Audience cheers the last of the NZSO’s Brahms concerts

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahmissimo! 
Academic Overture, Op 80
Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op.102 (allegro, andante, vivace non troppo – poco meno allegro meno allegro)
Symphony no.4 in E minor, Op.98 (allegro non troppo, andante moderato, allegro giocoso, allegro energico e passionata)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Mikhail Ovrutsky (violin) and Andrew Joyce (cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 15 October 2011, 2pm

In this concert, unlike any of the others in this series, the major works were both in minor keys.  However, it started with a work of a cheerful and light nature, described by Inge van Rij in her pre-concert talk, as “Popular and serious styles working hand in hand”.

It was pleasing to see a much bigger audience at this concert.   Obviously there are many people for whom the weekend is a much more suitable time to come to a concert, rather than 6.30pm on a weekday – at which time, inexplicably, most of the NZSO concerts have been scheduled this year.  As befitted an afternoon concert, the orchestra members wore a different mode of dress, the men in white shirts and grey ties with dark lounge suits, while Pietari Inkinen wore a dark shiny suit, and shiny black shoes.

The Overture used a smaller orchestra than that required for most of Brahms’s symphonic works; this was in response to the requirement of Breslau University, from whom the composer received an honorary doctorate in 1879.  Nevertheless, the work has flair as well as precision, in its reworking of student songs, including at the end, the well-known ‘Gaudeamus igitur’.  The playing was robust and energetic, and despite fewer brass and woodwind players, there was a loud and emphatic ending.

Compared with the violin concerto, the double concerto for violin and cello is seldom played.  Yet it is a very fine work, Brahms’s last for orchestra, and worthy of more frequent airings.  Some have thought it strange using instruments of such different pitch and timbre, but the cello has a huge range – and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is one of the most mellifluous works of the classical repertoire.

The cello opened the action, with double-stopping and high notes.  Then cellist Joyce played a brilliant duet with the violin soloist, both players employing great subtlety and expression, rhythmic drive and unanimity.   Maybe sitting a few rows further forward than I did on Thursday evening was better for sound, or perhaps Mikhail Ovrutsky played with a more mellow tone.  Whichever applies (or neither), I did not find fault with his tone on this occasion.  On the contrary, he played with great feeling, especially in the lyrical middle section of the first movement.

The second movement, too, revealed the unified interpretation and performance of the soloists.  There was an evocative woodwind chorus, and the mellow sound of melodious strings in the final section.  Always, Andrew Joyce produced a rich and attractive timbre.

The third movement featured lithe cello, followed by the same liveliness and spirit on the violin.  The technical proficiency of both soloists was very apparent, while the positive mood of this movement gave the whole work a hopeful feel, despite its earlier minor key.  While the movement is serious for much of the time, it is not as sombre as many of Brahms’s works are.  Its triumphal ending resulted in a show of great enthusiasm from the audience, while the orchestra showed its warm appreciation; the members were obviously very impressed with the playing of the visiting soloist and of their own new principal cellist.

The flowers which Joyce received at the end he gallantly gave to his wife, acting principal violist Julia Joyce; Ovrutsky felt obliged to emulate, and gave his flowers to the nearest female cellist.

The symphony constituted the major work on the programme.  Its swaying opening bars immediately drew attention.  This was deliberate, careful, skilled writing.  Here, there was a little untidy string playing, but this was most unusual.  Drive and energy were characteristic of the attack.  Falling thirds formed part of the massive architecture; the movement was characterised by almost relentless forte.

The andante second movement stopped short of being relentless.  It had even more vigour, but was also more luminous and meditative, this mood alternating with tension and grandiosity.   Typically with Brahms, it featured memorable themes.

Allegro giocoso was just that – bright, jolly and exuberant, and according to some commentators, this was his only orchestral scherzo.  At the end, it is almost overwhelming in its power and volume.

The finale is in the form of a passacaglia, with 31 variations on a theme from a Bach cantata.  A grand opening in the brass department was followed by ominous chords before the figure from Bach was stated, coupled with the falling thirds from the opening movement.  Lovely deep brass dissonances interspersed the lines of the other players.

At times, Brahms is portentous and annoyingly repetitive.  At times, he is sublime and a master of melody, and of lofty thought and expression.  The music is frequently scintillatingly soft and expressive.  His frequent favouring of the cello and the oboe makes one wish he had written concertos for these instruments.  Indeed, he is reported to have greeted Dvořák’s cello concerto with the remark “If I had known it was possible to write a cello concerto like that, I would have written one myself”.

The falling thirds appeared again, with the brass playing a sequence rising from the bass.  There was a rousing end to the symphony, and the series, and a warm reception from the audience, the cheers resounding as the leaders of the wind section stood individually, before the whole orchestra received the applause all its members richly deserved.

 

 

Brahmissimo: Third concert with 3rd symphony and 1st piano concerto: magnificent

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Michael Houstoun (piano)

Brahms: Symphony No 3 in F, Op 90 and Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 14 October, 6.30pm

This Brahms festival which started on Wednesday, has created a wonderful festive atmosphere in the Michael Fowler Centre each evening. Though on Friday, the audience was of reasonable size – I guess around 1200 – earlier it had been smaller, but the atmosphere was there from the first evening. It’s sad that so many things militate against several thousand people waking up to the marvels of good music and Brahms in particular.

The Symphony – No 3 in F major – was played first, presumably because it’s the shorter work – a good 10 minutes shorter – and probably has to be rated less weighty; and the symphony ends quietly while the concerto is simply a more passionate work with a huge emotional range, ending in a mighty climax.

But the symphony begins with arresting timpani to launch the first waltz-style movement and continues in its peaceful, pastoral vein – remember it’s in the same key as Beethoven’s Pastoral. Inkinen’s tempi and the inner feeling within each phrase and sentence, seem to be so right, so inevitable, and his rallentandos – the recur in  the first movement – are perfectly gauged.

You can tell very early in a performance whether it’s going to carry you to heaven and back, or whether there are things that are unconvincing, irritating, deceptive or dishonest. All my recent experiences of Inkinen have been of the former kind.

I was seated in the centre stalls for the first two concerts; this time I was on the left of the gallery facing the violas with the timpani behind them. As a result I probably heard the timpani rather emphatically; and because of sound reflections which do curious things in this space, I also had rich experience of double basses which were on the left of the stage, behind the cellos which, for Inkinen, change places with second violins.

Otherwise, balances between instrumental sections were beautiful.

The second movement is slightly calmer than the first but it seems only to modify the same spirit and very similar musical material. It’s in common time but there are passages of triplet quavers alternating with the 4/4 rhythm. The second theme has the flavour of Dvořák – say, the Eighth symphony – and the mood of the whole suggests that composer, whom Brahms helped and admired and remained on generally good terms with. The oboe and clarinet have significant roles in the movement’s colour and these were beautifully played (respectively Peter Dykes and Philip Green).

While the third movement is entitled Poco allegretto, the pace sounds only a little faster than the second; towards the end, in a very characteristic Brahms idiom, a long horn solo is taken up by oboe then clarinet and bassoon, and then fades quietly to allow the finale, Allegro, to follow. It begins with a connecting chorale-like theme but suddenly catches fire as a real finale is supposed to do; it’s the first real boisterousness to emerge. But as that fell away, Inkinen recaptured the mood of the other movements, and the spirit of peace and acceptance reigned in this very unusual finale which slowly fades out in one of the beautiful decrescendos and rallentandos.

It was a very beautiful performance of a remarkable symphony.

The First Piano Concerto is astonishing: it seems such a profound and mature work to have been penned by a 25-year-old, somehow more heroic and emotionally powerful than the B flat concerto from late in his career. The orchestra has a long introduction whose burnished richness and epic symphonic character hardly created the expectation of a showy concerto.

And of course that is what it is not.

When Houstoun enters the spirit of the music doesn’t change; and the density and weight of the orchestral introduction is transferred to the keyboard. The big chords with their heavy trills announced a complete break from the kind of glittery, virtuosic piano concertos that were being written through the mid 19th century. It seems the sort of concerto that was composed with a pianist like Houstoun in mind, perfectly capable of dazzling with bravura and speed, but whose nature seems far more in tune with music of real intellectual and emotional depth. Nevertheless, there are some highly challenging and visually attractive episodes that Houstoun navigates without ado but with marvellous sonority and panache. Elsewhere, for example in the latter part of the first movement, the piano has passages that respond to his sturdy, fluidly-paced playing that is also quite beautiful.

The end of the first movement seems imminent, but Brahms keeps us waiting and filling our ears with sounds that make the delay a blessing, finally coming to rest in the dark D minor mood of the Mozart’s Don Giovanni – after more than 20 minutes of enraptured, revelatory performance.

The second movement, the famous portrait of Clara Schumann, shows a rapturous, romantic Brahms, and it’s a time to luxuriate in Houstoun’s solo piano passages which had an improvisational character, along with the orchestra in a hushed and profoundly mature Adagio – how can this be a 25-year-old’s first foray in large-scale orchestral music?

It’s interesting that the orchestra, for all its weight in this work, is at classical strength: no trombones or tuba, no percussion other than timpani, no harp, two trumpets and just normal double woodwinds without a bass clarinet, contrabassoon or cor anglais, but with five horns. Horns are a significant Brahms hallmark and throughout this festival of his orchestral music, it has been his glorious handling of French horns that has caught the ear again and again. Happily, the horn section is back in good shape after the interregnum following Ed Allen’s departure, now under guest principal Samuel Jacobs; their sounds were one of the glories of this series, with particularly difficult work in this concerto.

The concerto ends with an Allegro – non troppo and, as always, Inkinen’s tempi seemed utterly right, and though the mood is lighter, hinting at the character of Schumann’s concerto, he succeeds in making us hear that a mighty musical mind is still very present. Though the rhythm is buoyant, the serious spirit remains, and Houstoun’s piano continued to be resolute and strongly based while the second, ‘B’, section of the Rondo is often rhapsodic and decorated by trills and delightful scales and passage-work.  The occasional dramatic punctuations from the orchestra, timpani-based, alternating with translucent textures from lightly-bowed figures in the strings and fluttering woodwind decorations, created a marvellously balanced, complementary structure that was deeply satisfying.

As I finish this review, after attending the fourth concert with the Double Concerto and the 4th Symphony, I retain the feeling that, for all the splendid playing by Mikhail Ovrutsky and Andrew Joyce, and that great symphony, it was the third concert that made the most profound emotional impact, and has induced me to explore other versions of those works, none of which, though interestingly different, seem better than what I heard on Friday in the Michael Fowler Centre.

 

Paul Rosoman’s adventurous organ recital at St Paul’s midday

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Karg-Elert, Marco Bossi, Guilmant, Liszt and John Bull

Paul Rosoman – organ

Cathedral of St Paul, Wellington

Friday 14 October, 12.45pm

The monthly organ series at the Anglican Cathedral might not get the sort of crowds one might have seen on the next two days in a big arena in Auckland, but for the few they are a valuable alternative, or perhaps an addition to the entertainments that otherwise dominate our world.

In all the quite frequent organ recitals that I get to around the city, I wonder at the profound change that has overcome the world in the past century, at the beginning of which communities had the will and could find the money to build generally rather beautiful buildings in which to celebrate their beliefs, and even more, to equip them with very expensive, technologically quite sophisticated musical instruments.

I am not an organist, but I have never been able to walk past a church where an organ is being played, and it is sad that today, one cannot even enter most churches freely, let alone stand and wait for the sound of an organ being played.

Paul Rosoman’s recital comes not long after his return from an interesting tour that took him to a small organ festival at Pelplin about 40km south of Gdansk in northern Poland. He also played in Germany and Britain.

He did not bring back any music from Poland but his programme was nevertheless very interesting: I had heard none of the music before.

It began with a highly diverting Homage to Handel, Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s Op 75. His name used to be more familiar – it was to me when my musical discoveries were starting in the 1950s – than it seems to be now, at least in New Zealand.

His piece is based on the same Handel theme – the Passacaglia from the Harpsichord Suite in G minor, HWV 432 – that was used by Johan Halvorsen in his Passacaglia for violin and viola that was played in a version for violin and cello, at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson last February, and in March by the violinist and violist of the Antipodes Trio at Paekakariki and in August by members of the Mêler Ensemble.

But the tune is distinctive and didn’t need background familiarity to enjoy it.

This time it provided the compoer with the basis for the most extraordinary, virtuosic exercise in kaleidoscopic registration changes and combinations. The programme note said there were 50 distinct combinations of stops – I didn’t count though – and that it was rarely played because most organs lacked the necessary range or technology. I couldn’t tell whether the, to me, brilliant scope of the cathedral organ filled the bill or whether Rosoman had to make compromises.

It is indeed the kind of piece that would captivate the neophyte as well as gain the admiration of the aficionado, particularly in the commanding performance given here.

Marco Enrico Bossi was a few years older than Karg-Elert and his Chant de soir was obviously designed to charm a fairly general audience; interestingly scored for some of the prettier stops, sentimental in an intelligent way, a touch elegiac.

Then came a more substantial piece by Guilmant who, you will remember, was RNZ Concert’s ‘Composer of the Week’ a while back. This was the Scherzo from his Fifth Organ Sonata, Op 80; it turned out to be a quietish scherzo in its pace and dynamics but its scherzoicity (neoglism acceptable?) emerged from the flamboyance of its melodic lines and bravura passage-work.

A short piece by Liszt followed – a charming set of variations on a choral setting of a pretty 16th century Ave Maria by one Jacob Arcadelt. If you look up Wikipedia, as I did, you will see a small reproduction of Caravaggio’s famous painting , The Lute Player, which is said to show the young woman (? – but you know about Caravaggio don’t you?) playing music by Arcadelt. The painting is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It also shows very precise and interesting detail of the character of the lute and of a violin resting on a table, especially of the bow.

The music was not especially remarkable but provided a very nice link to the last piece – the entire recital was built on a reverse chronological sequence – by John Bull, a Rondo in G.

Bull (born a couple of years before Shakespeare)  left a large quantity of fine keyboard music and his position in English music in the Elizabethan-Jacobean period is very close to Byrd and Gibbons.  His life was eventful: in New Grove (and also in Wikipedia), interesting details of his life can be read. Wikipedia sums it up: “However, in addition to his virtuosity as a keyboard performer and composer, Bull was also skilled at getting into trouble.”

And a report written in 1615 by the Archbishop of Canterbury goes into a bit more detail: “the man hath more music than honesty and is as famous for marring of virginity as he is for fingering of organs and virginals.” – nice archiepiscopal double-entendre.

This Rondo struck me as an extraordinarily sophisticated piece of writing, though its very un-Renaissance sound and complexity would have resulted from performance on this organ. But I assume it is a modern arrangement, for its treatment is virtuosic, elaborate and opulent , seeming to relish its access to the organ’s power and tonal variety. It sounded great fun, and the long pause before the coda sounded far more 19th than 16th century. And Rosoman’s performance did it complete justice.

I could not identify the actual piece in New Grove, let alone Wikipedia.

This was a highly entertaining recital; such a pity that there weren’t a thousand organ-sceptics there ready for conversion.

 

Brahmissimo! The second concert with the violin concerto

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahms: Tragic Overture, Op 81
Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77
Symphony no.2 in D major, Op.73

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Mikhail Ovrutsky, violin

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday, 13 October 2011, 6.30pm

With Brahms being Radio New Zealand Concert’s composer of the week this week, plus this series of four New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concerts, music-lovers are being treated to a veritable festival of his music.  How wonderful this morning (Friday) to hear on radio Jonathan Lemalu’s superlative, sensitive recording of the composer’s Four Serious Songs.

On Thursday it was more of his symphonic music, following the first concert in the series on Wednesday evening.

Concertmaster Vessa-Matti Lepännen spoke to the audience before the conductor entered, dedicating the evening’s concert to the memory of Christopher Doig, who had died that morning.  Among his many, many roles in the cultural and sporting life of the nation he was responsible over recent years for Sponsorship and Business Development for the orchestra, based in his beloved home city of Christhcurch.  In the last week he had greeted the great tenor Placido Domingo in Christchurch, a trip organised by Doig to raise funds for earthquake victims there.

He announced only days ago a scholarship for young singers – as a superb tenor himself, one of the very best New Zealand has produced, he was always encouraging others musicians, as Lepännen attested.

In Wellington he will be remembered best as the Director of the 1990 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, and the production in that Festival of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, with Sir Donald McIntyre as the principal soloist.  His loss to the cultural scene in this country is colossal; the fruits of his labours will live on for a long time.

How appropriate, then, for the concert to commence with the Tragic Overture, by a composer who spent most of his life in Vienna, a city where Chris Doig had been principal tenor at the opera house for a number of years.

Probably attracted by the Violin Concerto, the attendance was better than at the first concert, but there were still far too many empty seats downstairs in the Michael Fowler Centre.  We have a fine orchestra; more people need to discover it and the great music it plays.

This was as good a performance of the Tragic Overture as I have heard live; the playing had urgency, and was truly dramatic.  The wind solos were given due prominence, while the passage featuring pizzicato strings and haunting woodwind sent shivers down the spine.  The music presaged dire tragedy; it made me think of Lucia di Lammermoor.  The red and black lighting around the stage heightened the sense of looming disaster.

The sombre brass surge in the final pages, with soft descending strings, gave a sense of resolution, even of overcoming tragedy.  It was a masterful performance.

An irritant between items was that the lights were turned down.  Surely they should be turned up, so that audience members can read their programmes?  And they were well worth reading.  Frances Moore’s notes for the whole series were simply outstanding.  Her vivid language and impeccable writing made them a delight to read.

Inge van Rij’s pre-concert talk too, was informative, interesting, and well-expressed.  She spoke of the background to Brahms’s 1879 violin concerto, and the context of his time and place, which resulted in this beautiful yet unpretentious work that did not seek primarily to display the skills of the soloist.  This led to the great violinist Sarasate describing Brahms’s concerto as ‘too symphonic’, which meant it was not a showpiece for the violinist.  However, critics of the time, especially Brahms’s mentor Robert Schumann, had begun criticising works in the latter category.

As a performer on the piano rather than the violin, Brahms needed the advice of his friend, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, on technical aspects of this work, and also, since the latter Hungarian, on the gypsy idioms of the last movement.

The piece certainly has a symphonic idiom, and while opening in the major key, the soloists enters in the minor, and instead of his leading the major theme, the orchestra does it.  The cadenza that Joachim wrote for his performance of the concerto emerges seamlessly from the music it follows, and is the one most often used.

The young violin soloist, Mikhail Ovrutsky, is not one for the traditional ‘penguin’ suit; he wore a dark patterned loose shirt, open at the neck.  He was equal to the task at hand, though I found his ungainly stance on stage inelegant and off-putting.  While his tone was mostly beautiful, it was not always smooth from note to note, i.e. from up-bow to down-bow, and was even harsh occasionally.  At other times he displayed sweetness of tone, but at some of these moments, the orchestra threatened to overwhelm him.  At other times there was, for me, too much metallic string sound from him.  Joachim’s cadenza was fast and vigorous – but was it beautiful?

In the main, the orchestra was in splendid form, mellow and sensitive.  However, they were not quite together at the start of the slow movement.  The divine oboe solo was a little too assertive for my taste, though the tone was lovely, and the harmonising woodwinds were very fine, the melancholic sound thus created, haunting.

The violin solo then entered noticeably softer, and Ovrutsky employed more vibrato than previously, giving greater breadth of tone, appropriate for this movement.  Here, the solo playing was magical, and the mournful ending very refined.

For me, the huge change of mood in the final movement has always been rather hard to take – it is too much of a contrast with what has preceded it.  Again there was some harshness of tone in what was generally a very good performance.  There is certainly nothing wrong with Ovrutsky’s finger technique.

As the programme note stated “…the music never becomes an exercise in extraordinary virtuosity but is instead imbued with a passion that drives the music towards an exciting, breathtaking finish.”

The third offering, Brahms’s Symphony no. 2, features a grand, sweeping opening, counterpointed with delicate figures it.  The orchestra provided gorgeous string tone.  The first movement is mainly bold and brassy, but not without introspection too.  Towards the end of the movement there was some fine horn playing.

The second movement is more contemplative – a mixture of fibre and cream.  As has been said, Brahms makes the most of the material he has.

The third movement opens with a resplendent oboe theme, against pizzicato strings.  The full-bodied sound from the orchestra nevertheless allowed for nuance aplenty.  The exuberant clarinet and oboe both featured elegantly in the finale.  The strings introduced on of Brahms’s bold, sturdy themes; it developed excitedly.  Chromaticism followed (but not as in Wagner), and there was a great final statement of the main theme, noble and heroic.  Brahms seemed to get a little bogged down in this movement, with a tad too much working out of the themes.  However, the textures were always wonderful.

The orchestra looked as if it had successfully complete a marathon – which it will have by late Saturday afternoon.  As the audience gave the orchestra an enthusiastic response, the guest principal horn player. Samuel Jacobs, was raised for a special round of applause.

The splendour of this concert was a fitting tribute to Chris Doig, on the day of his untimely death – a man who contributed much to this orchestra as a consultant, and to many cultural and sporting bodies in New Zealand.

 

Christopher Doig

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

In the review of the second Brahms concert from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Rosemary included a few paragraphs about Christopher Doig who had died that morning. The concert master had dedicated the concert to his memory.

Concertmaster Vessa-Matti Lepännen spoke to the audience before the conductor entered, dedicating the evening’s concert to the memory of Christopher Doig, who had died that morning. Among his many, many roles in the cultural and sporting life of the nation he was responsible over recent years for Sponsorship and Business Development for the orchestra, based in his beloved home city of Christhcurch. In the last week he had greeted the great tenor Placido Domingo in Christchurch, a trip organised by Doig to raise funds for earthquake victims there.

He announced only days ago a scholarship for young singers – as a superb tenor himself, one of the very best New Zealand has produced, he was always encouraging others musicians, as Lepännen attested.

In Wellington he will be remembered best as the Director of the 1990 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, and the production in that Festival of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, with Sir Donald McIntyre as the principal soloist. His loss to the cultural scene in this country is colossal; the fruits of his labours will live on for a long time.

How appropriate, then, for the concert to commence with the Tragic Overture, by a composer who spent most of his life in Vienna, a city where Chris Doig had been principal tenor at the opera house for a number of years.

NZSO triumphs in Brahms festival with Inkinen and Irons

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Diedre Irons (piano)

Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat, Op 83 and Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 68

Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 12 October 6.30pm

The first of the four Brahms concerts entitled ‘Brahmissimo’ faced an audience that was a bit smaller that I’d hoped, at least in the stalls where I was sitting. I comforted myself thinking this was due to the fact that many might not be able to afford four concerts night after night, that 6.30pm has not yet been adopted as the public’s favourite concert hour and that there is still a lingering, inexplicable thing about Brahms, that must dwell mainly in the minds of the tone deaf or who allow a century-old controversy to prejudice them; or perhaps attention is all directed to the behaviour of an oval ball.

The concert was quietly advertised as part of the REAL New Zealand Festival, designed to accompany the Rugby World Cup games, and was supported directly by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.

The thousand or so who were there were in no doubt that Brahms was among the very greatest composers and that both performances were on a magnificent scale and deserved the vociferous ovations that they got.

The horns, led by guest principal Samuel Jacobs, opened the concerto rapturously, though with restraint, and pianist Diedre Irons followed in the same way, her solo passage quietly and very deliberately paced. So there was plenty of scope for a controlled amassing of dynamic energy that led to the eventual statement of the leading theme, which was clothed in grandeur.

This was Diedre Irons’s first ever public performance of this work, and it was thus no surprise to detect a degree of tension, that showed itself in the first movement in occasional minor slips, a slight lack of heart-easing lyricism and a tendency to stress individual chords rather than find all the meaning in entire phrases. There were signs of such unease in both the first and second movements though the latter, Allegro appassionato, had a spaciousness and sanguinity, that emerged as passion and excitement.

But the gorgeous Andante transformed her demeanour, allowing her to express herself with breadth and beauty. The entire movement blossomed in a spirit of flowing, relaxed calm, reinforced not a little by the rapturous cello solos from principal Andrew Joyce. In the middle of the Andante an end is suggested but there is a magical revival of life that brought all Diedre Irons’s musical gifts to the fore.

This spirit of ease and confidence carried into the finale where Irons found her way comfortably through the lively passages that invited a certain rubato and individuality of interpretation and both orchestra and piano threw themselves boisterously into the concluding phase.

The first symphony opens in a complete absence of Brahms’s much written-about shyness of the symphonic form because of the shadow of Beethoven. The Introduction is a triumphant conception: grand and expansive, and Inkinen demonstrated from the start, his command of sonority, pace and dynamics that immediately created a high level of anticipation.

Brahms’s quite other approach to writing for the orchestra, between concerto and symphony, was clear: the former taking pains with balance, both between individual instruments and individual sections of, and between soloist and, the orchestra; while in the symphony his attention is on the orchestra in its entirety, as with a single instrument. Here there was no need to create slender textures to allow the piano its space.

The sound was magnificent.

The Andante Sostenuto, second movement, with a prominent oboe – presumably Robert Orr – was a beautiful, calm, balanced, lyrical outpouring.

A nervous clarinet tune seemed to characterize part of the scherzo-like third movement which ends strangely, inconclusively, and Inkinen handled the insubstantial fleeting scraps of music which link the worlds of simple peasant dance with the overwhelming grandeur of the last movement, where the horn-led introduction drew the music suspensefully into the final climactic passages with marvelous subtlety. The restrained build-up made the eventual tutti exultation all the more triumphant as it was driven by the massive string choir operating at full-throttle.

I hope that word gets out that we had a marvellous opening to what is bound to continue as a marvellous mini-festival that offers an alternative to what is absorbing the country at present.

Don’t miss the other three concerts of Brahms’s symphonies and concertos.

 

 

 

Accomplished recitals from student violists of New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Music for Strings – Students of the NZSM

Music by Bloch, Penderecki, Stamitz, Schumann, Bach, Walton

Instrumentalists: Alice McIvor, Vincent Hardaker, Megan Ward, Leoni Wittchou (violas), accompanied by Douglas Mews (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 12 October 2011, 12.15pm

Despite its billing, this was a concert comprising only viola students – those studying with Gillian Ansell, violist in the New Zealand String Quartet.

It began with an additional item, not in the printed programme: Rhapsody by Ernest Bloch (which I conclude must be a movement from his Suite of 1919).  It was played by Alice McIvor, with Douglas Mews accompanying.  This was quite a passionate work, and the performers gave it plenty of expression.  There was strong bowing, a few intonation lapses, but splendidly rich tone.  This was a very accomplished performance, played from the score.

Next to perform was Vincent Hardaker, whose piece was Penderecki’s Cadenza per Viola Sola of 1984.  It was unaccompanied, and played from memory – a considerable achievement, given the complexity and idiom of the music.  Techniques included double-stopping and harmonics played alongside ‘straight’ notes. The fast middle section provided contrast, before the return to the falling motif and sadder mood of the opening.  As well as being demanding, the performance was thoughtful, competent and convincing.

Megan Ward’s dark-coloured instrument produced a dark sound, though not as rich in tone as McIvor’s.  She gave a very persuasive performance of Stamitz’s Viola Concerto in D major.  Her technique was good, but this was not so difficult a piece as those played by the two previous violists.

She followed it with two pieces from Schumann’s Märchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures): 1. Nicht Schnell, and 3. Rasch.

Like the Stamitz, these were accompanied, but the score was used, whereas the Stamitz was played from memory.  These song-like pieces suffered quite a few minor intonation wobbles, especially no.3.  The playing did not have the tone or the accuracy to bring me completely into the pictures implied by the programme note (the first movement “…dark and mysterious, perhaps set deep within an enchanted forest…”; the second: “…fast and …possibly a dance featuring sprites or pixies”), despite their being played with considerable facility.

Next up was Leoni Wittchou, with Douglas Mews providing impeccable accompaniment.   Leoni played (on the viola) the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite no.4, BWV 1010.  The piece began a little slower than is usual, and there was suspect intonation at times, but the player had a good, full tone.  Playing from memory, she gave an excellent account of this classic piece.

She continued with the Andante first movement from Walton’s Viola Concerto, but unfortunately another engagement prevented me from staying to hear it.

Programme notes were good, notwithstanding a couple of careless spelling errors in composers’ names, and a horrendous multiple misspelling of ‘mischievous’ in the description of the second Schumann piece.

To have four viola players at this level of accomplishment bodes well for the future of chamber music particularly.

 

 

Polished recital by Aeolian Players at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Marin Marais: Suite in G minor; Telemann: Trio Sonata for oboe, viola da gamba and basso continuo in G minor; Psathas: Waiting for the Aeroplane; Bach: Trio Sonata No 4 in E minor, BWV 528

The Aeolian Players:  Calvin Scott (oboe), Peter Garrity (viola), Ariana Odermatt (piano), Margaret Guldborg (cello)

St Mark’s church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 12 October, 12.15pm

Our last reference to the Aeolian Ensemble is in a review by my colleague Rosemary Collier of their concert in the Mulled Wine series at Paekakariki, where the same Telemann sonata was played but otherwise, a different Bach work, plus pieces by Buxtehude, Hotteterre and Forqueray.

I was a couple of minutes late and missed the first and some of the second movement of the Marais Suite in G minor. It is one of the Pièces en trio pour les flutes, violon, et dessus de viole, published in 1692.  It’s only a short step from flute to oboe, though one could argue that the shift has a significant effect on the mood of the music.

My first impression, as always, was of the way this church so enhances the sounds of instruments (it does as well with voices). So that all four instruments were clear as individuals, yet the composition had the effect of according equal status to them all, and no one dominated the melodic line. Margaret Guldborg’s cello had a warmth that brought it closer to the sound of viola da gamba (on which Marais was one of the greatest exponents) and the sound of the piano in the hands of Ariana Odermatt detracted not the least from the feeling of baroque music.

This was an altogether charming piece, played with an admirable feeling for style and with the interest of the whole placed above that of the individual.

The Telemann sonata (originally for violin, viola and basso continuo) created a quite different impression. Here the indivual instruments carried more distinct lines, each taking turns with the tunes so that the characteristics of each could be enjoyed, as for the most part they could.  The presence of the oboe in place of the violin always has an emotional effect – giving a touch of plangency or sadness – and in most cases is not out of place, and it certainly wasn’t here, even in the brighter Allegro.  As for the piano v. harpsichord issue, the character of the ensemble  did seem to call up in my mind an expectation of the lighter, non-sustaining sound of the latter, though Odermatt’s playing was crisp and sensitive to the idiom.

The inclusion of a modern piano solo was not the least bothersome. Psathas’s early piece, Waiting for the Aeroplane has become a small New Zealand classic; there is nothing difficult about its style or harmonies and it pointed, very early in Psathas’s career, to a refreshing independence of mind, removed from the sort of academic and, shall we say, pretentious music that tended to flow from aspiring student composers 20 years ago (and still does to some extent). Odermatt’s playing was most interesting, handling the rocking fourth that persists hypnotically throughout, is dreamlike; the two notes are uneven in character, the upper note fluctuating in strength while the occasional outbursts produced a quite unsettling effect.

The Bach Trio Sonata
This is one of a set of six so-called ‘trio sonatas’ for organ which Bach compiled in the late 1720s. His manuscript for the six sonatas, BWV 525-30, prescribes two keyboards and pedal.

The Oxford Bach Companion suggests the six sonatas show Bach’s frequent interest in transferring styles and idioms from one instrument or ensemble to another (particularly the keyboard). Thus it can be inferred that it is not an outrageous step for musicians to make arrangements in the reverse direction – back from a score for the organ to the original ‘trio sonata’ concept, that involved two high register instruments and a bass, or basso continuo.

To indulge further erudition, the Bach Companion also notes that the three-instrument form relates more to the concerto than to the church sonata form; and it surmises that the technical difficulty of these six sonatas, and their distance from the most common idioms for the organ, suggest a pedagogical intention (for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann who became a distinguished organist), and that they might be considered a corollary to the collected works for unaccompanied violin and cello.

Earlier versions of all movements of this sonata exist. The opening movement began life as the Sinfonia to the second part of Cantata No 76 – and significantly, it is scored for oboe d’amore, viola da gamba and continuo, composed at the beginning of his Leipzig years. That suggests, further, that other movements may also have been composed originally for instrumental trio. The Andante may date from his earliest years as it betrays the short-breathed motivic style of 17th century German music, as well as some of the ‘pathetic’ gestures of contemporary Italian opera, notably the chord of the Neapolitan Sixth.

The oboe part is again without direct authority apart from the oboe d’amore part in the sinfonia mentioned above, but it easily assumes the leading role, and in Calvin Scott’s hands fully justifies the adaptation. As the oboe and viola pass the theme of the Andante back and forth they create quite a strong and attractive emotional quality. The last movement, Un poco allegro, in triple time, creates a lovely curving line and I could again conjure a viola da gamba, together with a harpsichord in this movement, but the two talented players on cello and piano quickly dispelled any real hankering after a more historical interpretation.

 

Imaginative New Zealand choral music from innovative Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Renaissance Influences IV: Made in New Zealand

Music by Gillian Whitehead, David Farquhar, Ross Harris, Douglas Mews sen., John Ritchie, Anna Griffiths and Jack Body

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Saturday, 8 October 2011, 3pm

It was surprising to find the Tudor Consort performing works by New Zealand composers, and even more surprising to read the title of the concert.   However, there was no question, when one heard the works, about the influence of the renaissance composers on these down-under writers.  There was even less question, but rather joyful astonishment, at the skill of these works, and of The Tudor Consort in presenting them.  It was innovative to devise such a programme as this, and to commission two new works – the Ross Harris and Jack Body pieces.

The programme opened with the Kyrie from Missa Brevis by Gillian Whitehead.  The mass was performed section by section throughout the programme, interspersed with other items, as it would be in a church service, though of course there it would be interspersed through the liturgy.  Initially, this seemed odd, not to carry on the Gloria from the Kyrie, in a concert performance.  However, I think it worked well, giving each movement of the mass a freshness and pointing up the individual qualities of its parts better than would be the case if it had been sung through as a whole.

It was a most accomplished work for a composer who was still a student at university at the time of composition.  As the programme note said, “The unmistakeable influence of 16th century polyphony is clear from the outset…’   The full import of this influence grew as the various movements were presented.  But the skilled writing was apparent straight away.   There was much use of clashes of the interval of a second, and splendid dynamic contrasts.

The choir exhibited great attack and superb clarity of words.  In the Sanctus it was noticeable that some singers paid scant attention to the conductor, but the wonderful rise and fall of both pitch and contrapuntal complexity were well conveyed in spite of that.  This movement had a most rapturous ending.

Early on, the soprano tone was rather metallic at times, and one voice in that section had a tendency to dominate.  Nevertheless, in the main the choir’s balance was impeccable.  Only briefly at the end of the Agnus Dei was the choir not quite together.

Following the Kyrie, we heard Winter wakeneth all my care by David Farquhar, a setting of an anonymous 14th century English text.  This was a quite lovely setting of glorious words.  There was an interesting independence of parts, which gave frequent delicious clashes and juxtapositions.  The performance was magical.

The commissioned work from Ross Harris, Vobiscum in aeternum, was based on the well-known Tudor motet If ye love me.   Using the Latin version of the same words, this piece began with a gorgeous soft introduction.  The lattice-work of long-held notes in each part wove a beautiful, reverential solemnity in the fine acoustic of St. Mary of the Angels church.

The singing was beautiful blended, apart from one soprano who still dominated, from where I was sitting.  Otherwise, it exhibited the excellent attribute of carrying the sound and the words seamlessly forward, something the Australian judge of the recent Big Sing Secondary Students’ Choral Festival in Wellington commented on being absent from some of the otherwise excellent choirs that he heard perform.

Ross Harris could hardly have wished for a finer première performance.  The high standard continued in the adjoined Tallis original ‘If ye love me’ in English, that concluded the piece.  The brief for this and for the Jack Body commission was to take an ancient piece of music as a starting point.  I must admit to a sneaking feeling that it was a little pretentious that one composer used Latin instead of the English of St. John’s gospel in the King James version of the Bible, as used by Tallis, and the other to use Hebrew instead of the well-known and loved words, from the same version, for  Psalm 137 (or indeed the Russian of the introductory chant; see below).  However, this may have been the composers’ way of introducing an individuality that separated their compositions from the originals on which they were based – and it would be pretty difficult for a New Zealand composer to write for the Russian language.

Michael Stewart, in speaking to the audience, acknowledged that the next item, The Love Song of Rangipouri by Douglas Mews, did not have a Renaissance connection, but disarmingly stated that he liked it so much that he included it.  This work featured a soloist, Ken Ryan (baritone).  His facility with the Maori language and with the micro-tonality of the chant was astonishing, and his singing was very fine.   Based on a Maori chant recorded at Makara, the words are poetic and mystical; some of the lines were repeated in English.  I learned recently that even in the Far North, the pronunciation of ‘wh’ in Maori as ‘f’ was not traditional, if the early missionary Henry Williams is to be believed.  He wrote regretting the increasing tendency in his time for the ‘f’ sound to be used.

This was a difficult piece, but the choir brought it off, despite a few entries not being absolutely together.

The women of the choir sang two songs from John Ritchie’s Canary Wine song cycle: “I – Queene and Huntress”, and “III – Make Room for the bouncing Belly”.  The texts were by Ben Jonson.  I found it humorous to contemplate what now would be considered doggerel being written by the great Elizabethan playwright and poet: “Room! Room! Make room for the bouncing Belly, First father of sauce and deviser of jelly”.   There were unfamiliar words in the text, such as boulter and bavin, but thanks to a friendly pew-sharer and his I-pod, I now know that they all apply to domestic implements.

The music, good-humoured as is usual with Ritchie père, was utterly appropriate to the words.  It was good to have a lighter item in the middle of the programme; the singing was sparklingly accurate.

Anna Griffiths is a music graduate of the University of Auckland, and sings in The Tudor Consort.  She has won prizes for her compositions, and has had this and another choral piece performed overseas by the New Zealand Youth Choir.  Naseby is a setting of a poem by James K. Baxter, and depicts the Otago township.  I enjoyed the alliteration of the poem’s second-last line: “Then the dark peaks will hold their peace…”.  This was a very skilled and sympathetic setting, idiomatic with regard to the words.  The ending chord was not resolved, thus carrying through the music the timeless feel of the words.

Now for something completely different…  The men sang the Russian chant from the 17th century “Bogospod’i yavisya” (God, Lord, show yourself to us) which Jack Body used as the basis for his piece for full choir.  The men had a robust sound and relished the words, but perhaps could not obtain quite the resonant depth of tone of a Russian choir.

Psalm 137 was sung in Hebrew, influenced by the chant, but not in a Jewish style.  It began with three male voice parts interweaving “answered by a keening figure from the women” as the programme note stated.  It reached a climax at the end with the words “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock” (speaking of the daughter of Babylon) – words not usually incorporated in choral settings of the psalm.

The piece was very quiet in parts, yet there was plenty of volume when required.  Intonation was unassailable.  The whole was most effective.

We are fortunate to have composers of this level writing imaginative, highly skilled and effective music for choirs.  New Zealand composers certainly know how to write choral music!  The strong choral tradition in this country no doubt lends strong inspiration, and the fact that there are choirs capable of singing the complex, accomplished music we heard at this concert.

Some of the pieces were written for more than four parts, adding to the achievement for a choir of only 20 voices.  It was certainly different for this choir to perform New Zealand works; works that were difficult and very interesting, including a variety of languages.  They made for a most worthwhile concert.

All the works were well worth hearing, and it is to be hoped that other choirs will take them up – they should be heard again.  One or two only (the Ritchie and the Mews) I thought I had heard before.

The level of expert performance by this choir is all the more amazing considering the comparative frequency of its concerts.  This was only an hour-long concert, but it was a solid programme, and there was a great deal of concentrated and expert singing.   Bravo!

Orpheus Choir shows versatility with Cole Porter

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

An evening with Cole Porter from the Orpheus Choir, conducted by Mark Dorrell with Sarah Lineham (mezzo) and Chris Crowe (baritone) and the players from the Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 7 October 7pm

It is brave for a symphonic choir to tackle popular music of any vein, and though it could be argued that the music of Cole Porter has closer links with classical music than, say, The Spice Girls or Michael Jackson, the idiom in which composers of ‘popular’ music normally work is pretty remote from Mozart.

This evening’s concert did not offer a very strong counter argument to that proposition.

Yet it’s only a couple of years since this choir staged a Cole Porter concert. It did occur to me that if they wanted to dip their toes into Broadway again, or more popular music, there are other composers, other angles on the genre.

On the other hand there was no denying that the character of popular music of any kind sounds a bit unspontaneous from a choir almost all of whose practice has been in the great choral works, and looks uncomfortable in a place normally used for conventional classical concerts. The music and words are typically more intimate, not to say risqué in the case of Porter, and was imagined for the theatre or cabaret.

Mark Dorrell has been acting musical director of the Orpheus Choir recently and becomes permanent director next year. in black jacket and shiny tight pants, he was clearly determined to make the best of the atmosphere of the hall, its lighting dimmed and red stage lighting, but with the choir in normal sober costumes and arrayed in oratorio-style rows on the choir steps, he had his work cut out.

But by ordinary standards, the choir was well rehearsed, sang accurately, with impressive ensemble; and the players of the Vector Wellington Orchestra showed a natural affinity with the style in their arrangements by Wayne Senior.

However, one of the things that struck me was the sameness of the arrangements. Wayne Senior is a talented arranger, and his instinct for the Broadway musical style is keen, but the same hand on all the songs led to a certain uniformity. An evening of varied songs from a span of more than three decades, could have been treated to more colourful and individual sonic dress, perhaps by devising replicas of arrangements by bands like Nelson Riddle, Axel Stordahl, Victor Young.  It was for that reason that the few numbers in which the soloists sang with the excellent Mark Dorrell at the piano were an agreeable change, sounding idiomatic.

The intention was to hit the ground running with the punchy Kiss me Kate number, ‘Another op’nin’, another show’. It’s a great song but it sounded too polite, its attack a bit restrained; its syncopation was just a little too accurate and rhythm just short of the kind of arresting call-to-order that it needs.

The programme included a large number of Porter’s songs, and the selection here was very satisfying, though the number was achieved by singing no more than one verse from several songs, sung without break as if a medley.

‘Begin the beguine’ opened the first group; one of the most sophisticated and complex of popular songs in its harmony and shape, it calls for an easy swing spiced with a subtle Latin rhythm and choir and orchestra made a good job of it. The two soloists came out for the first time for the evergreen ‘Night and Day’, one of Porter’s small masterpieces; it was nicely handled, though neither singer struck me as a crooner whose vocal delivery required amplification and the voices were thus coming from two sources – both acoustic, and amplified. The rest of the songs in the bracket were among Porter’s greatest classics – the beautiful ‘In the still of the night’ and ‘I’ve got you under my skin’ – and it was easy to overlook minor technical or stylistic shortcomings.

There were four songs from the memorable film High Society (Sinatra, Crosby, Armstrong, Grace Kelly), high spirited, care-free and they should have been high points in the programme. For ‘True Love’, Dorrell (he spoke spontaneously several times but without a microphone was hard to hear) took over at the piano with the two soloists (matching the great Crosby and Kelly duet in the film) whose vocal blend was not ideal. It seemed curious, too, that the two singers took positions far apart on either side of the conductor; such stage positioning has become an often absurd gimmick in modern opera productions. Occasionally it would have made sense, but most of the songs rather suggest a degree of closeness between two people. ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ swung happily, and later in the programme, ‘Well did you evah’, sung by the two soloists, was a valiant effort with smart dialogue, with Dorrell at the piano. But good as it was, that song in the film has such a powerful imprint in the memory from the marvellous ensemble in the library, that anything else can pall. ‘Now you has jazz’ seriously miss-fired, seeming about as distant from a genuine jazz feel as you could get.

Each bracket adopted a theme. The first was Latin flavoured, as touched on above; the second was Paris – obviously, drawing from Can-Can (‘I love Paris’ and ‘C’est magnifique’) and Les Girls (‘Ça, c’est l’amour’ – though Crowe seemed unconvinced).

Crowe showed his talents better in the nostalgic ‘Where is the life’ from Kiss me Kate which produced some great songs. Though they avoided the too raunchy ‘Always true to you in my fashion’, Sarah, alone with Dorrell at the piano, sang a very feeling ‘So in Love’; but the up-tempo ‘Too darn hot’ really needs to be brazen and hard driven, a quality that rather evaded the choir.

The last song in the ‘Too darn hot’ set, entirely from the choir, was ‘It’s alright with me’ (from Can-Can) which, unfortunately for me, is forever owned by Errol Garner’s inimitable piano version; this performance had an authentic feel nevertheless.

In the last bracket which adopted the theme of the last song, ‘Anything goes’, began with ‘You’re the top’ from the show Anything Goes, and included ‘It’s de-lovely’ and ‘Let’s misbehave’. There was undoubtedly a growing feeling of ease and suppleness in the choir as the performance progressed and by the time of this last group both choir and orchestra were more comfortable and stylistically relaxed.

The audience was in no doubt about the concert and encores of ‘Blow Gabriel blow’ and ‘Begin the beguine’ were more gutsy and expressive than they had been at first performance.

It strikes me as possible that a foray into lighter music might be more within their range if they looked at European and American operetta from the era preceding Broadway, that began in the 1920s.