The Bach Choir – Where would we be without Messiah?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HANDEL – Messiah

Amelia Ryman (soprano) / Megan Hurnard (contralto) / Thomas Atkins (tenor)

David Morriss (bass)

The Chiesa Ensemble (Leader: Rebecca Struthers)

Douglas Mews – Continuo

The Bach Choir of Wellington

Stephen Rowley (conductor)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington

Sunday 27th November 2011

Though associated by dint of its “Birth of Christ” references with Christmastime, Messiah has as many affinities with the other “big” Christian event of the Liturgical year, which is, of course, Easter. Conductor Stephen Rowley seemed to emphasize the latter connection at the very beginning of the work in the Bach Choir of Wellington’s recent performance. In fact, it could have been that “High Priest of the German classics” Otto Klemperer conducting, so solemn, grand and slow were those chords at the opening of the overture, though the succeeding Allegro was sprightly enough, with perhaps just a touch of heaviness here and there. It wasn’t a performance for “authenticists” – too full-toned, with an almost romantic sensibility about the music’s expressive unfolding (but in a more cosmic sense, its unique delivery very much in a spontaneously “baroque” tradition).

Having admired and enjoyed the Chiesa Ensemble’s playing on many past occasions, I was a little surprised at the number of noticeable instrumental spills I noticed along the way (insufficient rehearsal, perhaps?) – ensemble awry at the beginning of  the recitative “For Behold…” and again with the soprano in her recitative “And suddenly…..”  – as well as some ragged playing in “Since Man came by Death”. Against these moments were some magnificently buoyant and pin-precise episodes, great support for the choir in “For Unto Us a Child is Born”, as indeed there was throughout all the choruses, another highlight being “And With His stripes” where both singing and playing was excitingly vigorous and secure.

Certainly those big moments, where one wants the utmost glory and majesty, were brought off thrillingly – I actually couldn’t see whether it was Mark Carter or Tom Moyer playing the solo in “The Trumpet Shall Sound” so beautifully, but both gave their all during the final choruses, amply supported by Larry Reese’s scalp-tingling timpani-playing, and full-toned outpourings from strings, winds and continuo.

The Choir itself, somewhat compromised by the imbalance of women’s against men’s voices (an all-too common phenomenon among choral groups these days), performed honestly and reliably throughout, here and there actually touching realms of true sublimity. There were instances where those middle and lower voices were overpowered by the higher ones – though in live performances it’s amazing what the “eye” can imagine the “ear” is actually hearing, especially if one knows the music well. Thus a chorus like “And He shall purify” featured a more-than-usually gleaming soprano line, though one could sense the effort of projection on the part of the other strands, coming together splendidly at the words “That they may offer unto the Lord”.

I liked conductor Stephen Rowley’s emphasizing of some of the choruses’ expressive gestures – the chorus ‘HIs yoke is easy” was nicely modulated throughout, with the dynamics well-controlled, and the tones of the voices on the last word “light” nicely softened into a diminuendo. And the voices’ emphasizing of the word “Death” in “Since Man came by Death” made for a dramatic, breath-catching moment. The Choir also sustained splendidly the long lines of “Behold the Lamb of God” at the words “taken away”. In short, splendid moments, these and others, transcending the difficulties, also occasionally apparent, of the group’s varying strength in different sections.

Of the soloists tenor Thomas Atkins was the first to impress with a thrilling “Comfort Ye”, the recitative properly declamatory and prophet-like, and the aria “Ev’ry valley” joyously energetic (and supported by some lovely string-playing). Also, he made something distinctive, I thought, of his sequence beginning “All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn”, the singing powerful and sonorous, as it was through “Thy rebuke hath broken His heart” . I must confess to wondering, throughout the first half, whether the microphone in the church’s pulpit (from where each of the soloists sang) had been left switched “on” as the voice-tones seemed to have for a while a somewhat augmented and “directional” resonance – but I never got to the bottom of the mystery, except that throughout the second half the voices seemed to my ears more naturally projected.

Contralto Megan Hurnard gave reliable, centered renditions of her solos, the voice gravely beautiful throughout her centerpiece “He was despised”, even if some of the words sounded a shade inert, needing more emphasis in order to make them live and breathe. I thought, for example, that during “He gave his back” the singer could have risked a little roughness of tone to get something of the sting of words like “smiters”, and even “spitting” across to us.

Bass David Morriss gave us something of that vocal energy, interestingly poetic-sounding and beautiful where I expected him to be darker and more sepulchral in “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth”. But he nicely “grew” the phrase “……have seen a great light” with an unerring sense of what the music ought to be doing, as with the more hushed tones of “And they that dwell”. The dramatic “Why do the nations” went splendidly also, with the figurations generating plenty of agitated bluster; and perhaps the brief moment that went awry in “The kings of the earth rise up” was due to the same unaccustomed “lurch” we all felt, of tumbling straight afterwards into the “Halleluiah” Chorus (one gets so used to another chorus “Let us break their bonds” coming beforehand – we were, in fact, so caught up by surprise that nobody on this occasion stood up!).  As for “The trumpet shall sound”, the introduction was full of expectancy and growing excitement, and, one or two “ensemble” moments notwithstanding, the interchanges between singer and trumpet-player were nimble and enlivening.

I enjoyed soprano Amelia Ryman’s bright, silvery tones throughout, celestial and sparkling at “And lo, the angel of the Lord”, and surviving some out-of-sync moments with the orchestra at “And suddenly there was” (the string players making amends with some beautifully hushed work at the end). The spirited, but difficult “Rejoice greatly” was negotiated confidently and securely (breathing an issue in places, here, with such long and florid vocal runs). And her entry during”He shall feed His flock” was a highlight, like an unveiling, an irradiating of the musical textures. Of course, the soprano’s big moment is “I know that my Redeemer liveth” – and we got a heartfelt rendition balancing poise with impulsiveness in places, which I liked – one sensed the words here really meant something, such as at “And though worms destroy this body”. A lovely ascent at “For now is Christ risen” capped off a pleasingly-wrought performance.

I’m sure many people feel as I do, that the year’s concert-going wouldn’t be complete without hearing a live performance of Messiah. By dint of the various performing editions and the possible combinations arising from these, let alone the difference between singers, instrumentalists and conductors, the work for me invariably emerges newly-minted from each encounter. My preference (not necessarily with all works, but this is one of them) would be to hear a performance in the evening – for me there’s always been something about the interaction of music performance and darkness that creates extra frisson (but I am having therapy!). Seriously, I thought this was a presentation with its own distinctions and set of ambiences, one which contained some excellent performances, and which readily conveyed to us the work’s on-going greatness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSM Piano Trio give superb concert of major works

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Piano Trios by Beethoven (Op 70 No 1); Mendelssohn (Op 49); Dvořák (Op 65)

New Zealand School of Music Piano Trio (Martin Riseley, Inbal Megiddo, Jian Liu)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Thursday 24 November, 7.30pm

I was struck by the use of the word ‘irritability’ in Martin Riseley’s notes about Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Trio. I have no idea whether the word has been applied before by others, but it opened a different response for me; one that I found made me listen to it rather afresh.

That might be an initial feeling in the opening phase of the first movement, but it’s quickly replaced by a more positive emotion.  I do not usually find myself remarking much on the performances of individuals in chamber music ensembles; since the end of the eighteenth century the raison d’être of chamber music has been a collaboration between players, and I would rather promote that than encourage audiences to seek stars, and personalities (it’s bad enough that politics has become a popularity contest at the expense of a contest between political philosophies).

However, it was pianist Jian Liu whose playing seemed not just to dominate in terms of audibility, but which guided the character of the performances with such distinction. That is not unusual in a piano trio of course, compared with a string quartet; for the piano commands greater density of sound, most of the harmonic spectrum of the music and, to revert to the eighteenth century model, makes it hard sometimes to avoid the impression of a piano sonata with violin and cello accompaniment.

The Ghost trio is perhaps the most democratic of the three works played, with striking contributions early in the first movement from the cello, beautifully played by Inbal Megiddo; nor is the violin part secondary, though Martin Riseley, here and elsewhere, sounded less robust and rich in tone. The first movement felt somewhat hurried; hurried rather than energy-driven, and the rather perfunctory ending of the movement seemed to come too quickly.

After a lovely calm entry by violin and piano in the second movement, it was the cello that soon caught the ear as Megiddo invested it with a deep emotional intensity, and Beethoven seems to call on the cello to carry much of its dark quality . There is evidence that this movement had its source in music Beethoven sketched for an opera on Macbeth which never got beyond that; the conjuring of a ghost here always escapes me however, even though the piano enjoys some other-worldly growling in the bass regions.

In the last movement the responsibilities are more evenly distributed; it’s given to short phrases that break off and then take off in a different direction.

Mendelssohn’s first trio is very much the work of a young piano virtuoso, and here, more than elsewhere, was the main ground of my remark about the piano’s omnipresence, not just constantly, but in dazzling virtuoso mode which hardly let up. Yet the piano is rarely alone and it never dominated the ensemble, allowing equal the participation by violin and cello; indeed, both have their moments in the bravura spotlight; here too, no player was inclined to overlook the need to create a harmonious synthesis.

The second movement, often likened to one of the composer’s ‘songs without words’, never slipped from its quiet nobility: a particularly successful movement. The scherzo went so fast – as it should – that the players may well have barely saved themselves from minor stumbles.

The last movement filled one with admiration at the pianist’s ability to deliver dazzling, and visually beguiling virtuosity in the most charming, self-effacing manner.

Dvořák’s third piano trio is a serious affair, coming between the D major and D minor symphonies (Nos 6 and 7), of his full maturity. It followed the death of his mother in 1882; that accounts partly for its somber character; the other rather strong influence is that of Brahms. Riseley’s remark about the relative neglect of Dvořák’s large body of great chamber music is well said. Apart from the Piano Quintet, the American Quartet, the Dumky Trio, what is really much heard?

Dvořák was not notable as a pianist (though an excellent one in fact), yet it is again the piano part that commands attention here, though there is interesting writing for the two strings, both again giving glowing performances. The piano is hardly less busy than in the Mendelssohn in dealing with thousands of notes in breathtaking cascades, especially in the second movement, Scherzo.

However, I confess to finding the slow movement somewhat listless, and though it was played with insight and intelligence, I could not escape the feeling of note-spinning. Nor did the players really convince me in the last movement where the piano again rather subordinates the strings and it strikes me as having run out of steam before the end. Yet the players seemed determined to make the most convincing case for it, and they almost succeeded.

Georgina Zellan-Smith – new light on the “Moonlight”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Piano recital by Georgina Zellan-Smith

Music by Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Chopin – plus some “popular favorites” requests.

House concert, Johnsonville, Wellington

Tuesday 22nd November 2011

Auckland-based pianist Georgina Zellan-Smith is, sadly, an infrequent visitor to Wellington these days. She performed here last at a commemorative concert in 2008 which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Richard Farrell, on which occasion she played an excerpt from Liszt’s Italian Book of his “Years of Pilgrimage”. On that evening she shared the piano with Maurice Till, Margaret Nielsen, Diedre Irons and Jun Bouterey-Ishido. So it was with the keenest of anticipation that I awaited her proposed house-concert scheduled for November in Johnsonville, and for which she would presumably have the piano all to herself (no reflection whatever, of course, on those other excellent pianists who contributed so movingly to the Richard Farrell evening).

In the event, she gave her attentive and highly appreciative audience a richly-conceived programme, using an instrument (a Kawai) whose tones seemed particularly sonorous at the lower end of the sound-spectrum. Whether this quality was in fact a natural penchant of the pianist’s towards middle and lower tones, or whether the player connected with and used the instrument’s intrinsic voicings to noticeable advantage, I’m not entirely sure. But in places such as throughout the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata, under Zellan-Smith’s fingers the middle and bass voices of the music had a fuller, richer and darker aspect than one normally experiences in this music. The effect was to bring a somewhat uneasy, almost sinister quality to the familiar “Moonlight on the lake waters” evocation, and explore a whole new dimension of feeling and response to the composer’s vision. Never have I heard this music sounding more than it could have been out of Schumann’s “Kreisleriana”, the lower voicing emphasizing the shadows stalking the right-hand melody throughout.

In this context the second movement of the “Moonight  made for a strong contrast, the syncopated rhythms in the middle section played fully out, suggesting something more elemental than what we normally hear. The finale continued the music’s mood, bringing great weight as well as momentum, Zellan-Smith pointing the rhythmic trajectories of the music to compelling, energetic effect rather than relying merely on speed for excitement. She also made a great deal of the claustrophobic contrasting episodes, hands close together concentrating the music into obsessive repetitions before opening up the vistas with the concluding rolling arpeggiations. Alone, the pianist’s playing of this somewhat hackneyed, but still potentially magical work made the concert worthwhile for me.

Incidentally, as a kind of prelude to the “Moonlight”, Zellan-Smith gave us the beautiful Adagio Cantabile” from the same composer’s “Pathetique” Sonata – and again she found in the music such a rich well of light and dark feeling. It was her left-hand work which riveted me, the ebb and flow of tonal coloring beautifully controlling and shaping the right-hand melody (one of the world’s great tunes, I think), the tempo not particularly slow, but always giving things time to breathe, each note specifically placed instead of being delivered in a generalized way. She made a great thing of the middle section’s arched magnificence, her left hand again making certain that all the music’s voices had a part in the overall scheme of things. I could have, on this showing, happily listened to her playing an entire program of Beethoven – what wouldn’t she have done with things like the wonderful “Les Adieux” Sonata, or one of those unearthly late masterpieces such as Op.111?

But then we would have had to do without some other deliciously different things, such as the recital’s opening piece, a Scarlatti Sonata in F Major, played here with such a delicious amalgam of grace, energy and good humor – something that fellow-New Zealand pianist Margaret Nielsen would, I’m sure, have called “great character” – and a Mendelssohn work that I couldn’t recall having ever heard before (to my shame, as a piano-fancier!), his Fantasia in F-sharp Minor, Op.28 (known also as the “Scottish Sonata”), a tremendous piece, beginning with swirling, almost Gothic-like arpeggiated mists, from which developed a beautiful, melancholic theme not unlike that from the opening of Schubert’s “Arpeggione” Sonata. In places Zellan-Smith’s playing strongly brought out the connection with Bach’s toccata-like organ works, Mendelssohn paying homage, one suspects, to those fantastic harmonic modulations that readily conjure up dimly-lit and spookily obsessive dream-like sequences of deranged organists lost in their private worlds of sound. I liked the pianist’s winsome treatment of the theme’s intermingling of major and minor at the end of the movement, and the soft drumbeats acknowledging the ending’s ghostly echoes.

As with the Beethoven Sonata, there’s a graceful ,dance-like movement between the two outer giants (shades of Schumann’s “flower between two chasms” – or was it Liszt who said that of the “Moonlight” Sonata’s middle movement?) – here, the pianist played the dance more for strength than for charm, which I liked, the music to my ears responding positively to such a purposeful approach. As for the last movement’s “diabolique” impulses, Mendelssohn’s sprites tend to be more mischievous than malevolent, though here the delicacies seemed to have flint-edges, the composer managing to conjure up a Beethoven-like mood of agitation in places (though the “Scottish” ambiences of the first movement didn’t seem to be carried over strongly into the rest of the work). Zellan-Smith kept the music’s serious mood to the fore, avoiding the “drawing-room gentility” that tends to hang about a lot of the composer’s chamber and instrumental music, and maintaining an “edge” to the textures and rhythms right up to the work’s final energetic flourishes.

A further delight of the recital was Georgina Zellan-Smith’s playing of a couple of items from her recent CD of popular piano classics, “Remembrance”, including the beautifully atmospheric “Rustle of Spring” by Christian Sinding, the piano on this occasion giving the pianist’s swirling left-hand accompaniments in places a bit more weight and body than on the CD recording, and providing the agitato feeling that the more delicate episodes o the music need to bring out their full effect. By the time the pianist reached the Chopin items which concluded the program, including the fleet-fingered Fantasie-Impromptu (another world-famous melody) I suspect that the effort of realizing both the Beethoven and Mendelssohn items so whole-heartedly was beginning to take its toll, though the G-flat waltz in particular was a great pleasure to experience. In all, there was a great deal of wonderful music and fully-committed music-making packed into what seemed like too short a time, throughout this recital. I do hope we in Wellington get further opportunities to hear Georgina Zellan-Smith play more of the music she obviously loves and illuminates with such skill and understanding.

 

 

 

Festival Singers’ Papa Haydn – a Man for All Seasons

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HAYDN – Oratorio “The Seasons”

Lesley Graham (soprano) / James Adams (tenor) / Roger Wilson (bass)

Festival Singers / Orchestra (Simon McLellan, leader)

Rosemary Russell (conductor)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 20th November, 2011

Of all the works produced by that exemplar of creative industry and longevity Josef Haydn (1732-1809), his oratorio “The Seasons” is surely one of the happiest on all counts. In the work the composer gives full expression to his delight in nature, his obvious relish for country pastimes (blood-sports and all), and his serene religious faith.

What strikes the listener at a first hearing is the work’s ceaseless flow of wonderful things, the composer’s imagination and powers of expression obviously undimmed by his advancing years, despite his complaints to his publisher, thus:

 “The world daily pays me many compliments, even on the fire of my last works; but no one would believe the strain and effort it cost me to produce these, in as much as many a day my feeble memory and the unstrung state of my nerves so completely crush me to the earth that I fall into the most melancholy condition, so much so that for days afterwards I am incapable of finding one single idea, until at length my heart is revived by Providence, when I seat myself at the piano and begin to hammer away at it. Then all goes well, again, God be praised!”

The work’s librettist, Baron Gottfried Von Swieten, has come in for some stick over the years, some of it from the composer himself, who was supposed to have exclaimed at one point that the libretto was “Frenchified trash”. Swieten adapted his verses from those of the Scottish poet James Thomson, whose epic, eponymous work in praise of nature had become one of the most popular texts of his age. Haydn and Swieten quarrelled over various aspects of the work (as happens with nearly all fruitful collaborations of this kind) – but the success of the finished product consigned such differences to the wake of musical history.

The work was here sung in English, the words a curious amalgam of Swieten’s re-translation of his own script back to the original language (losing most of Thompson’s poetry in the process) and various “improvements” made by different editors at diverse times. Some of the original numbers were cut, and others shortened, but nothing was lost which caused great violence to be done to the work as a whole.

Haydn begins with a dark, orchestra-only evocation of winter gloom – a few gravely-descending bars of darkness set the scene before conductor Rosemary Russell brought in the allegro strongly and sternly, placing winter in retreat-mode, and being more roundly dismissed by both bass and tenor (Roger Wilson stentorian and vivid, James Adams sturdy and poetical). Soprano Lesley Graham then welcomed the spring breezes from “southern skies” with true, lightly-floated tones, the cue for the chorus to properly ring the seasonal change with a lilting “Come gentle spring”….

The number I knew once as “With joy, th’ impatient husbandsman….” here became “At dawn the eager plowman”, given plenty of agrarian spirit by Roger Wilson, and relished by the counterpointing bassoon, nicely played by Oscar Laven. We enjoyed these things greatly, along with the “Surprise Symphony” orchestral quotations, and the singer’s slightly more decorative reprise vocals. James Adams impressed, also, with his golden-toned “The farmer now has done his work”, the following Trio giving the orchestral horns the chance to shine throughout a nicely-burnished moment of introduction, and bringing in the chorus, beautifully rapt at “Let warming air turn suddenly soft”, though with a bit of momentary strain when delivering the stratospheric “And let thy sun resplendent shine”.

Lesley Graham’s lovely “Our prayer is heard on high” set the tone for a nicely-poised duet “Spring, her lovely charms…” between the soprano and tenor, James Adams. And the “God of Light, God of Life!” chorus was stirringly done, the rapturous Beethoven-like mood amply and satisfyingly forwarded by the soloists. Apart from an uncertain initial entry by the men in the fugal chorus “Endless praise to Thee….” the vocal lines were woven together with strength and clarity, Rosemary Russell keeping her orchestra equally up to the mark right to the final cadence.

The remainder of the performance reinforced the above impressions, though particular moments remained in the listener’s memory, such as the sunrise sequence at the beginning of summer, a vivid and urgent introduction by Lesley Graham, followed by soloists and chorus making a marvellous refulgence.

The “Country Calendar” commentaries that followed were also characterfully delivered, Roger Wilson bringing alive the Breughel-like harvesting, and James Adams contrasting the hustle and bustle with a sun-drenched paean of idyllic indolence – all of which led naturally to Lesley Graham’s sweet-toned portrayal of a “haven for the weary”, with Jose Wilson giving us  some nicely-turned oboe-playing.

From this “Rural Roundup” kind of mode, we switched to full-on weather-forecasting, portentous announcements from Roger Wilson, with timpanist Doreen Douglas providing telling ambient support. James Adams’ warnings were no less dire, the pizzicato raindrops by now falling about Lesley Graham’s breathless, suspenseful utterances. A sudden lightning-flash, and chorus and orchestra hurled themselves into the maelstrom with great abandonment, a pleasing disorder of unsettling sounds resulting within the confines of the hall.

Autumn, too had its delights, even if the introductory string-playing had some ensemble problems – the Terzetto and Chorus which followed, praising industry and advocating its rewards, had something naughtily Haydn-esque about it, the droll wind figures decorating the soloists’ lines seeming to me to poke gentle fun at the seriousness of it all. The concluding chorus-and-orchestra fugue survived some “woolly” moments along the way towards some wonderfully chromatic upward modulations and a triumphal concluding marriage of honest labour with moral righteousness, soloists, chorus and orchestra shirking not their duties.

Sports of all kinds were celebrated, innocent, knowing and deadly purposeful – we enjoyed both James Adams’ singing and enjoyment in turn of his line “the orchard shades maidens large and small”, and Roger Wilson’s account of the spaniel’s hunting of the hapless bird, shot with a loud timpani retort! As for the deerhunt, the rousing horn-playing (Peter Sharman and Kevin Currie) led the way in grand style, matched in energy and vigour by the chorus, who were then called upon once more a after a short respite, this time for a rollicking drinking-song, “Joyfully, the wine flows free…” The voices did well to sustain their pitch as well as they did across the span of broken phrases, as required by the composer, besides keeping enough energy in reserve for the final “All hail to the wine!”.

Though there were occasional problems with both ensemble and intonation in places, the orchestral playing never lacked for atmosphere and colour throughout – and so it was with the opening of “Winter”, where a lovely, dark-toned instrumental colour at the opening used sombre strings and plaintive winds to suggest the grey mists and gloom, an evocation which the composer equated with his own mortality and failing powers. The Cavatina that followed taxed the strings’ ensemble at the beginning, but Lesley Graham focused our attentions with her tremulously-toned lament at autumn’s passing into darker climes. James Adams’ tale of a lost traveller was also dramatically told, even if the singer didn’t have quite enough breath to easily cap the ascending phrase at “to find comfort sweet”.

The chorus’s “Spinning Song” (surprisingly romantic, dark and dramatic, sounding almost like something out of Wagner!) went with a swing, making a piquant contrast with the saucy tale of the maid who extricated herself from the clutches of a lascivious nobleman. Lesley Graham pointed the detail with some relish throughout, if not with quite enough “heft” in places to be properly heard, though the chorus’s “ha! ha!’s” certainly demonstrated its appreciation of the entertainment.

Roger Wilson’s deep, rich tones saluted the icy grip of winter, imploring all to cling to virtue as a means of salvation – though the brass blooped their first notes in response they recovered to cap the concluding orchestral efforts, and support some fine, strong lines of singing in the fugal passage “Direct us in thy ways”. Everything became somewhat revivalist at the very end, the energy and fervour of the singing and playing filling the hall, and making for a most satisfying conclusion. All credit to the efforts of singers and instrumentalists, and to Rosemary Russell for her inspired and sterling direction, and for bringing such a delightful work to the fore once again, for our pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listening to ourselves: Voices New Zealand

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents

VOICES OF AOTEAROA

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Karen Grylls (director)

Horomona Horo (taonga puoro)

Music by Hildegard of Bingen, David Childs, Douglas Mews, Morten Lauridsen, Christopher Marshall,

Helen Fisher, David Griffiths, David Hamilton, Benjamin Britten, Henry Purcell (arr. Eriksson)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 19th November, 2011

The concert was brought into being by the sounds of a trumpet played by Horomona Horo, creating both a ceremonial and a haunting effect, and thus suggesting limitless possibilities. One of these, appropriately resembling a voice from long ago, was a Sequence composed by Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth-century abbess, poet, composer and mystic. Growing beautifully from out of the expectant silence, the text O viridissimi Virga sung the praises of the Virgin Mary, hailing her as the “greenest branch” from which sprang “harvest ready for Man, and a great rejoicing of banqueters”. Hildegard’s unison lines were then interspersed among the choir’s voices, Pepe Becker’s beautifully stratospheric soprano tones prominent amongst them, to which was added the gentle counterpointing of another of the taonga puoro, on this occasion a flute. The presentation seemed like a kind of ritual of birth, of bringing the music into being by awakening the spirit within each and every voice – and on this occasion calling up a creative impulse to speak to us from half a Millennium away – all very impressive in a quiet and undemonstrative manner.

David Child’s lyrical Salve Regina followed, the vocal lines baroque-like in their detailing and deployment – solo, small group and whole ensemble interacting as a living organism, conductor Karen Grylls achieving with the voices a great haunting beauty at the concluding words, “O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria”, aided by a mesmeric repetition of the word “Maria” at the end.

From “Saints and Angels” (the works were bracketed thus throughout the concert) we moved to “Voices of Fire”, beginning with the coruscations of Douglas Mews’ Ghosts, Fire and Water,a work which made a huge impression on me when I heard it performed some years ago. Written in 1972, it was inspired by a poem by British author James Kirkup, his response, in turn to a series of paintings which became known as the “Hiroshima Panels”, and whose subject was the dropping of the first atomic bomb on that city in 1945. The opening lines “These are the ghosts of the unwilling dead” sets the sombre tone of the work, the stark vocal lines having no warmth, expressing only horror and shock at the effects of the carnage, sometimes bleak unisons, sometimes irruptions of biting repetitions of figurations. Spoken voices are powerfully set against the singing in places, the phrase “Love one another” in different languages over a hymn-like backdrop, the silence at the end as eloquent as the last utterances.

A different world of feeling, indeed, from Morten Lauridsen’s Madrigali, which followed – six settings of Renaissance verses by various poets, all in praise of “love’s fire” – hence the Six “Fire Songs” of the work’s full title. Each setting is informed by the composer’s initial “fire-chord”, a cluster of intensities, sizzling and coruscating, impulses that recur throughout the cycle. I liked the contrast between the lively and capricious No.3 “Amor, Io Sento L’alma”, a depiction of a growing conflagration of love, and the tearful despair of the following “Io piango”, the weeping underpinned by a mournful bass line. And the concluding “Se per Havervi, Ohime!” set a ground-swelling clustered-harmonied hymn at the beginning through to a rapt, rich sinking conclusion, enlivened by a brief upward impulse at the end, everything beautifully and robustly characterized by the voices.

Then came “Voices of the Earth and Sea”, Karen Grylls talking with us briefly about the works in this bracket being a “collage of landscape”. Helen Fisher’s Pounamu was the one that made the deepest impression on me, the flute-sounds conjured up by Horomono Horo in haunting accord with the long-breathed vocal lines, the Maori text a proverb from Tainui, beginning with the words “May the calm be widespread…..” and later evoking “the shimmer of summer” with constantly undulating lines and the flute’s cry riding the skies like a falcon in watchful flight – all of this was so beautifully realized.

Christopher Marshall’s Horizon 1 (part of a larger cycle of settings) briefly but effectively set words by Ian Wedde from a poem “Those Others’, referring to the Maori view of creation, and sounding the unceasing “breath of life” behind the alto’s beautiful but austere line. Then, David Griffiths’ two vignette-like pieces from the work Five Landscapes took us firstly to Southland’s Oreti Beach, and afterwards to Mount Iron, a Wanaka landmark – the first characterized by ceaselessly complaining winds, and the second filled out with hugely imposing blocks of tone, punctuated by quieter harmonic clusters.

A new and stirring work by David Hamilton rounded off the local content of the program – Karakia of the Stars. Here, voices were used instrumentally, along with Horo’s koauau patternings, the sounds of tapping stones, and the Arvo Pärt-like tintinabulations of little bells – the singers and instrumentalists having evoked the starry firmament, the chant welled up from terra firma, the mens’ voices counterpointing the womens’, underpinned by stampings and gesturing and resounding through the spaces. A note from the composer told us that the chant was part of a longer invocation to the stars “to provide a bountiful supply of food for the coming year” – a ‘between-the-lines” election-year message for our politicians, perhaps?

Lastly, “Voices of Nature” presented music from two of England’s greatest composers, Britten and Purcell – firstly, Britten’s beautiful Five Flower Songs, all but the last settings of English poetry, the exception being the traditional “Ballad of Green Broom”. From the madrigal-like realization of the opening “To Daffodils”, through the angularities of “Marsh Flowers” and the rapt hymnal of “The Evening Primrose”, these songs brought to our ears a wonderful synthesis of creative imagination and stunning performance evocation, ending with smiles at the wry wit of the composer’s “Green Broom” setting. Normally, such a bouncy, good-humored number would nicely round off a concert, but the ensemble chose instead to enchant us further with Purcell’s Music for a While, a song written for John Dryden’s tragedy “Oedipus”, here arranged for choir by Gunnar Eriksson. Pepe Becker’s pure, focused tones were very much to the fore, here, delivering the melody with searing beauty, the lines harmonized in places by women’s voices and the ground bass patterns vocalized by tenors and basses. It seemed for a few intensely lovely moments to tell us just why it is we listen to music and go to concerts.

Winning pieces from inaugural guitar composition competition played by Matthew Marshall

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

2011 New Zealand Classical Guitar Composition Competition

Music by Gareth Johnston, Michael Calvert, Gillian Whitehead, Mike Nock, Michael Hogan, Anthony Ritchie, Campbell Ross

Matthew Marshall (guitar)

Theatrette, Massey University, Buckle Street

Thursday 17 November, 8pm

This recital was the public face of the first New Zealand Classical Guitar Composition Competition which has been organized by Matthew Marshall with collaboration from SOUNZ – The Centre for New Zealand Music – and the School of Creative and Performing Arts of Central Queensland University in Mackay where Matthew is Professor and Dean of the school.

In its first year the competition attracted 20 entries from New Zealand composers – students and professionals, resident both in New Zealand and overseas.

The earlier stages of the competition refined the entries to three finalists and these, along with four existing pieces, were played by Matthew Marshall in this evening’s concert.

The conditions called for pieces for solo, nylon strung classical guitar, with no stylistic limitations. Further, in his introductory remarks Matthew had described the aims of the competition as including an intention to enlarge the repertoire of guitar music in other than the Spanish and Latin American idioms.

The programme interspersed competition pieces with older pieces. The first of the latter was called Pasatanglia by Gareth Johnston, so called because it followed the pattern of a passacaglia in a tango rhythm: that demanded no special discrimination. Though it was garnished with a piquant chromaticism and its style and form derived from classical models, it presented no barriers to immediate enjoyment.

Matthew explained that he had known about Gillian Whitehead’s suite For Timothy of 1979 for some years, but it was only when he received it by mail from the Vice Chancellor of Massey University who had come across it in a second hand shop, that he decided to tackle it. It consists of two folk song movements – one Scottish, the other Northumbrian – framed by a Prelude and a Postlude. The latter offered melodic material and structures of a certain intellectual interest, ideas that were initially straight-forward but which soon took intriguing turns. The folk songs were treated with respect while at the same time being somewhat roughed up.

Mike Hogan lives in Port Vila, Vanuatu. His Two (of four) Studies of 2006 were studies in the Chopin sense: melodically engaging first and technically taxing only secondarily. Matthew uncovered the qualities of these rather slight pieces to offer them real charm. The last of the older pieces was the premiere of a 2009 piece by Anthony Ritchie called Sultry; typical of Ritchie’s music that succeeds in being engaging as well as revealing strengths that are likely to be peeled away and encourage repeat performances.

It goes without saying that Marshall’s  admirable, committed performances allowed them to be heard in the best possible context.

The results of the competition were announced after the recital by the manager of SOUNZ, Julie Sperring.

Third place went to Campbell Ross for his Two Dances, both, rather neglecting Matthew Marshall’s aspiration, in Latin rhythms – rumba and tango. Both were well-written, attractive pieces whose accessibility somewhat belied their sophistication. It earned a $400 prize.

Mike Nock’s Cytokinesis made its impact both through its melodic individuality and the composer’s ability to develop his variety of material in an organic way and through attractive chord sequences. I wondered however whether it had exhausted its inventiveness a couple of minutes before the end. Nevertheless, its sophistication, the way it handled scraps of related melody and its plain musicality clearly merited the second prize of $750.

First prize of $1500 went to Michael Calvert for Fantasia in August, that being the month in which it was composed. Let me quote the judges’ comment: “Fantasia in August is not simply a piece that can be played on a guitar, it is a guitar piece. Broody, moody, provocative, seductive, it drifts from cadence to cadence asking questions without answers. These come in the coda, the most eloquent passage of the work. To this point the musical language has been largely uncompromising. Here it softens, bringing with it a sense of resolution if not resolution itself. It is work of hidden depths that require more than a single listening to appreciate.”

All three pieces will be played at the New Zealand Guitar Summer School in January 2012, and at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Australia in May 2012
In addition, the winning piece will be played in the Purcell Room in the Royal Festival Hall, London in 2012.  And all three will be published in a volume by SOUNZ.

Brilliant violin and piano recital from Blythe Press and Richard Mapp

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Bach, Brahms, Chausson, Bowater and Ravel

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 November 2011, 12.15pm

Though it has become conventional not to perform individual movements of extended works of music, it often works quite well. This admirable recital did that very successfully, with the first movement – the Adagio – from Bach’s solo Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor, and again with the first two movements – Allegro and Adagio – from Brahms’s Third Violin Sonata. Only those quite familiar with the works would have felt a little unfulfilled when the music failed to continue as expected.

The compensation was the singularly thoughtful and musically sensitive performances from the young Blythe Press and accompanist Richard Mapp. Press is only 22, grew up in the Kapiti area, began studies at Victoria University but, getting a scholarship to study in Graz, Austria, graduated there earlier this year with a master’s degree with distinction. There he has distinguished himself in European competitions and as soloist with the Styrian Youth Orchestra. He toured New Zealand last year with the Cook Strait Trio (see the review in Middle C of 22 August 2010), and also played for the NZSO on their European tour.

The first movement of Bach’s first solo violin sonata (played without the score) was both an intelligent and imaginative move, for it made the audience attend to the careful and painstaking approach that guided his performance; it was unhurried, with slightly prolonged pauses between phrases, that put his stamp on the music’s profound meditative character. It stood on its own with no hint of self-indulgence.

The two movements of Brahms’s last violin sonata were equally impressive. The first might be marked Allegro but Press captured the pervasive feeling of calm and deliberation; with the piano lid on the long stick, which can allow an accompaniment to dominate the textures, Mapp maintained the pace and dynamic levels that the violin adopted: the two were in perfect sympathy, especially arresting in the more animated central section. The Adagio presented Press with the chance to revel in the beautiful warmth of his instrument, expressing a world-weary spirit with sensitivity.

Perhaps the centre-piece was Chausson’s lovely Poème, which is usually heard in full orchestral dress where it is easier to envelope it in a romantic and impressionist spirit. The two players handled it with a profound familiarity and confidence and with a deep affection, all the decorative features appearing intrinsic rather than pasted on merely for display.

Helen Bowater’s piece for solo violin may have been chosen to complement Ravel’s Tsigane, for Lautari denotes a class of Romanian gypsy musicians. I had not heard it before and was attracted both by its idiom, clearly derived from Eastern European folk music, and the confident personal touches that placed it pretty firmly in today’s musical context, though not in a vein given over to excessive experimental devices and gestures. Nevertheless, its writing (he played with the score before him) clearly presented challenges that Press overcame effortlessly.

It was a nice prelude to the Ravel in which the violin plays a long, unaccompanied, flamboyant cadenza. The Liszt of the Hungarian Rhapsodies is never far away, as the technical difficulties present the violin with comparable terrors. Press dealt with its two-handed pizzicato dashes and its full repertoire of impossibilities, never losing sight of the music itself which is not merely flashy virtuosity.

The recital was essential St Andrew’s stuff, offering the audience a chance to hear a young prodigy of whom we’ll hear much more.

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Georgina Zellan-Smith – fond piano memories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REMEMBRANCE

– and other favorite piano pieces

Georgina Zellan-Smith (piano)

 Ode Records CDMANU 5101

I must confess my first reaction upon receiving this CD was of surprise that so gifted an executant as Georgina Zellan-Smith would expend so much of her energies on “faded trifles” such as these. Especially in the wake of the same pianist’s excellent Beethoven/Hummel CD, whose interesting and unique compilation of repertoire “enlarged” the piano-playing world for me, I thought this collection seemed, by comparison, somewhat surplus to requirements, replicating many such “Great Piano Melodies”  or “Gems of the Piano Repertoire” kind of presentations.

What I didn’t take into account was the pleasure to be had from listening to a sensitive and insightful interpreter cast fresh light on these pieces. Being the child of a piano teacher, I had every note, every phrase of both “Remembrance’ and “The Robin’s Return” indelibly etched upon my musical memory, albeit refracted through the all-too-fallible fingers and youthful sensibilities of my mother’s piano pupils. I fancy she would occasionally have pushed them off the piano stool in frustration and actually demonstrated how certain passages would go, which would account for my having more-or-less musically coherent memories of each piece – and in the case of “Remembrance’ probably augmented by performances on the radio of people like Gil Dech.

Georgina Zellan-Smith plays each of these opening “flagship” pieces with what I can only describe as exquisite taste – she fuses a judicious amalgam of bright-eyed clarity with occasional dollops of ambiently-yellowed sentiment; and in each case the result is, for me, well-nigh irresistible. Apart from a slight mis-hit in “Remembrance” she makes every single note tell. The same goes for the following item, the ever-popular “Rustle of Spring”, one of the great “light” pieces of piano music, here conjuring up even more childhood memories, so that, like Dylan Thomas’s boyhood self in his story “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”, I’m forced to plunge my hands into the piece’s snowfall of notes and come up with whatever I can grasp – such is the compulsion of the resonances unlocked by this music.

Christian Sinding’s lovely seasonal piece reminds me, along with Edward McDowell’s “To A Wild Rose”, of other miniature works whose elegant craftsmanship has ensured their immortality – another example, though not on this recording, is Debussy’s “Clair de lune”. In all of these pieces the music’s intrinsic qualities reward in some way even the most interpretatively bland performances. “Rustle of Spring” in particular has a certain “layered” quality beneath the exquisite harmonies, allowing different performances to uncover whatever their interpretative capacities can realize. Sinding cleverly plays with both major and minor modes throughout, knowing when to flood his textures with sunbeams and when to drift the mists back through the sound-vistas – it may be unashamed emotional manipulation, but I dearly love it. Georgina Zellan-Smith’s performance of Sinding’s piece takes its time at the outset, gradually allowing the Spring’s impulses to awaken the textures, though her unhurriedness meant that some of the left-hand figurations lack the occasional touch of volatility and energy. Still, if pressed I would state a preference for her way to the rather more superficially exciting, but often somewhat mechanical renditions by other pianists I remember hearing.

Grieg’s “To the Spring” evokes seasonal change more ritualistically, though the piquancy of both textures and harmonies can’t help but exert a gradual spell upon the listener. A casual hearing suggests that Zellan-Smith plays the notes “straight” at the outset, but if one listens and breathes the phrases with the pianist, one feels their varied pulsations, sensitively and subtly delineated. Even more abstracted is the same composer’s “Papillon”, or “Butterfly”  as it’s called here, the angular delicacies of the creature’s flight being less quicksilver and gossamer, and more studied under Zellan-Smith’s hands, like an oriental etching on a screen or fan, exchanging volatility for grace and elegance.

There are too many pieces to fully comment upon individually – some are predictably engaging as performances (Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca”, for example), while others lie in wait to snare the unsuspecting in nooses of delight (Liadov’s “A Musical Snuff Box” for one). Albert Ketelbey’s “In a Persian Market” is a rip-roaring success, here, its quaint chocolate-box exoticism given a bit of extra grunt by the pianist in places with strongly-etched rhythms and glowing harmonic colorings. Another success is Handel’s eponymous “Largo”, here completely avoiding the treacly ooze generated by numerous Victorian arrangements for organ and orchestra, in favor of a clearly-etched cavatina-like outpouring of lyricism, far more in keeping with Handel’s original, from the opera “Serse”. And I loved hearing the Paderewski Minuet again (I used to listen to Jose Iturbi’s 78rpm recording of the work, which was on the “B” side of Iturbi’s recording of THE Prelude by Rachmaninov). Zellan-Smith’s delight in the dance comes across as sprightly as with any polonaise.

In short, far from sounding like “faded trifles”, a lot of the pieces re-emerge as glowing gems in Georgina Zellan-Smith’s hands, with everything nicely characterized and differentiated. From the sultry indolence of Mendelssohn’s G Minor Gondola piece we’re taken to the scented elegance of the Russian night with Anton Rubinstein’s Romance, for example; and while the third of Franz Liszt’s Consolations creates whole vistas of refined romantic sentiment, its old-worldliness sets off Kiwi composer Douglas Lilburn’s bright, breezy, out-of-doors Prelude which follows, to perfection. While I thought Auguste Durand’s Waltz a bit of a long haul, I was delighted with another old friend, Gabriel Morel’s Norwegian Cradle Song, amply prepared for with a beautifully-modulated performance of the Adagio from Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata.

A beautiful and simple rendition of Princess Te Rangi Pai’s “Hine e Hine” leads to the disc’s final item, “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, by James L. Molloy, one of these songs whose main tune is familiar, but which brings with it a verse-refrain that I don’t recall, possibly through not having ever heard it. The music’s delivered with the poise and grace that distinguishes the playing throughout. Touchingly, Zellan-Smith has dedicated the CD to the memory of long-time music retailer Murray Marbeck, whose idea instigated this project, but who died before its completion. Recorded in the Music Theatre at Auckland University by Wayne Laird, and released by Ode Records, the excellently-caught piano sound rounds off a venture whose artistic success has, I freely admit, set my ears attuned to the strains of an oven-timer, about to signal that my humble pie is cooked and ready to be eaten.

 

Stop Press: Georgina Zellan-Smith is giving a recital in Wellington at a house-concert on Tuesday 22nd November: seating is limited, so e-mail mgeard@windowslive.com for booking information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flawed silent film, Metropolis, with original score in splendid NZSO realisation

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Metropolis – silent film by Fritz Lang, accompanied by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra playing the reconstructed score by Gottfried Huppertz, conducted by Frank Strobel

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 5 November, 6.30pm

The first thing that struck me about the otherwise excellent programme notes was the absence of any direct comment about the thrust of the 1927 German film as an anti-capitalist document.

The notes suggest that the scenes of forced labour foreshadowed the concentration camps. That seems a misleading remark, considering NAZI taking power was still six years away, while exploitation of industrial workers had characterized most industrial enterprises since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.  The pervasive message of the work is a trenchant if rather simplistic portrayal of capitalism’s unspoken but ever-present aim to control and exploit labour. It would be unusual for a film dealing with the dominant economic and social character of the age to be otherwise.

The notes also remark on the presence of the Star of David on the door of the evil inventor Rotwang, which is taken to link both Lang and his wife to incipient Nazism, and remarking on the story that Goebbels had offered him the position of Head of the film studio UFA. However, there is no evidence that Goebbels did so. Lang fled Germany as early as 1933, mere months after the NAZIs came to power. Lang’s wife did remain in Germany and did become a member of the party, however.

It is historically invalid to link anti-semitism exclusively with the NAZIs. The Star of David simply suggests that Lang shared the widespread anti-semitism that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, had less a racist basis than an association between capitalism and the major role played by Jews in the financial sphere, particularly in the minds of the working classes.  Anti-semitism was a widespread phenomenon in left-wing thinking.

The film is set in the future where the city, Metropolis, is controlled by its apparent sole industrial magnate, Fredersen (not ‘Federson’), with a sharp separation between owners-managers, who live above ground in luxurious art deco apartments, and the workers who live and work underground in slave-like conditions.

The film’s present fame is due to its complex and interesting provenance more than to its particularly insightful political message. The denouement is summed up at the end, rather portentously, and childishly: “The Mediator between the head and hands must be the heart!” The head is capitalist master Joh Fredersen, and the hands are the exploited worker/slaves; Fredersen’s sympathetic son, Freder, is the mediator/heart.

Was Lang carefully avoiding alienating part of his audience by refraining from pointing to the film’s more obvious theme: the exploitation and oppression of labour by capital; or was he really that naïve?

The film owes some of its notoriety to the vicissitudes of its survival. After its indifferent reception in Germany in 1927, the German studio UFA and Paramount Pictures butchered it for American screening, reducing its 153 minutes to 90, as well as revising the script to turn it into a shabby Frankenstein-like film. .

The original premiere version disappeared and the cut parts were believed lost.  In 2001, a new 75th anniversary restoration was screened in Berlin; it restored the original story line using stills and intertitles to bridge missing footage, and it added a soundtrack of the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz.  But the cut parts of the film remained lost. Then in June 2008, a 16mm copy of the original film was discovered in an archive of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires.   It filled most of the gaps. The 16-mm copy was made from a 35-mm print owned by a private collector, who obtained it from the distributor who brought the original cut to Argentina in 1927.

Some contemporary critics panned it. The New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall called it a “technical marvel with feet of clay”. The Times went on the next month to publish a lengthy review by H G Wells who accused it of “foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general.” He faulted Metropolis for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines’ output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley’s Frankenstein,  Karel Capek robot stories, and his own The Sleeper Awakes.  Joseph Goebbels was impressed however and took the film’s message to heart. In a speech of 1928 he noted: “The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labour, to begin their historical mission”.

But in the meantime, New Zealand had a piece of the action; strangely, ignored by the notes in the NZSO’s programme booklet.

As Wikipedia tells it:

In 2005, Wollongong-based historian and politician Michael Organ examined a print of the film in the New Zealand Film Archive.  It had been thought that it was the same cut as the Australian version, but Organ discovered that it contained missing scenes not seen in the cut versions of the film. After hearing of the discovery of the Argentine print of the film and the restoration project currently under way, Organ contacted the German restorers about his find. The New Zealand print was found to contain 11 missing scenes and included seconds of footage which were missing from the Argentine print and also footage which could be used to restore damaged sections of the Argentine print.

It is believed that the editor in charge of editing the New Zealand print for some unknown reason excised different scenes than that of the Australian print, keeping scenes missing from other versions intact. It is believed that the Australian, New Zealand and Argentine prints were all scored from the same master. The newly discovered footage was used in the restoration project.

The rights holders of Metropolis, F. W. Murnau Stiftung (Foundation), later confirmed that the newly discovered footage completes the missing footage except for a few missing frames.

How did the screening go? As an art form that depends for its existence on technology, early films encounter more impediments for modern audiences than other arts. The plain technical shortcomings are soon accommodated by the viewer, but political and social views and attitudes present more serious barriers, and even some of the critics’ comments from the film’s time drew attention to those. These failings have not become less obvious.

Acting that is unaccompanied by dialogue is very different – more like mime – and I can only conclude that many of the audience had more acute intuitive senses than I do if they understood what was going on all the time.

For it’s a long film and a fairly detailed story, not, I would have thought, the ideal for silent movie treatment. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I found the story both obscure in places and then not presenting a very profound view of the subject.  After all the exposure of hideous maltreatment of the workers, both in their working conditions and their accommodation, it seemed bizarre to present a conclusion that hardly suggested that any kind of radical change was needed other than a bit of kindness.

Its division into three ‘acts’ (Prologue, Intermezzo and Furioso) with an interval between the first and second, helped create the feeling of a theatrical rather than a cinematic, experience. The music itself was interesting. Certain episodes such as the scenes in the cabaret were presented with the kind of jazz-inflected music of the 20s, and the somewhat chilling, heavy theme that depicted the machinery was evocative, but the music did not succeed in delineating character differences or in supporting the episodes that should have been frightening or romantic. Though there were several effective musical moments such as Maria’s terrified underground chase pursued by an inexorable torch beam, in general, the music did not, in comparison with operatic or tone poem scores of the previous half-century, contribute very much to the emotional fabric.

The score, for large orchestra, showed the influence of Strauss and Wagner, perhaps, but more particularly Korngold and Schreker.  In spite of its lack of acute emotional characterization, the richness of the orchestral palette was nevertheless a revelation of the scale of the orchestral resources available in the silent movie theatres.

The orchestral score is, as the programme note records, cued with the film scenes in a very detailed way, and this would have made the job of conductor Frank Strobel less accident-prone, though no less taxing. The result was certainly a most impressive achievement by the orchestra, which undoubtedly sustained interest in the film’s narrative which, I suspect, would have been very difficult without it, over its two and a half hour duration.

There is enough music of independent substance for an orchestral suite or ‘paraphrase’ to be drawn from it.

End of Year recitals from School of Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Post-graduate Student Recitals: Tabea Squire (violin), Imogen Thirlwall (soprano), Kieran Rayner (baritone)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, 31 October, 3 and 4 November 2011

What these recitals demonstrated was the very high standard of musicians emerging from university today.  All have had performance experience (once much harder to obtain than now), and have emerged fully rounded recitalists.

It is sad that few members of the public attended the violin recital compared with those at the vocalists’; singers have more glamour and appeal, obviously.

Tabea Squire played the Ciaconna from Bach’s Partita no.2 for solo violin, and Poème by Ernest Chausson, the latter accompanied by Emma Sayers.  This was an extremely demanding programme.  The technical demands were great, including for the pianist, since the Chausson work had the piano playing a reduction from the orchestral score.

The violinist has a natural, non-distracting stance when playing (unlike that of a certain recent overseas soloist with the NZSO).  After a bold start to the Bach she exhibited her excellent technique, and great attention to detail.  A few minor intonation wobbles did not detract from a fine performance.  The tone was sometimes a little raw (her violinist father told me she was playing a new violin), most of which can probably be put down to the Adam Concert Room’s acoustics.  Nevertheless, her volume was appropriate and on the whole the sound she made was pleasing.

Runs were very clean, and the techniques of multiple stopping and using the bow across all the strings in succession were taxing but very well done.  This was a very skilled, accomplished performance, especially for someone with rather small hands.

Programme notes were good, apart from a few typos.; the works were played from memory.

The Chausson work also had a sturdy start.  The double-stopping was excellent, but there were a few fluffs.  It was unfortunate that the sustaining pedal on the piano made noises not required by the score.

Sometimes the pitch was slightly under the note, particularly towards the end; the work did not come off as well as did the Bach.  Although parts sounded poetic, overall the performance was not quite poetical or ethereal enough.  However, the ending was beautifully done.

Imogen Thirlwall gave her recital four days later.  Unfortunately I got there late, missing the first four items, (Mozart, Britten, Schoenberg) thanks to a vehicle parked over the end of my drive preventing me from catching the train I intended to be on.  Printed programmes had run out by the time I arrived, but I had access to a neighbour’s copy, especially after he left at the first of two short intervals.  Approximately 30 people were present.  Much of the programme was unfamiliar to me: demanding works by Schoenberg and Barber, for example.  Mark Dorrell accompanied well, but sometimes a little too heavily for my taste.

The printed programme was impressive, with a considerable body of notes, and a list of sources at the end.  What was even more impressive was the fact that the excellent translations from French, Italian, German and Spanish were all by the singer herself.  The other languages in her recital were Latin, English and Russian – a grand line-up.

However, more proof-reading would probably have picked up numbers of errors such as misspellings, words and letters left out, and punctuation mistakes.  Worst perhaps, was the misspelling on the back cover of names of those she wished to thank.  There were a few oddities in the otherwise thorough programme notes, such as regarding Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate ‘Even though it  was written with a castrato singer in mind, this is often performed by sopranos’!  (Who sings it the other times?); Homer’s Odyssey being a novel; being in the Romantic period, and Turina’s and Bellini’s compositions having ‘received… success’ (‘met with’ would convey the meaning better, or ‘received acclaim’, and be more grammatically accurate).

These niggles aside, a fine recital was what the audience received.  Imogen Thirlwall conveyed drama in both face and voice, but not to excess.  After very satisfactory performances of the two Schoenberg song I heard, we were we treated to a very fine performance of ‘No word from Tom’, from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

Thirlwall was thoroughly on top of her programme.  In the two Rachmaninov songs that followed, she produced considerable volume when required, but never too much for the size of the room.   These items gave Mark Dorrell a lot of hard work.  The singer has lovely tone at the bottom of her voice (unlike some sopranos).

We then turned to opera: a recitative and aria from Bellini’s La sonnambula.  Perhaps the volume was a little high in the recitative, but the execution of this and the aria was  accomplished, and the florid sections were beautifully performed.

A Poulenc song was admirably sung.  Turina followed.  I noticed here too much repetition of the opening phrase in the notes: “Turina was a Spanish composer”.  Substitute ‘Poulenc’ and ‘French’, ‘Rachmaninov’ and ‘Russian’, etc.  But the style of singing was utterly appropriate for the Spanish composer – more expansive, and with more use of portamento.  Thirlwall uses her resonators outstandingly well.

After another brief interval we were treated to ‘Quando men vo’ from Puccini’s La Bohème.  This was a very classy rendition.

A Debussy song with words by Verlaine was fun and expressive, followed by a cabaret song by Schoenberg sung with character and appropriate tone.  The final song was Natural Selection by Jake Heggie, sung with terrific style and panache.

Kieran Rayner had his turn the following day, and a sizeable audience heard him.  His printed programme featured woodland scenes in colour on the front and back, and inside the front cover, portraits of the ten composers whose works he would sing.  As well, there were a couple of photos of the singer, one of the accompanist, and two taken from productions of the operas (in one case a film production) from which he sang.  Rayner had arranged his programme under a series of headings, such as ‘Mischief and Misdirection’; ‘Reminiscence and Regret’.

Unfortunately (from my point of view), the recital was to commence half-an-hour later than had originally been advertised, meaning that I missed the second half, due to another engagement.  Thus I did not hear Mozart, Ravel (Don Quichotte à Dulcinée), Donizetti (I imagine the excerpt from L’Elisir d’Amore would have suited this singer well), Tchaikovsky (from The Queen of Spades), Finzi, Britten, and Rossini.  This delay was occasioned by the fact that the poor examiners needed a rest in their long day of hearing singers’ recitals.

I had not heard Rayner in this venue before; the acoustic here certainly amplifies the voice compared with that at St. Andrew’s on The Terrace.  Rayner was accompanied here by Bruce Greenfield.  As always, the latter judges the acoustic exactly right.

The opening aria, from Orlando by Handel, was very florid, but sung with assurance.  The low notes were very good, and the articulation splendid.

Next came a nice conceit: excerpts from Mendelssohn’s Elijah presented by a character Rayner called James Leveson-Gower (he couldn’t know that in England this name is pronounced Lewson-Gore), as if part of a television series “The Bible Alive”, this episode being entitled “Elijah’s Road to Redemption”.  Rayner assumed spectacles and notes to introduce each aria separately as his character.  These interspersed acted elements were effective, and demonstrated the singer’s acting skill.

The recitatives and arias were sung with plenty of feeling and expression; words were very clear, and Rayner used consonants very well.  Mainly, the singing was good, but occasionally there was unattractive tone, the voice nearly cracking.  Perhaps these bass arias were at times too low for the baritone range.  Overall, it was a splendid performance.  In addition to the ‘television’ introductions, there were ample notes and the titles were printed, along with a description of the stage of the story into which the arias fitted.

Next up was a taxing ‘Journey Through Grief and Love’: Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen by Gustav Mahler.  Again, notes about the composer and the song-cycle, and a complete translation of the words, provided ample apparatus to assist the listener.

I felt that most of these songs needed a slightly more restrained tone: they are poems of woeful contemplation.  The third song required a more declamatory style, which suited this singer better; the song was quite fast.  The fourth song, ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’ was a little too raw – the voice was sounding just a little tired.

There is a considerable range in these songs; perhaps it was too great for Rayner.  Nevertheless, it was accurate singing, with success particularly in his higher register, which is very fine.  Bruce Greenfield’s accompaniments were just superb.  It was with regret that I dragged myself away; I am sure the second half, particularly the more humorous or light-hearted items, would have been sung very well.