Splendid singing at gathering of Anglican cathedral choirs

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Cathedral Choirs in Concert:
Choirs of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland; Cathedral Church of St. Peter, Hamilton; Waiapu Anglican Cathedral, Napier; Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul; Christ Church Cathedral, Nelson; ChristChurch Cathedral, Christchurch; St. Paul’s Cathedral, Dunedin.

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Saturday, 8 September at 5.30pm

It was a considerable enterprise to bring together the choirs of seven Anglican Cathedrals, especially when Wellington’s atrocious weather on the day prevented one choir (Dunedin’s) from arriving in time for them to be able to sing their item (it was to be sung in the next day’s Festal Eucharist instead).  Approximately 180 singers assembled for the weekend of singing.

The combined choirs sang first, ‘Hear my words, ye people’ by Hubert Parry.  This music was written for such a building as this one, and it certainly worked.  There was a resounding organ introduction from Richard Apperley, who accompanied the first two items, followed by quite a lengthy choral anthem.  There was lovely shading of the dynamics throughout, but the solos did not carry well.  The work was not as attractive as some of Parry’s better known anthems, and its length probably precludes it from frequent performance.  It was ably directed by Michael Stewart, of Wellington Cathedral.

Next came ‘I saw the Lord’, by John Stainer.  This had the grandeur we associate with late Victorian England.  Wagner might have been proud of the chromatic writing.  In the quiet passages there was a charming stillness, and throughout, effective word-painting.  As in the previous work performed, there was some difficulty in keeping organ and soloists in sync.  Musically, the piece is rather conventional, with effect rather than feeling or subtlety of expression.  It was conducted by Rachael Griffiths-Hughes, Director of Music at the Cathedral in Hamilton.

The choir of Auckland Cathedral sang one of the many unaccompanied church compositions of 16th century Englishman John Sheppard: ‘Libera nos, salva nos’.  There was a splendid introduction from the men’s voices, and wonderful interweaving of the lines.  The singing of the whole motet exhibited sustained beauty.  A gradual increase in volume continued through to the ending.

Junior choristers from Nelson, Napier, Wellington and Christchurch cathedrals combined under the baton of Brian Law of Christchurch to sing two more modern anthems: John Ireland’s ‘Ex ore innocentium’ and ‘Prevent us, O Lord’ by English/Canadian composer, organist and choral director Derek Holman.  The choir of boys and some girls sang with clarity and sweetness of tone.  The organ was very competently played by  Richard Apperley.

The following items were performed by the Hamilton choir, under conductor Rachael Griffiths-Hughes.  First was Palestrina’s ‘Agnus Dei’ from Missa Aeterna Christe Munera.  Mainly an adult choir, it sang with full tone, the female voices more obviously such than was the case with the Auckland choir.  It was a very polished performance, the tone superb and the singers’ mastery of the music very evident.

At this point I had to leave, to attend another concert, so I missed the train; that is, ‘It was on that train’ by Barry Ferguson, from the same choir, combined choir items by Timothy Noon (conductor of the Auckland choir), Bruckner and Elgar, and the Christchurch choir’s singing under Brian Law ‘My beloved spake’ by Paul Halley, an American church musician and composer.

Despite hearing only six items out of ten on the programme (with the removal of the Dunedin choir’s item), I was impressed with the musicianship, confidence, and splendid singing and playing of all concerned.  Words do not travel well in Wellington’s Anglican Cathedral, but the sound was beautiful and the programme (or what I heard of it) very pleasing on the ear.

 

 

Beethoven and the New Zealand String Quartet – shifting the paradigm

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet: 25th Anniversary Concerts

Beethoven Quartets Op.127, Op.135 and Op.132

Helene Pohl / Douglas Beilman (violins)

Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

St Mary of the Angels, Wellington

Friday 7 September, 2012

Guest reviewer: Antony Brewer

I have been attending New Zealand String Quartet concerts since the early days and while I am suspicious of saying such things, just now it feels as if this may have been the most wonderful of all. I have heard these superb musicians playing the most technically demanding works with style, fire and finesse. This evening, however, was as befits the music, on another plane altogether.

As Beethoven’s deafness isolated him, it seems he listened more and more to his inner voices and paid correspondingly less attention to the expectations of the outside world. One will never know whether his internal processes were uniquely original in terms of form, harmony and texture and he beat them into some acceptable form, or if the deafness simply accelerated an already maturing originality.

Beethoven was known to have said to the violinist Shuppanzigh, “What do I care about your violin?” when the hapless musician begged the composer to simplify some of the parts for his instrument. Certainly, the technical demands upon the players are enormous. One has only to observe the sheer effort of concentration, the split-second timing required and the sheer mechanical skill required playing this music. And this is before the interpretive issues are addressed and they must surely be among the thorniest in the repertoire. This is a mysterious factor in play: how do four musicians assimilate the vast spiritual and emotional forces at work here?

The great pianist Artur Schnabel is known to have said that “I am only attracted to music which is greater than it can be played”. One thinks of these quartets instantly as fulfilling this requirement. No matter how wonderfully traversed, the map, as Alfred Korzybski once observed, is not the territory.

A short note about introductions. I thoroughly enjoy them. They bring me into the music and the musicians’ passion and respect for it. I find the informality adding greatly to my pleasure and hope the quartet will continue this approach in the future.

And the maturity of the quartet is quite startling. Do they feel any real nervousness? As it seems, they come onto the platform as if striding into an adventure, a profound journey which they are about to take with us, the audience.

A further mystery is for this group to have such familiarity which each other, to sense the others’ direction and subtle inflections of tempo and phrasing while seeming to lose no aspect of their individual musicianship. I find their standing to play brings forward the full expressiveness of body language and while Rolf Gjelsten sits, he is almost dancing forward on his tiptoes to join the others, shaping the music with every part of his body. I particularly enjoyed watching his smiling joy in the music.

Gillian Ansell, that nonpareil among violists, always brought out the singing and speaking voices in Beethoven’s writing, relishing every one of the numerous gifts traced into these scores

Doug Beilman is also a highly expressive artist and a perfect complement to Helene Pohl, the first violin. He addressed his violin as though it were a sentient being somehow organically connected to him and  is a powerhouse of technique and passion for the music with the ability of the truly gifted to anchor and participate at the same time, allowing his violin partner to soar into the ether as her spirit takes her.

Helene Pohl’s sense of “innigkeit” and subtle beauty of phrasing was deeply moving for me. She is an intensely musical artist able to provide the most delicate shadings of tone and shaping to the music. Dynamics and transitions between sections within movements were managed as if the works were growing before our very ears.

As a programme this worked extremely well: Op.127 is a massive work as is the Op.132. Placing the somewhat lighter, almost divertimento-like Op.135 in between acted as a slightly astringent sorbet, exciting as well as cleansing the palate. The “Heilger Dankgesang”of Op.132 was among the profound musical experiences of my life. The final five minutes of this had me feeling as if I were on another planet. Exquisite.

After many years of knowing this music I found that my understanding of it underwent a paradigm-shift under the influence of these musicians’ profound insights. One can remain sure that these interpretations will not be cast in stone and will continue to develop, fine as they are already.

 

 

 

 

Nikau Trio creates charming new repertoire for their ensemble: at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Nikau Trio: Karen Batten (flute), Madeleine Sakovsky (oboe), Margaret Guldborg (cello)

Haydn: Trio No 3 in G, Hob. IV:3 (originally for two flutes and cello continuo)
J S Bach: Trio Sonata in G, BWV 1039
Beethoven: Variations on ‘La ci darem la mano’ from Don Giovanni, WoO 28
Vivaldi: Chamber concerto in G minor RV 103

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 5 September, 12.15pm

The lunchtime concerts at St Mark’s church on Woburn Road have been growing in popularity, and there seems to be a trend towards presenting music of greater substance over the past year or so. But that’s not the only pleasure in making the journey. The church has a light and open lobby where free tea and coffee are available before the concerts; and the church itself, with its high vaulted wooden ceiling, allows the music to bloom in the most engaging way.

The little trio in G by Haydn, written while he was in London for the Salomon concerts that featured his twelve last great symphonies, might be slight in terms of musical profundity, but perfectly matched the sunny day and the temperament of the three polished musicians. All free-lance, professional musicians, they created a beautiful ensemble, perhaps even more attractive than the original for two flutes would have been. Attention moves from one to another as they play, to admire the polish and individuality of each in turn, but then the sound of the trio as a unit overtakes you.

Given the work’s origin, it was to be expected that both flute and oboe would lie in a similar range, mostly quite high. To my ears, the oboe’s contribution lent a welcome textured colour to the sound, and the fine cello playing of Margaret Guldborg kept it well grounded.

Bach’s sonata was one of his few ‘Trio Sonatas’ (this one for two flutes and continuo); it was a very common genre in the early 18th century, and Bach wrote it during the years at the small court of Anhalt-Cöthen during 1717 – 1723, his instrumental music years (because the Prince was a Calvinist and was not interested in choral music). Cöthen is a bit north of Leipzig, in the present province of Sachsen-Anhalt.

It is in the traditional slow-fast-slow-fast pattern, and though hardly one of his major works, it offered enough musical substance in the form of counterpoint to hold the attention. And the opening Adagio was of a sanguine character, spiced by the Bach gift for the slightly unorthodox, to end the movement on an unresolved cadence. Though I can’t recall hearing the piece before, the second movement, Allegro ma non presto, and the last movement, were familiar. A trio sonata might stand somewhere between a solo or duet sonata and a concerto, and there were hints of the texture of one of his concertos in the third movement.

The Beethoven variations too were originally composed for a slightly different combination: two oboes and cor anglais, in 1796. It is quite an extended work with considerable variety between the eight variations though its pattern is little different from the very common variation form that prevailed across the centuries. The three players here exhibited considerable delight in this variety, whether tossing motifs back and forth or enjoying a brief duet in charming harmony. The eighth variation became more elaborate in its concertante character, both flute and oboe extremely busy while the cello looked after the melody. The rhythm in the coda turned into a gigue, with the cello again important; but the piece subsides to a quite poignant conclusion.

The Vivaldi concerto is one of his less common excursions for particular instruments: here he wrote for recorder, oboe, bassoon and strings. In G minor, it opens brightly, with Guldborg’s cello fluent and lively, then taking on a serious quality in the Largo led by the flute and oboe and the trio’s always splendid sharing of the motifs as well as the warmth and accuracy of the ensemble made this a thoroughly delightful recital.

 

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Nature, Life and Love – Pepe Becker and Helen Webby

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:

Pepe Becker and Helen Webby – Love’s Nature

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Helen Webby (harps)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 5th September, 2012

As soon as both singer and harpist made their antiphonal entrances from each side of the platform, we were spellbound, caught up in a rainbow of enchantment between the two performers, one whose contours had already begun encircling the enraptured audience. With sweet and true singing, supported by the softest, most beguiling harp-tones, the musicians conjured up sounds which gave these visual illusions substance, even if at times the tones took on an ethereal, unearthly quality that belied their worldly origins. All of this was without any help from extra-musical effects – what immediately came to my mind was that the musicians could have entered by candlelight, and/or the church’s lighting could have been dimmed at the outset, and gradually brought up as the performers advanced towards the centre. Still, the music was the thing – if one had shut one’s eyes it would have been easy to imagine those sounds wafting and undulating towards one’s ears from across the ages.

From the very outset Pepe Becker’s voice was sweet and true and Helen Webby’s harp-playing deliciously evocative. The opening music was a well-known Sequentia composed by the wondrous Hildegarde of Bingen, the eleventh-century composer, poet, abbess and mystic, someone whose music has come to define the typical sound of music-making in the middle ages, at once austere and richly-laden, simple,yet resonating with meaning – as the program note put it so succinctly, “a rapturous chant of devotion to the Virgin Mary”, O viridissima virga, the sounds as miraculous as the subject-matter. Cut from similar “old” cloth was a love-song by Guillaume de Machaut, Comment-qu’a moy lonteinne, lovely “modal-scaled” melody, the harp following the voice, but enjoying several solo-instrument sequences. The song’s triple-time metre meant that the music danced as well – and having the texts and translations in the program gave we listeners even closer proximity to the music’s actual substance and meaning.

The singer welcomed the audience to the concert at this point, talking about the places the musicians had already performed the program and where they were about to go next, describing for us the undertaking by the pair as a “road tour”. Introductions and overviews completed, bardic harp was then exchanged for a bigger, less mobile concert instrument, and the performers gave us two delightful Italian madrigals. The first by Francesco Landini, Fa metter bando (Let it be proclaimed), dating from the 14th Century, was a droll pronouncement regarding lovers’ behavior. The second, by Cipriano da Rore, Ancor che col partire (Though on departing), written two centuries later, played with the contrasting idea of lovers’ pain at parting enhancing the pleasure of reunitement. Silken vocal lines wafted beautifully over the harp’s resonances throughout, the feeling at once touching and dignified, expressed within a kind of ritual processional.

I hadn’t heard Pepe Becker sing in English for some time; and felt that, during the Purcell item If Music be the Food of Love, beautiful though her tones were, she needed to give the words’ consonants more emphasis, as the effect was a shade bland – it didn’t feel to me that the words were being “savoured” enough. Whether speakers of Italian would feel the same way when listening to her Monteverdi or (as here) Handel singing, I can’t say – but the effect of listening to an exerpt from the opera Rinaldo was, to my ears, enchanting all over again, Handel’s heroine Almirena bemoaning her fate at being captured by the sorceress Armida, and separated from her lover, Rinaldo.

Helen Webby then “wowed” us with a harp instrumental, a Fantasie in C Minor by Louis Spohr, dark, dramatic and gothic throughout the opening, and reminding one of Beethoven’s “Tempest” Piano Sonata with its recitative-like flourishes, everything modulating freely and wondrously – virtuoso stuff, right to the end. The composer wrote the work for his wife, Dorette Scheidler, a virtuoso harpist, who must have been thrilled and truly grateful at receiving something so overtly spectacular to play. From this “Sturm und Drang” outpouring, it was but a short step to the world of Robert Schumann, in an exerpt from his Requiem. Pepe Becker brought a distinctive timbre to this world of dark, romantic feeling – at first, I must confess, I thought her tones too pure, too unequivocal in colouring to convey the music’s rich darkness, in fact, too much like a boy soprano. But she sustained her line beautifully with great intensity, and some spectacular high notes, at one point blinding us with the beauty of such a sequence around a particular phrase in the middle of the song.

Again in the French settings, more particularly in the first, a song by Andre Caplet, Doux fut le trait (Sweet was the dart), I thought the voice had a purity slightly at odds with the sensuality of the experience described in the poem (but could someone then explain to me how the same instrument, when singing Monteverdi madrigals, seems to have sensuality to burn?). More suited to her voice was, I thought, the Ravel song, Chanson de la mariée (Song of the Bride), the first of the composer’s “Cinq Mélodies Populaires Grecques”, the jeweled elegance of Ravel’s superbly contrived art so exquisitely realized, here, by both singer and harpist.

After the interval we enjoyed three of Philip Cannon’s “Five Songs of Women”, with texts by the composer’s wife, Jacqueline Laidlaw. The songs exist in both in French and English versions, the latter being performed here. Pepe Becker actually tore into the first one The Angry Wife with great gusto, relishing the words and giving us virtuoso singing. Though she put across the second song The Widow with touching pathos, fining her tone down to a ghostly-voiced conclusion, I still felt she needed to give those consonants a bit of real sting in places, to give the feeling more readily of “owning” each and every word. The effect in the third song was much the same – beautifully -shaped vocalizing, the line pitched to perfection, but the effect overall just a shade bland. It occurs to me that much the same used to be said of Joan Sutherland’s singing on the operatic stage, the exquisite tones somewhat unrelieved by a lack of sharp-edged consonants, depriving each word and its meaning of a properly-contoured shape. (But, in Monteverdi……)

New Zealand composer Helen Bowater wrote Hihi in 2007, a Messiaen-like piece depicting both the call and the environs of the native hihi, or stitchbird, presented here by Helen Webby with many magical, haunting touches – the harp’s strings activated in so many different ways. Then it was Pepe Becker’s turn, with an unaccompanied setting of an anonymous Japanese text, Hoshi no hayashi, dating from the 8th Century AD, a mesmeric evocation of the workings of the skies, the effect not unlike Sibelius’s Luonnotar, in places. Still more New Zealand music was featured, with Gareth Farr’s Still Sounds Lie, vivid settings of somewhat ingenuous words by Carolyn Mills, the NZSO’s harpist, recounting holiday-inspired thoughts and impressions, and with attractively energized accompanying figurations carrying an interest of their own for the ear (Elgar performed the same kind of musical alchemy for much of the poetry in his song-cycle “Sea Pictures”).

The concert concluded with a section devoted to folk-song, arrangements of both traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, featuring the talents of such luminaries as Josef Haydn and Hamilton Harty. Helen Webby told us, by way of introducing the segment, of Haydn’s generosity towards an impecunious English music-publisher, William Napier, the great composer gifting his arrangement of a number of Scottish songs to the hapless Napier, who had been threatened with debtor’s prison. Singer and harpist put across both of the Haydn settings, Secret Love, and On a green day with a winning mix of art and spontaneity, as did Pepe Becker’s realization of Hamilton Harty’s arrangement of the Irish air, My Lagan Love. Before this, and the singer’s wonderfully plaintive delivery of another Irish song, Black is the colour, we got a couple of “harp jigs”, then afterwards an arrangement of Sting’s Fields of Gold made by Helen Webby and an older “jig” by Machaut obviously connected to the song heard earlier in the concert, as it shared the same name, Comment qu’a moy.

And, to finish, singer became fellow-instrumentalist and harpist became fellow-singer in the pair’s arrangement of the Irish song The little drummer. So the harp was joined by a drum and two voices intoned the song’s final verse, celebrating the triumph of love and the joy of whole-hearted music-making. We in the audience saluted the pair with all the applause we could muster at the end, in return for an excellent evening’s entertainment and delight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Cellissimo’: Upper Hutt recital by NZSM cello and piano lecturers

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Classical Expressions at Upper Hutt

‘Cellissimo’ – Inbal Megiddo (cello) and Jian Liu (piano)

Boccherini: Sonata in A major; Beethoven: Handel Variations (‘See the conquering hero comes’); Cello Sonata No 4 in C, Op 102; Schubert: Introduction, Theme and Variations, Op 82 No 2, arranged by Piatigorsky; Rossini: Concert Rhapsody on The Barber of Seville, arranged by Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco.

Genesis Energy Theatre, Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt

Monday 3 September, 7.30pm

This was the fourth in the fine series of recitals that are jointly promoted by the arts centre and the Upper Hutt Music Society. I always enjoy a trip to Upper Hutt, though I have yet to get myself there by train, which is so convenient at the Upper Hutt end, with an arrival at 7.20pm and departure at 10pm.  The arts centre itself is an attractive space, usually with an art exhibition to visit before or during the interval and a coffee bar open at those times too.

It was an interesting programme, though by the end, I felt that Ms Megiddo had chosen a bit too much showy music at the expense of a couple of more lyrical works for the cello. (By the way, her name is pronounced with a hard ‘g’ and stress on the second syllable: clues to pronunciation should be routinely clarified in every reference to names whenever there is the slightest chance of uncertainty, as there is, even, in many ordinary English names).

It began with one of the large number of cello pieces composed by the 18th century’s most famous cellist, Luigi Boccherini; I count about 23 cello sonatas in the Gérard catalogue (and he wrote over a hundred string quintets that call for two cellos). It opened with an Adagio, gentle in tone with a long ornate melody that nevertheless offered plenty of scope for display of his own virtuosity, typical of writing by a composer for himself; though it was not without minor bowing flaws. It continued in the Allegro movement with much decorated material, in a vigorous rhythmic style.

Turning attention to the piano, Jian Liu’s playing was in immaculate accord with Megiddo’s playing, supporting it admirably.

Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No 4 followed. If I found the performance a little lacking in tonal richness, I’m inclined to put it down to her instrument, which has plenty of projection but which makes it hard to obtain a warm, lyrical line. As a result the work sounded a bit severe, its most notable quality being to bring out musical structure, rather than the flesh that gives music its essential life.

Beethoven’s variations on the aria from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, ‘See the conquering hero comes’ responded better to Megiddo’s playing; here there seemed better scope for a dramatic approach which had the side effect of injecting more colour and spirit. The sharp differences between each of the variations lend the piece a good deal of its interest, with excellent opportunities to mark the cellist’s technical skills, and the piano’s contribution, with its own striking ornaments, was again, most rewarding.

The second half gained through its singular variety of styles. Megiddo captured the bare beauty of Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel in a very arresting, keenly focused performance, with remarkable pianissimos and long-held, deeply intoned notes as the piano handled the more detailed elements.

Megiddo’s note for a piece written for the cellist, marking the 50th anniversary of Israel’s emergence, succinctly described the character of contemporary Israeli concert music, and it was an excellent introduction to her playing of Eretz by Hanna Levy. There were indeed echoes of the various cultural strands that contribute to the complex fabric of Jewish peoples in Israel, and they made for an interesting, often attractive, symphony of disparate sound. This too found Megiddo in a very comfortable space.

The next two pieces struck a curious note for someone always intrigued by unexpected juxtapositions. Schubert and Rossini were very close contemporaries; the prodigal flowering of Rossini’s music, aged about 18, that almost at once gained world-wide popularity occasionally stood in the way of the 5-years-younger Viennese composer’s hopes of success, especially in opera. Another odd circumstance is the fact that Schubert ended his composing life through dying, poor and not widely celebrated, just a few months before Rossini ended his opera career by retiring in Paris in great fame and wealth.

But here was a set of variations composed for piano four-hands by Schubert, not, I should have thought, primarily a show-piece for the players. (It’s in the Deutsch catalogue as: Variations on an Original Theme in B-flat major, Op. posth. 82, No. 2, D 968 A). It sounded fairly unexceptional as a conventional set of variations. However, I am not in a position to know what Schubert’s original was like, nor what changes cellist Piatigorsky made in the course of his arrangement, but what we heard had plenty of material for a skilled cellist to make excellent use of.

The Rossini variations were also an arrangement by another hand, this time by Italian composer, best known for his guitar compositions, Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco (translating as ‘Newcastle-German’, if you’re interested). It didn’t start terribly well on the cello, though I didn’t think it mattered as it did not impress me as an especially worthy piece of music.

Rather better was their brief encore, one piece from the Suite popular española by Manuel de Falla which seems to be an arrangement, probably for violin, of six of his Siete canciones populares españolas (properly translated as Seven Spanish popular songs, and not ‘Popular Spanish Songs’).

A somewhat uneven programme, somewhat unevenly played on the cello though very fine at its best, and with sufficient musicality and musical substance to make the journey worthwhile.

 

John Chen’s highly rewarding detour for piano recital at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

(Waikanae Music Society)

Mozart: Piano Sonata No 15 in F, K 533 and K 494; Enescu: Piano Sonata No 1 in F sharp minor, Op 24 No 1; Dorothy Buchanan: From the Mountain to the River; Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op 17

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 2 September, 2.30pm

John Chen paid a flying visit from Auckland to play this one concert for the Waikanae Music Society after which he returned to Auckland to pick up his flight the same evening, to Hamburg. The good citizens of Kapiti could well feel privileged.

The Waikanae hall which is basically an indoor sports arena has not been an ideal music venue, particularly for chamber music, has been cleverly adapted so that sound projects more strongly and cleanly. A recessed stage was created a few years ago which acts as a kind of amplifier, and this has recently been improved with a hard-surfaced ceiling at 45 degrees which further enhances the sound.

Chen cultivates a reputation for looking out for unusual music, and it is music that generally rewards his risk-taking. That was certainly the case here with two rather unfamiliar pieces. Mozart’s Sonata No 15 is not unfamiliar, but it is just not so often played as half a dozen other sonatas that are more popular.

It was composed in two separate parts. In June 1786 he had written a Rondo (or Rondeau in one account), to which Köchel gave the number 494, and some months later he wrote an Allegro and Andante.  At his publisher Hoffmeister’s request, he joined those two movements with the earlier Rondo, adding a twenty-seven measure cadenza to it, to form a three-movement sonata.`

Chen’s playing introduced it unpretentiously, light and confident, yet betraying its sophisticated, contrapuntal character and the interesting inner voices seemed to gain particular point.  His articulation was precise, with lively staccato, all of which commanded attention.

Each movement contains musical ideas that are both attractive and arresting and which lend themselves to imaginative development; the themes are not especially catchy, but they soon take on the nature of a thinking person’s sonata. The meaningful pauses in the Andante movement are not characteristic of a late 17th century work; : each note, in Chen’s hands, seemed to be in the inevitably right place, and it was as if Mozart was responding to an instinct that was taking him rather wide of the conventions of his day.

It was the next piece that was the real discovery: Enescu’s first piano sonata. He wrote three, but the second has been lost; in the light of this one, that is very sad. Everyone has expectations of Enescu through the two wonderful Romanian Rhapsodies (the second, much less played, is quieter but just as infectious); the reality of the other music that he’s written is quite different however, and his opera Oedipe is ranked by many among the great operas of the 20th century. I have long regretted having to opt out of booked seats to see it in Bucharest about eight years ago.

The opening is very plain, single notes, but slowly complexity gathers, rhythms and tonalities shift to create an air of unease or instability; it place in the march of music history is defined by an occasional subtle bluesy harmony, but its ancestry can only be heard as coming from the eastern side of the Atlantic. If there are traces of Romanian folk music, they merely go to show that my acquaintance with that music is uncultivated. The general impression is of a work rich in melody of a fleeting kind, that makes its points obliquely and modestly. I Googled the work (as one does almost routinely these days – my set of the New Grove Dictionary of Music gets consulted much less) and found a review of a performance which made excellent general remarks about the music:

“Perhaps one reason why not a lot of pianists have paid attention to Enescu is because, while it is fiendishly difficult to play, the music rarely offers virtuosic thrills that bring concert audiences to their feet. To be sure, playing Enescu is just as difficult as playing Bartok, Ravel, Prokofiev or Rachmaninov, but Enescu requires a selfless kind of virtuosity, one that goes far beyond absolute control of the instrument.”

I thought there were weaknesses, not in the playing, but in passages that struck me as prolonged by needless passagework or repetition of mere decoration; and, particularly in the second movement, the promise of an interesting development that was tantalisingly unfulfilled. However, Chen’s achievement was to invest such moments with interest and liveliness, and the last movement slowly created a ravishing and magical landscape by which all minor misgivings were forgotten.

A short impressionistic piece by Wellington composer Dorothy Buchanan opened the second half, imaginative, unpretentious, and Chen gave it a gentle, careful reading.

The big draw-card was of course Schumann’s Fantaisie in C, widely loved even by those poor souls who don’t love Schumann’s music unreservedly.  Though it is allowable to regret that he did not quite find this glorious vein of composition again. Chen revealed a real affection for it through playing that was both hugely capable (it’s not for amateurs, I say sadly), but poetic and restrained, and in the powerful central movement giving full vent to all of the composer’s wonderful impulsiveness, never mind a couple of unimportant smudges, and expressed so rapturously, the composer’s ecstatic hopes for a future with his beloved Clara.

And so, after rather clamorous applause, he played the Prelude to Bach’s 4th English Suite in F, BWV 809.

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Gendall’s Triple Concerto perplexing highlight of Wellington Orchestra concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘The Toy Box’

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei

Haydn: Symphony No 60 in C (Il distratto); Triple Concerto by Chris Gendall with the NZ Trio (Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello, Sarah Watkins – piano); Debussy: ballet score – La boîte à joujoux – narrator: Jackie Clarke

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 1 September, 7.30pm

This concert was performed in the Masterton Town Hall on the previous night.

In Wellington, there was a rather smaller audience than in the past, and one can only surmise the reasons;  perhaps, the absence of a thematic link that has been so successful in the past?

Il Distratto
Haydn’s 60th symphony, (Il distratto, or the absent-minded man) was in part a satire on the incompetent composer whose command of form and taste is deficient, which was a not uncommon procedure in the classical era when matters of form were very important.

The spoofs began with the opening Allegro, with the leading motif dying out as if the hero of the story was experiencing memory loss; not once but several times. The second movement involved the juxtaposition of alien tempos. And so it goes till the last movement when bad tuning causes the whole orchestra to stop in chaos and to re-tune laboriously.

My old LP of this symphony, under Vittorio Gui, explains that Haydn actually instructed the violins to tune the G string down a tone at the start of the Finale which creates the foreign harmony of D minor when the two bottom strings play together; it is that which brings about the chaos.

The effect on the night was funny nevertheless as the retuning process is a totally unprofessional procedure; the orchestra played it with a suppressed smile that was audible, staking out the music variously, in a vein that was mock serioso or absurd, and it brought the symphony to a end, promising perhaps that the rest of the concert might carry on in the same high spirits.

Chris Gendall’s premiere
There could have been nothing more different than the next work. My earlier experience of Chris Gendall’s music had led me to considerable curiosity about a work with a title suggesting a move into the Beethovenian heartland of symphonic music. It was not that; and there was no time to make any calm, spiritual preparation for what followed.

The last piece of Gendall’s I heard was Intaglio; it too was played by the NZ Trio, both at a Mulled Wine concert at Paekakariki and at Lower Hutt (I heard both, mainly in order better to grasp Intaglio).

The NZ Trio is a leading advocate of new New Zealand music, especially of the more adventurous kind, and their contribution in this performance was quite as prominent as such a soloist group would ordinarily be. But there was little familiar in the way they interacted or used their instruments.

The relationship between trio and orchestra bore no relationship to any Beethoven-born expectations: no conventional rivalry, but a completely integrated sensation, all contributing in the ways suggested primarily by the possibilities of the instruments themselves.

Gendall was a music graduate of Victoria University and has since completed doctoral studies at Cornell University. He has been celebrated at international festivals and conferences on contemporary music, and he has been a frequent prize winner, starting with the Lilburn composition prize at Victoria University. He was Composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music and is now Composer-in-residence with the Vector Wellington Orchestra which has led to this performance.

You will find four other reviews of his music on this website by using ‘search’.

The Triple Concerto
Some of those reviews, though admiring, suggested a dense and difficult character. That was indeed the case with this concerto, which is probably one of the largest and most ambitious works Gendall has undertaken. I should have made an attempt to hear it in rehearsal; to read the score of such an extraordinarily multifaceted, complex work would have been no help at all (extracts are on the SOUNZ website).

The programme booklet did not have space for notes that appear on the SOUNZ website, recording Gendall’s description of it. It might have helped define beginnings and endings of the five sections of the music, let alone to get the hang of the musical ideas, and their evolution.

Here is the link: Chris Gendall’s Thumbnail Sketch of the Triple Concerto

Perhaps the music’s character will be suggested by a quote from Gendall’s programme notes, that explains the five movements as “traversing a variety of sonic terrain, … to explore the distinction between diffused sounds and those in close proximity in rhythmic, harmonic and physical space”.  The latter was demonstrated, among other things, by disposing a number of brass players around the perimeter of the gallery, hinting fleetingly at Gabrieli-style sounds, but that proved misleading. In the event I felt the opportunity to create some kind of major stereophonic effect was not fully exploited.

If the impact of the sounds, relentlessly produced and making formidable demands on players’ accuracy and skills of all kinds,  left many in the audience bemused or confused, the work nevertheless displayed an accomplishment and aural imagination that would probably gain it attention in international contemporary music circles. For it demonstrates a most impressive command of compositional techniques and command of orchestration that would amaze Berlioz or Rimsky-Korsakov, but which are the material of today’s version of the avant-garde.

But just as the old-fashioned virtuoso aimed to overwhelm his listeners by putting all his skills on show, so in a show-piece of avant-gardism, technical brilliance, the impulse to demonstrate a command of an astonishing array of composerly skills, leaves this listener feeling bewildered, first through the sheer multiplicity of sounds and their transformations, and secondly from an overwhelming sense of the music’s complex intellectual character; which can leave a feeling of dismay and frustration at one’s inability to grasp and hence enjoy the music. Does the music have a heart?  Are there human emotions at work there? Is there a soul? The answer may be, Yes, but there can be a problem if some glimmering of those things cannot be perceived.

Little music of this kind is actually performed in normal orchestral concerts for ordinary music-lovers, however. On the other hand, performance of new music in the exclusive environment of the contemporary music concert or festival is a defeatist response, for the ordinary music lover has not in the past found digestible material there, and they stay away.  One fruitful solution can be a ten minute exploration of some of the key elements of a new piece in the concert itself, before the piece is played.

One can say, as many listeners do, that composers would do themselves and their potential audiences a favour by refraining from employing all the extremely advanced notions, concepts and techniques they might command, for the sake of engaging with their listeners.

La boîte à joujoux
Debussy’s La boîte à joujoux is one of his least known extended pieces. I’d not heard it before. Though written in 1913 while Debussy was alive, it was not produced as a ballet till 1919, when he was dead, at the Théâtre lyrique du vaudeville in Paris.

It was written for his own daughter, nicknamed Chouchou (c.f. Joujoux), based on a scenario by painter André Hellé, but left in 1913 as a piano four-hands score, with only 93 measures orchestrated. The orchestration was completed by composer/conductor André Caplet, after its first performance as a ballet was delayed by the war.  This performance, without dancers, needed a means of telling the story and Dave Armstrong adapted a spoken narrative drawn from a scenario (was it the original by Hellé or something prepared later for a possible concert performance such as this one?).

But even though delivered vividly by actress Jackie Clarke, in a manner that was charming and entertaining (though her voice was often overwhelmed by passages of orchestral tutti), it didn’t really change it from a rather childish confection.

The music itself was rather slight, though tuneful and pleasant, especially that for the Pretty Doll, but it’s clearly not a neglected masterpiece which explains, I suppose, why it has not become familiar, and has not even inspired the extraction of a suite.

However, Marc Taddei had inspired the orchestra to play as if it was a delightful, undervalued treasure; what more can you ask?

So here was a programme that had some hurdles to clear, some of which were just a little too high to achieve a uniformly polished, flawless concert. Nevertheless, though this was not an unmixed triumph in terms of the box office and audience response, its exotic and eclectic character made its impact, and reflecting on it over the next two days was to recall it all with increasing satisfaction, and certainly a sense of discovery.

 

A fine recital of Fauré mélodies at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs by Fauré sung by The VoxBox:  Megan Corby (soprano) and Craig Beardsworth (baritone)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 29 August, 12.15pm

I last heard these two accomplished singers at a lunchtime concert at St Mark’s church, Lower Hutt, a few months ago, when  they sang an amusing variety of American songs. For Wellington City they chose a slightly more rigorous programme, though only in the sense that all the songs were by one composer, and a classical composer whom many would not rank among the top ten.

But this little recital went some way to establish Fauré as a composer who can easily sustain interest in a programme dedicated solely to him.

The two took turns. Megan Corby sang the first two songs: Au bord de l’eau, a charming barcarolle, which served to get piano and voice in balance with each other; dynamics were a little uneven, but her French was carefully delivered; then Ici bas, in which her attractive voice found a comfortable level; it’s a lament on the shortcomings of life on earth compared with another life elsewhere. Both were songs to poems by Sully-Prudhomme. (He was associated with the group known as Parnassiens, who advanced the notion of l’art pour l’art – ‘art for art’s sake’).

Craig Beardsworth sang a third song to a Sully-Prudhomme poem, Les berceaux. It was good to hear his voice in such good shape, in a song that called for subtlety where his velvety baritone seemed sleepily suited; the idea is unusual, with a rocking motion that relates both to a cradle, and to a boat whose shape also suggests a cradle: the words reflect on the roles of men and women,

Megan returned for Aurore by an obscure poet, Armand Silvestre, and her voice flowed comfortably over its long lines. (Silvestre, incidentally, was more noted as a playwright; he wrote the play HenryVIII that Saint-Saëns set as an opera). She followed with the languorous Les roses d’Ispahan by Leconte de Lisle, the leader of the Parnassiens, capturing a fitting sensuous quality.

Craig offered a few comments before some of his songs. He explained the origin of Nell (also Leconte de Lisle), as derived from a poem by Burns and his singing was enriched by its varied timbres. Craig’s remarks before several of the songs were apt and well-informed: I am not one who has an objection to performers speaking.

Megan next sang one of Fauré’s best-known songs, Après un rêve. Her delivery was a little more declamatory than its lines seemed to suggest to me: rather whispered.

Craig, without the score in front of him, sang a trilogy of songs, Poème du jour (by another obscure poet, Charles Grandmougin). Though minor poems, Fauré has created a set of expressive songs telling a predictable little love story, in which Craig’s voice rose comfortably, occasionally, into the tenor register.

Megan’s final songs were Chanson d’amour, Clair de lune and Mandoline – the last two to poems by Verlaine. Chanson d’amour was slight enough, repeating unvaried the words ‘Je t’aime’ at the start of each stanza, but she created an air of superficial contentment. Both Clair de lune and Mandoline are settings of good poems in some of Fauré’s loveliest music, and Megan explored their individual character most affectingly, leaving a convincing impression of a singer with the secrets of the French mélodie in her soul.

Craig’s last songs were Le secret (about which he told an anecdote: Fauré who was never a confident composer, had played it to Duparc who exclaimed: ‘Bête sauvage’ which reassured Fauré that he’d been successful); and En sourdine, also by Verlaine. Over an accompaniment of broken arpeggios, it refers to a muted stringed instrument, though it’s a song of wide-ranging character that would hardly call for a mute if played on a violin, and was a fine way to confirm Beardsworth’s accomplishments as a sensitive singer of French mélodies.

The whole programme was very well conceived and, given the outdoor attractions of nice weather, well received by a quite large audience.

 

 

Brahms the Second? – perhaps Herzogenberg the First?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St Mark’s Lower Hutt Concert Series

BEETHOVEN and HERZOGENBERG

Jane Young (‘cello) / Hugh McMillan (piano)

BEETHOVEN- ‘Cello Sonata No.4 in C Op.102 No.1

HERZOGENBERG – ‘Cello Sonata No.3 in E-flat Op.94

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 29th August 20

What a lovely concert! – a wonderful idea by Jane Young and Hugh McMillan to present something of a “standard classic” in tandem with something else rather less known, to the advantage of both!

In a sense, each of the pieces represented an adventure, albeit of a different kind. Beethoven’s Op.102 ‘Cello Sonatas completed the process already begun by the composer with his Op.69 Sonata, of inventing something new – an “equal partnership” between ‘cello and piano for such an instrumental combination.

By comparison, Herzonberg’s work seemed to bravely and steadfastly explore paths already trodden by giants such as Brahms, managing, in places, to convey his own late-Romantic slant to the familiar terrain, with attractive and absorbing results.

The Beethoven Sonata opened beautifully and tremulously, as if the composer was depicting the unfurling of a flower in the sunlight – the phrasing between both players properly resonated, their full accord expressed through a sense of hand-in-glove phrasing and beautifully-modulated tones. Beethoven seemed here to be anticipating Schumann’s poetical musings, his themes at once spontaneously expressive and contained, hinting at darker feelings.

The Allegro vivace alternated freely between playfulness and purpose, only the ‘cello’s highest notes giving any suggestion of strain for the player. It all made a telling contrast with the Adagio’s relative darkness and gradual lightening of mood.

Both players timed their respective “not ready yet” figurations at the finale’s beginning to perfection, the ‘cello’s wonderful drone-notes creating whole worlds of mystery, which the piano then gently mocked with “Well,are you coming along?” phrases.

I thought Jane Young’s and Hugh McMillan’s playing gave the episode a wonderful “boys’ and girls’ own” freshness of utterance and movement. But their playing of the whole sonata was as good, at practically every point presenting their listeners with opportunities in the music for engagement and participation. I felt the musicians made practically every note of the work eloquent and distinctive.

Hugh McMillan talked briefly about our “mystery” composer, Heinrich von Herzogenberg, one whose name I knew in connection with Brahms, via correspondence between the latter and Elisabet von Herzogenberg. Brahms was on good terms with both husband and wife, though he may have harboured a secret passion for Elisabet, whom he wrote to frequently. Towards the end of his life he paid a kind of belated homage to Herzogenberg’s music, acknowledging its quality.

Herzogenberg’s ‘Cello Sonata No.3 does show the influence of his great contemporary in places, especially in the piano writing throughout the opening movement, while in other places I detected vestiges of the Mendelssohn of the Octet. The last few pages of the movement achieved a swing and flow amid a grandeur of utterance that seemed the composer’s own, as did much of the slow movement, though again the piano writing had a big-boned Brahmsian feel to it. The players readily enjoyed the contrast between the lyrical opening and the running middle section of the music, with gaily tripping piano and cello pizzicati.

The work has a kind of ‘grand finale’, a theme and variations movement which, in some circumstances might be thought a trifle long, though Jane Young and Hugh McMillan kept our interest simmering with both their interchanges and occasional “solo” sequences. An occasional moment of strain regarding the cello’s intonation mattered far less than the player’s feeling for phrases and their integration into the flow of things, which satisfied greatly. My feeling at the work’s conclusion was less of a “Brahms the Second” response to the music , and more along the lines of “Herzogenberg the First” – thanks in part to these two musicians’ whole-hearted advocacy.

Young Leonari Trio produces elegiac joie de vivre at Lower hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Leonari Trio (Hilary Hayes – violin, Edward King – cello, Maria Mo – piano)

Beethoven: Piano Trio in D, Op 70 no 1 (‘Ghost’); Rachmaninov: Trio élégiaque No 1 in G minor; Arensky: Piano Trio No 1  in D minor, Op 32

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Tuesday 28 August, 7.30pm

This young trio which came together at the University of Waikato in 2009 has had a charmed life, after winning the Pettman Royal Overseas League scholarship and touring Britain with singular success, visiting some fairly notable concert venues. Individually, they have gained some prestigious awards: both string players were in the NZSO National Youth Orchestra while pianist Maria Mo has played concertos with the Opus Chamber Orchestra and the Waikato Symphony Orchestra.

This concert fell in the middle of a nationwide tour for Chamber Music New Zealand; a second, very attractive programme called Viennese Tales, has been played in other centres, sadly not in the Greater Wellington region (you could catch it in Cromwell on 2 September).

Though it was unfortunate that I arrived a little late, the boisterous sounds of their playing met me as I opened the outside doors of the theatre and I could well have stayed there with no loss of clarity or excitement from their playing.

I could at once understand how their gusto and an almost reckless abandon that exposed an occasional fluff, would have won audiences over in their UK tour, and since.  Perfect accuracy becomes irrelevant when music is attacked with such open enthusiasm and delight in a rapport that was so attractive and immediately obvious.

Fortunately my colleague Rosemary Collier was there too and she left me with a few remarks about the first two movements of the Beethoven, generally admiring their individual accomplishment, that combined so strikingly in ensemble. Their slow movement was most expressive, and technically interesting, another friend remarked about the impression that certain of Hilary Hayes’ violin sounds had, resonating with those in the piano, evidencing excellent intonation.

The choice of pieces brought to mind the music that was played by the wonderful Turnovsky Trio more than a decade ago. Both Rachmaninov’s first Trio élégiaque and the Arensky Trio were in their repertoire, as I recall.  It’s worth noting the fact that Rachmaninov also wrote a second Trio élégiaque, this one in D minor, and given Opus No 9: a full-scale, three movement work modelled on Tchaikovsky’s and written in his memory; he had died shortly before, in 1893.

These players tackled the music with an approach that was similar in spirit, virtuosity and youthful joie de vivre to the Turnovsky Trio.  The Leonari Trio began the Rachmaninov with a hushed, magical, cross-string motif that becomes the accompaniment to the piano’s first romantic theme; the playing was full of drama and refinement, even though it rose to quite an extrovert and energetic character before long.

The provenance of the violin and cello which I heard about at the interval, helped explain the special beauty of tone they produced, with timbres that were so closely related that they almost sounded as if emanating from one instrument. The violin was formerly that of the late NZSO violinist Stephen Managh, and the cello was a loan from Allan Chisholm who is retiring as assistant principal cello of the NZSO later this year.

Never needing to play loudly to compete with the piano, their sound projected vividly in the theatre, which is often claimed to present a dry, difficult acoustic. Perhaps, but it just demands players capable of listening to the effect they are having, and adapting to the situation. Cellist Edward King created warm and opulent passages in its later phases.

For its part, the piano, also criticised by some (and now sought to be replaced by a shiny new Steinway), usually surprises me by its range of colour and sonority. Maria Mo seemed to have its measure, as well as the measure of the theatre, also found difficult by some. Though her playing was full-blooded, she had the lid on the short stick and her sound was vigorously lyrical rather than simply loud.

Certainly, together they made a good deal of noise but it was musical noise, and it didn’t prevent their playing of the subsiding, élégique coda with a serene peacefulness.

The Arensky trio also found the players in full sympathy with the music, starting in a lovely lyrical mood, phrased beautifully, assertive in later staccato piano episodes over tremolo violin, though becoming a little blurred in fast piano passages. They particularly relished the blousy piano tune in the Scherzo, and the piano produced delightful bell-like treble notes at the top of little flourishes in the Trio.

Flawless tone in the slow Elegia movement, all three players in remarkable accord, which was still more striking in the finale, particularly in the soft passages nearing the end.

Audiences, including several young people, have been looking better this year than in the past few years, and their warm applause won them an encore, of the third of John Psathas’s Three Island Songs, also played brilliantly.