Mellifluous flute and piano at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Lunchtime Concerts presents:

THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY FLUTE WORLD

Music by Georges Hüe, Sigfrid Klarg-Elert, Ian Clarke, Robert Aitken, Alfredo Casella

Hannah Sassman (flute) / Robyn Jaquiery (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace

Wednesday, 10th July, 2013

A thoroughly invigorating music-listening experience! – most appropriately for a middle-of-the-day concert, this had an engaging “borne-on-air” quality, as much to do with the playing of two consummate artists as with the instruments and repertoire.

Hannah Sassman plays flute with both the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington as a freelance musician, and teaches the instrument to a number of advanced students. She’s currently a music librarian with RNZ Concert, and recently completed her Master of Music degree at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA.

Her partner today at the piano, Robyn Jacquiery, is a well-known and highly-regarded accompanist, working with solo singers, instrumentalists and choirs.

Their combination here brought an assemblage of generally little-known repertoire to life for us, beginning with a Fantasie by French composer Georges Hüe, a contemporary of Gounod and Franck, and a winner of the Prix de Rome.

Known during his lifetime mainly for his operas and choral works, Hüe wrote this Fantasie in response to a commission by the Paris Conservatoire’s professor of flute, Adolphe Hennebains, to whom the piece is also dedicated.  Originally for flute and piano (which latter part was subsequently orchestrated, according to my researches) it’s a delicate and charming work, with that unique kind of bitter-sweet amalgam of “French Catholic” sentiment and late-romantic astringency that, to my ears haunts French fin-de-siecle music.

As engaging a communicator when talking about the music as when playing it, Hannah Sassman gave us just enough “background” to each piece in a way that nicely complemented the program notes. And with her playing of such things as Karg-Elert’s Chaconne for solo flute, she demonstrated how, in the hands of a gifted performer, music can indeed take up where words leave off – the Chaconne ranged from evocations of meditative calm to episodes of impulsive excitability.

The most recently-written works on the program were Ian Clarke’s Hypnosis and Sunday Morning, pieces which stemmed from the composer’s work in rock groups in the 1990s, the latter piece suggesting to Clarke a connection with Lionel Ritchie’s “Easy like Sunday Morning”, and giving the work a title. Hannah Sassman demonstrated for us some of the special “flute techniques” used by the pieces – things like slides and “timbral trills”.

More esoteric, perhaps, was Canadian composer Robert Aitken’s Icicle, written in 1977, a piece using microtonal techniques and nuances. Parallel to the rigorous intellectual aspects of all of this was the piece’s wonderful atmosphere, its figurations and the instrument’s timbre readily suggesting birdsong.

Music by Italian composer Alfredo Casella concluded the programme – an attractively written Sicilienne et Burlesque dating from 1914, lots of fun to listen to, and obviously, judging from the spirited nature of today’s performance, to play.

I enjoyed the music’s ritual-like opening, with its suggestions of both chant and folk-song, the piano’s graceful, rhythmic progressions creating different ambiences for the flute’s peregrinations.  The time-honoured progression from slow to fast worked brilliantly here, with the energetic Burlesque – in places intense and dark-browed, but in others lightened by an attractive insouciance. Both players handled the many changes of time and tempo with considerable aplomb – we listeners found ourselves caught up in the music’s trajectories, and enjoyed the excitement both musicians generated at the finish. Splendid!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enterprising take on the year’s anniversaries with Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Michael Vinten

Overture: Oberto (Verdi)
Requiem on the anniversary of Verdi’s death (Puccini)
Plymouth Town – ballet music (Britten)
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten  (Pärt)
Hommage à Wagner: Liszt’s Venice: music for Wagner’s death (arranged by Michael Vinten)
Symphony in C (Wagner)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 7 July, 2.30pm

2013 is the two hundredth anniversary of the births of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of Britten’s. Here was an ingenious concert that included pieces from the early years of each composer as well as music written to mark the deaths of the three.

Some were fairly obvious, others obscure and interesting, if not great works.

Those in the habit of listening to Radio New Zealand Concert after midnight will have become familiar with a disc of Verdi overtures which I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times over the years. (Much less interesting is their attachment to overtures by Marschner). The all-night programme seems to be drawn to certain discs and I have always enjoyed this one.

Oberto was the first opera that Verdi completed and was performed, at La Scala indeed! It reveals Verdi as a bold melodist and orchestrator, in the style of the day which was heavily influenced by Bellini. It’s interesting as demonstrating the accepted and expected approach of the day that made no virtue of ‘originality’ but merely sought to display talent in finding memorable, dramatic music that fitted the story and maintained the attention of those paying for their seats: today that’s considered tawdry commercialism in some quarters.

It was a fine way to start, as there was little that a sub-professional orchestra could not play adequately. Gusto and good sense compensated for some rough edges and the usual problem of modulating the volume of brass instruments.

I had never come across the little Requiem that Puccini wrote in 1905 to mark the fourth anniversary of Verdi’s death. It was a bit hard to discern the composer of Madama Butterfly of just the year before. It was composed for choir, solo viola and organ but this was an arrangement for orchestra. It was thoughtfully played but didn’t leave much of a mark. I’ve listened to You-Tube performances, both employing a choir, which I confess I found a little more engaging that the orchestral version.

More interesting was a very early work by Britten, a ballet score entitled Plymouth Town, the story hinting a similar topic in Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free and the musical, On the Town, though the scenario involved a bit of violence in the middle that Britten handled with a mixture of inventiveness and inexperience. Largely based on the evolution of the sea-shanty A-roving, the first few minutes, working well with cellos and bassoon did not strike me as offering music that cried out to be danced, but it became more ballabile in the course of its 20 minutes duration. There were later passages that offered flute, clarinet and timpani some attention, and there were well controlled pianissimo string and woodwind passages marking a restoration of peace.  Given that Britten was writing for the stage, where other senses could be engaged, it was hardly surprising that the music alone seemed a bit long.

Then came the piece that had opened the NZSO concert two days before: Arvo Pärt’s moving Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. Tubular bells were unobtainable and the part was played at the piano; the piano, played to produce the purest sonority sounded most appropriate.  Of course, the performance lacked a little of the sense of breathless grief that can be achieved, but the final note of the ‘tubular bell’ lingered longer in the air than seemed possible.

After the interval Wagner had the floor. It began with Vinten’s quite Wagnerian-sounding orchestration/precis (shall we say) of a couple of Liszt’s late piano pieces prompted by Wagner’s death in 1883. One was entitled Hommage à Wagner and the other, Am Grabe Richard Wagners, which Liszt had partly orchestrated. There were hints of Götterdämmerung and Parsifal; not a bad experiment in musical manipulation, and well played by the orchestra.

Finally, the most impressive work on the programme, Wagner’s symphony, written aged 19 and played in Leipzig to an encouraging reception. As the programme notes pointed out, its models were Beethoven and Weber (interestingly, Weber’s two early symphonies, both also in C major, were written when he too was 19 and 20).  Though ten years before Schumann’s symphonic ventures, it seemed to me that he and Wagner had both been similarly influenced by Weber, particularly in the scherzo, third movement. Furthermore, Wagner’s symphony was performed in Leipzig where Schumann lived in 1832, studying with Friedrich Wieck; did he hear Wagner’s work?

It’s a most impressive early work that deserves occasional outings with major orchestras, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra made a very creditable fist of it, as they did with most of this very interesting programme.

Beauty and truth from Amici at Waikanae

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society 35th Anniversary Concert

Amici Ensemble (Donald Armstrong, Cristina Vaszilcsin, violins; Julia Joyce, Andrew Thomson, violas; Rowan Prior, Andrew Joyce, cellos; Hiroshi Ikematsu, double bass; Kirsten Simpson, piano)

Mozart: Grande Sestetto Concertante in E flat, K.364 (allegro maestoso, andante, presto)

Christopher Blake: Māramatanga (Rangiātea, McNaught, Sisyphus)

R. Strauss: Metamorphosen

Waikanae Memorial Hall

7 July 2013

The Waikanae Music Society has formed a laudable habit of commissioning a new work to celebrate each of its fifth-ending anniversaries.  Jack Body and Kenneth Young have both had commissions; this time it was the turn of Christopher Blake.  Most laudable, too, is the length of time for which its committee members have served; President Helen Guthrie has been on the committee for 29 years!

The programme began with Mozart, the work not under its original title Sinfonia Concertante or in its familiar setting for violin, viola and orchestra, but for string sextet of two violins, two violas, cello and bass.  Directed from the first violin desk by Donald Armstrong, convenor of the group, it certainly sounded different in this combination.  The arrangement by an unknown hand was extremely skilled, giving melodies to all the instruments that in the full version were for violin and viola.

As Armstrong suggested in his opening remarks, the original work would have been played, under its original title Sinfonia Concertante, by a small orchestra in a venue much smaller than those typically used today.  I still missed the broader background sound of an orchestra, despite the superb solos; notably the excellent double bass solo from Hiroshi Ikematsu in the first movement, and the viola solo from Julia Joyce in the andante movement.

The beauty of form and melody were to the fore, as always with Mozart.  There were so many charming touches, some unexpected.  Each movement was full of transforming character.  Slight aberrations of intonation were perhaps more obvious in this configuration than they would be in that for which the music was originally written.

The programme note stated that Christopher Blake’s music for piano quintet was about the enlightenment of religious faith.  This was seen in the Maori context, the opening movement being named for the church at Otaki.  The second movement was named after a comet, and the third based on the philosophy of Camus, and on the Greek character condemned to push a rock uphill, forever.  The link between Maori and the Greek gods is surprisingly topical, given the recent repeat performance of John Psathas’s Orpheus in Rarohenga, and a very fine current exhibition at Pataka in Porirua, of Marian Maguire’s wonderful etchings and lithographs linking Maori and Greek characters, Titkowaru’s Dilemma.

The work began with strummed cello, becoming gradually louder.  The other strings joined in, some pizzicato with strings deliberately hitting the finger board.  The piano entered, and the movement became a string quartet with shimmering piano in the background.  The piano followed up with a sombre, intoned melody while the strings played pizzicato again.  The movement ended as it began, with the cello.

The opening unison of the second movement perhaps suggested the open night sky; its crescendo sounded like a planet rising.  Other-worldly sounds continued.  Interlocution from the piano built up to passionate outbursts, then a mellow, muted section followed.  Meanderings by all the instruments ended the movement.

The third movement, reflecting the bleak philosophy of Frenchman Albert Camus had a gloomy tone, overall.  In places it was confused and hectic, with elements of a different, more positive attitude in a skipping piano part.  After this, the rapidly repeated, almost tremolando phrases of the strings had a pessimistic slant, and their angular melodies brought a dismal mood that the piano then joined in.  There were some gorgeous harmonies for the strings, before a declamatory ending.

Māramatanga means enlightenment; this exploration of some of its aspects certainly justified another hearing, at which one would hope to be further enlightened by and about the music.

Metamorphosen is usually played by 23 strings, but this version for seven strings is apparently based on Strauss’s original sketches.  His mourning for the destruction of so many symbols of German culture during World War II is amply heard in the music; one hopes that he also looked to a metamorphosis from that shocking state to a better one.  He certainly had good reason to be gloomy, as he saw the destruction around him.

The music brought forth beautiful playing from each individual in the group.  The cadences, progressions and harmonies had highly emotional effects.  The work grows gradually and almost imperceptibly with a wonderful build-up of tension and gorgeous tone.  After a time it took on a more optimistic aspect, in the midst of restless searching, the while clothed in romantic beauty.

As compared with the Mozart work, Strauss made considerable use of a variety of dynamics, and depth of sound.  This was a powerful performance.  A beautiful viola solo with quiet accompaniment had me wondering – is it describing resignation or resolution?  The firm, even at times harsh passage that followed suggested rejection, not acceptance.

A return to more peaceful pastures was mellow, but turned to poignancy – and perhaps resignation at last.

A fine concert illustrated why it is that the Amici are frequent visitors to the Waikanae Music Society.  Their tackling of such a varied programme always had the ring of truth.

 

 

Capital Choir – joys and travails through Solstice and Winter

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Capital Choir presents:
Sing the Measure of Solstice and Winter

BEETHOVEN – Mass in C
A Selection of New Zealand Songs
Felicia Edgecombe (director) / Belinda Behle (piano)

Soloists (Beethoven):
Belinda Behle (soprano) / Ruth Armishaw (alto)
Chris Berentson (tenor) / Rhys Cocker (bass)

Janet Gibbs (organ)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street,

Sunday 7th July 2013

There’s such a lot of pleasure to be had in singing, and especially if one is musical but doesn’t perhaps command any experience or great expertise on an instrument other than the voice.

And for people like myself who can hear music and enjoy it but would seriously baulk at the thought of making individually-exposed sounds themeslves, there’s safety in numbers in the shape and form of membership of a choir.

Recalling my own short-lived but enjoyable experience as a choir member, I’m sure I would have liked singing with this group in repertoire such as we heard throughout the first half of this concert – a collection of songs, some of them written by the choir’s own director, Felicia Edgecombe, and in one instance with the words written by another choir member, author and poet, Rachel McAlpine.

These were, for the most part, simply-conceived songs, featuring a good deal of strong, well-focused unison sounds, with some differentiation between men’s and women’s voices and enough angularities in the lines (plus the occasional harmony) to pose sufficient of a challenge.

I fancy I would also have appreciated the focused, but always flexible direction of the group’s director, Felicia Edgecombe, being made to feel secure and well-rounded in matters of breathing and phrasing by following her visual example.

And as an intensely private pianist myself, I particularly relished the songs’ piano accompaniments, each sounding so beautifully modulated and flexibly phrased (oh, to be able to play like that!) by Belinda Behle – whose name I couldn’t at first see anywhere in the program relating to the first half of the concert, but whose identity was revealed when I saw she was the soprano soloist in the Beethoven Mass as well! – she is, I believe, the choir’s regular accompanist.

I imagine it would have been a source of pride to have sung those items written especially for the choir by Felicia Edgecombe – the “Nation Prayer”, a kind of New Zealand ballad, a lovely setting of a gorgeous Gerard Manly Hopkins poem, complete with a final, affirming “Praise Him!”, and a setting of a poem “Once in a While” by Brian Turner, which featured the choir’s bass voices steadfastly holding their line throughout the first part.

Most interesting of these was, I thought, the setting of Rachel McAlpine’s lines throughout a work entitled “World”, words which the poet herself read before the performance. With bells pealing at the start, the women launched into the setting splendidly, then supported the men’s verse following – perhaps the voices didn’t quite have the “oomph” necessary to bring off the climax of the last verse, though the subsequent upward modulation seemed to give the choir more “heart”, and strengthen everybody’s resolve.

Part of the fascination of singing in a choir was, I remember, marvelling at the confidence and skill with which any soloists present would deliver their lines – so exposed, and yet so focused and purposeful. In this respect the Beethoven Mass would have been a real treat – four very different voices, beginning Beethoven’s “Kyrie” confidently, and shaping their lines throughout the “Gloria” with plenty of musicality.

In general, this was a performance of the Beethoven work by the choir that started strongly, but seemed to lose its choral focus as the work progressed. Throughout the Kyrie and Gloria, my notes contain comments such as “Women very strong – hold their lines well” and “Enthusiastic – a little strained, but nicely shaped” – and at one point where the accompanying organ unaccountably stopped, towards the end of the Gloria, the choir continued as if its life depended the outcome, holding its tone firm and its ensemble truly (I understand the organist was taken ill, hence the momentary lapse).

However, from the Credo on, the performance seemed in places under-parted – in particular, the men were often tentative-sounding, though lack of weight of numbers certainly contributed to the weak, non-upholstered body of choral sound in places.

By dint of having the most resplendent-sounding solo voices the alto Ruth Armishaw and bass Rhys Cocker were able to fill out their tones with ample variation of intensity and colour. Though plainer and more subdued by comparison the sweet-toned soprano of Belinda Behle and Chris Berentson’s true-voiced tenor managed to maintain their respective lines and hold their own in ensemble passages, achieving an attractive blend in places. And towards the end of the Gloria,in that typically Beethovenian build-up of tensions, the singers seemed inspired, led by the soprano, keeping their lines steadfastly to the end.

I would have thundered as loudly as I could at the beginning of the Credo, had I been singing – I felt tempted to join in anyway, as there didn’t seem enough power in those voices at this point. It was left to our soloists to “focus” the music, which they did at “Et incarnatus est” – again both bass and alto shone during their respective solos, at  “Et resurrexit” and “Et in Spiritum Sanctum”  How amazingly like the Missa Solemnis  this music is in places – obviously a kind of preliminary run on the composer’s part!

I don’t think I would have liked to sing the Sanctus, much – all that chromatic writing! But I did wonder as to whether there had been sufficient rehearsal though these sequences, because they sounded to me as though they were being sight-read, here. Again, the soloists came to the rescue in the “Benedictus”, Ruth Armishaw in particular a tower of strength, despite the briefest of stumbling over an ending to “In Nomine Domine” – and, the final lines of the ensemble were simply heavenly!

The choir rallied itself for the final Agnus Dei, achieving the “cry of anguish” at the beginning,and establishing a coherent sense of ebb and flow through to the end. For me, the music had a wonderful kind of dark “Gothic” feeling about it in places, which the choir was able to sustain, and which the soloists were able to work their contrasting “Dona nobis pacem” passages against to good effect.

So – a mixed bag, with the warm, heartfelt choral singing throughout the first half and the work of the soloists during the Beethoven Mass the most notable features. Even the undernourished choral singing during parts of the Mass didn’t for me negate the work’s glory, so, all-in-all, I was grateful to have heard it done, this “little brother” of the great Missa Solemnis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magnificent Nordic programme from NZSO, Vänskä and Currie

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä with Colin Currie (percussion soloist)

Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (Pärt)
Percussion Concerto ‘Sieidi’ (Kalevi Aho)
Symphony No 5, Op 50 (Nielsen)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 5 July, 6.30pm

Osmo Vänskä’s name first came to my notice as conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in a series of Sibelius symphonies that returned to the composer’s original versions. Even though the consensus was generally that Sibelius’s further thoughts were best, there were interesting revelations; in any case, the performances were acknowledged as powerful and highly motivated.

Though in his conversation with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat, Vänskä hinted at the way he has been rather confined to the Nordic repertoire, it was no bad thing for us to experience this splendid programme; just a shame that Wellington audiences seem to be overlooking the meaning of the increasingly empty boast of being the Cultural Capital: there were far too many empty seats.

Wellington heard the first of the four performances of this wonderful concert (the orchestra goes on to Christchurch, Hamilton and Auckland), and it proved to be a landmark, both for the astonishing percussion concerto by Kalevi Aho and the electrifying performance of Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony. Many of us consider Nielsen to be a symphonist in almost the same class as Sibelius, and this Finnish conductor clearly believed in the music’s stature and importance.

While Nielsen avoided referring to a ‘programme’ behind this symphony, it is generally felt that the horrors of the First World War – it was written between 1920 and 1922 – are the unspoken sub-text. Robert Layton, for example, remarks of the end of the first movement that the conflict eventually subsides leaving “a desolate clarinet mourning the terrible cost of the triumph [surely a most unfortunate word to apply to any aspect of the war, especially the Versailles treaty, pregnant with the seeds of another war]”; and an “evocation of the terrible conflict from which Europe had just emerged”.

Violence is audible in many parts, particularly in the role of the insistent automatic-weapon-like rattle of the snare drum in the first movement.

Though it is cast in two movements, each divided into several sections, a strong unity of musical subject matter binds the whole so that the audience is gripped for its entire 35 minutes or so. The symphony emerges as a very distinctive and memorable work in almost any hands, but there was a powerful, arresting atmosphere here, from the very start, with the music seeming to emerge from nowhere as violas rock across a minor third; it announced Vänskä’s intimate understanding and command.

Familiarity with the work creates a tense feeling of anticipation, awaiting the entry of the terrifying snare drum, played by Lenny Sakofsky.  Even though the drum was placed in the middle of the orchestra (where I couldn’t see it) rather than in a soloist’s position at the front, its arrival and its growing, almost overwhelming, force came as something of a shock which mere familiarity with recorded versions cannot quite prepare you for. That staccato attack is not confined to the drum however, and the driving staccato characterizes all other sections of the orchestra.

And it’s not till the last few pages that a sunny rising motif arrives to lead to the beautiful, perhaps more characteristic sound of the lyrical Nielsen with which the second part, Adagio non troppo, begins. If the tempo marking might suggest less of the drama and dynamism of the first movement, that was not the way it happened; though the conflict of the first movement was resolved, there was no loss of momentum or intensity and it proved an entirely convincing sequel.

We’d been prepared for the character of Vänskä’s performance by the two works in the first half: scrupulous, detailed attention to dynamics and to the balance between individual instruments and orchestral sections, but above all, enormous energy and rhythmic impulse.

The concert opened with Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. It’s a piece that I have long promoted to family and friends who might need persuading of the existence of classical music that is irresistible: simple, spiritual and profoundly moving.  However, while I am usually most reluctant to parade comparative remarks about performances, I was unable to ignore the sounds of the recording by the Bergen Philharmonic under Neemi Järvi that is engraved in my head. This playing rather lacked the same clarity and deep spirituality. But its place as a prelude to the massive works to follow was intelligent and should awaken those hearing it for the first time to music other than Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel by this singular Estonian composer.

The percussion concerto, Sieidi, by Kalevi Aho was jointly commissioned by the London Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras and the Luostoclassic Festival which, the programme notes did not tell you, is in Finnish Lapland (An amazing place; look at: www.bachtrack.com/about/luostoclassic‎).

It might be tempting to denigrate Kalevi Aho’s work as largely a virtuosic showcase for Currie, and to wonder about its musical substance; would it prove to be slight if the huge score were to be reduced to a solo piano version? But that is the equivalent of analyzing the artistic value of a painting by turning it into naked black and white.

While there were moments early on when such thoughts cropped up, admiration and persuasion soon supervened. As well as being mesmerized by Currie’s astonishing prowess, the orchestral episodes that offered the equivalent of the Promenade in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, allowing Currie to move comfortably from one instrument or set to the next, were opportunities for lyrical, reflective and often simply beautiful music. Even as the soloist was in full flight, the orchestral composer was very conspicuous, in complementary developments that were exquisitely attuned to the character of the particular solo percussion passages.

The music evolved, metamorphosed, maintaining the listener’s attention through its varying moods and along its diverting paths. There is of course, no problem with the concerto’s form, formal anarchy has reigned in all styles of music for at least a century. It’s not divided into the traditional three or four movements, and the musical ideas are not handled in traditional ways: sonata form, rondo, or the theme and variations form, though that could be a way of considering it, where motifs are treated successively by each of the percussion instruments or groups of instruments, as well as the orchestra itself.

There were novelties among Currie’s battery of instruments: African hand-drums, and a five-octave marimba, which I had not seen before, and vibraphone. Three other orchestral percussionists participate, their positions prescribed by the composer – in the middle of the orchestra and on either side. The orchestral percussion makes its impact from the very start, as the hand-hit djembe is accompanied by quite stunning timpani and bass drum.

The deliberate visual effect is intended to reflect the shape of the music as attention on soloist Colin Currie moves from right to left and, after reaching the giant tam-tam on the left, begins a return in the other direction with the music generally exploring sounds that sounded distinct from those heard on the up-journey.

It is an extended work and makes huge demands of the entire orchestra, particularly the percussionists. I would be surprised if this performance could be heard as inferior to the premiere performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vänskä. In fact, his agreeing to come to conduct the NZSO in the piece speaks volumes about the orchestra’s international reputation. Obviously, Vänskä would have agreed to conduct this massive programme only in the confident knowledge of the NZSO’s capacities.

While it might be tempting to offer a reserved view about its musical value, I did not share some opinions that it was a bit too long; in spite of the burden of being heard as a virtuosic exercise, there is real music here, of colour, spectacle, huge variety and sustained power; and I was in no hurry for it to end. All of this could hardly have been more vividly, brilliantly brought to life than from the hands of Currie, Vänskä and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

 

Young Musicians enliven lunchtime at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by admin

New Zealand School of Music presents:
Young Musicians’ Concert

St. Andrews on the Terrace

Wednesday, 3rd July 2013

This concert featured members of the N.Z. School of Music Young Musicians Programme, which provides opportunities for gifted young people to work with the cream of New Zealand performers, composers and music educators, as well as overseas visitors, faculty staff and gifted post-graduate NZSM students. Seven performers contributed to a well rounded programme which demonstrated that there is no shortage of well trained, able younger musicians coming up the ranks.

Firstly Harry Di Somma sang Brahms’ Leibestreu and Schubert’s An Sylvia, in a sensitive, musical presentation, with promising cantabile, good dynamics and phrasing, and sound intonation. His love of the works was obvious from his face, but he needs to release his whole body to express more fully the feelings he wants to convey.

Next Sophie Smith sang Brahms’ An Ein Veilchen in a remarkably well rounded, mature voice with a sure cantabile, good dynamic control and artistic phrasing. Her overall musicianship, mature voice and accomplished singing quite belied the petite figure that stood before us in her school tunic, and I believe we will see her go far with her talents.

Nino Raphael then sang Schumann’s Im Walde and Purcell’s Music for a While in a warm expressive performance with a quality of vocal timbre, phrasing and dynamics that supported a sure cantabile line throughout. He has yet to develop strength at the outer limits of his range, but he has plentiful talents to build on.

The singers were accompanied at the piano by John Broadbent, whose sure technical support and musicianship greatly enhanced the three partnerships. His crafting and balance of piano dynamics  with each voice was exemplary, easily the best piano ensemble work I have heard in the challenging acoustics that musicians must now grapple with since alterations were completed at St.Andrews.

John Tan was the first of the instrumental students, playing a Scarlatti Sonata and two piano works by Albeniz. It was a musical, expressive performance supported by a thoroughly competent technique. He can well afford to rely upon it, and need not have succumbed to the nerves that caused him to rush in the technically demanding final section of the Malaguena.

Next was an arrangement of Erroll Garner’s classic ballad Misty in a charming, sensitive rendition by guitarist Amber Madriaga. It was a perfect gem but was very difficult to hear back in the hall. Amber needs to project her lovely sound much more when playing in spaces this size.

Pianist Prin Keerasuntonpong followed with Granados’ Quejas o la Maja y el Ruisenor. He amply captured the shifting moods of its rich melodies and textures and demonstrated the skill and sensitivity that have doubtless earned him the scholarship he has secured to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

The final performer was Jamie Garrick, a fourth year guitar student at NZSM. He played Mertz’ Romanze from Bardenklange, and the Introduction and Caprice from Regondi’s Op.23. His sure technique supported musical phrasing and dynamics. However, a somewhat aimless approach did little to clarify the musical form of the Introduction, though this improved with the clearer melodic writing of the Caprice section.

Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable concert that amply demonstrated the talents of New Zealand’s younger musicians.  It deserved a better audience.

(550 words)

Quintessential winds at Old St.Paul’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Old St. Paul’s Lunchtime Concerts presents:
Quintessential

Ibert: Trois Pièces Brèves

Gounod: Andante Cantabile, from Petite Symphonie (arr. Tilson)

Nielsen: Quintet, Op.43

Shostakovich: Polka, from The Golden Age

Quintessential – Karen Batten (flute), Madeline Sakofsky (oboe), Moira Hurst (clarinet), Preman Tilson (bassoon), Heather Thompson (French horn)

Old St. Paul’s, Thorndon

Tuesday 2 July, 2013

To be able to hear music of such interesting variety and high standard at a free concert is a privilege indeed.

The Ibert pieces were a great way to start.  They were quirky Ibert at full play, in the opening dance-like Allegro.  There were many fast runs for the smaller instruments, and leaping intervals for the bassoon.  The Andante began as a duet for clarinet and flute, with charming interweaving of lines and timbres, the other instruments joining in at the end.

The finale was marked Assez lent – Allegro scherzando (fine mixture of Romance languages there!)  It was piquant, cheerful and sprightly, again in dance-like rhythm and tempo.  It included a notable oboe solo, followed by a clarinet one.  There were jolly little figures on bassoon, and plenty of support from the horn.

The Andante Cantabile from Gounod’s Petite Symphonie was arranged for the wind group by bassoonist Preman Tilson. This work gave the horn an opportunity to play out, in its solo passages.  The arrangement made a charming and delightful piece, and the players performed with wonderful ensemble.

The major work, Nielsen’s Quintet, is a wonderful composition, and the introduction by Karen Batten, explaining the events depicted and the variations on a chorale in the last movement were very helpful.  The first movement, Allegro ben moderato, depicted a character (the composer?) in the countryside.  There was lots of activity for everyone, fragments of melody and other delicious passages.  The Minuet second movement had the character in the city, and so the music was much busier, with a recurring theme; the Trio section perhaps depicted a party.

The third movement, titled Praeludium (though it was at the end!) consisted of an Adagio, Theme and Variations 1-11.  The plangent Adagio was said to depict a storm in the forest, but it was a very tame storm compared with what we recently experienced!  The composer finds a church to shelter in, and sits at the harmonium, improvising a chorale upon which the variations are made.  The programme behind the variations: they depict the five players for whom Nielsen wrote the piece – people he knew well.

The first variation was for horn and bassoon – an unusual combination.  All five played the next, a flute solo soaring above the others’ musical lines.  No. 3 featured oboe; this variation changed the character of the chorale utterly.  The fourth variation was fast, with all five playing in triplets.  Number 5 featured the clarinet, with a burping bassoon for accompaniment.  No.6 had all five playing a gentle piece, sounding like a heavenly choir singing, with pleasing effect.

The seventh variation was a bassoon solo, in which the composer used the entire register of the instrument.  All played together again, in a minor tonality, in the eighth variation; the music had a rather Eastern sound.  Number 9 was for horn only; Heather Thompson achieved distant, alpenhorn-style sounds.  No. ten had all five  players interlocking with graceful phrases, and changes of key.

The final variation was spiky, with everyone asserting their own phrases.  The tempo quickened, then the splendid chorale was played again.  At this point the bassoon had to insert an extension tube into the top of his instrument, to get the notes at the end, since they were off the instrument’s range.

This wonderful, inventive and cheerful work converted me to Nielsen, of whom I have not been much of a fan to date.

The final work, to send us out in cheerful mood, was the Polka from Shostakovich’s ballet The Golden Age.  It was appropriately characterful and active for such a style of dance, not to say amusing.  Marvellous discords and lumbering rhythms were just some of the ways in which the humorous dance was created.

I noticed after the concert that there was a cor anglais on the platform; I had failed to notice in which work it was used, but I suspect it was in the Ibert.  With both pitches of clarinet in use, that made a total of seven instruments – much wind indeed, for a windy day.

 

 

Beethoven from Houstoun Concert 4 – recycle plus renewal….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

Michael Houstoun (piano) – Beethoven ReCycle 2013

Sonata No.20 in G Op.49 No.2 / Sonata No.3 in C Op.2 No.3

Sonata No.24 in F-sharp Op.78 / Sonata No.16 in G Op.31 No.1

Sonata No.23 in F Minor Op.57 “Appassionata”

Town Hall, Wellington,

Sunday 30th June 2013

Those of us who are regular concertgoers can’t really help ourselves – as we get to know the work of certain musicians whom we’ve heard at various times over the years, we form opinions of them as artists and of their work. And, contrary to the popular axiom, if this work is of a consistently high standard, it’s a case of familiarity giving rise to admiration and respect, and invariably to a desire to hear still more from these same people.

Consider, for instance, pianist Michael Houstoun, who’s had thus far a most distinguished career in this country, and who’s presently engaged upon his second complete public performance cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Through these and many other performances and recordings, Houstoun has impressed a positive, strong and clearly-etched artistic profile in the minds of the musical public. He would, I’m certain, be widely regarded as this country’s foremost classical pianist at the present time.

Houstoun has consistently and single-mindedly worked towards the highest standards as a musician – to the point where, some years ago, his intensities contributed to a kind of physical melt-down in the form of focal dystonia, a dysfunctional phenomenon which has, over the last quarter-century, afflicted a number of instrumentalists. It says much for the pianist himself that he was able to work towards a recovery, with the help of a number of skilled specialist practitioners.

So, up to that particular crisis-point in his career, and with stellar achievements under his belt such as two complete Beethoven sonata performance cycles – one in public, the other commercially recorded – his reputation as a pianist had been well-established.  Now he’s come down to us having gone through what he himself has indicated was a redefining set of experiences associated with his debilitating disorder and gradual return to playing health.

I’ve heard him perform on a number of occasions of late – and for me, each experience has persuaded me to rethink my opinions regarding a pianist whose playing I thought I knew well. This latest concert, the fourth in the new “Beethoven ReCycled” series, pushed out the parameters of the pianist’s art for me in a way that was as exhilarating as it was unexpected. It wasn’t a Wordsworth-like scenario of pleasure and understanding recollected in tranquility – this was a here-and-now experience, one which took its time to grow and flourish during the recital’s course, but with its flowers growing cannons towards the end, to overwhelming effect.

For whatever reason we were located in the Town Hall for this particular recital – and the venue I think overawed the musical content of the opening sonata on the programme, the second of the two “student’ sonatas, Op.49, the one in G Major. Houstoun also chose to play the music in a very simple and unprepossessing way, as if his abilities had been marshalled and concentrated for the purposes of simply realizing the score. I could have imagined more character given to each of the movements – the first chatty, even garrulous in places, volatile and explosive in others, and the second homespun, quirky and angular, by turns – but the pianist might have reckoned that such treatment would have overlaid the music’s simplicity. And Houstoun’s playing graciously made me feel that my own feeble attempts at playing the second movement weren’t perhaps altogether worthless!

The C Major, Op. 2 No. 3, was a different story, the irruptions of energy positively orchestral in their impact, though the melodies were kept on a fairly tight rein, as was the right-hand work – more power than “tumbling warmth”, but none the less impressive for that. The slow movement’s opening, with its stepwise left-hand theme and filigree right-hand figuration here beautifully stilled the busy beat of time, making the great mid-movement outbursts all the more telling, Houstoun bringing out almost Goethe-like vistas of huge spaces and great contrasts.

Tumbling warmth there was a-plenty in the scherzo, with the canonic-like voices having a marvellous time, falling head-over-heels together and landing in satisfyingly tangled heaps at the bottom of each descent – by contrast, the trio was all swirling, vertiginous impulse, making the return of the “Jack and Jill” opening a relief, even if the ending did suggest that the Jack indeed “fell down and broke his crown”. And the finale, deceptively graceful in places (and, I thought, quite Schumannesque in the lyrical second subject), released great surges of energy, with a fierce young virtuoso’s joy in the final presentations.

Before the interval we were treated to one of the composer’s loveliest and most distinctive creations, the two-movement Sonata No.24 in F-sharp Op.78, subtitled “For Thérèse”, the dedicatee, Thérèse von Brunswick, being one of those on the “short list” of candidates for the composer’s enigmatic “Immortal Beloved”. The music here had a lovely ceremonial opening, with Houstoun giving the subsequent unfoldings plenty of time and flexibility to allow a sense of something naturally expressed.

Beethoven gives us certain surprises in the form of sudden remote modulations, and a playful whimsicality as the exposition repeats (lovely to hear!), not to mention the abrupt, enigmatic ending. As for the second movement, its sophisticated humour was given just the right amount of insouciance by the pianist, though we did all enjoy those dynamic “lurches” from major to minor and back again, in those toccata-like passages. If the music is indeed something of a “character-study”, Thérèse must have been both a bit of a thinker, and a lot of fun!

Enjoyable though the first half was, I thought Houstoun’s playing really began to spread its wings after the interval, beginning with the exalted playfulness of the first of the Op.31 Sonatas, No.16 in G Major. Gone was much of the severity and brusque treatment of detail found in the pianist’s recording of the first movement of this work, made for Trust Records in the mid-1990s – here was playing still of great virtuosity but tempered by touches of humour. In between the exciting, energetic runs, the syncopations were given time to register their drollery, so that the listener had a sense both of action and reflection, and their give-and-take in the music.

The second movement’s aria-like aspect here properly had a singer’s amplitude, the textures richly and gorgeously upholstered with both trills and related figurations – I liked the “duetting” middle section, a lovely foil for the more ritualized solo lines, while the “coming together” of the simple and decorative at the end was given by the pianist, by turns, a rich ambience and a wistful, open-ended feeling of space. And the fleet-of-finger finale similarly played with contrasts, Houstoun readily and easefully bringing out the music’s expansive, very Schubertian figurations and textures, but adroitly returning us to a Beethoven-like presto at the end, a drawing-together of the discourse’s threads and patches.

And when this was done, Houstoun proceeded to launch into a performance of the “Appassionata” Sonata, No.23 in F Minor, Op.57 – one of the most famous of Beethoven’s works – with an almost frightening sense of purpose and determination. I remember the pianist in an interview describing how his youthful encounter with a gramophone recording of this music all but overwhelmed his sensibilities  – and it seemed that, on this occasion he was able to recapture the essence of that initial impression and convey its full force to those who were present.

No other work by Beethoven expresses a sense of the elemental more insistently, not even the “Grosse Fugue”. The music’s incipient darkness never fully relinquishes its grip, even if there’s some relaxation of tension throughout the “theme-and-variations” form of the middle movement. Houstoun’s powerful playing had all the “grip” this music needed, bringing into play a living and volatile feeling for the piece’s dramatic ebb and flow, great command over a tonal spectrum that gave the piano’s treble plenty of ring and glint and the bass what seemed like oceans of depth, and the enormous reserves of power and stamina needed to do it all justice.

Two things about this performance will abide in my memory long after other details are forgotten – firstly, the sense of the pianist playing that opening phrase, and in doing so somehow enveloping us completely and utterly into the music’s world, as if we were suddenly taken to a vantage-point and could see it all from where we stood at a single glance – by no means removed from the storms but instead placed in the very eye of them! Thus every irruption and every lull swirled around and about our heads, having both an immediacy and an inevitability which stimulated body and mind, emotion and intellect.

When Houstoun observed the finale’s repeat of the development and recapitulation (some pianists don’t, which, for me, always leaves a kind of undressed, bleeding wound in the music at that point!) I had to restrain myself from rising from my seat and thumping the railing in front of me for sheer excitement! I’ve never been able to understand how any pianist with genuinely red blood coursing through his or her arteries could omit this passage, or any analysis could put forward the premise that the repetition is problematical for the movement’s overall structure (significantly, Houstoun also played this particular repeat on his 1995 recording of the work for Trust Records).

The other thing I’m not likely to forget was how Houstoun played the Presto coda of the Sonata’s final movement and what happened straight afterwards. He delivered those opening coda sequences not “as fast as possible” but at a tempo which enabled him to keep the following swirling figurations at a similar pulse, thus avoiding any sense of “slowing down” again, and maintaining the music’s momentum right to the end – such involving, scalp-pricking stuff! And then – the pianist rose from his seat and, amid tumultuous acclaim, seemed almost to scowl at the applause, before turning and practically stalking off the platform, occasionally giving his head a mighty shake, like a lion tossing his mane! He seemed fired up with what he’d just done, and we simply adored him for it! Incredible!

By the time he returned, to renewed applause and a standing ovation, he was ready to smile again! But after a performance such as he gave us of the “Appassionata” he could have made whatever gesture he whatever he wanted, and we would have roared our approval. For myself, I was glad I was there – to see a musician seemingly transported by the emotion of the music he or she is performing so mightily, is certainly something to remember.

 

 

 

 

 

Pataka piano recital pleases

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Pataka Friends presents:
Piano Recital by Ludwig Treviranus

Rachmaninov: Études-tableaux Op.33  no.9 / Liszt: Transcendental Étude no.3, “Paysage”

Chopin: Étude Op.10 no.5 “Black Key Study”

Beethoven: Sonata Op.27 no.1 in E flat “quasi una fantasia”

Mendelssohn: Variations Sérieuses Op.54 / Ravel: Alborada del Gracioso

Mussorgsky: Five sketches from ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’

Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

Helen Smith Community Room, Pataka, Porirua

Sunday 30 June 2013

A brilliant programme played by a brilliant young Wellington pianist greeted an almost full room on Sunday.  All the music was played from memory and extremely competently; in many cases, superbly well.  Programme notes were very informative, yet brief.

Problems were to do with the room – painted walls on two sides of the piano and a low ceiling made for undesirable triple fortes at times, and in the opening piece and occasionally elsewhere, a brittle sound.  The performer needs to learn to adjust more to the size and acoustics of the venue.  The other problem was the squeaky piano stool.  Adjustable piano stools seem to be like the doors on public toilets – they’re never oiled, and always squeak or creak.

The Liszt piece was gentler and quieter until well on, thus we could appreciate the performer’s pianism better.  The well-known  Chopin study was played in a delicious style and manner.

I was delighted at the next item – one of my favourites of Beethoven’s sonatas, and certainly the one I have played the most.  As the programme note stated, it and its mate in Op.27, the ‘Moonlight’ sonata, are improvisatory in style, and played without breaks between movements.  A few skipped notes here and there did not cause great damage, although there was a little too much pedal for my taste at times; at others, figures were artistically turned without pedal.  The playing was beautifully expressive without unnecessary affectation.  The second movement’s syncopated notes were played too fast to fully reveal the syncopation between the hands.  Nevertheless, this performance gave me new light on a work I know well.

The variations by Mendelssohn were very inventive, and conveyed his usual good humour.  The playing was just a mite heavy-handed at times.  A virtuosic section contrasts with the quiet, thoughtful chorale played in the middle of the piece.  The first section repeated the rather brittle sound.  A good deal of prestidigitation was required.

Ravel’s piece from the piano suite Miroirs was given a lively performance, with plenty of staccato to lighten the texture.  It was a characterful rendering, but rather too loud.  After this piece, a friend and I moved further back in the room; we were not  bothered there by brittle sound.

Mussorgsky’s splendid musical rendering of his late friend Hartmann’s sketches is a superb landmark of the piano repertoire.  ‘Gnomus’ received fiery, electric treatment, with lots of character.  The final sketch, that brings the theme from the opening ‘Promenade’ to its apotheosis, ‘The Great gate of Kiev’ featured great dynamic contrasts.  This was a fine and accomplished performance of Mussorgsky’s appealing work, and played with splendid technique.

As an encore, Treviranus played a jazz arrangement of the ever-popular ‘Somewhere, over the rainbow’.

All those present would wish him well with his determination to make a career in New Zealand.

 

 

Tremendous panache from performers in Verdi’s epic Requiem

Posted on by admin

VERDI – REQUIEM MASS

Lisa Harper-Brown (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (mezzo), Rosario La Spina (tenor), Jud Arthur (bass)

Orpheus Choir and City Choir Dunedin

NZSO conducted by Pietari Inkinen

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 29th June.

Verdi’s Requiem was presented last Saturday evening with tremendous panache by a huge group of musicians who all seemed to revel in the privilege of performing this epic work. Their enthusiasm was palpable, in a way that communicated itself to the audience and created a gala atmosphere that was further enhanced by the wonderful lighting of the rich timber work in the dome . The huge range of dynamic and dramatic possibilities, and the riveting contrasts crafted by Verdi were brought out by Inkinen’s direction in every movement of the score.

A great deal has been written about the dramatic and operatic style of the Requiem by those who question whether such overt dramatism is appropriate for a work that contemplates death. But the score makes it clear that Verdi saw much more than contemplation in the gamut of emotions facing a dying human being. He threw his formidable talent at the challenge of expressing a whole range of feelings with no holds barred, and this was a performance that did that intention proud. The musicians barely whispered the breathless plea of the opening Requiem aeterna,  yet  repeatedly unleashed a shrieking terror of divine wrath in the recurring Dies irae. The contemplative numbers were sensitively crafted by the singers in solos and ensembles alike, and they were supported by some breathtaking obligati from the woodwind principals, the first bassoon being the standout example.

There were very few moments that were less than satisfactory. Lisa Harper-Brown embraced the huge demands of the solo soprano score with complete technical mastery and projected clearly over the strongest orchestral and choral passages. Margaret Medlyn’s musicianship was, as always, eminently sensitive and convincing, but there were times when the pitch and timbre of her voice could not quite float through the orchestration provided for the mezzo solos. Jud Arthur likewise needed more power and definition than his voice could find to sound strong and satisfying in some numbers. Rosario La Spina could soar effortlessly over the combined choir and orchestra, but was sometimes too dominant in the tenor voice of ensemble numbers. Margaret Medlyn and Jud Arthur were both sometimes difficult to hear within the solo ensemble when it was set against the massed choirs and full orchestral resources.

Inkinen was apparently conducting the Requiem for the first time on this NZSO tour. But his beat was always clear and sure and only once, in the Sanctus, did he set off at a tempo which left the disparate choral and orchestral strands struggling to mesh their rhythm. His control of the vast dynamic range and huge dramatic contrasts demanded by the score was truly impressive, and it was clear that even the most distant chorister responded to such clear, emphatic leadership. The orchestra was in splendid form, and the strings and wind had no trouble holding their own with Verdi’s fullest orchestration for brass and percussion.

The performance built inexorably to a riveting climax that was capped off with thunderous applause from the packed auditorium. The glowing faces and excited comments that buzzed in the lobbies afterwards expressed the enormous enthusiasm of the audience, and the sense of being privileged to experience such a powerful work so magnificently presented. Judging by the turnout on Saturday, the NZSO should take these reactions to heart, and more often consider the great masses and requiems of such as Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven etc. when preparing future programmes.