Youthful brilliance from the NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Summer Concert 2013

ARNOLD – Brass Quintet No.1 Op.73 / BALLARD – frisson (world premiere)

R.STRAUSS – Wind Serenade Op.7 / GRIEG – Two Norwegian Airs Op.63

BRAHMS – Symphony No.2 in D Major Op.73

NZSO National Youth Orchestra

Conductor (Brahms) :  Kenneth Young

Town Hall, Wellington

Friday 8th February 2013

Called a “Summer Residency Concert”, this NZSO National Youth Orchestra presentation most effectively highlighted the skills of some of the country’s top youthful musicians.

This was done by allocating works featuring the orchestra’s different sections to make up the concert’s first half. Following this, the whole orchestra came together to perform Brahms’ genial and much-loved Second Symphony.

The idea looked good on paper, and worked, I thought, marvellously in practice, thanks in part to the judicious programming.  In each of the pieces, the young musicians tackled the specific challenges fearlessly – in fact, I found the results astonishing as regards the virtuosity and musicality of the orchestral playing.

At this point I ought to apologise for what might seem a lengthy review to follow – but I want to try and do these young players’ efforts suitable justice by discussing just what I thought it was that made this concert such a special event.

First up were the brass players, five of whom presented themselves on the platform to take on Malcolm Arnold’s First Brass Quintet, written in 1973.

Arnold himself was a brass player who, in his youth, desperately wanted to play like jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.  Perhaps he didn’t quite achieve this aim, but he was certainly a good enough musician to win places in both the London Philharmonic and BBC Symphony Orchestras in the post-WW2 years. Eventually he gave up full-time playing in order to compose.

A complex personality, dogged throughout his life by profound depression,  Arnold wrote a wide range of music, some of which did confront his demons – though much of his output turned its back on his life’s darker aspects, and resulted in a number of exhilarating and accessible works , as is the case with this piece, though the second of the work’s three movements did cast some shadows.

The Quintet, written in 1961 ideally demonstrated the technical virtuosity of these NYO players – two trumpeters, a horn-, trombone- and tuba-player. The “game of chase” opening movement delighted us with absolutely scintillating trumpet work at the outset, galumphing rhythms throughout and swirling fanfares at the end. The middle movement, a Chaconne, brought out a more serious, even occasionally menacing mood, with tragic sequences calling to my mind parts of the finale of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony, along with similar echoes of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary.

But the con brio finale swept the skies clear of these clouds, Arnold bending his opening melody by throwing in occasional characteristic grace-notes, and writing irreverent glissandi for individual instruments wanting to “bale-out” of the toccata-like figurations. Everything went with a swing,  the players maintaining both intonation and ensemble with remarkable poise and touching in moments of real brilliance throughout the work.

Next was a world premiere performance of Sarah Ballard’s frisson, a work written for brass and timpani. Winner of last year’s Todd Corporation Young Composer Award with a work Bitter Hill, inspired by the Pukekawa District alongside the Waikato river, Sarah Ballard’s new piece seemed a rather more abstracted, cerebral affair. Ballard acknowledged the influence of the late Elliot Carter with this work, in particular the spectacular timpani solo that opened the piece in flamboyant style, the player transfixing us with the theatricality of his pop-drummer-like gestures and the boldness of the sounds produced.

The ensemble – trumpet, two trombones and timpani – produced some amazing individual and concerted sonorities, though I felt sorry for the trumpeter not having a “counterpart” to play off against, unlike the other two brass players, who were constantly setting timbre and figuration against one another to brilliant effect. As it was, both timbral and gestural effect stipulated by the composer was astonishing in its range and scope, even if I thought the trumpet line seemed isolated in places, less integrated in the argument compared with what the doppelgänger trombonists were doing! In places the trumpeter coped well with treacherous figurations, while the trombonists seemed able to “wrap” their lines around one another’s before either would detach with a peremptory gesture. So, for me, it was a work of great contrast and some tension in the “working out” – the composer got a good reception afterwards, and the comments I heard were favourable.

Onto the platform then came the wind players, ready to give us Richard Strauss’s youthful Serenade in E-flat, Op.7, a brief though enchanting work, and an assured piece of composition for an eighteen year-old. I enjoyed the performance greatly, partly because the players (unconducted) seemed less concerned with “moulding” the sounds and instrumental blends, and more with bringing out the different timbres and colours of these combinations. Having previously sat through concerts of wind ensembles with well-nigh perfect intonation throughout but singularly bland and unexciting results, I was here constantly stimulated by the ensemble’s actual “sound”. There was charm, gaiety and energy by turns, and one sensed the players’ delight in interaction, occasionally fulsomely-scored moments contrasted cheek-by-jowl with felicitous delicacies. Yes, there was the odd ill-tuned patch (which a friend, sitting near me, commented on afterwards), but I much preferred that to dull perfection, regarding the results overall as varied and characterful – so enjoyable!

It wasn’t until the string ensemble entered and began playing that I remember being struck by the “conductorless” status of the music-making – truth to tell, I had enjoyed the performance of the Strauss Wind Serenade so much I was obviously of a similar mind to the famous wind-player about whom the story is told that he was asked who the conductor was of a performance of “The Magic Flute” he had recently taken part in at Covent Garden –  to which he replied, “Don’t know – I never looked!”

Well, there may have been the odd phrase-beginning where intonation and ensemble might have benefitted from a guiding hand, but nothing which besmirched the delight and pleasure I felt at the group’s performance of almost all parts of the Grieg work chosen , which was itself something of a rarity in concert – Two Norwegian Airs, Op.63, though I knew the second of the “Airs” as “Cowkeeper’s Tune and Country Dance”, rather than the given titles in the programme of “Cow Call and Peasant Dance” (it obviously depended on which agricultural college one attended!).

I thought the ensemble was of a high standard throughout, both in terms of attack and in the flexible handling by the players of the music’s phrasings and pulse.  Grieg’s lines here sang and breathed with an unforced naturalness which I found beguiling.  Nicely-phrased lower strings gave us a beautifully wistful folk-melody, and then, augmented by the violins, playing of great delicacy, allied with command of weight and nuance – a real treat for the listener.  I enjoyed especially the upper strings’ wind-blown variation with its chromatic dying falls – in places uncannily anticipating Sibelius’s Tapiola.

The following “Cowcall” captured the same kind of rustic charm and sensitivity at the start, doing full justice to those very “northern” textures and harmonies characteristic of Grieg , contrasting the wistfulness of the opening with the more “earthy” emphases of the lower strings when they added their weight to the sound-picture. My one caveat was that I thought the following “Peasant Dance” too fast and slick-rhythmed, lacking a true “bucolic” quality – here, the players I thought needed to “dig in” a bit,  and trust more to accenting and “pointing” rather than to speed,  to give themselves space enough to properly bounce the bows on the strings near the bridge, and generally sound more like folk-fiddles.  The music seemed suddenly, throughout this section, to lose some of its character.

Still, in the light of the wonderful playing and conveyance of feeling and colour I’d heard earlier in the work, I felt as though we’d been treated to something special.

Having demonstrated their compartmented skills the players then had the opportunity to put their talents together, via a performance of the Brahms Second Symphony. Kenneth Young took the podium, and Salina Fisher (who had superbly led the strings throughout the Grieg work) swapped the concertmaster’s chair with Arna Morton, whom I’d often seen in the role, leading always with tremendous zest and intensity.

I was looking forward to Ken Young’s interpretation of the Brahms – my favourite of his symphonies –  as I very much enjoyed his work as a conductor. I liked his brisk, no-nonsense way with music, and his ability to draw from players great intensity and plenty of excitement. Very occasionally I’ve felt his work missing that last ounce of breathing-space, applying that no-nonsense quality a touch too rigorously, to the point of being a bit oppressive and lacking in repose – so here was a chance to experience what he would do with music I knew extremely well.

From the beginning the playing had a buoyancy, an “upward-thrust”, with the ends of phrases “speaking” to those that followed, and suggesting the music’s lovely, pastoral character. Though briskly-unfolded, the music wasn’t straitjacketed at the outset – I’ve never forgotten Young’s comment to the players at a rehearsal I once attended – “Don’t count it – FEEL it!”. Having said that I was in subsequent places reminded of Toscanini’s approach to this work, the first big climax passionately, almost fiercely declaimed, with plenty of onward drive, and perhaps with some of the figurations a bit unyielding, if very excitingly played.

The brasses in the development section sounded properly louring and purposeful, similarly activating the rest of the orchestra, and creating crescendi whose climaxes were like waves crashing one after another on a beach. Afterwards was a wonderful horn solo from Alexander Morton, ably supported by the strings, and characterfully riposted by the winds.

Slow movements don’t necessarily mean relaxation, and straightaway Young encouraged his players to really “dig in” and feel the intensity of this movement – very focused, impassioned ‘cellos at the beginning, more strong and vigorous rather than lyrical and warm, though the upper strings suggested some sunlight breaking through the clouds. There was another piece of lovely horn-playing, leading to heartfelt sectional exchanges, the whole having a “real and earnest” character, something of a battle for supremacy between light and dark. Finally the strings, with help from the bassoon counterpointing its way through the battlefield, managed to bring some hope, even though the shadows re-emerged near the end, with thudding timpani suggesting the abyss beneath this world’s feet. A not-quite-in-tune final chord helped suggest a slightly-out-of-sorts concluding mood.

Though it’s marked “allegretto grazioso” Young got his players to “energise” the third movement in places as if it were a true scherzo, the playing often emphasizing the music’s thrust and “spike”. Strings found ensemble with a couple of their entries precarious but they eventually came together, and their deep-throated “burgeoning” of tone in the music’s middle section made a great impression. After a stylish skip-and-jump away with the winds, the strings again touched our inner places with a “beautiful and strange” reprise of the opening theme,  put then to rights by the oboe, the sounds poised and lovely at the end.

A nicely “charged” first chord at the finale’s beginning was succeeded by swirling ambiences of strings and winds, rather like crowds of people gathering for the start of a great event – then, a great shout of exuberance, and the music was off over hill and dale, horses and riders parting company at some of the jumps, but everybody managing to remount and catch up at the singing second subject theme. I was reminded by Young’s headlong tempo of a recording I’d recently heard of the NZSO’s inaugural 1947 concert, with conductor Anderson Tyrer setting what was, for those players, an impossibly breakneck speed – by comparison, these young players could handle the pace, even if I felt a somewhat “hectoring” quality in the music in places.  The contrasting , gently-oscillating sequences just before the reprise of the opening gave us some much-needed respite, before it was “Yoicks! Tally-ho!” once again, and we were off!  It was all undeniably exciting, right to the end, with the look of exhilarated wonderment on one of the front-desk cellist’s faces after the final chord, with its “Wow! Did we do that?!” quality speaking volumes, as did the tremendous ovation for all at the music’s ending.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty-two talented young singers fill brilliant evening at Whanganui’s Opera School Gala

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Opera School, Whanganui – Gala concert 2013
Great Opera Moments

Twenty-two singers with seven accompanists in arias and ensembles from opera

Staging directed by Sara Brodie and ensembles conducted by Michael Vinten

Royal Wanganui Opera House

Saturday 12 January 2013, 7.30pm

This concert celebrated the nineteenth annual opera school held at Whanganui, in the music rooms of Wanganui Collegiate School during the preceding ten days.

The idea of a training school for promising singers was driven by certain Auckland-based opera figures, most importantly Donald Trott. He has been deeply involved in opera both as a singer and administrator from the days of Perkel Opera and the several opera company metamorphoses, through Auckland Metropolitan Opera, Auckland Opera to the present NBR New Zealand Opera; and this involvement at Whanganui may well be the most rewarding and memorable.

Previous general manager of NBR New Zealand Opera, Jonathan Alver, has now become Director of the school while Donald Trott takes the role of Executive Chairman.

In the early years the principal tutor was the distinguished Romanian soprano Virginia Zeani. Her place has been filled in recent years by English vocal teacher Paul Farrington plus New Zealand teachers Margaret Medlyn, Barry Mora and Richard Greager as well as others coaching language and acting.

In recent years, with the guidance of stage director Sara Brodie, the evening concert has been enlivened by staging ideas attempting to offer linkages between items, making use of the aria’s thrust, the situation dramatised in the aria, the opera’s setting or subject. As is to be expected, it worked better in some instances than others. Sometimes the audience was probably in the dark through not knowing what the opera or the particular aria was about.

A rare ensemble to start
That was probably the case with the opening ensemble. Leoncavallo wrote Zazà in 1900 and it was probably the only work after Pagliacci that met with some success; one can be forgiven for not having heard it though it registered with me years ago seeing a Metropolitan Opera photo of a prominent soprano – Geraldine Farrar perhaps – in the title role.

Its Introduction, presented, as was the entire first half of the concert, as a rehearsal.  It served to open the concert: half a dozen singers in a cheap music hall in Saint Étienne, near Lyon, where Zazà is performing (incidentally, for those who like such connections, it’s the birthplace of Massenet and its opera house has been staging festivals of all Massenet’s opera over many years); strangely, this ensemble does not include Zazà. The music has an odd, un-Italian, latter-day, operetta character. For the operatically curious, it was interesting.

It led seamlessly into Amelia Ryman’s aria from Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix, ‘O luce di quest’anima’ the best and probably only known aria from the opera. As the first solo of the evening, shaky intonation was evidence of nerves, a condition that affected several of the singers, particularly in the first half dozen pieces.

Mozart and his contemporaries
Then we get an introduction to the subject of Così fan tutte through a spoken exchange between the two naïve young lovers and their Alfonso, who resembled Donald Trott. Tenor Phillip Akau became Ferrando and sang the beautiful ‘Un’aura amoroso’, again displaying nerves, and an attractive voice.

We remained in the Mozart era with an aria from La serva padrona, attributed to Cimarosa; but did he actually write a version of the opera set first by Pergolesi?  Paisiello, on the other hand, certainly did: it’s easy to confuse the two contemporaries. From it, Madison Nonoa gave a spirited account of the aria ‘Stizzo mio stizzoso’.

There followed a bracket Mozart: first some stage business takes place and a letter is passed to Edward McKnight, as Publio, before he sings ‘Tardi s’avvede’ from La clemenza di Tito. After the abortive attempt on his life Tito has sent Publio to try to save Sesto – the failed assassin – from the Senate’s likely decree of execution.  The role of the letter at that point escaped me.

Then there’s a further bit of stage business, an exchange reflecting the wager in Così; but it’s followed by the Count’s petulant reaction in The Marriage of Figaro, ‘Hai gia vinta la causa’, as he faces the imminent marriage of his two servants. Baritone Edward Laurenson’s rather strong and elegant performance missed something of the anger.

Zerlina, on the other hand, is trying to placate her legitimately jealous fiancé in honeyed tones, with ‘Batti, batti’, and Eliza Boom’s attractive voice met its demands a lot more than half way.

The return to Così was long delayed, till the second half of the concert, when Isabella Moore took up ‘Come scoglio’, Fiordiligi’s beautiful hymn to fidelity, as one of the disguised lovers holds out a posy of flowers towards her. Her performance lent her words real conviction and it was distinguished by subtle dynamics, eloquence, clear delivery and agility – it was certainly among the two or three finest items of the evening.

Shakespeare or Bellini
I Capuleti e i Montecchi is generally assumed to be adapted from Shakespeare, but it draws mainly on Shakespeare’s own source: Matteo Bandello’s 16th century novella (is there a Bandello industry in Italy that gets outraged by thefts and distortions of the works of their great Renaissance writer?). Here we had two arias from Bellini’s first act: the first in the order of the score, Romeo’s ‘Ascolta, se Romeo l’uccise un figlio’. Disguised as his own servant, he meets Capellio (Capulet) and Tebaldo (Tybalt) in the Capulet palace proposing a deal to mend the feud between the rival Ghibelline and Guelph parties of Renaissance Italy through a marriage between Romeo and Giulietta, which is rejected by Capulet. Instead, Capellio insists that her marriage with Tebaldo should take place at once (not, as in Shakespeare, with Paris, who doesn’t, along with several other Shakespeare characters, even appear in Bellini).

Mezzo Elizabeth Harris enters, swinging a sword dangerously, reminding us that she is performing a trouser role, with Romeo’s aria in which she comfortably reached the extremes of her range.

In the following scene of Act I, Giulietta (Shannon Atkin) in her chamber longs for Romeo in ‘Eccome in lieta vesta’, leading to ‘Oh quante volte’. Unlike Shakespeare, there is no preliminary scene with her Mother and her Nurse and no first encounter with Romeo at the Capulets’ ball. Atkin, in a white bridal gown, a bit previous one might say, sang expressively and maintained well shaped lines in the famous aria and, climbing on to a stool, the cabaletta,

Libertines male and female
For the Carmen items the stage manoeuvres relied somewhat on both retrospect and foresight: the music starts with a bit of the habanera from the first act, but continues with Micaela’s arrival in Act III seeking José in the gypsy camp in the mountains. Probably unremarked, Tom Atkins, who appeared as José later in the concert, is among the gathering. After Carmen and her friends have read their futures in cards, they stay as Micaela (Christina Orgias) summoning Dutch courage, sings ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante’; and indeed, she looked far from timid.

Tom Atkins, Don José, in the penultimate aria of the evening, sang the Flower Song from Act II, a fine tenor with distinctive colour and expressiveness in a performance that fully justified its position near the concert’s end.

The role of the sexual adventurer switches sexes for Ann Truelove’s difficult aria, ‘No word from Tom’, from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Elizabeth Mandeno handled it admirably if not perfectly, expressing the meaning and emotion very well; and David Kelly’s piano accompaniment scored high.

Romantic tales from between the wars
The rest of the first half remained in the 20th century.

There’s more than one worthy stand-alone aria in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (though nothing quite compares with Marietta’s Lied).  Surprisingly, it turned out to be the only German item in the programme: the Pierrotlied, ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen’ (‘my longings, my delusions’, cf. Hans Sachs’s ‘Wahn, Wahn’). In my Erich Leinsdorf recording, Hermann Prey sings it beautifully and Frederick Jones’s voice found the right colours, with an excellent understanding of its character.

The first half ended with the glamorous, troubled scene at Bullier’s restaurant from La rondine, with dancing, using the revolve with flair; solo voices emerged well though singing from their scores created a oddly static impression,

Some French opera
The second half began with a further instalment of the Così problem, with Donald cynically prevaricating; towards the end of the evening (between the Gounod and Debussy arias) he presents bills to several of the men, counting the goods with numbers seeming to total those in Leporello’s Catalogue Aria.

But somewhat enigmatically the singing continued with Imogen Thirlwell’s ‘Depuis le jour’ from Louise, a lovely romantic performance; and she stayed on stage through the next item, for Oliver Sewell’s singing of ‘Dalla sua pace’ from Don Giovanni, elegantly, expressing well Don Ottavio’s aristocratic ineffectualness.

A camel led across the stage made me momentarily expect Aida, but when Leila Alexander began ‘Se pieta di me non senti’ I recalled that Handel’s opera’s full name was Giulio Cesare in Egitto; it’s Cleopatra’s prayer to the gods to have pity on Caesar in battle with Ptolemy, all sung in high head tones, rather effective. .

Other French arias came later: Valentin’s futile assertion, ‘Avant de quiter ces lieux’, in Faust, that Christian Thurston sang with a tenorish, if slightly constricted quality but it is a voice of promise.

Bianca Andrew chose a rarity, the only sample from Debussy whose sesquicentenary was widely observed last year. His L’enfant prodigue is not an opera, rather a dramatic cantata; I did not recognise the ‘Air de Lia’, and my notes in the dark recorded ‘Massenet?’which was not a bad guess given its early composition. Bianca appeared in stockings and suspenders, her French was very good, clear and her soprano voice firm and true.

A bel canto episode
A feature of this concert was the splendid selection of non-hackneyed arias. One of the nearest to that class was Jesse Stratford’s singing of Nemorino’s ‘Una furtive lagrima’. After a little scene involving a rack of clothes including a wedding dress, his uncle’s will was read and all the women on hand fell upon him; a great white wig had some relevance I suppose, but it eluded me. However, he sang with happy clarity and he delivered his notes accurately, with fine spirit.

Angelique MacDonald then took us back to Bellini, ‘Qui la voce sua soave’ from I puritani. It’s from the mad Elvira in Part II (she’s the daughter of a Puritan and she loves Arturo, a Royalist, condemned to death; thus, she goes mad):  though it was a huge success at its Paris premiere and continued so for decades, Puritani does little to counter the belief that opera libretti are absurd. MacDonald, at first in a stunning, sparkling, deep blue gown, changed into white in mid-aria for the cabaletta, ‘Vien diletto’. It was one of the most stylish offerings of the evening.

Then, after another somewhat puzzling verbal exchange about everyone needing a sponsor, another singer from the New Zealand School of Music, Kieran Rayner, chose I puritani, where Riccardo sings ‘Ah! Per sempre io ti perdei … Bel sogno beato’ from Part I. Rayner has become one of the best-known young singers around Wellington and he invested his baritone voice with solid feeling to portray the man who’d earlier loved Elvira and is given an uncompromising though quite rewarding role.

Later another most effective Donizetti aria appeared: ‘Chacun le sait’ from La fille du regiment, written for Paris. This is the regimental song, and Ella Smith, as Marie, the offspring of the regiment, in loose, orange, quasi-military trousers sings and gestures in vivid military style, it was another real high-point of the evening.

Puccini
Out of the 26 items, only three were by Puccini (and, in their 200th anniversary year, neither Verdi nor Wagner appeared at all!).

After the Rondine scene, the second Puccini was the last scene of Act I of Tosca in which Scarpia sets his sights ruthlessly on Tosca – ‘Va, Tosca’. Scarpia is Edward Laurenson who had also sung the Count’s impatient aria from The Marriage of Figaro. Here too, was a dark voice that did well expressing the aggressive, controlling character in some male psyches; the scene was complete with organ accompaniment for the Te Deum and cannons from the Castel Sant’ Angelo announcing the escape of Angelotti: an arresting moment in the middle of the second half.

And the final ensemble scene came from Act II of La Bohème, with Musetta’s waltz song sung brightly by Amelia Ryman while the scene involving contributions from all four students leads towards their abandonment of their bill to the foolish Alcindoro. Here again the revolve was sensibly used, and it brought the evening to a brilliant conclusion.

It remains to record the major and very eloquent contributions from the pianists: Bruce Greenfield, Greg Neil, Edward Giffney, Iola Shelley, David Kelly, Travis Baker and Somi Kim; and the occasional on-stage contributions from tutors who have been named in the text above.

In recent years the school has been successful in gaining greater visibility in the city through the work of local volunteers in Wanganui Opera Week, organising daily concerts in the course of the school. The support of Creative New Zealand and the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, among several other major sponsors, are helping to put the school’s very valuable work on a firmer basis.

 

Wonderful recital of French Christmas music from organist Dianne Halliday

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Joyeux Noël: organ music for Christmas by French composers

Dianne Halliday

St. Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Friday, 21 December, 7pm

Dianne Halliday gave her audience a wonderful conspectus of French organ music for Christmas, mainly. but not exclusively, from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It was a pity that the composers’ dates were not in the printed programme.  However, I was able to find all except one, in a variety of sources, but chiefly Wikipedia.

The opening piece was ‘Chant du Roi René’ from Les Livres de Noëls by Alexandre Guilmant, who lived from 1837 to 1911.  It was a lively, rhythmic piece based on traditional Noëls, featuring a full diapason choir, as a rousing opening to the recital.

In complete contrast were two Noëls by seventeenth century composer André Raison.  Here, soft reeds contrasted with flutes in the first piece, with a tremulant at the end, while the second featured a medieval-style melody.  Michel Corrette flourished from 1707 to 1795 – like all the other composers in the programme except one, he confirmed my observation that organists are a long-lived lot.  His Première Suite de Noëls consisted of four movements.  Among the four delightful pieces was ‘Une jeune pucelle’ (A young virgin), on flutes, and ‘Noël Provençale (tambourin)’, a polyphonic piece that introduced a stop that sounded like a Jew’s harp.

Clément Loret (Belgian-born, 1833-1909) followed; of his Six Noëls avec Variations Dianne Halliday played no.5, ‘Noël Arlesien’.  This was a delightfully inventive piece.  The title summed up what all the pieces on the programme were: variations on traditional Christmas songs and melodies.  Most had simple folk melodies which were then varied to great effect, both in the writing, and in the registrations used by Dianne Halliday.  Despite this and the range in dates of the composers, there was a certain sameness in the programme.  This one had many variations, and a great variety of registrations.  A simple melody was introduced sotto voce with the swell box closed, and then repeated with a 15th stop added at the top, then a louder rendition, then more flutes for the next, and yet more variations to follow, most without pedal parts.  Last of all was a variation played in what is probably the upper reach of human hearing – a 2-foot rank?

The next composer, Nicolas Lebègue, lived from 1631 to 1702.  Laissez paître vos bêtes (Leave grazing your animals) was based on the same melody as Bizet used for the Prelude in his first L’Arlesienne suite.  The variations included a second on quiet reeds (Vox Humana?), followed by a third on full diapason chorus.

The name Charpentier is a well-known one in French composition circles, though I could find no evidence that Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier was the relative of the two famous composers of that name.  His dates were 1734 to 1794.  The two of his Douze Noëls played: no.5, ‘Noël pour une Elévation’ and ‘Noël dans le Gout [manner] de la Symphonie Concertante’ were charming variations on two traditional Christmas songs.  The second melody was titled ‘Où s’en vont ces gais bergers?’; one could, perhaps, hear the shepherds’ clumsy movements in the abrasive reeds, and their pipes in the gentler flute tones.

Jean-François Dandrieu’s two pieces were enchanting; he flourished from 1682 to 1738.  Following his music, we had Jean Bouvard’s Noël Vosgien.  He was the only one of the featured composers for whom I could not find any information.  The piece employed some rather different tonalities, and like the other pieces in the programme, was most appealing.

‘Noël cette Journée’ from Douze Noëls by Louis-Claude D’Aquin (1694-1772) is a piece that I did know, having a recording of it on an LP made by my late revered organ teacher, Maxwell Fernie.  I have a memory of a hymn or carol in English on the Noël’s melody, but could not track it down in any of the relevant books I have.

André Fleury (1903-1995) was the composer of  Variations sur un Noël Bourguignon.  We heard one of the pieces: ‘Lo qu’en la saison qu’ai jaule’.  An interesting reed stop opened the music, then the melody was heard on the pedals with quiet accompaniment.  Louder variations followed in this extremely effective piece.

The penultimate piece was by the appropriately-named Ếmile Bourdon (1884-1974); a Noël by the 17th century Nicholas Saboly, ‘Lei
plus sage – Dòu vesinage’, [a Noël setting in the Langue d’Oc of the
south of France].  Finally, Quatre Noëls Op.26, by Charles Quef (1873-1931).  The first, ‘Noël Lorraine’ was the most contemporary-sounding piece in the programme.  It ended in a march.  ‘Noël Mâconnais’ utilised a modal melody that introduced chunky variations.  ‘Noël Breton’ was calm, with a positive mood, while ‘Noël Parisienne’ was a very bright and attractive piece, with a strong melody and a spirited finish.

What an amazing selection of Christmas organ music from France this was!  Dianne Halliday revealed a rich tapestry of music we seldom hear.  Nearly all had ‘Noël’ in the title.  I had never heard of the majority of the composers.  The playing was always beautifully articulated; registrations all had clarity and euphony; the organist exploiting the beauties of the organ to the full.  The recital was quite long, and a tour de force for the performer, to use an appropriately French phrase.

 

 

A great Messiah from the NZSO and Orpheus Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Messiah by Handel

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, conducted by Graham Abbott

Soloists: Madeleine Pierard – soprano, Anna Pierard – mezzo-soprano, Simon O’Neill – tenor, Andrew Collis – bass

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 December, 6.30pm

There was a very near full house at the Michael Fowler Centre for this, now rather rare occasion. In earlier years the NZSO and the Orpheus Choir joined for the annual December performances every year or so, but for a while the tradition was broken. For many years it became common for the Orpheus Choir to take turns with other Wellington choirs to sing the oratorio.

This resumed relationship might have contributed to the big audience which generated the feeling of a festival; of a tradition re-established.

Things began very well with orchestral playing of great assurance in the Sinfonia. It was pared down to a ‘period’ size but made little attempt to produce the more pronounced characteristics of ‘period practice’. The playing was simply crisp, alive, vigorously rhythmic as well as supporting the expression of whatever emotion existed in the words.

If there was one characteristic that all four soloists shared, it was a strong dramatic instinct, not surprising from singers whose primary job is in the opera house. Simon O’Neill’s opening ‘Comfort ye’ and ‘Every Valley’ exhibited a feeling of calm, priestly and – well – comforting; his tenor voice has both a heroic intensity and a baritonal authority that supported his assurance that the rough places would be made plain.

The Chorus enters with its splendid air of religious certainty that the ‘glory of the Lord shall be revealed’. Here was a choir of well over 100 singers that had been rehearsed so well (Mark Dorrell) that they sang with clarity and exemplary ensemble, sounding like a 30-strong, specialist baroque choir, as well as a sense of excitement, involvement and plenty of volume.

Australian Bass Andrew Collis was new to me. His is the quintessential bass, fit for all the magisterial roles that demand moral fortitude and authority, and his first recitative, ‘Thus saith the Lord’, but even more his next outing with ‘The people that walked in darkness’, seemed to lend the performance as a whole, a feeling of absolute assurance and the kind of religious certainty that Handel’s audience expected. This was an old-fashioned oratorio that delivered musical delight, dramatic excitement, and a sturdy lesson in faith and morals.

Anna Pierard sang next; it was good to be reassured about her gifts having had little chance in her role as one of the Valkyries in the NZSO’s Die Walküre earlier in the year. In ‘But who may abide’ her low notes had all the warmth of the traditional mezzo as well as conveying the urgency and trepidation that the words demand. And her voice revealed itself high and bright when called for as she sang ‘when he appeareth’, with decorous ornamentation.

The alto part gets a lot of exposure in Part I and Anna’s next recitative, ‘Behold a virgin’ and the aria, ‘O thou that tellest good tidings’, reflected beautifully the tone of optimism that Isaiah’s words convey, though her ‘Behold your God’ might have been uttered with greater magniloquence. Later, however, she sang her aria ‘He was despised’ as if the grief was her own, plangent and moving, her ‘…from shame and spitting’, underpinned by the bassoon.

The various sections of chorus showed their distinct colours in the next choral number, ‘And he shall purify’, as sopranos began and others followed in fugal fashion; and they captured the sense of the next triple time chorus with the words ‘behold the glory of the Lord is risen’ with almost thrilling exuberance.  One of the most famous choruses, ‘For unto us a child is born’, which for me was implanted (along with the anguished ‘Surely, he hath born our griefs’ in Part II, and much other essential musical furniture) at Wellington College’s annual concerts in the Town Hall around 1950; the words ‘Wonderful, Counsellor’, almost shouted, were alive with its clarity, joyousness and speed. For speed was a distinct characteristic of Abbott’s direction, and a reason why the performance was not too long in spite of doing the work entire rather than with the more usual cuts.

After the Pastoral Sinfonia, known as Pifa, that sets the scene for ‘There were shepherds’, comes the soprano’s first entry, and Madeleine Pierard filled her voice with a sunny arcadian spirit, beautifully supported by the orchestra that matched her air of excitement, with its variety and delicacy of string playing. After a short choral interjection – ‘Glory to God in the highest’ – she resumes in ‘Rejoice greatly’ with brightness, expressive movement, and colouring her voice enchantingly.

And it was this spirit, shared by all four soloists, of immediacy, of engagement and the dramatising of the events and prophesies in the Biblical texts that gripped the audience as if at the opera.

This performance departed from the usual practice of taking the intermission half way through Part II by breaking at the end of Part I.  The pair of choruses, ‘Surely…’ and ‘All we like sheep…’, were high points, though the levity with which the music treats the latter is always a surprise.

Grief also permeates the tenor’s next numbers, and O’Neill’s spitting out of the words in ‘Thy rebuke hath broken his heart’ and the intensity of his top notes as he sang ‘But there was no man’ were again of operatic force. Madeleine Pierard, bass Andrew Collis and O’Neill sang, respectively, highlights like ‘How beautiful are the feet’ and ‘Why do the nations?’ and Thou shalt break them’ with superb understanding, capturing their dramatic function wonderfully.

Several later numbers of Part II are among those often cut, but here their energetic and committed performance ensured their value was fully realised. The Alleluia chorus is always a high-point and the odd tradition of standing was adhered to though, strangely, by no means all stood during the prolonged ovation at the end, where such a gesture was actually deserved.

And the succession of indelible numbers continued almost unfalteringly, with the orchestra and chorus delivering flawless performances to support Madeleine’s rapturous ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’, the revelatory chorus ‘Since by man came death’ with its sudden burst of joy, and the great bass recitative ‘Behold I tell you a mystery’ and aria ‘The trumpet shall sound’ where it did indeed do that.

Then as the end approached, the only duet in the work, ‘O death where is thy sting’ – alto and tenor answering it by their demonstrative vocal gestures, though not a perfect balance; another soprano solo ‘If God be for us’, a fine display of finesse, attention to sense and careful delivery; and ‘Worthy is the lamb’, a sort of wonderful prelude to the final fugal Amen chorus.

They may have been previous performances that approached this one, but I doubt there has been a better in this town. The audience proved that by long applause with more than half standing.

 

 

 

 

Penultimate lunchtime concert at St Andrew’s: delightful cello and piano programme

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schumann: Fantasy pieces, Op. 73
Barbara Heller: Lalai, lullaby to awaken you
De Falla: Suite Populaire Espagnole
Janáček:  A Leaf Blown Away
Bartók: Romanian Folk Dances
Arnold Trowell: Caprice Op.20 no.6

Robert Ibell (cello), Catherine McKay (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 12 December 2012, 12.15pm

The pieces by Schumann that opened this programme are quite well-known.    A beautiful singing tone from the cello received sensitive accompaniment on the piano, with subtle variation of tone and touch.  The playing was of an appropriately romantic character on both instruments, full of expression and beautifully articulated, every note having a chance to speak.  The renditions followed the titles of the pieces, which in English are ‘Tender with expression’; ‘Lively, light’; ‘Quick and with fire’.

Originally written for clarinet and piano, they were arranged by the composer for cello and piano.  They received an exemplary performance.

At this point Robert Ibell spoke to the audience, briefly but very clearly introducing the varied programme, much of which consisted of arrangements, but some were of these arrangements were by their composers.

Next came a contemporary composition by a German composer.  The song on which it was based was a resistance song from Iran in the Shah’s era, and was written to commemorate women persecuted in that era, and then murdered by the subsequent hard-line Moslem regime.  Robert Ibell showed passion in rendering the simple opening melody, and then the strong, highly rhythmic chords and discords that followed, while the pianist plucked very low strings on the piano.

In the third part, the pianist both played and plucked the strings, without the cello, and finally both instruments played what was largely, but not exactly, a repeat of the first section.  The emotion of the piece was not, in the main, worn on the sleeve, but built up subtly through unusual figures and rhythms.

De Falla’s lively suite is well-known in his original sung version from which this one was arranged.  I must admit that I find such arrangements to be lesser creations; the music of songs is inspired by the words of poems, and not to have the latter takes away the relationship to the meaning and essential expression of the songs, not to mention the particular cadences and timbres of the Spanish language, in this case.  Nevertheless, this was very eloquent and articulate playing, and the performance displayed de Falla’s great gifts as a composer.

The opening song (giving them their English titles) was ‘The Moorish Cloth’; it was lively, with lots of pizzicato, but could not convey the irony of the original words.  It was followed by ‘Lullaby’, a beautifully gentle contrast to the previous song (no.5 in my recording of the songs), simple in its expression.  ‘Song’ (no.6 in the original sequence) was spirited and gentle by turns, and is perhaps my favourite.  Its lilting rhythm was almost soporific.

‘Jota’, an Aragon-inspired piece, featured delightful cross-rhythms and strumming contrasted with smooth passages; the story of a lover whose mother disapproves of the relationship.  It was quite gorgeous, and exploited the cello’s versatility between singing and percussive effects.

‘Asturian Song’  is a thoughtful, slow lament, originally placed before the ‘Jota’.  It’s quiet and pensive music was most effective.  Finally, the rumbustious ‘Polo’ had much hard work for the piano to do – in fact it was demanding for both musicians, and gave a vivacious ending to the suite.

Janáček, along wih his fellow countryman Dvořák, wrote for the now-despised harmonium: the ordinary family’s instrument that was smaller and probably cheaper than the piano and therefore popular in homes.  One could pretend to be playing a pipe organ, but for the wheezy tone!  Things have gone full circle; I recall hearing a Dvořák composition recently where the harmonium part was played on chamber pipe organ!  This composition, ‘A Leaf Blown Away’,  translated well to the cello and piano.  It was a soulful and telling piece.

Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances are well-known and popular, both in the original piano setting and in the composer’s orchestrations.  The cello and piano arrangement was by Luigi de Silva.  After the opening ‘Stick Dance’ came ‘Sash Dance’ and ‘In One Spot’; two difficult and high-pitched pieces, requiring the cellist to alternate between playing the strings normally, and playing harmonics.  The effect was delightful, as indeed was the whole performance.  After ‘Horn Dance’ and ‘Romanian Polka’ came ‘Fast Dance’, robust with pizzicato and bowing alternating, and a dynamic piano part.

The final piece was by Arnold Trowell, who gives the lie to the oft-repeated statement that Douglas Lilburn was our first serious composer – though some will allow Alfred Hill a look-in, even though he spent the greater part of his productive life in Australia.  This was no fledgling piece, being part of Trowell’s Opus 20.  It must be admitted that the composer spent most of his life in England from the age of 16, and that he is perhaps better known as a friend of Katherine Mansfield, his brother Garnet being perhaps more than a friend.

Trowell was a professor of cello at two London music colleges, and wrote a lot of music for cello and piano.  This was a very competent piece, featuring light and shade, somewhat Elgarian, but lively and tuneful, and very fast.

After the concert, an elderly friend said to me “How can he make the cello sound like a whole orchestra?”   Answer: with the vivid, technically assured playing of both Robert Ibell and his accompanist Catherine McKay, he can.  It is worth noting that Robert Ibell is probably the only NZSO member who regularly plays in these lunchtime concerts, for which there are no artists’ fees.  As the concert organiser, Marjan van Waardenberg said in a recent email “All the artists… participate feelessly in this series.”

 

Start of a diverting Cello(phonia) tradition at the New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cellophonia II: New Zealand School of Music

Music for cello ensembles: by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, J Strauss II, Bach, Farr

Cellists: Inbal Megiddo (NZSM lecturer in cello), Andrew Joyce, Ashley Brown, Eliah Sakakushev; students of the NZSM and the Young Musicians’ Programme; players from Wellington orchestras

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Sunday 9 December, 7.30pm

Last year’s festival for cellists at the New Zealand School of Music was a very popular occasion, and it encouraged Inbal Megiddo, cello lecturer at the school,  and other leading cellists, to stage a repeat. It involves cello tuition, masterclasses and ensemble performance and a cello scholarship, consisting of $1000 plus the use of a Thomas Kennedy cello (c. 1813) for a year.
Professor Shmuel Magan of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance participated during the week, as a tutor.

There were one or two changes from last year in the ranks of professional cellists taking part and a considerable increase in the number of students, and players from amateur orchestras such as the Wellington and the Kapiti chamber orchestras; 29 in all.

An arrangement of Mozart’s overture to The Marriage of Figaro opened the concert, involving 12 players evidently playing seven parts. While it sounded an almost entirely different piece without woodwinds and brass, the variety of tone that could be captured was very interesting, particularly the sounds high on the A string.

Perhaps the most impressive piece on the programme was the arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, which acts as a major member of the cello concerto repertoire both because of its intrinsic musical quality and the heroic demands placed on the solo cellist.

In this case the solo role was passed from one of the principal cellists to another; that was in itself entertaining, but the experience of seeing and hearing it at close, chamber music, quarters highlighted the impact of the virtuosic terrors that it presents. It fell to Andrew Joyce to play some of the most spectacular variations.  As each variation exhibits different performance characteristics, the handling of particular sections by each cellist tended to illuminate these differences most divertingly.  Though focus might have been on the soloists, the accompaniment too exposed the bones of Tchaikovsky’s writing, not quite as interesting as when clothed in the colours of a full orchestra.

The first half ended with a Blue Danube Waltz: think I’ll stick with the version left to us by J Strauss Junior.

After the interval the full ensemble – 29 – emerged to play mainly lolly-pops. The non-lolly-pops were the 6th Brandenburg Concerto and Gareth Farr’s Ascent. The latter, led by Auckland Philharmonia principal cellist Eliah Sakakushev, is a piece written for cello ensemble, in a fairly conventional idiom, but exhibiting attractive musical ideas that seemed to emerge from a composer who was constantly alive to the sounds of the instruments as he wrote the notes on his manuscript (speaking loosely in the age of ‘Sibelius’). It was a delightful piece in its own right.

In contrast, and surprisingly for me, the 6th Brandenburg, though written for strings without violins and which I had imagined would be an easy convert to a wholly cello environment, disappointed. It began with a satisfying crunch, and the perpetuum mobile rhythm of the first movement sustained interest. But the leading melody in the second movement seemed earth-bound, it didn’t fly. And in the third movement I concluded sadly that though cellos are near neighbours to violas, the sounds they produced were simply not very beguiling, while the sounds of the original hovered in my head.

On the other hand, Bach’s Air on the G string (the second movement from his third orchestral suite) worked very well, never needing to be played in a range that was too remote from the limits of the original. The players changed their places from one piece to the next, presumably to give the students and amateur players a good range of experience; in the Bach the leading cellists each shared a desk with one of the students.

Finally, the big ensemble played the brief Trepak from The Nutcracker ballet, another piece that might have seemed a very improbable candidate for this treatment. Though it’s one of the classical pops that has long been on my ‘best avoid’ list, it was kind-of fun.

 

 

A world in a grain of sand – Pepe Becker and Stephen Pickett at Futuna

Posted on by Peter Mechen

COLOURS OF FUTUNA presents:

MUSIC FOR AWHILE……

15th, 16th, and17th Century Songs of love and life,

from Italy, England, France and Spain

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Stephen Pickett (lute and chitarrino)

Futuna Chapel , Friend Street, Karori

Sunday 9th December 2012

All that was needed for perfection to be had in this concert was a more substantial audience – but for one reason or another, people stayed away. Perhaps it was the weather – when Wellington turns on a beautiful day, it’s a place to be out and about like no other, and the prospect of an indoor concert, however felicitous, becomes proportionally less inviting. Still, it was an event whose qualities led one to recall those reproving words from Henry V – “and Gentlemen of England now abed / shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here….”

True, there’s been a superabundance of great concerts in the Wellington region throughout the year, and faced with the delights of such weather, many otherwise committed concert-goers could well have reflected upon cups that “runneth over” and chosen something different this time round. But the much bandied-about “arts capital” epithet which Wellingtonians are certainly proud to own by dint of location did receive a dent, or at least a paintwork scratch in this case, in my opinion. Whatever may have been the alternatives, world-class performances such as what we handful of audience members present heard from Pepe Becker and Stephen Pickett deserved better support than this.

This was my second visit to Futuna Chapel for a concert of recent times, and the venue again worked its unique magic, helping to impart a timeless feeling to the musicians’ explorations of music from distant times and places, and bringing the sounds triumphantly to life for our twenty-first century ears. The acoustic and general ambience admirably suited Pepe Becker’s voice and Stephen Pickett’s accompaniments, catching all of us present up in the music’s world and allowing its full force and flavour, thanks in equal measure to the skills of these performers.

The concert began with a short instrumental solo played on the lute by Stephen Pickett, a Ricercar by Joan Ambrosio Dalza, whose was a composer-name new to me – the work was published in 1508, which goes some of the way towards explaining my ignorance. From this uncommonly elegant beginning we moved to the first song, by Antonio Caprioli, Quella Bella e Bianco Mano (“That fair white hand”), in which love is depicted as both a wounding and a healing experience – beautifully performed.

Pepe Becker welcomed us graciously to the concert, expressing pleasure and gratitude at our attendance (for our part, as an audience, I think we felt embarrassed at our lack of real numbers, but both musicians quickly put us at our ease!). In fact, we were treated like kings and queens throughout, with song following beautiful song as if in some kind of “dream-ritual”. Especially evocative was this first “Mediterranean” bracket, with the soft, musical Hispanic word-sounds in particular adding to the general romantic effect – the last two songs of the group presented different aspects of the Spanish character, the first, by Miguel de Fuenliana, Passevase ei rey moro, a lament for the “Alhambra” in Granada, declamatory and serious in intent; and the second energetic and celebratory, Juan Encina’s dance-like Hoy comamos y bebamos, (“Today we eat and drink”), a roistering song complete with clapping and dance movements.

Stephen Pickett changed from the guitar to the lute for the bracket of English songs, introduced by a piece for solo lute Go from My Window, and followed by John Dowland’s Flow My Tears, with Pepe Becker opening the vocal throttle and suffusing the ambience with glorious resonant tones. If the singer paid rather less attention to word-pointing and more to a sense of  flooding the listeners’ sensibilities with sorrowful sounds, the latter carried the day triumphantly. Robert Johnson’s Hark, hark ,the Lark was also splendidly delivered, with a trio of lovely bird-like ascents to the tops of the phrases, each better than the last. A stratospheric Willow Song from the Dallis Lute Book of 1583 completed the bracket in beautifully bell-like style.

“Charlatans and Mountebanks” was the intriguing title of the next bracket (courtesy of a description (1619) by Michael Praetorius of music made by comedians and clowns), beginning with a solo by Stephen Pickett on the guitar-like chitarrino, and then plunging us into the no-emotional-holds-barred world of Barbara Strozzi, with the singer declaiming wonderfully melismatic lines high and low, stressing different rhythm-points in a way that created occasional mini-tensions, all to a passacaglia-like accompaniment – like much of this fascinating composer-performer’s music, the lines wept, raged and just as quickly dissolved once again. An instrumental Fantasia terza by Melchior Barberiis nicely effected a contrast with the following dance-song, Amor ch’attendi by Giulio Caccini, the singer augmenting the music’s energy and colour with a drum.

With Music for a While by Henry Purcell the musicians concluded eponymously both the final bracket of items and the entire concert, a section which featured as well works for voice by Merula, Monteverdi and Strozzi (again). Some of these were the most overtly expressive of the afternoon, Tarquinio Merula’s Canzonetta sopra la nanna for one, an extraordinarily doom-laden and fate-ridden lament by a mother made over a sleeping child, to an insistently “sighing” lute accompaniment, singing and playing which I found riveting in its intensity. Another was Claudio Monteverdi’s Ohimè, ch’io cado, energetic and volatile, with Pepe Becker demonstrating an exhilarating combination of force and focus over a wide-ranging terrain of emotion. The third of the “trio of intensity” was Barbara Strozzi’s somewhat suggestively-titled L’eraclito Amoroso, a conceit for despairing lovers, with different rhythmic trajectories underlining the spontaneity of thought and impulse, and words like “piangere” brought out and beautifully coloured by the singer. Altogether, a real “tour de force” of vocal expression from Pepe Becker, alternating beautifully “held” lines, with passionately delivered recitative, and holding us in thrall throughout.

As well that Purcell came to the rescue of our somewhat tenderized sensibilities at the very end – here was emotion cleansed of all excess, and rarefied as a pure stream of melody. No wonder he was so esteemed by his contemporaries – his setting of Dryden’s and Nathaniel Lee’s words, presented here by singer and player, persuaded we listeners that , indeed, “beauty is truth, truth, beauty…” and seemed to soothe for a brief time in our lives the sea of the world’s troubles.

 

 

 

 

 

Turning over a Blue Leaf – Adam Page and Stroma

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA with Adam Page  – BLUE PAGE

Adam Page (saxophones and looping)

David Bremner (trombone)

Mark Carter (conductor)

Stroma

Downstage, Wellington

Sunday 9th December, 2012

This concert put me in mind of a review I once read of a performance given by the great 19th Century pianist/composer Anton Rubinstein, while on tour in the United States, the writer turning to a kind of “vernacular” in order to be able to express the wildness of exhilaration that had seized him when confronted with such music-making –

“….the house trembled, the lights danced, the walls shuck, the sky split, the ground rocked – heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, ninepences, glory, tenpenny nails, Sampson in a ‘simmon tree – Bang!!!……I knowed no more that evening!….”

The concert was billed as “New Zealand s largest chamber ensemble meets New Zealand’s greatest multi-instrumentalist”.  Even though he’s Australian-born saxophonist extraordinaire Adam Page can call himself a Kiwi (or anything else he likes), just as long as he keeps his voyage of spontaneous and interactive discovery as fresh, intriguing and even as dangerous as he did with the Stroma musicians at Downstage Theatre.

Though the concert’s apex-point was Adam Page’s Space, Time and a new pair of shoes,  a work featuring this multi-talented musician’s technique of looping his own and accompanying musicians’ live improvisations into a continually enriched texture of accumulated musical impulses,  the concert featured as well works by Jack Body, Michael Norris and Jacob ter Veldhuis, all taking their starting-point as the tradition of the Blues.

Jack Body’s work Tribute to the Blues began this exploration, a work in four sections. It began with “Big Joe’s Moan” lovely, lazily loping accordion sounds, joined by various other instruments,  playing homage to jazz legend Big Joe Turner by way of setting long and lyrical lines,  over the top of an almost pointillistic soundscape, flecks and single brushstrokes of sound and colour. The following “Penitentiary Blues”,  realized by the New Orleans-based group Tangle Eye, had a sombre and definite “Singing Detective” ambience about its textures, one trying, it seemed, to ”lighten up” and escape the claustrophobia of both form and context.

John Lee’s Pluck came to the rescue, marimba and piano creating a gorgeous “carpet” with string pizzicato joining a sympatico marimba and piano, and finger-clicking from the musicians keeping the faith, as it were, in the spirit of John Lee Hooker. Contrast, if needed was afforded by “Chain-gang Chants”, with heavy bass-dragging beat underpinning a roaring sax and trombone. The lamenting winds and strings  seemed to speak for the human spirit, the roaring brass underpinning the oppression.

Finally, Mary Lou’s Dream (homage to another jazz giant, Mary Lou Williams, pianist composer and educator) presented a kind of “blues fantasia”, with cool, walking-pace rhythms leading the ear into a kind of twilight zone of eerie wind chordings and tremolando strings, until the blues gestures begin to coalesce, building up to great roulades of expression, before expiring with a muttered cadence.

Michael Norris’s Heart across night followed on from a film clip of Theolonius Monk playing his classic Straight, No Chaser, the trio of musicians responding at first with primordial sound-impulses, a muted trombone (David Bremner), rumbling double-bass (Alexander Gunchenko) and quietly scintillating percussion (Lenny Sakofsky), all kept pulsing together by the beat of Mark Carter. The composer’s own poetry was printed as a kind of word-map “paraphrase” of Monk’s piece giving us clues as to his specific visions – thus the irruption of energies could be interpreted as “hot tears crashing”, to all of which the electric double bass seemed to choreograph a kind of “danse macabre” very much on the surface.

“No rest” cautioned the poem, so that even the twilight-zone evocations contained bursts of activity responses to disturbances and terrors within. I found a kind of  perverse joy in David Bremner’s muted trombone, a lovely sound, the instrument later reverting to its full-throated voice. with Stravinsky/Firebird-like glissandi sliding like a board-rider on a molten surface of percussion-driven activity – the climactic “that’s her” getting a volcanic, exciting response from all the players.

The final two items were dominated by Adam Page’s incredible playing, firstly Jacob ter Veldhuis’s Grab It! for tenor saxophone and audio tape, the latter containing samplings from a documentary film of death row prisoners’ aggressive verbalisings. The saxophonist played a series of high-powered synchronisations  mirroring the energy of the constantly-recycled words. The whole scenario was an amazing assault on one’s sensibilities, though the combination of images, music and words drew one into the matrix of anger and despair evinced by the presentation’s various elements – a haunting, life-shaking experience.

Lastly, we got Adam Page’s own Space, Time and a new pair of shoes, a work whose improvisatory spirit created a Baroque-like panoply of melodic and rhythmic explorations processed and shared by Page himself and the whole ensemble in tandem with a looping recorder machine. The technique enabled the musicians’ contributions to and variants of the bluesy opening material to be added to the sound-picture via the recorder-machine, whose agglomerations gradually built up to near-epic proportions. Page commented in his programme notes that he had never used so many musicians when previously presenting this work live, and was thus looking forward to the “unknown” aspect this circumstance would create.

The effect was exhilarating, transporting – a total knockout! – not quite shades of “I knowed no more that evening” but instead, a kind of flabbergasted audience babbling in response, something which, had it also been recorded and “looped”, Adam Page himself would have presumably delighted in augmenting with the excitement of his own visceral, heart-on-sleeve intensifications.  And that would have been yet another work, and it would have been even harder to tear oneself away – as it stood, from Stroma it was no less than a feast of musical discovery, with Adam Page as the inspirational “lead-from-the-front” guide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freddy Kempf’s Gershwin with the NZSO – poet-pianist with a brilliant orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NEW ZEALAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA presents FREDDY KEMPF PLAYS GERSHWIN

GERSHWIN – Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra / BERNSTEIN – Prelude, Fugue and Riffs

GERSHWIN – I Got Rhythm Variations / An American in Paris / SHOSTAKOVICH – Tahiti Trot

GERSHWIN  – Rhapsody in Blue (orch. Grofe)

Freddy Kempf (piano)

Matthew Coorey (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 7th December, 2012

A splendid program, expertly delivered, with the qualification that, to my mind pianist Freddy Kempf’s playing was notable more for poetry and introspection than glint and incisiveness, particularly in the “Rhapsody in Blue”. There were places where I wanted the piano to assert itself to a greater, somewhat brasher extent, particularly as the orchestra, under the energetic direction of Australian conductor Matthew Coorey, was “playing-out” in the best American style.

As with the players’ response a couple of months ago to Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s direction of Bernstein’s West Side Story Dances, here was a kind of untramelled spirit unleashed which took to the music with a will and realized much of its essential energetic joie de vivre. This came across most consistently throughout a vividly-projected rendition of An American in Paris – I wanted the motor horns at the beginning to “honk” more stridently, though it became obvious as the performance unfolded that the conductor was purposely “terracing” the score’s more overtly vulgar aspects to telling overall effect.

It seemed to me that any orchestra that could whole-heartedly “swing” certain music along in such a way that the NZSO players could and did on this occasion (as happened also with the Bernstein work I’ve mentioned) would be capable of bringing those same energetic, colourful and expressive qualities to any music it cared to play. Under Matthew Coory’s direction, the music’s story of the homesick traveller struggling to regain his emotional equilibrium in a foreign land, and eventually making the connections he needed, was here, by turns, excitingly and touchingly recounted, enabling the work to “tell” as the masterpiece it is.

Of course the brass has to carry much of the music’s character via plenty of on-the-spot ensemble work and virtuoso individual playing – and the solos delivered by people such as trumpeter Michael Kirgan delivered spadefuls of brilliance and feeling (even the one or two mis-hit notes had plenty of style and élan!). Not to be completely overshadowed, both winds and strings contributed soulful solo and concerted passages, balancing the blues with the brashness of some of the energies, though horns, saxophone and even the tuba also had episodes whose sounds tugged at the heartstrings.

What was caught seemed to me to be the “rhythm of the times”, putting me in mind of memories of watching some of those 1930s American films with their amazing song-and-dance sequences. Obviously this spirit had world-wide repercussions, as evidenced by Shostakovich’s contribution to the evening’s entertainment, via his Tahiti Trot, which was nothing less than a thinly disguised orchestral setting of Vincent Youman’s Broadway hit Tea for Two, completed by the composer in 1928.

Where Shostakovich’s work delighted with the wit and delicacy of its setting, Leonard Bernstein’s raunchy Prelude Fugue and Riffs from over twenty years later pinned the ears back with its percussion-driven brass declamations at the outset, irruptions alternating with echoes, and its in-your-face burleske-like gestures. It was all by way of preparing for a jazzy fugue whose peregrinations seemed to follow its own rules of expression, before returning to the all-out burlesque posturing and an ensuing “riff” whose manic energy threatened to sweep away the whole ensemble. It was the solo clarinet which finally called a halt with a single note. Again, I felt awed at the energies released by these normally straight-laced, classically-disciplined musicians, all of whom were suddenly demonstrated impressive “crossover”-like skills, and producing performances that to my ears sounded and felt creditably idiomatic.

A few further words about the concertante Gershwin items – the most interesting, by dint of being the least familiar, was the Second Rhapsody, first played in 1931, seven years after the original Rhapsody in Blue was first performed. Originally written as part of a film score, Gershwin set out to portray the bustling, concrete-jungle character of a big city (specifically New York), with a particular emphasis on the city’s upward-thrusting building activities, leading to the film-sequence being dubbed originally “Rhapsody of Rivets”. Gershwin’s later expansion of the score as a concert-piece retained the original music’s energy and rhythmic drive, but added and developed a contrasting lyrical character in places. The result was a work which its composer described as “in many respects….the best thing I’ve ever written”.

Freddy Kempf’s performance again delivered the more soulful moments of the score with plenty of heart-on-sleeve feeling, and he seemed here more into the “swing” of the energetic moments – also, his concertante approach seemed to me to suit this more sophisticated work better than with the first Rhapsody’s more “blue-and-white” character. While not as richly-endowed with memorable themes, this later work has a much more “interactive” spirit between soloist and orchestra, more like the later Concerto in F, the tension of the exchanges towards the end here magnificently terraced. I particularly enjoyed the chromatic, Messiaen-like orchestral lurches leading up to the final “all-together” payoff.

The I Got Rhythm Variations, perhaps the most lighthearted of the three, made a sparkling mid-concert makeweight, Kempf’s deft touch and whirlwind tempi for his solos reminiscent of Gershwin’s own, very unsentimental playing-style preserved on a few recordings. Again the orchestral playing under Matthew Coorey’s direction sounded right inside the music, by turns pushing, coaxing and simply letting it out there. How wonderful to have an orchestra in Wellington which can “swing it” just as whole-heartedly as it can deftly turn a Haydn or Mozart phrase, or rattle the rafters with a Brucknerian or Wagnerian climax. Well done, pianist, players and conductor, for giving us such a great concert.

Talented piano duettists combine wit and virtuosity for St Andrew’s audience

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Nicole Chao and Beth Chen (piano duettists)

Souvenirs de Bayreuth (Massenet and Fauré)
Preludes Op 23, Nos 4, 5 and 6 (Rachmaninov) – played by Beth Chen
Mephisto Waltz No 1 (Liszt) – played by Nicole Chao
La belle excentrique (Satie)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 December, 12.15pm

These two pianists, born in Taiwan, gained their master’s degrees at Victoria University, and have studied elsewhere. They have returned to Wellington with a host of awards and prizes in their brief-cases.  They have both become highly polished players who have recently joined forces to play piano duets, and duos, no doubt, which they do with a unanimity of feeling and technical mastery that is not usually acquired in so short a time.

Their programme combined a couple of satirical duets with solo pieces from the normal, yet highly demanding, repertoire.

Messager and Fauré put together as set of five pieces drawn from Wagner: ‘Fantasy in the form of a quadrille on themes from Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen’. Unlike certain French (and other) composers, the two friends – teacher and pupil – were enraptured by Wagner’s operas and had seen them in Munich, Cologne, Bayreuth and London.

We were offered no hint as to the respective contributions by the two composers (Messager wrote many operas and operettas, the still popular ballet Les deux pigeons, and conducted the first performance of Pelléas et Mélisande).

The first piece opened with loud chords and continued its brief course in dramatic fashion. The character of the quadrille varied from piece to piece, all danceable no doubt, but more likely to raise smiles; but more likely to raise smiles for the intention was to send up a few of the Leitmotive in a genial, light-hearted way.

Beth Chen played three of the preludes from Rachmaninov’s Op 23 set; hints of sentimentality were to be heard in No 4, but what kept the piece alive especially was the way the sounds produced by the two hands were kept so distinct in their colour and mood, yet created such  a perfect vocal blend.

No 5, in G minor, is the second best-known of the preludes; she played its slightly non-bellicose march carefully, which lent a greater force to the climactic phases. No 6 is rhapsodic in character and Chen gave it a relaxed though scrupulous performance, with sensitively placed rubato; again the two hands took up sharply contrasting roles – bright chords in the right hard, the left playing legato arpeggios. These were highly accomplished and authoritative performances.

Then it was Nicole Chao’s turn, with the first Mephisto Waltz, and it was brilliant: the sinister excitement of the first heavy chords, the dangerous, galloping rhythms; the scarlet and black colours of a medieval Satan in the hair-raising rushes of chromatic scales, and then the sudden beguiling calm.  Her playing was a dazzling display of speed, agility and clarity, getting to the heart of Liszt.

The pair returned then to offer another facet of late 19th century French wit, whose musical model was Satie. La belle excentrique [oui, il s’écrite comme ça] describes four characteristics or behaviours of a type of woman only to be found among the French. The Moon March, for example, suggested someone coping with the low gravity that exists on the moon or possibly with three too many drinks. The High Society Cancan with its scraps of tunes that interrupt each other, toy playfully with the spirit of Offenbach. The performances were a splendid substitute for a liquid lunch.

These two pianists await, though I doubt whether they do consciously, an invitation to join Chamber Music New Zealand’s nationwide concert series or even as duet or duo pianists, in the tradition of the Labèque sisters, in Bach, Mozart, Dussek or Poulenc, with the Wellington Orchestra or the NZSO.