Organist Elke Voelker in excellent varied programme at the Basilica

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Handel: Fireworks Music (transcribed by E. Power Biggs)
Bach: Adagio from Orchestral Suite in D (transcribed by S. Karg-Elert)
Rheinberger: Romanze from 9th Organ Sonata in B minor Mendelssohn: Prelude and Fugue in D minor
Grieg: Anitra’s Dance from Peer Gynt Suite (transcribed by E.H. Lemare)
Karg-Elert: ‘Now thank we all our God’, from Chorale Improvisations, Opp.65/59
Vierne: Aria from 6th Organ Symphony
Wagner: Festmusik from Die Meistersinger (transcribed by Sigfrid Karg-Elert

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Sunday, 6 March 2011, 2.30pm

Probably not many people beyond the organist fraternity know the music of Sigfrid Karg-Elert, who lived from 1877 to1933. Elke Voelker is part of the way through recording all the composer’s organ works on CD, and on Sunday she played one of his compositions, plus two transcriptions that he made of famous orchestral pieces.

Poor attendance at the recital may have been due to the inclement weather but also due to the unfortunate but understandable close proximity of another organ recital – that by four organists on the newly-restored organ at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Willis Street on Friday evening, in memory of the staff of the South Island Organ Company who recently carried out the work on that instrument, and who died in the Durham Street Methodist Church in Christchurch, during the earthquake of 22 February.

Elke Voelker herself was very shocked by that event, having played on the Christchurch Cathedral organ in March last year.

The pitiful audience of just 13 people were given a wide-ranging programme.

The Handel music featured robust, detached playing in the Overture and The Rejoicing, with the 4-foot and 2-foot ranks sounding rather shrill in the nearly empty building. The legato Peace movement was most attractive. The Bourée and Minuet movements seemed too fast – it would not be possible to perform those dances at that speed!

The transcription of the Bach Adagio was very tasteful but to my mind the melody’s repeated notes needed to be more detached and it should have been phrased, not played continuously. In the early part the rhythm was not always even.

The marvellous Fantasia and Fugue in G minor forms a very grand and exciting example of Bach’s skill and invention, and is one of the better-known of the composer’s major organ works. The lively opening subject of the fugue is often given the words ‘O Ebenezer Prout, you are a funny man’, thus immortalising an eminent analyst and writer on counterpoint of an earlier age. One writer has said “The subject of the Fugue is one of the finest ever devised. (It was based on an old Dutch folk-song.) …the speed, quantity of notes and complexity of part-writing (all magnificently musically motivated) seem to produce a physical thrill in the player… perhaps the same feeling a racing-driver has when taking a fast car over a tricky but well-known road.”

Voelker’s registration was excellent, and the fugue very clear, resulting in a very satisfying performance of this great work.

The next item was something completely different: Rheinberger’s Romanze was attractive, and lived up to its name in the chromatic manner of its period.

Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue was notable for a thrilling opening with huge chords alternating with runs involving lots of rapid finger-work, but placed alongside Bach, Handel and Rheinberger, was not very inspired – even though Mendelssohn was a great fan of J.S. Bach.

Grieg’s beautiful piece was very pleasingly registered and played, with delightful use of a 2-foot rank.

Karg-Elert’s is a grand piece, played by many organists (including me), and probably his best-known. Volker’s quavers were uneven at the beginning, but lots of accelerando and rubato were certainly acceptable and added to the mood and effect of the music, which includes interesting harmonies.

The Aria from Vierne’s 6th symphony, written in 1930, was the most modern work on the programme. Its intriguing and piquant harmonies and intervals and bright, upbeat mood were echoed in the registrations employed.

As a grand finale, nothing could be more truly festive than the Festmusik of Wagner. It was an excellent transcription, and made a rousing end to the recital.

The programme, combining works written for the organ with four transcriptions, demonstrated well the range of pipes on this first-class instrument. I thought it was a little out of tune in the upper reaches – this may have been due to the weather.

A wonderful new asset to the church, whose forms (rather than proper pews), have provided such discomfort to many of us in the past, so that we have brought our own cushions to concerts, are handsome red seat cushions on the front seven rows of seats. Comfort at last! Let’s hope this welcome development continues to all the seating in the church.

New Sounds – SMP Ensemble, Magda Mayas, Tony Buck and Hermione Johnson

Posted on by Alan Wells

SMP ENSEMBLE

“INTERIORS I”

Mitchell McEwen (flutes), Andrzej Nowicki (clarinets), Dylan Lardelli

(guitar), Carolyn Mills (harp), Claire Harris (piano), Antony Verner

(violin), Andrew Filmer (viola), Charley Davenport (cello), Jeremy

Hantler (taonga puoro).

DYLAN LARDELLI: “Musical Box”;

PHILIP BROWNLEE: “He rimu pae noa”; “As if to catch the fleeting tail of time”;

SUN-YOUNG PAHG: “ThresholdIng”,

RACHAEL MORGAN: “Unfold”,

SAMUEL HOLLOWAY: “Sillage”.

Adam Concert Room, Wellington.

Saturday 26 February 2011


MAGDA MAYAS, TONY BUCK

St Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

Saturday 26 February 2011


HERMIONE JOHNSON

Two Works

Adam Art Gallery, Wellington

Sunday 6 March 2011

After funding was withheld from leading NZ contemporary group Stroma

for this year, the senior-student/recent-graduate ensemble SMP was

left to carry the torch for new “concert” music – at least for
Wellington. Thankfully, some money was made available by Creative NZ
for “Interiors I”, the first of two presentations exploring subtleties
of tone colour and aspects of player interaction.

All but one piece featured the versatile Dylan Lardelli on guitar, and
all but one (a different one) were written by recently-emerged New
Zealand composers. Lardelli himself is one such: he starred in his own
2009 “Musical Box”. This delightful dance of harmonics from guitar,
Carolyn Mills’ harp and Andrew Filmer’s unexpectedly resonant viola,
was joined by Jeremy Hantler on taonga puoro: soft contrabass-clarinet
kakapo booms blown across the hue gourd, mouth modulated infrasonics
from the spinning porotiti, and (in a change of mood at the end) the
piccolo register of the bone koauau. There was a sense of timelessness
here, which Lardelli has evoked before, nowhere more successfully than
in “Aspects of Theatre”, premiered by SMP Ensemble under Lucas Vis in
March last year. There was an absence of development, which was not
however a deficiency: as also in Holloway’s “Sillage”, the sounds were
sufficient unto themselves.

Lardelli seamlessly integrated the traditional Maori instruments into
the world of western classical ones. So too did his fellow graduate
from Victoria University (NZ School of Music), Philip Brownlee. The
2009 “He rimu pae noa” began with Jeremy Hantler whirling the
dove-voiced poi-a-whio-whio gourd, while simultaneously playing the
nguru (with mouth). The albatross bone putorino, heard first in flute
mode, announced the climax with its trumpet voice, while Claire
Harris’s brittle, sparkling piano displaced Lardelli’s otherwise
ubiquitous guitar. Hand cupped “speaking stones” (Phil Dadson style)
led this well-shaped piece back to its beginning.

I found Brownlee’s “As if to catch the fleeting tail of time” (also
from 2009), less successful, despite the precision playing from SMP.
Here Lardelli’s guitar solo (and it can be played as a solo) was
magnified by the ensemble: blended tonally with the harp, its attacks
extended by Charley Davenport’s cello. I found the succession of
separated events overlong, compounded by the lack of the sense of form
and direction found in Morgan’s “Unfold” and Brownlee’s own “He rimu
pae noa”.

I had a similar feeling about the only work not written by a New
Zealander. Sun-Young Pahg is a Korean living in Paris, and her
“ThreshholIng” (2007) was an alternation of slow, spacious passages
with more agitated sections.

Rachael Morgan’s “Unfold”, on the other hand, unfolded, simply and
beautifully. Another graduate of VUW/NZSM, Morgan has been a recipient
of the Edwin Carr Foundation Scholarship which has taken her overseas.
Beginning with the guitar softly bowed (yes, bowed) near the bridge,
“Unfold” grew gradually with string tremolandi and flute pitch bends
to an understated climax (where the guitar strings were struck with
what appeared to be a dulcimer hammer), before returning to the sotto
voce opening.

Aucklander Samuel Holloway is one of our most exciting
recently-emerged composers. In his somewhat Webernian 2005 trio
“Stapes”, he managed to make a piano sound microtonal by using quarter
tone pitches on the violin and cello. The long-held tones of “Sillage”
(2010) belong to the time-suspended world of his recent string quartet
“Domestic Architecture”, which made a feature of the pulsing beats
between sustained micro-intervals. These scores are dangerously close
to minimalism – dangerously, because Holloway has publicly expressed a
distaste for minimalism. However, his idiom here is far removed from
the frenetic repetitions of Philip Glass (which, I think, Holloway had
in mind), and more akin to the “holy minimalism” of Aarvo Part, and
the prolonged soundings of LaMont Young. In “Sillage” (the word means
a wake in water or a waft of perfume) Lardelli’s bowed guitar
established a harmonically rich tambura-like drone (unobtrusively
detuned over the course of the piece) above and around which the
timbres of alto flute, clarinet, viola and cello merged and emerged.
Atmospheric as this realisation was, the instrumentation (apart from
guitar) is variable: a different version will be heard in SMP’s next
concert (“Interiors II”, Adam Concert Room, Friday March 11, at 7pm).

Interiors (in this case the inside of the piano) was very much the
theme of the recital by German musician Magda Mayas. Perhaps
paradoxically, there was greater ebb and flood of tension in these
extrovert, improvised interactions with percussionist Tony Buck, than
in many of the  more fully composed offerings from SMP. I caught only
the last one-and-a-half sets (and missed the contribution from Sound
and Light Exploration founder Daniel Beban altogether) because –
crazily – there were two concerts of enterprising new music scheduled
for the same evening.

Sound and Light Exploration member and regular performer at their
Frederick Street venue Fred’s, Hermione Johnson, had two works played
at the Adam Art Gallery. The reprise of a  multi-instrumental piece,
originally premiered in October to open the Designs for Living
exhibition, took advantage of the disparate spaces of the Gallery:
violinists Chris Prosser and Tristan Carter on different floors, Jeff
Henderson on sax in a side room, Nell Thomas on the mezzanine with her
theremin, Gerard Crewdson prowling with spooky unpitched staccatos on
the trombone, and Johnson herself barely audible on accordion in a
distant corner. The second item was rather more, well, dramatic.
“Drama Studies” was improvised – brilliantly – by Johnson, on a
spectacularly prepared piano (not only the classical Cage bits of
metal and wood, but also a network of wires strung from the ceiling).
After a long first half that was like Stockhausen on speed – something
of a marathon for both pianist and listeners – the rewards came as
Johnson began to use varying slabs of texture and changes of tempo,
culminating in a galaxy of attacks  mixing standard and altered tones.
A tour de force, never to be heard in quite the same way again.

VECTOR WELLINGTON ORCHESTRA – whatever the weather……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Vector Wellington Orchestra Summer Concert

Soloists: Aivale Cole (soprano) / Benjamin Makisi (tenor)

Footnote Dance Company

Kate Mead (Radio New Zealand Concert) – presenter

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 6th March, 2011

As comedian Michael Flanders, of “At the Drop of a Hat” fame, might have said, “If the gods had intended us to listen to music outdoors, they would never have given us weather!”. Such was the case on the weekend, when, to the intense disappointment of all concerned, the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s annual family concert sortie to the grounds of Government House had to be relocated to the Michael Fowler Centre. The smaller indoor venue meant that many ticketholders had to get their money refunded, although those of us who were lucky enough to have a transferable seat found ourselves still able to collect our picnic hamper, whose contents we sampled while pretending to be enjoying a beautiful day, sitting on dry grass, in the sun or under trees, watching the rest of the company doing the same. The ritual enabled something of the occasion to be salvaged (everything incredibly well-organised, I thought), while the wonderful music-making generated by singers, orchestra and conductor did the rest. So, despite the privations, it was a great success.

Again the Wellington orchestra’s management was able to demonstrate that, when something special was required to fit an occasion, it was delivered with aplomb (by contrast with some of the promotional efforts from the “other” orchestra in town, whose energies seem hardly to spill over from concert platform activities), inviting the Governor-General and the Wellington Mayor to speak at the concert, and properly “place” the event , albeit in its amended form. There might, actually, have been one speech too many, at the start, with the event’s raison d’être – the music – being, as it were, kept waiting in the wings a little too long. But the show’s compere, Kate Mead, of Radio New Zealand Concert, quickly put us at our ease and prepared each item with whimsical descriptions of the music’s contexts, and “humanizing” figures like the all-too-fallible Antonio Vivaldi of the “Four Seasons” fame, with stories of his being censored by his superiors for his “unpriestly” activities (some things never change…..).

Concerts such as these tend to go for the “instant appeal” repertoire, of which, naturally, there’s a marvellous store, especially in opera – interesting, really, that so many people regard the latter as a relatively “closed-book” kind of art-form, yet hugely enjoy the “great moments” upon contact. But also, making a world of difference here, were the singers, soprano Aivale Cole and tenor Benjamin Makisi, both in fine voice and having a wonderful theatrical ease and spontaneity on the stage, separately and together. As for the support from orchestra and conductor, the accompaniments were of a piece, by turns full-throated and exquisitely atmospheric – a particular joy was Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma”, with Makisi’s nicely-focused tones borne aloft on diaphanous veils of floating instrumental sound, everything deliciously delicate and wind-blown. Perhaps the orchestra’s reduced numbers helped, here (I counted just four ‘cellists, for example), of a scale comparable with that of the average orchestral band in the “pit” of an opera house. What these players achieved with conductor Marc Taddei in places was spell-binding, considering they were in the same space as the singers, rather than in the recesses of “the womb of Gaia” (as Wagner called the orchestral pit). Admittedly, the reduced sound-scale didn’t help things like Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours”, which seriously lacked “grunt” during the final Galop, but fortunately this wasn’t typical.

It was a nice idea to run the three “La Boheme” exerpts together from Act One (again, the “big moments” – two arias and a duet, with the only unimportant casualties being the interjections of the offstage Bohemians), allowing Cole and Makisi plenty of theatrical as well as musical expression – while they were both impressive, I thought Cole freer, more easeful vocally, and still with something in reserve, even with the cries of “Amor!” at the end – fortunately, the largely non-opera-going audience broke off their premature applause to allow the singers these final off-stage vocal ecstasies! Earlier, Aivale Cole had demonstrated her versatility in Gareth Farr’s “Aoraki”, contributing a soaring vocal line to the largely traditional ambiences of karanga, were and putatara, supported by a typically rhythmic orchestral background. Apart from one audible Michael Laws-like comment from an audience member at the very end, not far from where I was sitting, this work got an enthusiastic reception, as did the same composer’s “Sea Gongs”, later in the program. Well, as American baseball coach Connie Mack once said, “You can’t win ’em all!”.

Dancers from the Footnote Dance Company contributed to two items. They performed rather more effectively to Tchaikovsky’s lovely Waltz from the opera “Eugen Onegin”, where the ‘ballroom swirling” was nicely captured, than for Vivaldi’s “Summer” from the “Four Seasons” (a brilliantly-played solo from concertmaster Matthew Ross), their movements I thought somewhat out-of-sync. with the music in places. The orchestra generated much more fire with Berlioz’s “Le Carnival Romain” (a nicely-phrased cor-anglais solo) than with Ponchielli, the players inspired by Taddei to produce surges of tone and flashes of brilliance as required. Again, the singers shone, Aivale Cole capturing the magic of a couple more famous operatic moments, Catalani’s “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from “La Wally”,  and “Vissi d’arte” from Puccini’s “Tosca”; while Benjamin Makisi brought the caddish aspect of the Duke of Mantua from Verdi’s “Rigoletto” to life, tickling the sensibilities of the audience to perfection with his insinuations. And if Cole didn’t quite “nail” the fiendishly difficult penultimate note of the same composer’s “Sempre libera” from “La Traviata”, she could take comfort from knowing that many famous sopranos have also failed to totally convince at that point.  The “Brindisi” (Drinking Song) from the same opera brought the full-throated best out of both singers, a few impromptu waltz-steps from Cole and Makisi throughout the “chorus bits” again delighting the audience, and bringing an immediacy to the music’s context.

It remained for the old warhorse, Tchaikovsky’s Overture “1812”, to round the music off, which was done in quite spectacular, if unintentional fashion, when the second bass-drum player (brought in to simulate the cannon-fire at the piece’s climax) lost his grip on the drumstick at his first thunderous whack, sending it spinning across the back of the orchestral platform, to the risible delight of the audience! Wisely, I think, Marc Taddei had removed the repetitions of some of the music’s material in the middle of the piece, so that the actual battle came sooner than was expected. What astonished me was the weight of tone that the orchestra produced in places, so that nowhere did we feel sonically compromised or sold short in excitement. And the hapless percussionist who had lost his stick made up for the couple of entries he had missed while retrieving his implement by thundering away with extra vim and vigor at the height of the victory celebrations, earning himself a special accolade for his efforts at the music’s conclusion!

Wellington’s music in 2011 – our ‘Coming Events’

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

It is timely to remind you about the musical services offered by Middle C.

We have recently been loading into our ‘Coming Events’ details of all concert series and individual concerts being presented in the Wellington region in 2011.

Though we remain ready to add any that we have overlooked or that have not been drawn to our attention.

St Andrew’s Concert Series
In particular, we should highlight the St Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts that will take place between 10 and 20 March. It is a reprise of the series that Richard Greager and Marjan van Waardenberg presented last year alongside the International Arts Festival. Its impulse was the continued failure of the International Arts Festival to provide modestly priced lunchtime concerts which had been such an important part of the festivals from the very beginning in 1986, fading out through the late nineties.

Even though this is not a ‘Festival’ year, it was obvious that a regular series was the best way to establish a musical tradition that opened Wellington’s musical year in a striking manner. The ten concerts this year are in the evenings at 7.30pm with a 3pm concert on each of the two Sunday afternoons.

For full details of the programme, beyond what is in Coming Events in Middle C, go to http://thestandrewsseason.blogspot.com/

All the concerts

All the main concert series throughout Greater Wellington will be found here: from the NZSO and the Vector Wellington Orchestra, the opera, and Chamber Music New Zealand to the Mulled Wine concerts at Paekakariki, the new Tuesday lunchtime series from Expressions at Upper Hutt, as well as their evening series, the chamber music series at Waikanae and Lower Hutt and the Ilott Theatre Sunday afternoon concerts, as well as organ series at St Paul’s Cathedral. And not forgetting the many choral concerts though so far not all have been finalized. We look forward to being advised of more details as they are confirmed.

The major performances in the coming month include the NZSO playing Mahler’s fourth symphony on 25 March and Bach’s St Matthew Passion on 10 April. The Eggner Trio in the Town Hall on 24 March and the Wellington Orchestra’s first concert in the Town Hall on 16 April, with Borodin’s second symphony; and the Bach Choir singing two interesting French choral works with France-based organist Christopher Hainsworth.

For Christchurch

As well as the organ concert on Friday evening at St Peter’s Church, Willis Street, which remembered three members of the South Island Organ Company who had restored the church’s organ recently, and who were killed in Christchurch when the Durham Street Methodist Church was destroyed as they were working on its organ, there will also be a concert by The Tudor Consort at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on Monday at 5.30pm for the benefit of victims of the earthquake.

Menage a Trio – relishing the contrasts…

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CONTRASTS

Aram Khachaturian – Trio (Ist Movement) / Bela Bartok – Contrasts

Charles Ives – Largo / Paul Schoenfield – Trio

Menage a Trio : Julia Flint (violin) / Anna Coleman (clarinet) / Chris Lian-Lloyd (piano)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Wellington

Saturday 5th March, 2011

Menage a Trio’s combination of violin, clarinet and piano vividly and triumphantly presented both contrast and fusion throughout an enterprising program. This was the Australian group’s second Wellington outing, a little better attended than the first the previous evening. A pity, as such playing as we heard on the Saturday evening deserved far more widespread appreciation.

Beginning with just a single movement of the Khachaturian Trio, the group straightaway established the music’s exotic colour and flavor, those evocative chordal clusters on the piano bringing forth a soulful response from the clarinet and a beautiful sinuous line from the violin, capturing the work’s opening ebb-and-flow character. And how beautifully the players reversed the roles of clarinet and violin, the clarinet quixotic and decorative in its figurations and the violin soulful and intense. The Trio readily brought out the music’s volatile undercurrents besides relishing its heartfelt, folky atmosphere.

With Bartok’s Contrasts, the work that gave the concert its name, the players again took us right into the music’s world, the opening pizzicato blues of the Verbukos (the so-called “recruiting dance”) with its near-cabaret rhythms, piano tintinabulations and splendid clarinet cadenza acquainting us well with the character of the instrumental interactions. Bartok’s title for the work reflected the composer’s attitude that the instruments didn’t really belong together – he wrote the piece for two prominent instrumentalists, clarinettist Benny Goodman and violinist Josef Szigeti, each part emphasizing great virtuosity, while underlining the differences between the instruments – hence the title “Contrasts”. Even so, the first few minutes of the Pihenö (relaxation) movement features beautifully interactive instrumental textures, evoking one of the composer’s nocturnal scenes with the surest of touches, the playing here etching the sounds onto the aural scenario with the utmost sensitivity.

The last movement was something else, complete with a mid-music change of violin, the composer directing that at the start of the movement the violin’s lower string be raised half-a-tone to G# and the top string lowered to E-flat, creating a tuning effect known as scordatura, one common in European modal folk-music. The player reverts to a normally-tuned instrument after thirty or so bars; but the effect at the outset was striking, not unlike the opening of the second movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with a fiddle tuned higher than usual. It launched a proper “Danse Macabre”, with a whirling dervish aspect, conveyed with plenty of visceral impact by these musicians (echoes of the “Concerto for Orchestra” in places). A wistful, folk-flavoured central episode gradually took on a hallucinatory fire-siren aspect, out of which sprang madcap gallopings, a full-blooded violin cadenza, and exuberant shrieks from all participants, the players and their instruments dashing towards the music’s destiny amid exhilarating swirls of sound, the Bulgarian folk-rhythms adding to the excitement of it all.

Charles Ives’s Largo survived its transition from an intended, then rejected violin sonata movement to enchant us in these musicians’ hands – a dreamy, contemplative opening allowed firstly the solo violin ample opportunity to rhapsodize (difficult passagework giving rise to a strained touch in places), and then the clarinet, the latter proving a galvanizing force, goading the music into various volatile juxtapositionings, until the violin returned to call things to order and draw forth processional chordings from the piano, the dying fall of the music sweet and valedictory – a lovely performance.

The “dark horse” of the program for me was a work by the American-Jewish composer Paul Schoenfield – a Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano. Inspired largely by Hassidic worship, the composer wanted the music to reflect the celebratory nature of Hassidic gatherings, as well as generate an exotic appeal to classical audiences. Though drawing from the work of Klezmer Bands, the music’s high-octane energies and cutting edges impart a somewhat frenetic performance aspect that might well have left most traditionalists reeling. Right from the galloping opening, punctuated at the pauses by heartfelt glissandi and rumbustious pianistic energies, the music never let up, the first movement’s closely-argued convolutions tightening all the more throughout a final breathless accelerando, again very excitingly played. A portentous march-like opening to the second movement featured a mournful, almost drunken clarinet supported by equally doleful violin-playing, the piano, with flailing arpeggiations keeping the beat going, the players seeming to relish the grotesqueries, screeches, slurs and all – totally absorbing.

The atmospheric Nigun movement, the most meditative part of the work, was set in motion by the clarinet alone, the violin’s answering figurations rather like the impulses of two landmarks in a desolate landscape, with the piano supplying the Bartok-like night-sounds. Without a break the players plunged into the exhilarations of the finale, whose beating heart drove the music into and through celebratory rituals of both circumspection and abandonment, the last couple of pages releasing surges of energy – altogether, a demanding work, but one which these young Australian instrumentalists excitingly made their own throughout.

In Memoriam: organ restorers remembered at St Peter’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Organ recital to remember three members of the South Island Organ Company killed in Christchurch on 22 February.

Paul Rosoman, Dianne Halliday, Richard Apperley, Michael Fulcher

St Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Friday 4 March 5.30pm

Only two weeks after the inaugural concert for the restored organ at St Peter’s three of those who had worked on the project were killed on their next assignment, the organ in the Durham Street Methodist Church in Christchurch; this extremely beautiful church built in 1864, called the “Mother Church of Methodism” in the South Island, was totally destroyed.

One has to hope that the focus of the city’s recovery will quickly start to dwell on the vital importance of rebuilding the city’s most important and beautiful buildings. If Dresden and Warsaw and many other war-wrecked cities of Europe could take their time to restore the physical element of their spirit, calmly and determinedly, so can Christchurch.

Four Wellington organists took part; a fifth, Douglas Mews, was unable to participate as he was overseas. Paul Rosoman opened the programme with Bach’s Partita on ‘O Gott, du frommer Gott’, BWV 767, unfamiliar to me. It was one of Bach’s earliest organ works, a set of variations rather than what we now understand as a partita. Its solemn opening of the Lutheran hymn on the pedals made an imposing statement, though it is alleviated by more lively, and light-spirited sections as it progresses.

Dianne Halliday followed with Lilburn’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor, subtitled ‘Antipodes’ of 1944 sounded uncharacteristic of Lilburn. In fact, being unable to see the organists who slipped unobtrusively from a door beside the console, I wondered for a while whether I was listening to the Herbert Howells piece that Richard Apperley was scheduled to play. None of the familiar Lilburn melodic and rhythmic ticks were there, and it seemed as if the composer, dealing with an instrument that till then had no significant body of New Zealand music, placed himself almost entirely in the hands of English organists of the first part of the 20th century. Nevertheless, its weight and its evident accomplishment made it a particularly valuable contribution to the concert.

Her second piece was Bach’s ‘Schmücke, dich o liebe Seele’, BWV654.

Richard Applerley played Howells’s Master Tallis’s Testament, beginning in a state of calm but slowly creating a remarkable and portentous essay during which the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and the west-facing stained glass, after which the sound subsided. For me it was a moving discovery.

And he followed it with Théodore Dubois’s ‘In paradisum’ a spirited, somewhat insubstantial (in the best sense) and glittering piece.

Michael Fulcher concluded the concert with Franck’s Third Chorale, all three from his last year, 1890. My pleasure in Franck may be driven by an all-embracing franc(k)ophilia which withstands the deprecations of unLisztian and unFranckian friends. I greatly enjoyed Fulcher’ rendering, with its shimmering opening, its impressive contrapuntal progress and its final triumphant ending.

I had missed the inauguration of the restored instrument and relished this chance to hear it put through its paces in a good variety of music. It sounds admirably in tune with the church’s acoustic and in both its loudest and quietest moods produces sounds that are beautifully right. The reed stops caught my ear for their unusual, slightly nasal character, but they seemed in perfect accord with the charmingly decorated pipes and the meticulously restored wooden case.

All donations were sent through the Red Cross to help with their work in Christchurch

 

Brio Vocal Ensemble imports the USA for a St Andrew’s lunchtime.

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and items from Sweeney Todd (Sondheim) and Candide (Bernstein)

Brio: Janey MacKenzie (soprano), Jody Orgias (mezzo), John Beaglehole (tenor), Justin Pearce (baritone) and guest singer Michel Alkhouri (bass baritone)
Piano: Robyn Jaquiery

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 2 March, 12.15pm

This was my first lunchtime concert for the year. It was a good start with a moderate sized audience. The performances were well presented and conveyed their dramatic qualities as well as is possible in a well-lit church with the sanctuary as backdrop and religious symbols as props.

Usually St Andrew’s is an acoustically friendly place, for chamber music by both strings and winds. Often, the piano is treated well though on occasions when a mat of some sort has been put beneath it, the sound has been less clangorous that when it is played with the lid fully up and standing on polished timber. Robyn Jaquiery’s playing of the accompaniments was admirable, though there were times when the sound lay too heavily on the singers.

I sat downstairs during the Sweeney Todd pieces and found it hard to catch words and was uncomfortable with the combination of voices and piano, so I went upstairs for the rest of the concert. There, voices were clearer and the words a little more understandable, but the hard reverberation was still troublesome.

Five very contrasted voices were involved: Janey MacKenzie’s soprano is agile and warmly lyrical, and she gave one of the few agreeable items in Sondheim’s opera a fine showing, and she was charming as Cunegonde in the happy waltz duet in Candide; as her partner, John Beaglehole portrayed the naive Candide with comparable affection and warmth.

Jody Orgias has an unusual voice which I happen to like but its heavy texture does have its limits in the interpretation of some characters. But she acts splendidly and she had a good deal of convincing work as Sally in A Hand of Bridge and in ‘We are easily assimilated’ from Candide. Justin Pearce too has a voice with certain limitations, and they made for a properly disturbing Sweeney, as well as good contributions in ensembles in Candide.

The guest artist was Michel Alkhouri (of Arab descent, growing up in Marseille) who had made his mark at Baron Trombonok in Il viaggio a Reims in the Opera in a Days Bay Garden last December. He opened with a striking scene-setting role in the Ballad of Sweeney Todd and was perfectly cast at Dr Pangloss in Candide.

I have to say that I find Sweeney Todd the most disagreeable theatrical piece I have ever seen and never want to be exposed to it again; it is currently fashionable to allow Sondheim as the Broadway composer most accepted by the classical world, perhaps because of the paucity of his melodic invention; I am not among his fans.

The other two works, however, are most worthy. A Hand of Bridge was interestingly done by the erstwhile Wellington Polytechnic Conservatorium of Music a couple of decades ago; though very short and very slender in content, it works musically and dramatically. And Candide is simply a brilliant, musically rich little masterpiece which deserves a full production in Wellington.

Oh, for our own professional opera company!

The Tudor Consort opens season at the Carillon

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Music from the Sistine Chapel

Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652): Missa ‘Che fa oggi il mio sole’
Felice Anerio (c.1560-1614): ‘Regina caeli laetare’; ‘Ave regina caelorum’ Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521): ‘Domine, non secundum peccata nostra’
Cristóbal de Morales (c.1500-1553): Andreas Christi famulus
Palestrina (1525-1594): ‘Assumpta est Maria’

The Tudor Consort, conducted by Michael Stewart

National War Memorial

26 February 2011, 7pm

The National War Memorial is a venue that the Tudor Consort has used a number of times over its 25 years. This concert was a free one for 70 or so subscribers who attended, to open its 25th anniversary season.

While not quite the Sistine Chapel, this little chapel has a handsomely decorated interior, has superb acoustics for unaccompanied voices, yet is not too reverberant, and is an appropriate size for a small choir – though it has to be said that when in full flight, the Tudor Consort was a shade too loud at times. Some choir members wore (subtle) red with their black, in tribute to those who died and have suffered in the Christchurch earthquake. Michael Stewart announced that the choir would put on a benefit concert for earthquake fund soon.

Most of the items were sung with 14 voices, while one (the Josquin) used only eight. Michael Stewart’s short introductions to the items were informative without overloading us with information. The concert lasted approximately 75 minutes – a good length for this sort of music; longer, and the ear might have become wearied.

The Allegri Mass, like most of his extant music written for the Sistine Chapel Choir, of which he was a member, was broken up to be interspersed between the other items in the programme. The Credo was not sung.

Right from the opening Kyrie of the Mass, attack was excellent, phrases were beautifully shaped, and most of the parts were full-toned and wonderfully varied. In the early part of the program there was a rather metallic sound somewhere in the sopranos in the upper register.

The Gloria presented waves of lovely sound washing over us. The tonal and dynamic contrasts included a soft ‘you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us’: exquisite delicacy in contrast with the robust, muscular bass singing that followed. The texture was almost always well balanced.

Anerio was a priest-composer who wrote for the papal chapel. His ‘Regina caeli’ demonstrated a more complex style than that of Allegri. For these two items the choir moved to singing antiphonally, as two choirs facing each other on opposite sides. The music brought out some of the very rich voices in the choir, as it contrasted homophonic with polyphonic passages to give an extraordinary effect.

The Sanctus and Benedictus of the Allegri Mass revealed perfect tuning from the choir, and superb cadences.

Josquin, the Flemish composer, spent many years at the Sistine Chapel, and his music continued to be sung long after he died – not something that was common at the time. His piece performed by the choir was written for Ash Wednesday, and was appropriately pure and subdued. The choir was reduced to eight singers for this item.

‘Domine, non secundum peccata nostra’ opened with only the two altos and tenor, whose singing was very fine. This was remarkably smooth and restrained singing, yet there was plenty of sonority and volume when required.

The ‘Andreas Christi famulus’ of the prolific Spanish composer and member of the papal choir, Cristóbal de Morales, was full of lavish sounds, especially at the cadences. The audience luxuriated in the intertwining chords and contrapuntal lines flowing ever onward.

The Allegri Agnus Dei was exquisite; very dramatic, yet graceful and elegant.

Palestrina’s tenure as a choir member was short-lived; he was married, and a change of pope from Marcellus who appointed him in 1555 meant that the rules were more strictly applied, so he had to go. His hymn to Mary featured wonderful word-painting. It was much the most declamatory, confident and exuberant of the items. The confident music was matched by the confidence of the choir, who produced a full, extravert tone throughout, with florid, contrasted dynamics.

The building’s resonance had a curious effect: the pitch of the reverberation was always slightly sharper than the note just sung – only noticeable at the end of items – rather like the effect when a car, train or other vehicle sounding its horn passes one; the pitch after it has passed is higher.

It was a concert of uplifting music, sung with verve, energy and conviction. The choir reached a high level of achievement and professionalism.

Further to the review of Lewis’s Winterreise in Nelson: surtitles

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

My review of the recital at Nelson at which Keith Lewis and Michael Houstoun performed Schubert’s Winterreise had overlooked what I felt at the time to be a major innovation: the use of surtitles. I have now inserted the following paragraphs in my review of 9 February.

“First, I should note an innovation that sets an admirable precedent for voice recitals: the projection of surtitles. Occasional whines are still heard about them in the opera house though I have been a wholehearted supporter from their first appearance in the late 80s. If there are plausible objections to their use in opera, however, there can be none in the recital. The decision was made to not include the words or translations in the programme, to avoid the interrupting rustle of collective page turning and the dispiriting vision, for the artists, of audience heads down during the performance. In recital, eyes do not need to be constantly on the stage watching movements, gestures, expressions; nothing is lost by raising the eyes to read the words. And the surtitle screen was of ideal size, allowing easy reading of full translations in images that were very clear.

“At the end of the concert booklets containing full German and English texts were distributed. The whole process was handled with great care and thoughtfulness.”

NZSO Soloists wind players delight

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

R. Strauss: Serenade in E flat major, Op.7
Josef Bohuslav Forster: Quintet in D major, Op.95
Beethoven: Octet, Op.103
Franz Krommer: Partita in B flat major, Op.78
R. Strauss: Suite in B flat, Op.4

‘Wind Power’: NZSO wind soloists, with Gordon Hunt, oboe and conductor

Michael Fowler Centre. Saturday 19 February 2011, 8pm

It was delightful to hear unusual music from the wind ensemble made up of players from the wind sections of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.  Flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons (including contra-bassoon) and French horns all had their spot in the limelight.  To hear ensembles varying in size from five to thirteen players was also a novelty. This was quite a light programme, suitable for a warm summer evening.

Yet while this concert was not symphonic, it also was not chamber music in the ordinary sense.  Some of the music played was designed for performance outdoors, while some would be more suitably performed in a smaller venue than the Michael Fowler Centre.

The mixture of well-known and lesser-known composers was interesting, but it would have been more so if, instead of two works by Richard Strauss, there had been some other work from a different period.  Or we could have had an airing of some New Zealand composer’s music for small wind ensemble  Ken Wilson’s quintet, for example.  My colleague Peter Mechen discovered that there are 47 wind ensemble works by New Zealand composers.

Strauss’s Serenade features beautiful sonorities.  The opening is Mozartian, and there are many memorable melodies.   The work employed 13 players: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, one contra-bassoon and four horns.  It was conducted by Gordon Hunt.  Quite light in tone, the piece could have been the overture to an opera.

Forster was not a familiar name to me; his dates of 1859 to 1951 make him an almost exact contemporary of Strauss, but his music is quite dissimilar.  The four movements produced delightful timbres and interweaving parts.  The ensemble was excellent in this quintet  one player each of the instruments employed in the previous item, with the exception of the contrabassoon.

This was not profound music, but entertaining, and skilfully set to provide good balance and contrast between treble and bass instruments.  A sprightly opening allegro, an uncomplicated and folksy third movement scherzo and a jolly ending were features.

Beethoven came next  not his Septet, although only seven chairs and music stands were provided, making bassoonist David Angus feeling he was optional extra, when he had to hustle up the necessary furniture, so as to provide the Octet with its full complement: two oboes (one was Gordon Hunt in both this and the Krommer after the interval), two clarinets, 2 bassoons and two horns.

This was uncomplicated music written to accompany meals; in other words, tafelmusik (table music).  It was tuneful, cheerful and charming, and was performed superbly.  The third movement, minuet and trio, featured lovely pianissimos; one hopes the diners’ conversation and their wielding of cutlery were not too loud for them to appreciate them.

The presto Finale was fast and lively, and quite taxing on the instruments.  It would have been even more so on the wind instruments of Beethoven’s day.

Following the interval there was a surprise additional item.  Gordon Hunt played a solo oboe piece, written for him by British composer Andrew Jackman.  Google reveals little about this composer: he was born in 1946 and died in 2003, and featured mainly in the popular music scene.  This composition was highly entertaining, indeed amusing.  It was called ‘Circus’, and its three sections (played continuously) were Ringmaster, Elephants, Clowns and Acrobats, as Gordon Hunt explained prior to his performance.  The last section was the longest, and was marked by obvious ‘wrong’ notes  apparently the clowns would not learn to play their parts properly.

Hunt proved to be an immaculate and amazingly flexible musician on this instrument, not the easiest to play well.  He demonstrated the great range an expert player can coax from the instrument, and was able to communicate the humorous, piquant fun of the piece.  His breath control was, well, breath-taking.

Franz Krommer was a contemporary of Beethoven, and if the Partita was anything to go by, his music is well worth hearing.  It was scored for 9 players: two oboes, two clarinets, 2 bassoons and contra-bassoon, and two horns.  The work opened with a charming dance-like allegro. The third movement adagio was most attractive, with its melodies and harmonies, especially those for oboe. Here and elsewhere one was aware of the astonishing variety of tone that Gordon Hunt achieved on his oboe.

The presto Finale was notable for the clarinet writing.  It was lively, even bucolic.  However, by this stage I was beginning to tire somewhat of the sonorities and timbres of the wind instruments, and could have used some strings to provide contrast and subtlety.

The final item was a Suite by Richard Strauss, for 13 players; the same configuration as in the first Strauss work.  It was conducted by Gordon Hunt.  I did not find this as attractive a work as the opening Serenade.  It was certainly more complex and intricate than that piece, and more of a concert work.  Horns were prominent, but all the instruments’ tonalities were splendidly exploited.

After quite a lengthy Praeludium, the second movement was a gorgeous Romanze, with many dynamic changes.   As happened a few times elsewhere in the concert, initial entries were not always absolutely together.  However, it would be difficult to find any other failing in the playing of this or any other of the works.

The fourth movement was dense and not, for the most part, melodic.  Perhaps its exuberant mood made up for this.
The worst thing about the concert was the small size of the audience.  Do people not like chamber music or wind music?  Was the programme too unfamiliar?  Perhaps a Mozart Serenade or some other more familiar work might have attracted more people.  Though the NZSO has ceased providing senior rush tickets, there are concessions for Gold Card holders, and also for those aged 30 and under, so one hopes that many more people will be attracted to the rest of the year’s concerts.

Though not large, the audience greeted the music enthusiastically.