Category: Reviews – Concerts

Rare and wonderful Mozart opens Nelson’s festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Adam Chamber Music Festival: Grand Opening: Dvořák, Halvorsen, Mozart

Nelson Cathedral

Friday 4 February 7.30pm

For those who knew their music, this was a rare treat. Dvořák’s string sextet is a rich and gorgeous piece, one of those pieces that has familiar moments but is surprisingly neglected. Is it really too hard to get the necessary six player together? The sextet gains it special sonority and interest both from the more complex textures available and the addition of two lower instruments, an extra viola and cello. The four New Zealanders were assisted by the violist and cellist from the Hermitage Trio.

The extraordinary gifts of the latter trio were further revealed as the violinist and cellist played an astonishing duo composed by Norwegian Johan Halvorson based on a tune by Handel. No mere virtuosic show-piece (though it was all that), but a sophisticated and brilliant little composition in its own right. It unleashed a storm of applause.

But the real masterpiece was Mozart’s Gran Partita, or Serenade for 13 wind instruments (though the 13th is Ikematsu’s double bass) in B flat, K 361. It had profoundly impressed those who heard it in Vienna in 1784, and it has continued to enchant audiences ever since. It is less often heard live because it’s hard to get a dozen top-class wind players together. But the NZSO Soloists helped out and the performance was deeply musical, moving, tear-inducing, enthralling. Four horns, and two each of oboes, clarinets, basset horns and bassoons, plus double bass.

It’s almost an hour long, with seven movements including two minuets, a theme and variations movement and others in rondo or sonata form. There are very few other such ensembles and none that touch it in musical inspiration and depth.

It is a ever-changing pattern of solos from the various instruments, sonorous symphonies of sound from different combinations and often the entire band. There’s too much to detail, but constantly striking was the string bass, often suggesting timpani, from Ikematsu, grounding the whole fabric. Most rapturous was the third movement, an Adagio, in which Robert Orr’s oboe provided long ecstatic cries underpinned and echoed by clarinets and one by one, all sections. The remarkable fifth movement too captured deeper responses through its exquisite melancholy alternating with a brisk march rhythm, often accompanied by a hypnotic tread or pulsating chords from bassoons and basset horns.

The concert had begun with the little heard sextet in A, Op 48, by Dvořák, again neglected on account of its configuration. It really is too bad that string quartets have come to so dominate the chamber music field that the numerous quintets, sextets and larger ensembles are little known.

The beauty of the sextet in its normal configuration is a string quartet plus additional viola and cello, which gives both a heart-warmingly greater sonic foundation as well as allowing the composer to engage in more complex harmonic paterns. Though much of the melody was folk-derived, there was nothing peasantish about the composition or its performance.

The third movement – a furiant in place of minuet or scherzo – was probably most likely to sound familiar, from kinship with Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances, but the entire work is filled with melody that the composer knows how to make use of in ever-shifting ways.
While the playing was polished and opulent, there were moments, as in the dumka second movement when a little more boisterousness might have helped. In the last movement a long viola solo from Gillian Ansell caught the ear: a theme and variations, whose melody and its various guises were enchantingly played by this happy ensemble that found complete unity of spirit throughout. Someone asked Haydn why he didn’t write string quintets and he said he’d tried but could never find the fifth voice (or something to that effect); Dvořák had no such problem finding richness through six parts with which to clothe his fecund source of melody.

Chamber Music Festival under way in Nelson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Adam Chamber Music Festival, Nelson, 3 to 12 February 2011.

The Eleventh Adam Chamber Music Festival began with a gala dinner and concert at the Woollaston Winery out of Nelson with musical contributions from all the musicians present at that point; the New Zealand String Quartet whose first violinist and violist are the festival’s artistic directors; Canadian clarinettist James Campbell joined the quartet to play Weber’s Clarinet Quintet; special treat throughout the 10-day festival, of a fast rising Russian string trio, the Hermitage Trio. Their contribution was one of Beethoven’s string trios – the Op 3. Members of both the quartet and trio contributed towards Boccherini’s String Quintet in C. Finally, the NZSO’s principal bassist, Hiroshi Ikematsu, found a slot with cellist Rolf Gjelsten to play Rossini’s hair-raising and hilarious duo for those two instruments.

It was a stylish affair, with music between each of the courses of the elaborate dinner. I was not there, but patrons were delighted at the entire presentation.

The purely musical Grand Opening however was on Friday the 4th in the Nelson Cathedral.

Audiences at the festival have grown steadily over the years, till now several concerts were either sold out or almost so. That can be explained partly by the eventual awakening of New Zealanders, and a few overseas visitors, to the phenomenon that has taken firm root in other parts of the western, and even the Asian, world: the music festival, usually in summer in a charming place – like Nelson. The other stimulus in the case of New Zealand is the steady decline in artistic standards by the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington, to the point where classical music has a minor place and the festival is dominated by events aimed to attract casual audiences of limited interest in the arts, little cultivation and knowledge of music or the other mainstream performing arts. None of the other festivals in New Zealand, least of all the one in Auckland, takes its role as an arts festival seriously either.

Esa-Pekka Salonen recently remarked that people in their thirties and forties are awakening again to real music: “You realise that your time in not unlimited, that there might be an end to all this, and that life is too short to be wasted on things that are not quality”. In most countries, a whole generation has been let down by a school of ill-educated educationalists who have impoverished school curricula and allowed what is called the relativist view of culture to banish the systematic teaching of literature, general history, and the arts.

They have discovered that they can now come to Nelson for a rich diet of great, varied and wonderful music from top international players.

This festival was compressed into 10 days in comparison typically to about 17 days in the past. There have been varied reactions to this and time will tell how a programme with more music each day, but somewhat less overall, will impact on audiences and musicians …  and the bottom line.

We will post reviews of each concert in the coming days.

Michael Houstoun’s gala welcome to the new Fazioli at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society: Inauguration of new piano

Bach: Italian Concerto BWV 971; Schumann: Kreisleriana, Op 17; Kapustin: Sonata No 2, Op 54; Liszt: Three Petrarch Sonnets and The Fountains of the Villa d’Este

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 30 January 2011, 2.30pm

For a long time, pianists and some of the audiences at the Waikanae Music Society’s concerts had been a little dissatisfied with the piano, given the character of the concert space, a large multi-purpose hall in which sounds could dissipate for those not close to the performers. For more than a decade the society had been accumulating funds to buy a replacement and the time came last year. The achievements of the Waikanae Music Society should be seen as a shining example to all other musical organisations.

In consultation with Michael Houstoun the society settled on a Fazioli and it arrived three days before the concert. This special gala concert, meaning somewhat higher than usual prices, drew a very large audience – almost 500. The piano seemed easily to reach to the back and many remarked on its richness of tone. (For an enchanting insight into Fazioli pianos, let me recommend a chapter in T E Carhart’s The Piano Shop on the Left Bank).

The recital consisted of one piece that Houstoun had played in the past year in at least a couple of recitals in the Wellington region – Schumann’s Kreisleriana, some pieces we’ve not heard from Houstoun, at least for quite along time, and one very singular piece: an extended four movement Sonata in the jazz idiom, by Nikolai Kapustin.

Kapustin is a Ukrainian composer whose training at the Moscow Conservatorium was orthodox enough, but quite soon he fell under the spell of jazz, and was influenced there by someone he called a great teacher, Avrelian Rubakh.

Houstoun’s performance of the second piano sonata (out of eighteen), a many-faceted piece, suggested a myriad of jazz pianists from Earl Hines, though Errol Garner, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, even Keith Jarrett – particularly Oscar Peterson, whose amazing virtuosity astonishes both classical and jazz lovers.

Houstoun has recently been exploring jazz, perhaps inspired by his association with Mike Nock, and his feel for it impressed both by its command of the often highly complex rhythms, the star-bursts of cascading notes, with whirl-wind scales and arpeggios, all played as if pouring out as improvisation both spontaneous and inspired. Nevertheless there were times when, in the more bluesy passages such as in the Largo third movement, a feeling of more total relaxation might have been missed, and some driving climaxes fell a little short of the rapturous excitement that a Garner might have created.

Perhaps it is a surprise that Kapustin had no problems pursuing jazz in the Soviet Union where Stalin had proscribed it. But Khrushchev’s reforms created a considerably more comfortable climate for jazz and Radio Free Europe allowed Russian jazz enthusiasts to hear it.

So while Kapustin’s interest was not main-stream at the Moscow Conservatory, what made it acceptable was that it involved no improvisation and its employment of classical forms with jazz influences kept it free from criticism. Kapustin said, “I was entirely free; no problems. My music wasn’t avant-garde.”

The second sonata and other music by Kapustin has been famously recorded by Marc-André Hamelin. I have not heard it but reviews are electrifying, and so evidently is his playing. But I would be surprised if it were to prove much more idiomatic and consummate that what we heard on Sunday.

Judgement about the worth of the music is of course something entirely different. For the moment, it must simply be regarded as a remarkable, highly entertaining piece, brilliantly played.

That is no doubt how Liszt was regarded in the 1830s and 40s, though there were plenty of conservative critics ready to condemn him out-of-hand (there are still some). Houstoun ended his recital with the three Petrarch Sonnets, sensitive, poetic, carefully crafted in terms of dynamics and rubato, but again, not as abandoned as some might have wished, to the romantic excesses that were the thing at the time they were written: and The Fountains at the Villa d’Este; all from the Italian book of Years of Pilgrimage. The latter, insubstantial but enchanting, and played accordingly.

In this two-hundredth anniversary of his birth I hope for some serious exploration of this somewhat neglected and misrepresented composer. Houstoun is an obvious proponent; he has made a fine start.

The recital had begun with a fine and intellectually quite severe reading of Bach’s Italian Concerto (homage to the piano); it was elegant and fluent, rhythmically firm in the first movement, gracious and thoughtful in the second, racing, but perfect in its clarity and spirit in the last movement.

Kreisleriana featured in Houstoun’s programmes last year, the Schumann bicentenary, and both Peter Mechen and I wrote reviews of the performances. Though an important and highly imaginative work, for me it doesn’t have the delight of Carnaval, Papillons, the Abegg Variations, the Symphonic Etudes, or the inspired rapture of the Fantaisie.

But a highly persuasive account of it. I will leave it at that.

Postcards From Exotic Places – NZSO’s Chinese New Year

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Postcards From Exotic Places

SHENG – Postcards / LALO – Symphonie Espagnole

BODY – 3 Arias from “Alley” / DVORAK – Symphony No.9 “From the New World”

Tianwa Yang (violin)

Jon Jackson (counter-tenor)

Perry So (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 29th January 2011

On paper, it somehow seemed a slightly gimmicky way for the NZSO to begin the year – and having two much-played works from the standard repertoire presented as “exotic places” came across as almost ingenuous. How could Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, which EVERYBODY knows, possibly create an “exotic” impression? And, as a friend of mine remarked, “Chinese New Year Concert? – well, if you regard Lalo and Dvorak as Chinese composers, I suppose!”

In the event, it all worked surprisingly well, not the least due to some remarkable performances from the musicians involved with the concert. Both of the “standard repertoire” pieces sounded newly-minted on this occasion, and the two more obviously “Chinese” items in the concert stimulated and delighted the ear, so that we in the audience were constantly drawn towards the music. The brilliant and evocative playing of the soloist, Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang, brought Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole alive for me in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible – I’d previously regarded the piece as vapid and long-winded, and was charmed to find myself so unexpectedly engaged by it all. As significant was the contribution of the young Chinese conductor, Perry So, who secured from the NZSO players plenty of energy and focus throughout, enabling one to fall in love all over again with Antonin Dvorak’s most well-known symphony, one whose familiarity might just as easily have prompted a routine, all-purpose makeover. Instead, here was a fresh, urgently-delivered sequence of responses which made the notes sound as though they really mattered, the first two movements in particular for me getting right into what sounded like the music’s pulsating heart.

One of the most interesting aspects of the concert was the performance of three of the arias from Jack Body’s opera “Alley”, first staged in 1998 in Wellington’s International Arts Festival. At a pre-concert-talk the composer himself charmingly spoke about the music and the figure behind its inspiration, China-based New Zealander Rewi Alley, an active and life-long supporter of Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Revolution and its aftermath. Though problematic for a number of reasons, the production at the time received a lot of acclaim, though I felt the music had been somewhat compromised by the various on-and off-stage goings-on. Here, then, was a chance to experience without undue distraction three of the opera’s musical highlights, each of the three arias belonging to the young Rewi Alley, reflecting upon different aspects of both pre-and post-revolutionary China.

Each aria was sung by Australian counter-tenor Jon Jackson, not quite with sufficient voice in his “normal” register, but crackling with electricity in his “counter-tenor” mode, galvanizing the textures with incredibly emotive tones. The first song, Two Eyes, describing the execution of a young dissident, began with beautifully-focused “exotic” textures, readily capturing a sense of a time and place at once immediate and far away. The singing, precise and controlled at first, seemed muted, in danger of being consistently overwhelmed by the orchestral textures (less of a problem, perhaps, with the band in an opera house orchestral pit), but then hurling aside all reticence in counter-tenor mode, as the victim’s fate becomes apparent. The second aria , Men at Work, featured goosebump-making antiphonal drumming, and orchestral vocalizations, the soloist more “sprecht” than “gesang” in places, describing both the power and purpose of “ten thousand men working naked”, and the near-eroticism of the sight of a young boy cooling his body with irrigation water. Finally, Night painted a visionary, in places heartbreaking set of images of sleep, involving sleepers, whispering trees and millions of “battered, joyless children” imploring, seeking comfort and love. Body and his librettist, Geoff Chapple, used texts drawn from Alley’s own poetry.

Opening the concert, Bright Sheng’s Postcards took us on a whirlwind tour of different parts of China, the composer using folk music idioms from specific regions to help characterize a particular feeling about each one. From the Mountains took listeners to remote, widely-spaced places, the wind lines exotically “bending” their melodic pitching in places and creating a peaceful sense of drifting distance in tandem with undulating string figurations. A contrast came with From the River Valley, whose Respighi-like energies, heralded by bell-sounds, featured ear-tickling sonorities from winds and a muted trumpet set against the roar of heavy percussion at climactic points. Rather more primitive and challenging was From the Savage Lands, sounding in places like a “Stravinsky-meets Britten” amalgam of rhythms and sonorities, building up to an exciting rhythmic tattooing of percussion and shrieking winds, until muted trumpet and bass clarinet led the music away from the bacchanalian frenzies to a state of exhausted afterglow, the composer confessing that at this point in his work, the final Wish You Were Here, his homesickness for his native land became all too apparent. Sheng’s music amply demonstrated at this point that peculiarly Oriental ability to evoke whole worlds with the simplest of artistic means, the restraint of the scoring making all the more telling a concluding impression of peaceful resignation.

As for the two better-known items in the concert, what I really enjoyed was the immediacy of the playing of both the soloist and the orchestra – I thought the instrumental textures were given a bit more edge and “bite” in places than has been the case with the orchestra of late, making for an exciting and involving sound. Beside violinist Tianwa Yang’s stunning playing – expressive across a gutsy-to-sweetly-rapt continuum – many of the orchestral solos both stimulated and enchanted, none more so than the superb cor anglais playing of Michael Austin throughout the New World Symphony’s Largo, though comparable magic was wrought by the front-desk octet of strings at the close of the movement. Apart from a reading of the Scherzo of the Symphony which in places relied perhaps too much on speed instead of rhythmic pointing, I thought conductor Perry So’s approach to the music constantly fresh and invigorating. And I liked the sounds he encouraged from the players, direct and wholehearted, and serving the music well.

Whanganui hosts a sell-out opera school gala concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Seventeenth New Zealand Opera School at Whanganui. Director of the school: Donald Trott; Performance director: Sara Brodie

Royal Wanganui Opera House

Thursday 13 January 2011

For the first time, the gala concert to end the summer opera school was a sell-out. A brilliantly contrived TV item may have been partly responsible, with a rehearsed ‘ad hoc’ performance in a street market a couple of days before featuring the brindisi from La traviata.

In recent years a group has become established, Wanganui Opera Week, which helps popularise and make visible and audible the school’s activities in the city. And year by the year appreciation of the rare distinction that Whanganui enjoys in the survival of its Victorian opera house grows. A house not only of considerable architectural interest but also with excellent acoustics.

The last four summer opera schools have had the benefit of staging and, shall we say, dramaturgical embellishment by choreographer and opera and theatre director Sara Brodie. And it was this element, in addition to the widely acknowledged rise in vocal skills, that dominated audience conversations. In contrast to last year’s concert which comprised a series of tableaux each with something of a common theme, this concert was guided by two ideas.

The first was an audition session from the inside, with Sara Brodie playing the key role in the assessments. The first candidate, Bianca Andrew, sang a vivid ‘Parto, parto’ from La clemenza di Tito, all the taxing roulades cleanly delivered, and she was rewarded with an immediate, ‘You’re hired!’.

The auditioning process recurred from time to time throughout, but it was overlaid by a French cabaret or revue setting, and the colour blue seemed to be a constant image, along with the sensuous use of large feather boas; they became a sort of trade mark. The joint MCs of the revue scenes were Bianca Andrew and Cameron Barclay; he later sang the aria from Les Troyens.

Nothing could have been more French than the four excerpts from Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann and the panel’s conferring about the singer led to the Students’ drinking song from the Prologue to that opera, sung by the men – I counted nine. Was this a record? I don’t think there have been so many excellent male singers at the school before.

The first ‘Act’ closed with the Barcarolle – the duet from the Giulietta act, with the surprise inclusion of the Sri Lankan counter-tenor Stephen Diaz, who had attracted wide attention last year. He took Nicklausse’s mezzo role, inauthentically, as a female mezzo normally sings the part of Hoffmann’s male friend. His performance was immaculate and authoritative. Bryony Williams sang Giulietta, well, though the two voices seemed to inhabit quite different acoustic spaces; was it a quirk of the theatre or was there some subtle amplification taking place?

Diaz had earlier sung an aria by one of the great composers of the castrato era – Riccardo Broschi, the brother of Carlo, more famous as the castrato Farinelli, from his opera called Idaspe (Venice, 1730). Though this year’s aria (‘Ombra fedele anch’io’) was unknown, it made no less impact than Handel’s ‘Ombra mai fu’ did in 2010. Though Diaz made his performance with its dazzling embellishments look easy, it was not merely the uncommon vocal register that made him stand out, but also his musicianship and lyrical gift, his natural expressive powers, the penetrating strength and subtlety of his singing that placed him in a class of his own.

Bryony Williams’s solo aria was in the second half – Catalani’s greatest hit, ‘Ebben? Ne andrò lontana’ from La Wally. Here, in a long blue gown, Wally enters being chased from her father’s house because she persists in her love for the son of her father’s enemy. Her polished voice and arresting stage presence did full justice to this evocative aria.

The second offering from The Tales of Hoffmann was the Kleinzach chorus, sung in English, with the final sound of both that name and the Bach town of Eisenach pronounced ‘k’; no need to anglicize to that degree. However the singing was spirited. It was followed as if there was some narrative connection, by ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ from Samson et Dalila; Elisha Fai sang it in French, showing a few flaws though hers is a pleasing and promising voice.

A Samson presented himself at her feet during her performance, which was followed by the metamorphosis from Samson to Hoffmann to a continuation of Kleinzach. Darren Pene Pati’s voice exhibited colour and real beauty as well as impressive control.

We did not hear him in an extended aria till his beautiful performance of ‘Che gelida manina’ (Bohème) near the end of the concert. His was one of the highlights of the concert and it received a well merited ovation. His Mimi, Xing Xing Wang, followed it naturally with ‘Si, mi chiamano Mimi’ in a perfect interpretation that was vocally affecting and histrionically poised and moving. Applause for her was hardly less enthusiastic.

The third piece from Hoffmann was the above mentioned Barcarolle; the fourth, fittingly, was the septet that brings the opera to an end, as it did the concert itself, with the entire assembly singing with huge gusto and enjoyment. Bruce Greenfield accompanied all the Hoffmann excerpts, lending the spirit of the fantastic and the recklessness that characterizes the story of Offenbach’s hero.

Other French pieces included a lovely aria that is familiar but whose provenance is probably obscure: ‘Oh! Ne t’éveille pas encore’ from Jocelyn by Benjamin Godard, a contemporary of Fauré and Chausson. Oliver Sewell did not altogether avoid the danger of allowing its charming sentiment from sliding towards the sentimental; a good voice but as yet little stage presence.

In ‘Act II’, the first French aria came from a rather neglected quarter: Berlioz.

Cameron Barclay repeated his successful recipe from last year, with something very unfamiliar. In 2010 he sang an aria from Copland’s The Tender Land; this time it was Iopas’s aria ‘O blonde Cérès’ sung to console Dido in Act IV of Les Troyens. His French was good and the quality of his voice promising as he found the right idiom and phrasing for Berlioz’s sometimes unusual metres.

There followed two familiar arias from familiar operas, Carmen and Faust, but first, and most remarkably, the final scene from Poulenc’s devastating opera Dialogues des Carmélites. (Note the proper title of the opera is without the definite article). Here, in the opera based on Georges Bernanos’s novel, all 11 women in the school took the parts of the nuns, falling dead in full view on stage as we hear the swoosh of the guillotine, in one of the many terrible acts of fanaticism perpetrated during the Terror following the French Revolution. In the only live production I’ve seen, the nuns are led out one by one to be executed out of sight; the effect is, as always, far more chilling and powerful than for violent acts to be portrayed graphically, a fact to which most theatre and film directors today seem oblivious.

It was perhaps the most dramatic and memorable item on the evening.

School director Donald Trott reminded those of the audience unaware of the career of founder tutor of the school Virginia Zeani, that she had sung the major role of Blanche de la Force at the La Scala world premiere of Carmélites in 1947 – the opera made such a remarkable impact that productions followed in the same year in Paris, Cologne and San Francisco.

Kieran Rayner followed that with Valentin’s aria from Faust pleading that God watch over his sister Marguérite while he is away at war. As with his brindisi from Thomas’s Hamlet in 2010, aria Rayner showed his flair in the French repertoire, striking presence and a robust attractive voice. Oddly, I found some of his French vowels a little eccentric.

From fifteen years later, Carmen made its appearance in Micaela’s second aria, ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante’.Rachel Day chose it well for it lay comfortably for her even though her top notes were a little shrill.

Other nationalities were represented in a few items.

American operas had interesting exposure, starting with Bernstein’s Candide. Here was a splendid vehicle for promising coloratura Olga Gryniewicz who sang a Rimsky-Korsakov aria in 2010. In truth, some of the high notes in ‘Glitter and be Gay’ showed her at a little below the polished and assured brilliance of some earlier performances, but there is both fine musicianship and vocal virtuosity here; and she is a vivid actress.

Menotti is American rather than Italian and the aria from The Old Maid and the Thief opened ‘Act II’; Bridget Costello sang the droll ‘Steal me, sweet thief’ with clear diction and straight-faced irony; her voice is well schooled, has excellent dynamic control and she inhabited the role well.

The third American opera was Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah from which Amelia Berry sang ‘The trees on the mountain’. She sings with skill and confidence, her voice firm, accurate and expressive. In choosing this aria she demonstrated both adventurousness and a musicality that should take her far.

Two singers had chosen Britten.

Rose Blake sang the Embroidery aria from Peter Grimes, a long and difficult piece to interpret musically and with lyricism, yet her well-supported voice and secure high notes complemented her musicality.

Considerably less familiar is Britten’s Rape of Lucretia though its first appearance just after World War II led to many productions. The former Wellington Polytechnic produced it about a decade ago. It was not the title-role we heard – made famous by Ferrier and Baker – but the part of Tarquin, as he contemplates the sleeping Lucretia. Thomas Barker’s baritone was beguiling and attractive rather that expressing the violent lust that drives him.

Stravinsky’s The Rakes’s Progress can also be classed as English for Stravinsky set this operatic interpretation of Hogarth’s set of engravings in English. Imogen Thirlwell sang Anne’s poignant aria, ‘No news from Tom’ with clarity and some sensitivity.

Since the last gala concert of the opera school, several of these singers were heard in one or both of the operas in Rhona Fraser’s Days Bay garden: The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini’s The Journey to Rheims. There they all demonstrated their ability to handle not just individual arias but sustained performance in a real opera.

Mozart in fact out-numbered Offenbach, with six singers in a variety of well-known arias from four operas. There were two arias from Figaro.

Isabella Moore sang the Countess’s ‘Porgi amor’, her first appearance at the beginning of Act II. I thought her red dress offered the wrong image for the betrayed wife, but her singing showed her understanding nevertheless.

A little later in Act II the young page Cherubino, a mezzo trouser role, seeks the help of Susanna and the Countess in understanding his unrelenting priapism: ‘Voi che sapete’, and Ceit McLean sang it well enough; as yet she has not developed the flair and confidence to carry such an aria off with real elan.

I mentioned Bianca Andrew’s ‘Parto, parto’ from Tito, which opened the concert.

Tavis Gravatt sang the baritone role of Guglielmo from Così fan tutte: ‘Donne mie, la fate a tanti’, in a sturdy, capable performance, not yet invested with much charm.

Another baritone, Anthony Schneider, sang the first of two arias from The Magic Flute: Papageno’s ‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja’, natural seeming; the by-play seemed a little de trop, as the Three Ladies made their appearance which would have made sense only to those familiar with the story. There were glosses on several other performances that would have had meaning only to the initiated. Schneider carried it very well.

The tenor ‘hero’ Tamino in the Flute is less funny than Papageno, and so makes quite different demands. A somewhat rapturous reaction is called for as he looks at a vignette of the princess Pamina, and neither Jamie Young’s costume nor his demeanour quite met the requirements; the by-play was again a little distracting but his actual singing portrayed Tamino effectively.

Accompaniments were uniformly splendid; in addition to Greenfield, they were Greg Neil, Iola Shelley, Evans Chang, Travis Baker, Mark Dorrell, and Philippa Safey. Michael Vinten conducted choruses. The tutors were Prof Paul Farrington, Margaret Medlyn, Barry Mora, Richard Greager; Flavio Villani tutors in Italian and Kararaina Walker was production assistant and delivered the opening Karanga.

In a country so isolated from the musical, especially operatic, resources and performances available in Europe and even in North America, more than usual efforts need to be made to provide opportunities to hone skills and cultivate talents and interpretive insight as well as taking part in live performance. This now 17-year-old opera school at Whanganui provides some of the scarce experiences of the first kind.

The Whanganui project is the result of extraordinary efforts on the part of a few dedicated enthusiasts, led by Donald Trott, dependent on huge fund-raising efforts which ought to be taken up to a far greater degree through the state-assisted tertiary education system.

We need both advanced training and journeyman experiences for our rising singers, plus professional companies that can stage more than two productions a year to provide a basic livelihood in their own country.

While New Zealand often seems content to congratulate itself for producing gifted musicians and others in the arts, little attention is paid to the stark fact that this country is right at the bottom of the OECD in terms of arts funding at all levels and in all the serious genres. What initiatives the Government does take seem, extraordinarily, to be devoted to energy and money-wasting ‘reviews’ and consultative processes, to cutting and imposing ever-increasing barriers and demands on poverty-stricken, already struggling enterprises.

Free Concert to mark the Summer School of Choral Conducting

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Choral pieces by American composers, Rossini, Brahms, Lauridsen, Helen Fisher, David Griffiths, David Childs and Anthony Ritchie

Choir of the Summer School in Choral Conducting conducted by three visiting tutors from USA with accompanist, Bronwyn Brown (Australia); Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir conducted by Karen Grylls, with Horomona Horo (taonga puoro)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill Street

Sunday, 2 January 2011

A free concert is always welcome, and Sacred Heart was nearly full for a short choral concert.

The opening bracket of songs were all by American composers, and conducted by tutors at the Summer School of Choral Conducting, the choir being made up of those being tutored: choral conductors and fledgling conductors.

Jo-Michael Scheibe conducted ‘I carry your heart with me’ by David Dickau, with words by e.e. cummings. He explained that there had only been three hours for rehearsal; whether this was for this piece alone or for all three pieces was not made clear. After a tentative start, this was a good performance, though not electrifying, despite one of the headings in the printed programme reading ‘International Summer School in Choral Conduction Inc.’ The choir of over 40 was well balanced, and featured splendid basses. This item was accompanied on the piano by Bronwyn Brown.

The second choral song was a setting of Psalm 121: ‘I will lift up mine eyes’, by Nicholas Mekaig. It was conducted by Christopher Kiver, an Englishman resident in the United States. Again, the opening was a little tentative, and at one point the soprano sound turned into something of a shriek, but there was good unaccompanied singing, and a lovely balanced ending.

These were two beautiful settings, which would be worth local choirs taking up.

The last of the three was accompanied, and opened with excellent unison singing. Most of the choir sang from memory in this item: ‘True Light’ by Keith Hampton, conducted by Mary Hopper. This was a gospel-style number, with the choir eventually swaying to the beat.

The choir made a good fist of unfamiliar music. The conductors were clear in their beats and other gestures, without flamboyance, and produced good results from a group not accustomed to singing together, performing new music.

After a short break while the choirs changed places, Horomona Horo slowly led Voices New Zealand into the Cathedral, as he played taonga puoro. He switched instruments from the conch shell trumpet-like instrument to a long wooden, very loud wind instrument when the choir reached the front of the church.

For a complete contrast, the choir began with Rossini’s ‘Cantemus’, an attractive piece reminiscent of compositions of a couple of centuries earlier. Immediately we were in the presence of a very impressive choir. These are quality voices, singing very effectively with unified tone, excellent enunciation, feeling for the music, which moves forward all the time. Legato singing was graceful, and dynamics superbly graded.

Brahms’s ‘Nachtwache’ and ‘Verlorene Jugend’ from Funf Gesänge followed. Fullness of beautiful tone is what distinguishes this choir and its remarkable conductor, as well as accuracy and attention to detail. For example, all the vowels are made in the same way by every one of the 24 choir members. There is plenty of volume when required. In this piece there were one or two harsh high soprano notes, but this was an isolated occurrence. I am sure Brahms would have been thrilled with this performance.

The noted American choral composer Morten Lauridsen wrote Six Fire Songs. Three were performed, and proved to be very effective music. They were sung with force and clarity. There were difficult harmonies, all executed to perfection.

‘Pounamu’ by Helen Fisher was the only one of the Voices items accompanied: Horomona Horo played the koauau beautifully during this quite lengthy piece. The instrument contributed to a ghostly feeling, as did the long-held notes from the choir. The interval of a second occurred frequently; this was difficult music, and not something that many other choirs could readily tackle.

David Griffiths set poems of Charles Brasch in Five Landscapes, of which we heard two: ‘Oreti Beach’ and ‘On Mount Iron’. This was stark, but interesting music, and the second song particularly featured delicious choral writing. However, from where I sat it was not possible to hear most of the words.

A lovely ‘Salve Regina’ setting by David Childs was exquisitely sung. There were gorgeous harmonies, and the basses particularly were outstanding. A few fuzzy entries did not really detract from a fine rendering.

Last of all was a piece written especially for Voices New Zealand: ‘Olinda’ by Anthony Ritchie. Here, the words were clearer – it may be that the writing of a former New Zealand Youth Choir member (and present Board member of Choirs Aotearoa) lent itself to greater clarity. It was a cheerful item with which to end a memorable concert.

Christine Argyle introduced the Voices items, each of which was received with sustained and hearty applause from the audience.

The four New Zealand compositions were all more adventurous in style than the American ones. This is not to put down the latter – they were all most effective choral pieces, and certainly not without tricky harmonies and rhythms. We were treated to a programme of demanding music, magnificently sung.

The Tudor Consort in a brilliant Christmas Oratorio

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Bach: Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248

 

The Tudor Consort and the Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Michael Stewart. Soloists: Anna Leese (soprano), Kate Spence (alto), David Hamilton (tenor), Jared Holt (bass)

 

Wellington Town Hall

 

Saturday 18 December 2010, 7.30pm

 

The Tudor Consort’s courage in hiring the Town Hall for its Christmas Oratorio was rewarded by a good audience and by an absolutely wonderful performance. Anna Leese was no doubt an important draw-card, but in the event the success was achieved through the other three principals, by the choir itself, and very importantly, the superb baroque ensemble drawn from the Vector Wellington Orchestra.

 

Here was just one occasion when this fine orchestra provided an indispensable contribution to a performance. Bach calls for only about 23 players, but these were players who created an accompaniment of such finesse and sensitivity to the Baroque style that I can hardly imagine better in this country, or any other. As he had shown in his work with the choir, Michael Stewart proved an equally gifted orchestral director, as diverting to watch as to hear.

 

Most striking perhaps were the three trumpets, led conspicuously by section principal Barrett Hocking who carried most of the high-lying embellishments. No less beautiful were the four oboes two of which dealt with Bach’s writing for two deep-voiced oboe da caccia; or the accompaniment by solo violin and cello (Matthew Ross and Jane Young) of Kate Spence’s aria in Part III, ‘Schliess mein Herz’, and elsewhere.  The only outside players were NZSO timpanist Larry Reese and bass player Alexander Gunchenko whose playing made consummate contributions too.

 

On its own in the Sinfonia of Part II, all the many strengths of the orchestra, such as beautiful string playing, became most conspicuous.

 

Soprano Anna Leese had, naturally, attracted most of the pre-concert publicity; unfortunately, Bach had misread his brief and offered her fewer solo opportunities than she merited. Nevertheless, her singing stopped the audience in its tracks, as it were, in her first, short offering in Part II, as the Angel, in duet with David Hamilton’s Evangelist: ‘Und der Engel sprach zu ihnen’; again, in Part III, she sang in duet with Jared Holt, ‘Herr, dein Mitleid, dein Erbarmen’, somewhat oddly, many metres apart, at the front of the stage: her voice penetrating, dramatic, agile, and nicely blending with Holt’s.  

 

After a most delightful trio between soprano, alto and tenor, Leese got her big solo in Part VI, ‘Nur ein Wink von seinen Händen’, which only convention prevented the audience from shouting to the rafters: such variety of colour and articulation, such insight into the meaning of every word.

 

(It was interesting to look back at the Mobil Song Quest in 2002: Anna Leese, winner; Kate Spence, second; Ana James, third. The other three finalists were ‘whatever-happened-to’ names: Majka Kaiser, Andrew Conley and the recently returned from Europe and still singing-in-opera, Anna Pierard.)

 

David Hamilton deserved equal billing for his prolonged work as the Evangelist, rich with highly accomplished ornaments, and interpretation of the words in the most lively and sympathetic way. His voice hardly tired, it remained clear and accurate throughout, still singing like a thirty-year-old!  For example, he made an impressive and arresting job of the melodious aria in Part II, ‘Frohe Hirten, eilt, ach, eilet’, adorned with ornaments and charmingly accompanied by flutes.  

 

After her runner-up prize in the 2002 Mobil Song Quest and studies in London Kate Spence had only a short professional career in opera; but she often sings on the concert platform. One has to lament that support of opera in New Zealand has been so poor that a singer of such talent has not been able to stay in the profession. Her voice, a lovely mezzo with characteristic warmth at the bottom, is full of character, projects strongly, a voice that bloomed in the Town Hall acoustic. I commented on her above; and she had several other notable recitatives, arias and ensembles, such as the long aria ’Schlafe mein Liebster’ in Part II, this time attractively accompanied by oboes and flutes.  

 

Jared Holt won the Mobil in 2000 and had a promising career that even reached the stage of Covent Garden; like several other singers, he had equipped himself with the safety-net of a law degree and that is now offering him more security. A strong opera company that can employ a regular ensemble of principals would have kept him away from law. His first substantial aria in Part I, ‘Grosser Herr, o starker König’, was a fine display of his sturdy competence, vigorous and splendidly dramatic: its accompaniment by a brilliant trumpet did his performance no harm at all. And I noted above, his very striking duet with Leese.

 

The oratorio obviously offers great music for the choir itself, with its wealth of lively, often triple-time numbers, and chorales, many of which have a familiar ring since so much of the music was recycled from earlier pieces. Not unusually, the choir’s energy and confidence built through the performance. Perhaps a shade more ecstasy might have driven the opening chorus, ‘Jauchzet, froh locket’, yet it was still among the most polished and exuberant performances I have heard; the subsequent chorales, calmer, enabled the choir to gather its strength for some powerful singing, till a chorus such as the opening of Part V, ‘Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen’ was a thrilling exhibition of ebullience and vocal athleticism.

 

Foremost in the thoughts of audience members as they listened to the orchestra’s polished and exuberant playing, must have been the present threat to the orchestra whose existence in at least its existing size and quality is vital to Wellington’s musical life. The behaviour of Creative New Zealand which would deny this orchestra even the modest level of assistance it now receives, seems driven by either vindictiveness, some obscure, adolescent, PC-ridden agenda, or plain ignorance: perhaps all three.

 

I can only hope that those who make boasts about the cultural capital will be able to bring to their senses those who have such destructive impulses.

 

 

Organist Richard Apperley celebrates Advent and Christmas

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Modern organ music for Advent and Christmas, by Andrew Baldwin, Marcel Dupré, Flor Peeters, Charles Ives, David Farquhar, Wilbur Held, Maughan Barnett.

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Friday, 10 December 2010, 12.45pm

A fine organ recital from Richard Apperley consisted of mainly short seasonal pieces. All the composers were either born in the twentieth century, or did most of their composing in that century. Three New Zealand composers featured.

Andrew Baldwin was Composer in Residence at the Cathedral from 2006-2008, and wrote An Advent Prelude for Apperley in 2009; this was its first public performance. Charming chord progressions, alternation between manuals and much use of the swell pedal, allowing for gradual build-up from pianissimo passages were features, as were key changes. Not a profound work, it nevertheless made pleasant listening.

Dupré was one of the great French organist-composers. His ‘Ecce Dominus veniet’ (Behold the Lord cometh) from his Six Antiphons for the Christmas Season was short and sweet: attractive, but not diverse in style or key.

Another organist-composer, this time Belgian, was Flor Peeters. His music for organ is varied and imaginative, as was ‘Hirten, er ist geboren’ (Shepherds, he is born). At the beginning there was delightful use of a 2-foot stop in running passages for the right hand, with the chorale melody below. The music reminded me of flights of birds, or music as droplets of sound.

Charles Ives, the American composer, had studied the organ in his youth. His Prelude ‘Adeste Fidelis’ began with a sustained high note, which changed to dissonant chords, followed by the melody in the lower part, against ever more dissonant chords and pedal before the return of the high note. It was a thoroughly innovative treatment of the well-known tune.

Another well-known Christmas melody was the subject of David Farquhar’s piece: ‘“…From Heaven I come” with Song and Dance and Dance’; variations on ‘Vom Himmel Hoch’. While I found a few parts of this setting a bit dull, at least in the Cathedral’s acoustic, overall it was interesting. The trumpet declaimed the melody, with intermittent chords below it, then flutes varied it discursively. They were followed by variations interspersed between the manuals in a variety of registrations, the pedals not being consistently employed. A declamation on reeds was followed by frisky flute runs. This was quite a demanding piece, that ended in a great roar. We would not think of Farquhar as a composer for organ, but he obviously knew his way around it. The programme note states that Apperley worked with David Farquhar to prepare registrations for a performance of the work on Christmas Day in 2002.

American Wilbur Held (b.1914) was represented by a setting of the Christmas hymn ‘Of the Father’s love begotten’. The high-pitched opening was an unusual and appealing treatment of the theme. The variation introduced chords in a variety of harmonies. A most enchanting setting ended calmly.

Maughan Barnett was English, but moved to New Zealand in 1893, and to the position of organist and choirmaster at Wellington’s St. John’s Presbyterian Church two years later. He became the first city organist in 1908. He wrote music for a variety of important occasions, and was a notable figure in the city’s musical scene until his death in 1938. His ‘Introduction and Variations on the Christmas Hymn ‘Mendelssohn’’ (alias ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’) was quite a lengthy piece. It began loudly and robustly, in good Victorian or Edwardian style (its date of composition is not known).

There was plenty of decoration, full organ contrasting with more straightforward playing of the hymn tune. The first variation featured broken chords on two manuals. I must admit I was reminded of someone slurping porridge, interspersed with doing the same with their cup of tea (i.e. the higher pitched registrations).

The second variation had a background of rapidly running notes, while the melody itself was subject to some variation. The third began with bombastic chords, and put the tune into a minor key, while the fourth had the tune rendered more or less straight, on a reed stop over a quiet accompaniment. The next one had a bland registration of the melody with harmony on the pedals, but above that, lovely runs on a 2-foot registration.

The sixth and final variation began with quiet chords on reeds, the melody having varied harmonisations and decorations, moving into a full harmony treatment on diapasons with some upper variations, and finally a grand ending.

Apperley’s playing was impeccable and tasteful throughout the varied programme of considerable interest.

Christmas presents from the NZSO….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Wellington Christmas Concert 2010

Works by Britten, Mozart, Respighi, Handel, Corelli, Reger, Adam, Nicolai, Rutter

Aivale Cole (soprano)

Choir and Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Paul Goodwin (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 9th December, 2010

Musically, this was a heart-warming “something for everybody” concert, presenting tried and true favorites from, for example, Messiah (fascinating to compare performances with what was heard less than a week previously from the Orpheus Choir and the Wellington Orchestra) along with relative concert-hall rarities like Benjamin Britten’s Men of Goodwill and Otto Nicolai’s Christmas Overture. Almost as rare was Respighi’s beautiful L’adorazione dei Magi, the second of the composer’s Three Botticelli Pictures. Another composer whose works rarely make concert-hall appearances in this part of the world is Max Reger, represented here by two Nativity settings for choir and orchestra.

Despite the musical interest of the program, and the excellence of the performances from soloist Aivale Cole, and the choir and orchestra under Paul Goodwin, I thought the event could have been made a bit more festive or Christmassy. True, the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul Choir and Choristers’ Santa-red robes did give a certain ritualistic air to the proceedings, and Aivale Cole’s spectacular dress with its energetic swirls of resplendent colour-energy was certainly eye-catching. But apart from these visual stimulations, there was nothing done or staged to proclaim the event had any more significance than just another concert. I actually felt sorry for the NZSO players, having to “deck the halls” in public not long after returning from an exhausting whirlwind European tour during which they obviously gave their all, wowing the critics and the audiences alike. One would have thought the orchestra had done enough for the year, and could deservedly rest on its laurels for a bit before facing the new challenges of 2011. But, presumably because it’s the “expected” thing to put on a Christmas concert, the musicians, or at least most of them, were there at the party, giving enjoyable and well-played performances of a mixture of interesting and standard repertoire.

What might have made a difference would have been somebody associated with or representing the orchestra actually welcoming the audience to the concert (and I don’t mean via one of those deadeningly impersonal recorded voice-overs which the orchestra uses to announce each event – was it David Pawsey who in the old days used to come out onto the platform at the beginning, and very sweetly ask us to make sure our cell-phones were turned off?). It’s the kind of thing that conductor Mark Taddei for one carries off with great élan when introducing Wellington Orchestra concerts – if somewhat gauche in effect when overdone, it’s nevertheless great to mark a festive occasion with something out of the ordinary like this. Alternatively, being a capital city, Wellington has no shortage of well-known “personalities” whose talents could be thus commandeered  (the city has a new Mayor, of course, who might have been thrilled to be asked to introduce something at the concert). And though it’s a bit of a hoary idea (but no more so than performing the “Halleluiah” Chorus on such an occasion, I might add), the items could have been introduced by one or two or more of these personalities reading something appropriately seasonal either from Scripture, or from literature. These are very basic “impulse” ideas, but doing something along these lines would have helped engender some extra atmosphere befitting the occasion.

Fortunately, the performances carried a certain sound and sense of seasonal celebration to convey an idea of Christmas, beginning with the Benjamin Britten rarity which I disappointingly missed, thanks to an unfortunate car-parking contretemps! Luckily, a reviewer colleague present described it all for me as “engaging and rumbustious, with a jolly fugal finale, played here by the orchestra with plenty of energy and feeling”. I do wish I’d heard it – apparently it was music Britten wrote for a broadcast of a Christmas speech in 1947 made by King George VI, though without the fugue on that occasion, due to time constraints. Britten never had the work published – whether he didn’t think much of it, or was too taken up with other projects, one can’t be sure – but Men of Goodwill had to wait until several years after the composer’s death before the score was made available by Faber Music.

Soprano Aivale Cole looked and sounded magnificent, even though her first offering, Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate, was truncated – contrary to the programme’s indication, she performed only the work’s opening section (my colleague thought she hadn’t sufficiently “warmed up” for the rest, hence the unscheduled departure from the platform). Next was Respighi’s adorable, orchestra-only L’adorazione dei Magi, an enchanting work, featuring orchestral winds performing miracles of rustic evocation, the strings initially held back, then allowed to interact with the winds to create a sense of wonderment and exultation at the Saviour’s birth. While very much a stylistic jump from this to Handel, Aivale Cole’s re-appearance for “Rejoice Greatly” from Messiah certainly continued the Nativity sequence, even if the singer found some of the downward figurations of the opening a bit breathless and intonation-testing – after the central “He is the Righteous Saviour’,  the reprise of the opening found her voice more settled and confident-sounding. Throughout, Cole’s wonderful diction and “ownership” of the words I found a constant delight, though she changed the unidiomatic “He shall Fe-EED his flock” to “He sha-AALL feed his flock”, about which one couldn’t really complain, especially as we even got some modest decoration of the line at the reprise of “Come unto him”. The Wellington Cathedral Choir and Choristers’ first appearance was at the end of this sequence, with a swift, lithe performance of “His yoke is easy”, the interpretation missing a bit of the ending’s irony with the word “light”, but still all beautifully sensitive and finely-graded.

Corelli’s Christmas Concerto began the second half, the opening terse and snappy, but with a lovely gravity of utterance in the slower section that followed. Donald Armstrong’s and Andrew Thomson’s duo violin work was just one of the outstanding features of a performance whose stylish textures, phrasings and rhythms helped bring the work’s pictorial qualities to life – a gorgeous “Nativity” processional sequence, for example, breathed such sweet and serene air as to make the contrasting allegro section properly “bite” before returning to the opening serenities. In both of Max Reger’s Christmas hymn settings the youthful freshness of the choir’s voices also made an incredibly sweet impression, the second of the two settings in particular allowing both men’s and women’s voices individual sequences, and contrasting the strands excitingly with the vigor of the full choir in the choruses. Otto Nicolai, best known as the composer of the opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, chimed in with a substantial overture-like piece, Christmas Overture, written for what seemed like a very large orchestra, whose size proved the choir’s undoing at the very end. But Paul Goodwin and the players captured the Schumannesque beginning of the work to perfection, with cathedral-like archways of sound, leading to episodes by turns agitated and suffused with the radiance of the chorale “Vom Himmel hoch”, the choir joining the festivities towards the conclusion, but sadly proving too “voice-light” and insufficient in number to make much impression alongside Nicolai’s full orchestral scoring.

Other highlights included Aivale Cole’s expansive and lyrical O Holy Night, whose second verse, sung in Samoan, featured a glorious high note at the end which brought the singer screams of approval at the end – and deservedly so. Again the sweet, youthful choral voices were like balm to the ears in John Rutter’s Shepherd’s Pipe Carol and the same composer’s arrangement of Away in a Manger; while a swift, excitable “Halleluiah” Chorus set one and (almost)all up and on their feet in the traditional manner – a good thing, too, because at the end everybody simply walked off the stage and the applause stopped, and that was it, no recalls, flowers, kisses or anything like that – just as if it was the end of another day in the life of an orchestra…….

Ruth Armishaw sings about songbirds and divas at St Andrew’s final concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

From Sondheim to Swann; songs by Victor Herbert, Sondheim, Jonathan Larsen, A L Webber, Christine McVie, Bock and Harnick, David and Arthurs, Bizet, Puccini, Flanders and Swann 

 

Ruth Armishaw (soprano) with Jonathan Berkahn (piano)

 

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

 

Wednesday 8 December 12.15pm 

 

For the last concert of the St Andrew’s free lunchtime series, a departure from the strict canon of classical music might be permitted. This time it proved especially permissible because of the polish and style that singer and pianist brought to the job.

 

Nevertheless, it’s not easy to bring off songs conceived for smoky bars, cabarets or even musical theatre in the severity of a well-lit church on a bright mid-day, with a stone-cold sober audience. Ruth Armishaw did extremely well.

 

Many critics and music lovers cherish an almost automatic aversion to anything that smells of ‘cross-over’, in both directions, and operating with particular PC force where ethnic music is concerned – in that case, condemnation is one-way, applying solely to the white presuming to sing black or brown music. Ruth Armishaw did not risk that censure.

 

She began with a song made famous by Kiri – ‘Art is calling for me’ from The Enchantress by Victor Herbert. With its feet firmly in the land of operetta, this splendid song suited her operatic voice perfectly and her self-confidence carried its story effortlessly. Its rhythm and infectious, hyperbolic lyrics were vigorously yet subtly backed by Jonathan Berkahn whose contribution Ruth called attention to, jazz or pop music style, half way through the concert. It’s one of the traditions that the classical world could usefully borrow.

 

Though I find Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (musical? operetta?) singularly distasteful, ‘Green finch and linnet bird’ lies charmingly without being besmirched by the gruesome story and Armishaw sang it in a way that made clear Sondheim’s affinity with Menotti rather than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

 

The next three songs came from a range of musical theatre pieces for which she reached for the microphone; her voice, the entire atmosphere, was transformed, not necessarily for the worse, though it’s salutary to recall that till the 1950s Broadway and West End singers sang properly, without amplification. This was crooning.  ‘Come to your senses’ from a show called Tick, Tick, BOOM!, which I’d never heard of, became her rather affectingly; though I could understand few of the words and thus the repetitiveness of the music somewhat outlasted its interest.

 

Andrew Lloyd Webber does little for me, apart from the two or three favourites and so the song from Sunset Boulevard was an empty exercise in pseudo melody, handling trivial emotions: no reflection on the singer!  

 

Her voice in ‘Songbird’ from a Fleetwood Mac album suffered through a too obtrusive piano part.

 

She put aside the microphone for the rest of the programme starting with a song from a 1960s musical called The Apple Tree, unfamiliar to me, but look it up in Wikipedia – sounds attractive. The song was gorgeous, reminding me of my belief that the musical hardly survived beyond the 1960s when rock and the microphone destroyed its charm, musicality, its ability to characterise and tell real stories.

 

After that came the successor song to the Victor Herbert at the beginning: a lovely waltz song from 1912 called ‘I want to sing in opera’ by David and Arthurs (whom, again, I’d not heard of) in which Armishaw’s real operatic voice came through again, rather impressively.

 

That reintroduced opera, naturally, and she sang the Habanera from Carmen and ‘Vissi d’arte’ from Tosca. They were well projected, attractively sung with good dramatic character, first sultry, then piously self-pitying (well, isn’t it?).

 

Finally came a number that surprised me – a Flanders and Swan song I didn’t know! – ‘A word in your ear’. It was another little ironical, singer’s song, this time from one who is aware of her shortcomings, to wit, inability to remember the tune, with carefully faulty pitch to prove it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch enough of the words, a pity in the case of a song by that inimitable English pair of the 1950/60s.

 

’Twas a delightful way to end the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts for 2010 which have again been particularly enjoyable, varied and simply excellent: Wellington is greatly indebted to the church’s generous cooperation and to the unflagging, entirely voluntary efforts of organiser Marjan van Waardenberg.