Category: Reviews – Concerts

A Touch of Spain – Trio Con Brio with Caprice Arts Trust (2010 Concert Series)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by CARULLI, PIAZZOLLA, BRUNI, ALBENIZ, TARRAGO, GRANADOS, and BEETHOVEN

Trio Con Brio

Cheryl Grice-Watterson (guitar)

Martin Jaenecke (violin)

Victoria Jaenecke (viola)

St.Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Tuesday 4th May, 2010

It didn’t take long for the Trio Con Brio’s mellifluous combination of guitar, violin and viola to make a lasting impression on this listener. What I heard in the grateful acoustic of St.Mark’s Church in Lower Hutt, all but persuaded me to give myself entirely over to the music of Ferdinando Carulli as if it were among the greatest ever written. I strongly suspect that, attractive though the music undoubtedly was, it was largely the animated elegance of interplay between three fine musicians that captured my attention so wholly, the kind of music-making that’s worth taking a lot of trouble to seek out and enjoy.

The work in question was a Trio Concertante by the aforementioned Carulli, whose name, though not unknown to me, was unconnected with any music I could remember hearing. The programme notes suggested that Carulli’s output was somewhat uneven, though adding that he was at his most inventive when composing chamber music. Though I suspect my listening at this stage of the concert was taken up largely with registering how well the guitar’s limpid tones held up against the brighter, more sustained timbres of both violin and viola, the trio’s adroit balancing of voices allowed the composer’s across-the-board inventiveness to make a positive impression. By contrast with the opening movement the Largo explored softer episodes, the guitar demonstrating its dynamic range as tellingly in its way as could its companions. A final movement, marked “Presto” wasn’t quite that – more “allegro”, but also quixotic and volatile, with a lovely “false” ending that satisfied both one’s capacity for amusement and sense of completion.

Martin Jaenecke’s violin next joined with Cheryl Grice-Watterson’s guitar to realise one of Astor Piazzolla’s redoubtable tangos, one entitled “Continental Cafe 1930”. A slow, languorous beginning, more dreamed by the guitar than played at the start, until awakened by the violin with dance-like impulses, put the work into the category of one “more to be listened to than danced” (although experts might disagree!). A major-key section emphasised the dance rhythms, though sequences from the solo guitar inclined towards the freely rhapsodic, the fascinating interplay between the two instruments suggesting an intertwining of different sensibilities attracted by something ineffable.

The following work was by a composer whose name I didn’t at all know, Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1757-1821), a composer of opera in his day as well as of many instrumental works. Italian-born, he spent much of his career in Paris as a violinist, conductor, composer and teacher, having the good fortune to be seen as a supporter of the Revolution, which helped his job prospects – apparently at one stage he was given the task of compiling an inventory of valuable musical instruments confiscated during the Terror!  Martin and Victoria Jaenecke, playing violin and viola respectively, gave us one of Bruni’s many duos, and added plenty of physical excitement to their playing by standing, thus able to almost “choreograph” the music – a flowing, lyrical opening was enlivened with dance-like episodes, switching from major to minor and with lead and accompaniment constantly changing. As one might expect, the teamwork between the players was impeccable, with the finale’s “allegro con moto” adding extra excitement to the interchanges – I particularly enjoyed both the swapping of melodic lines in the same register between instruments, allowing the different timbres of each to tell, and also, towards the conclusion, the “question-and-answer” phrasings in the melodic line.

Concluding the first half was another piece by Piazzolla, “Oblivion Milonga” which was arranged by the Trio themselves to play. A characteristic opening, sultry and laden, with the viola taking the melody initially, before handing over to the violin, subsequently became a duet in octaves, the guitar supplying the rhythmic impetus, the music as potent when delicate and withdrawn as when full-blooded.

Cheryl Grice-Watterson began the second half with a work for solo guitar, the wonderful “Asturias” by Isaac Albeniz, telling us a little about the composer and the work and the “guitaristic’ qualities of the music. Listening to her playing this work, it was difficult to imagine that it was originally written for piano, so “guitaristic” did the player make it sound. She captured the storytelling aspect of the recitative passages with remarkable focus and concentration, her subtle “voicings” of tone compelling our attention throughout. The guitarist was then joined by Victoria Jaenecke, whose viola stood in for the human voice in three song transcriptions, one by Graciano Tarrago (1892-1973),and two by Enrique Granados. In the Tarrago transcription, I felt the viola sounded a shade too “smooth” compared with the forthright guitar-playing – a slightly coarser, more “pesante” approach might have worked better, perhaps? Again, Cheryl Grice-Watterson’s guitar timbres  and rhythmic impetuses really made the Granados songs come alive, the viola nicely encompassing in particular the mood of the first of the two Granados songs, “La Maja Dolorosa” (The Sad Woman).

The concert ended with a Serenade by Beethoven, arranged for the ensemble by a contemporary of the composer’s, one Wenceslaus Matiegka, whom the programme note describes as “a fashionable teacher of piano and guitar in Vienna” (nothing is said about Beethoven’s opinion of the transcription, though there were many such made of the work for different combinations). The players realised the opening’s vein of melancholy, with lovely long lines, the strings in octaves and the guitar a middle voice, before what seemed like a schizophrenic vein of mischief gripped hold of the proceedings, with the composer alternating between a major-key allegro and a quasi-tragic adagio – all very divertingly and entertainingly brought off by the Trio. The second movement, an Andante quasi Allegretto, was charmingly done, by turns poised and deeply-felt throughout a set of variations; while a polonaise-finale with genteel rather than rustic intentions featured golden-toned strings and rousing guitar chords, and a surprise scampering ending, brought off with characteristic style and elan by the three musicians, who thoroughly deserved the acclaim which marked the concert’s end.

Cantoris explores the motet literature, from Bach to Rubbra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cantoris: Motet Perpetuem, directed by Rachel Hyde 

Bach: Lobet den Herrn and Jesu meine Freude; Brahms: O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, Op 74 No 2; Bruckner: Ave Maria, Op 6, Os justi, Op 10; Poulenc: 4 motets pour le temps de Noël, Op 152; Rubbra: Tenebrae Motets, Op 72, Nocturne 3

St Peter’s church, Willis Street

Saturday 1 May, 7.30pm

It must be about a year since I heard Cantoris, which was one of Wellington’s leading choirs under he direction of Robert Oliver; like most musical bodies it has had its ups and downs since then. Under Robert Oliver the choir gained distinction by presenting complete performances of Handel oratorios; it is no longer possible to excite large audiences with such things, and concerts of late have been more eclectic. In the five years that Rachel Hyde has been in command, Cantoris has largely regained its former standing.

This was eclectic, though it consisted of music called motets.

The motet is not a very precisely defined class of choral composition, generally described as a choral composition to Latin words that are not a part of the Mass, but used in other church offices; its texts are usually from the Bible.

Bach’s six motets, written probably in his early years at Leipzig, are the most famous and provide models for most subsequent so-called motets. That was the theme of the concert; each of the later motets in the programme were directly or indirectly influenced by Bach’s.

So it was interesting that the singing of the two Bach motets was less polished than several of the later ones. That is undoubtedly because they present greater challenges, largely attributable to Bach’s musical erudition and his fascination with the mathematics of music.

I was a minute late and had the charming experience of hearing the choir in full flight as I entered: the urgent sounds of Lobet den Herrn, brisk, supported by clean staccato singing, with organ accompaniment (a debatable addition). Balance among the women’s voices was excellent but the men’s voices were less homogeneous, and there were moments of suspect ensemble. These flaws were most evident in the two Bach motets (in the sixth stanza of Jesu meine Freude the tenors, opening alone, drew attention to their fragility); in the Brahms motet, too, vocal quality was uneven among the tenors.

Bach’s largest and most imposing motet is Jesu meine Freude which demands singing of some dramatic quality because of the varied character of each of the 11 stanzas, that create such an elaborate and satisfying architectural structure.

Brahms modeled his German motet, O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, on Bach’s, though he did depart from one formal norm of the motet – Latin words, and the complexities of the opening section were handled bravely if not perfectly. The last, ‘Du wollen wir…’ allowed a purer, cleaner sound to emerge, particularly the women’s voices that were quite admirable.

Two of Bruckner’s motets followed, again accompanied by the organ (borrowed from the New Zealand School of Music). Gentler, more submissive than Brahms, they allowed all sections of the choir to be heard to better advantage; I realized that the problems of obtrusive individual male voices was overcome by softer singing: the Ave Maria was gorgeous. Voices blended beautifully in Os Justi too, and there were subtle fluctuations of dynamics.

Poulenc’s four a cappella Christmas motets were charming examples of the composers cheerful piety. Again, the choir’s strengths were more evident than its weaknesses, coping well enough with the testing rhythms, though I found the emphases on certain words rather at odds with the meaning: for example on ‘jacentem’ in the first motet. Striking a sort of news-reader’s tone made Hodie Christus natus est rather interesting.

The Tenebrae motets by Rubbra, to words that to a non-catholic, are shockingly brutal, were not familiar to me, all seemed set to music that dealt succinctly and exactly with the subject, and the choir excelled themselves in the Third Nocturne, handling it with a deliberate, serious tone yet very musically.

It was a worthy revival of music by a gifted but neglected composer, whose music was more familiar when I was young, to end an admirably devised programme.

The concert was a benefit for the restoration of the church’s organ.

Sounds contemporary – Stroma and SOUNZ Contemporary…

Posted on by Alan Wells

STROMA: Sequences

Featuring Dave Bremner (trombone), Bridget Douglas (flute), Peter Dykes (oboe), Rebecca Struthers (violin), Lenny Sakovsky (flowerpots),

Hamish McKeich and Mark Carter (conductors).

Berio: “Sequenza I”, “Sequenza VII”; Xenakis: “Charisma”; Rzewski: “Song and Dance”, “To the Earth”; Ross Harris: “Fanitullen”, “Trombone Opera”; Chris Gendall: “Rudiments”.

St Andrews on the Terrace, 1 May 2010

also: SOUNZ Contemporary Award 2010  (preview): Chris Gendall: “Rudiments”; Ross Harris:  “Violin Concerto No. 1”; Chris Cree Brown: “Inner Bellow”.

New Zealand Music Month 2010 began with a highlight – the “Sequences” concert from leading contemporary music group Stroma, which  featured NZ premieres of two recent offerings from Ross Harris and Chris Gendall. These large-ensemble, almost orchestrally weighty scores, bookended a series of  mainly solo pieces showcasing the virtuoso talents of individual Stroma members.

Luciano Berio’s 1958 monodic classic “Sequenza I” gave star flutistBridget Douglas scope for delicate multiphonics, and a twentieth century version of baroque “virtual counterpoint” on a single melodic line. Interestingly, I did not particularly notice any of the microtones and pitch-bends that have become a characteristic of many, more recent, pieces for solo woodwind. Berio’s 1969 “Sequenza VII” took oboist Peter Dykes on a breath-control marathon, with its dissolves from multiphonic fuzziness to “uniphonic” clarity, and – again – the use of contrapuntal lines sketched from contrasting registers (here anchored by a recurrent tonic).

The tense, telling gestures of Iannis Xennakis’ 1971 “Charisma” (fortissimo scrunches, and tremolando slides, on Rowan Prior’s cello; bell-like grace notes on Patrick Barry’s clarinet) were fitting in a work written to commemorate a premature death. More celebratory was Frederic Rzewski’s 1977 “Song and Dance” ( vibes, flute, bass clarinetand contrabass) in which “song” sections with their graceful flute lines and plaintive bowed contrabass, were set against the rhythmic, jazzy “dance” episodes. A later Rzewski piece, “To the Earth” from 1985, had been performed during the composer’s visit here a few years ago. It was a solo (or perhaps more accurately, a duo for one): percussionist Lenny Sakovsky played in a tetratonic scale on four flowerpots (made, of course, from clay – from earth),  while reciting a hymn to Gaia (Earth) translated from the ancient Greek. The effect was one of affecting simplicity.

Ross Harris’s “Fanitullen” was written as a test piece for the 2007 Michael Hill International Violin Competition. Taking its cue from Scandinavian folk fiddling and the legend underlying “The Soldier’sTale”, this “devil’s tune” demanded virtuoso playing from Rebecca Struthers – by turns fiery and ghostly, with polyphony within a single line, as well as double-stopping. Harris’s “Trombone Opera” was inspired by pansori, a form of Korean monodrama for a singer –  with only her fan for a prop – and a drummer. Not a fan in sight with Stroma, but a battery of three percussionists (including bass drum, marimba, and bells) were amongst the support for the recitatives of David Bremner’s golden-toned trombone. Bremner notwithstanding, I did not find the work attractive (it probably wasn’t meant to be). It seemed to belong to the gnarly, knotty sound-world of those discomfiting compositions in which Harris (sometimes courageously) confronts the darker, angst-ridden side of human nature. Among these are “To the Memory of I.S. Totska”, “Contramusic” (one of Harris’s earlier essays for Stroma), and also “Labyrinth” for tuba and orchestra (the NZSO) –  which received a Sounz Contemporary Award (unlike the awards for Harris’s Second and Third Symphonies and for “…Totska”, which were all eminently deserved, I thought the win for “Labyrinth” was suspect, displacing as it did Ken Young’s enigmatic but ultimately powerful Second Symphony).

As in “Labyrinth”, there was a significant place in “Trombone Opera” for tuba (Andrew Jarvis), and as in “Contramusic”, Hamish McKeich featured on the contrabassoon. “Trombone Opera” was written in 2009 while Harris was Creative New Zealand/ Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence at the NZ School of Music. The prospective (now current) holder of the  Residency is Chris Gendall. While a student at Victoria University, Gendall was noted for his impressively energetic, rhythmically driven compositions, such as the piano duo “Xenophony”, and “So It Goes”, which won the inaugural (2005) NZSO/Todd Foundation Young Composers Award (in my view, it should have been first equal, along with Andari Anggamulia’s exquisitely Webernian “Les Images”). Even as early as 2002 (with “Sextet”) and 2003 (“Miniatures” for guitar, cello, contrabass and drums), however, Gendall was interrupting his  motoric momentum with passages of fragmentary free rhythm. Gendall has now completedpostgraduate studies at Cornell University, and in his most recent scores, such as the 2008 “Wax Lyrical” (another Sounz Contemporary winner, also performed by Stroma last year), and in “Rudiments”, the ostinati have been almost entirely dispensed with, and the jagged, disjunctive rhythms have come to predominate.

The three movements of “Rudiments” were based on three foundations of music: melody, harmony and counterpoint (rhythm, notably, did not get a mention). The energy of “So It Goes” was still here, but expressed as a kind of textural exuberance (for my part, I miss the metre). In the first movement there was a dense tone-colour-melody, and a progression from single note to cluster. In the second (“Forest for the Trees”) there were some remnants of pulse, while in the third, hints of contrapuntal  imitation. For this piece, the versatile HamishMcKeich packed away his contrabassoon and took up the baton.

Gendall’s “Rudiments” is one of three contenders for the 2010 Sounz Contemporary Award, to be announced on 8 September. While undoubtedly a strong work, it remains to be seen whether it will be a landmark, and whether Gendall will consolidate his current style or explore other areas. Ross Harris is again in contention for the Award, this time with his Violin Concerto, first performed by Anthony Marwood and the NZSO in this year’s Made in New Zealand concert (7 May). Here the soloist wove an almost continuous commentary around the orchestra’s discourse, which ranged from the idiom of Webern, to Berg, to (even) Shostakovich. The episodic one-movement structure could seem either delightfully rhapsodic, or confused and meandering.  Despite the impeccable advocacy of Marwood and the NZSO, I was unconvinced by the premiere. After hearing subsequent Radio New Zealand Concert broadcasts, I have warmed to the work a little, but still remain ambivalent. If time-frames had permitted, I would have  much preferred Harris to have been represented by either “The Floating Bride, The Crimson Village” (Jenny Wollerman, NZSO/Sounz Readings last year; and Made in New Zealand 2010), or “The Abiding Tides” (Jenny Wollerman and the NZ String Quartet,  Arts Festival, 7 March). “The Floating Bride”was a romantically Mahlerian song-cycle, and while “The Abiding Tides” had some of the stylistic diversity of the Violin Concerto, in the chamber work the different styles tended to be confined within separate movements, and furthermore had a purpose in underlining Vincent O’Sullivan’s compelling texts.

Nevertheless, I would put money (if I had any) on Harris winning the Award. My own choice though would be  Chris Cree Brown’s “Inner Bellow” for clarinet and electronics. Performed by Gretchen Dunsmore at the CANZ Nelson Composers Workshop opening concert (4 July 2010), “Inner Bellow” not only seamlessly blended live and recorded sounds, but also created strange new colours from the partially dismantledclarinet, with intervals being compressed (instant microtones!) in some registers. As in “The Triumvirate”, played by the NZ Trio during the 2005 Nelson Composers Workshop, Cree Brown employed an adventurous musical language within a reassuringly conventional structure (with recurring elements suggestive of  a rondo).

Given the calibre of this year’s contestants, whoever receives the Award will be a worthy winner.

______________________________

Polish Pride – an Antipodean tribute from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Polish Pride

SZYMANOWSKI – Concert Overture

CHOPIN – Piano Concerto No.2

CHOPIN (arr.Stravinsky) – Nocturne

LUTOSLAWSKI – Symphony No.4

Diedre Irons (piano)

Jacek Kaspszyk (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 29th April 2010

Polish hearts beat staunchly both at the beginning of and throughout this special concert in the Michael Fowler Centre, as Beata Stocyńska, the Polish Ambassador to New Zealand, addressed those present in the Michael Fowler Centre at the invitation of Peter Walls the orchestra’s CEO.  Mrs Stocyńska spoke of her countrymen’s and women’s pride in their culture and the achievements of their creative artists, such as Fryderyk Chopin, whose 200th birthday was marked by the proclamation of a “Year of Fryderyck Chopin” by the Polish Government. There was tragedy, too, at the mention by the ambassador of the recent air-crash in Russia that claimed the lives of the Polish President and a number of government officials, an event that gave this concert and its music all the more poignancy for those present. Adding his dignified gravitas to the occasion was the Governor-General of New Zealand, the Honourable Sir Anand Satyanand, speaking on behalf of all of the non-Polish people present, and eloquently but simply conveying a nation’s sympathy for another’s anguish and grief.

The tributes concluded, it was then over to the musicians, who moved the proceedings forward spectacularly with Karol Szymanowski’s Concert Overture. Anybody unfamiliar with Szymanowski’s music would have presumed that the overture was by Richard Strauss, so unerringly does the younger man imitate the latter, at the time the most famous composer in Europe. In fact Szymanowski almost out-Strausses Strauss, if not to the music’s advantage – though exciting and forceful, the work is simply too heavily scored, and risks tiring the listener’s ear before the end. Conductor Jacek Kaspszky controlled the profusion of youthful orchestral exuberance as best he could, although one was still left with a “less-is-more” feeling after the tumultuous waves of instrumental tone had ceased once and for all.

If the excitement and energy was all too palpable during the Szymanowski Overture, similar qualities were in short supply during much of the performance of the Chopin piano concerto which followed, at least in the orchestral playing. Though numbered as the second, the F Minor Concerto was actually composed earlier than the E Minor No.1, and, despite the young composer’s love for Mozart’s music, shows little of the latter’s aptitude for using the orchestra as an effective protagonist, especially in the outer movements. It’s music that doesn’t ”play itself”, requiring instead plenty of positive and energetic advocacy, which conductor and orchestra seemed strangely reluctant to fetch up, with the result that, when pianist Diedre Irons wasn’t playing, the music seemed to amble inconsequentially along. Right at the outset there was genuine poetic feeling from the strings, and some nice work by oboist Robert Orr, but thereafter things were oddly lacklustre – some nicely shaped bassoon-and piano exchanges later in the movement raised hopes, but the duetting if anything seemed to further inhibit rather than stimulate any contrasting vigour and muscle in the tuttis.

It’s interesting, and fortunate, that the slow movement of the concerto is an absolute gem – inspired by the young composer’s passion for a singer, Constantia Gladowska, the music conjures up a kind of breath-stopping enchantment throughout, underpinned by a richly-woven carpet of sensitively-sustained orchestral tones. Diedre Irons wove one magical arabesque after another in this movement with finely-spun feeling and delicacy, nicely supported by the orchestra at every turn. But as for the rest, there was little to enthuse about – no strong impulse or spark that would have energised those admittedly dull orchestral textures and given the interchanges between piano and orchestra some interest. The pianist was doing her utmost (and how good to have her perform with the NZSO once again), but the orchestral response to her elaborate solo paragraphings and spirited lead-ins during the outer movements suggested that hearts and minds were largely elsewhere.

Igor Stravinsky’s piquant orchestration of Chopin’s A-flat Nocturne Op.32 No.2 served to demonstrate the well-known balletic inclinations of one of the twentieth-century’s greatest composers. Written in 1909 for the impresario Diaghilev, to extend an existing ballet using Chopin’s music for the famed Ballets Russes, Stravinsky produced a delightful neo-Tchaikovsky-like realisation which brought out all the sentiment of the original (a lovely “stopped” horn at the cadence-points of the opening section) and gave bright Russian colours to the more vigorous episodes in the middle part of the work. A lovely, diaphanous ambience gave the conclusion a sombre beauty, Kaspszyk and the players nicely realising the setting’s mixture of delicacy and turbulence.

Both delicacy and turbulence were writ large in the evening’s final work from Poland, the Fourth Symphony of Lutoslawski. Overshadowed at first by the incredible popularity of his Third Symphony, with its engaging tunefulness and high drama, Lutoslawski’s Fourth is a much tougher proposition, shorter, more introverted and darker, in places elegiac. The work has a two-movement layout, each part relating to the other in a way that creates a kind of arched structure, the first movement making its listeners, in the composer’s words, “hungry, and finally even impatient” for the fulfilment of the second part. So we heard the clarinet’s gentle, lyrical theme at the start against a murmuring accompaniment, extended later by both flute and clarinet,and interspersed by episodes of faster, more mercurial and less predictable music – these are marked in the score “ad libitum” and the performers asked to improvise, to shape the gestures according to their own impulses.

The players were transformed, engaged, focused and totally committed to making these sounds – my notes refer to things like “impassioned tolling-bell figures – great swinging strides from basses, snappish brass clusters splash colour and tighten tension, strings soar and sear…”  and later “claustrophobic ostinati from strings with brass and percussion bouncing backwards and forwards off walls…” the impression thus given of sometimes elemental, sometimes feverish activity. Against this were the moments of stasis, in line with Lutoslawski’s avowed intention of delaying the listener’s desire for continuity and resolution through unexpected contrast and variety. I noted “pointillistic shimmerings from strings, iridescences from everywhere, like fireflies at dusk” and “great spaces, deep loneliness, railway lights humming along lines in the middle of nowhere – a sense of impulses coursing over vast spaces, subdued but purposeful…”. One’s gradual awareness of the process of resolution of these disparate elements became a profound listening experience – throughout the performance the focus of the playing and conducting was palpable, spell-binding in its intensity and brilliance, and unerring in its control and direction, for which the musicians received their just dues from the audience at the end.

Towards a musical cross-fertilisation at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Exchange: compositions of Jeremy Hantler for contemporary and indigenous instruments

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 28 April, 12.15pm

An unusual concert took place at St Andrew’s in the usual Wednesday lunchtime slot. What lay behind it was the notion, perhaps inspired by the experiments in European music from the late 19th century, that mixing conventional forms of music and conventional instruments with the music of other, often less sophisticated, cultures could lead to a new and more vital music. Think of the influence of the exhibitions of Asian art and music in Paris on Debussy and others.

The instruments included several drums, violin, guitar, banjo, trombone (Nick van Dijk), saxophone (Blair Clarke), double bass (Scott Maynard), and three players of ‘taongo puoro’ (why don’t musicians give us the names of the individual flutes? It’s a failing of percussionists too: a chance missed to refine audience knowledge).

There was to have been a didgeridoo, but Styefan Sarten didn’t appear. 

I arrived during the performance of a piece entitled Duet, which used a tenor saxophone, a Maori flute, to the accompaniment of what is known as a bull-roarer (Maori name?). It struck me as a work in progress, neither particularly well organised as a composition nor as a performance. Jeremy Hantler, spoke about the music with animation, but without much care for voice projection or clarity of diction so that, sitting towards the back, I caught little.

However, his leadership was clearly sufficient to motivate the other players; and while some phases seemed somewhat tentative, even incoherent, there were also moments when something of genuine musical value happened, with a sequence of harmonies, a tune or the blending of instruments in an unlikely but ear-catching way.

Watchful Eye featured three players of the taongo puoro, that recreated the voices of tui and ruru (morepork) rather effectively, but was otherwise flavoured by jazz sounds from saxophone and trombone, with less conspicuous offerings from violin, but with Hantler very conspicuous on drums. Again, passages sounded less than finished and thoroughly rehearsed, but there was attractive duetting between trombone ansd saxophone.

The piece after which the concert was named, Exchange, was largely driven by side drums and later, Cook Islands log drum played by Andreas Lepper, both skilled and gently exciting. There were striking signs of careful preparation here, with more attention to musical patterns familiar in western music.

The last piece was called Quicksand: resolute drum rhythms and the trombone and saxophone again, though less clear purpose in the playing of violin and guitar. The contribution of the Maori flutes seemed less fully realised, a somewhat arbitrary addition that had not found a comfortable role: the words I jotted down were ‘pasted on’. Yet the chorus that these instruments created towards the end, backed by plucked bass with soft voiced violin and guitar, was one of the most attractive, as they set up a moving lament.

The concert was an interesting and worthwhile experiment, though more attention needs to be paid to conventional modes of presentation, stage management, voice projection, and more thorough documentation of instruments and their characteristics – for the many potential listeners not familiar with nomenclature, but prepared to listen with open minds and ears.

There were acknowledgements in the programme to Richard Nunns, Brian Flintoff, James Webster, Warren Warbrick, Hirini Melbourne and Steph.

Maxwell Fernie – Centenary tribute at St.Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MAXWELL FERNIE – A Centenary Tribute

Concert at St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

Presenter: James A.Young

Music by Maxwell Fernie, Helen Bowater, J.S.Bach, Rachmaninov, Palestrina, Purcell, Vierne, Widor

Performers: Thomas Gaynor, Donald Nicolson (organ) / Douglas Mews (organ, harpsichord) / Rowena Simpson (soprano)

Gregory O’Brien (speaker) / Yury Gezentsvey (violin), Peter Barber (viola) / Robert Oliver (viola da gamba, conductor)

St.Mary of the Angels Choir

Sunday 25th April 2010

Maxwell Fernie (1910-1999) was a true “Renaissance Man”, one of those multi-talented people whose activities encompassed a vast range of skills, interests and sensibilities. Born in Wellington exactly one hundred years ago this year, the young Max showed sufficient promise as a young musician and teacher to secure the position as organist and choirmaster at St.Joseph’s Catholic Church, next to the Basin Reserve. Immediately following the Second World War, during which he served with the Second NZEF in Egypt and Europe, Fernie became one of a number of talented New Zealand musicians who undertook to complete their musical training in the Northern Hemisphere. For him this meant remaining in London, where he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music. He was awarded prizes in Organ-playing and Extemporization, General Musicianship and History of Music. Just three years after his return to New Zealand he was back in London in 1953 where he took the post of organist of Westminster Cathedral, a position he held with great distinction for five years. Fortunately for Wellington, and for New Zealand, Fernie decided to return home to take up the directorship of the St Mary of the Angels Choir, a position he was to maintain until his death in 1999. He was also the Wellington City organist for 27 years, the founder and conductor of the Schola Polyphonica Choir, and a teacher of organ at Victoria University of Wellington. He was awarded the OBE in 1974 for services to music.

Something of his lasting influence across the years and among his many associates and talented pupils was strongly and joyfully conveyed by a Maxwell Fernie Centenary Tribute Concert fittingly held in the Church of St Mary of the Angels, an event participated in and attended by both people who knew and worked with him and others, like myself, who never met him but were aware of his prodigious achievements. For people to whom his name might have been familiar, but the extent of his activities as a musician far less so, the concert would have been a revelation, as well as food for reflection. The variety and depth of what music-lovers in Wellington enjoy today was built up over many years by the talents, hard work and inspiration of people like Maxwell Fernie, something that anniversaries such as these should emphasise and celebrate as an on-going and life-enhancing process. Thanks to the heartfelt and committed advocacy of Max’s family, and former friends, associates and pupils, this concert did him and his reputation proud.

The Parish Priest of St.Mary of the Angels, Father Barry Scannell welcomed us all to the church for what he called a “very special occasion”. He was followed by Andrew Fernie, Max’s son, who spoke about the Maxwell Fernie Trust, set up to continue the legacy of the great man by means of an annual scholarship award of $10,000 to young, up-and-coming organists and choral conductors. For the Trust the concert was a red-letter occasion, as it marked the inaugural presentation of the award to a young organist Thomas Gaynor, made later in the programme by the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage, the Hon. Chris Finlayson. James A.Young, who was Fernie’s assistant organist and choirmaster, and later his successor at St.Mary’s, took over as Master of Ceremonies, and first of all introduced Max to the audience via a recording of an interview, made in 1958, Max obviously in his element talking about the newly-installed pipe organ in the church. We heard him clapping his hands to demonstrate the space’s reverberation, and playing exerpts to illustrate the types of organ pipe being used, their combinations and interplay with the pedal notes. It all made a perfect introduction to the concert’s first musical item, Douglas Mews’ playing of JS Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G, the opening sprightly and characterful, and the fugue steady and cumulative, with clear, focused lines throughout.

Next, Robert Oliver, currently the Director of Music at St.Mary of the Angels conducted the choir, which he sang with as a student under Fernie, who was in fact his first singing teacher. The performers firstly gave us Maxwell Fernie’s own “Ingrediente”, here sung with forthright, beautifully over;lapping tones, the voices true (a touch of wavery tone in places) and properly celebratory in impulse and effect. Rachmaninov’s “Ave Maria” followed, its plainchant opening leading to a harmonised repetition of the “Ave” and some lovely bass notes in “Benedictus tu” beneath the women’s voices with the melody in octaves. Palestrina’s  exquisite “Sicut Cervus” demonstrated the freedom and beauty of the women’s voices, able to float their tones throughout in a way that the men’s voices weren’t quite able to do. As a contrast, soprano Rowena Simpson, with Robert Oliver’s bass viol and Douglas Mews’ harpsichord, gave us Purcell’s “Music for a while” – lovely singing from the soprano (another of Fernie’s former pupils), even if I felt the music’s pulse dragged just a little in places.

The impact of Maxwell Fernie’s tenure as Director of Music at St.Mary’s, reflected in Art Gallery owner Peter McLeavey’s words “He opened worlds to me that I never knew existed”, was obviously a sentiment shared by poet and artist Gregory O’Brien and composer Helen Bowater. Their regard for Fernie’s work came together around a poem written by O’Brien called “The Non-Singing Seats”, celebrating the involvement in music felt by the listener when attending any performance directed by Max in St.Mary’s, a feeling also expressed by O’Brien in two etchings completed at the request of Peter McLeavey to help raise money for the Trust. The same poem was then set to music by Helen Bowater, the work interestingly scored for violin and viola, rather than for organ or any kind of keyboard configuration,as one might have expected, the composer’s choice expressing the ambience of each of the etchings, violin for the lighter,and viola for the darker of the two images. My experience of music mixed with spoken word, as opposed to singing, is that it rarely works well, partly due to the speaking voice’s comparative lack of projection (it’s no accident, I think, that those Second Viennese School works which use speakers call the technique “Sprechgesang”). O’Brien himself read the poem in the performance, the entry-points of the words precisely placed in the score by the composer, but afterwards the poetry allowed to flow at the reader’s own pace. The effect was interesting, but something of a diffuse experience for me, finding as I did the somewhat Ivesian effect of parallel modes of expression distracting, instead of one illuminating the other in performance.

Fortunately, the work was recorded by the same forces, violinist Yury Gezentsvey and violist Peter Barber joining Gregory O’Brien as in the church. Much of the text in the live performance was difficult to hear because of the microphoning and speaker placement not being ideal – the recording preserves much more clarity, being better-balanced. It also gives one the chance to concentrate on single strands and follow those lines for more coherence’s sake – in the concert the words of the poem particularly suffered in this respect, though I wanted to hear more clearly the interplay of the instrumental dialogues and their overall ebb and flow. I was certainly expecting something different from the work, probably a primacy of text-language, to which the musical strands would pay due homage. Instead, it sounded more like an instance of the voice being a third instrument, carrying less specific detailing and more interactive abstraction, the spoken word truly inhabiting a “non-singing seat” as it were, but fully participating in the refulgent glow of the music-making. The two instrumentalists also performed two 2-part Inventions by JS Bach, the second of which caused veritable ripples of appreciation throughout the building at its conclusion.

The moment came for the Hon. Chris Finlayson, the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, to present the inaugural Maxwell Fernie Organ scholarship. The Minister raised a laugh at the outset by talking of Max’s music-making giving him every Sunday a sense of the eternal, as opposed to the more common present-day phenomenon of guitar-playing in church leaving a taste of the infernal! He then presented the scholarship to the winner, eighteen year-old Thomas Gaynor, already a winner of various organ prizes in both New Zealand and Australia, one being the 2009 ORGANZ Organ Performance Award. The Maxwell Fernie Trust Award will help Thomas with funding the overseas experience he requires involving coaching from leading European players and teachers, and encountering some of the great instruments to be found throughout the Continent. We were able to watch some video footage featuring one of Britain’s most well-known organists Nicolas Kynaston, talking about Max, who was his teacher and mentor in London, and then some treasurable sequences featuring Fernie himself teaching, and philosophising about music in general – very inspirational!  After this, James Young recounted his impressions of Max’s exacting and uncompromising specifications for the rebuilding of the St.Mary’s organ (which took place eventually in 2006). There remained the proof of the pudding – and the young inaugural recipient of the Trust’s scholarship, Thomas Gaynor, proceeded to give a brilliant performance of the finale of Vierne’s First Organ Symphony, amply demonstrating both his suitability as the successful scholar, and Maxwell Fernie’s expertise as an organ designer. I loved the almost Mahlerian feel of the work’s final pages, the movement’s principal thematic material returning with wonderful, inevitable power.

Ater this tour de force one could have forgiven Donald Nicolson for steering the same instrument straight into the strains of “Happy Birthday” and away from the evergreen “Toccata” from Widor’s Fifth Symphony, which, following the Vierne, was always going to be a bit anticlimactic. However, he didn’t disappoint the punters and resolutely played the piece, then adroitly wove the time-honoured birthday melody into the coda, inviting the audience to join in with the song.  It was perfect as a tribute from everybody, including the “Non-Singing Seats”, to the man who like no other made the spaces of the same building resound with the most glorious music.

HellHereNow – Anzacs at Gallipoli, Pataka Museum, Porirua

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Gallipoli Diary of Alfred Cameron

Paintings by Bob Kerr

Music by Alfred Hill and Gabriel Faure

Slava Fainitski (violin) / Brenton Veitch (‘cello) / Catherine McKay (piano)

Robin Kerr (speaker)

Pataka Museum, Porirua

Sunday 25th April 2010

At Pataka Museum in Porirua, an exhibition featuring a series of paintings of Gallipoli by Wellington artist Bob Kerr was presented, bearing the title “HellHereNow”.  The ten paintings together made up a sizeable panorama of Anzac Cove in Gallipoli – a place that uncannily resembled Makara, not far from Wellington, one similarly rugged and desolate. Interestingly, the ambience and atmosphere of each panel was reflected by the elements in different ways – the landforms were depicted as more constant and immutable from image to image, whereas the sea and sky expressed movement, change and occasional volatility. The sequence thus engendered at once a sense of permanence and the unceasing movement of time and tide.

At the bottom of each of the panels Bob Kerr wrote an exerpt from a diary written by Alfred Cameron, one of the young New Zealand soldiers who saw action during the First World War at Gallipoli, while along the top of all except the outside pair was written the words of a statement attributed to a Turkish officer, Ismail Hakki, expressing his anger at the senseless of soldiers being made to “kill each other without reason”. The effect of these writings transcribed upon images of a totally unpeopled and forbidding landscape is a somewhat ghostly one – almost as if the land is quietly murmuring the sentiments of the shades of the soldiers who fought there, keeping their stories alive for those coming after who would take the trouble to stop and listen.

Kerr found Alfred Cameron’s diary among a collection of  fifty World War One diaries in the Alexander Turnbull Library, and was struck by the directness, the honesty and the clear-sightedness of the young man’s writing, enough to want to express in visual terms the all-too-enthusiastically expressed spirit of the age, a desire to experience the adventure and excitement of going to war.

Alfred Cameron’s diary captures the wide-eyed idealism of the young men who went off to war, as well as the bitter disillusionment which followed. Over twenty-one days of diary-writing Cameron had gone from reflecting this idealism to expressing the brutal realisation of the situation’s realities in one of the final entries – “It’s hell here, now”. Alfred Cameron was subsequently wounded at Gallipoli, hospitalised, and eventually repatriated. He returned to farming in New Zealand in North Canterbury, married, and raised a family, some of whose descendants now live in Wellington.

The paintings were exhibited at Pataka for over two months, from March 20th until  May 23rd. During this time, appropriately enough on the weekend of Anzac Day, the exhibition featured several performance presentations of the diary writings as a spoken narration to the accompaniment of live music, all set against the backdrop of the series of paintings. With the artist’s son, Robin Kerr as an impassioned and theatrical, though nicely-poised reader,  along with the heartfelt playing of a trio of musicians, violinist Slava Fainitski, ‘cellist Brenton Veitch and pianist Catherine McKay, presenting exerpts of music by Alfred Hill and Gabriel Faure, Alfred Cameron’s diary writings took on even more of the emotive force of a living, cumulative tragedy.

The performers chose Alfred Hill’s music as reflecting the somewhat naive patriotic spirit of the times,  playing a reconstructed work, a piano trio written in 1896, whose piano and violin parts were subsequently lost, but which had also been reworked by the composer as a Violin Sonata. From this work, Australian musicologist and publisher Alan Stiles had been able to put the Trio back together along its original lines, to marvellous effect in the work’s opening movement, much of which was used to reinforce the forthright optimism of the diary’s first few entries, eagerly and youthfully conveyed by narrator Robin Kerr.

The presentation began with Bob Kerr welcoming the audience and speaking about his paintings, after which it was the turn of the musicians and the narrator to take up Alfred Cameron’s story. The first music we heard was the opening of the Trio by Alfred Hill, at the outset arresting, forthright chords and strongly syncopated emphases, with lyrical lines in between the more energetic episodes. A second subject was beautifully prepared by the writing and nicely shaped by the players, the ‘cello having the line and the violin the descant, before the instruments joined, with piano accompaniment.

Whenever the playing broke off to allow the speaker his turn I found myself torn between wanting to hear the music continue, and waiting for the next piece of the narrative. The words of Cameron’s diary brought out the young man’s essential boyishness excitement at the prospect of going to war, and the first exotic ports of call that the young men experienced, in Egypt and at Suez. The music began again at the diary’s description of the young soldiers’ going out to dinner in Cairo, the sounds wistful at first, then gradually returning to the mood of the opening, jagged and athletic, with strength and lyricism well-harnessed together. Throughout I liked the tensile, well-wrought argument between all three instruments, the robust and rugged interworkings and the singing of the lyrical lines contrasting to rich effect.

The diary narrative skilfully dovetailed with the music – the first news of casualties from the “front” was contrasted with descriptions of the beauty of the Mediterranean, and the excitement of the arrival at the Dardanelles, where, upon approaching and landing on the beach the soldiers were suddenly confronted with the realities of war, the company being heavily shelled by the Turkish forces. Before long the situation’s hopeless tragedy became apparent, the diary towards the end describing the desperate conditions, the ill-fated skirmishes, and the loss of life – the description of the soldiers’ graves was placed alongside Gabriel Faure’s  Elegie, beginning with sombre ‘cello and piano, and with violin eventually joining in as the music became more impassioned. The full force of Alfred Cameron’s words seemed to find expression in the instruments’ tones: – “It’s just  hell here, now, no water or tucker, only seven out of thirty-three in number one troop on duty, rest either dead or wounded. Dam the place, no good writing any more.”

At the end, the music took over from the words, the heartfelt playing by the trio of musicians ineffably expressing the mood of the evocation, wrought in tandem with the paintings and the narratives. Altogether, the presentation made a stunning effect, the synthesis of visual art, music and spoken narrative finely and sensitively judged by all concerned, artist, speaker and musicians – an Anzac Weekend event to indeed remember.

New Zealand Trio looks towards Australia

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Trio (Chamber Music New Zealand)

Sarah Watkins – piano, Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello

Mozart: Piano Trio in B flat, K 502; Judy Bailey: So Many Rivers: Stuart Greenbaum: The Year without a Summer; Pärt: Mozart-Adagio; Schumann: Piano Trio in D minor, Op 63

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 24 April 7.30pm

The second concert in Chamber Music New Zealand’s 2010 subscription series offered another concert from the New Zealand Trio (their trade name: NZTrio) which was one of the groups that played in the chamber music weekend during the International Festival last month.

Though this evening we were offered complete works, a similar balance between standard repertoire and new music was aimed for. One of the two established pieces was by Schumann, no doubt to mark his 200th birthday this year. It is conventional to give more praise to his chamber music involving piano than his string quartets, not a view I subscribe to; this D minor trio is certainly a fine work. It achieves a balance between piano and strings and the writing for strings sounds idiomatic and comfortable, though I confess I have not consulted string players specifically on the point.

It opened (Mit Energie und Leidenschaft – appassionato) with a relaxed tempo, slow, allowing nicely-judged rubato and sometimes a quixotic variety of mood; there were attractive piano moments, and the cello took the spotlight for a few bars. Through the lively second and the soulful, adagio third movements, the players expressed themselves with a convincing naturalness; it was the last movement’s more striking melody that endeared itself and set it alight. It was the last item in the concert; nevertheless, I had a feeling that it ended with a shade less energy than they had brought to the opening Mozart trio.

Mozart’s K 502 had indeed begun with a tremendous flourish, mainly driven by pianist Sarah Watkins, and the striking first theme tended to dominate. In fact the piano, from where I sat, on the right side of the balcony, close to the players, left the violin and cello somewhat obscured, in terms both of volume and of musical interest (and I’d have liked less choreographed head and shoulders effects from the pianist). Much of the time the cello acted as little more than a basso continuo instrument. In the second movement there was greater equality as both violin and cello were given more interesting material; the violin displaying a wonderful refinement and the cello too emerged clearly and vividly.

The rest of the programme comprised small pieces: two premieres – on this tour, if not on the night – and an odd piece by Arvo Pärt that toyed amusingly with the Adagio of Mozart’s piano sonata, K 280.

Both the pieces by Judy Bailey and Stuart Greenbaum, both resident in Australia, were quasi visual in inspiration, with some kind of ecological/political subtext. Though I am not convinced that music (unless accompanied by words) lends itself to polemical, or even visual or narrative material, it can succeed if your name is Berlioz or Strauss: success depends on the creative strength of the musical impulse and sheer genius.

So Many Rivers made pleasant noises, jazz or blues coloured, but left me with the impression of meandering improvisations rather than of music that emerged from any powerful musical inspiration.

The second piece, The Year without a Summer, by Stuart Greenbaum attempted a portrayal of the huge volcanic eruption in 1815 of Mount Tambora in Indonesia which dimmed the skies in the following year around the world (did it colour the outcome of the Congress of Vienna?). Though it too sounded often like the work of a gifted improviser, its meditative character suggested some musical inspiration.

Without attempting to relate its phases to the event and its effects, the music was better constructed than the Bailey piece, stood on its own feet without the need of its narrative, and revealed a composer of considerable sophistication even if, in the end, it did not seem to be a work of great depth.

On balance, I left with the feeling that there was not quite enough music of real consequence in this programme, though the players are among the most talented in the country and they play to audiences that generally seek weighty classics, as well as being prepared for substantial new music.

Brilliant NZSO in Slav and Finnish country

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Smetana: Sarka from Ma Vlast; Sibelius: Violin Concerto; Tchaikosky: Symphony No 6 ‘Pathétique’

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Hilary Hahn (violin)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 23 April, 6.30pm

I have the feeling that while the Wellington audience realizes that Hilary Hahn is quite a good violinist, many do not quite know the extent of her international renown. One doesn’t become a Gramophone magazine Artist of the Year on account of being simply competent – and that was 18 months ago. The NZSO programme booklet, at least, marked the orchestra’s awareness of her pre-eminence with an unusual double-spread biographical essay. There was a full house and I understand some were turned away: a contrast with the situation at the fine Bruckner/Strauss concert a fortnight earlier which, of course, had deserved a similar audience.

Hahn’s vehicle was the Sibelius concerto, oddly, only seven months after the orchestra’s performance of it in the Sibelius Festival with its concertmaster as soloist. That was a fine performance, but this one was superb. Not only did Hahn demonstrate every kind of spiritual energy, from dynamic power to breathless, poetic finesse in her role, but her very presence, petite and all as she is, seemed to inspire in the orchestra a boundless intensity in the tutti, and especially in the cellos and basses (both sections seem remarkably inspired by the leadership of bassist Hiroshi Ikematsu), low brass and bassoons, but also their obverse: misty, shimmering pianissimi in the opening pages and the several magical diminishings of sheer physical power, such as in the slow movement.

Even if her scarlet dress didn’t altogether endorse the emotion of the tremulous, sub-audible dawning passage at the opening, it came to represent the character of her ful-blooded playing soon enough, helped by the commanding projection of sound from her fine instrument.

She played an encore, to cleanse he palette, as it were – the Allegro assai (I think) from Bach’s 3rd solo violin sonata.

What most characterizes her playing is not just the flawless intonation, beauty of tone and the detailed nuances that colour and embroider every phrase, but the celebration of the human spirit, generosity and optimism, belief in the importance of human creativity (if such purple extravagances be allowed). Those are the spiritual messages of all great art, regardless of the specific emotions and images with which they engage.

Those thoughts recurred listening to Tchaikovsky’s last symphony, with its assumed text of despair, a reading that is hard to avoid as one leaves with the last movement in the ears. Yet that is hardly the overwhelming message of the earlier movements, though in a performance such as this where I felt both second and third movements to be in the nature of forced rejoicing, unvarying in their tempo and without much dynamic variety.

It struck me that Inkinen’s immediate start of the last movement was as much to deny any temptation to hear the March-like 3rd movement as an affirmation of over-confidence, to reject it at once as empty bombast, as it was to stop the inevitable, unwanted applause that makes such a juxtaposition hard to bring about.

While the middle two movements are interesting, the Pathétique’s heart, unlike with many great symphonies, seems to lie in the first and last movements which seem far more complex, obscure, ambiguous and plain beautiful than the two middle movements. Their orchestration, their ebb and flow of speed and dynamics, exert a much stronger attraction to the emotions and to tantalize the intellect.

Played at the beginning, and completing this programme devoted to the music of the Slav, and near-Slav world, was the long overdue playing of one of Smetana’s symphonic poems: an imaginative stroke. It puzzles me that so many of the pieces of music that feature in writings about music and that furnish the minds of at least older audience members, from their childhood, are ignored by concert arrangers: the more popular of the Ma Vlast cycle for example, Vltava and From Bohemia’s Woods and Meadows.  Sarka is a particularly dramatic piece, perhaps not entirely successful in its shape, but susceptible, as shown here, to brilliant and arresting performance; the clarinet solos were most eloquent and there were fine passages from other players such as trombones and tuba.

Lovers of the tone poems lament that a composer of such orchestral flair didn’t attempt the symphony, or more large-scale orchestral music.

In all, this was a brilliant concert fully justifying the big audience, and the presence of this remarkable violinist.

New Zealand Youth Choir – the Wellington Connection

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Members of the NZ Youth Choir

Fundraising Concert for Asia/Australia Tour

Music by Tallis, Stanford, Brahms, R.Strauss, Mendelssohn, Shearing, Rachmaninov, Penderecki, Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Carter, David Farquhar, Wehi Whanau

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

23rd April 2010

At the end of June the New Zealand Youth Choir heads off to Asia for an international tour that will include concerts in Singapore, South Korea and China, before returning to Australasia via further performance dates in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney. During April, the Wellington members of the Choir gave a fundraising concert at St.Mary of the Angels’ Church, one which readily demonstrated not only the group’s corporate abilities, but individual choir members’ variety of musical skills. If the other “chapters” of the choir possess comparable abilities, the assembled group will, under their artistic director Karen Grylls, a musical force to be reckoned with.

Throughout the concert one had to “bend one’s ears” to pick up the microphoned voice-announcements in between each item, some of which were almost impossible to decipher in the reverberant acoustic of the venue. Fortunately the musical performances were unaffected, even if the placement of the singers in one or two instances didn’t do the performances complete justice. Generally the church’s ample acoustic served the singers and instrumentalists well, in both solo and ensemble items.

The concert began with a group of two English anthems, the well-known  If Ye Love Me by Thomas Tallis, and the setting by Charles Stanford of Psalm 119 Verse 1 Beati Quorum Via, the choir conducted by Ruth Kirkwood.Immediately one registered the soprano lines in the Tallis work as clear, beautifully-defined strands with a rich, full quality. With the Stanford motet the mens’ voices had more chance to shine, particularly the tenors, whose singing featured long-breathed lines and lovely pianissimi. Throughout the six parts the tuning was good and the tones both delicately and richly-sustained equally by the smaller groups and the full choir.

Following this was the Brahms Quartet Der Gang zum Liebchen (Way to the Beloved) Op.31 No.3. I would have brought the voices further forward for this, as Belinda Maclean’s excellent piano-playing was given too much physical prominence by the placement of the instrument, in places obscuring the close-knit vocal lines. Nevertheless, the group’s lovely singing gave pleasure, with only the softer, more delicately pointed harmonies failing to register as they ought, due to the balance. Strauss’s song Morgen worked better, with its more open textures and soprano Amanda Barclay’s clear, focused tones, sensitively accompanied, again by Belinda Maclean. The performers took us into the song’s heart, capturing all of the setting’s awareness, expectation and rapture – a lovely performance. Belinda Maclean was to demonstrate further talents with two harp solos later in the programme, her playing of what sounded like a “Willow Song” bringing out such beguiling qualities as a pliability of touch and phrasing that made every note a pleasure to listen to.

The choir’s delivery of Mendelssohn’s Drei Volkslieder did the music proud, with the first song’s gentle pastoral lilt set against the slightly sinister tread of the following piece’s minor-key mood, all tensions resolved with the carol-like finale. Imogen Thirwell’s wonderfully capricious performance of David Farquhar’s Princess Alice was another whose effect would have been more telling had the singer been placed further forward – as it was, her bright, eager voice and clear-as-a-bell diction delighted, as did her use of facial gesture to “flesh out” and punctuate the words. More word-pointing, this time from the whole choir, enlivened the George Searing number Lullaby of Birdland, with some lovely harmonisings and echoings of the lines throughout. At the other end of the “entertainment” scale were the performances of both Rachmaninov’s Bogoroditse Devo, the Hymn to the Virgin from the composer’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil”), and the Sanctus from Penderecki’s Requiem, the Rachmaninov bringing out the voices’ deepest and richest tones, casting a dark and ruminative spell, and the Penderecki filled with tensions and strained beauties, the lines constantly fractured or broken for expression’s sake.

More individual performaces included baritone Josh Kidd’s bright, energetic and attractively Italienate singing of Bellini’s Vaga Luna, Isaac Stone’s droll, nicely folkish rendering of Britten’s setting of the English folksong The Foggy Foggy Dew , and Jessica Lightfoot’s rapt, dusky-toned playing of the slow movement Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, beautifully partnered on the piano by Evie Reiney. When one thinks about it, it stands to reason that a person’s musicality would more than likely manifest itself in a number of ways, though such demonstrations of multi-faceted technical proficiency still seemed remarkable. The focus appropriately returned to the choir for the last bracket of items, including a rhythmically-alert and glorious-toned rendition of the Negro Spiritual I‘m Gonna Sing, and a beautifully-grounded final number, the Wehi Whanau’s  Wairua Tapu, complete with body actions, music that gives one the feeling of belonging to a very specific part of the world, one that the members of this choir will undoubtedly play their part in representing with great honour and distinction.