Orpheus Choir’s Concert title “I Was Glad” eponymously shared by audience response at Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orpheus Choir of Wellington presents
“I WAS GLAD”

SARAH HOPKINS – Past Life Melodies
HUBERT PARRY – “I Was Glad”
JAMES MacMILLAN – A New Song
ERIC WHITACRE – Lux Arumque / Little Birds
CHRIS ARTLEY – I Will Lift up Mine Eyes
KAROL SZYMANOWSKI – Stabat Mater

Barbara Paterson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)
Wade Kernot (bass), Martin Setchell (organ)
Karen Batten (flute), Merran Cooke (oboe)
Dominic Groom (horn), Peter Maunder (trombone)
Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion), Thomas Nikora (piano)
Stephen Mosa’ati, Matthew Stein (trumpets)

Orpheus Choir, Wellington

Brent Stewart (conductor)

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul,

Saturday, 7th August, 2021

We were, I think, all imbued with gladness at Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul on Saturday evening at the splendours of the music-making by the Orpheus Choir in partnership with the instrumentalists throughout most of the concert and with the vocal soloists in the concluding  Szymanowski work, the whole directed to lustrous effect by conductor Brent Stewart.

It was an occasion whose intensities and excitements seemed, throughout the evening, to escalate with each item’s performance the content, order and trajectory of the distinctly different works beautifully leading our ears from one unique sound-experience to the other. The musicians’ concentrated and focused efforts helped bring out the essential resonant “character” of each piece as separate aspects of what felt like a single journey, which was, I think one of the concert’s great strengths.

It would have been tempting to have resplendently closed the concert’s first half with its eponymous title-piece, Hubert Parry’s I Was Glad – however I felt it worked brilliantly as a sound-spectacle nearer the evening’s beginning, placed immediately after the extraordinary “opening up” of the space’s resonances by the very first item on the programme, Sarah Hopkins’ Past Life Melodies which in a sense acclimatised us to the cathedral’s enormous potential for sustenance of tones and textures, allowing us to “feel” the spaces all around us.

Hopkins, a New Zealander by birth, has lived and worked in Australia for most of her life – her work performed this evening illustrated her interest in a vocal technique known as “harmonic overtone” singing derived from ancient Mongolian and Tibetan practices. Written in 1991, Past Life Melodies takes its name from the composer’s idea of accessing sounds  from her “other lives” through harmonics and overtones wrought from her own vocal production and combining these effects with other ethnic-based techniques to produce something unique and unworldly. It’s been her most successful choral work to date, having been taken up by vocal ensembles worldwide. The sounds reminded me of a “singing in tongues” phenomenon which I once heard at a Charismatic Christian presentation, strongly ritualistic in atmosphere and wholly mesmerising to the sensibilities. A feature of this performance by Orpheus was the use of ambient lighting, which intensified and dimmed with the piece’s overall shape, to telling effect.

From these “sounds of the earth” we were then made privy to a different kind of ritual belonging to another time and place – Sir Hubert Parry’s I Was Glad, a performance which sounded utterly “right” from the first note, its freshness and energy giving the piece a “newly-minted” quality, the instrumental opening magisterially realised by organ, brass and timpani and the voices full-throatedly delivering the opening words.  The sopranos’ ecstatically beautiful “Our feet shall stand in their gates” led the way forwards for the other voices, the music expressing the “unity in itself” of the text before allowing the brasses their heads in fanfares and tumultuous jubilations! The cathedral’s acoustics in such places made nonsense of the choir’s otherwise superb diction, but what a splendid sound it all gave forth!

There was sweetness, too, in “O, pray for the peace of Jerusalem”, before the brasses heralded a new jubilation at “Peace be within thy walls!” – and there was certainly “ample plenteousness” of ceremonial tones within these same walls as the music reached its vociferous end.  A certain clearing of the air came with James MacMillan’s beautiful A New Song, another Psalm setting, this one from Psalm 96,”Sing unto the Lord a new song”,  one beginning with plainsong-like lines from the sopranos, the organ adding melismatic-like flourishes which brought other voice-lines into the music’s flow, the building’s acoustic allowing the vocal lines to resonate magically, while still preserving the folk-like “turns” delivered by each strand. The men’s voices took up the plainsong melody, accompanied by the deep tones of the organ, which again sounded its windblown melismas as the rest of the choir repeated the section, complete with the “folk-turns” – dark, massive organ notes reintroduced the plainsong, canonic between women’s and men’s voices, leaving the organ to finish the piece, simply but effectively, with a breath-catching crescendo.

Eric Whitacre’s music has made its mark on the contemporary choral scene with its sure-fire shimmering choral clusters and baroque-like recyclings of material for every which purpose – whether his music has the kind of substance that will last is anybody’s guess. His Lux Arumque has achieved cyber-fame with a performance by a “virtual choir”, a tour-de-force synchronisation of voices from all over the world for one single performance, winning fame and garnering scepticism, depending on which commentator one reads  (one writer had it both ways, describing the music as “soupily addictive”!). Orpheus Choir’s performance of the work had it all, the finely-tuned clustered harmonies, the repeated “breathing” effects, and the sostenuto lines gliding over the oscillations – it’s hard not to capitulate to such expertly-wrought beauty and fluency. And the other Whitacre work on the programme, Little Birds, was great fun, complete with piano swirlings, vocal whistlings, and an irruption of birds’ wings at a pre-arranged signal, the choir members suddenly brandishing pieces of paper in a flamingo-like show of flight’s ecstasy!

If not quite a hat-trick, the concert achieved a “Psalm triple” with New Zealand-based Chris Artley’s setting of “I will lift up mine eyes” from Psalm 121, a work written for Auckland’s Kings College Chapel Choir in 2012. Women’s voices intoned a lovely melodic line, repeated by the men, the  beauties at “Shall neither slumber nor sleep” contrasting with an upsurge of tones at” at “The Lord Himself is thy keeper”, the trumpet joining in with the organ to heart-stirring effect, reaching magnificence firstly with the arched “Glory Be” sections, and a stirring return to a stratospheric “Amen” at the conclusion, setting the Cathedral’s precincts resounding with joy.

During the interval I was privileged to make the acquaintance of two audience companions, both of them ex-Orpheus Choir members, and more than ready to enthuse about what we all had heard thus far, as well as answer my queries concerning previous concerts they had both taken part in – though I had never been a choir member I had attended a number of these concert occasions, so our discussion brought back many resounding memories! I was told by one of these women that she was ninety-four, to which I expressed amazement, and a fervent wish that I myself might look forward to a ninety-fourth year sitting somewhere in a concert-hall with my music-appreciation faculties in as superb a condition as both hers and her companion’s obviously were!

So we came to what was for me the evening’s piece de resistance – though I must admit that, thanks in part to the musicians’ committed and finely-judged first-half performances, I was already thoroughly enjoying the concert, more, in fact than I had anticipated. Obviously the choir’s music director Brent Stewart had wisely chosen the repertoire in accordance with the Cathedral’s wondrous-slash-notorious five-second reverberation time, and the Stabat Mater of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski proved just as suited for performance in such a space as anything we had heard thus far.

Szymanowski’s music has its champions, but has still to make the “breakthrough” to gain acceptance in the average concertgoer’s consciousness. This work (especially so through this astounding performance) would have made the composer many new friends by the time the last of its heartfelt utterances had been expertly-sounded by the soloists, choir and ensemble together under their conductor’s inspired direction. The music began with gentle wind lines accompanied by the organ, leading up to the soprano’s entry, describing the grief of Mary, Christ’s mother, at her son’s crucifixion, Szymanowski  dividing the famous thirteenth-century poem depicting the mother’s vigil into six separate movements.

Soprano Barbara Paterson’s finely-honed delivery and complete absorption in the feeling expressed by the Polish text held us in thrall throughout (“Mother, bowed with dreadful grief…”) supported by haunting rejoiners from the choir, and beautiful, sensitive work from the instrumentalists. Soprano and oboe together near the end made such exquisitely heart-rending moments of the concluding “She who saw with grief the unending anguish of her Son”. By contrast, the deep blackness of bass Wade Kernot’s arresting tones plunged our sensibilities into the second part’s grim darkness, complete with throbbing percussion and bass ostinato, the voice laden and sepulchral in feeling, (“…thus beholding Christ’s dear mother in woe unlike any other woe…”) the choir rising from out of the dark agitations, pleading and beseeching, conductor Brent Stewart achieving an overwhelming effect with his soloist, brass and percussion at “When he gave up his spirit”.

The third part (“Tender Mother, sweet fountain of love”) featured mezzo-soprano Margaret Medlyn in fine, focused voice, and blending beautifully with the soprano, unfailingly supported by the winds and brass, and encompassing the great outburst (“Hatred, mockery and scorn”) towards the end with such palpable feeling, both voices true of tone and finely-drawn. How angelic were the women’s voices of the choir at the beginning of the fourth part, tenderly characterising Mary’s vigil at the foot of the Cross (“Under your care, weeping, watching….”), and with the rest of the choir enabling a gorgeous texture of sound at “May I live and mourn for his sake…”, repeated by the soprano with some beautifully-floated high notes, one extended phrase in particular to die for! Paterson was then joined by Medlyn and the choir to conclude their solicitations.

A stern, black-browed accompaniment greeted Wade Kernot’s apocalyptic utterances (“Immaculate Maid, most excellent!…”), the choir and instrumental ensemble responding with urgently rhythmic, almost agitated sotto-voce reactions. The exchanges were repeated, but a third time the bass refused to be put off, and, encouraged by the instruments towards heartfelt declamation, was joined by the choir for a powerfully-delivered “Virgin, let me be protected, when I am called in my turn!” Following these full-blooded beseechments came an opening melody for the work’s final section that the composer described as ”the most beautiful melody I have ever managed to write”, here delivered most movingly by Paterson, again negotiating her high notes with ethereal purity, the choir echoing her beautiful line, and Medlyn with her, steady and pleading at “May He who died here be my friend so that He may pardon me!”.  Kernot’s bass joined in, partnered by the choir and supported by a horn, repeating, along with soprano and mezzo “Grant to my soul all the joys of Paradise” a phrase whose variants and impulses. underpinned by resonant winds and brass, and reiterated at the work’s very end stayed in the silences that followed the last lingering notes.  Exquisite!

Roger Hall’s “terrific couple” at last back on stage in Wellington – “Winding Up” at Circa Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
Winding Up , written by Sir Roger Hall
and directed by Susan Wilson

Featuring Ginette McDonald (Gen) and  Peter Hayden (Barry)

Set and AV Design – Lisa Maule
Lighting – Marcus McShane
Costumes – Sheila Horton
Music and Soundscape – Michael Nicholas Williams
Technical Operator – Niamh Campbell-Ward
Stage/Production Manager – Deb McGuire

Circa Theatre, Wellington

Sunday, 1st June, 2021 (until 28th August)

Sir Roger Hall’s “Winding Up”, an exploration of love weathering age and untoward circumstance, has finally made the stage at Circa Theatre, over a year after being first scheduled and then waylaid by Covid-19 and Lockdown. This afternoon its performance by Ginette McDonald and Peter Hayden as the play’s two characters, Gen and Barry, flickered all about to begin with, gradually warmed, then connected with, and finished up conflagrating an appreciative audience.

Its unfolding all somehow reminded me of pianist Artur Rubinstein’s account of first going to hear Russian classical superstar Sviatoslav Richter play  – “I thought at first the playing was nothing special – then I realised that tears were actually rolling down my cheeks….”Similarly, Hall’s window-view of “us” gradually penetrated our reserve, awoke our recognitions, tickled our fancies, engaged our sympathies and touched our hearts, giving us more and more “moments per minute” as we delved deeper and deeper into what were, either by direct experience or dint of association, our own lives.

For this reason, it’s very much a play one would ideally share with someone rather than view alone – I was grateful to go with a long-standing friend with whom, by dint of shared sideways glances, wry gesturings and occasional in-tandem chortles and spontaneous comments, I could relish the shared recognitions and empathies generated by the action’s plethora of impulses and nuances via word and gesture. And if not quite “tears rolling down my cheeks” I certainly registered, towards the end, some lump-in-throat moments, making the recognitions and empathies apparent. The playwright’s own attitude to his characters was summed up during a 2019 radio interview as “a terrific couple”, Hall adding that “Anybody in a long-term relationship recognises them and what they talk and argue about”.

Gen and Barry are two retirees, septuagenerians very much in “what’s next?” mode, and equally as much dealing with the “life is what happens when you’re planning something else” phenomenon that happens in the best families – and which certainly brings the same dynamic to bear on the action throughout the evening. The genesis of these two characters sprang from an earlier Hall play, Conjugal Rites, which featured the same Gen and Barry thirty years before, on the point of celebrating their 21st wedding anniversary, and about to examine their marriage, their children and their respective occupations, dealing with both a balance of power change in the relationship (Gen becoming a practising solicitor) and infidelities on both sides (Barry with one of his dental patients, and Jen with a fellow-solicitor), issues that the present play revisit, albeit with passage-of-time mitigating philosophical perspectives.

Are the preoccupations, idiosyncrasies, quips, jokes and life-issues showing signs of wearing thin after thirty years? It’s almost as though Hall has written a kind of “laundered” quality into the first exchanges, something of an implicit “how many times have we heard that one” feeling, which is as much about style as content – like having to gradually get on someone’s “wavelength” so as to fully appreciate what is said (and “how”, as well, incidentally). Ginette McDonald as Gen conveys this nonchalance in her exchanges with Peter Hayden’s well-practised (and nicely “in-character theatrical”) delivery as Barry with a casual brilliance that leaves one open-mouthed with admiration. Opposite her, Peter Hayden’s Barry is something of a “performer”, with a certain command (perhaps historically occupational?) of repartee – “You’ll have to speak up – I’ve got my hearing aids in!” he quips to his daughter during a ‘phone call. Their differences reinforce an “opposites attract” quality that manifests itself elsewhere in their exchanges, more of which below.

As the business of ageing crowds in over the course of the play one realises just how “in tune” the couple are despite their differences – McDonald’s characteristic no-nonsense style as Gen complements Hayden’s ostensible heart-on-sleeve manner for Barry, revealing a “vive la difference” quality of being and doing in an arrangement that has worked long-term, despite the speed-bumps and the debilitating temporary detours along the way. Neither has been diminished by the other in the long haul – perhaps for some people a cloud-cuckoo-land scenario that falls apart in the face of harsher realities, but (on the basis of art suggesting an example for, rather than merely imitating, life) it’s a depiction that’s life-enhancing, and therefore a worthwhile, “act of theatre” to take in and ponder.

The issues are classic and resonantly recognisable, some even from a distance! – they range from individual attitudes to possessions (Barry is a “hoarder” whose responses to enjoiners from Gen to “downsize” regarding clothes and books are priceless! – “My ideal life-style is a mess!” he expostulates at one point!), to sex (a spontaneous “making-out on the shag pile” episode elicits “last of the Mohicans/end of the drought?/in the bed or out here?” comments from both of them as the embers are raked over to risibly indeterminate but still touching effect!) and to dancing to “their” music (“The first time I ever saw your face” to which Gen and Barry dance so touchingly and tenderly – and I think here of my own parents dancing foxtrots and twosteps to Mills Brothers’ tunes) – the music might be dated, but the shared enjoyment is timeless…)

The play’s “elephant in the room” isn’t one really, but it’s all-pervading enough to both “figure” and be “disregarded”, taking cues from the couple’s laudably ornery attitude to the news at the action’s beginning that Barry has been tentatively diagnosed with leukemia. The couple’s plans for a longed-for visit to see distant grandchildren are put under stress and jeopardy – though the outcomes at least didn’t at that time have to deal with Covid-19 as a factor. Funeral plans come into reckoning, then, the situation further pushed near the bone when news of Gen’s brother-in-law’s unexpected death arrives, necessitating the couple’s attendance at a funeral, and inevitable post-funeral talk – not here, but much later, Barry confesses to Gen that, were there “menus” for methods of dying, his preferred choice would be “to wake up dead!”

So, there’s much, and more, to take in from this script which, as I’ve already indicated, felt to me as if it moved from superficial exchange at the beginning to almost Faustian transcendence at the end, where one is confronted with a strangely dream-like set of scenarios in which time, matter and energy are redeployed. Hall here brings his play’s characters to their apotheosis in unforgettably iconic “Goodnight Kiwi” fashion, ensuring their immortality, while keeping us suspended in conjecture as to “what was happening”, as great art is wont to do…….

Credit needs to be articulated in many directions for all of this, firstly to director Susan Wilson for settings and dynamics that had here an inevitability of perspective, seeming to know what to bind and what to loosen, where to space out and where to hone in, and what to specify and what to leave to us to “figure”. Hand-in-glove with all of this was Lisa Maule’s set whose centrepiece was the painting with the “iconic” Wellington Harbour view, complete with Matiu/Soames Island and the resplendent Rimutaka Ranges in the background. Marcus McShane’s on-the-button lighting caught every atmospheric and dynamic nuance, while Sheila Horton’s costumes were everything one might expect from people of this couple’s socio-economic status. And I loved the music, particularly the dance  sequence of “The First Time I ever saw your Face”, which, as Noel Coward might have observed, “took” us, along with the others with surprising potency backwards to times and places, demonstrating the sure touch of Music and Soundscape designer Michael Nicholas Williams.

There’s been a suggestion that this work might be Sir Roger Hall’s swansong as a dramatist – if so we in New Zealand will be the poorer in no longer having “updated” portraits and scenarios from his perceptive sensibilities of people and things we know but perhaps can’t find the words to express for ourselves, or in such a recognisable way. We owe him a great debt of thanks.

 

A piano recital from a superbly well-prepared young man who obviously enjoyed his playing

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Waikanae Music Society presents:
Lixin Zhang – a piano recital

CHOPIN – Ballade No. 1 in G Minor Op.23
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor Op.58
Nocturne in C Minor Op.48 No.1
MOZART – Piano Sonata in C Major K.330
LISZT – Vallée d’Obermann No.6 from “Years of Pilgrimage Bk.1 S.60

Lixin Zhang (piano)

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday, 1st August, 2021

I, and the larger than usual audience, came to this concert with huge expectations. Lixin Zhang is a young man of 19 who had cleaned up all the main piano competitions in New Zealand and was this year a Silver Medallist at the prestigious Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition. And indeed, from the very first chords of the Chopin Ballade, or more importantly, from the first pause after the first chords, it was evident that we had an exceptionally talented young musician here. He played an old fashioned, traditional recital, with a large helping of Chopin, a little Mozart and finally Liszt; nothing more modern or adventurous, but then this was the core of the piano repertoire, and is what people expect at a piano recital.

Chopin Ballade No. 1 in G minor (Opus 23)

A Ballade is is a musical form virtually invented by Chopin. His Ballades are not settings of literary narrative poems, as they don’t have a coherent narrative. They “are music free in form, highly original in thematic development and harmony, with an astonishing varied musical palette” (from programme notes). Like Nocturnes, Scherzos, and even Polonaises, Chopin made this his own musical form. This Ballade is one of Chopin’s most popular works, used in a number of films. It starts with a boldly stated chord, then a pause. This pause determines the character of what is to follow, and with this pause Lixin Zhang asserted his vision of the piece. A dream-like passage followed the opening chord, but there was no trace of nostalgia in Lixin Zhang’s reading, He played it with a sense of freedom, yet giving the impression that he was just improvising the music. There was thought behind every note, every phrase. His playing was forceful when force was required, lyrical when a singing quality was called for. He brought out the brilliant treble passages with his rapid clear finger work, but not at the expense of the strong rhythmic base. He highlighted the dramatic contrasts. It was a well considered performance.

Chopin Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor (Opus 58)

The last of Chopin’s three piano sonatas is a colossus among the sonatas written after Beethoven and Schubert. Though it adheres to the traditional sonata form, in four movements, it is a very complex work. It needs a pianist who can grasp the architecture and densely argued relationship of themes. The melodic lines contrast with powerful virtuoso passages. The first martial section of the sonata leads into a lyrical song-like second theme. Lixin Zhang’s piano sang beautifully, his phrasing was meticulously clear. He was undaunted by the meteoric fast passages of the second movement and brought alive the dramatic contrasts of the second theme. The heart of the sonata is the third movement, Largo, a Nocturne with its sorrowful undertone. Was it longing for Chopin’s Poland, or some other loss that the composer, in failing health, had in mind? – who knows? It is moving music straight from the heart. In Lixin Zhang’s hands this theme was like an aria, a gentle song. The last movement with its heroic subject is an exuberant rondo with great technical challenges, but Lixin Zhang coped with these effortlessly. Every note, every phrase was carefully considered, without losing a sense of spontaneity. A lot of thought went into this performance.

Mozart Sonata in C major (K330)

This one of Mozart’s most popular works for the piano, one of three sonatas he composed in 1783. It is a charming, playful work. Yet this playfulness required great control. The first movement is sprightly, requiring crisp articulation. The second movement recalled graceful operatic passages. The third movement was played at a fast clip – too fast, I first thought, but with Lixin Zhang’s clarity and sensitive phrasing, it proved just right. There was something almost childish in the way Mozart took delight in humour. Think of “The Marriage of Figaro”.

This piece showed another side of Lixin Zhang’s musicianship. This Sonata required a lighter touch than did the Chopin and Liszt works.

 Chopin Nocturne in C minor (Opus 48 No. 1)

A Nocturne, like a Ballade, is a musical form that Chopin made his own. This Nocturne is one of a pair, a short, modest little piece, but so moving, that you, the listener get caught up with it and perhaps even feel like singing or humming along with it. From the first note there is an air of expectation. Every note foreshadows some magical sequence. It was played convincingly. There was something old-fashioned about the reading, recalling pianists of the past, when pianists could afford to play with freedom giving vent to spontaneous feeling.

Franz Liszt Vallée d’Obermann, No.6 from “Year of Pilgrimage” Book 1  S.60

The Chopin Ballade and Nocturne shows the departure of early Romantic piano music from traditional musical forms. Liszt’s Vallée d’Obermann goes a stage further, finds a musical narrative in literature. It was inspired by a now largely forgotten novel of the same title and tells the “story of a young man enthralled, but also also overwhelmed, by his encounter with nature and the feelings of longing it engenders in him”. (Programme notes).  Liszt seeks to depict extra-musical ideas on the piano; landscape, emotion, transformation and consolation. He creates a soundscape, using a palette of tone colours. The music is improvisational, a challenge for the performer. He has to be able to depict different moods and emotional turmoil. Again, it is the gaps between notes that defines the music. Lixin Zhang’s playing was notable for its singing quality; not a note too harsh. He made the most of the wonderful Fazioli piano, arguably the best instrument in the region.

After the well deserved applause Lixin Zhang played Glinka’s Lark as an encore.

This was a sensational concert by a young artist. If you had never heard of him before, don’t worry, he should have a great future ahead of him. Full credit to the Waikanae Music Society for including this promising young artist in their concert series.

 

Wellington Youth Orchestra and Andrew Joyce take on quintessential Beethoven and Dvořák

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:
LEONORE – Music by Beethoven and Dvořák

BEETHOVEN – Overture No. 3 “Leonore” Op.72 No.1c
DVORAK – Symphony No. 6 in D Major Op.60

Andrew Joyce (conductor)
Wellington Youth Orchestra

St.James’ Anglican Church, Lower Hutt

Saturday 31st July 2021

Today’s concert given by the Wellington Youth Orchestra in Lower Hutt’s Anglican Church of St James seemed to me a fascinating instance of a certain event’s “atmosphere” influencing one’s reaction to musical performance. I say this in comparing today’s concert with a not-so-long-ago occasion at the same venue and involving the same players, albeit with a different conductor – though I didn’t think the latter a significant factor in the difference between the two events.

Something about the “Transatlantic” concert in May obviously drew what seemed like an excitedly burgeoning churchful of people, all of whom seemed palpably determined to enjoy what they were about to hear – one could feel the anticipation bubbling away well before the start! To be fair, it was a fantastic programme, one whose delightful prospects would literally have jumped out in front of any potential or prospective audience member with a “Well, are you coming?” aspect of enticement before one knew where one was! Just where many of those same people were today I found it puzzling to comprehend, though a relatively unfamiliar Symphony by Dvorak, however much of a treasure waiting to be more widely appreciated, perhaps wasn’t on paper going to quicken the blood of the orchestra’s regular fans in quite the same way as did the May concert’s items.

That amalgam of audience presence and expectation is one of the reasons that a good “live concert” performance of any music invariably feels more exciting, more vital and connective than does a recording of the same, however expertly played.  Today’s concert, by dint of having a smallish, and largely “spread-out” audience simply didn’t for me have at the start the previous occasion’s electric charge, that trace of “something in the air” producing preliminary crackle and cumulative excitement. All (or nearly all) the notes were played, but the excitement that produces uplifting moments was, despite the players best efforts, more of a “sometimes thing” throughout, and invariably hard-won.

Still, there were many moments to enjoy, during the course of both of the concert’s items, the first of which gave the concert its title, the Overture  Leonore No.3 being the third of four attempts by Beethoven to write a satisfactory overture to his opera “Fidelio”– a beautifully-co-ordinated “whoof-like” quality about the Beethoven work’s opening chord, for instance, the heroine’s “Leonore” theme beautifully sounded by the winds before being contrasted briefly with the darkness and stillness of the dungeon imprisoning the hero, Florestan, and the flute seizing the moment and uplifting the mood to one of hope, paving the way for the first of many heroic flourishes that depicted good striving against evil, throughout the work’s course.

Conductor Andrew Joyce drew real exuberance from his players with the allegro’s theme burgeoning into a full-throated roar of intent, one reinforced by the horns’ sudden shaft of light and hope. I thought the upper strings in particular (who faced where I was sitting, almost directly opposite)  maintained this exuberance and purpose in their playing throughout, keeping the trajectories alive and “charged”, up to the moment when Joyce unleashed the terrific surgings of tone that heralded the famous off-stage trumpet call, played here to perfection – Joyce brought out the sounds’ freshness of new expectation, getting a great response from his flutist in her solo’s ever-increasing excitability, and with the strings’ fantastic explosion of spirit goading the rest of the players into action. Though I thought the brass sometimes seemed a shade too relaxed in their rhythmic responses to the beat, they rallied at the end, triumphally carrying the music to its conclusion.

The Dvořák Symphony also began well, its engaging, off-beat rhythm gurgling away on the winds, over which the strings got to “float” the movement’s principal theme, a lovely, free-as-air idea – if the same players had to then work hard at energising the music to prepare for the melody’s return on the full orchestra, it got to make its impact – Joyce gave us the repeat which allowed us to hear the opening all over again, bringing out even more the strength of the band’s  first violin section (the two front-desk players like veritable forces of nature in their determination to “sound” their lines).

The winds, too, showed their mettle at the development’s beginning, oboes taking the lead, echoed beautifully by the flutes and clarinets, an “echt-Czech” moment readily summonsing up “Bohemia’s Woods and Fields”, and continuing the pastoral feeling throughout the interactions. I thought the brass again strangely reticent in places here, as opposed to the excitingly “up-front” feeling the same players had  conveyed throughout the previous concert (which, incidentally, I PROMISE not to mention again!) – but the music’s gradual build-up of all forces (including splendidly-sounded timpani) awakened their instincts, and they delivered sonorously at the movement’s recapitulation!

The slow movement was captivating at the outset, the winds and strings beautifully floating the sounds over a gently undulating atmosphere – inexplicably, the horn failed to take up the strings’ melody, but the music’s pulse was steadfastedly maintained, and the exchanges continued, the clarinet contributing a beautiful solo and the horn then making amends with a similar appearance – and I thought the violas “sounded “ their turn with the recurring melody so tenderly and well! The movement’s brief but telling moment of minor-key darkness came and went like clouds obscuring the sunlight, with the strings (this time gratefully answered by the horn!) giving the melody full-throated treatment, allowing the emotion its head before the soft, crepuscular ending was wrought by the winds and sensitively-sounded timpani – the composer could be forgiven for allowing one last forceful reiteration of such an appealing tune before the end!

Nowhere in this work is Dvořák more “Bohemian” than with the Scherzo, whose main body is a Furiant, an exciting, quick-moving dance-form seeming to move between two-four and three-four rhythm. Joyce kept his players on their toes throughout, varying the dynamics in an ear-catching way, and delineating the trajectories firmly, even if again I thought the brasses not as quickly-reflexed as were the rest of the players, being left slightly behind the beat at the impetuous coda’s end. The more relaxed trio was an absolute delight, the winds so AIRILY pastoral-sounding, and the accompaniments at once playful and deliciously indolent.

Uncharacteristically, the strings’ ensemble came slightly adrift during the crescendoed section of the finale’s introduction, the conductor expertly bringing them all back together once the first big ”tutti” had shaken the rhythms down and sorted out the trajectories! Joyce kept the music going through the second subject, deliciously and dancingly played by the winds, the strings playing their hearts out, sometimes roughing up their intonations, the brass coming to their rescue with a stirring call to arms that brought the recapitulation, the music swirling, the winds doing famously, the strings now sounding a bit tired, but rallying with astounding rhythmic point and energy by way of introducing the work’s outrageous presto coda – what a blast! Though the ensemble couldn’t quite match the introduction’s fire and energy, the players summonsed up all their reserves and raced their way to the music’s end – as dogged as energetic, but achieving the discharge of the music’s spirit. We couldn’t really mirror the musicians’ sounds with our applause, but we did our best to convey our appreciation of such heartfelt efforts!

 

 

 

 

Sonata and Revolution – pianist Liam Furey at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Piano Works by BEETHOVEN, BERG, BOULEZ and CHOPIN

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110
Alban Berg Piano Sonata in B minor Op. 1
Pierre Boulez Sonata no. 1 (1946 (movement 1), “Lent – Beaucoup plus allant”
Frederic Chopin Ballade no 1. in G minor, Op. 23

Liam Furey (piano)

St. Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday, 28th July 2021

Liam Furey is an Honours student of Classical Piano and Composition at the NZ School of Music. This ambitious program was a journey of exploration  by a young musician. He invested an incredible effort into memorizing this wide ranging music, which he considered essential to the understanding of these pieces as the theme of “Sonata and Revolution”.

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110

This is the middle of the last three sonatas of Beethoven and in some ways the most difficult of them with its huge double fugue in its last movement. It is a profound piece that may require a lifetime of contemplation, but you have to start somewhere and challenging as it might have been, Liam Furey took the trouble to master it. He called on his audience to get behind the notes, to consider the pauses, the phrases, the contrasts, the riotous levity of the second movement and the dark undertone of the final movement.

Alban Berg Piano Sonata in B minor Op. 1

Berg, under the influence of Schoenberg, explored new harmonies, chromaticism, yet he intended this piece to be in traditional sonata form in B minor. To understand music that preceded it it was instructive to view it in light of what followed. Berg’s beautiful sonata shed light on Beethoven.

Pierre Boulez Sonata no. 1 (1946 (movement 1), “Lent – Beaucoup plus allant”

This is the first of Boulez’s three piano sonatas. He wrote it when he was 21, while studying with Messiaen and under the influence of the music of Schoenberg and René Leibowitz. He experimented with sounds and effects that can be produced on the piano. He sought the rhythmic element of perfect atonality.  This short work is in two movements, with no thematic material, but contrasting sound effects. By 1946 the world moved on a long way from Beethoven and the soundscape of the great composers of the previous century. Boulez, like some of his contemporaries, asked questions about the nature of music. It is these questions that Liam Furey set out to investigate.

Frederic Chopin Ballade no 1. in G minor, Op. 23

With this, one of Chopin’s most popular pieces, we returned to the main stream repertoire. Somehow, after listening to Boulez and Berg, we listened more attentively, and the work proved to be the appropriate climax of the concert. This old warhorse sounded fresh. There were a lot of notes in this piece and lots of Polish passion. Liam Furey played it with feeling, had the music well under control. It was a beautiful way to end a concert of exploration which involved a journey from the first quarter of the nineteenth century to middle of the twentieth, from rules of harmony and form to atonality.

One of the great features of these Wednesday lunchtime recitals is that it gives a platform to young, emerging musicians, who need such opportunities, and for the audience the opportunity to explore, discover and celebrate.

Liam Wooding – Reflections and Connections at Woburn’s St.Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
LIAM WOODING – REFLECTIONS AND CONNECTIONS

DOUGLAS LILBURN – Sonata for Piano in F-sharp Minor (1939)
STUART GREENBAUM – Remote Connection (2021)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Sonata for Piano in C-sharp Minor Op.27. No.2 “Moonlight”
DUKE ELLINGTON – Reflections in D (1953)
CLAUDE DEBUSSY – Images, Book 1 (1905)
1. Reflects dans l’eau  2. Hommage a Rameau  3. Mouvement
JOHN ADAMS – Phrygian Gates (1977)

Liam Wooding (piano)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Tuesday, 27th July 2021

Music today has a lot to thank Franz (Ferenc) Liszt for. Among his achievements throughout a life devoted to performing, composing, teaching, promoting, and collegially supporting and encouraging the art-form is his single-handed invention of the phenomenon we know today as “the piano recital”. On June 9th,1840, in London at Hanover Square, Liszt gave the first of two London concerts that were advertised as “recitals”, the first documented occasion on which the word “recital” had been used in describing a musical event (he had previously called his solo concerts “soliloquies”). He had already turned the idea of a concert as was then known on its head, by being the only performer, by the music presenting overall “themes” instead of being hotch-potch collections of unrelated items, and by turning the piano to its side so audiences could see the performer better and the instrument could with its lid opened, project the music more clearly.

How long it might have taken for others to evolve a similar kind of presentation without Liszt will never be known – as with most revolutionary developments in all human endeavour, surprise seems to be a regular and necessary component, one which Liszt certainly utilised at the outset of his stellar, if relatively brief, performing career. Since then, little has radically changed (as one might thankfully observe!), the “piano recital” at its best continuing to deliver some of the purest, most unadulterated music-listening experiences available to audiences anywhere. Liszt would have undoubtedly poured his whole being into such presentations to overwhelming effect – and something of that directly-wrought, straight-from-the-shoulder essence of committed performance and recreativity freely emanated from pianist Liam Wooding’s engaging musical personality in St Mark’s Church, Woburn over the course of an evening’s music-making!

The pianist, relaxedly sporting a colourful loose-fitting top which straightway suggested he might be on holiday, rather than “at work”, welcomed us by way of providing a context for the occasion, telling us that this was the “last stop” stop of a ten-venue tour of the country, which was another way of saying that he’d gotten to know the pieces well!  He didn’t “announce” each piece individually (his own, simply-expressed, and to-the-point programme notes told us all we needed to know as an introduction to each item), merely informing us that there would be an interval after the Beethoven Sonata. The rest he would obviously be expressing via the music!

First up was the remarkable 1939 Piano Sonata in F-sharp Minor by Douglas Lilburn. In Wooding’s hands the music’s opening Lento readily burgeoned with emotional impulses amid evocations of familiar landscapes, to my ears a prophetic precursor in sound and intent of the forces that produced the remarkable flowering of the performing arts in this country over a decade hence. Throughout, the music freely alternated between purposeful rhythmic structure and spontaneously-evolving spaces, allowing impulses, gesturings and tones to play, interact and resonate.  With playing as committed and passionate as here from Wooding, I thought these full-toned utterances beautifully defined by dint of contrast the intensities of their opposites, such as found in the magically withdrawn sequences leading to the brief but achingly lyrical coda to the movement.

The Theme-and-Variations second movement began with a chant-like invocation which readily bore fruit, elaborating on the simple mantra both quizzically and excitably – a wonderful scherzando variation contained that characteristic Lilburn rhythmic snap, while a further one exuded bumptious, angular qualities, markedly contrasting with a subsequent show of keyboard brilliance! – in response, a bell-like sequence prettily danced its approval. Came a more sober minor-key-change, filled with nostalgia, the composer listening to his world with deeply-moving feeling, before activation once again by a running figure, one insouciantly inventive! – a brief presto display of bravado and the journey was finished – obviously, a significant work still needing to come into its own, if here given the kind of advocacy that makes such things happen!

Australian composer Stuart Greenbaum’s freshly-conceived (2021) Remote Connection, was written for Wooding, the piece a response by the composer to the pandemic privations of 2020, a year of “remote connection” for many people. While directly evoking the technical manifestations of various electronic connecting devices at the start, the music also grew a wider realm of human interaction and emotional response to isolation and loneliness. Throughout, Wooding patiently brought out the work’s contrastings of the machine-like figures with long-held, deep-breathing chords, the more animated figures seeming to develop anxieties of their own in places, gesturings beset by impatience and insistence amid the different variants of touchingly human response. The jazzy, almost boogie-woogie trajectories at the end seemed almost nihilistic in their exuberance and exhilaration, perhaps speaking for desperate people tempted into doing desperate things…..

Wooding took us then to a different age’s manifestation of human isolation and loneliness, via Beethoven’s renowned “Moonlight” Sonata, one, of course, forever “coloured” by the famous contemporary description of the first movement’s undulations as resembling moonlight on lake waters, a remark which conveniently passed over the agitated violence of the final movement’s character. In his notes Wooding very properly quoted (and agreed with) fellow-pianist Michael Houstoun’s thoughts on the work as “relentlessly dark” and “violently black”, although here, his playing of the eponymous first movement seemed to me strangely contained to the point of inhibition, scarcely hinting at any deeper, darker undercurrents – an adagio that I thought needed more breadth, and a sostenuto that wanted more depth and blackness of tone.

Oddly enough these things manifested themselves readily In the two movements that followed – an Allegretto “spooked” by some of its own phrase-endings, and a Presto agitato that was just that! The latter movement I thought took time to “settle”, with the first couple of upward runs slightly muddying the two concluding notes’ whiplash sforzando effect, but the rest were most excitingly and (in one instance towards the end) even wildly brought off. After such coruscations an interval seemed like an excellent idea!

We came back to a different world, one of dreamily impressionist sounds emanating firstly from Duke Ellington’s appropriately-titled piece Reflections in D, many of whose familiar, jazzily-tinted gesturings may well have been “invented” by this same composer. In his programme note Wooding told us that an idea of “pairing” Ellington’s work with that of another composer, Claude Debussy, came from the work of an American pianist and composer, Timo Andres, who made video recordings during the pandemic underlining the links between Debussy’s works and Ellington’s material. An example was straightaway forthcoming – the seamless “running together” of the latter’s Reflections in D with Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau from Book 1 of Images, clearly demonstrating “the Duke’s” drawing from Debussy’s work, with whole phrases from the former’s piece seeming to readily align themselves with the latter’s delicately impressionist-sounding evocations.

Both pieces enchanted by turns, Wooding’s superbly-crafted playing encapsulating the “movement of stillness” world conveyed by the play of light upon watery surfaces and the disruptive animations of the fountain’s sparkling turbulence, with a nostalgic note at the end suggesting a farewell of sorts, perhaps one to the day via a sunset, or to a friend or lover in the wake of a passionate encounter…..

I’ve always been somewhat intrigued by the second Image, Hommage à Rameau, looking in vain for a reference to some motivic quotation from the earlier composer’s music, and finally figuring out that the piece is far more abstract, any such connection being expressed by the use of a solemn and serious Sarabande (a processional dance-form often used by Baroque composers to express significant and meaningful ideas and feelings). Debussy was one of the editors of a planned complete Rameau Edition, and was working on the latter’s opera Les Fêtes de Polymnie when he wrote the first Book of Images. Here, he seemed to me to awaken “ghosts” from the past, whole entourages of bygone grandeur made to live again, Wooding’s resonant playing allowing us full access to the glory and enduring resonance of one composer’s tribute to another.

What a contrast with the following Mouvement, here, the pianist’s playing brilliantly embodying the music’s title, building the crescendo leading up to the ebulliently-sounded fanfare motif, and taking us on a mercurial harmonic exploration throughout the piece’s central panoplies of sound before whirly-gigging us on to a feathery-fingered conclusion.

And so we were brought to the evening’s final item, John Adams’ monumentally self-defining minimalist work “Phrygian Gates” (the composer called it his true “Opus 1” as representing his first “mature composition” exhibiting a “personal style”. I had never heard this particular piece before (Wooding voiced the view that the work’s performances on his tour were the first heard in this country), so it was, for me, an absorbing journey of discovery, over twenty minutes of mesmeric repeated-note rhythmic and harmonic exploration which cycled its way through six of the twelve key-centres of the “circle of fifths” on a more-or-less nonstop tour.

Adams has stated that the piece requires a pianist of considerable physical endurance and sustaining capabilities, and Wooding seemed to fulfil those criteria to an astounding degree – I could detect no sign of flagging of either energy or concentration throughout the work’s entire span, and marvelled at what seemed like his complete identification with and focus upon the music’s myriad variation of impulse, colour and intensity, in places mesmeric scintillations of delicate light-and shade, while in others harrowing, agitated hammerings of dark purpose!  A “proper” musician would, as a listener, have doubtless registered the piece’s on-going technicalities of sequence and change and perhaps even predicted what was to follow, whereas my untrained sensibilities revelled in the frisson created by so many unexpected moments of stimulation, and relished to the full the “epic” experience of the work’s scale and outreach.

Afterwards I reflected on my Middle C colleague Anne French’s single comment regarding the same recital she had attended in Wellington a few days before, at St.Andrew’s – mindful of my plans to attend this concert and not wanting to unduly influence my reaction, all she conveyed to me by way of her impression of Liam Wooding’s playing was “Wow!” All I can say by way of appropriate response is “Absolutely fair comment!”

Monstrous and idiosynchrophiliac goings-on with Stroma at Wellington’s Bats Theatre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma presents:
IDIOSYNCHROPHILIA – Stroma meets invented instruments!

Rosie Langabeer (composer)
Idiosynchrophilia (2021)

Invented instruments devised and built by Neil Feather

Stroma – conducted by Mark Carter
Daniel Beban, Erika Grant, Neil Feather (invented instruments)
Anna van der Zee (violin), Andrew Thomson (viola), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)
Alexander Gunchenko (double bass), Shannon Pittaway (bass trombone),
Todd Gibson-Cornish (bassoon) Thomas Guldborg, Lenny Sakofsky (percussion)

The Heyday Dome, Bats Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 25th July, 2021

The perils of reviewer-conviviality are never so real as when one attends a concert of contemporary music, and sits next to someone in the audience one knows by sight but has never had a chance to talk with seriously, so most pleasantly spends the entire pre-concert time getting properly acquainted, as a result of which one completely forgets to read the concert’s programme notes before the lights are dimmed and the music gets under way!

Being thus plunged into the sound-world of an intriguingly and unconventionally “new” piece of music certainly put me on my mettle, especially as my “reviewing-brief” involved the substance of the presentation and its outcomes and the production of a dissertation of sorts on the same!  I knew beforehand that the concert featured at least three “invented” musical instruments, the work of one Neil Feather (also one of the musicians), for which an accompanying “soundscape” inspired by 1960s “monster” movies had been wrought by composer Rosie Langabeer. The fact that the contemporary music ensemble Stroma was involved also suggested that there would be interactions between these “deliciously idiosyncratic” inventions and conventional instruments of the kind any concertgoer would be familiar with – string, wind, brass, percussion instruments – perhaps!

I wasn’t entirely sure of my ground when it came to thinking about 1960s “monster movies” – though I had lived through that era, I was a timid, largely unadventurous moviegoer, who avoided anything “scary” through being prone to nightmares and other uncontrollable imaginings. I presumed there would be lots of “creepy” sounds with plenty of ominous ambiences and sudden dynamic irruptions designed to stimulate equally calamitous and involuntary bodily mechanisms to do with fright! In order to get more in alignment with the composer in this matter I googled the “monster movies” genre, pondering over what I’d missed in my formative years when reading descriptions such as “atomic mutants, monstrous throwbacks, monsters made and/or controlled by mad scientists, animal-man combinations, scientists who transform themselves into monsters, the various species of resurrected dead, and creatures from outer space, including alien parasites”.

Conversely, when the music actually began I instantly felt on familiar territory – was not that baleful bass trombone sound over sinister percussion a first cousin of Fafner, the mighty giant-turned-dragon from Wagner’s Siegfried? The sequence was repeated, with strings reinforcing the trombone, and on a third repetition Erica Grant began to tremulously activate the Nondo, a large sheet steel string instrument, which was resonated with strikers, and further activated by the rolling of a steel pole across (near invisible) strings stretched from end-to-end , the sounds electronically amplified – in fact I thought at first the pole was magnetised and seemed to “balance itself” mid-air with the help of attracting/repulsing forces! I thought in places of Len Lye’s famous steel-sheet installation in New Plymouth which I’d seen and heard a number of years ago, now, the timbres as remarkable as there but uniquely “here”, and responsive to different kinds of touches from the player, wonderfully cavernous sounds as well as delicate ones.

I ought to remark at this point that audience involvement in these gesturings couldn’t help but be total and visceral, due to the auditorium’s wonderfully-raked seating, giving every person a clear view of what the various players were doing – obviously the venue, which I had never been to previously, is something of a treasure!

The room’s immediacies were underlined when, at one point the wind and string players were goaded into launching a violent, positively seismic tutti, to which another player, Dan Beban, responded with his Vibrowheel activation, impressive in a “miniature” sense to view, and belying its size to listen to – a “Mutt and Jeff” kind of comparison with the voluminous and visibly-impassive Nondo! As the latter was again roused by its player, Erica Grant. the timpani rumbled in a more spontaneously-interactive way, transferring energies towards both the bassoonist and the strings, the latter essaying eerie glissandi whose sense of unease proves a precursor to more demonstrably threatening sounds,  abrasive, fractured, and almost anarchic utterances from trombone, double bass and bassoon.

Diverting the menace somewhat was the activation of the third “invented instrument”, this one by its actual creator, Neil Feather – the Wiggler consisted of four wires stretched horizontally between two metal bars laid flat, creating a Koto-like, or dulcimer-like playing aspect, but with the wires activated by metal rods laid upon or balanced at right angles in the space between the iron bars – the rods were dropped/bounced upon or balanced in between the wires, and allowed to bounce on, and scrape against the same, gently or more forcefully as the scenario required – almost the “music of industry” seemed to resonate from this arrangement, factory-like in its repetitions, but also delicate and natural in its evocation of gentler impulses, a “music is where you find it” realisation…..

As the Wiggler was put through its paces (the ensemble percussionists took their respective triangles for a walk in separate directions at this point, possibly as a dissociative gesture!), the ensemble “crept” its diverse sounds in “under the radar”, with the strings in lament-like mode , a spell broken, intentionally or otherwise with a start-inducing crash from the vicinity of the Nondo, Erica Grant unable to supress a smile at this point as if she’d pre-planned the disturbance.

I’ve not mentioned the presentation’s notable lighting properties up to this point – artfully atmospheric and, I think, gradually morphing between different tones – but suddenly there was a marked change of atmosphere and lighting, and the ensemble immediately struck up a sentimental dance-tune, complete with wire-brush percussion accompaniment, most divertingly and engagingly delivered, the trombonist phrasing the leading melody superbly! The strings took over the tune’s first part and the bassoon and trombone concluded the phrase with some smart dovetailing!

“Time for you and time for me, and for the taking of a toast and tea” the music seemed to say, when another abrupt lighting change and a dissolution of sounds into something metallic and mechanical “flicked a switch” to a kind of “noises off” or “underbelly” scenario. Most disconcerting!  The scenarios then switched backwards and forwards from dance-scene to Nibelungen-like slave-labour industry, with each switch inducing a more desperate and anarchic feeling. A change back to the dance scene then introduced a more “hep to the jive” rhythm, the muted bass trombone sounding what seemed like a reminiscence of a 1960s television action programme, and the bassoonist out of his chair and wielding his instrument like some kind of Grim Reaper with his scythe!

Conductor Mark Carter abruptly left the podium at this point, leaving the musicians at odds with the activated “invented” instruments, whose sounds died away as the lights dimmed for the last time. Altogether it seemed like a kind of dissolution of order, and a leaving of things to nature at the eventual silencing of the machines. Whatever impressions of intent were at large, the audience’s reaction to the performance was unalloyed delight, both at its manifest entertainment value and its idiosyncrophiliac singularity.

Afterwards, at home I read the programme! – it was there! – the ominous awakening of a monster somewhere deep in the underground, followed by its pursuit of a gradual path of destruction through both nature and civilisation, ending in human oblivion. As to the place of spontaneity and improvisation in the work, such was the freedom with which the musicians brought the sounds into being, it all gave the impression of the musicians being “played” by the piece as much as playing it. I was fascinated by the manipulations of the “invented” instruments, even if I thought the Vibrowheel a tad under-represented in the work, compared with the others.

Though I didn’t feel the ‘idiosynchrophiliac” instruments integrated musically with the ensemble’s monster scenario, that perhaps wasn’t the point of what the exercise was all about – what remained in my mind was a sense of spontaneous creation and recreation having random and unexpected outcomes exhibited by all facets of the presentation, from nature’s own “dimension cleft in twain” manifestation of chaos (arguably representative of a virus waiting to strike, as well), to seemingly innocuous if titillating sound ambiences wrought from invented machines – manifestations of unpredictability from which we can each draw our own conclusions.

“The Long Day Closes” – Mozart, with “Evening Music and Lullabies” from the Bach Choir of Wellington

Posted on by Anne French

Mozart Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339
Evening Music and Lullabies by Franck, Brahms, JS Bach, Karg-Elert, Haydn, Lauridsen, Whitacre, Sullivan and David Hamilton

The Bach Choir of Wellington
Music Director:  Shawn Michael Condon
Accompanist:  Douglas Mews
Vocal Soloists: Shaunagh Chambers (soprano), Kate Manahi (mezzo), LJ Crichton (tenor), Samuel McKeever (bass)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Saturday, 24 July 2021

This was a concert of two halves, as they say in rugby. The first half consisted of the advertised Mozart Solemn Vespers, and the second half consisted of ‘Evening Music and Lullabies’, on the basis, I suppose, that Vespers is the evening prayer service, one of the Canonical Hours in the Catholic liturgy, although you wouldn’t find any of these items following a Catholic Vespers. But more of this later.

The liturgical Vespers consists of five psalms, preceded by a chant and followed by the Magnificat, with the doxology (‘Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto…’) at the end of every psalm. Mozart wrote this Vespers for the Cathedral of Salzburg in 1780. It is scored SATB with a small orchestra including two trumpets and three trombones, basso continuo plus organ, but in this case Douglas Mews substituted for everything.

For the first half of the concert, the choir was stationed in the gallery of St Andrews, around the organ. This must have been a bit of a squeeze, because there are nearly 60 of them, plus four soloists. I couldn’t see how cramped they were, though, because I was sitting at the front of the back half of the seating, facing forwards. The front half of the seating had been rearranged to face inwards, separated by a narrow aisle.

I was in St Andrew’s a few weeks ago for the terrific Inspirare concert, where the choir (all 18 of them) sang from the choir loft, but that evening all the downstairs seating faced backwards.  In both cases, putting the choir up in the gallery worked well. Now that St Andrew’s has thrown a cool three million at the organ, we can probably expect more of it. It strikes me that the choir sound is enhanced by singing upstairs, even in a dryish acoustic.

In any event, I was waiting for the choir’s first note with slight trepidation. The Bach Choir was once an excellent choir, but it fell on hard times. ‘What do they sound like these days under Shawn Condon?’ I wondered. Much, much better is the answer. The first phrase of the ‘Dixit Dominus’ was full and confident; the second higher and louder. The choir’s sound had a fuzzy quality, a bit like peach fuzz, which I found oddly beautiful. With a choir of sixty, it’s easier to sing loudly than quietly, and very hard to sing exactly together, so the fuzz was probably the result of dozens of tiny inexactnesses. Still, the opening filled me with confidence. This was going to be a great concert.

And so it proved. There were four soloists supporting the choir, all young singers at the start of their careers. The soprano gets the most work, being given the well-known Laudate Dominum (aka Psalm 117) with the choir as backing group. In this case, it was Shaunagh Chambers who was doing the full Kiri. She is in her honours year at New Zealand School of Music, where she is taught by Jenny Wollerman and Margaret Medlyn. She has a lovely voice for Mozart, bright and agile, and she sang the few florid passages she was granted with athleticism, plus Wollerman-like precision and beauty. But the other soloists were no slugs, even though they had hardly anything to do. I was especially taken with the delicious dark sound of Samuel McKeever, the bass soloist. He is a graduate of Project Prima Volta and recently performed with the NZSO. Tenor Lila Crichton was also great, and mezzo Kate Manahi, like the tenor and bass, a Project Prima Volta graduate, has a glorious voice. They sounded beautiful together in their quartet passages.

Early on the choir’s diction was rather muddy, but it had improved by the time they got to the doxology of the second psalm, Confiteor tibi. The dynamics were somewhat samey at first with a lot of mf and not much else until the third psalm, Beatus vir. Here the soloists sang as a quartet, and the choir’s first entry was a bit pallid after their brilliant tone. The basses begin No 4 Laudate pueri, but the tenors follow straight after. There are currently 12 basses in the choir but only six tenors, yet the tenors sounded gorgeous: they have a completely unified sound, young and fresh, which creates the effect of much bigger forces. The altos, I thought, often sounded underpowered, getting lost in the texture, yet there are 17 of them.

Mozart’s Magnificat in this Vespers is not subtle: word-painting applied by trowel. By the time they got to ‘quia respexit’ the choir was giving it plenty of welly, and the tenor section briefly overblew. But the soloists came to their rescue. Though the women nearly came to grief in ‘dispersit’, they were brought into cohesion in ‘Abraham et semini eius’ which sounded definitive. The soloists led into the doxology, followed by the choir. The tenors were briefly a bit on the rough side – pushing too hard? And then it was over.

The pieces in the second half of the concert were a mixed bag. It opened with César Franck’s setting of Psalm 150, a gorgeous thing, with the choir accompanied by the organ. The work was composed to inaugurate the new organ at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris, and was scored for organ, choir, and orchestra. The aim is to show off the capabilities of the organ, and Douglas Mews did a splendid job; supported by the choir, with fluting sopranos and the men lyrical and majestic by turns.

Next came my favourite work of the concert, a very Brahmsian rendering of ‘Wie lieblich sint deine Wohningen’, the most performed movement from the German Requiem. They sang in great rolling waves of sound, with the altos sometimes getting lost in the texture, and then found again. The basses sounded splendid. The subito piano was dramatic, and the occasional drop in tuning (a loss of energy at the ends of phrases) went almost unnoticed.

Then came an organ and chorus version of Bach’s ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ from BWV 79 which seemed a bit antique after the lush chords of the Brahms, with the choir singing the harmonized hymn tune and the organ providing all the elaborations. I wondered why it was here, out of time and not very ‘evening’ in theme; but before I had formed the thought it was attaca Karg-Elert’s rowdy setting of the same tune as a triumphal march, in case the Bach had put anyone to sleep. It was a magisterial showing off of everything the refurbished organ can do. Douglas Mews must have eleven arms.

The choir moved downstairs, and stood at the front of the church to sing David Hamilton’s ‘God be in my head’, a movement from a mass written for the choirs of Westlake Boys and Girls schools. I was surprised to see that the Bach Choir is older than it sounds. (In my day, the Bach Choir comprised under-35s.) The Hamilton was a capella and more challenging, but they sang it sweetly and simply, heads mostly buried in their scores. Mews came down to join them at the piano for Haydn’s ‘Evening Song’, a rare work for accompanied choir that was not commissioned. But it was one choral part song too many for me. This would have been the moment to use the four soloists, who had sung so little.

Next came ‘Sure on this Shining Night’, a poem setting by the American composer and mystic Morten Lauridsen. Shawn Condon was on home turf now; the dynamic indications were clear, the tuning mostly excellent. It was followed by another popular American, Eric Whitacre (b.1970). ‘The Seal Lullaby’ was originally composed for wind ensemble. Whitacre is beloved of choirs, and it’s likely that no one ever lost money by programming him, although I find him light to the point of weightlessness. But the choir sang with conviction.

And still two more works to go! Arthur Sullivan’s ‘The Long Day Closes’ came next. This too would have been great to give the soloists (although there was already too much music for one concert). Or not sing it at all. Still, there were some great low notes from the second basses.

Finally, the last work in the programme, David Hamilton’s arrangement of ‘Hine, e Hine’, a lovely thing that benefited from the assistance of the soloists singing with the choir. Alas, it was over too fast. All in all, a delightful concert that would have been better if it had been shorter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Purcell’s “Food of Love” at Wellington’s Cathedral of St.Paul

Posted on by Rebecca Stanton

Wellington Cathedral’s TGIF recital series presents:
HENRY PURCELL – Songs and Duets
Anna Sedcole (soprano) / Helene Page (mezzo-soprano)
Michael Stewart (harpsichord)

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Friday, 23rd July 2021

There is a particular pleasure in hearing a duet sung by two voices that are well-matched in timbre, especially when the singers obviously share not only a vocal quality but a musical sensibility and a personal rapport.  Such were the harmonies on offer at this presentation of Purcell songs, performed by old friends Anna Sedcole and Helene Page, and accompanied fluently and unobtrusively on harpsichord by Michael Stewart, the Cathedral’s Director of Music, who also happens to be married to Sedcole — completing the sense of a musical afternoon among friends.  At its best, the concert felt almost spontaneous, as if the three felt a common impulse to burst into song. Such a carefree effect, of course, bespeaks careful and devoted preparation.

The recital opened with “Music for a while” from the incidental music to Oedipus, sung by Page in a warm but austere mezzo-soprano reminiscent of a Baroque recorder. While the vast vertical space of the Cathedral did its best to swallow her low notes, she made a compelling case for the “beguiling” properties of music, which was amply borne out by the next two numbers, “Let us wander” and “Lost is my quiet.” Here we got to appreciate fully how well-suited the two voices were to each other, each striking overtones off the other that showcased Purcell’s harmonies beautifully.  Ornaments and fast-moving passages were clearly articulated for the audience to appreciate.  Next came “If music be the food of love,” showcasing Sedcole’s agile, flute-like soprano.  I especially appreciated her sensitive dynamics (again not easy given the voracity of the space) and bright, clean articulation, so necessary in this music (and the polar opposite of the viscous legato required for the Russian choral repertoire the singer would be performing the following night as a member of the Tudor Consort!).

Page then returned and the two sang a gorgeous love duet, “My dearest, my fairest,” making the most of long, languishing melismas, suspensions, resolutions, and a hocketing “no, no” at the end that recalled bird song (and made one wonder whether a tragic ending was secretly encoded in this otherwise idyllic pastoral-sounding romance.  Having now looked up the play for which Purcell wrote this song, Pausanias, the betrayer of his country: a tragedy by Richard Norton, I find it indeed precedes a scene in which the eponymous hero’s lover, Pandora, attempts to seduce his lieutenant — so Purcell seems to have caught the mood here exceptionally well).

A slight technical malfunction in the harpsichord recalled us to Michael Stewart’s labours at the keyboard, and afforded an opportunity to marvel a second time at the family likeness between Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and the opening bars of the next duet, “Sound the trumpet” (from Come Ye Sons of Art, one of the odes Purcell wrote to commemorate the birthday of Queen Mary II in 1694).  Appropriately jubilant, it was sung with fine rhythm, vigour, and precision, and went with a swing.  The next piece was a total contrast in all but the technical excellence of the performance: the slow, melancholy and poignant “O Solitude,” sung by Helene Page in a tender legato which reminded one of liquid honey, the vocal decorations — mordents and small trills — offered to the listener precise and unhurried.

The final two songs, both duets, were drawn from King Arthur, an opera I’m now extremely curious to see performed in its “Restoration spectacular” entirety.  The first of these, a duet of shepherdesses entitled “Shepherd, shepherd, leave decoying” was the highlight of the program for me: witty and nimble. I would have placed it last on the program instead of “Two daughters of this aged stream” (a song for two sirens), whose more languid tempo and theme (and final refrain of “And circle round, and circle round”) suggested intrigue rather than peroration.  Intrigue, however, was there none; the performers ended their recital promptly at the destined hour, leaving their audience satisfied but not surfeited with Baroque harmonies.

Ravel and Bartók make companionable and stimulating piano-and-percussion bedfellows in stunning NZSM Adam Concert Room performances

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī  NZ School of Music presents:
RAVEL – Rapsodie Espagnole (arr. 2 pianos and percussion)
BARTÓK – Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion SZ110

Gabriela Glapska and Jian Liu (pianos)
Sam Rich and Naoto Segawa (percussion)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 23rd July 2021

While waiting in the foyer for the Adam Concert Room to be opened for the NZSM concert, and pricking up my ears to flute snippets from Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and trumpet phrases from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade being practised by students in an adjoining studio, I couldn’t help but reflect on the charm and delight of experiencing such a “music-in-the-air” ambience about where I was and what was about to happen – a free concert of great music given by some of New Zealand’s finest musicians, at this particular time balm for the soul in the midst of a sea of troubles.

With its various series of lunchtime concerts, and a more-or-less constant flow of music and theatre presentations on all sides, Wellington still remains a wellspring of artistic endeavour, and particularly in music, despite the privations of ongoing earthquake strengthening operations at much-loved and -missed venues such as the Town Hall, St.James’ Theatre and the Sacred Heart Basilica in Hill St.

For various reasons the Adam Concert Room has been a godsend over the years, enabling Te Kōkī  NZ School of Music to showcase the talents of both its students and their tutors, the latter highly-esteemed performers in their own right, and apparently inexhaustible in their efforts to advance music’s cause in diverse contexts around the capital.

This latest concert provided a mouth-watering opportunity to hear “live” one of the most renowned of twentieth-century chamber music classics, Bartók’s Sonata for 2 pianos and percussion, together with another earlier “classic”, Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole, here served up in a relatively unfamiliar guise via an arrangement presumably made by German percussionist Peter Sadlo.  The four “star performers” on this occasion were pianists Gabriela Glapska and Jian Liu, with percussionists Sam Rich and Naoto Segawa.

As it turned out, I enjoyed the Ravel at least as much as I did the Bartok, partly, I think, because I was prepared for something of a disappointment with the former – I’d read a lukewarm review of a performance of the Rapsodie in this form given by fairly illustrious names, with the implication being that the results didn’t justify the efforts made by the artists due to the material. I was, however, instantly held in thrall with the intensities generated by the two pianists in their delineations of the opening Prélude à la Nuit’s “heavily-scented pianissimi”, its occasional surges exquisitely coloured by percussion, the players giving the music all the space and sensousness it required – a totally absorbing “sleeping before the awakening” beginning!

Malagueña, too, captivated with its combination of rhythmic verve and sultriness, the pianos dancers and the percussionists guitarists, moving and playing with edge and physicality, leading the music fluently between substance and suggestiveness towards one of Ravel’s enigmatic endings. Even more beguiling was the Habanera which followed (and which particularly captured Manuel de Falla’s admiration for its “Spanish character”), the piece’s languid melancholy here superbly wrought by the musicians, bringing utmost delicacy cheek-by jowl with deep-seated resonance, the gentle tolling of accompanying figures bringing to mind another evocative Ravelian soundscape, that of “Le Gibet” from Gaspard de la Nuit. It all somehow awoke in this listener a nostalgia for the sounds of a distant (and unknown) land where melodies and rhythms mingled with splashes and slivers of evocation along with deeper, darker imaginings.

Though I thought the “piping” opening theme of the concluding Feria (Fiesta) could have been more incisively delivered by whichever pianist (they both had their backs to me!), it was my only quibble regarding a tour-de force of positively orchestral realisation by the players! We got energetic, detailed, and incisive playing punctuated with great upward flourishes, the dovetailed piano figurations pulsating with energy and the percussion ringing and roaring with uninhibited exhilaration before the music seemed midstream to spectacularly collapse in a smouldering heap!

Amidst the sonic wreckage stirred a plaintive, languorous theme, here played by Liu, and a “sighing” rejoiner, delivered by Glapska, both exuding that characteristic brooding Iberian torpor, holding us in a spell underpinned by the return of the melancholy ostinato figure from the opening of the work, the whole further charged by atmospheric “night noises” from the percussion. Soon, the festive sounds  reawakened the slumbering rhythms, with first the timpani and then side-drum rapping out its insistent figures, and castanets unashamedly joining in with the dance! Such tremendous exuberance from everybody over the last few pages, with even the brief hiatus before the end halting only momentarily the surges of released energy emanating from all sides – a triumph!

So, here was a how-de-do! – would the players be able to “recapture that first fine careless rapture” for the Bartók work after such an energy-sapping display? As it proved all those present were obviously “fired up” for what was about to happen – both Glapska and Liu talked a little with us about the oncoming work , Liu in particular stressing that performing it was for him an exhilarating, if also “frightening” experience!

Bartók’s work was written in 1937, and first performed early the following year by the composer and his second wife, Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, at an  International Society for Contemporary Music anniversary concert in Basel, Switzerland. Besides two pianos and pianists, the work employs two percussionists who play seven instruments between them – timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, snare-drum, tam-tam and xylophone. Bartók as well gave the percussionists numerous detailed playing instructions, besides stipulating the layout of the instruments.

The longest of the three movements began the work, with dark, portentous timpani rolls introducing low, overlapping piano notes from both instruments,  the sombre scenario suddenly set alight by the first of two violent irruptions, each generating a sense of something waiting in the ambient darkness to strike. Gradually the players led the way out of the gloom with a firm grip, judging the acceleration to a nicety, the percussion forward and “present”, each strand properly telling, and playing its part in the delineation of each section’s character.

Trilling piano lines and scampering figurations led from a dotted-rhythm toccata-like sequence to a rollicking, angular section, each player contributing to a kind of juggernaut of sound, tumultuous in effect with energetic piano dovetailings between the players driving a series of great crescendi that burst out brilliantly in fanfare-like figures. What was notable from this performance were the sharply-etched contrasts the musicians brought out from the different episodes, the music falling back from the enormous climax into almost folksongish figurations, underpinned by bell-like percussion sonorities, the piano exchanges wandering for a while in what seemed like ambient wastelands. A side drum roll then led into the Bartókian equivalent of “a devil of a fugue”, hair-raising in its effect, with the heavy percussion excitingly prominent! I thought the forceful angularities of the exchanges at the movement’s end could have been rammed home even more lustfully and with an even greater rhetorical sense of finality, here – (but the “sensationalist within” often gets me over-excited at tumultuous times such as these, so I cautioned him to keep his composure and not over-project)!

Bartók’s “night music” movements are proverbial, and this one was no exception – the players breathtakingly caught both the stillness and the depths of the music’s world. The various rhythmic  impulses that punctuated the soundscape became almost a “processional” of their own, accompanied by chord clusters that morphed into swirling chromatic figures before becoming eerie glissandi, uncovering an element of unease and disquiet at the feral nature of forces in play, before the impulses dissolved into three hushed, beautifully-poised chords at the end.

The attacca which brought the last movement into play burst the sounds about our senses like a firecracker, the xylophone playing especially incisive and almost festive in impact! – I thought the initial theme almost Shostakovich-like in its folkish appeal. The pianists varied their trajectories in places, here  direct and almost business-like, and there, droll and loping, the whole time turbo-charged by the percussive  elements, most satisfyingly “present!” I loved the pianists’ “cake-walk” treatment of the theme, almost a parody, as in the folksy treatment of the music in  the “Concerto for Orchestra” finale,  a sequence which alternated tongue-in-cheek insouciance with rumbustiousness, before exploding into a final, exciting accelerando! That done, Bartok’s little waltz-tune at the end brought smiles of pleasure, as did the unexpected courtliness of the final piano chords and the muttered percussion codicil ending the work!

What a piece, and what a performance! Come to think of it, what a concert! Very great credit and honour to those concerned – Gabriela Glapska, Jian Liu, Sam Rich and Naoto Segawa!