn-like strands whose oscillations continued in my brain long after the actual music had stopped.

Rounding off this concert’s wonderfully discursive explorings were Gyorgy Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, pieces which belie their “trifles” classification. The pieces are arrangements by the composer of movements from a series of piano pieces called Musica ricercata, which he wrote in the 1950s. Listening to Zephyr’s brilliantly vivid realizations of this music I found it hard to imagine the pieces in any other guise than for wind ensemble. From the “Keystone Cops-like” opening movement, through the ebb and flow of lament, folksong and energetic dance, Ligeti’s pieces whirled us through whole worlds in microcosm, leaving us almost as breathless as the players by the time the final Vivace capriccioso had “done its dash”.

We were a none-too-sizeable audience when put in the relative vastness of the Town Hall, but we roared and clapped our appreciation as whole-heartedly as we could at the end – a great concert experience!

 

 

 

 

Litton and Hough combine with the NZSO to present an exhilarating concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Andrew Litton conducts the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with pianist Stephen Hough

Anthony Ritchie:  Diary of a Madman: Dedication to Shostakovich; Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No 5 in F, Op 103; Shostakovich: Symphony No 5 in D minor, Op 47

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 22 September, 8pm

To label this concert ‘Around the world in 80 minutes’ is to draw a rather long bow: every concert that includes both a New Zealand and a European work could be so called. From Egypt to Russia is not far, and Ritchie’s piece is really from Russia, after all….

But Wellington’s astute concert-goers were not misled: it was an excellent concert both on account of the programme and the performers.

Anthony Ritchie is one of New Zealand’s best and most successful composers; his arrestingly named Diary of a Madman proved a splendid piece, a sort of small-scale ‘concerto for orchestra’; it was originally written for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, to celebrate the centenary of Shostakovich’s birth in 1906. Its name derived from Shostakovich’s admiration for playwright and short story writer Gogol. He had set the story The Nose and the play, The Gamblers, as operas; another Gogol story was called Diary of a Madman, which uses the formula of ‘laughter through tears’, a formula that is very often present in Shostakovich, Ritchie writes.

It employed a large number of Shostakovich’s tunes from a variety of works, many of which would have been familiar to many of the audience, though not all easy to name. So one way to pass the time was to wrack the brains to identify each one; another pastime was to admire the orchestration of which Ritchie is a master, using xylophone or tuba or side drum with flair and wit, each element seeming to reflect something of the character of the theme involved; and also to become increasingly impressed by the organic structural feeling that accompanied its unfolding.

He hardly had to tell us, in the programme notes, that he had put them together in a process of free-association; so an attempt to find logical associations would clearly be nonsense.  It began in comfortable tonal language and didn’t deviate greatly from its idiom as music to divert and entertain.

It deserves to become a staple repertoire piece.

Stephen Hough seems to be the only great pianist who allows us to hear Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos. Years ago he played No 4; now No 5, which the composer wrote in 1896 in Luxor and Cairo, making use of some local tunes and thus acquiring the nick-name Egyptian (unlike some composers, he was not starved of melodic invention however). But the extent of this material is slight and I hear more touches of Spain and even the Balkans in this concerto.

Hough made his early reputation in certain very conspicuously virtuosic works like the Hummel piano concertos, but his playing has always revealed an exquisite poetic quality and a refined taste that the flights of unbelievable spectacle merely seem to enhance in a perfectly modest way.

On Saturday evening, he gave a spectacular demonstration of the way in which he has persuaded millions of the value of certain neglected music, particularly the much scorned Romantic composers of the second class. He has shown that the main impediment has been the belief that the music was meretricious and shallow, a view that sprang from the influence of the post Romantic and atonal schools. But it can all be blown away by a player’s musical integrity and demonstrative sincerity. Each movement has a strong individual character, with constantly changing handling of the ideas, set in delightful sunny visions.

Saint-Saëns never pretends to teutonic profundity; he can never be mistaken for Beethoven or Bruckner, and though some of his music, for example most of his solo piano works, can be called trite, far more of his music than gets played deserves to be well known. There is nothing predictable or formulaic in this concerto; its progress, as it happens, seems inevitable; nowhere more conspicuous than in the middle Andante movement, where a distinctly, perhaps north African, atmosphere appears, but which proceeds in the most unpredictable ways, portentous, then mysterious, sentimental moments alternating with deep sonorities.

The only common link between that and the Shostakovich was the number 5.

This great symphony responded to Andrew Litton’s attention just as powerfully and colourfully as had the two previous works. If one’s attention had been monopolised rather by the piano, it was now easy to be impressed by the smooth beauty of string playing, the sense of unease that was soon created, the touches of sardonic martial music, ethereal touches from the celeste or harp and the surprising entry by the piano.

At the back of one’s mind, as one listens to this symphony, is always the still unresolved question about Shostakovich’s intentions: how much do we rely on Volkov’s account of its bitter anti-Stalinist subtext, that the words attached to the score were merely to save his skin; or is it expressing a more ambivalent picture of Soviet conditions?

Nevertheless, this performance left no room for doubt about the orchestra’s ability to rouse powerful emotional responses to the music itself; it was perhaps the kind of concert that the NZSO ought to present more frequently.

 

 

Wellington Community Choir – delights both human and animal

Posted on by Peter Mechen

LAND, SEA and FRIENDLY CREATURES

Wellington Community Choir

Directed by Julian Raphael and Carol Shortis

Diedre Irons (piano) / Simon Burgess (bass) / Sarah Hoskyns (mandolin)

Nino Raphael (guitar) / Ukulele Ensemble

Opera House, Wellington

Friday, 21st September, 2012

Two years ago, I spent a rollicking, richly-conceived evening in the Town Hall with the Wellington Community Choir, on the occasion of its 5th birthday. This latest concert, in the very different surroundings of the Opera House had a separate and distinct buzz of its own, the contrast underlined by a photograph from that memorable, multi-layered 2010 event reproduced in this year’s programme.

This time round, the performing focus was less on diversity and more on specific repertoire, with two very different and captivating musical strands plucked and resonated for our great enjoyment. We had a “Pasifika” first half, put together under the title “Songs from Oceania”, and then a distinctly “Northern Hemisphere” second half, courtesy of that redoubtable duo Flanders and Swann – with one exception, not the well-known “At the Drop of a Hat” items, but songs from a less-known collection “The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann”.

One registered that, even before the singers took the stage the Opera House atmosphere had created something rather more theatrical than in 2010, aided by back-lighting and a proscenium arch “framing the magic” as it were. But just as strong was the community aspect of it all – as the singers and instrumentalists came on their audience connections were underlined by shouts and waves of greeting, bringing stage and auditorium cheek-by-jowl, as it were. So, we had the best of both worlds by the time conductors Julian Raphael and Carol Shortis made their appearance.

The first song, from Tonga, Malimali Mai, had one of those rhythmic trajectories that has the effect of catching up up whole bunches of people in some kind of mesmeric spell, and getting them to move, think, act as one. The choir sang with plenty of gesturings, and conductor Julian Raphael invited us audience members to clap the rhythms – so we were involved from the outset. Various members of the choir introduced each item during the first half, which heightened the sense of “performer ownership” of the proceedings.

The opening item from Tonga had occasioned a lighting backdrop of the most delicious mango-like hues, underlining the sweetness and warmth of the song’s “place” in our minds. For two songs from Samoa which followed, the intense blue of the sea was emphasized instead; while the songs, firstly Falealili Uma, and then Fa’afetai I le Atua featured richly-harmonised repeated refrains, the second in particular real a cappella stuff. The NZ Maori Wairua o te puna Aroha which followed brought in a strong instrumental beat, and a pronounced swaying motion from the choir, underlining a sense of one people moving in accord.

An old favorite was The Wellerman, an early New Zealand whaler’s song, describing struggles between man and beast relieved occasionally by the “Wellerman” with fresh supplies for the whalers. Here I thought the song’s tessitura too low for the men’s voices to be able to clearly enunciate the tale, compounded by a tempo that was too fast for those same singers – as well as clarity, something of both the melancholy and the drudgery of the whalers’ situation wasn’t for me put across strongly enough. More securely grounded in effect was a New Zealand Lullaby from a slightly later period, early in the 1800s, apparently composed as a joint venture by two women, Maori and Pakeha, its attractive, faintly exotic melodic line accentuated in a Russian-sounding direction by the balalaika-like ukulele accompaniment!

I had to get my atlas out to find Boigu Island – its song Waiye here sounded suitably “ethnic”, which wasn’t surprising considering the island’s proximity to the Papua-New Guinean mainland – instrumentalists gathered around two impressive-looking and -sounding drums which punctuated the ends of the song’s phrases in fine style. The singing had that peculiary “open-throat” sound one associates with Polynesian cultures, slightly raw and very exciting, the men’s lines harmonizing with those of the women’s. More westernized, though still with exotic elements such as rhythmic chanting, was the Australian Soul Wind, the melody line and harmonizing very bluesy in places. Both of these were conducted, spaciously and most expressively, by Carol Shortis.

Two contrasting “Pasifika” items concluded the half, the first Tagi Sina, from Tokelau, dramatic and mournful, with a heavy rhythmic drumbeat underpinning the women’s plaintive melodic line, and the feeling of a whole community expressing sorrow taking up the whole company, the whole intensifying then concluding with a resounding crash. A perfect foil to it all was the concluding Sipaio from Niue, introduced as “Happiness”, with open, long-breathed melodies, accompanied by exuberant hands-and-arms movements suggesting joyful overflowing of feelings. The “tropical” lighting of the very first item returned as well to bring things to a kind of full circle.

From largely oceanic climes and vistas, we were taken by the concert’s second half to different worlds inhabited by non-human creatures, courtesy of one of the greatest musical comedy duos of them all, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann. World-famous for their “At the Drop of a(nother) Hat” shows” they also created a collection, “The Bestiary of Flanders and Swann”, less popular, but just as high in literary and musical values. We were given eight of these, five arranged by Julian Raphael for choir, and three sung as either solos or duos by Julian, Carol Shortis and a character called Lambton, who was also the “compere” for the second half, in which role I thought he often became tiresomely wordy, his humour mostly of the heavy-handed W.S.Gilbert variety. Fortunately he was able to redeem himself with a spirited solo performance of “The Rhinoceros”.

Julian Raphael’s similar turn for “The Elephant”, augmented with a pair of elephant ears, brought out all the droll humor of the words concerning a pachyderm who has lost his memory, to the audience’s delight – while his “Warthog” duo with Carol Shortis gave both performers and their audience plenty of fun at the tale of Warthog Wallflower’s neglect at a party, until the arrival of Mr Right Warthog saved the day.

The rest of the songs featured the choir, supported by some superb piano-playing from Diedre Irons, the “guest accompanist” for the evening (occasionally doing a “Donald Swann” and adding an extra voice to those in the choir). The Whale sang and sneezed its way through Seas Antarctical, while the choir, although resisting the temptation to sing while standing on their hands, still evoked the world of the Sloth with words like, “The world is such a cheerful place /when viewed from upside-down / It makes a rise of every fall; a smile of every frown.”  Other wonderful rhyming couplets came in the song “The Armadillo”, in the wake of the unfortunate creature falling in love with an armoured car- “I left him to his singing / cycled home without a pause / never tell a man the truth /about the one that he adores…” music filled with droll, regimented rhythms and ironic gentleness, soft-hearted beneath the armour-plating!

As happened with every one of the actual Flanders-and-Swann concerts, the show’s climax came with the concerted singing of the “Mud, mud, Glorious mud!” chorus from “The Hippopotamus”, a ritualized celebration, indeed. Though there was an encore song with audience participation, called “Midnight makes up its own mind”, our hearts and sensibilities mostly stayed with the Hippopotami on the banks of the cool Shalimar, taking the song and the other spirited evening performances from choir, pianist and conductor happily with us with us out into the evening air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australian guitarist Alex Tsiboulski seduces audience with beautiful playing

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

J.S. Bach: Suite no.1 for unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007), arr. Stephen Snook
Fernando Sor: Variations on a theme of Mozart, Op.10
Hans Werner Henze: Drei Tentos from Kammermusik
Alfred Uhl: Sonata classica
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Valsa Chôro from Suite populaire brésilienne
Isaac Albeniz: Sevilla from Suite Española
Pixinguinha (Alfredo da Rocha Viana Jr.): Carinhoso, arr. Roland Dyens

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Thursday 20 September 2012, 7pm

Jane Curry, the New Zealand School of Music tutor in guitar, introduced the performer, his visit being enabled by sponsorship from the Australian High Commission in Wellington (though Ukrainian-born, Tsiboulski has lived in Australia since his early teens.)  We in the audience were the beneficiaries, not least in that this was a free concert.  It was a bonus to have the concert in the relative intimacy of the Adam Concert Room, where the guitar could be easily heard, and the player easily seen.  The sound was clear; even the quietest notes could be heard.

The Bach Suite’s Prelude was played in so gentle and lovely a manner that I formed the opinion, not changed through the six movements, that I actually preferred this version to the cello original (sacrilege, maybe).  Tsiboulski spoke after the first two items, and said that this was not an ‘authentic’ arrangement, in that it did not stick solely to the notes written for cello in the original, but took into account the capabilities of the guitar.

There was considerable use of rubato, but the playing could not be called romantic – yet the music perhaps had more emotional impact than it would in the original version.  The delicacy was just enchanting.  The Allemande was most appealing (my note says ‘fab.’), while the Courante was a very fast version.  Throughout the movements there were subtle gradations of dynamics, and a little vibrato.  Tsiboulski made this music truly enthralling.  The last movement, Gigue, was very robust.  At the end of the Suite, the guitarist retuned his instrument; he did not break up the music by doing so between movements – if there was a slight drop in pitch on one or two strings – so what?

How different a mood we encountered with Sor’s Variations!  There was much more passion in this well-known work.  The varying timbres and volumes Tsiboulski extracted from his instrument by the placement of the right hand were delightful.  He played these variations with more subtlety and variety than I’ve heard them played before.  When playing quietly, he achieved a pianissimo I don’t think I’ve ever experienced from this instrument – and that’s saying something, since it is a quiet instrument – and Tsiboulski explained that among the unusual features of his Australian-made instrument was the fact that it was louder than average with guitars.

The last variation was very robust, by contrast.  Unlike the Bach, the work was played from memory.

Henze’s pieces were three excerpts from a suite of 9 pieces, inspired by poetry by the German poet Hölderlin.  Tsiboulski emphasised that these three were just interludes in the longer work.   There was a lot of fingering in very high positions in these pieces, which were otherwise deceptively simple, yet full of expression.  The second one, which translates as ‘In life the eye often finds’ gave the guitarist much more work to do, while the third was quieter again, but with running motifs, interesting chords and an inconclusive ending.

The next piece, Alfred Uhl’s Sonata classica (1937), was introduced in an entertaining way, with a story about Segovia’s penchant for adding his own gloss to composers’ work; Uhl didn’t like that.   His piece is a ‘take’ on the late 1700s – jokey and German.  Its four movements feature unexpected key changes and accidentals.  The andante second movement was quite idyllic, while the third was fast, with some strumming, which we had not heard so far.  There were reprises of earlier material; the whole featured superb writing for the guitar.

Villa-Lobos’s ‘Valsa Chôro’ from Suite populaire brésilienne was apparently about the composer looking back to his childhood, and writing a European waltz with a Brazilian flavour.  He wrote many Chôros; this was one of the early ones.  It was a charming, very melodic piece.   The guitarist created great feeling with this piece, which had that wistful, regretful tinge that much Brazilian music has.

Albeniz followed; Tsiboulski explained that like Granados and others, Albeniz wrote for the piano music that is frequently played on the guitar, including this suite.  They wrote repertoire for salon performers.  Nevertheless, it is authentic Spanish music.  This piece is particularly well-known.

The final piece was by ‘Little Penguin’ (it being customary in Brazil for popular musicians to be known by nicknames).  Like the Villa-Lobos, there was a touch of that Portuguese melancholy, as in Fado.  The arrangement of the song Carinhoso was very effective, and ended the recital on a lighter note.

It is a long time since I heard a solo guitarist that I enjoyed so much as I did the playing of Alex Tsiboulski.  His playing, choice of programme, and spoken introductions were of a very high order.

 

 

Young pianists delight and impress

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Piano Recital: students of Judith Clark

Piano music by Fauré (duets), Pasquini, Lilburn, Brahms, Rameau, Mozart, Schumann, Jenny McLeod, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Ian Munro.

Nicole Ting and Eric Ting

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 19 September 2012

These students of Judith Clark, the doyenne of piano teachers in Wellington over a long period, proved to be young; 13 or 14 and 11, maybe?  Therefore a review in the usual style does not seem appropriate.  However, some remarks are in order.

These are two very capable and talented performers.  From the beginning, I was very impressed with their touch on the piano.  They did not hit, bang, clatter or slur the keys.  They were in sympathy with the instrument, and had been taught how important touch is, something often missing today, in my experience.  This piano did not clatter, it gave out music.

Another feature was the marvellous control of dynamics, from very soft to loud.  Having touch and dynamics understood and under control, the rest can follow for these young pianists.  That this control emanates from the excellent teaching they have received is obvious.

All the music except the Jenny McLeod Tone Clock no. 20 was played from memory, including the duets from Fauré’s Dolly Suite: ‘Berceuse’ and ‘Mi-a-ow’ at the start of the concert, and ‘Kitty Valse’ at the end.  The concert was thus framed by Fauré, and had Mozart in the middle as the gentleman thanking the players after the recital said.

The Mozart was the most extended item: Sonata in B flat K.570 – a late work.  It was thoughtfully, accurately and sensitively played by Nicole Ting, who among her 6 solo pieces in this baroque to contemporary recital, played Rachmaninov’s Étude Tableau Op.39 no.4.   Nicole proved equally at home in a modern number by contemporary Australian Ian Munro ‘Dismal Blues’ from Blue Rags.

Eric played four solos, including four of Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op.119 and Op. 33.  These were beautifully rendered.

The Fauré duets, in which Eric played the upper part and Nicole the lower were a delight.  At first it seemed the young pianists were adjusting to the piano and the acoustics in the church, but they were soon on their way.  There was none of the clattering some duettists produce; the combination of Fauré, St. Mark’s, and the Ting siblings was enchanting.

Interesting, themed recital by vocal quartet at Old Saint Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘The Hunter and the Hunted’

Janey MacKenzie (soprano), Jody Orgias (mezzo soprano), Jamie Young (tenor), Justin Pearce (baritone) and Robyn Jaquiery (piano)

Arias and songs by Tchaikovsky and Handel

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 18 September, 12.15pm

The programme notes were prefaced by the words: “Some hunt for sport. Some hunt for revenge. Others are searching for love.”

Sometimes the search for a theme that might bring to a recital some kind of common thread that seems to make the whole greater than the sun of the parts, is useful, sometimes not. This fell somewhere between, though the ground was well covered by what we heard.

Janey MacKenzie and Jody Orgias opened with two duets by Tchaikovsky.
‘In the garden, near the ford’ opened with rippling piano sounds that accompanied the two very different voices which, however, blended most attractively. In authentic-sounding Russian, their singing lifted the spirits. In a second duet, ‘Dawn’, the two voices evoked a quiet religious air in a chant-like melody, perhaps suitable for the Orthodox equivalent of Matins, in slow waltz time, and they reflected the brightening day in lines than rose in pitch and clarity.

Handel occupied the central group of the recital: three pieces from Giulio Cesare, one from Semele, and one, the trio ‘The flocks shall leave the mountains’, from Acis and Galatea.

Tenor Jamie Young sang ‘Where’er you walk’ (Semele) in a voice that was slightly brittle but more seriously, in a manner that tried too hard with needless ornamentation. As a result it was difficult to conjure an air of gentle longing. Jamie reappeared in the trio from Acis and Galatea, singing the role of Acis which framed his voice to better advantage among other singers. Janey MacKenzie sang the Galatea while Justin Pearce as the nasty Polyphemus interrupted matters with a fine, threatening confrontation.

Here, and throughout, the need to use the scores detracted a little from the creation of an atmosphere seeking to evoke theatrical performance.

The three items from Giulio Cesare came together well; first with Jody taking the alto part of Cornelia to Janey MacKenzie’s Sextus in ‘Son nata a lagrimar’ in Act I where the murdered Pompey’s wife, Cornelia, and their son Sextus lament their predicament, caught up in the political and sexual web through the designs of Ptolemy and his retinue. The emotion was well portrayed.

Earlier in that act, Caesar has been offered duplicitous blandishments by Ptolemy and Caesar invokes a hunting simile in his solo ‘Va tacito’ to hint at the revenge he seeks against the Egyptian king. Jody illuminated the castrato role of Caesar (these days a great role for counter-tenors David Daniels and Andreas Scholl) with the right emotional quality.

The beautiful aria ‘Piangero la sorte mia’ is sung by Cleopatra at the beginning of Act III after Ptolemy’s army has defeated Cleopatra’s forces and she is imprisoned, but dreams of revenge which she and Caesar achieve with Caesar’s surprise defeat of Ptolemy in the last scene. Janey MacKenzie created a convincing Cleopatra both vocally and even visually.

The recital reverted to the late 19th century with another song and two arias by Tchaikovsky. The curtain rises in Eugene Onegin with Tatiana and her sister Olga singing a duet and these two voices simulated the peasant simplicity of the two rather affectingly.

Between the two arias Justin Pearce sang what is probably Tchaikovsky’s best-known song, ‘None but the lonely heart’, a Russian translation of the second of Mignon’s songs from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren, ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’.

His voice is perhaps a little unyielding for the real emotional force of the song to emerge but the tone or regret and longing were there.

Then from Tchaikovsky’s penultimate opera, The Queen of Spades, the two again took very similar roles, Lisa and Pauline, children of landed gentry, sweetly adopting a peasant song for their pleasure.
It brought to an end an attractive and unusual group of songs in a setting that helped simulate the atmosphere of the theatre.

 

 

Orchestral rarities in impressive performances from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Donald Maurice with Inbal Megiddo (cello)

Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man; Barber: Cello Concerto; Ives: Symphony No 2

Church of St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 16 September, 2.30pm

What an ambitious programme for an essentially amateur orchestra! Thinking back a decade or so, it would seem that the orchestra has gained greatly in the average level of skill. This was an astonishing concert.

The polish and confidence were evident at once in the performance of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. It’s nothing that a practised group of bandsmen couldn’t do very well, but the augmented brass section of the WCO did rather more than just play the notes. There was a real feel of muscular workers’ unity in the sonorous brilliance of the playing and strains of the ‘Internationale’ were not far away.

But it was both the other major works that stamped the concert with a mark of bravery and self-confidence.  I’ve never heard the Barber cello concerto live before and as it unfolded I really doubted that I’d heard it at all.

The cello concerto is a world away from the lyrical violin concerto, though not so far as to meet with the commendation of the school of Boulez, Maderna and Stockhausen.

It is a neglected work and I imagine the reason is partly its great difficulty, and partly its somewhat remoteness of tone, and its scarcity of much immediate melodic charm. Yet it was apparently considered by Barber to be one of his most successful scores.

I came across a review of the 1951 performance conducted by Barber with cellist Zara Nelsova which declared:  “Given suitable advocacy it could be a highly popular work and deserves to have a much stronger foothold on the repertoire than it at present enjoys. The work possesses an astonishing freshness, lyricism and a natural charm which grows stronger over the years. There are few modern concertos that have such a marvellous main tune as does the opening of this Concerto, and Barber’s scoring is beautifully transparent and full of colour.”

However, in the following 60 years it has not had many performances.

I must first, however, say how impressed I was to read the programme notes, unusually fluent, literate, well-informed, wide-ranging over much more than merely the mechanics and background to the music. They were by Ben Booker.

If Haydn and Mozart and just about every composer till the 20th century, could write as if the terrible and endless wars that surrounded them did not exist, it became impossible for any art form to ignore war after World War II which may explain the angularity and ‘nightmarish’ (Booker’s word) quality of the opening.

I’ve heard Inbal Megiddo play in several, varied situations, but this was the first time in a concerto; and in a very tough concerto. The writing for the cello might be challenging, but it struck me as lying well, if not very comfortably, for the instrument, much in the middle of the cello’s range, though much quite high too.

The opening reminded me a little of the start of Shostakovich’s first cello concerto, which could only have been coincidental for Barber’s was written earlier. But perhaps it points to a similar view of what constitutes music in the late 20th century. Both eschewed the avant-garde, and the sound that Barber sought seemed to be the essential cello sound.

Most eyes and ears are on the soloist in a concerto, and Megiddo’s playing, powerful and brilliant, kept attention focused where it had to be. Her end-of-first-movement cadenza was a truly professional, virtuosic affair.

A prominent and nicely played oboe signalled the meditative, yet lyrical second movement, which made more conspicuous use of trumpets, horns and trombone – the brass played very well.

The third movement followed the normal course, though any joyousness is very tempered by a certain brutal brilliance as the cello persists with highly detailed decorative passages, all lending an air of frenzy and disturbance rather than an optimistic conclusion.

Though no one could claim the orchestra played immaculately, rehearsals under Donald Maurice had clearly been thorough enough to ensure that there were few conspicuous stumbles and for the orchestra to deliver plenty of rhythmic energy, and generally very good ensemble.

The Ives symphony was also a rarity – all his four symphonies are rarities in live performance, and I don’t recall any by the NZSO. I didn’t know this one. Its opening could have been an immature and eccentric work by Schumann or Bruckner; but such seekings for comparisons are futile. The mind has to be empty of expectations for this music.

It is in five movements. There is no mistaking the Ives trademark quotations from both classics and American folk and gospel music which, to me, still sounds eccentric: I ask myself, Why does Ives feel that this technique makes good music?

Of course there is no compulsion for a turn-of-the-century composer to write in a manner that establishes his place in the chronological sequence, in the middle of the careers of Mahler or Elgar, Debussy or Janacek, Schoenberg or Rachmaninov, Puccini or Strauss, Falla or Ravel, and so on, but in doing that he has risked being considered a permanent iconoclast and loaner, which has been Ives’s fate – but is it a fate?

There were times when the music sounded simply naïve, and not able to be set alongside the composers I’ve mentioned above. But one smiles at the composer’s studied wit nevertheless. Given all that, the performance, handling quite deftly the myriad facets of his music – sentimental, quixotic, droll, long-breathed, bombastic, satiric, imitative of so many kinds of music – was remarkably competent and satisfying,

 

 

Enter Spring – wishful encouragement from Nota Bene

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Spring Songs: English songs by Moeran, Finzi, Michael Head, Parry, Holst and Rutter, arrangements by John Walker and Philip Walsh

New Zealand songs by Janet Jennings, and American songs by  Ken Neufeld, Scott Wilkinson, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Loesser and Charles Collins

Sharon Talbot (soprano), Stephanie Gartrell (mezzo), Juliet Kennedy (soprano)

Nota bene conducted by Peter de Blois, with Rosemary Russell and Peter de Blois (piano)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Sunday, 16 September 2012

It is rather unusual to hear a programme of songs entirely in the English language – there is a certain refreshing nature to such a concert.  Most of the songs were by English composers, but there were a number of American compositions, a couple of New Zealand ones, and a couple of arrangements (where, strangely, the original composers were not properly credited).   Not only were they all in English, they all evoked the season of spring in some way – some very directly, others by inference.

A very full printed programme gave the words to all the songs, which was most useful.  While in many cases the words of the songs were projected clearly by the singers, in those songs with more complex settings it was difficult to pick up all the words.  The entirely Internet-derived programme notes gave concert-goers plenty of information.

The programme opened with seven songs by Ernest Moeran (1894-1950), (not Edward Moeran as in the programme – he’s a later musical character) whose Songs of Springtime were settings of words by Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Thomas Nashe, Samuel Daniel, William Brown, and Robert Herrick, all of them poets flourishing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the earliest birth date being 1562 and the latest date of death, 1674.

There are those who will say that a well-written poem is music in itself, and it does not need to be given melody and harmony in the musical sense.  Nevertheless, composers are attracted to fine poetry, and if the settings are inspired, they can enhance the words and the meaning.

Most of Moeran’s a cappella settings filled this definition.  ‘Under the greenwood tree’ was full of joy, and had interesting modulations.  There was some harsh tone from the choir in this item.  The second song, ‘River-god’s song’ was of a different mood, and featured lovely suspensions, great variation in dynamics and clear enunciation.

‘Spring, sweet spring’ was a gentle evocation of birds and their songs, and spring was gently introduced.  ‘Love is a sickness’ was notable for gorgeous harmonies.  During ‘Sigh no more, ladies’ the tone of the men was very good – often it is the case in choirs that the male voices do not match the female ones in this respect.

‘Good wine’ was a tricky piece, but the choir brought it off.  The church’s good acoustics assisted the very pleasing timbre and resonance of the voices.  The final song of Moeran, ‘To Daffodils’ projected a smooth and pleasing quality from the voices.

The men of the choir took a break, while the women sang two songs by New Zealander Janet Jennings: ‘To Spring’ and ‘How sweet I roamed’, the words of both by William Blake.  What wonderful words they were!  Rosemary Russell accompanied on the piano.  These were most appealing songs.  Nota Bene has sung Janet Jenniings’s music before; it deserves wider performance and notice.  These were very accomplished songs.

Gerald Finzi was a composer with a great gift for setting poems.  His unaccompanied Seven Partsongs (five of which were sung) are settings of poems by Robert Bridges (1844-1930).  The poems are quite wordy compared with those set by Moeran and the other composers we had heard already.  Yet Finzi’s love of poetry and his skill combined to write the music sensitively, showing ‘…an unfailing response to and unity with each poet’s words…’ as the programme note had it.

It was a pity that the choir was not together for the start of the first song; elsewhere in the programme initial attacks were faultless.  Two songs about flowers, and the mournful thoughts they can evoke, were followed by a more well-known song (a favourite of Professor Peter Godfrey’s) changed the mood: ‘My spirit sang all day’.  The rising cadences of this song indeed raise the spirit; it is a wonderfully jubilant and affirmative song invoking joy.

The poem set for the next song, about a stream, struck me as rather too complex to communicate well through music, and the final one also.  That is not to say that the settings were not beautiful, the music of the first being clear and gentle, despite some strain and inaccuracy from the choir; the tenors’ tone particularly was sometimes abrasive.  Nevertheless, excellent blend is a lovely feature of this choir, and the performances were very musical.  The final song, ‘Wherefore tonight’ was about the soul and its experiences, and was scattered with wonderful discords and their resolution.  It was a grand conclusion to the cycle.

Now for something completely different – two solos: Michael Head’s A blackbird singing, and Parry’s My heart is like a singing bird, sung by Sharon Talbot, accompanied by Rosemary Russell on the piano.  These were not entirely successful.  The words did not project, for the most part, and the lower notes disappeared. The piano was a little too loud at times to allow the singer to be heard well in such an acoustically alive building.  I was amused to read that Michael Head ‘gave his first public recital as a self-accompanied singer’; not so many years ago, Simon O’Neill was disqualified from a class of a prestigious Sydney voice competition because he accompanied himself, his designated accompanist having not been able to be present at the last minute.

The choir returned to perform I love my love by Gustav Holst; it was given a spirited performance when required, but also thoughtful.  The words were depicted well in this beautifully varied song.

American composer Neufeld was represented by ‘To Daffodils’, Moeran’s setting of which we had already heard.  It was very apparent that we were hearing a more modern setting than Moeran’s; the jazz elements, and different use of the voices were distinctive, particularly the great low bass notes.  It was a charming setting.  Another American followed: Scott Wilkinson, whose setting of words from the Biblical Song of Solomon was complex, however the words were beautifully treated.  In this song the tenor tone was variable.

Several solos followed, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s State Fair, ‘That lovely weekend’, a Vera Lynn song, with music and words by Moira and Ted Heath (although the printed programme implied they had written the words only).  It was arranged by John Walker, who has arranged for The King’s Singers; and Frank Loesser’s ‘Spring will be a little late this year’ from the movie Christmas Holiday.  The first and third songs were sung in good style by mezzo Stephanie Gartrell, accompanied by Peter de Blois on the piano, at an appropriate level for the soloist.

Gartrell possesses a very resonant voice, and moved around in a natural manner while singing.  However, these pieces seemed incongruous from a singer (and a choir) dressed totally in black, in the atmosphere of a church, and while not at all against the inclusion of such items in a choral concert, I felt that they fell flat in this environment.

The Heath song was sung by Peter de Blois, while the choir ooh-ed in harmony.  De Blois’s fine tenor voice sang very expressively with absolutely clear words, while the choir ooh-ed with smooth tone and appropriate style.

The next item again acknowledged the arranger in the programme (former busy musician in Wellington Philip Walsh), but not the composer, Manning Sherwin.  It was the wartime favourite ‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’.  The statement ‘…was written for the choir of Queen’s College, Cambridge’ presumably applied to the arrangement.  A soprano soloist, Juliet Kennedy, sang the do-dos and ah-ahs as well as text, but without the smooth insouciance of a Vera Lynn.

Charles A. Collins was the composer of an amusing song, ‘Mary had a little blues’, with de Blois accompanying on the piano.  It was sung by the women; the sole male vocal participation was an ‘Oh yeah’ at the end.  A lively rendition from memory,  the performance proved how much more communication there is with the audience when music is memorised.

The final item was by that British master of choral music, John Rutter.  His setting of Shakespeare’s ‘It was a lover and his lass’, another unaccompanied piece which the conductor joined in singing after getting the choir started.  The song had a jazzy style and rhythm, and was a cheery ending to the concert.

Peter de Blois’s conducting style is fluent, and the choir responded well in all the items. The rather small audience gave the choir enthusiastic applause.  It struck me that the English songs could be compiled into an very acceptable and attractive CD.

 

 

The Tudor Consort celebrates Mexico’s National Day with great 17th century music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘Missa Mexicana’

Missa ego flos campi by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and other Mexican baroque music

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart with Matthew Marshall and Jamie Garrick (guitars)

Church of St Mary of the Angels

Saturday 15 September, 7.30pm

The inspiration for this concert of Mexican music, mainly liturgical, came from its coinciding with Mexico’s national day, celebrating independence from Spain in 1810 (though not from the economic colonisation by the country to their north).

For all the cruelty of the conquistadors towards the pre-Colomban peoples, Spain had nevertheless planted a richer and in some ways a more permanent linguistic, cultural and religious character on the country, in the shape of splendid religious architecture, painting and music; though of course that went with a conservative social and economic framework that the countries of Latin America are still suffering from today.

Recall that a major Spanish composer, Padilla, who lived in Mexico through the mid 17th century while the English colonies to the north remained relatively uncultivated, had found an environment that had already succeeded in replicating the culture and sophistication of the home country quite profoundly.

When Padilla was 26, in 1616, he became Maestro di capilla at the Cadiz Cathedral, and travelled to Mexico by 1622 where he became Maestro di capilla at the Cathedral in Puebla. Puebla, now a city of around a million, had by the 17th century become remarkably rich and had gained a pre-eminent position in Mexican cultural life, especially music. Padilla was the leading, and an enormously prolific, composer whose name, curiously, will not be found in English music reference books of earlier years. However, a glance at ‘Mexico’ and his own entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, will put him in context.

It was one of his many masses that formed the backbone of the concert: Missa ego flos campi (‘I am the flower of the field’, from The Song of Solomon). It was accompanied by Michael Stewart on the chamber organ and two guitars played by Matthew Marshall and Jamie Garrick.  Apart from that, there seemed little to distinguish it from the polyphony of Morales or Victoria, and the choir performed with its accustomed elegance and clarity. The Gloria attracted special attention with its opening tenor solo, leading to passages that were perhaps a little more light-hearted than earlier masses; while the Sanctus introduced rhythms with a hint of syncopation.

I was particularly charmed by the translucent singing of the Agnes Dei which was greatly enriched by the simplicity of guitars and organ.

As is common in concerts of this kind, the mass was interspersed by smaller motets and guitar pieces, and there were some changes that were reportedly brought about by rehearsal problems.

Between Kyrie and Gloria, the Xácara (a Portuguese word meaning ‘ballad’; the Spanish is ‘jacara’), ‘Los que fueran de bien gusto’ was sung by three soloists from the ranks: sopranos Erin King and Jane McKinlay and alto Megan Hurnard: syncopated rhythms were accompanied with clapping.

After the Gloria Matthew Marshall played a Prelude, allegro and gigue by Francisco de Vidales, which had been programmed in the second half. (It replaced a xácara by Padilla). The prelude, slow and meditative, led to a charming triple-time allegro which revealed the hand of an accomplished composer and a spirited performance. In the Gigue quite tricky rhythms had me wondering whether a particular phrase was smudged or merely an unusually complex little turn.

Soprano Erin King sang again after the Sanctus: ‘Marizapalos a lo divino – Serafin que con dulce harmonia’ by a contemporary of Padilla, Joan Cererola. Her singing was warm and soft, and perhaps in my imagination, I was hearing the wonderful Montserrat Figueras’s voice.

Matthew Marshall contributed another solo, this time way out of the era: ‘Por ti mi corazón’ by the father of Mexican nationalism in music, Manuel Ponce. Its gentle meandering melody suggested Mompou or Turina, in a performance that spoke of modesty and refinement.

The choir then returned to the 17th century with Garcia de Zéspedes’s ‘Convidando esta la noche’ (which I suppose means something like ‘Convivial is the night’). Part way through Michael Stewart took to a drum set while a singer handled maracas as the spirit of the music grew more and more lively, with an energetic tenor taking command towards the end.

Though the concert was a bit shorter than might have been expected the goods were of the finest quality and the audience showed great delight at this move away from the heartland of the early baroque, no doubt to open many ears in surprise to the sophistication of New Spain in the 17th century.