Jenny McLeod’s “Peter Pan” music on Naxos

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by JENNY McLEOD

The Emperor and the Nightingale (narrator and orchestra) / Rock Concerto / Three Celebrations for Orchestra

The Emperor and the Nightingale: Helen Medlyn (narrator) / Kirstin Eade (solo flute)

Rock Concerto: Eugene Albulescu (piano) / Bridget Douglas (flute)

Conductor: Uwe Grodd

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

 NAXOS 8.572671

After the splendid concert given by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra featuring Jenny McLeod’s The Emperor and the Nightingale as part of the NZ International Festival of the Arts Series, it was interesting re-adjusting one’s thoughts towards an audio-only presentation of the work, included on this splendid recent CD. In fact, coming back to it in the wake of the concert enhanced my enjoyment of both experiences, and stimulated a lot of thinking regarding the respective merits of sound and vision as communication tools in themselves.

Jenny McLeod has herself been a nightingale of sorts, one whose song has taken a variety of tones, characters and intentions over a compositional career which has seen her delve into and work through a number of stylistic preoccupations. Formative studies in Europe with Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen advanced her early avant-garde impulses, alongside of which she was able to identify and explore aspects of this country’s bicultural heritage with music-theatre works like Earth and Sky (1968) and Under the Sun (1970).

She concerned herself for a while with attempting to integrate popular styles of music into classical forms (e.g. her Rock Sonatas for piano), but then became interested in an innovative harmonic theory propounded by Dutch composer Peter Schat, the “Tone Clock” Theory. McLeod based a number of her compositions on this method. More recently she has become involved with writing church music for use by Maori groups, an involvement which led her to being asked to write a piece about an historical event involving an ancestor of Whanganui Maori, Hohepa Te Umuroa (the result being the recent NZ International Arts Festival opera Hohepa).

Here on this new CD, it’s McLeod’s “popular neoclassical” period that we’re largely concerned with, music whose approachability would surprise anybody whose experience of the composer’s work hadn’t included her “pop-influenced” output. As McLeod herself put it in her program notes, “this is the music of a composer who for a time refused “grow up”, declaring that writing and performing music should be “enjoyable”…”

That enjoyment comes across in spadefuls throughout McLeod’s setting for narrator and orchestra of Hans Christian Anderson’s famous story The Emperor and the Nightingale. The Arts Festival concert referred to above paired the work with perhaps the most well-known of “narrator-and orchestra” stories, that of Peter and the Wolf with music by Prokofiev – though comparisons were scarcely in order, as the latter was completely reworked, dispensing with a narrator and featuring an animated film to present the story along with the music.

In McLeod’s Anderson setting, Helen Medlyn’s storyteller-delivery bars no holds, her projection as vivid and as wholehearted as if she were performing the piece for a packed auditorium – rather than overpowering the listener in a domestic environment, I found the larger-than-life characterizations she evokes a perfect match for the orchestral panoply with its multifarious colorings and textures and its extremes of loud and soft, weight and delicacy – in fact her voice is used as another orchestral instrument, and the Naxos recording comes to the party most satisfyingly (unlike some other “speaker-and-music” recordings I’ve heard which seem to deny the participants any sort of sonic relationship!)

McLeod cleverly differentiates the music for the “clockwork” as opposed to the real nightingale: the clockwork bird’s melodies are proscribed, angular and turning in on themselves, as opposed to the freer, more improvisatory figurations of the real bird – and the sense of everybody “taking-up” the mechanical tune is splendidly conveyed, with weight and colour. It’s all the more shocking, then, when the clockwork begins to malfunction, and the bird’s song ceases – the music characterizing the emperor’s resulting malaise could have come from Kodaly’s Hary Janos.

I’m pleased flutist Kirstin Eade is credited in the booklet with the flute solos depicting the nightingale, because they’re wonderful – gorgeously turned, and deftly characterized with so many colourings. Alongside her, the orchestral detailing, so magically and unhurriedly wrought by the composer, is here beautifully realized by the NZSO’s contingent of star players.

Three Celebrations for Orchestra date from 1983, though the work was revised by the composer a couple of years ago. The opening “Journey through Mountain Parklands” is classic “road music” at the start – sounds which push forward and throw their ambiences in all directions, defining the range and scope of what’s to follow.  It’s all gloriously tonal and accessible, with strands of texture that arrest the ear, such as the saxophone solo lines, which lead to gentler,more settled evocations before the scene’s underlying grandeur takes over again, percussive textures adding their voices to the driving momentums.

Nostalgia informs the gentler second movement, an invocation of Pukerua Bay, near Wellington. A kind of wistful tenderness winds through the opening, the music allowing for occasional irruptions of pleasure and excitement – would Malcolm Arnold have written in a similar vein had he visited the country and concocted some “New Zealand Dances”? The third episode has the title A&P Show –  the opening a riot of glittering energies, combining the bustle of visitors with the strut and swagger of performers and showpeople – there are Copland-esque, rodeo-like touches at one point! The music allows for both reflection and purposeful impulse, with the final pages generating plenty of colourful activity, the “rodeo-motif” prominent again just before the whiplash close.

Last on the disc is the Rock Concerto. The music actually began life as a “Rock Sonata” for solo piano, written for the gifted seventeen year-old pianist Eugene Albulescu at the instigation of his teacher, Bruce Greenfield; but Albulescu subsequently requested that McLeod recast the work as a concerto. McLeod calls aspects of the music “very much of our own time”, while referring in both spirit and style to composers of earlier times – “distant friends” as she calls them.  The spirit of Gershwin colours some of the more reflective, lyrical moments of the work, though I confess to finding other parts of the writing surprisingly slight of expression. McLeod warns the listener, it’s true, that “those in search of something deeper and darker must look elsewhere…”

Not so the middle movement – subtitled “Elegy for Charlie French” (a friend of the composer’s who died of Aids), the music gradually colours its deceptively simple opening with darker hues, the expression eventually reaching a point of utterance whose candor and sobriety are appropriately moving. The darknesses dissolve somewhat, as the poise of the opening returns, though l liked the bitter-sweet strands the composer threaded though the utterances of the closing pages.

The finale is all angular energy – the composer marks the music allegro giocoso, and translates it herself as “swinging and robust”, an apt description. In true pragmatic, Baroque-composer fashion,  McLeod indicates that each of the movements of the work can be played independently. Is it all too much of a good thing? One senses that, as with whatever she was engaged with, McLeod was “on a mission”, the music enthusiastically encouraging her dictum “it should be enjoyable”. And there will be plenty of music-lovers prepared to go along with that.

 

 

 

 

 

Words, music – and film : Jenny McLeod and Serge Prokofiev

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts presents:

JENNY McLEOD – The Emperor and the Nightingale

SERGE PROKOFIEV  – Peter and the Wolf

Helen Medlyn (narrator – “The Emperor and the Nightingale”)

Suzie Templeton (director, Breakthru Films, UK – “Peter and the Wolf”)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 9th March 2012

I’ve never forgotten my delight in reading, a number of years ago, a Charles M. Schulz “Peanuts” comic featuring Marcie and Peppermint Patti at a Symphony Concert, waiting for a performance of “Peter and the Wolf to begin. In the comic strip Marcie, her face suddenly brightening, whispers conspiratorially to her companion, just before the music starts,  “Maybe this time the wolf will get him!”.  I didn’t feel her comment was an indictment of either story or music – merely a reaction to the prospect of yet another humdrum performance.

Had Helen Medlyn narrated “Peter and the Wolf” on that or this present occasion (as I’m sure she’s done at some stage or other), I feel certain that no-one would have thought the occasion in any way humdrum or routine. As it was, her input regarding this concert was confined to the narration of Jenny McLeod’s setting of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor and the Nightingale”. Her performance was, I thought, riveting – she made every word of the story “zing” in places and “ping” in others, and gave the impression that she’d established some kind of “universal” eye contact with her audience all at once, so that we were undoubtedly transfixed by her storyteller persona’s sheer presence.

Though some time ago, I well remember playing in the percussion section of the Manawatu Sinfonia for a performance of McLeod’s delightful realization of Andersen’s story – I can’t recall the exact year, though it was around 1991 or 1992, at the time the Mayor of Palmerston North was Paul Rieger – because he was the narrator! (He was no Helen Medlyn, of course – but as much as a standard “celebrity appearance” could deliver he didn’t let the side down). I don’t remember the composer being present for this performance, but my memory is that it was done beautifully, our modest orchestra surpassing itself for the occasion.

With that experience in mind, what truly astonished me during this recent NZSO performance was the actual sound and impact of the orchestra – the timbres and colours uncharacteristically (for this venue) bright and sharp and to the fore, with the brass-playing in particular making a delightfully visceral impression throughout. Had the orchestra been “brought forward” on the platform, as it were? I didn’t think so – what I put it down to was Hamish McKeich’s encouragement of the players to “play out”, and make certain details really tell. Quite apart from being arresting in itself, the playing was thus able to match the narrator’s “larger-than-life” deliver of the text with similarly characterful instrumental tones.

A scintillation of exotic wonderment from the orchestra launched the music; and after Helen Medlyn’s beautifully-delivered opening statement, there was more of what seemed like the full panoply of orientalism in music refracted through Western sensibilities – pastiche it might have been, but the composer’s grasp of orchestral use was mightily impressive and resulted in some beautifully-focused and characterful sounds. Though in places reminiscent of Ravel’s “Ma Mere l’Oye”, the music readily found its own idiosyncratic character in some episodes, such as the angularities of the courtiers’ journey into the forest following behind the little kitchen-girl, and the inventive, slightly off-beat sonorities given to creatures such as cows and frogs.

Kirstin Eade’s flute-playing (depicting the voice and character of the little nightingale) was gorgeously turned at all points, and deftly characterised with many different colorings. Alongside her, the orchestra’s detailing was woven of similar magic, beautifully unhurried in its unfolding throughout, and (as I’ve said) flaring up excitingly in the bigger, grander moments. Much less obviously a quasi-instructional exercise for those unfamiliar with orchestral and instrumental sounds than the Prokofiev work, McLeod’s music nevertheless seemed beautifully tailored to the Anderson story, perhaps not as “leitmotiv-driven” than was “Peter”, nor as pungently and vividly characterized – but sufficiently colourful and incident-detailed to work successfully, especially in these performers’ hands.

Chalk followed on from cheese, so to speak, with British film-maker Suzie Templeton’s adaptation of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” story, in a trice taking us all to the movies, via a big screen, and with the luxury of a live-performance soundtrack (the film did have its own non–musical sound effects). For anybody expecting a standard, narrator-driven presentation of the work, it would have come as a huge shock, less on account of the spoken words’ absence, and more due to the harshness of the film-maker’s setting. In a half-urban, half-rural setting, Peter and his Grandfather live in a house on the outskirts of a town, making Peter prey to both the Wolf from within the forest and the town bullies from the urban jungle. What Prokofiev depicted as an idyllic rural existence for a boy and his animals, here is shown to be a somewhat fraught, law-of-the-jungle, siege-mentality scenario, almost of the “film noir” variety in places. There were children (and adults) in the audience who found it all a bit too much, though a lot of the (very audible) angst would, I’m sure, have been due to thwarted expectation – on its own terms, the presentation, though not without contentious elements, was, in my view, stunning.

Conductor Hamish McKeich, God bless ‘im, did at the outset nudge us in the direction of the composer’s original intentions by getting the orchestral soloists (as well as the strings) to play the “themes” of the story’s characters (though, for the benefit of us sight-restricted “ground floor concertgoers” it would have been great if every player had been able to stand up while giving us each of the character portraits). Of course, the presence of a film reduced the importance of this process; and indeed the compelling on-screen character-animations and evocative settings throughout put the orchestra’s contribution somewhat in the shade, beautifully though the score was realized by conductor and players.

The experience, cheek-by-jowl with the Jenny McLeod work, made me realize the extent to which our senses and perceptions interact with one another depending upon the nature of whatever stimuli we’re encountering. Suddenly, the orchestra who had played the “Emperor and the Nightingale” music during the first half so vibrantly and engagingly now sounded relatively distant and once-removed, the sounds coming to us as if in a kind of dream, refracted through those images we were all so readily involved with. At times it seemed as though this was no children’s story, but a life-and-death struggle against archetypal forces of darkness, the film-maker, for example “squaring Peter up” to his town-bully tormentors, whose brutality was unvarnishedly depicted. And there was no room for sentimentality – the drop-dead cuteness of Peter’s duck was unremittingly savaged by the wolf (causing the bulk of noticeable audience carnage), those cathartic sounds of a poor creature swallowed whole and therefore still alive, here given no fulfillment of expression, no cause for rejoicing.

Audience participation and involvement throughout, it must be said, was gratifyingly palpable – and if, at the end Charles M. Schulz’s Marcie didn’t get her wish, there was certainly a new twist to the old tale, if one which seemed to unfortunately tie up a loose end that hitherto belonged to the hapless duck, and put paid to her one chance of survival. It seemed to me that Peter’s loyalty towards his small, awkward but obviously lovable friend was sacrificed by the film-maker in favour of a new denouement evoking some kind of libertarian impulse on the part of the hero, in favor of the wolf. Still, it’s hardly surprising in a day and age that seems to actively concern itself with the welfare of perpetrators of crimes, and pay lip service to the suffering of the victims. (In this case, no less a philosopher than Basil Fawlty might have observed, “Well, if you’re a duck – you’re rather stuck!”)….

Technically, the animation resembled those early stop-frame cartoons with the jerky movements that older children like myself remember from our earliest times; and the results are certainly engaging, the figures and their movements having an uncanny realism, a properly tactile effect. I think it was the direct, somewhat primitive aspect of it all (wrought by extremely sophisticated technology and painstaking skill) which heightened the characters’ capacities for expressive gesture, which, of course, had to serve for actual words throughout. In effect, the film represented the substitution, for a well-known story’s retelling, of one powerful communication tool for another, the latter very much for our time. It’s well worth tracking down and watching, and especially with friends who enjoy heated discussion!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Duo Tapas return for more violin and guitar music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Krouse, Anthony Ritchie, Lilburn, Imamovic, Piazzolla, and Bartók

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 March, 12.15pm

Duo Tapas has become a fairly familiar presence on Wellington’s chamber music circuit over the past couple of years, even though the combination of violin and guitar has not been a major musical genre, or one that has drawn scores of composers to write major works.

Nevertheless, the music that this attractive duo turns up is always attractive, serving to dispel the notion that classical music consists entirely of great masterpieces by great geniuses all of whom are dead.

These musicians show that very listenable programmes can be built with music written by living composers from all over the world, including some who are their friends.  (All of it has been arranged for this combination from other originals). The names Krouse and Imamovic, as well as Ritchie, and some of the same music – Da Chara for example – have appeared in their earlier concerts.

The latter piece, by Ian Krouse, began with a deliberate or accidental hesitation, but it seemed altogether in keeping with its subdued Irish accents, with hesitant rhythms, the slight fragility in the violinist’s playing, evolving towards the end into a faster dance.

The New Zealand department of the recital consisted of an arrangement by Anthony Ritchie of one his own Five Dunedin Songs of 1996: Stone Woman. It had a bluesy, ‘country’ character , the guitar injecting curious figures alongside the violin’s flowing line. And Lilburn’s Canzona (not Canzonetta) No 1 followed: it seems belatedly to have become a genuinely popular piece (I think it made the RNZ Concert New Year’s Day Count-down), perhaps in a similar class to Farquhar’s Ring Round the Moon music, and similarly perhaps, not highly rated by the composer, misled during those benighted years in which melodies were scorned as a mark of non-seriousness or commercialism. The guitar part seemed the perfect accompaniment, while the violin’s velvety bowing was quite enchanting.

In a recital last year the duo played music by Bosnia-born Almar Imamovic, whom Moriarty met while studying in Los Angeles.  Hints of a modal scale could be detected in Jamilla’s Dance (played in their 2010 recital at Old St Paul’s), and a characteristic Balkan, perhaps Greek touch was present as the dance slowed. It was a slight piece, though effective, given a spirited and careful performance.  A second scheduled piece by Imamovic was omitted for reasons of time.

The two pieces by Piazzolla were in marked contrast. (Incidentally, try looking him up in any music dictionary more than 15 years old, even New Grove: he’s only recently been promoted into the ranks of ‘classical’ music). The first, Oblivión, was a slow tango whose tension was probably as hard to sustain as it would have been to dance to (the emotional state called up makes me think of the evocation of the tango in Kapka Kassabova’s recent memoir/novel on the subject). It’s a condition comparable to a slow elegiac aria, in long phrases, calling for extraordinary breath control. The violin remained on its upper strings while the guitar carefully picked out supporting motifs.

Libertango was a more conventional exemplar of the Argentinian dance in speed and rhythm, the player tapping the guitar body as he picked out the tune around which the violin weaved a counter-melody.

To end, the duo played Bartók’s six Romanian Dances, all quite short but in vivid contrast one with another. Bartók wrote them for publication as piano pieces; Székely arranged them for violin and piano and they in turn were arranged for guitar and violin by Arthur Levering.

The instrumentation brought them back closer to their peasant origins, arresting and strong-minded or languid, sometimes complex in rhythm, sometimes calling for a harsh bow on the strings. All very striking and an excellent way to end a very agreeable recital by excellent, skilled musicians.

 

Strength, delicacy and deep feeling – the New Zealand String Quartet with Jonathan Lemalu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

POWER AND PASSION – New Zealand International Festival of the Arts

The New Zealand String Quartet – Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman (violins), Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) – with Jonathan Lemalu (bass-baritone)

ROSS HARRIS – Variation 25 for String Quartet

GAO PING – Three Poems by Mu Xin

SAMUEL BARBER – String Quartet Op.11 / Dover Beach Op.3

SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No.9 in E-flat Op.117

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 4th March 2012

Despite the fact that there really ought to be a moratorium declared on the use of the words “power” and “passion” anywhere and at any time, this Festival Concert featured the New Zealand String Quartet and bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu in performances that defined the best sense of those very words.

In fact this concert was the latest to somewhat bend the righteous pitch of my on-going complaint regarding the Festival’s paucity of music events – during this and recent previous years. Though they’re relatively thin on the ground this time round, compared with the glory Festival days of, say, the 1990s, I have to say, in all fairness, that the 2012 concerts I’ve attended so far have certainly compensated in sheer quality for their lack of numbers. This one was no exception.

Again, the New Zealand String Quartet was there, at the forefront of a cutting-edge musical experience (following on in like manner from their Beethoven concerts) – I thought this program classic and meaty “Festival” fare, its content and delivery transcending the brain-dead hype of its title, and giving us a treasurable variety of memorable intensities (that description isn’t particularly flash, either, but I think it’s better than you-know-what!).

On the face of things the combination of string quartet and bass-baritone would, I think, pose for the average concertgoer more the immediate prospect of a challenge than out-and-out delight. The moderate attendance seemed to reflect something of this attitude, the organizers optimistically using the Wellington Town Hall for a concert of music  whose ethos seemed to suggest more intimate surroundings. Still, the performers in this case were renowned communicators, able to reach out and fill the vistas of most venues with their personalities and musical skills.

As it turned out, the performances seemed to easily draw in all those who were there – and there’s a certain vicarious excitement to be had from experiencing a “large” silence as opposed to a smaller one, which we were all able to enjoy and repeatedly savour, throughout the evening. Our enthusiastic appreciation at the concert’s end for the performers’ efforts belied our actual numbers, I’m sure.

Beginning the concert was local composer Ross Harris’ music, his meditation on one of JS Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, called simply “Variation 25 for String Quartet”. The Quartet’s Second Violin Douglas Beilman announced before the music began that the group would first play a transcription for string quartet of the original “Goldberg” variation. Presumably the quartet had the approval of the composer to do this – one wonders whether any composer who’d written something inspired by one of the world’s great music masterworks would necessarily want an audience reminded of the original, as it were, cheek-by-jowl! However, in this case, the “putting-together” of the two gave the opening of Ross Harris’s work such a telling ambient context, one fancied one could almost “sense” the direct lines of inspiration and observe something of the creative process of gradually making one’s ideas one’s own.

So, to my way of thinking, hearing the Bach original at the beginning (albeit in a string transcription) was an enrichment regarding what followed – very much in line with what the composer wrote in his accompanying notes about wanting “to pay my respects to the beauty and richness of the music…” It seemed to me at the outset something like a “hall of mirrors” effect, the canonic agglomerations producing a magical overlapping, coloring, intensifying and resounding texture – rather like how one might imagine a note, phrase or theme would be creatively acted upon.

One could sense the composer’s imagination getting into full stride, firstly with a paragraph of intense, stratospherically arched extremities, and then through various scherzo-like passages, the arguments frenetic and the energies ecstatic. After these exertions came a graceful, limpid dance which restored listeners’ equilibriums, the sounds transforming the former intensities of light into rather more dappled and fitful modes. And in much the same way the piece’s linear tensions seemed to melt into floating echoes of their former selves, the first violin then making a somewhat torturous ascent through the textures to conclude the piece, leaving in its wake a stricken viola mid-phrase.

I did think the Quartet’s performance a shade over-wrought at the outset, with some on-the-edge intonations, to my ears, throughout both the theme and the opening measures of the Harris piece – the price one perhaps pays in places for intensity? As the work progressed, the tones centered more readily – and throughout the other works on the program the playing sounded poised and true. The soft playing, in particular, throughout the works featuring a singer, had our sensibilities in thrall with the magic of it all; and bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu was able to match the instrumentalists’ rapt murmurings throughout such moments with equally haunting tones.

The first of Gao Ping’s settings of three poems of Mu Xin (a writer and artist who died last year in China, aged 84) perfectly illustrated the performers’ skills in evoking the beauty of great stillness – strings and voice together, floating sounds that seemed not of this world. This was a world premiere, an occasion which the programme notes didn’t emphasize, apart from Festival Director Lissa Twomey’s introductory welcome message. The poems were, I believe, sung in Mandarin, the translations suggesting a poet’s finely-wrought sensibility, with occasional erotic overtones (as in the first of the three settings, “My Bountiful Desire”, in which figured lines such as “lips eddy, breast piers, thigh ravine….”).The second settting, equating a bird’s life with happiness, is all pointillistic texturing and evocative calling, while the third, “A HIstory of Love”, begins with a saga-like sense of momentum and movement, rather like a river telling its story in passing. The two previous settings had magical interactions between voice and solo instruments at their conclusions (with violin and ‘cello, respectively) – but this one concluded with some equally haunting falsetto-like singing from Jonathan Lemalu, the words chronicling the passing of time, of youth, of love.

American Samuel Barber’s best-known work is his Adagio for Strings, often played as a commemorative piece, and used in various films (“I couldn’t help it – I kept on imagining helicopters” said my concert-hall neighbour at the end, alluding to the Award-winning film “Platoon”). Usually heard as a work for orchestral strings, here we heard it in its original guise, as part of a String Quartet, the second of three movements (officially there are only two, but to my way of thinking, the return to the material of the opening after the Adagio constitutes a movement of its own, however brief). The performance vividly characterized the volatile nature of the first movement, with its jagged opening and its hymn-like chorale intertwined throughout; while the Adagio’s songful lines here had a spell-binding vibrancy, the climax “built” with inexorable purpose and intensity – amazing stuff from the Quartet, no matter how many times previously one might have heard the piece.

Not heard as often, but a piece whose beauties undoubtedly deserve more attention is “Dover Beach”, Barber’s setting for baritone and string quartet of Matthew Arnold’s poem (I thought there might be a version for voice and string orchestra, which could increase the work’s performance frequency – but there doesn’t seem to be). Again, Jonathan Lemalu’s beautifully-focused soft singing made for pure poetry of sound in tandem with the strings – it struck me how Barber used the voice as a “fifth string” in many places, the vocal line often sharing the phrasings and figurations of the quartet’s. Particularly beautiful was the line “and bring the eternal note of sadness in”, at the conclusion of the music’s first section.

The bass-baritone’s tones sounded less mellifluous under pressure, though the artistry of the singer’s phrasing was evident at “Ah, love, let us be true to one another!” – a fantastic outpouring of emotion, especially telling against the setting’s more hushed moments, the controlled anguish of the final “Where ignorant armies clash by night” an ecstasy of intensity approaching pain. Altogether, I thought it a wonderful performance.

Completing what might be regarded as a line-up of varying intensities, the Quartet addressed the Ninth String Quartet of Dmitri Shostakovich with all of the group’s customary energy and focus. Having heard some of its Shostakovich-playing before, I expected and got a veritable roller-coaster ride of full-on incident and raw emotion, all of the music’s spiked energy, droll humor and bleak melancholy given plenty of amplitude. By the sound of such things, these quartets are surely a body of work that these musicians were born to play – and what we heard confirmed my feelings on the subject.

With a “moments-per-minute” performance such as this one, singling out individual moments can seem to do a violence to the whole – but from the very beginning of the work the Quartet caught the music’s character, intense and claustrophobic, with impulses attempting to energize and lighten the mood leading inevitably to a “screwing-up” of tension and anxiety. Right across the work’s five movements (played without a break) the players readily conveyed that echt-feeling of fatalism regarding humanity’s lot, that “to live is to suffer, and to feel is to invite pain” attitude which continuously informs the pages of this music.

I’m sure the unexpectedness of encountering such richly- and readily-wrought listening experiences played its part in making the occasion for me so truly memorable – a truly “surprised by joy” outcome, a festival concert worthy of the name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sixteen’s second concert, a cappella, a benchmark performance

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand International Arts Festival

The Sixteen  conducted by Harry Christophers

A cappella music by Tallis, Morley, Gibbons, Byrd, Sheppard, Tippett, Britten and James MacMillan

The Town Hall, Wellington

Saturday 3 March 7.30pm

The second concert by The Sixteen was devoted to music by composers born in Britain, not simply one who spent most of his life in the country, as was the first of The Sixteen’s concerts.

Two groups of Tallis’s ‘Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter’ were sung, four at the beginning and four at the end of the concert. They were a sort of purifying wash to introduce the audience to singing that was not too complex – in fact the first began with four men singing in unison – allowing the unprepared ear to adjust to the acoustic of the hall and to sample the sounds of many individual voices.

The choir is perhaps a little unusual in having more men than women, though that is because parts otherwise sung by female altos are here sung by male altos (or counter-tenors). It lent the ensemble a quality that set the exemplary sopranos in marked contrast to the weight of males singing the other parts.

Tallis’s ‘Salvator mundi’, in Latin, was a striking illustration of Tallis’s versatility, coping with the dangers of religious dogma as the country moved back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism. And the choir demonstrated the contrast between Tallis’s setting of English and Latin texts as clearly as his shift from the vertical harmony of English music to traditional Latin polyphony.

The Latin element was very temporary and it was followed by English part-songs: Morley’s ‘April is in my Mistress’ Face’ and Gibbons’s very beautiful ‘The Silver Swan’; the weight and warmth of the men’s voices kept the mood from becoming too ‘hey-nonny-nonny’ in Byrd’s ‘This sweet and merry Month of May’. John Sheppard’s ‘In Manus Tuas III’ returned to a Latin text, opening with a demonstration of men’s voices in unison, and then a strong counter-tenor solo.

The first half finished in the 20th century however with, first, James MacMillan’s ‘Sedebit Dominus Rex’, given a subtle Scottish accent (it’s one of his Strathclyde Motets), an attractive separation of men’s and women’s roles, to produce singing of very great emotion.

There was a second piece from MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motets later: a striking contribution by women’s voices as well as the gentle opening section by basses, marked his ‘Mitte manum tuum’, again quite short and technically approachable.

The best known part of Tippett’s A Child of Our Time – the five spirituals – brought the first half to an end, with several opportunities for strong solo voices, particularly female.

Yet, what is it about a composer’s fundamental well-spring of invention and emotional power that consigns almost all of his music – apart from arrangements of existing melodies – to museum status almost within his own lifetime? No want of trying on my part, yet I feel impelled to revisit almost nothing even of the music I have on my own CDs.

The second half was also a satisfying mixture of the 16th and the 20th centuries; It began with three more Latin motets by Tallis, each with its distinct character, reflected in the tempo, in the varying amounts of legato singing, and the vocal colours produced by the choir.

The curious little dissonances (remarked in the programme notes) gave ‘O nata lux’ vitality; the next, ‘O sacrum convivium’, was by contrast sombre, calm and quite extended. The third motet, ‘Loquebantur variis linguis’, cleverly simulated a complex tissue of disparate languages through elaborate counterpoint: even those without Latin could have worked it out.

There was another Byrd motet, his masterpiece ‘Laudibus in sanctis Dominum’, that seemed to mark him as an English composer, set to song-like music in which vertical harmonies were as audible as the elaborate counterpoint.

The other major contribution from the modern repertoire were the Choral Dances from Britten’s opera Gloriana. For long, these were about all that was much performed from an opera that was inexplicably felt to be a ritual occasional piece, but is now firmly placed among Britten’s greatest operas. I was delighted to catch a performance a couple of years ago in the Ruhr, in Germany. Britten himself arranged this unaccompanied version of the dances, and I have to say, heretically, they did not make quite the impression on me that the original operatic ones did. They emerged, for me, somewhat affected and bloodless; but the performance of them was far from that.

The choir presented an encore: an arrangement by choral composer Bob Chilcott of a Tallis anthem.

Finally, the programme booklet was a model. It provided a wealth of rich and informative material about the choir and its director, but also writings about the composers and their social and political situation, and evocative thoughts about the nature of the music itself, all of which might deepen listeners’ knowledge.

Not enough of the audience bought the programme however.

From time to time I express my view that programmes for concerts – and other performing arts too – should be provided free. For a year or so New Zealand Opera did that, but later reverted to the practice of confining them to those who could pay the fairly high price for them. That is to sacrifice a valuable opportunity to deepen and broaden the audience’s knowledge of what it is hearing, a matter of even more importance now that most of the population under 50 is approaching the more serious arts without the benefit of any formal exposure to them at school where the sounds of good music (and poetry and foreign languages) can be implanted, perhaps subliminally, in the minds of the young – when that faculty is at its most receptive.

The major cost of programmes lies in the preparation of the texts and the design and formatting of the printing; for the fruits of those efforts to be restricted to a minority of the audience is a sad lost opportunity to educate.

The programme also took the trouble to ask the audience to refrain from clapping between the items in a group; the fact that few on the audience had programmes meant that there was applause between the numbers in Tippett’s Five Spirituals.

Truly festive Handel with The Sixteen

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HANDEL – Coronation Anthem “Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened”

Motet: “Silete Venti” / Psalms: Nisi Dominus / Dixit Dominus

The Sixteen Choir and Orchestra / Conductor: Harry Christophers

Soloist (Silete Venti): Gilian Keith (soprano)

NZ International Festival of the Arts

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 1st March, 2012

Now, this is the kind of concert in terms of impact and quality that helps make a festival worth remembering. The trappings were, in fact, few – there were no bugles, no drums, just people-generated excitement, right from the initial “buzz” of queuing outside to actually get into the Town Hall, and up to the moment that these world-famous musicians walked onto the platform in front of us to begin their concert.

I wonder if people who attend concerts actually realize what a treasure the WellingtonTown Hall is in respect of providing experiences whose memory seems to embrace the “occasion” as well as the performance – it’s partly my being a bit of an event junkie that squeezes these remarks out of me, but I couldn’t help reflecting on the difference in atmosphere between this concert and last week’s in the Michael Fowler Centre which opened the Festival. The Stravinsky performances were themselves terrific – but I feel the MFC needs a LOT of extraneous help for any event to really “buzz”, whereas the Town Hall simply reflects and enhances what’s already going on.

This was one of two concerts offered by The Sixteen (my concert companion nudged me fiercely at one point and hissed, “I think there are seventeen” (of them)! – shades of “The Sound of Music”?….). One could have had, as here, Handel in a grandly ceremonial manner, readily encompassing all manner of structures and emotions as befits the work of a composer writing for public occasions; or one could have turned, instead, to the rather more circumspect a capella world of various native British composers over a period of several centuries.

I would imagine that, after experiencing the group’s performances of Handel, there would be a number of concertgoers who, like myself, wished they had purchased tickets to both concerts. In the words of Shakespeare’s Henry V, we such unfortunates will on Saturday evening be as those “gentlemen of England now a-bed” who “shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here”. One must, however, thank one’s stars that one heard the group on at least one of the occasions. And after all, pleasure can still be had from imagining how wonderful a second concert WOULD be, having already enjoyed one (a case of “Heard melodies are sweet, but….”, perhaps)…

For those who enjoy chancing their arm with the prospect of picking up last-minute cancelled tickets, The Sixteen is indeed performing again on Saturday, 3rd March at the Town Hall at 7:30pm, a program of British a capella music, ranging from works by Thomas Tallis to those by James MacMillan. In the meantime one can enjoy recalling the highlights of the group’s Handel presentation, involving various soloists, choir and orchestra.

One noticed immediately the intense focus of the sound, both from singers and players, obviously steeped in a performing tradition which has undergone a considerable revolution over the last fifty years. The modus operandi of such groups as The Sixteen sits firmly upon using the forces that the composer would have expected, and producing the sounds in a style that corresponds with period musicologists’ findings. Happily, these strictures were accompanied in this case by a performing style that set great store on sounds with a variety of tone, colour and nuance (emanating from, or else mirrored by, the expressive gestures of conductor Harry Christophers, as non-metrical as one could ever hope to find) – though all within the parameters of accepted baroque practice.

Beginning with the Coronation Anthem “Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened”, orchestra and voices commanded the hall’s sound-vistas, the phrases having at once discernible focus but an ear-catching “bloom”, with everything precisely balanced – one could set one’s ear to “find” any line or texture it wanted and follow its course. The fugal character of the section “Let justice and judgement…” found the composer employing sounds of structures and balances, suggesting the power of law and order. Here, the individual lines took on plenty of character, the timbres being allowed to “sound” instead of subjected to a homogenous blend, so that one was always aware of a quartet-like texture. The lively “Alleluia” had a sensuous feel in the dovetailing of the lines, tied together with an appropriately celebratory concluding note.

Gillian Keith was the soprano soloist for the motet Silete Venti, the text a colorful and descriptive evocation of the bliss which comes with faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The soloist had pure, bell-like tones and flexible energy aplenty to do the music justice, though I thought in places a slightly “kittenish ” aspect crept into her singing, one rather at odds with the subject matter of the motet. The text, I thought, wasn’t without its idiosyncrasies – e.g. “If you strike you cause no wound, your blows are as caresses….” – pardon? Set against her slightly-less-than-crisp articulation of the words in places was a freedom and flexibility of impulse and movement which the singer used to negotiate her runs throughout “Date serta” with such winning ease and grace as to disarm other criticism. And her breathtaking energies in tackling the flourishes at the repeat of “Veni, vein transfige me” in the first part was matched in excitement by her feathery, stratospheric vocal dancings throughout the conclusion’s gigue-like “Alleluiahs”, singer and instrumentalists particularly enjoying things like the effervescent exchange of triplet figurations just before the end.

After the interval we were rejoined by the choir for the two psalm settings, Dixit Dominus and Nisi Dominus, both youthful works (Handel was in his early twenties), but displaying their composer’s great precocity, not only in choral writing, but in his use of the orchestra. The more spectacular of the works, the slightly earlier Dixit Dominus, was wisely left to the end. It would be tiresome to reproduce all of my scribbled notes, inspired by the performances’ many felicities, but certain things deserved to be savored, such as the quality of the contributions from the solo voices within the choir. In the first of the Psalm settings, Nisi Dominus, both tenor and bass made a telling impression, the former’s “Vanum set” a pleasingly-shaped vocal arch of flexible tones, and the latter’s fiery, properly warlike “Sicut sagittae in manu potentis” (As arrows in the hand of the mighty) properly pinning back our ears. Throughout, I liked the bringing forward to the front of the platform the soloists from the choir, making for an almost operatic effect, and giving each voice’s utterance its proper focus.

Dixit Dominus made for an exciting and sonorous conclusion to the evening in this performance – muscular energy at the outset from the orchestra and incisive lines from the choir launched the work with a will – the brief occasional solo lines, with the voices remaining within the choir, struggled in places to be properly heard, though a couple of the more brightly-focused voices managed to make their tones “tell” in the midst of the music’s cut-and-thrust activity. The more extended, out-the front solos were superbly done, and beautifully accompanied. I particularly liked the teamwork of soloists, choir and orchestra at “Dominus a dextris tuis”, the solo voices overlapping and interchanging words and phrases with almost operatic excitement, followed by the unleashing of tremendous tensions at the words “die irae” from choir and orchestra. Among other ear-catching moments was the choir’s pointed staccato treatment of “conquassabit capita in terra”, the words spat out like machine-gun fire, their effect made to sting! Following this the soprano duet “De torrent in via bibet” was of soothing balm, two differently-toned voices blending to great effect.

Impossible to do justice to everything, here – in general, I thought Handel’s music magnificently served throughout, the music’s energies liberated, the textures enlivened, the beauties savoured. The Town Hall’s acoustic gave the performances all the immediacy they deserved, enabling us to enjoy to the full the talents of The Sixteen, their orchestra and their obviously charismatic director. It wasn’t surprising to find people on their their feet applauding at the end, demonstrating their appreciation and enjoyment.

 

 

‘Does a cappella singing get better than this?’ – Wellington members of the New Zealand Youth Choir

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Choral songs and anthems by Handl, Bruckner, Pearsall, Bàrdos, Richard Madden, Stephen Lange, Anthony Ritchie, Andrew Baldwin, Helen Caskie, George Shearing, with arrangements by Douglas Mews, Christopher Marshall, Stephen Chatman

Wellington Members of the New Zealand Youth Choir, conducted by David Squire

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace church

Wednesday 29 February 2012, 12.15pm

It was gratifying to see the church nearly full for the thirteen members of the choir who sang an interesting and varied programme.

Immediately they began, the choir had a wonderful, confident sound.  The opening item, ‘Resonet in laudibus’ was by Jacob Handl, a sixteenth century Slovenian composer also known as Gallus.  The pure sounds in this sympathetic acoustic made it hard to believe that there were so few performers.  Balance between the parts was excellent throughout the concert.

A long-term favourite of the Choir followed: Bruckner’s beautiful ‘Locus Iste’.  The singers’ start was not quite together, but that could hardly spoil such a supreme pearl of choral writing.

Another chestnut for this choir was sung: Pearsall’s madrigal ‘Who shall win my lady fair?’, a nineteenth century composition.  Its performance demonstrated how well the choir sings out to the audience, but also, as elsewhere in the programme,  how the singers vary tone, expression and word style as appropriate for each item.  To me, this is the mark of a really good, flexible choir.  It is not just a matter of dynamics.  The expression in this song exhibited both charm and subtlety.  Stresses on important words were carefully observed.

The Hungarian composer Lajos Bàrdos’s ‘Libera me’ was next.  The men opened a shade sharp in pitch, but overwhelmingly, the a capella singing was impressively secure, even, as in this piece, when singing intervals of a second.  The piece traverses various pitches, moods and dynamics.  It is in several sections: first declamatory, then low-voiced and sombre, then gentle and melismatic.

We now turned to New Zealand compositions.  Richard Madden’s ‘I sing of a maiden’ has been around for a while now, and has lost none of its exquisite beauty and delicious clashes that resolve so mellifluously.  The piece featured soprano and tenor soloists.  The breath control was remarkable.  If the singers are as good as this under-rehearsed (as David Squire described it), they must certainly be New Zealand’s top choir when fully prepared.  It must not be forgotten that the New Zealand Youth Choir of 1999 won ‘Choir of the World’ in Cardiff.

Stephen Lange’s ‘The cloths of heaven’, composed to words of John Keats, was a difficult piece, with many enchanting discords.

Another NZYC favourite: Douglas Mews’s ‘Sea songs’, an arrangement of early New Zealand folk songs about whaling.  This was rollicking and characterful music on a subject distasteful to us today, but an important industry in the early days of colonisation, and before.

Christopher Marshall’s arrangement of the traditional Samoan ‘Minoi, minoi’ is one of the most delightfully rhythmic songs one will ever hear.  It reminds us how music and dance are all one in many parts of the world.  It was sung more lightly than I have sometimes heard it, which is appropriate to the words of the love-song.

Jeffrey Chang, tenor, sang two solos, giving the choir a rest, with Michael Stewart (former choir member) accompanying on the piano.  Chang announced the songs in a clear voice, loud enough to be easily heard (take note, New Zealand School of Music lecturers and students!).  David Squire’s announcements of the other items were made using a microphone.

The first solo was ‘Song’ by Anthony Ritchie, with wonderful words by James K. Baxter, speaking of Jesus as a human, and his characteristic of mercy.  It was beautifully sung: expressive, effective, with very clear words.  Both songs were sung from memory.

The second was an arrangement by former choir member Andrew Baldwin, of the spiritual ‘Deep River’.  This did not come off quite so well.  The performance did not sufficiently express the emotions of a slave in southern USA – it was too matter-of-fact in places, although there were some lovely moments.  The register was a little too low for this singer.

The choir returned with a traditional Newfoundland folk song, ‘She’s like the swallow’, arranged by Stephen Chatman.  It began with women’s voices only, then the men joined in.  Once again, the clarity of the words was notable.

New Zealand composer Helen Caskie has written a three-movement work ‘Ten Cent Mixture’, to amusing poems by Fiona Farrell.  The first tells the story of a sun-burnt kiwifruit.  Here I heard the first harsh tone in the concert; perhaps this was the result of introducing humour into the voices.  Next was a song about leaving your dreams behind when you go to school (oh dear!), and the third was about going to see Mr Prasad at the dairy to buy lollies.

These were lively and ingratiating settings, sung with animation.  The last song particularly was very funny, and sung in appropriate humorous style.

The concert wound up with an arrangement by Andrew Carter of George Shearing’s ‘Lullaby of Birdland’.  Just as the Caskie songs were sung in a suitably childish style, so this swing number was rendered in the proper style, American accent and all.

Most of this repertoire is to be presented in Hawke’s Bay in April, with all 48 members of the full choir; the audiences there are in for a treat.  Does a cappella singing get better than this?  I ask this as someone who has just heard the King’s Singers live, in the splendid acoustic of Hamilton’s Performing Arts Centre at the University of Waikato.

 

 

I Musici: highly accomplished performances of mainly light-weight music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand International Arts Festival and Chamber Music New Zealand

Serenata Italiana

Rossini: Sonata a quattro no.1 in G  and Une Larme
Donizetti: Allegro in C
Paganini: Il Carnevale di Venezia
Marco Enrico Bossi: Tre Intermezzi Goldoniani Op.127
Respighi: Aria per strumenti ad arco
Luis Bacalov: Concerto Grosso for I Musici’s 60th anniversary
Nino Rota: Concerto per archi

I Musici di Roma (Antonio Anselmi, violin; Ettore Pellegrino, violin; Pasquale Pellegrino, violin; Claudio Buccarella, violin; Gianluca Apostoli, violin; Antonio de Secondi, violin; Massimo Paris, viola; Silvio Di Rocco, viola; Vito Paternoster, cello; Pietro Bosna, cello; Roberto Bambioli, bass; Francesco Buccarella, keyboard)

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday 28 February 2012, 7.30pm

I Musici is famed for its recordings, particularly a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons made early in the group’s career, which helped to create the great popularity of these concertos.

The musicians are aided by the fine instruments they play.  There was one Amati violin, two Guaneri, and a Storioni cello.  Most of the violins and the two violas were made in the seventeenth century; both cellos were from the 18th century.

For a group such as this to be celebrating its 60th year is a considerable achievement.  Of course, none of the original members are still part of I Musici, but it has maintained its place in the musical pantheon throughout all these years.  This is the group’s first visit to New Zealand.  A nice touch of welcome was the generous flower arrangement in the colours of the Italian flag.

The concert might have been better to have been held in the Town Hall, but apparently there was another Festival event going on there.  Patrons were seated only in the downstairs of the Michael Fowler Centre, apart from a few rows in the centre block upstairs seating dignitaries, such as the Ambassador for Italy.  Even then, there were empty seats downstairs.   Some confusion was caused to patrons near me because numbers have disappeared from the seats.

The programme commenced with a familiar Sonata, in three movements.  Apparently written when Rossini was only 12 years old, this work was played by a slightly smaller group than the full ensemble.  The opening sound from I Musici was a little too brittle at times for romantic music, but it soon settled down into an open, bright sound (as the leader, Antonio Anselmi described it in a radio interview).  The group’s magnificent cohesion, despite no conductor at the front, is remarkable, as is the players’ precision, noteworthy in their pizzicato as much as in their bowing.

The three-part moderato first movement, with the same theme for first and third, was a pleasant introduction to the concert.  The slow movement had, despite its tempo designation of andantino, much sprightly music.  A few times only, there was not total uniformity of intonation.  The final movement, allegro, fairly skipped along.

Another short Rossini work followed: Une Larme [The Tear]: theme and variations for cello and strings.  The soloist, Pietro Bosna, has a superb command of his instrument.  The harpsichord was used in this item, plus the additional violin and viola joined the band.  The harpsichord sound did not come through well, from its placement at the back of the right-hand side of the stage, behind the cellos and bass.  The lower tones especially could not be heard – and I was sitting only about a dozen rows back from the stage, in the centre block.

A slow, solemn introduction from the cello, with a few chords on the keyboard began the work.  An eloquent, rich cello solo followed, but the accompaniment from the other players was not particularly distinguished.  The music then developed into a fast-paced virtuoso piece, splendidly played with wonderful tone and technique from the soloist; the piece ended in gaiety.

Donizetti’s Allegro in C, like the first Rossini work, dates from his extreme youth.  It evinced a very operatic opening, as though it were the introduction to an aria or an  operatic story.  The theme was quite lovely, followed by decorations to its melody.  The tone of the orchestra had largely settled down by now.  This work, though brief, had more substance to it than had the preceding pieces.

Paganini followed; the piece is a theme and variations for violin and strings, with Antonion Anselmi playing the virtuosic solo part.  There was more than a passing physical resemblance between Anselmi and Paganini as depicted in the photograph (of a painting) on the page of the programme.

The theme is perhaps rather a trite one; in English, the jolly tune ‘My hat, it has three corners’, but apparently in Italy it is a Neapolitan song ‘O mamma, mamma cara’.   As the programme note said, Paganini ‘varies it using pretty much every technique known to a violinist.’

One would expect such a work to be flamboyant, utilising a range of astonishing effects, and indeed it was.  There was little for the other players to do while Anselmi went through the variations that employed a huge amount of double-stopping, glissandi, left and right hand pizzicato in the same phrases, octaves, and so on.  Certainly the playing had flair and confidence, but also humour, and bird-like sounds – all demonstrating astonishing technique.  It was a performance, indeed.

After the interval, the strings (without harpsichord) played Bossi’s Tre Intermezzi Goldoniani, written between 1901 and 1905..  Each of the three movements was quite short, and incorporated more light and shade than most of the previous pieces in the programme.  The opening ‘Gagliarda’ was lively and tuneful, while the ‘Serenatina’ featured much pizzicato, then a violin duo followed by a violin solo with a wistful theme, over more pizzicato.  Finally there was ‘Burlesca’.  It began with more of a dance feel to it than had the other two movements.

More well-known is Ottorino Respighi.  The Aria per strumenti ad arco was written at the end of his student days, presumably before 1905.  Its nostalgic opening theme had rich harmony; the players produced a lush sound.  The music ebbed and flowed, and became very romantic.  It was more sombre and not as frothy as some of the music earlier in the concert, and therefore was more satisfying.

We then came to the meat of the programme: Luis Bacalov’s work written especially for this anniversary year of I Musici.  The harpsichord was used in this three-movement work.   The leader introduced the music, and then there were sturdy, gutsy chords in a firm, march-like sequence.  Anselmi played flights of fancy above, while strong rhythms continued in the accompaniment.  Some of these airborne fancies were worthy of Paganini.  The cellos got their own little cadenza at the end of the movement.

The andante had a medieval-sounding solemn opening, then the solo violin turned it into a romantic passage.  Steady pizzicato from the bass underpinned all.  There were echoes of baroque music in the steady beat, the cadences, and the use of the harpsichord.  Albinoni was in there somewhere, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

It was certainly an appropriate work for this group’s anniversary.  There were lovely and elegant touches for the soloist, and for viola, the later having some fine solo passages, but basically the music was fairly straightforward, with touches of a film score about it.

The allegro finale had a brilliant yet folksy opening from Anselmi, a splendid cadenza, then another echo of Albinoni in a similar march tempo to that used in the opening of the work.  Some harmonic innovation arrived, but there was much repetition.  However, it was not minimalism, because there was constant variation too, but in a narrow span, like some of the Paganini music we heard in the first half.

The item on the programme that provided the most satisfaction was the Concerto per archi by Nino Rota, written for I Musici in 1964-65.  The opening of the Preludio first movement featured multiple layers of music, not mere accompaniment to solos, creating a most pleasing effect.  The movement developed in a turbulent mood.

The scherzo second movement had a quicker pace and a lighter mood.  All was most beautifully played, with astonishing precision.  A solo from the leader in the middle of the movement was one of many interesting features of the work.  The music modulated between keys, yet it was a cohesive whole.  This was great idiomatic writing for strings.  It was undoubtedly twentieth century music, but was neither harsh nor repetitive.  It reminded me at times of Benjamin Britten’s music.

The lilting opening of the third movement ‘Aria’ seemed uncertain as to its home key; the music had a questioning feel about it.  Another solo passage was replied to by the cello, but the uncertainty remained.  Things became more passionate, but the range remained fairly narrow.  Then more urgency led to the quiet, gradual arrival of assurance in the solo lines, though the music remained sombre until the end.  This movement also had shades of Britten about it.

By contrast, the Finale had a lively start, with strong rhythms and repetitive phrases, which reached fever pitch.  This was truly the most interesting work of the evening.

Applause was rewarded by a movement from the ‘Winter’ concerto of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, played at a crisp, energetic pace, to the delight of the audience.

Overall, the programme seemed excessively light and frothy for a Festival presentation.  I was tempted to think that the programme was somewhat patronising: pops for the culture-starved Antipodeans?  Rota redeemed it from such considerations.   However, it must also be said that most of the music on the programme was unfamiliar, and interesting as unknown compositions of known composers.

There is no doubt about the accomplishments of I Musici.  The question is rather about the programme: was it appropriate for an International Festival of the Arts?  Or for Chamber Music New Zealand for that matter  although it was certainly suitable for an Italian ensemble of this size and composition.  The programme will be repeated at nine other centres around the country.

 

 

New Zealand String Quartet revelatory with second group of Beethoven’s Opus 18

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand International Arts Festival

Beethoven: String Quartets, Op 18 Nos 4, 5 and 6

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman, Gillian Ansell, Rolf Gjelsten)

Church of St Mary of the Angels

Sunday 26 February, 7.30pm

In her brief introductory comments at the first of these two concerts Gillian Ansell had observed how interesting it was to play the quartets in chronological order rather than to mix works from different periods: it highlighted the essential features of these works of the 30-year-old Beethoven, their originality, their imaginativeness, the clear mood contrasts between each.

And so it was.

Many listeners will have heard these quartets in sequence as a result of the availability of several complete recorded sets, but such remarkable live performance in such a beautiful setting is something else.

The New Zealand String Quartet is one of the musical groups that know the importance of lighting and of ambience generally that is necessary to create the best emotional environment for listening to music (which varies of course with different kinds of music). Here the church was dimly lit with evocative under-lighting in the sanctuary that made the most of the deep blue of the back wall.

The programme contained useful and illuminating notes from Nancy November as well as from two of the players – Douglas Beilman and Helene Pohl.

I always enjoy reading the perceptions of others about the spiritual character of music and Helene’s pithy snapshots drew particular attention to certain movements and to the general character of each quartet as a whole.

The fourth quartet, Helene suggests, is ‘dramatic, passionate, with overall orchestral textures’. It’s the only one of the set in a minor key. But that by no means implies any lack of energy, and so its first movement seemed to be leaning into a brisk wind, moving forward energetically, going just a little faster than one’s breath could accommodate. It was a wonderful way to launch the evening! The dynamics undulated like a ship moving on a gentle swell. The players knew precisely how much weight to allow individuals at every stage – sometimes the first violin, sometimes the cello – to give proper voice to the melody.

The second movement – unusually, a scherzo – light, dancing in triple time, in a spirit that seems unBeethovenish, quite singular in its flavour, perhaps offers homage to Haydn. The slow movement comes third; it was played darkly and urgently, in marked contrast to the Scherzo, and in its turn it is in sharp contrast to the finale, where the four players seemed intent on obliterating individual voices in the tangle of almost frenzied activity.

I don’t know whether the fifth quartet is the most played – I seem to have heard it more often – but it is perhaps the most lovable. Helene remarks, ‘“Hommage à Mozart”, buoyant, though not without an edge’; and the programme note suggests ‘a sardonic skit on genteel elegance’. I don’t know about the sardonicity, but it was played in high spirits, the quavers in triple time generating a real delight.

Again, Beethoven breaks with tradition to place his dance-like movement (reverting to a minuet from his more normal scherzo) second, gorgeously lyrical with a Trio sounding like a peasant Ländler, that the players invested with even more gentle though artful simplicity.

One of the most beautiful movements in all six quartets follows with the Andante Cantabile. While Beethoven was, in certain of his other compositions, a man aware of the politics and troubles of his times, I reflected here, as the enchanting and endlessly inventive variations unfolded, on the presence of Napoleon’s armies criss-crossing Europe during 1797–1800, capturing Austrian territory in north Italy, causing social and economic distress for France and other countries. Yet, for Beethoven it was never a reason to compose music that was ugly or violent.

On the contrary, it may be that his sympathy with Napoleon’s overthrow of the oppressive and corrupt absolute monarchies that still ruled much of Europe, obscured the destructive consequences of the wars, and that it was his optimism about political and social advancement that Napoleon sought that allowed him to compose much spiritually joyful and positive music.

And so the performance of this Andante, an elaborate and beautiful set of variations suggesting Beethoven’s contentment with this best of all possible worlds, formed the concert’s centrepiece, giving generous and carefully exploited space to each individual instrument in turn.  All that could follow was the brilliant, contrapuntally complex last movement.

The last of the six quartets was revealed as yet another original and different masterpiece. The famous and percipient writer on the quartets Joseph De Marliave suggested that ‘the ease and breadth of the finale of the preceding quartet flows on to the first movement of this’; support or otherwise for such remarks is one of insights possible through their playing all together, in the order in which they were written.

Writing on the same quartet, De Marliave, also commented on the repetitions of the first theme, and I had found the same: a little surprising in works that otherwise exhibit such profound sensitivity to form and motivic development. Nevertheless, the players responded wonderfully to the energy of this Allegro con brio first movement, finding entertainment in the step-wise motifs and the unusual excursions, for example the grumbling gambits by the cello.

Even in the superficially most uncomplicated movements, Beethoven provides surprise and amusement. The decorative Adagio second movement mocks the cello in a short sequence of false starts, and later there is an unexpected, somewhat mysterious deviation into a minor key.

The contrast between the Adagio and the following Scherzo and Trio was drawn for all it was worth, with syncopated rhythms and an ebullience spirit.

The last movement opens with a slow introduction labelled Malinconia: another singular contrast of mood. A lot of attention has been accorded to it; that its plan pre-figures the last quartets, its remarkable modulations, whether the eventual arrival of the Allegretto really succeeds in creating a satisfactory finale… They played that Adagio as if weighed down by the sorrows of the world, and perhaps by the composer’s own awareness of his solitary life and the first signs of deafness. The requisite Allegro that follows seemed rather a matter of formal necessity yet it was played as if its level of inspiration was just as high as all that had gone before.

It brought to an end what many might come to feel as the most rewarding concerts of the festival, a testament to the maturity and the peak of artistic accomplishment that has been reached by the New Zealand String Quartet.

These two concerts are the first of three series in which the entire oeu vre will be played: the second, mid-year, under Chamber Music New Zealand and the last under the quartet’s own management.

 

Exhilarating first of two concerts of Beethoven’s Quartets Op 18

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand International Arts Festival

Beethoven: String quartets Op.18, nos. 3, 2, 1

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman, violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello)

St. Mary of the Angels church

Saturday, 25 February 2012, 6pm

The New Zealand String Quartet will play all Beethoven’s string quartets this year, in chronological order – a major undertaking in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the quartet.  As Helene Pohl observes in one of several excellent programme notes, hearing them this way ‘we discover how full of personality these “early” quartets are!’

The Quartet’s fondness for St. Mary of the Angels as a venue was understandable straight away: the first notes demonstrated the warm sound.  However, the lively acoustic does allow every sound to be heard clearly, including a little too much metallic tone from the first violin, at times.

The first quartet played was the third in the set.  Beethoven’s harmonic invention was there in abundance.  In the first movement, allegro, the first violin has most of the interesting work.  The second demonstrated lovely rhythmic variety; the smooth  legato second theme was played superbly, with the sonority of Gjelsten’s cello particularly marvellous.  A few slightly misplaced notes did not detract from a sensitive and fine performance.  The movement came gently to a beautiful conclusion.

The third movement was energy alternating with calmness, followed by increasing complexity, while the fourth, marked presto, was certainly fast.  It was a joyful movement with unanticipated touches of reflection; little turns cause the music to pause in its rush towards the end, which is unexpectedly quiet, almost humorous.

The attentive audience in a full church demonstrated how much people enjoy hearing Beethoven played well.  Where are these people (assuming most of them were Wellingtonians) when the Wellington Chamber Music Society’s winter Sunday afternoon series is on?

The second quartet is quite different.  Its opening allegro features plangent crescendos.  The next movement, adagio cantabile, has a rich-toned opening.  A ‘false scherzo’ intervenes – fast, yet light and frothy.  The slow tempo returns, and sounded all the more sombre by contrast.  The movement ends with delicate figures in the minor key.

The real scherzo that was the third movement, described in the programme note as ‘brilliantly unpredictable’ reminded me of a dragonfly’s dance (having seen a large native one in my garden just recently).  It was too fast and frisky for human feet.  A solemn little set with the dancers bowing to each other was followed by variations, with copious interplay of the instruments.

The final movement was a delightful piece of counterpoint.   Here, the players were equal partners in a jaunty and good-humoured mood, in a movement more democratic  than the others (to use the language of programme note writer Dr Robert Simpson). A strong and vibrant passage is followed by a quiet section, then bang!  Suddenly the music is loud again; a typical gesture of Beethoven’s.

Now to the beginning of Beethoven’s quartet-writing career: Op.18 no.1.  This quartet was the most familiar of the three, to me.  Its lyrical opening was in a cheerful, mellifluous mood.  It presented a great range of dynamics – as indeed did the other two quartets.  It sounded to be a more mature work than the others, and this would be due to the fact that the composer comprehensively revised it two years after its first composition.  This allegro con brio opening movement was very satisfying.

The adagio affettuoso ed appassionato second movement began in sombre fashion, reminding me of Mozart’s Requiem.  Later, the music became passionate.  Its constantly altering moods make for an intensely interesting listening experience.  Slight rubatos added to the effect.  It was magnificently played.

The playful scherzo that followed required plenty of fast finger-work.  The finale was a surprise.  “Where is this going?” was my thought.  This was another democratic movement; all the players were engaged in the many twists and turns, and changes of key.  The constantly altering faces and qualities of the music sustained the attention.  Some of the strongest and most emphatic playing of the evening was in this movement.  It was fast, with an energetic ending.

The New Zealand String Quartet provided an appreciative audience with a thoroughly satisfying, even exhilarating concert.