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.

 

 

Douglas Lilburn’s “Winterreise” twice-told by Roger Wilson and Bruce Greenfield

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Flowers of the Sea :  A Celebration of New Zealand Music

LILBURN – Sings Harry (words by Denis Glover) / Elegy (words by Alistair Te Ariki Campbell)

DOORLY – The Songs of the Morning

FREED – The Sea Child (words by Katherine Mansfield) / War with the Weeds (words by Keith Sinclair)

BODY – Songs My Grandmother Sang

Roger Wilson (baritone)

Bruce Greenfield (piano)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn Rd., Lower Hutt

Wednesday 5th October 2011

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

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 

One should never underestimate the power of headlines as attention-grabbers! Experience suggests that some of these printed declamations are blatantly untrue, some patently absurd, and still others somewhat far-fetched (the few that are left have the merest grain of verisimilitude).

In the present case, equating Douglas Lilburn’s 1951 song-cycle Elegy with Schubert’s Winterreise might be an impertinence for some people – in which case they will qualify the heading of this review for one or more of the three counts listed above – but at least they’ll have read this far, and might be tempted to go on, ready to “pounce on the howlers”, on further absurdities and exaggerations. I take full responsibility for the said impertinence.

Whatever the reader’s thoughts might be concerning the relative merits of both Schubert’s and Lilburn’s similarly “well-weathered” cycles, the parallels between each composer’s work are fascinating. Certainly, the theme of anguish through loss expressed over the course of a number of songs is not uncommon in the European art-song tradition, something that Douglas Lilburn, being no mean Schubertian as suggested by some of his own compositional inclinations (especially in his piano music) would have been well aware of.

Grief to breaking-point – that is what we encounter in Schubert; and the grief of loss is all too palpably expressed in Lilburn’s settings of Alistair Campbell’s Elegy poems as well. These were written by the poet to commemorate the death of a friend in a mountaineering accident among the Southern Alps in 1947. It’s true that the consequences for the poet in the latter are rather less injurious in mind or body than the death and derangement depicted in the Schubert cycles – possibly because in Elegy a young man’s death is the work’s pre-given starting-point – and a good deal of the grief and anger seems to be “shared” by the rugged New Zealand alpine landscape, dramatically beset by elemental storms, enabling a fierce and harrowing process of reconciliation in the face of a harsh natural order of things.

Giving rise to these thoughts was a pair of performances I heard recently of the Elegy cycle by baritone Roger Wilson, with pianist Bruce Greenfield. The first occasion, in Lower Hutt’s Church of St.Mark, Woburn, was apparently a hastily-organised affair in response to a cancellation of an already-scheduled concert; while the second took place in Wellington under similar circumstances, as a “filler” for another cancelled concert, this time at St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace. Incidentally, Bruce Greenfield was a last-minute ring-in at Lower Hutt, as pianist Gillian Bibby, who’d performed most of this program with Roger Wilson earlier in the year in Wanganui, had commitments elsewhere. Singer and substitute pianist had performed some of Elegy together before, but the pair had never collaborated in Lilburn’s “other” song-cycle, Sings Harry, (a 1953 setting of six of Denis Glover’s eponymous poems). As well, there were two other brackets of works, each of which had a “family connection” with the singer, and, in conclusion, Jack Body’s quixotic Songs My Grandmother Sang.

(At this point I ought to warn readers that this is going to be a longer-than-usual review – the two Lilburn song-cycles are of such importance, to “pass lightly” over them seems to me a near-criminal offence! So, I’m recording my impressions of both works and comparing the two performances as best I can.)

Having recently made a study of Lilburn’s Elegy for a radio programme I was thrilled to be able to hear the work performed “live”, especially from an artist who hadn’t recorded the cycle. Just as fascinating was the context of the performances, in each case paired with Sings Harry, a combination of contrasts that I’d discussed in conversation with a number of singers and pianists. Here, I thought each work the perfect foil for the other, both stronger and more sharply-focused by juxtaposition, as it were – even if the effect of the pairing underlined the lightweight nature of the remainder of the programme’s music.

Wisely, the pair began in each case with Sings Harry, Bruce Greenfield’s piano-playing salty and pungent from the beginning, the notes of that opening strummed like those of a guitar. Roger Wilson’s voice was of a balladeer’s of old, the words self-deprecatory but intensely noble, deserving of the moment of stillness at the end. The following “When I am old” glinted with droll humour and defiance of age, the rollicking rhythms suggesting flashes of past energies and impulses (“Girls on bicycles turning into the wind….”). I thought the Lower Hutt performance of this a little more “buccaneering” than the Wellington one, the latter seeming more wry and even detached, the mood slightly more resilient.

Pianist and singer arched “Once the days were clear” beautifully, emphasizing the writing’s structural integrity, very Bach-like in its fusion of strength and poetry. The lines rose and fell with a spacious and noble grace, though the singer’s phrase-ends in both instances seemed to be given not quite sufficient “breath” to sustain a floating quality on the last couple of notes. By contrast, energy and confidence abounded throughout the performances of”The Casual Man”, a kind of “credo” of the free spirit, the singer’s aspect very masculine and devil-may-care, voice and piano managing the “throwaway” mood to perfection.

Occasionally performed on its own as an “encore” item, the achingly beautiful “The Flowers of the Sea” sets the “then against now” of the hero in a context of timelessness. The voice points the contrasts of youthful strength and aged compliance, and the volatile passions of former times with the resignation of experience; while the piano delineates the omnipresent rise and fall of the tides and the calls of the sea-birds throughout. Roger Wilson made much of the “youth-and-age” progressions, every line’s meaning given its proper emphasis and gravitas. In the Lower Hutt performance the voice’s final sustained note sounded to my ears a shade flattened throughout “….for the tide comes and the tide goes, and the wind blows…”, whereas in Wellington, the line seemed truer-toned, but not quite as emotionally charged.

For a long while the only commercial recording available of Sings Harry was on a Kiwi Records EP featuring tenor Terence Finnegan and pianist Frederick Page; and that performance burned itself into the collective musical consciousness of New Zealand music aficionados, retaining people’s affection (and allegiance) for the last fifty-odd years, notwithstanding the subsequent appearance of one or two competitors. Despite some idiosyncratic touches on the part of both singer and pianist, their performance of the final song, “I remember” seemed to me to capture not only the childhood reminiscences of a still-vigorous old man, but the ambiences of those times and since – “…and a boy lay still, by the river running down – sings Harry” – if a more matter-of-fact delineation of the passing of childhood than Dylan Thomas’s in his poem “Fern Hill”, it’s one that’s just as telling in its own way.

Like Frederick Page was able to do, Bruce Greenfield observed the staccato patterning of the piano part without sacrificing its warmth and resonance, the notes “hanging together” rather than picked out drily and unatmospherically. The golden tones this song sets in motion always remind me of a Don Binney painting, “Sun shall not burn thee by day, nor moon by night…” the light and heat warming the far-off days brought to mind by the poetry, sparking further memories of uncles leaving the farm to go to war or look for a place in the sun elsewhere. Roger Wilson’s “My father held to the land” had a stirring “Where are the Yeomen – the Yeomen of England?” kind of declamatory force, contrasting this with a boy’s delight in growing up “like a shaggy steer, and as swift as a hare”, both sentiments vividly and first-handedly realized in each performance. How affecting, then, the singer’s distancing of his tones at “But that was long ago…” on each occasion both musicians drawing us into the world of dreams and “child of air” evocations, and leaving us there, a cherishable moment inviolate in the memory…….

Roger Wilson introduced each of the cycles at each recital, thoughtfully sparing us some of the end-to-end impact of contrast between the two. Lilburn’s earlier setting of Elegy is anything but elegiac at the outset, a savage, biting evocation of a storm, the piano angrily preparing the way for the singer’s declamations, the voice here wonderfully sepulchral in places such as the line “whose colossal grief is stone”. The following “Now he is dead’, funeral-march-like at the outset, builds the rugged landscape rock by rock, the voice rolling majestically up and over the phrase “the storm-blackened lake” (somehow making a more visceral impact at Lower Hutt, though the scene’s wild grandeur was vividly presented on both occasions). Similarly, the brooding wildness of “Now sleeps the gorge” grew inexorably towards the majestic “O this bare place…” both musicians drawing on elemental energies and impulses, and washing the sounds over our sensibilities like an ocean wave over a swimmer.

There’s little physical respite for both singer and pianist throughout the cycle – though “Reverie”, with its JS Bach-like opening (as pianist Margaret Nielsen pointed out to me, with a pair of prominent oboes in thirds in the piano part) plots a course through rivulets of uneasy calm, briefly rising at the end with “wind’s disconsolate cry”. Roger Wilson again delivered the great surgings whole-heartedly, though the voice sounded curiously disembodied at the beginning, seemingly reluctant to “fill out” the tones, and making for a somewhat bleached effect. Incisive, glittering tones from Bruce Greenfield’s piano introduced “Driftwood”, all energy and volatility at the beginning, the singer’s diction clear but avoiding self-consciousness, making the poetry really work instead of over-pointing its slightly “arch” quality. The low notes really told, driving the energies inward to dark, almost sinister places, establishing a properly tragic mood at the end.

The last three songs move us more closely to the spirit of the young climber whose life was lost so tragically – though still making reference to landscape features, the language integrates the setting more readily with aspects of a personality – “a storm-begotten grace /and a great gentleness” in “Wind and Rain”, for example, and “the mind like the spring tide / beautiful and calm” in the final “The Laid-out body”. And if opinions differ regarding the implications of “bright flesh that made my black nights sweet”, the overall abiding impression is of a youthful intensity of feeling radiating through Campbell’s language – one that Lilburn’s overwhelming and full-blooded musical response to matches most appropriately.

There’s something ritualistic about key episodes in each of these final songs – there’s the quiet resignation of “Wind and Rain”, the remarkably agitated “Farewell”, whose pianistic convolutions repeatedly dash themselves against a steady, remorseless vocal line, and the noble declamations of “The Laid-out body” (the latter something of a poetic “conceit” as the young climber’s body was unfortunately lost by the recovery team down a crevasse). Throughout these and their contrasting sequences, the music’s beauty, nobility, anguish and resignation was conveyed in rich quantities by both musicians, each of the two performances carrying its own particular distinction. Surprisingly, I found the earlier Lower Hutt occasion more involving, despite (or perhaps partly because of) the vicissitudes of the venue, such as the less-than-responsive piano. But, especially in the case of Elegy, each performance did ample justice to a work whose stature, for me, grows with every hearing.

Had the concerts presented only the two Lilburn song cycles, I would have had no complaint – but we were generously treated to some lighter fare by way of contrast to the coruscations we’d just experienced, which was a reasonable enough scheme. The first of two groups of items with which the singer had a family connection was called The Songs of the Morning, referring to a collection of songs written by Roger Wilson’s grandfather, Gerald Dooley, intended for performance during a sea voyage to the Antarctic in 1902, on a ship (the SY “Morning”) upon which he was the 3rd Officer.

The ship’s engineer, J.D.Morrison wrote the words for most of the songs, two of which, “The Ice King” and “Yuss”, were performed for us here, with considerable gusto. The first, very British and patriotic-sounding, redolent of Sullivan, went with a fine swing, pianistic drum-beats and all; while the second “Yuss” was a proper British Tar’s song, complete with sailor’s accent, and quirky, almost Schumannesque piano part.

Dorothy Freed (1919-2000) a prominent music librarian and composer, was the aforementioned Gerald Doorly’s daughter, and therefore Roger Wilson’s aunt. Her song The Sea Child won an APRA prize in 1957, and some time later was recorded by Margaret Medlyn and Bruce Greenfield, on Kiwi-Pacific SLD-110. Compared with what I remembered of Medlyn’s lyrical-voiced rendition, Wilson’s voice on both outings seemed to me too dark and earthy, and even occasionally unsure of pitch (the vocal line is beautiful but challenging). Better was the second song, Freed’s setting of Keith Sinclair’s War with the Weeds, a stirring march redolent of endless combat and eventual compromise with nature. I found the words not ideally clear, but the singer conveyed enough of the sense of things for the work to make an appropriate impression.

To finish, we in the audience were given the opportunity to fill our lungs afresh and join in with a few choruses from three of Jack Body’s Songs My Grandmother Sang. Before we began, Bruce Greenfield cautioned the audience not to take any notice of his accompaniments, describing them for us as “quite mad” – though anybody familiar with Benjamin Britten’s folksong settings wouldn’t have been too perturbed by Body’s “exploratory counterpoints”. I think we enjoyed the third song, “Daisy Bell” the best, as much because of hearing the rarely-performed verses belonging to the chorus that most people would readily recognize, thus:

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do,

I’m half crazy, all for the love of you;

It won’t be a stylish marriage – I can’t afford a carriage!

But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two!”

But ultimately it was the pairing of the two Lilburn works that I thought gave these concerts such distinction – especially as they were performed with the kind of conviction that makes the stuff of musical history. Is that yet another headline I can feel coming on?……..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bevy of intensities – Ensemble Liaison with Wilma Smith

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand 2011

HAYDN – Piano Trio in G Major “Gypsy Rondo”

BRAHMS – Clarinet Trio in A Minor Op.114

MESSIAEN – Quartet for the End of Time

Ensemble Liaison:

Timothy Young (piano) / Svetlana Bogosavljevic (‘cello) / David Griffiths (clarinet)

– with Wilma Smith (violin)

Town Hall, Wellington

Saturday 29th October 2011

Contrast was very much the going order for this concert, given by the Australian group Ensemble Liaison, with violinist Wilma Smith, in the Wellington Town Hall. The group made light of the rather over-generous acoustic and voluminous spaces of the venue, with some extremely focused and well-projected playing throughout the varied program. As well, the ear soon adjusted to the prevailing ambience, so that the sounds soon became as “normal” as at any concert.

One comes to expect certain levels of musicianship and technical proficiency from visiting artists, and the members of Ensemble Liaison delivered handsomely on all counts. Timothy Young’s piano-playing combined a soloist’s presence and focus with a chamber musician’s sensitivity throughout the evening. He was admirably partnered in all three works by ‘cellist Svetlana Bogosavljevic, sonorous and supple-toned, from the largely continuo-like underpinnings of the Haydn Trio to the fractured intensities of Messiaen’s work. And clarinettist David Griffiths charmed us at first with his expressive sensitivities in Brahms, before pinning back our ears with playing of searing surety in the Messiaen Quartet.

Joining them for this series of performances in New Zealand was Wilma Smith, well-known here for her work as concertmaster with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and as leader and a founding member of the New Zealand String Quartet. She brought what a friend of mine described at the interval as “warmth and clarity” to the music, as well as an experienced chamber musician’s sensibility to the interactions with her colleagues.

Before the concert began Chamber Music New Zealand boss Euan Murdoch welcomed the audience and highlighted some aspects of next year’s programme, making particular reference to the visit by illustrious Italian ensemble I Musici, as well as that by the equally renowned Takács Quartet. A further announcement came from Wilma Smith, telling us of her wish to dedicate the concert to the memory of a recently deceased former colleague of hers from the NZSO, veteran trumpeter Gil Evans.

Haydn’s well-known G Major Piano Trio, named “Gypsy Rondo” on account of its exotically-rhythmed finale, enabled musicians and audience to”get the pitch of the hall”, the resonances bringing out Haydn’s delightful “al fresco” echoes of the forest and the hunt throughout the first movement’s variations – I wanted the opening major-key sequence repeated, so felicitous was the playing and the sense of delightful rapport between the musicians. Though the ‘cello had practically nothing thematic to do throughout, Svetlana Bogosavljevic’s playing warmed the harmonies beautifully, enabling the violin to sing and the piano to sparkle with even more sweetness and élan. Only in parts of the finale did I feel the acoustic robbed the playing of some of its finesse of detail – some of the rapidly moving figurations were but a blur, though the skin-and-hair “gypsy” sequences came across with plenty of temperament, the whole delightfully paprika-flavoured.

From rustic exuberance we moved to a more autumnal mood with Brahms’s Op.114 Clarinet Trio, the first of several works written for the famed clarinettist Richard Mühlefeld, whom the composer had heard play in the Meiningen Orchestra. David Griffiths introduced the work, making reference to Mühlefeld and his skills, and to the beauties of these later works. On the showing of his subsequent playing in the Trio I would have been happy to have heard Griffiths play all of them, including the two sonatas, in a single concert – perhaps another time! What impressed me was the beautiful transparency of his tone, the playing catching the music’s “wind-blown” quality in a number of places. With Svetlana Bogosavljevic’s dulcet ‘cello tones leading the way into many of the melodic contourings, the music’s emotive impulse was constantly maintained, Timothy Young’s piano-playing contributing a nice sense of fantastical suggestion to the proceedings.

The Adagio here delivered a beautifully-voiced dialogue between clarinet and ‘cello . Griffiths had pointed out beforehand that he and the ‘cellist were a married couple – but even Oscar Wilde, with his “washing one’s clean linen in public” remark, couldn’t have helped but approve, with such felicitous music-making on display! As well, the third movement’s ritualistic waltz-like impulses produced in this performance something at once stirring (those wonderfully ‘”arched” phrases, like uplifted festoons of roses) and surprisingly tender. True, there were passionately-expressed moments in the finale, here given full voice by the performers, but the over-riding impression was one of light-and-shade, the composer seeming more readily to trust his lyrical instincts in these later works than in much of his earlier chamber music. Upholder of the classical tradition he may have been, but the aspect and mood of some of Brahms’ later works present more lines of connection with Romanticism than perhaps the composer himself might have cared to admit.

Naturally most of the concert’s focus fell on the second half’s single work, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Though by now a twentieth-century chamber music classic, the work had eluded me up to the time of this concert, so I had no previous experiences, save some knowledge of the composer’s other music, to bring to the occasion. Reading some of the background to the work’s composition certainly heightened my expectation of hearing something that was uniquely special – and on that score I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Even so, there was for me something unsettling about it all which took me a while to come to grips with, more of which anon.

As is well known, the work was written while Messiaen was interned in a German prisoner-of war camp in Görlitz, in the Eastern German province of Silesia. Thanks to a fortuitous amalgam of humanity and circumstance on the part of both the composer’s fellow prisoners and some of his German captors, Messiaen was able to write a work that gave a lasting voice to both his own creative personality and to a representation of a moment in time interwoven by numerous strands of indomitable human spirit. In later years the composer tended to “mythologize” the circumstances surrounding the work’s first performance, exaggerating the audience numbers and the parlous state of the musical instruments. Evidence from other sources suggests that the work’s gestation and completion was as much the result of collective co-operation as of individual genius. In fact the composer’s German captors went out of their way to facilitate the work’s composition and performance, giving the music a kind of wider reference to collective human empathy, alongside the composer’s own purposes.

The “End of Time” reference by the composer in the title, while relating to to the Apocalyptic imagery contained in the Revelations of St.John seems also to illustrate in musical language the composer’s own attitude towards time – “…not as flow, but as pre-existing, revealing itself to human temporality in a series of brilliant unalike instants…”. We therefore got not a Berlioz-like or Verdi-like Apocalypse, but a more abstractly-conceived and quirkily-expressed outpouring involving elements of plainchant, birdsong and ambient resonance. In between episodes of transcendent stillness and beauty there were occasionally fierce irruptions, and dances that swung along irregular rhythmic trajectories in disarmingly unexpected ways.

It was challenging as a “long-music” concept – ironically, perhaps less so in today’s world, where the constantly-changing mini-byte is the expected mode of communication – but especially to those of us brought up on Aristotelian-like unities of dramatic action and narrative flow within a time-framework. This music simply didn’t do any of that – each of the Quartet’s eight movements had an almost stand-alone independence which had little to do with flow within time. To me there seemed at the time (!) an undermining lack of ostensible organic unity about the piece, completely at odds with the idea of the whole being greater than the sum, etc….later, after my brain had had time to catch up and reorganize its expectations, I began to feel more comfortable in retrospect with what I’d heard, accepting more readily the composer’s idea of time as “pre-existing being” encompassing our “human temporality”.

What I instantly appreciated was the playing of each musician – true, my being able to say that I thought the third-movement clarinet solo “Abyss of the Birds” was a performance highlight, in a sense defines my problem with the piece’s overall unity, but perhaps it equally points to a deficiency of analytical brain-power on my part. In any case, the movement seemed the “dark centre” of the work, the solo instrument contrasting the deep “sadness and weariness” of the ages with the “stars and rainbows and songs” of the birds. Incredible playing from David Griffiths – his instrument produced sounds from the bowels of being, as it were. Comparable moments included the fifth movement ‘cello solo, “In praise of the eternity of Jesus”, Svetlana Bogosavljevic’s beautifully rapt ‘cello playing matching intensities with her husband’s, right to the piece’s held-note conclusion. And though a couple of Wilma Smith’s violin notes weren’t pitched at exactly their mark, her playing’s overall purity and sweetness carried the day to breathtaking effect throughout the work’s final “In praise of the immortality of Jesus”. Here, as in the other movements requiring piano, Timothy Young provided all the delicacy, energy and deep sonority the music asked for.

We in the audience were, by the end, properly caught by the music’s power of communication and enthrallment, and showed our appreciation of the ensemble’s achievement accordingly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delight and surprise – Piers Lane at Upper Hutt’s Classical Expressions

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Piers Lane at Classical Expressions

FIELD – Nocturnes: No.5 in B-flat H. 37 / No 10 in E Minor H.46B / No.11 in E-flat H.56A

SCRIABIN – 24 Preludes Op.11 / CHOPIN – Waltzes 1-17

Genesis Energy Theatre,

Expressions Arts and Entertainment Centre, Upper Hutt

Tuesday 25th October 2011

Though Piers Lane has been a frequent visitor to New Zealand I’d not heard him play before attending this recital. Naturally I was keen to confirm in my own mind the good things I’d heard various people report about his playing; and the recital’s first half seemed amply to confirm this impression. In the case of each composer (I knew some of Scriabin’s Piano Sonatas, but not his Preludes) the music was new to me, and the pianist’s unfailingly beautiful touch and richly-wrought inner voicing throughout each of the pieces seemed by turns to suit their character to perfection. But as can sometimes happen, the concert’s second half proved somewhat disappointing, compared with the first, as if by some strangely alchemic means everything had been altered. We were given seventeen of the Chopin Waltzes, the pianist breaking them up into groups and talking to his audience about salient points in the music before each bracket. To my surprise, Piers Lane took what appeared to me a kind of gung-ho approach to the music, somewhat at odds with the quote by Schumann reproduced in the program – “Aristocratic from the first note to the last”. Whatever was in the pianist’s mind, it was only intermittently aristocratic – some of it was presented with what seemed like an air of over-familiarity, even impatience in places, as if the music’s jewelled elegance had worn thin, exposing a kind of rough-and-ready base metal.

As Piers Lane worked his way through his groupings of the waltzes (I thought his spoken commentaries before each bracket interesting but made too frequently), the music’s elegance and poise seemed to gradually creep back into some of the playing, especially in the slower, more melancholic waltzes. Occasionally, one of the quicker ones, too, would “go” with a hiss and a roar, justifying Lane’s very direct approach – though I got the feeling that in such instances that particular item had been better “prepared”. An example was the famous “three-against-two” Waltz in A-flat Major Op.42, where Lane actually captured a lovely gossamer quality at speed, and delicately brought out the cross-rhythms in a thoroughly “finished” way, characterizing both quicker and slower sections of the music with enviable fluency. Another instance was the famous “Minute” Waltz, again played with plenty of technical aplomb, enabling the piece’s vertiginous quality its head while keeping its poise – lovely playing. Yet another success was the Waltz I’d first encountered in the ballet “Les Sylphides”, the C-sharp Minor Op.64 No.2, the sinuous melody of the “answering” measures replying to the wistful opening with ever-increasing energy and suggestiveness.I liked also the recitative-like middle section, very “juicily” characterized, before the pianist returned us to the world of doubt and gentle resolve which began the piece.

It will be gleaned from all of this that, punctuating my general air of disappointment throughout the second half of the concert there were occasional delights. Still, my overall impression remained of a kind of generalized and in places insufficiently-honed response to the music. However much an interpreter plays these pieces they ought not to sound routine, or, alternatively “beefed up” energy-wise at the expense of elegance. This was what seemed to happen with some of the better-known Waltzes, such as the much-loved Op.Post.E Minor work, the agitations conjured up by the pianist resulting in an unseemly scramble through the opening episode (Chopin wrote plenty of musical agitation into the notes themselves, which speaks when the piece is played with precision and clarity). The G-flat major Op.70 No.1 which followed I thought skittery and charmless, as though the pianist feared any charge of sentimentality in his approach, while the E Major Op.18 (another “Les Sylphides” introduction for me) suffered from the same brittleness of manner – energies generalized and details insufficiently polished.

Far better to concentrate on the first half of the pianist’s recital, which I thought was splendid, both as a conception and in execution, from beginning to end. Beginning with music by the Irish-born virtuoso pianist John Field, the man credited with writing the first “Nocturnes” for solo piano, Piers Lane played three such pieces, each of which seemed to strongly anticipate the more famous Nocturnes by Chopin. The pianist gave us a short spoken introduction to the music and to its composer, after which he delighted us by illustrating his remarks with playing of the utmost sensitivity. His sound-world for this music seemed to be one which was perfectly wrought between the hands, a richly-sonorous bass working in tandem with a singing right-hand line.

While not as adventurous harmonically as Chopin’s, Field’s pieces certainly had a “stand-alone” quality, the first (No.5 in B-flat) beginning with a melody which could have easily been written by the young Schumann, as Chopin, and featuring also a gentle sequence of Mendelssohn-like chords – a true precursor of the Romantic Age. The second Nocturne, No.10 in E Minor, featured a guitar-like accompaniment of a Chopin-like melody, with gentle flourishes at the end, Lane creating a nicely atmospheric soundscape. No.11 in E-flat brought the hands more closely together, melody and argpeggiated accompaniment almost merging as one in places, except where the melody ascends an octave. The music has a middle section which borders on heroic emotion, the right hand’s strong, deliberate line briefly courting glory, and then becalming again. Field’s intensities seemed to me on this showing to be melodic rather than harmonic, the line curved and shaped over the trajectories of endless arpeggiations, progressions which a lesser pianist might have responded to with some impatience – instead of, as here, sounded by Piers Lane with an ebb and flow of subtly-varied intensities.

The earliest music written by the Russian symbolist composer Alexander Scriabin (born in 1872) owes a good deal to Chopin – though Scriabin’s set of 24 Preludes Op.11 wasn’t completed until 1896, No.4 in E Minor dates from 1888, and is among the earliest of the composer’s surviving works. Scriabin organized his set along the lines of Chopin’s Preludes, a cycle of successive major tonalities a fifth apart on the sharp and flat side of the key of C, each piece paired with its relative minor. While a number of the pieces suggest allegiances to various influences upon the composer – Schumann in a number of the pieces, such as the questioning Allegretto A Minor (No.2), Chopin in the Lento E Minor (No.4) and the Andante Cantabile D Major (No.5), Liszt in the Misterioso B-flat Minor (No.16), and Rachmaninov in the massively grand Affetuoso E-flat Major (No.19) and the final D Minor Presto (No.24) – there are occasional precursors of the mature Scriabin, such as the ecstatic outpourings found in the opening Vivace C Major (No.1)and the Andante D-sharp Minor (No.10), and the pictorial contrasts of calm and storm which characterize the Andante G-sharp Minor (No.12).

I couldn’t have imagined a more atmospheric, richly-conceived performance of these works as Piers Lane gave us – what impressed me most of all (confirmed by a friend sitting elsewhere in the audience whom I spoke with at the interval) was the unerring focus of the pianist’s touch throughout, creating tones whose translucence allowed both clarity and colour at all times. Looking through my notes recalls my constant delight at the SOUND of it all, and the ease with which Lane evoked the music’s myriads of characterful moods, and, just as readily, let each one go in favour of newly-formed impressions.

There were too many moments worthy of specific mention, except that, as stated above I was struck by how his beautifully-coloured musical focus brought out in Scriabin’s youthful pieces what seemed to be something of the spirit of Schumann’s quixotic world, echoing the latter’s questioning, ambivalent vignettes of emotion in places such as the B-flat Major Andante (No.21) and its companion, the Lento G Minor (No.22). But the important thing was Lane’s ability to sustain the musical argument throughout the whole of the set, like a journey through an intensely poetic landscape, with a guide whose sensibilities enabled the music to speak with its full range of expressive force.

I understand Piers Lane has recorded all of Scriabin’s Preludes (he wrote numerous sets of them following this one, totalling nearly ninety individual pieces) on a two-disc Hyperion issue, which, in the wake of this recital, I shall be sorely tempted to investigate. The pianist’s Chopin-playing remains a puzzle, to my mind, but one I’m happy for the moment to put aside in favour of my recollections of his Field and Scriabin, which for me were this recital’s very great pleasures.

New Zealand School of Music and Symphony Orchestra players join in rapturous performances

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSM Hunter Concert Series: Schubert’s String Quintet in C, D 956  and Tchaikovsky’s sextet, Souvenir de Florence, Op 70

Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Martin Riseley (violins), Julia Joyce and Donald Maurice (violas), Andrew Joyce and Inbal Megiddo (cellos)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Thursday 20 October, 7.30pm

I often feel, as I sit at the computer after getting home from a concert, that all I want to say is something like: ‘this evening several gifted musicians, after conscientious rehearsing, gave beautiful performances of marvellous music – perhaps an acknowledged masterpiece – that has been handed down to us by scores of music lovers, composed 100, 200, 300 ago by gifted composers who were intent above all on giving musical stimulation and pleasure to their audiences”.

And it often seems churlish and inappropriate to have listened with such deliberate critical attention, seeking flaws, that I would feel the need to remark on some minor defect, possibly merely a difference in tempo, in dynamic shifts or emphasis, or some aspect that could perhaps be compared unfavourably with another performance.

Schubert’s Quintet in C is such a sublime piece that it can withstand quite a wide variety of approaches to its performance, even performances that have distinct shortcomings. The music is that much greater than any individual performance.

The music that one heard early in one’s life tends to remain clearly connected with the place and circumstances of its hearing, and that is probably true for most people’s first hearing of this quintet. For me it was at the house of a friend I’d made in Stage I Latin classes at Victoria University in 1953. Though it moved me deeply, I didn’t then have enough breadth of musical experience really to realize what a masterpiece it was, an understanding that has arisen over many years.

On Thursday evening, the performance by these musicians – three NZSO principals and three leading School of Music faculty members, arguably among the finest players of their instruments in the country – was so deeply felt and generally so technically admirable that the very minor smudges had no impact on me at all; in fact in the face of such beautiful playing, it seemed an impertinence even to have registered them.

Schubert’s greatest works are full of melody that seems to flow endlessly, and in such a natural, organic manner to create music whose structural complexity seems to have sprung fully formed from the mind of the composer, yet at the same time it is of breathtaking simplicity. One of its features is the equality accorded to each of the five instruments. In earlier chamber music, the first violin usually had a leading role, enjoyed most of the tunes in their shapeliest state and was given most of the opportunities for virtuosity. But with Schubert the tunes move from one player to another, reflecting the French Revolution’s égalité, and the tunes themselves seem easily confused with what might otherwise be called accompaniments.

The Adagio is the most wondrous movement where, after several minutes of intense elegiac beauty, an agitated phase arises, led by tormented pulses from the two cellos that seems to express determination, against all grief,  to live life to the full.

The Scherzo gives prominence to some hard bowing by the two cellos, and strong rhythms, but the Trio, which usually offers something of a rhythmic and tonal contrast returned the music to the deeply melancholy spirit of the Adagio, interesting that the main theme is played by viola and cello – Julia and Andrew Joyce – in a duet that one felt, by just listening to the rapturous beauty that the pair produced, was to be intruding on a very private communion.

I always wonder why we need a last movement, usually fast and happy, of a deeply meditative piece like this; is Schubert merely conforming with convention? But, apart from providing the structural counterweight to the first movement, it justifies its place by means of its spirited energy and the accomplished fugal passages that somehow produce a sense of intellectual and emotional depth.

The concert was given the title, 3+2+1. What did this mean? I guess, the three NZSO players, plus the two instrumental teachers from the School of Music who took part in the Schubert and finally, the addition of violist and professor at the school, Donald Maurice, as the sixth voice in the Tchaikovsky.

The front of the programme was the striking reproduction of a make-believe scene, a painting by Domenico Mileto called Trompe l’oeil, depicting Florence, through a Renaissance arch with the Duomo prominent in the middle distance.

Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence suffers somewhat, especially in the minds of chamber music devotees, from the lingering notion that Tchaikovsky’s melodic fecundity has to indicate a less serious composer, and less capable of complex, deep musical manipulations.  But its performance in the company of Schubert ought to dispel such ideas, for in Schubert’s no more than 15 years, not even Tchaikovsky created such a huge body of beautiful, melodious music.

Players changed places for this: Martin Riseley now took the first violin position and Inbal Megiddo and Andrew Joyce changed places. The Souvenir is indeed so replete with gorgeous lyrical melody that at times seems almost surreal, but it certainly reflects the composer’s love of Italy.

This piece seemed to lend itself more to solo highlights, some long-breathed melodies like Julia Joyce’s big tune in the first movement, some more in the nature of accompanying motifs such as Donald Maurice’s a little later. Martin Riseley’s vigorous and delightful playing of a prominent melody enlivened the first movement; his playing was showcased again in the second movement, against pizzicato from the other instruments, who soon pick up their bows. Andrew Joyce had another beautiful solo melody to himself before it was taken up by Riseley and Maurice again. The third movement, marked Allegretto rather than Scherzo till a sudden Vivace episode, was played brilliantly, in high spirits; but the dance-like music was in the Finale – Allegro con brio e vivace – which offered lively solo opportunities to all players. This was so brilliantly delivered that the audience erupted with long applause and even some shouting, that recalled the six players four times.

 

 

Intelligent programme of well played chamber music at Lower hutt

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wieniawski: Reverie for viola and piano
Bruch: Nos. 1, 5 (Rumanian Melody), 6 (Nocturne) and 2 from Eight Pieces, Op.83 (originally for clarinet, viola and piano)
Brahms: Sonata for viola and piano, Op.120 no.2, in E flat major
Piazolla: Tango Primavera Portena

Victoria Jaenecke, viola; Martin Jaenecke, violin; Rachel Thomson, piano

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 19 October, 12.15pm

A superb concert by professional musicians, with an interesting and varied programme greeted those who attended at St. Mark’s Church.  It was a considerably smaller attendance than that at Upper Hutt the previous lunchtime.

One of the features was the perfect balance between the instruments.  The lid of the piano was fully up, but there was carpet on the floor.  Whether it was the carpet, the skill of the pianist, or a bit of both, the larger instrument never dominated the others, but neither was it too reticent.

Victoria Jaenecke and Rachel Thomson started proceedings with the Reverie.  It began slowly, in the minor key.  This was an attractive piece, exceedingly well played with great sonority.  A lovely middle section led to a return to the sombre tones of the opening.

The players were joined by Martin Jaenecke for the series of Bruch pieces.  Martin’s violin tone is warm and seductive, and matches the viola well.  The second piece had figures of separated chords on the piano, against a low, solemn melody on viola, before moving into a more lilting section for all three instruments.  Here, as elsewhere, the players demonstrated superb ensemble.

The Nocturne, no.6, commenced with viola and piano.  This movement was much more square in form, but tuneful and pleasing, becoming passionate as it progressed, finally subsiding into a dreamy ending.

The final piece played (no.2) began with the piano, then the viola entered.  The music became faster, yet it was still eloquent.

Brahms’s sonata may be more familiar in the version for clarinet, but the viola version was very attractive in these hands.  The sunny opening movement, allegro amabile, featured a complex piano part, ably performed by Rachel Thomson, and a lovely coda.

The second movement, appassionato ma non troppo – allegro, was faster than I have previously heard it, but did not seem to suffer for that.  The solemn middle section transposed the opening theme most effectively.   The finale, andante con moto – allegro non troppo, delivered an imposing opening theme, with chords.  Rapid lilting passages followed.  The allegro seemed somewhat troppo to me, especially for the piano, but this gave a brilliant ending.

Throughout the entire concert I may have heard four or five ‘bum’ notes.  This was music-making of a high order.

The final item was an arrangement of a tango by Piazolla.  Beginning with a violin solo accompanied by pizzicato on the viola, it was lively, with off-beat rhythms and interesting harmonies.  Pizzicato ended the first section, then a more serious melody was introduced on the viola, soon to be joined by the violin.  Harmonic uncertainties and chromaticism led to a sprightly, even jazzy section to conclude.  It evoked the whirling, twirling dancers, and their final gesture and pose.

Apart from the Brahms sonata, the music was unfamiliar to me.  The programme was so intelligently constructed and the items so unfailingly well played, that it maintained the attention and enjoyment throughout.

The audience was informed that next Wednesday’s recital will see eight musicians perform Mendelssohn’s wonderful Octet (although that is not what is advertised in the flyer circulated early in the year); something to look forward to.

 

 

Superb recital from NZSM voice students at Upper Hutt

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Arias from opera; songs

New Zealand School of Music: Vocal students of Richard Greager, Jenny Wollerman and Flora Edwards, with Mark Dorrell (piano)

Rotary Foyer, Expressions Arts and Entertainment Centre, Upper Hutt

Tuesday 18 October 2011, 2pm

This was the last of a monthly series of free concerts given by performance students from the New Zealand School of Music, that began in March.  It attracted a full house, there being over 100 people present.  All the singers presented their items with poise and confidence, and most were formally dressed.  Up to the last four items, all except three were from opera.

The foyer has a fine acoustic, and both pianist and singers seemed able to perform well there.  There is a café sharing the space, and this meant a certain amount of chatter and clatter, not to mention delicious aromas.  However, it was never very loud, nor was there constant noise, so on balance, it made a pleasant, somewhat informal venue – more literally chamber music than is usually the case.

Due to road-works near the venue and the resulting traffic jam, and also the paucity of parking in the daytime, I missed the first two items, unfortunately.  They were Handel’s ‘Ombrai mai fu’ from Xerxes, sung by Thomas Atkins, and ‘Che faro senza Euridice’ from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, performed by Emily Simcox.  These two arias would have made a pleasingly familiar start to the concert.

Thomas Barker gave a spirited introduction to his Mozart aria ‘Non piu andrai’ from Le Nozze di Figaro, sang it in like vein, and acted it out with bravado.  The same composer’s ‘Il mio tesoro’ from Don Giovanni was performed by Thomas Atkins.  While he had plenty of force, he also had a lovely tone, and skilled negotiation of the florid passages.

Angelique Macdonald sang Gabriel Fauré’s song Clair de lune, which she introduced.  Her French language was very good, but her voice was rather shrill at the top, for this acoustic, while it might be fine in an opera house.

Smetana’s ‘O jaký žal’ from The Bartered Bride was next, sung by Amelia Ryman.  This singer has a powerful voice, but it was beautifully controlled.  She gave a very dramatic performance of the aria.

Thomas O’Brien performed ‘Kuda, kuda’ from Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky.  His Russian language sounded good, and the aria was competently sung, but the voice needs to grow somewhat in size to sing this aria as it deserves.  The top of the range was a little insecure, but the singer paid great attention to detail.

Still in Russia were two songs by Rachmaninov, sung by Angelique Macdonald.  The printed programme gave the English translations of the titles: ‘Before my window’ and ‘How fair [is?] this place’.  There were some fine, soft top notes, and the singer varied her voice attractively.  She put these songs over disarmingly.  However, her breathing was noisy at times.

Verdi was represented by the well-known ‘Questa o quella’ from Rigoletto, sung by Thomas Atkins.  This really suited the singer’s voice, which has developed since I heard him some months ago.  He has a ringing top, and his production of the words was excellent.  This was a most satisfying performance.

Angelique Macdonald sang again, this time a famous aria from Turandot by Puccini: ‘Signore ascolta’, which she introduced.  This is her forte – in more than one sense.  It was a very good rendition, but she needs a little more mellowness and warmth in the voice.

It was pleasing to hear a New Zealand song: a poem of James K. Baxter’s simply titled Song by the composer, Anthony Ritchie.  It was thoughtfully sung by Amelia Ryman.  The words were very clear indeed, the tone was gorgeous, and all in all it was an absolutely lovely realisation of a skilled composition.

Cole Porter’s song Miss Otis Regrets brought a laugh from the audience at the end, but Emily Simcox sang it too ‘straight’.  She has a beautiful, natural voice, but there was insufficient expression, and she made the song seem almost routine.  Words were clear, but I think a lady in society would say ‘today’, not ‘tiday’.  The song cried out for more vocal and facial expression.

Schönberg (Claude-Michel, not Arnold) was the composer of the popular Les Miserables, from which Thomas Barker sang ‘Stars’, with flair and aplomb.  It was a strong and impassioned performance, in which he used his voice appropriately for the style of music.  He was undoubtedly more flamboyant than the other performers, but has a good voice to go with it.

The concert ended less successfully, with a trio (Ryman, Macdonald and O’Brien) from Mozart’s Mass in C minor, K.427: ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’.  While most of the items performed would have been written for orchestra, somehow it didn’t seem to matter that a piano was used in the solos, but it did in the Mass excerpt.  O’Brien’s voice not being as strong as those of the women, meant the trio was not well balanced, and coming at the end of a recital of secular songs and arias, it did not fit well.

Nevertheless, overall this was a superb recital, demonstrating the talents and skills of the students, and the excellence of the teaching they receive.

 

 

Boutique Opera does “the Jones boy” proud

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Edward German: Tom Jones

Boutique Opera

Directed by Alison Hodge

Arranger and Musical Director, Michael  Vinten

Wellington High School Hall,

15 October, 7.30pm

Apparently there were five different scores for German’s light opera, premiered in Manchester in 1907.  Since it became so popular, it was performed frequently, the last version being from 1913; a concert version for performance by choral societies (sung by the Orpheus Choir’s predecessor in the Hutt Valley in 1953 and 1957).

Michael Vinten has taken the music from various versions of  Tom Jones, including film and television versions, introducing situations from Henry Fielding’s novel of 1749, which were not included in German’s work.  He has done a great job!

The result was a seamless, fast-moving entertainment, involving both speaking (some with music in the background) and singing.  Though there was no set, and little in the way of props, the costumes were excellent, and the whole production gave evidence of much rehearsal and learning.  However, mention must be made of the delightful hobby-horses used in the second Act.

A seven-piece orchestra, including piano, worked hard and played well, though occasionally too loud for the singers, or more particularly the speakers, especially when the latter were at the orchestra end of the performing space.  The pianist was Ken Ryan, whom I recently heard performing at the other end of the musical spectrum, as a baritone soloist with The Tudor Consort.

The hall’s stage was virtually not used, the action taking place ‘in the round’, with rows of chairs (hard plastic school chairs, not designed for sitting on for two and a half hours) on each side, the rear ones raised on platforms.

Described as “A Musical Farce in Two Acts”, this was a considerable undertaking for the producers, Lesley and Ian Graham.  There was a cast of seven main characters and a chorus of 16, many of whom undertook minor solo roles also.

There was a lot of intrigue, sub-plot and counter-plot for the audience to keep track of; programme notes under the headings ‘The Plot’ and ‘The Music’, plus a list of the songs and a cast list, helped a lot.

The show commenced with talking (sometimes with musical background), the cast explaining the situation and the roles – all in character as they did this.  Finally, Roger Wilson began the singing, with chorus.  As Squire Western, father of Sophia, the heroine (Rose Blake) he was, as always, characterful and convincing, with an English country accent appropriate to Somerset, where the story was set.

We then met the ‘West Country Lad’, Tom Jones, sung by Jonathan Abernethy.  He has a well-produced, smooth and most attractive voice, and invariably sang convincingly in this, the main role in the show.  He was confident and had good stage presence.

With 28 songs, most relatively short, there was a lot of singing going on.  The chorus was very accurate, and each was fully involved in their roles.  Words came over well, on the whole; the singing was good, and cohesive.

Next up of the soloists was Rose Blake.  Her singing was excellent, although occasionally a little too operatic in style for a farce.  However, her acting was certainly appropriate to this show.  The trio that followed, ‘Festina Lente’ with Sophie, Honour (mezzo Natalie Williams) was very successfully sung and acted.

Blifil (Michael Miller) was not so satisfactory vocally, although he looked and acted his anti-hero part well enough.  The sextet ‘The Barley Mow’ was quite a highlight – a drinking song, sung very robustly.

Charles Wilson made the most of his role as Benjamin Partridge, his acting exactly fitting for a farce, and raising many a smile.  Vocally, too, he was more than adequate, characterising his voice appropriately.

Tom’s next appearance was to sing ‘A Foundling Boy’, a suitably touching aria that Abernethy sang beautifully, as did Rose Blake in ‘By Night and Day’, though there was a tendency for her voice to be a little shrill at the top of her range.

Such were the affaires in which Tom Jones was involved, it was at times a little tricky to keep track of who was who amongst the women.  Mrs. Fitzpatrick (Maline Di Leva) was one such.  She had a lovely voice, but it was not always quite strong enough in the rather unsympathetic acoustic.  As to intonation, she was utterly accurate.

At the end of Act 1, the chorus was briefly ‘out of synch’, but this did not occur elsewhere in the show.

Following the introduction to Act 2, there was the ‘Gavotte’ scene.  If not a perfect gavotte as to steps, it was nevertheless beautifully done (and sung) in the rather confined space available.

The ‘Playhouse Riot’ was very effective.  Rose Blake acted the frightened country girl superbly, while the men made the most of their chorus.  Natalie Williams (Honour, which she tried to preserve in others as well as herself) followed with one of her several fine contralto arias and ensembles, this one, ‘As the maids and I one day’, being very reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan, as indeed were other numbers in the show.  And indeed, Lerner and Loewe may have learned something from Edward German.

An attractive ‘Barcarolle’ from the chorus was followed by ‘Waltz’, engagingly sung by Sophia and chorus.  This was the only song in the show that I knew, having attempted many years ago to accompany a singer performing it.  The following four-part ‘Madrigal’ again had echoes of Gilbert and Sullivan

Tom’s solo ‘If Love’s Content’ was quite lovely, and his sustained high note very fine.  This was followed by the jolly ‘Back to Somersetshire’, with the horses, and then the dénouement, in which paternity and maternity issues are sorted out, and Roger Wilson, as Western, in one of the funniest moments, has an exceedingly rapid change of heart as to the suitability of Tom as a husband for his daughter Sophie.

All is sorted, and the sizeable audience applauded heartily, in the knowledge that they had got their money’s worth and were thoroughly entertained by an innovative and lively production.  All responsible should give themselves a good pat on the back.

How fortunate we are to have, on the same day, an orchestra playing Brahms superbly well, and musicians and singers putting on a capable, first-class performance of Tom Jones!

The season continues in the Otaki Civic Theatre on Saturday, 22 October at 7.30pm, and at Expressions, Upper Hutt, Sunday 23 October at 2pm.