Festival Singers’ Papa Haydn – a Man for All Seasons

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HAYDN – Oratorio “The Seasons”

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

Festival Singers / Orchestra (Simon McLellan, leader)

Rosemary Russell (conductor)

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

Sunday, 20th November, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listening to ourselves: Voices New Zealand

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents

VOICES OF AOTEAROA

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Karen Grylls (director)

Horomona Horo (taonga puoro)

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

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

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 19th November, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brilliant French programme with Anne Sophie von Otter and Wellington Orchestra at Town Hall

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Debussy); Songs from Chants d’Auvergne (Canteloube); Symphonie fantastique (Berlioz)

Anne Sophie von Otter  with the Vector Wellington Orchestra under Marc Taddei

Town Hall

Friday 18 November, 7.30pm

A full Town Hall auditorium and a stage crowded with a great orchestra of some 85 players, put me in mind of the Town Hall concerts that an NZSO of 30 years ago could sell out.

An entirely French programme was the perfect response to the Wellington Orchestra’s encounter with the wonderful Swedish mezzo who has indeed cultivated a special gift in the language and music of France.

As Marc Taddei remarked, the programme included two works that were landmarks not just for French music but for the whole world of classical music. Debussy’s Faune is now widely considered to herald the dawn of modern music, perhaps of more importance than the adventures of Schoenberg into atonality and serialism. And 60 years earlier it was Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony that pushed wide open the doors to Romanticism that Beethoven had unlocked.

Taddei opened Debussy’s enchanting work with the most discreet movements of his baton, preparing visually for Karen Batten’s ethereal, seductive flute sounds; and though such refinement characterized much of the playing by other instruments, particularly Matthew Ross’s solo violin, and Moira Hurst’s clarinet, the performance was not without more robust passages that spoke of the more earthy, physical quality of love described in Mallarmé’s poem. But its dream-like effects were sustained in an almost faultless canvas of sound.

Anne Sophie von Otter sang seven of the collection of songs from the region known as the Auvergne the name which is today given to one of France’s 22 regions, occupying the main part of the Massif Central. Canteloube was born in the département of Ardèche which lies on the southeast side of the region. I travelled through it 20 years ago on a train called the Le Cévenol (which I see has now become a ‘tourist’ journey), through Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand and south through winding, forested river gorges, through enchanting landscapes with a hundred tunnels and bridges and ancient villages.

Another composer who celebrated its music was Vincent d’Indy whose Symphony on a French Mountain Air or Symphonie Cévenole was also an early love of mine;  D’Indy had a summer residence in Ardèche.

Canteloube compiled five books of folk-songs totalling 32 altogether. I discovered them in the early 70s through the land-mark recording by Netania Davrath; it seems that Véronique Gens is the only later singer to have recorded them all.

Singing in the Auvergnat dialect – related to Provençal and Catalan, von Otter invested these idiosyncratic songs with the great variety of emotions and gestures that they evoke. She was discriminating however with things like vibrato and the affectations of ordinary classical performance; notes were prolonged for comic or sentimental effect; the fourth song, Lou boussu, plagued with switching rhythms and tempi, depicted a girl’s heartless rejection of a hunchback’s advances, with careless gusto.

There was a rare graciousness, almost grandeur, in the performance of Passo pel prat, the voice rising ecstatically, her body and arms swaying to the rhythm. Similar gestures served a comic purpose in the last song, Lou coucut.

The orchestral accompaniments were equally diverting, witty, rumbustious, here a squally clarinet, there rude blasts on horns, a sentimental cor anglais.  Conspicuous too were the piano forays of the piano – from the singer’s regular accompanist, Bengt Forsberg, that seemed to have a special flavour inspired by his intimate musical relationship.

The endless applause prompted an encore – by Benny Andersson (ABBA) – not too far removed in essence from the songs she’d just sung.

And yes: though these songs are quite enchanting, it was a pity not to have heard her, in addition, in some French art song – Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Berlioz’s Nuits d’été…

The second half was devoted to the 50 minutes of the Symphonie Fantastique, which Taddei dedicated to the departing General Manager Diana Marsh. It opened with the Largo, breathed suspensefully by velvety strings, gaining speed till the main Allegro movement arrives, introducing the  Idée fixe which is, of course, much more than just a ‘principal theme’.

One noticed Taddei had dispensed with music stand and score, a step that meant far more than the fact of having the entire 230 pages (of my miniature score) by heart: it soon became clear that it was allowing him to attend, without his eyes distracted by the notes on the pages, to communicating with every player and creating a performance of sustained beauty at one end and utterly unbridled passion or ferocity at the other. Again it was possible to admire much instrumental playing, particularly cor anglais, horns, and the inflated numbers in certain areas: the two tubas, and two harps, the two timpanists on each set of drums (yet the timpani was often played with the utmost quiet).

One might have imagined that the orchestra had been inflated by many NZSO players; but in reality they were few. So it was possible to record admiration at the polish and integrity of the strings, and to admire the beauty and ensemble of the wind sections. The tubular bells under the balcony on the left produced a magic, remote sound with their Dies Irae, while the cornets lent a distinct anti-classical character to the music of the fourth and fifth movements.

The waltz movement, Un bal, went rather fast; I have always felt that this movement should suggest a phantasmagoric, dream ball rather than a Straussian one; something was lost. The first movement and the Scène aux champs were beautifully paced, a terrifying Marche au supplice. As for the Witches’ Sabbath I was overwhelmed by the frenzy that Taddei mustered from his totally engaged players who still had the capacity to double their speed across the final page even though Berlioz only marks it ‘animando un poco’. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.

If there was a price to pay in terms of precision and finesse for the sometimes almost reckless speeds and the intense emotion generated at many stages of this performance, it was entirely worth that price.

Perhaps for the first time, here was a performance that recalled for me the astonishment and excitement I felt when I first heard the work in my teens.

Winning pieces from inaugural guitar composition competition played by Matthew Marshall

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

2011 New Zealand Classical Guitar Composition Competition

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

Matthew Marshall (guitar)

Theatrette, Massey University, Buckle Street

Thursday 17 November, 8pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brilliant violin and piano recital from Blythe Press and Richard Mapp

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Bach, Brahms, Chausson, Bowater and Ravel

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 November 2011, 12.15pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Georgina Zellan-Smith – fond piano memories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REMEMBRANCE

– and other favorite piano pieces

Georgina Zellan-Smith (piano)

 Ode Records CDMANU 5101

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

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

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 5 November, 6.30pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Wikipedia tells it:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End of Year recitals from School of Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

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

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, 31 October, 3 and 4 November 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

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

DOORLY – The Songs of the Morning

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

BODY – Songs My Grandmother Sang

Roger Wilson (baritone)

Bruce Greenfield (piano)

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

Wednesday 5th October 2011

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

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bevy of intensities – Ensemble Liaison with Wilma Smith

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand 2011

HAYDN – Piano Trio in G Major “Gypsy Rondo”

BRAHMS – Clarinet Trio in A Minor Op.114

MESSIAEN – Quartet for the End of Time

Ensemble Liaison:

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

– with Wilma Smith (violin)

Town Hall, Wellington

Saturday 29th October 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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