New Zealand School of Music guitar students’ interesting recital at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Guitar students: Jamie Garrick, Nick Price, Cameron Sloan, Mike Stoop

Music by Bizet, Bach, L K Mertz, Daniel Bacheler and Adnrew York

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 5 June, 12.15pm

These students, plus one other, had played at St Andrew’s on The Terrace in the previous week, with a largely different programme. I missed it, as did my Middle C colleagues. I gather that they played mainly as a quartet then; at Old Saint Paul’s they played two ensemble pieces, and four solos.

A suite from Carmen opened the concert. The programme note remarked that the opera had had a rough beginning (actually, the nature of its reception has been rather distorted; it had about 30 performances in the three months between its premiere and Bizet’s death – more than any other opera at the Opéra-Comique that year, 1875; there was a great deal of popular and critical acclamation – just one or two churlish reviews; and already the Vienna Court Opera had made an approach for it to be produced there).

The performance by the quartet here began well, carefully, capturing the Spanish air that pervades it from the start, and the attractive arrangement gave each player bright solo opportunities while the others provided nicely contrasted accompaniments, rhythmically and dynamically acute, and placed on the lower strings of the instruments. However, some of the later dances did not capture quite the same charm or character, and by the time of the Toreador’s song slips occurred more often. But the Entr’acte was well done and the Gypsy Dance  was quite a delight.

The audience seemed unfamiliar with applauding customs, clapping after every section of the Carmen suite, and even more surprising between the two parts of the Prelude and fugue from Bach’s Lute Suite, BWV 997, which was played without the score by Michael Stoop. His dynamics were nicely judged and phrasing expressive. The fugue is quite long and it was no small achievement to have got through it without noticeable mishap.

Cameron Sloan played two pieces, again from memory, by one Johann Kaspar Mertz, a 19th century composer: Fantaisie originale and Le gondolier, from his Op 65; they sounded influenced by the piano music of his age – of Weber, Schubert and Schumann. Though he played these two attractive pieces very well, his spoken introduction had been inaudible. Given a composer probably unknown to most, as it was to me, a few words would have been interesting. New Grove does not list him, but Wikipedia does: named as Hungarian guitarist and composer, born in Bratislava (Pressburg or Pozsony when the city was in Austria or Hungary respectively).

Later players decided against introducing themselves or commenting on their pieces. A little coaching in the art of speaking in a medium size auditorium would be a good idea.

Equally attractive was a piece called Monsieur Almaine by Daniel Bacheler, a theme and variations. Again, I had not heard of him; moderate-sized dictionaries were of no help, though I found him in New Grove, and of course the Internet never fails. It appears that recent scholarship has brought some 50 lute pieces to light and some have been recorded.  He was born in 1572, the same year as Ben Jonson and Thomas Tomkins, around the dates of John Bull, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi. Dowland, Weelkes … With the confidence afforded by using the score, Nick Price played with a good ear for style, phrased and articulated a clearly difficult piece very well, with only minor slips.

The last soloist was Jamie Garrick who played another Bach Lute piece, the Prelude and Fugue from BWV 998; he played thoughtfully, maintaining fluent rhythms in both parts, though with occasional hesitations. The Fugue, with an attractive melody, starts slowly which demanded considerable care in its meandering passages, and in the fast passagework as it accelerated towards the end.

Finally the quartet reassembled to play a rather delightful piece by contemporary American composer, Andrew York, Quiccan. It was fast and rhythmically lively in a gently Latin-American manner. Judging by the adroit fingerwork evident in all players, it was well rehearsed and well liked.

I had not noticed that the concert was running over time, which suggests that, in all, it had proved most enjoyable.

Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee brilliant at Cathedral of St Paul organ

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Organ Conference

Cortège et litanie (Dupré), Petite rhapsodie improvisée (Tournemire – scored by Duruflé), Two parts of L’ascension (Messiaen), Feux follets and Carillon de Westminster (Vierne) and Le sacre du printemps (Stravinsky – arr. four hands)

Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee – organists

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Sunday 3 June, 3pm

For those, like me, who missed the NZSO concert on Friday where Olivier Latry played Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, this recital was pretty good compensation.

Latry is one of the three organists at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris (the position at French churches is known as a titulaire). Thus he’s one of the very finest organists now alive. Such is his fame that not only was the NZSO concert a full house, but the Anglican Cathedral too was well filled.

One hears occasionally, from those more technically knowledgeable than I am, denigrating remarks about the character of the cathedral organ; perhaps from those for whom music stops more or less with J S Bach.

But for those who have listened to organ music, as music, and not as some sort of rarified and recondite technical practice, organ music runs through the musical experience of virtually every country touched by the traditions of western music, and through every era, though often carried by composers who did not work much in other spheres.

After the great baroque era dominated by Bach, the school of organ composition that seems to me, and some others, to be of great importance and delight is the French school inspired by César Franck.

Latry’s recital celebrated that; and even the evident intrusion of an arrangement of a ballet score by a Russian composer, could be seen as falling in the tradition of organ composition and organ building that was developed in France.

One of the problems of the organ repertoire is that many, most, of the names are not those of the greatest composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Some rate, like Liszt, Franck himself, Saint-Saëns or Messiaen, as respectable 1st division composers of orchestral, choral or chamber music and some, enjoy a slightly enigmatic place in the pantheon.

Marcel Dupré was more famous as a performer than a composer, though he’d been one of the more brilliant winners of the Prix de Rome. He composed in the tradition set by Franck and Widor rather than in the impressionist or tonally ambiguous character of those who followed Vierne. He succeeded Widor at the great church of Saint-Sulpice.

The Cortège et litanie is one of his most popular pieces, opening prayerfully and building impressively as the Cortège emerges grandly (some hear a Russian influence from his friend Glazunov) with its confident theme that corrects the impression of fluttering mysticism in the Litanie. Its performance lifted it from perhaps second class to music of considerable imagination and emotional honesty.

Charles Tournemire’s improvisation entitled Petite rhapsodie improvisée was recorded as he played it in 1931 on the great Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte-Clotilde (Franck’s organ). In 1958 Maurice Duruflé took it down, along with several other pieces by Franck and himself, from that recording and it has now found its way on to You-Tube where you can dial it up.

What we heard on Sunday was a great deal more red-blooded and arresting than the dim and shallow 1931 recording (though it’s enough to vindicate Tournemire’s reputation). It’s a short piece marked by remarkable powers of invention, clearly justifying Tournemire’s fame as an improviser. Played here on an organ capable of great brilliance, Latry’s performance seemed to magnify its musical and colourful inspiration. He found a myriad of fluttering bird-sounds, underpinned by firm pedal notes; if the occasional tremolo didn’t seem very appropriate, the whole performance demonstrated other aspects of this versatile organ and Latry’s way of exploiting it; and it acted as a good link between the Dupré and the two Messiaen pieces that followed.

These were two of the four parts of Messiaen’s L’ascension, first written for orchestra in 1932 and then rewritten for organ a year later, when Messiaen replaced the third part (Alleluia sur la trompette, alleluia sur la cymbale) with Transports de joie d’une âme devant la gloire du Christ qui est la sienne.

The first part played was Section II, Alleluias sereins d’une âme qui désire le ciel, and there is a kind of serenity, but rather strong evidence of a ‘belief’ that is concrete, highly visual and audible, somewhat distant from the feeling inspired by traditional protestant religion.

There are times when I wonder about the immediate recognisability of Messiaen, whether it suggests that he’s merely writing the same stuff over and over, with minor variations.

I was intrigued to know what had led Messiaen to write another Part III and found a recording of the orchestral original. It is quite un-organ-like: exuberant, slightly jazzy, using an orchestra that hints at Ravel, perhaps Roussel or Koechlin.

The organ version of III is also vigorous and assertive, and Latry must have rejoiced in the great trumpet stops that are available on the cathedral organ; certainly, they would have thrilled the audience which could almost see the long horizontal pipes crying out over the left of the Choir.  Here was the blazing show-piece of the first half of the concert: great clusters of riotous runs and multi-coloured Messiaenic chords that created a triumphal peroration.

Two pieces by Vierne led to the Stravnisky ballet score which was to end the concert.

Feux follets, Op 53 No 4 and Carillon de Westminster, Op 54 No 6 are two of the 24 Pièces de fantaisie that Vierne wrote to play during a fund-raising tour of the United States in 1927.

These were well-placed as pieces lying somewhere south of Messiaen, and certainly more modest accomplishments than what followed. Latry adorned Feux follets with rare combinations of stops that created hollow sparklings, lightning flashes, a bit like Ravel’s Jeux d’eau or Debussy’s Ce qu’a vu le vent de l’ouest.

The Carillon is one of the organ’s famous showpieces, based on the uninteresting Westminster chimes, but transformed by means of harmonic colouring and surprising stop combinations, a great deal of it the contribution of the performer.

Finally came the one of the most extraordinary exhibitions of the arranger’s imagination and the organist’s (organists’) mastery of an instrument.

But how does this piece by a Russian qualify for this concert of French organ music? Stravinsky had worked in Paris from the time of The Firebird in 1910, and lived there periodically from then on, taking French citizenship finally in 1934; much of his most important music was written for French performance, and the influence of the French cultural aesthetic was as important as that of Russia.

Stravinsky had made a piano four hands arrangement of Le sacre du printemps, so the composer had sanctioned that much tampering with the nature of his work. This was the basis of the performance which then became an exercise in restoring as far as possible, the colours that were in the orchestral original, and that, through the inspired and imaginative choice of registrations, was entirely the work of the players – in this case Latry and his partner (in both senses), Korean organist Shin-Young Lee.

It was strikingly clear from the first notes that the work lent itself uncannily well to an organ arrangement. Perhaps it actually captured the essence of The Rite, a degree of violence in the dehumanising of primitive religious ritual, that allows the music to become even more phenomenal and awful in the hands of a machine with reserves of power that exceeded what any orchestra could create.

The task of making a machine produce from this music, beauty, excitement and awfulness was a supreme challenge and the result was utterly astonishing.

The re-creation of the unearthly introductions to both sections were extraordinarily vivid; what a brilliant transformation of the crunching rhythms of the Dances of the Adolescents, and the furious speed of the Dance of the Earth! (It certainly makes sense to employ four hands on an organ – after all most have multiple manuals – this one four: why leave so much of the keyboards unemployed for most of the time?).

Nevertheless, there were times when, for example, the throbbing beat during the Jeux des cités rivales became too cluttered but the final climax was reached with a power and terror, with triple fortissimo, or more, as the most formidable stops were brought to bear.

The large audience had judged well of the likely overwhelming musical experience to be had in St Paul’s this afternoon, and even their prolonged ovation hardly did the event justice.

 

 

Anniversaries the pretext for chamber organ recital for Organists’ Congress

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Organists’ Association – New Zealand Association of Organists’ Congress
Sweelinck to Stanley

Sweelinck: Ballo del granduce; ‘Flow my tears;’  Onder een linde groen;  Fantasia Chromatica;
Charles Stanley: Voluntary IX in G major Op.VII;  Three Songs from ‘The Muse’s Delight’; Solo III for flute and basso continuo, Op.1;  Voluntary VIII in D minor Op. V;  Song: The Blind Boy
Handel: ‘Sweet Bird’ (from L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato)

Douglas Mews (organ, harpsichord, virginal), Rowena Simpson (soprano), Penelope Evison (baroque flute)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Saturday, 2 June, 7.30pm

As part of ‘Wellington 2012’, the Organists’ Congress, this concert was offered to participants and the public as something involving the organ, but more intimate than the Friday Symphony Orchestra concert with the Poulenc Organ Concerto, and the recital at Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul the following day, both featuring eminent French organist Olivier Latry.  The composers were chosen because of their anniversaries this year: 450 years since the birth of Sweelinck, and 300 years since the birth of Stanley.

Clarity of instruments and voice was the hallmark in the relatively small, but acoustically alive Adam Concert Room.  The two-manual and pedal Reil Dutch organ is set in the room, not in a special organ chamber.  To my mind, some of the ranks are harsh and even abrasive in this acoustic.  However, the flute stops employed in some of the Sweelinck (1562-16211) variations on an Italian dance tune that Douglas Mews, Artist-in-Residence for the Congress, played first, gave a mellow and liquid sound that was most attractive.

Next, the versatile Mews played virginal for Rowena Simpson’s first song, ‘Flow my teares’ by John Dowland, following which we heard Sweelinck’s keyboard variation  upon the melody, ‘Pavana Lachrymae’.  The dark, sad mood of both was eminently well conveyed.

A song in Sweelinck’s native language, Dutch, was sung by Simpson, before the four variations were played, this time on the organ.  With study in The Hague behind her, Simpson sang the words fluently and clearly – as indeed she did in all her items.

‘Fantasia Chromatica’ on the organ displayed the skill of the composer in intertwining melodies along with a chromatic theme.  It was an interesting example of music of the period conveying changes of mood, as well as demonstrating Douglas Mews’s great skill in playing organ music of this period.

Charles John Stanley (1712-1786) was a prolific English composer for the organ.  The first items, the three songs, were interspersed between movements of the flute piece (really a sonata).  Here, Douglas Mews accompanied on the harpsichord.  Penelope Evison’s expertise on the transverse flute (wooden, of course) was a delight to hear, while the songs, with their commentary on men, maids, and the pros and cons of the two getting together, were interpreted with flair by Rowena Simpson.

The second voluntary was quite a vehement piece compared with the earlier one, and more demanding on the skill of the performer – a demand that was fully met.

Stanley had very restricted vision for most of his life, so the song of the blind boy was quite poignant, though the poem (by Colley Cibber) ends on a more positive note, explaining that the boy can ‘bear a loss I ne’er can know.  Then let not what I cannot have my cheer of mind destroy: Whilst thus I sing I am a king, although a poor blind boy.’  Accompanied on the virginal, the song was sung in an appropriately touching manner.

The recital ended with soprano, flute and organ performing Handel’s ‘Sweet Bird’, to introduce the association between Handel and Stanley, the latter having conducted Handel’s operas and oratorios.  This song from Il Penseroso (words by John Milton) represented sadness, enlivened by the flute imitating the nightingale.

Thus ended an evening’s pleasant entertainment, demonstrating the musical arts of two periods in which the organ was eminent.

 

 

 

STROMA – Percussion/Action in small but compelling doses

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – Soundbytes III

Works by Beat Furrer, Manuela Meier, Andrew Ford and Toru Takemitsu

Lenny Sakofsky / Jeremy Fitzsimmons / Bruce McKinnon (percussion)

Adam Auditorium, City Gallery, Wellington

Saturday 2nd June 2012

Stroma’s 2012 concert formats are taking in both larger, standardized happenings called “Headliners”, which feature well-known performers and works by established composers, and briefer, concentrated concerts of less than an hour’s duration called “Soundbytes” – the group’s publicity referred to these events as “aural degustations”, a term which had me reaching for my dictionary, illiterate peasant that I am, to be summarily enlightened – and yes, these in this “Soundbyte” under consideration, were tasty sound-snacks indeed!

New to me, though open since 2009 (where has this reviewer been, of late?) was the venue, a space called the “Adam Auditorium” located on the ground floor of the Wellington City Gallery. I loved being in the space, and thought the acoustic and ambience served the music-making well, marrying sound and sight with pleasing directness. Because of the pronounced auditorium “rake” almost everybody in the audience could clearly see what the players were doing to conjure up their panoply of sounds, giving the concert something of a specific gestural, or even choreographic, element.

Being a determined advocate for the audio-only listening experience, I’m surprised to find myself stressing this aspect of the presentation, though the relative novelty (when compared to one’s normal concert-going experiences) of encountering percussion ensembles means that one is more than usually interested in what is actually happening on the concert platform. Our three percussionists on this occasion didn’t disappoint, with plenty of variety of sound and movement served up for our delight by way of whirling us through four very distinctive musical experiences in an all-too-brief concert.

Actually, I thought the brevity of this “Soundbyte” experience had the positive effect of leaving us with appetites sharpened for more, which the “degustation” definition certainly implies. I confess to not really coming to grips with the first of the items, however, finding Beat Furrer’s sound-world a mystery, one which gently repulsed any kind of construct or attitude I strove to place around the sounds I heard along the way (I was pleased to read in the program afterwards of the composer’s “predilection for refinement and restraint”, qualities I found in the music almost to a fault!).

Not that I was overly worried about indulging myself in enjoyment of the sounds, but afterwards wondered how I could convey something of the experience of Beat Furrer’s Music for Mallets in words – it felt as if a patient, gradually unfolding soundscape grew from the first few minutes of the work, with sudden impulses of tone precursors of more frequent irruptions of energy which enlivened the textures somewhat, even if the music’s pulsing spent a lot of the work “underground”. A freer, more volatile episode followed, rapid glissandi and other figurations, staking out the land, though the sense of something restrained, evanescent and mysterious remained, embedded in the music’s character, and making a lasting impression.

By contrast, Stroma administrator Manuela Meier’s 2012 work Cada bristled with movement and impulse, throughout, the antiphonal exchanges between the two percussionists a delight to the senses. Again, the seating configuration allowing us to really “get involved” with the players’ physical gesturing and form a relationship between different sounds’ cause and effect. The composer treated us to a plethora of timbres and colours and what seemed to our “insectified” ears like a stunning range of dynamics, from the whisperings of wood against a smooth metal edge to the harsh complaints of friction-making textured metal surfaces worked upon by the same hard sticks. It all had the feeling of some kind of inner reality, akin to the flowing of blood, impulsings of a nervous system or an intelligence network processing sensory responses. This was the piece’s first-ever performance in public.

Andrew Ford’s Composition in blue, grey and pink for solo percussionist gave Lenny Sakofsky a chance to demonstrate his considerable performance skills. Taken from a larger work for flute and percussion and arranged as a stand-alone movement, it places the performer at a kind of drum-kit arrangement as if in control of the flight-deck of an enormous flying machine. Content-wise, the piece is extremely theatrical in its soliloquy-like structure, completely in accordance with a certain improvisatory air (intended by the composer, who leaves certain decisions to the player, such as the choice of drumsticks, and the dynamics throughout).

The opening episode is almost like a jumble of thoughts, as if emotion is trying to sort out an order of saying or a coherent overall shape – so we get fast and chatty sequences, but within a fragmented discourse. Slow and sinister follows, a different view of the material, or else a change in its ambient surroundings, contrasting with a sequence of brittle scintillations, whose short, questioning coda concludes with a final flourish. Both sounds and the player’s choreography of performance were totally absorbing, with never a void moment.

One doesn’t have to be a camp follower of percussion concerts to encounter the music of Toru Takemitsu, as this same work, Rain Tree, was heard during a concert given by the NZSO Soloists in March of this year (the same concert which featured Shchedrin’s entertaining, reworked and re-orchestrated take on Bizet’s Carmen). On that occasion I remember the music being somewhat marred by excessively-projected lighting of each instrumentalist – the systematic spotlighting was meant to synchronize with the music, but for me it was all too visually “loud”, and thus proved a fatal distraction. Significantly, Takemitsu himself is on record as having supervised a performance of his work with similar lighting, but then commenting afterwards that he found the effect “too distracting”.

Here, most thankfully, there were no such lighting manipulations, the musical impulses allowed to speak for themselves throughout the piece. Again, the characteristics of the auditorium enabled us to connect directly with the three players and their instrumental gesturings – Takemitsu’s title for the piece, Rain Tree refers to a tree described in a novel by Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe The Ingenious Rain Tree, one which, because of the thickness of its foliage “stores” water from rain and continues to water the ground long after the rain itself has ceased. The work reflects this process, the raindrops depicted by use of the crotales (antique cymbals) build up towards a cascade, with the marimbas alternating the whole while, and the vibraphone providing a kind of underlying foundation. Some of these were gorgeous sounds, both when isolated (the crotales) and when interactive – the marimbas woody and solidly ambient, the vibraphone all air and water.

The evening’s music and its performance, along with the venue and its warmly attractive ambience, all came together beautifully to make this Stroma concert yet another one to remember with great pleasure.

 

 

 

Spellbound by NZSO and the organ of Olivier Latry

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Spellbound: magic and mystery

Dukas: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Poulenc: Organ Concerto
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op.35 (1. The sea and Sinbad’s Ship; 2. The Kalender Prince; 3. The young prince and the young princess; 4. Festival at Baghdad – the sea)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with Olivier Latry, organ, conducted by Rossen Milanov

Wellington Town Hall

Friday, 1 June 2012, 6.30pm

This was a spectacle of aural colour, the entire concert being made up of works that threatened to bleed the aural palette dry.  To those of us who play the organ, it was a thrill to see the Wellington Town Hall almost full of people who had come to hear our instrument.

According to Olivier Latry, in his entertaining, informative and well-attended question and answer session with the conductor prior to the concert, Paul Dukas did not compose more music because he was so heavily involved in teaching at the Paris Conservatoire, where he was eventually followed by the rather similarly-named Jean Roger-Ducasse.  That he had the ability to be a more eminent composer is amply demonstrated by his well-known Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

The pre-concert session focused on the Organ Concerto of Poulenc, and some humorous exchanges took place.  Milanov likened the organ to a large truck – the ‘driver’ could only see him by means of his rear-vision mirror.  He said he dared not overtake such a large vehicle!  Olivier, in answer to a question from the floor, said he thought the nature of the piece was ambiguous: was it religious, secular, or a bit of both?  He related how in Paris a performance of the organ concerto at Notre Dame had rated a higher decibel level than the Concorde!

Before returning to Dukas, I want to air (again!) one of my pet gripes.  Why are we not allowed to read the programme during the concert?  I could just make out the words, but the lady next to me obviously had poor vision, and had brought a magnifying glass with her, but had to give up.  In the United Kingdom, the Arts Council pays for large-font printed programmes at plays, opera and concerts.

A concert that was book-ended by Dukas’s work and Rimsky-Korsakov’s made for a certain symmetry: they were a good match.  The French composer’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was inspired by a ballad by a German (Goethe), based on a second century story by a Greek.  Certainly it included a huge variety of colours.  The music was perhaps some of the most inventive ever written for orchestra.  There were shades of Stravinsky, whom he influenced, and Messiaen, whom he taught.

The eerie opening was carefully conducted by Bulgarian conductor Milanov, an elegant and precise but poetic conductor to watch.  He conducted both this work and the Rimsky-Korsakov without use of the score.  The bassoons’ announcement of the theme was accompanied by wonderful sorties on the strings and horns.  A spooky rise in the drama follows.  The composer’s cataclysmic orchestrations and development leave one gob-smacked.  Drums and cymbals with full brass precede a quiet introduction to the romantic ending.  This features a viola solo being the apologetic apprentice who has wrought so much havoc, plaintively performed by Julia Joyce with harp interjections, before the closing bar spurts at us, double forte, to despatch the apprentice.

After quotations from  J.S. Bach at the opening of Poulenc’s organ concerto, I fancied I could hear some thematic links with Dukas in the more lyrical passages from the organ.  The orchestra followed at a respectful distance.  When some of the tonal qualities surprised me, I was reminded of Latry’s remark in the pre-concert session, when asked about the Town Hall organ, that ‘This organ speaks English!’.

The seven movements were played without any breaks.  The opening andante proceeded in a very restrained fashion after the initial outburst; gorgeous quiet tone from both strings and organ.  However, a crashing volume from the organ interrupted the reverie: we were into the allegro giocoso, and then the familiar theme of the concerto arrived.  Some of this music seemed to foreshadow minimalism.

The next andante was very beautiful and even languid.  Bird sounds from violins and violas played against solid cello and organ tones.  Its lustrous ending made its mark, mesmerising, but with growing intensity, before the music moved on to the molto agitato fourth movement.  All is suddenly amplified and accelerated.  There is great excitement as the organ rushes through rapid paces, increasingly loud, then the quietude returns with mellow sounds on the organ followed by a solo on a reed stop.  This is the slow fifth movement: “Très calme. Lent.”

The return of the familiar quick theme was there suddenly, on the organ, accompanied by the orchestra in this sixth movement: “Tempo de l’Allegro initial”.  Chords many layers thick are played before Bach returns.  Then all is stilled in silvery tones, followed by another viola solo, accompanied by pizzicato from all except the first violins; the solo is repeated on the principal cello as pizzicato, with slow chords on the organ to herald the final (seventh) movement: “Tempo introduction. Largo.”  A huge unison for organ and orchestra ends the work.

The concerto is not only for organ and string orchestra: there is a large and challenging role for the timpanist.  It is sometimes known as the concerto for organ, timpani, and strings.  Certainly here (and also in the Rimsky-Korsakov work) Laurence Reese had more than enough to do.  When moving down from the organ to take his bow, Latry shook hands with Reese.

Latry played with great accomplishment and immaculate technique and musicianship.  As well as immense appreciative applause from the audience for the soloist and for the modest conductor, Julia Joyce and Andrew Joyce, principal viola and cello were  singled out.  A return curtain call for Olivier Latry was thoroughly deserved; he in turn showed his pleasure at the reception.

After the interval we were treated to a marvellous performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s very virtuosic Scheherazade (or more usually Sheherazade).   Among many outstanding features were the violin solos of Sultana Scheherazade’s theme, played by Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Ingrid Bauer’s wonderful harp accompaniment to that theme: the combination was simply stunning, as indeed were the strings, especially in their pianissimos, throughout the work.

The exotic themes are now familiar to many (and the movements have been played on radio, on separate days recently), but must have been remarkable at the first performance (it was written in 1888).  The  work could be considered a symphony by its length and its four movements, but in no way is it a standard symphony.  In the pre-concert talk, conductor Milanov described it as the first concerto for orchestra; it was easy to see why.

A little ‘fluff’ from the horn early on did little to detract from the fine playing of the entire orchestra throughout the work.  An enchanting oboe solo accompanied by solo cello, another violin solo, and then all the colours were thrown at us, while the timpanist was flat out.  Sinbad certainly struck some storms!  But then things calmed down, and the waves sparkled by, before the next outburst.  There was a magical ending to the first movement, with a return to the music played at the beginning: violin solo and harp.

Bassoon and oboe were splendid in music that evoked the exotic – markets, harems, silken draperies – as we meet the prince in his fabulous setting, in which spices and strange odours abound.  How is it that the oboe seems exotic, yet in another context it seems the epitome of English pastoral landscapes?  Of course, it is all in the writing of skilled composers.

Brass now had the opportunity to come to the fore, followed by thrumming pizzicato with the lone clarinet theme.  Cor anglais, flute and piccolo get their turns at solos against the thrumming – marvellous.  Layer upon layer of sound emerged – or perhaps rather, the intricate woven design of a Persian carpet.  The orchestra was splendid, here declaiming, there speaking sotto voce.

In the fourth movement we hear the familiar themes, but now the Scheherazade theme played by Vesa-Matti Leppänen was double-stopped, with oriental-sounding harmonies.  While there was a lot of repetition of themes in the Rimsky-Korsakov work, there was huge variety of treatment.  All comes together in a mammoth explosion of exuberance, followed by the final repetition of Scheherazade’s theme, joined by the deep theme of the Sultan.  As Milanov explained prior to the concert, this is a catharsis – adding significantly ‘We change at the end’.  As the violin solo was played for the last time, the conductor looked at Leppänen with obvious appreciation.  (Indeed, he told us before the concert that this was a world-class orchestra.  Certainly, it excelled itself in this concert.)

The final pizzicato was not together, but this could hardly detract from such a massive and wonderful performance, full of fabulous settings.  Solos from violin, viola, cello, horn, clarinet and other woodwinds, not to mention the prominence of the fabulous harp, enlivened this gorgeous work.

What a thoroughly exotic and colourful evening we had!  French music based on a German poem based on a Greek story, a rare organ concerto from the twentieth century, and now a Russian writing oriental music.  It was a lively and engrossing programme; there was so much going on, visually as well as aurally.  The percussion had a field day.

A feature of the printed programme was the very full and well-written notes.  Each work commanded much more detail than we have become accustomed to.

The nearly full hall, and the very enthusiastic reception to the concert, and to Olivier Latry in particular, perhaps proves what I heard Paul Rosoman say in an interview on radio regarding the Queen’s Birthday Weekend’s Wellington 2012 Organ Congress, that interest in the organ has rekindled recently, compared with the situation over the last couple of decades.  This was demonstrated by 11 entries in the Congress’s performance competition, compared with 3 or 4 in previous years.

Let’s hope that Latry’s sensitive and brilliant performance will have inspired more to take up the ‘King of Instruments’.

 

 

Romance with elegance – Jian Liu plays Schumann and Liszt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music

Jian Liu (piano) in concert

SCHUMANN – Carnaval, Op.9 / LISZT – Piano Sonata in B Minor

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn

Wednesday 30th May 2012

What a delight for piano-fanciers! – here at the Adam Concert Room was a free recital featuring two of the cornerstone works of Romantic piano literature served up for us by pianist Jian Liu, currently the co-ordinator of classical piano studies at the New Zealand School of Music. Both works fully tested the player, producing in each instance a strongly-etched interpretation from an obviously well-equipped musician who possessed an abundance of skill, endurance and creative imagination.

On the face of things pairing Schumann’s and Liszt’s music made a logical enough coupling of works, though their close proximity here highlighted the nineteenth century’s most significant musical controversy – the conflict between tradition and innovation which burst into open conflagration between the conservatives, who clung to classical ideals and the progressives, who wanted to explore new ways of doing things. As so often happens, the debate became excessively nasty at times, with casualties on both sides, though at the time, more so on the part of the progressives such as Liszt, whose music, was systematically trashed by mouthpieces of the conservative establishment, such as the influential critic Eduard Hanslick (though the latter greatly admired Liszt as a pianist).

Schumann and Liszt were in fact good friends at first, but the differences which developed between them unfortunately turned into issues, exacerbated by people such as Schumann’s wife, pianist Clara Wieck, who disapproved of what she called Liszt’s “empty, vulgar compositions”. Despite all of this, Liszt in 1854 dedicated his Piano Sonata to Schumann, certainly in return for the latter’s earlier dedication to Liszt of his wonderful Op.17 C Major Fantasia, and perhaps also in a spirit of reconciliation – though by this time Schumann was beyond reach, having become increasingly beset by the mental instability which was to contribute to his death in 1856 at a mere forty-six years old.

So we were presented with two very different but equally potent and wholly characteristic manifestations of musical romanticism – though the conflicts and animosities which flowed between the worlds represented by these two pieces continue to this day to divide opinion and polarize musical sensibilities. At the recital I sat next to and talked with two people, one an enthusiastic admirer of Liszt and his music, and the other who, when the Sonata was finished, said “I made myself stay to listen to Jian play – but oh! – how awful that music is!”. Evidently, the spirit of the disapproving Clara Wieck lives on in today’s world.

One of the recurring characteristics of Jian Liu’s playing throughout both works was the generous flexibility of his phrasing, giving the notes space in which to breathe at all times, so that nothing seemed hurried or sounded incoherent – within these spaces his sensitive detailing, never fussy or contrived, was always accompanied by the feeling that he was drawing out from the notes themselves what sounded like an infinite variety of voicing, shadings and colorings. So, it was no surprise that he was able to constantly entertain and charm our imaginations with his portrayals of Schumann’s moods and characterizations throughout the composer’s richly-conceived parade of personalities, “Carnaval”.

Right at the beginning the opening fanfares had just enough rhetoric to arrest the attention without losing the declamation’s urgency and excitement, the following animato building up its energy and exuberance, before breaking off and beginning the whimsical procession of characters and emotions that give the work its never-ending fascination. From so many finely-drawn characterizations, I thought Liu’s Pierrot particularly vivid, the phrasing free rather than metrical, and with some lovely, subtle voicing, the repeat emphasizing the dreamy, self-communing aspect of it all, with even the emphatic repeated three-note phrase drawn into the world of wonderment. The Valse Noble enabled us to hear how Liu’s left hand beautifully varied its emphasis, the different voicings bringing a strand of meaning to the music far above that of mere accompaniment.

Spontaneity in performance is a risky business (Liu’s Papillons, though exciting, was a bit of a scramble, as were some of the left-hand figurations in the treacherous Paganini), but that sense of throwing caution aside was so worthwhile, so imbued with spirit and impulse as to drive away any sense of routine. And with that spirit applied to the work as a whole, Liu was able to present the music to us as sounding freshly-improvised – Chopin, for example, coming across here as a spontaneous-sounding tribute from one romantic to another, the music seeming to almost lose itself in its own reverie, here, towards the piece’s conclusion.

So, there was poetry and elegance aplenty; and excitement, too, with the right-handed repeated-note scintillations of Reconnaissance followed by the agitations of Pantalon et Colombine, energies shared across both hands in the latter to stunning effect. The final March of the League of David against the Philistines had plenty of swagger, and the ensuing stretta swept our sensibilities along towards the final triumphant if battle-scarred chords. Liu’s playing again caught a sense of the occasion, of the composer’s Don Quixote-like questing spirit, complete with fully-imagined triumph at the end.

But what of Liszt and the B Minor Sonata? Side-by-side with Schumann and with Jian Liu’s finely-honed sensibility brought to bear on the music, the work’s visionary scope and searing focus seemed as if newly-wrought for this occasion, with nothing about the performance left to “play itself” or convey anything of Clara Wieck’s charges of emptiness or vulgarity.

Liszt-lovers like myself are all too aware of the abyss of disapproval mined by all those nineteenth-century conservatives beneath the composer’s feet – and carried onwards in the twentieth century by agenda-ridden character assassins such as Ernest Newman. No other major composer, with perhaps the exception of Wagner, has had to endure, both throughout his lifetime and posthumously, such torrents of criticism and outright hostility regarding his music (let alone his grossly-distended reputation for extra-musical exploits). Fortunately, the advocacy of musicians such as Louis Kentner, Alfred Brendel, John Ogdon and Georges Cziffra, and a host of present-day pianistic giants, among them the redoubtable Leslie Howard with his staggering survey of the composer’s keyboard output for Hyperion Records, has effectively given the lie to the Clara Wiecks of this world regarding the music’s interest and worth.

Whether Jian Liu aligns himself with the believers or the skeptics in the matter of Liszt’s music, he plays it with the care and commitment of a true advocate, with no detail left to chance or unexplored. As with his playing of Carnaval, I was taken by the extent to which his piano-playing speaks across the hands, with what I had previously thought of as mere accompanying figures having something interesting and significant to say. Of course, the Sonata, with its amazingly-layered reworking of the principal themes needs a player alive to those different voices and their characters, and Liu didn’t disappoint, investing every episode with a kind of organic flow that constantly led the ear of the listener onwards. Even during the couple of instances where the music’s complexities momentarily clouded his bearings, he was able to seize upon the severed strands and quickly pull them together and continue – heart-stopping moments, indeed, but their resolution further evidence of the player’s quality.

For me one of the highlights of Liu’s performance was his playing of the fugue – Elgar’s description “a devil of a fugue” relating to his own Introduction and Allegro for Strings would as well apply to LIszt’s diabolically-conceived lines, the latter’s use of the work’s themes demonstrating compositional mastery of an almost indecent kind! Here, these were set in motion by the pianist as part of an ever-burgeoning torrent of impulse whose progress evoked a kind of demonic pursuit through the mind’s most shadowy and sulphurous realms of fancy. By contrast, and perhaps fittingly enough, another moment of magic was generated by Liu over the work’s last few pages, with whole worlds created between the hands, and as beautifully-timed a final low B as I’ve ever heard.

All I wanted during the performance of the Liszt was (should I be ashamed of admitting to this?) a touch more rhetoric in places, mostly in the form of bigger, more resonant tones at one or two cadence-points. Liu’s playing treated the music entirely on its own merits throughout, and was as faithful an account of the score as given by any other pianist I’ve heard – but everything I’ve read of Liszt’s playing indicates that he was no literalist, and that he wouldn’t hesitate to “heighten” whatever mood or feeling the composer indicated (accounts suggest that Liszt and his contemporaries had a more “creative” attitude to the printed score than we ourselves allow performers in this day and age).

Unlike that of his great contemporary, Chopin, the music of Liszt has a “larger-than-life” aspect which, in some instances invites performer-involvement of a kind that reflects the spirit of the work rather than one slavishly following the letter of the score. Without adding notes or radically changing tempi or dynamic markings, I feel it’s still possible to convey something of that “beyond the notes” feeling that marks a truly great and visionary performance of this repertoire. Jian Liu had for me something of this quality in his soft, inward-sounding playing – had he allowed a few more degrees of lingering romantic resonance in the bigger moments the performance as a whole would then have utterly knocked me sideways.

 

 

 

 

 

Organist Paul Rosoman opens Old Saint Paul’s lunchtime series

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Froberger: Capriccio III
J.S. Bach: Partite Diverse ‘O Gott du frommer Gott’ BWV 767; Prelude and Fugue in D minor BWV 539; Prelude and Fugue in M minor BWV 544

Paul Rosoman, organ

Old St. Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday, 29 May 2012, 12.15pm

Tuesday saw the first of the lunchtime concerts at Old St. Paul’s for 2012; the first of  a series that runs weekly until late September.  It was well-attended, in a rather cold church – though the under-seat heaters were on.

Cold fingers may have been a bit of a problem for Paul Rosoman, especially early in the concert, since a number of ‘fluffs’ occurred in an otherwise well-executed recital.  There were, too, a few out-of-tune pipes in the organ.

A problem with most organ recitals is that the audience cannot see the performer’s face, only their back view.  Therefore, compared with almost any other musical performance, there is less of a feeling of communication between player and listener.  I have been to exceptions: at Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul when the downstairs moveable console was used, and in Calgary, Alberta, when a similar console was played.

This organ is a relatively small two-manual and pedal organ in the baroque style, installed in 1977.  It works by tracker action; that is, a direct mechanical action, not electro-pneumatic, electric or electronic.  It has a strong, clear sound and a surprising array of  tonal qualities can be obtained.

The Froberger piece was a pleasing example of pre-Bach organ music.  It was very well suited to this instrument.  A range of colours was employed; the pedal tone was particularly fine.

Paul Rosoman’s brief spoken introduction to the Bach pieces singled out the Partite Diverse as being ‘Bach at his finest, particularly in the last stanza’.  That is, the last stanza of the hymn on which the parts of the whole were based.  He explained that each variation corresponded with a verse of the hymn, being eight in all.  Some illustrated the texts musically, perhaps illuminating the ‘seven ages of man’, through from joyful childhood to old age and death, finishing with the joy of resurrection and heaven.  It is thought to date from Bach’s late teens; if so, it is remarkable.

The work, written for manuals only, opened with a strong rendering of the chorale (hymn tune).  A splendid reed solo was the feature of the first variation.  The second was not so lively, being calmer and less colourful.  The third employed flute stops, including the 2-foot, to give a bright yet light timbre.

All the variations were abundant in invention and variety.  Number four featured the Principal, and was relatively solemn and steady, while the fifth variation gave us reeds – was this illustrating man’s bombastic stage of life?  A less brightly resplendent, more contemplative sixth variation followed.  The swell pedal was used to introduce a quieter section in this partita.

The seventh variation began very quietly and slowly, probably to illustrate old age.  This was not the vibrant ‘third age’ that many of us today aspire to!  Death cannot have been far off .  The last variation’s brightness on the reeds perhaps spoke of resurrection and heaven, while flutes pictured bliss and peace.  Rosoman achieved considerable contrasts between the manuals; a more sombre and sober section was followed by declaiming reeds again, at the end.  This was a most interesting and attractive work, played in an accomplished and satisfying manner.

The Prelude in D minor was composed separately from the Fugue, and there is a theory that the pair were matched up long after Bach’s death.  The prelude was written for manuals only, and after the delights we had just experienced, it sounded rather dull by comparison; it was a relatively plain work – described in the excellent programme notes as ‘modest’.  There was good phrasing from Rosoman, but I would have liked a little more crispness and separation of notes in both movements; this would have made the fugue, particularly, more engaging.

The fugue had no rumbustious ending, just a few flourishes, unlike many of Bach’s fugues; this prelude and fugue constituted the weakest item in the recital.  Not that I was after mere noise; harmonically and even contrapuntally this work was less than arresting.

The B minor Prelude and Fugue were a complete contrast to the previous work.  Known as ‘grand’, it lived up to its name in breadth and excitement.  The prelude was vintage Bach, with lots of contrapuntal complexity, including surprising harmonies and modulations.  A bold fugue followed, utilising the mixture stops on the instrument.  The pedal version of the fugue melody was very clear; the piece demonstrated the clarity and versatility of this small organ, and the competence of the performer.

This recital was a fine start to the year’s season at Old St. Paul’s.

 

Rhapsodic strains from the NZSM Orchestra with Kenneth Young

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Rhapsodie

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Saxophone : Deborah Rawson

Conductor: Kenneth Young

Sam Logan – Lost Island  / Maurice Ravel – Suite “Ma Mère L’Oye”

Claude Debussy – Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra

Witold Lutoslawski – Concerto for Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace, Welington

Tuesday, 29th May, 2012

Every NZSM Orchestra concert I go to seems to surpass the previous one in some respect or other, to the extent that I now expect to encounter on each new concert occasion a stimulating and innovative programme and a high standard of performance skills from all concerned. This latest one was certainly no exception, with conductor Ken Young at the orchestral helm securing from the students (and some of their NZSO tutors, swelling the band’s numbers) plenty of impressively-wrought playing, which shaped up well to the programme’s considerable demands.

As well as playing skills, also on show was a new piece evocatively titled Lost Island, written by an NZSM student, Sam Logan, a recipient of the David Farquhar Prize in Composition. Describing his work as “an episode of escapism”, Sam Logan freely acknowledged in his program note the piece’s debt to the composers he likes – one would think, for a young composer eager to learn, an excellent springboard for creativity, especially as this was a “first” for him in writing for a full orchestra.

In seven or so minutes, his work progressed confidently through a number of atmospheric episodes – to begin with, an attractively languid opening nicely launched and floated exotic fragments of melody, the music gradually building in intensity towards a full-blooded roar and a quixotic change of key (brass glissandi and heavy percussion contrasting their voicings with a lovely violin solo). Then, with rhythms nudging the textures more and more insistently, the Lost Island scenario came into focus, bringing tropical-flavoured pulsings not unlike Gershwin with a dash of Jamaican Rhumba, all of which sounded easy on the ear and great fun to play.

Haunting chimes sounding over string tremolandi gave the music a mysterious “Shangri-la” aspect, with an ascending motif prominent, one which worked through trenchant orchestral textures and determined ostinati, creating waves of attractively La Mer-ish sea-swellings (uh-oh! – a tautology?) – but I thought at some stage the episode needed a bit of thematic interest or character to sharpen the listener’s focus (a solo instrumental line? – perhaps more from the violin, whose voice was heard to great advantage earlier). So, hardly a distinctive voice, but there was some well-crafted orchestral writing from the young composer, to go with discernible character in some of the sections of the piece, enough for its hearing to be an enjoyable audience experience.

Further delight was to be had from the performance of Ravel’s suite from his ballet Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose), our anticipations sharpened by the entrance onto the platform of additional players, among them a contra-bassoonist (very visible!). This music is, of course, both a gift and a challenge for any orchestra, simple figurations tempered with exacting refinements throughout. We got a piquant blend of winds throughout the Sleeping Beauty’s Pavane, dynamics not perhaps perfectly gradated, but each player’s sounds winningly wholehearted. More finely-honed was Petit Poucet (Tom Thumb), with lovely strings and melancholy oboe to begin with, and a meltingly beautiful cor anglais solo – the strings gave us a fine surge of emotion at the climax, as did the cor anglais’s return; while Kate Oswin’s violin cheekily led the chorus of birds mocking the lost wanderer.

Laidronette, Empress of the Pagodas, one of Ravel’s happiest creations, here splashed and scintillated with joy, the winds in fine fettle, and the horns resonant and atmospheric. The xylophone’s pentatonic tinklings, tentative the first time round, were brilliantly nailed by the player on the repeat, ably supported by the rest of the percussion at the climax. No greater contrast could be imagined than with Beauty and the Beast, clarinet and strings depicting the girl’s loveliness, set against the grotesquerie of the contrabasson’s rasping tones (great playing by Hayley Roud), backed up by suitably growly percussion! The strings admirably portrayed Beauty’s initial disquiet and confusion, before Kate Oswin’s silken-sweet violin tones brought about the Beast’s magical transformation.

The suite’s final number,The Enchanted Garden, completed the magic, the strings encouraged to play with plenty of warmth by Ken Young right at the start, and the solo violin again lovely, if not always steady, joining in with the great rocking rhythms, horns chiming, strings singing and percussion sizzling, in celebration of the day’s sun-drenched awakening of a garden’s beauties.

This was the first time I had heard the Debussy Saxophone Rhapsody, and was highly entertained by the account of its history and its composer’s dilatory attempts at composing the piece, as set out by the program note. Its title suggests precisely what the piece sounds like – not a concerto, but a rhapsody with a prominent solo instrument part. And Deborah Rawson played it exactly like that, her tones always beautifully rounded, but often meditative, blending in with the orchestral discourse rather than seeking to dominate or over-ride the textures.

It all sounded like a civilized discourse between equals, though a more robust and forthright episode towards the end brought forth more energy and rhythmic intensity. Whether or not the composer was himself properly convinced of the work’s efficacy is open to conjecture – certainly Debussy’s coyness regarding his relinquishing of the work’s orchestral sketches for publication suggests an equivocal attitude – but Deborah Rawson and the orchestra certainly gave the piece every chance to shimmer and glow with this finely-played performance.

I had not heard the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra in concert since, I think, 1972, which was when Vaclav Smetacek directed a performance with the then NZBC Symphony in the Wellington Town Hall. The piece knocked me sideways then, and did so again here, Kenneth Young inspiring his student players to dig into the textures and relish the earthiness of the orchestral writing throughout the first movement. We got searing strings, soulful winds and pin-point brass fronting up with trenchant rhythms and rolling maelstroms of sound, contrasting with gentler, more folksy episodes involving winds and a solo violin, with the celeste sounding a kind of stricken aftermath at the end, a solo flute and clusters of strings picking over the salvageable remnants.

How well I remembered the skeletal eeriness of the second movement’s opening, everything dryly dancing and scampering, a real sense of musical sleight-of-hand, with both wisps of ghostly illusion and breaths of human warmth whisked away alike in a trice! What music, and what playing from this young orchestra! Brass interruptions led to a percussive hammering whose sounds reached breaking-point and exploded, leaving a mourning flute over grumbling strings. And in the aftermath the disquiet took up again, the dovetailing of lines at speed expertly done to the end. Exhilarating stuff!

As for the third-movement Passacaglia, launching a longer movement than the other two put together, it all proved an epic journey, beginning solemnly, with pizzicato strings bringing out a wonderful solo from the cor anglais and inspiring further wind-and-string interchanges. There were brass shouts and percussion onslaughts momentarily obliterating all other voices, ruling by force, though winds and strings reasserted themselves with a chorale-like theme, the strings sounding like a heavenly aftermath of angels. And the toccata-like irruptions from the brass – terrific playing! – spearheaded an even more brutal assault, against which the winds sang a kind of “coming through” theme, like lifelines stretching over an abyss.

Under Young’s direction the orchestral forces throughout all of these contrasting calms and storms scarcely faltered, with only a single episode of less-than-unanimous playing that I noticed – the accelerando passage towards the end in which the players took a few bars to “find” one another. The ensuing cataclysmic chorale grew magnificently out of the ferment of orchestral activity, and Young whipped the players into a final frenzy for the skitterish payoff at the end. Had I been completely new to this work I might have been writing at this point “I knowed no more that evening…..” For all concerned, a stunning achievement!

 

 

Wonderland in name and deed – Made In New Zealand

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WONDERLAND – MADE IN NEW ZEALAND 2012

CREE BROWN – Celestial Bodies

CRESSWELL – Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet

WHITEHEAD – Alice

New Zealand String Quartet

Helen Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 25th May 2012

This was a “Made In New Zealand” concert which packed a real wallop, featuring three substantial pieces of music by different New Zealand composers – all of whom, incidentally, were present.  While none of the performances on this occasion were premieres, each one seemed to me to freshly unwrap the music, and square up whole-heartedly to the technical and emotional challenges of each of the pieces’ different physical and spiritual worlds.

It seems to me to be important that any orchestra can play and sound as if it “owns” music written by composers who live in the same geographical space, however “global” or “multi-national” an outlook certain forces of darkness seek constantly to try and impose on our lives. And, as Douglas Lilburn was fond of pointing out, there are aspects of the New Zealand experience which even Mozart, for all his music’s greatness and universality, couldn’t express – and an orchestra such as the NZSO which both encourages and can brilliantly play music by local composers that CAN express these things, is, purely and simply, above rubies. At least, in the expert hands of conductor Hamish McKeich, this was certainly the case throughout Friday evening’s concert.

While I’m still convinced of the need for integrating New Zealand music into “normal” concert programs and schedules, rather than treating it as a kind of separate species  confined to its own enclosure (open to the public only at certain times throughout the year!) I’m certain that having a “Made In New Zealand” concert gives additional opportunities for the NZSO to (as orchestra CEO Chris Blake puts it) “support and stimulate the creation and development of a New Zealand symphonic repertoire”.  And it’s fortunate we have conductors such as Hamish McKeich and Kenneth Young who can, when given opportunities to do so, make good that statement of intent with fully-committed advocacy.

Without wanting to “limpet-mine” this review with any suggestion of a subaqueous agenda, I feel nevertheless compelled to mention, quite offhandedly, that one of the greatest (in my opinion) of New Zealand symphonies – David Farquhar’s first, performed in concert in 1960, a year after it was written –  still awaits its SECOND public performance. Ironically, the work has enjoyed two recordings throughout the interim, and thus can’t claim to be completely neglected – but how else would one characterize something that’s had a single public airing in fifty-two years? To my ears the work urgently has a part to play in any such “development of a New Zealand symphonic repertoire”.

Back with the business in hand, I was interested to read that the first work on the evening’s program, Chris Cree Brown’s Celestial Bodies, was first presented in 2005 in Christchurch as an audio-visual collaboration with the artist Julia Morison. It would have been interesting to have experienced something of the composer’s original conception for this work, though previous “Made In New Zealand” concerts which used visual elements encountered a good deal of criticism from concertgoers, myself included, which might have been off-putting for the organizers. However, it must be said that the criticism was directed almost exclusively at instances where visual elements were imposed on existing music, not where it was part of the composer’s own initial scheme.

This accounted for those parts of the work so readily and cheerfully dispensing entirely with the “live” orchestra (the whole of the fourth section “Dark Matter” for example.) Having visual imagery interacting with the taped material would at this point have, I feel sure, removed some of the incongruity for me of having to watch an entire orchestra sitting on a concert platform listening to prerecorded sounds. For the rest I enjoyed the players’ skilful acoustic dovetailing with some of the sounds on the tape throughout (a sign of the times being a reference to an “electroacoustic CD” instead!).

Celestial Bodies is a work in ten sections, the parts named for various phenomena found throughout space, the composer describing them as “overwhelming in their size, awe-inspiring in their diversity and breathtaking in their beauty”. New Zealand composers have written outer space-inspired music before, an example being Edwin Carr’s ‘The Twelve Signs”, though Cree Brown’s work avoided any astrological reference-points. Instead, his pieces unfolded for us, one by one, aspects of the cosmos with titles such as Galaxy, Globular Cluster, Pulsar, Nebula and Supernova, as well as those with a more sinister ambience like Dark Matter and Black Hole.

These were brilliantly crafted sounds, atmospheric and pictorial, with plenty of variation, and readily suggesting their subject matter in practically every case. They were not for everybody, as I discovered when talking with people, some of whom said they struggled to feel any connection with the music, while admiring the composer’s craft and skill. I felt involved in almost every episode, and particularly enjoyed the orchestra’s interactions with the pre-recorded sounds, a process which I thought set up interesting performance tensions in places and pushed my listening boundaries outwards, towards places that felt quite eerie – the second piece, Globular Cluster, worked on my imagination readily in that respect.

I also enjoyed the pieces’ contrasts, for example, when going to the following piece, Pulsar, and encountering those strongly-etched rhythms pulsating through spaces that had seemed up to this point pleasantly nebulous. Black Hole was another piece whose elemental irruptions gave a real sense of menacing power, thrillingly at odds with one’s accustomed sense of vast stillness when looking at the night sky, the orchestra’s heavy batteries making splendidly frightening noises, complete with a startlingly anarchic chord at the end.

Where I didn’t especially “connect” with Cree Brown’s music was, as I’ve said, with any “pre-recorded only” episodes of any length – the fourth piece, Dark Matter, the most ready example. I’m certain that, had we seen Julia Morison’s images, the sequence would have told more readily and maintained enough interactive tension – perhaps a soloist or group of soloists from the orchestra needed to play ad lib with the pre-record, in the absence of any visuals, to keep the impulses alive and flowing.

Interactive tension was the name of the game with Lyell Cresswell’s Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet. In one continuous movement, the work spun its listeners excitingly through what seemed like an endless variety of episodes involving interchange between the performers – in this case the New Zealand String Quartet and the orchestra. Although this concerto wasn’t written for the NZSQ, (it was premiered in Scotland by the Yggdrasil Quartet and the Scottish National Orchestra in 1997), Cresswell has written other works specifically for the group, a piano quintet And Every Sparkle Shivering, first given here in 2000 with Michael Houstoun, and a string quartet, Kotetetete, which the NZSQ performed last year in the City of London Festival. Cresswell has described the NZSQ as “a quartet that can play anything”, and felt that whatever demands he made of the players in writing the Quartet, they would relish the challenges.

The group has played the Quartet Concerto before, the first time in 2001 with the BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young. From the start, Cresswell wanted to write a piece that was a genuine partnership between quartet and orchestra, and not merely with the latter group providing some sort of “accompaniment”. And neither did he want the piece to be a kind of Concerto for orchestra, with string quartet. On the “genuine partnership” count alone, the work seemed to me a truly egalitarian tour de force – one noted a constant flow of creative happenings between solo instruments, small groups and larger forces, a kind of all-encompassing concerto grosso, with all the attendant tensions and resolutions which one might expect would throw up between such elements.

Cheryl Hollinger’s magically-phrased trumpet-playing, introduced by scintillations of percussion and airborne, ethereal orchestral strings, got the work way to a suitably “storyteller-like” beginning, the theme hinting at a kind of unfolding aspect, as in the best tales. And though the quartet’s viola-led instrument-by-instrument configurings, supported by the orchestra strings and commented upon abruptly by brass punctuations, were carefully terraced by the composer, the effect seemed always natural and organic, never forced or contrived. As with genuine human interaction, the exchanges occasionally flared up excitingly, the music expressing its fair share of marked contrast and volatility, but was then balanced by slower, more reflective and meditative episodes midway through the work. Here, I loved the heartfelt duo lines between various pairings of solo strings from the quartet, seeming to me expressing great beauty against what felt in places like a backdrop of ambient desolation.

There were places throughout the final section during which I wondered whether the writing fell back on itself every now and then, and could have benefitted from some  “tightening” by the composer – but always a succeeding episode would scoop up and whisk away my misgivings, generating so intense an excitement of quicksilver exchanges of texture, colour and rhythmic patterning between quartet and orchestra. Cresswell’s orchestral writing in particular I thought so very virtuosic in places, the music’s occasionally vertiginous momentum creating exhilaration aplenty. The quartet players, as always, gave their all, and each section of the orchestra, directed and balanced with admirable skill by conductor Hamish McKeich, seemed switched-on to razor-sharp mode with the timing and focus of their rapid exchanges.

After the interval came intensities of another, more directly human kind, Gillian Whitehead’s setting of poet Fleur Adcock’s retelling in verse of an ancestor’s emigration from Britain to begin a new life in New Zealand in 1909. Twenty-three year-old Alice Adcock, showing symptoms of tuberculosis, and hoping that a change of climate would help effect some kind of cure came to this country from Manchester, to the consternation of her family. She lived for a further fifty years, during which time she lost her husband and was then rejected and dispossessed by his family, having to relocate with her children to another part of New Zealand and start a new life.

Fleur Adcock felt Alice’s story was, in a sense, that of all those who came across the seas to establish a new life, the commonalities having, in her words, “the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here”. Making the most of the deceptively simple poetry, singing with great power and beauty, and relishing occasional forays into a kind of sprechtgesang, Helen Medlyn here became the heroine, Alice, body and soul, pretty much as she would have done when she “created” the role in 2003 at the premiere performance. She brought out all the different elements of the text – its humor (much talk of lice, using terms like “gentle creepers” and “big crawlers”), positive energy (revelling in the clean air of a new country), unflagging optimism (happiness at finding a man to marry who will take and accept her child) and a sense of loss and grief over deaths of loved ones (father and husband) – but also gave the sung lines plenty of theatrical (even operatic) presence and vibrancy.

No praise is too high for orchestra and conductor, Hamish McKeich, living the different scenarios with Medlyn every inch of the way throughout the story-line, and continuing to deliver, right through the unfortunate contretemps which quietly erupted in the gallery, where an audience member suddenly took seriously ill ten or so minutes before the end of the piece. This, of course, occasioned a flurry of piteous activity (those on the ground floor, along with many of the musicians, largely oblivious to what was going on) – but evidently the revival efforts of those brought to help were successful.

A stimulating and colorful “Made In New Zealand” concert then, with three substantial works whose effect will have won for the orchestra, its conductor, and the special solo performers many plaudits from a delighted audience and from three grateful composers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sayers and Mapp, varied and delightful piano duets at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Emma Sayers and Richard Mapp (piano duet)

Music by Thomas Tomkins, Mozart, Schubert. Ravel, Kenneth Young, Barber and Poulenc

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 20 May, 2.30pm

A concert of piano duets (four hands on one piano) is likely to raise discussion about the propriety of arrangements and the voicing of opinions about the merits of an orchestral arrangement of a piece for piano four hands (or two hands, for that matter).

As it happens, most of the music at this concert was originally written for four hands though two were later orchestrated for a ballet.

The opening piece was a small surprise from the Stuart period when the keyboard – harpsichord, clavichord, virginals, etc – was being used increasingly as a solo instrument, most notably exemplified in Fitzwilliam’s ‘virginal book’ published in the 19th century.

According to the programme note, Thomas Tomkins’s piece, A Fancy, ‘for two to play’, is probably the first surviving piece for two players at one keyboard. It started quietly giving the impression that the composer was really thinking of only one player, but soon its various layers emerged to justify its treatment by more than one player.

Mozart wrote several sonatas and other pieces for two pianists on either one or two keyboards. This, in F major, K 497, was not one of the best known, and in spite of Emma Sayer’s promoting it as echoing the spirit of the operas that he was writing at the time – The Marriage of Figaro and The Impresario – it isn’t really furnished with the memorable and characterful tunes that made them famous.

They played the opening Adagio cautiously, and there was even a feeling of holding back as the Allegro got under way. The air of hesitancy derived more from the music than the players; in spite of the outwardly lively tunes, and it struck me that Mozart was compensating for a slightly lower level of inspiration by adorning it with decoration and unexpected modulations.

The same feeling lingered in the Andante second movement: interesting rather than beguiling, yet we heard a performance that was well rehearsed, with attractive dynamic and tempo changes. The finale offered more lively music, the two players sporting with each other, exploiting chances to surprise, offering nothing that was routine, and ultimately leaving no room for doubt that the composer was Mozart in his masterly maturity.

Schubert’s Allegro in A minor, thought to be the first movement of a never completed sonata, was entitled by the publisher, Lebensstürme – ‘life’s storms’. It is no 947 in the Deutsch catalogue, which is immediately after the much better known, three Klavierstücke. It deserves to be as well known for it has real strength and dramatic shape as well as having a perfectly enchanting middle section. Stormy is the way it opened but the storm soon passed; it was interesting melodically as well as developing in ways that were typical of Schubert. There’s an underlying swaying rhythm that characterises a beguiling melody before the music returns to the arresting minor key, fanfare-like motif with which it opened.

Though there were charms of rhythm and lyricism that I felt were not totally realised, this performance was persuasive enough to make me pursue the piece further. If you Google ‘Lebensstürme’ and ‘Schubert’ you will find several You-Tube video clips of performances. One which captivated me was by the Georgian twins, Ani and Nia Salkhanishvili at the San Marino Piano Competition.

Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye was written for girls, obviously highly talented, for it’s not particularly easy.  The question whether the original duet version or the orchestral version is to be preferred exercises many people; for my part, I’m seduced by both as soon one or the other starts. This duo approached it fastidiously, the wit and charm discreetly obscured, to be smiled at by others than those who respond only to the gross and obvious in humour. They played it as one, approaching the rise and fall of dynamics exquisitely and making much of the playful turns in treble passages in ‘Hop o’ my thumb’. The suite ended with the droll sleight of hand found in the last phrase of ‘The fairy garden’.

Kenneth Young’s Variations on a Prayer is based on an original chorale-like tune, according to the programme note, which went on to explain that it “explored the nature of prayer, which can take many different forms in pursuit of a universal goal”. It is the sort of comment that seems more likely to come from a composer than a writer of programme notes, but the notes later speak of Young in the third person, linking his musical character with Dutilleux and Takemitsu. In any case, Young’s music finds its way successfully between the rigours of the complex avant-garde and the indulgently melodic and sentimental, and the performance situated it without apology in the company of the early 20th century pieces in the programme.

The recital ended with another two pieces I hadn’t come across before: Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs and Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano Duet (of 1918, and so very early).

The three pieces taken from Souvenirs, a suite of six movements, Op 28 of 1951, were Schottische, Pas de deux and Hesitation-Tango. Though originally written for piano four hands, Barber also arranged it for solo piano, for two pianos and then he orchestrated it for a ballet which was first performed in 1955.  The Schottische has a jazzy quality in quick 3/8 rhythm; then a slow Pas de deux that exemplified the nostalgic aspect of these Souvenirs, and the Hesitation-Tango, (a take, I suppose, on the once-popular Hesitation Waltz that I recall from college dancing classes), slightly reminiscent of Prokofiev with wisps of a big tune that proved evanescent, and leading us into the here and now.

The Poulenc sonata would, one might think, be performed along with the sonatas he wrote for wind instruments near the end of his life, but this one, written at 19, was contemporaneous with the well-known Mouvements perpetuels . well before his ballet, Les Biches, which put him on the map in 1924. One could hear why it’s not so well known, though it’s not inconsequential, and the duo found its varied character, the dense chords in dotted rhythms of the Prélude, the improvisatory interlude called Rustique, and the speedy, staccato Final that was perhaps going nowhere, but gave the impression of generating much energy in doing so.

This enchanting recital made me realise how much pleasure is to be found in the piano duet repertoire. Mapp and Sayers have been playing together for a few years and their performances deserve to be more frequent and widely enjoyed.