Sibelius Festival 2009 – Pietari Inkinen and the NZSO

TAPIOLA / SYMPHONY NO.2 (SIBELIUS)
DON QUIXOTE (R.STRAUSS) – with Gautier Capucon (‘cello)
Friday 18th September

SYMPHONY NO.3 / SYMPHONY NO.6 / SYMPHONY NO.7 (SIBELIUS)
Saturday 19th September

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra : Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Was it a previously undiscovered ‘cello concerto by Sibelius that made an appearance right in the middle of the orchestra’s festival of the composer’s music? – alas, no! any rumours of there being a work which had somehow survived the self-critical silence of Sibelius’s last thirty years turned out to have no substance. The “cello concerto” was by the Finnish composer’s almost exact contemporary, Richard Strauss – and it wasn’t really a ‘cello concerto at all, more of a concertante work in the form of themes and variations for solo ‘cello and orchestra, with significant soloistic contributions from both viola and violin. What was it doing in one of the Sibelius Festival concerts? – Peter Walls teasingly answered a query along those lines at a pre-festival talk involving him, Pietari Inkinen and Vesa-Matti Leppanen, by saying that it was there because Sibelius never wrote a ‘cello concerto. But the orchestra had engaged French cellist Gautier Capucon to tour a programme featuring one of the Sibelius Symphonies, and Tapiola, as well as Strauss’s magnificent tone-poem Don Quixote, the concertante work.

One could have complained about this on several counts, one being that we were deprived of hearing a couple of Sibelius’s other tone-poems which could have easily filled up the concert’s spaces had the Strauss not been played. In fact, another of the problems of organising the concert was that the first item, Tapiola, wasn’t really a suitable work with which to begin the evening  – it’s too terse, austere and uncompromising a piece to set upon an audience first time up. We could have instead had En Saga or Pohjola’s Daughter, or even, as an alternative, the Four Legends, all of which would have more successfully “tuned the audience in” at the outset.

However, we would have been the poorer had Gautier Capucon not made an appearance at the concert with his performance of “Don Quixote”– not only did Strauss’s music make for a fascinating comparison with his Finnish contemporary’s (worlds apart from Sibelius’s quintessential nature-work Tapiola), but the music’s performance was outstanding. The orchestra played with a brilliance in places that was richly satisfying to experience, as was Capucon’s own complete identification with the title-role. He seemed to “live” the part of Don Quixote, expressing as much with his face and body-language as with his playing, constantly engaging and interacting with the first violist (representing Sancho Panza), the concertmaster, the conductor and the rest of the orchestra – a true piece of music-theatre. With these players in charge, the old story came to life, the music no longer having need of words to express Don Quixote’s knightly delusions.

Despite my reservations regarding Tapiola as a concert-opener, Sibelius’s masterful tone-poem was given an impressive performance, the playing readily conveying the work’s bleak austerity and dark foreboding, if underplaying the last ounce of raw savagery which depicts nature at its most elemental. I wonder whether Pietari Inkinen was simply too refined a spirit and elegant a musician to push the music to the extremes that are sometimes called for – I recall for example his mellifluous but oddly undercharacterised performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique earlier this year, where the same strictures seemed to apply. What impressed most here was the tension generated between strings and winds, the rhetorical opening exchanges building up a dark, brooding quality, and the tightly-focused quicksilver dialogues readily suggesting fairy laughter amidst the prevailing gloom. But for me the picture remained tantalisingly incomplete, with the brass entries towards the end having insufficient snarl and bite to evoke the forest god’s baleful presence, the dry-ish MFC acoustic perhaps partly to blame here, for the lack of ring and presence.

In the pre-concert discussion Peter Walls had remarked on Sibelius’s Second Symphony resembling a kind of detective story, with the composer sprinking clues throughout the first movement as to the nature of the whole. Inkinen and the players contributed to the compositional sleight-of-hand by keeping the opening movement moving, the strings allowed just a little room to breathe within their phrases, their warmth and richness actually making the horns sound somewhat lack-lustre in comparison. I thought the brass-writing throughout the symphony was hampered by the hall’s lack of resonance, the antiphonal calls throughout the second movement in particular having little atmosphere and spaciousness. Even so, the “mountain-tops” sequence in the same movement worked its magic, with the beautifully-played solo trumpet nicely supported by strings, winds and horns. The brass  brought out the music’s epic character with powerful chording and magnificently-controlled crescendi, a perfect foil for the answering poetry of the strings, with their “big tune”. I wanted more whirlwind recklessness from the strings with the third movement’s vivacissimo, but Inkinen and the players generated plenty of excitement in the build-up to the finale, the strings singing almost crazily throughout, and the winds making the most of their “journeying” tune on its first appearance, as did the rest of the orchestra with a magnificently-delivered build-up towards the final peroration, the brass at the end giving all they had.

And so to the final concert the following evening – three rarely-played symphonies in a single evening making a treat for Sibelians and an intriguing prospect for the uninitiated. Fittingly, I thought the concert the best of the series overall, though my judgement could well be impaired by a particular fondness for the works presented. The pieces represented the composer in different guises, classicist, polyphonist, visionary, nature-poet and epic adventurer, each symphony sharing some of these aspects but having its own strongly distinctive character. Part of the success of the evening was due to Inkinen and the orchestra bringing out that special identity held by each work, with the Seventh Symphony making a fitting climax to it all.

The Third Symphony presented the strongest possible contrast with the Second the evening before – here were restrained orchestral textures and cleanly-conceived classical lines, the voices balanced and poised throughout. Inkinen got his first movement string polyphonies to bubble over beautifully, their effervescence building up nicely to the point where the strings and winds reintroduced the opening theme with a roar and a swing; though I felt the true climax of the movement came in this performance with the “giant’s strides” of the timpani and lower strings leading away from the brass crescendo and through hushed vistas towards the ritualistic hymn-tune with its wonderfully conclusive “Amen”. The slow movement had an enchanting “other world” ambience throughout, with winds and then strings in characteristic Sibelian thirds, contrasting nicely with brilliantly melismatic recitatives from the winds in the movement’s more animated episodes. The finale’s opening pastoral playfulness featured some adroit rhythmic dovetailing from strings, winds and muted horns, before the grand processional of the final theme suddenly appeared, winningly introduced by the ‘cellos, and spreading across the rest of the strings, the different textures making for an ear-catching effect as the power and momentum of the music increased – glorious playing from all, right up to the end.

There’s an “other-world” quality about the Sixth Symphony which some people find elusive and even puzzling. Despite what seemed like a less-than ideally poised beginning from the strings, the vibrancy of the playing quickly regained the ground, the music’s timeless aspect unfolding as inevitably as the lines of a great renaissance polyphonic motet, the horns calling forth the dancers at the string-saturated climax, led by the harp’s dulcet notes and the winds’ first energising steps (how could anybody not respond to such music?)…..the slow movement similarly hinted at a parallel kind of perfection, the winds ringing the timbral changes with great point, especially the oboe, the music’s stillness-within-the-bar beautifully caught. Horns made the most of their off-the-note accompaniment, the music at once lyrical and plangent and full of character, building towards the inevitable climax and release-point with marvellous spontaneity – at the end, the elfin swiftness of the strings’ figurations transformed meditation into dance with the surest of touches.

In an ideal world I would have requested more assertiveness from the brass in the scherzo movement, though the players found more of a voice for the final flourish. And had I been Inkinen I would have again encouraged my brass and excellent timpanist to play out even more in the finale, though each of the irruptions had more weight and snap than the previous one, so that the cumulative force of the last outburst had something of a proper cataclysmic effect, if falling a little short of the  glimpse into the abyss. Inkinen and the orchestra made amends with the epilogue, the string phrases filled with visionary fervour, and everything impulsive and heartfelt, as the music seemed at one and the same time to suggest eternities while turning and glancing homeward once more. If not of unalloyed greatness, this was music-making of something approaching the highest order.

Almost straightaway, the epic, questing Sibelius was returned to us with the very first phrase of the Seventh Symphony – the NZSO’s playing had both breadth and forward impulse from the opening ascent of the strings, through the hymn-like sonorities of its opening section, and to the first of three great trombone solos, sometimes characterised by commentators as great peaks rising from a continuous mountain range.  Inkinen took his time and allowed the music to unfold, with the dancing figures evoked by timpani, strings and wind, through the skitterish play of the elements and into the rolling orchestral juggernaut of strings and timpani that prepared the way for the trombones’ second appearance, here magnificently supported by the rest of the brass, the strings tumbling and skirling with the winds after the heavy batteries had shut down. Nobly heroic horns and graceful string replies led to tricky cross-fertilisations of rhythms and motifs – Inkinen and the orchestra right on their toes throughout this section, generating excitable interactions from which grew the final trombone solo, big and imposing and lovely, with strings arching upwards and bringing tensions to fever-pitch. A shout from the brass, a cry of anguish from the strings, and the crisis passed – in the MFC it seemed as though human angst had spent itself and nature was reassuringly drifting back to its place of pre-eminence.

At the end there was applause, prolonged and heartfelt, from those of us who had witnessed Pietari Inkinen’s and the NZSO’s wondrous Sibelian journey in concert. At this point I couldn’t help thinking that some kind of ritualistic public acknowledgement of the undertaking, perhaps from some representative of the Finnish government (what about the New Zealand Government?), or even a prominent Finnish person resident in New Zealand, would have added significance to the occasion. Apart from the pre-concert discussion on the festival’s opening night, there was precious little else visible to people to help suggest that the orchestra and conductor were doing something out of the ordinary. There were no displays featuring Sibelius, Finland and things Finnish that I noticed, no flags, national costumes, photographs, art-prints (what about those beautiful Kalevala illustrations familiar to those of us who buy recordings?), and certainly no groups performing Finnish songs or dances in the MFC foyer beforehand – things that would have added colour and interest and distinction to an event described as a “festival”. Really, it was all left to the music and the musicians, whose commitment to the cause brought forth magnificent results; and whose efforts were not yet done –  several recording sessions involving these same symphonies had been scheduled for during the coming week. If the recordings manage to capture something of the excitement of what we heard on the festival’s final night, they will be a series of sound-documents well worth waiting for.

Sibelius Festival – 2nd concert: Symphonies 1 & 4

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos 1 and 4

Michael Fowler Centre, Thursday 17 September

The second of the four concerts in the NZSO’s Sibelius Festival drew a much smaller audience than the previous night, with its Finlandia and the Violin Concerto. Old story: a soloist is essential to the box office.

But because this one contained the Fourth Symphony – and the First too, which is far from merely journeyman work – and because it was played with such vision and spellbinding build-up of tension at its climaxes, this was the best of the four concerts.

I would have reversed the order of the two symphonies, because the profundity of the Fourth would have been my choice of music to carry away and to ruminate upon during the following hours.

The music to go home with was left for the First Symphony, which is a splendid work, already showing clear marks of the fully mature composer. It has been fashionable to denigrate it by hearing Tchaikovsky and others in parts of it – yes, Wagner, Schumann, too if you want – but such pursuits are usually profitless.

After all, you might argue (I would) that if you can’t hear a composer’s antecedents at least in his early works, then he is a phony, has not learned his trade.

It is simply the first great symphony (if we overlook Kullervo and the Lemminkainen Legends) on the journey of a genius, and fortunately, Inkinen sought to discover and rejoice in its strengths and its character, building tempi and phrasing in ways that best reflected those strengths, as well the overall architecture of the distinct phases, movements and the whole.

It was replete with the immaculate and expressive playing of the soloists, from the shimmering strings and the trembling clarinet of Patrick Barry [I have been corrected, having assumed, unable to see from the stalls, that it was principal, Philip Green, who did contribute at other stages]  at the opening, that immediately lifted the spirit in anticipation of a great and moving performance. At once, it can be no one but Sibelius: then bassoons and the fuller wind assemblage and Laurence Reese’s arresting timpani.

The opening of the second movement is already true Sibelius, its big rhetorical voice beautifully uttered by low woodwinds, and solo cello, magnificent in its calm. The horns over tremolo strings, a hint of Siegfried’s forest murmurs that are no longer of Wagner.

Not only does one have to remind oneself of the high virtuosity and expressive refinement of each of the wind soloists, and string principals, as they emerged, but also to wonder at the miraculous ensemble that the whole achieves. Though I do not pretend to be a student of the recorded archive, listening recently to a couple of examples has demonstrated the superb quality of the NZSO.

The Fourth invades territory that is new to Sibelius. There are sounds early in the first movement that presage the spirit of Gorecki; more use of cellos and basses than elsewhere; instead of warm woodwinds we have attenuated sounds from cellos and basses and clarinets and oboes that produce narrow, textureless sound.

Though there is a lighter spirit in movement 2, which is vivace, coloured by flutes and oboes, the symphony’s proper character returns in the third movement, long, introspective, with pauses, with protracted phrases that rival Bruckner. At its end I wanted no more. I felt this might have been Sibelius’s Bruckner 9, unfinished yet complete. In some perverse way, even though the performance was utterly persuasive, I have always wondered if the last movement is merely to meet conventions, not true to the work’s real essence.

Like most people, when I first heard the Fourth, let’s say forty years younger than I am now, I simply thought, in spite of the quiet dancing in the second movement and the lift in the last, that it represented a low point in Sibelius’s life, and I could hear only a troubled soul. I would have been immensely sad if I had died before reaching an age when I think it one of the most beautiful creations in music. And this performance, from a young man at whose age I was still unready for it, was the most profoundly moving of the entire festival.

Sibelius Festival: No 5 and Violin Concerto

The Sibelius Festival: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Vesa-Matti Leppännen (violin)

Sibelius: Finlandia, Violin Concerto, Symphony No 5.

Michael Fowler Centre, Wednesday 16 September

When the 2009 NZSO season was announced I sensed certain misgivings in some people who wondered if a Sibelius festival was really such a good theme, and if it would fly.

Yes, we had a talented young Finnish conductor whose reputation, we gathered, was growing fast overseas; and a Finnish concertmaster who’d make a pretty authentic fist of the violin concerto. But typically in New Zealand, I continued, and continue, to hear certain carefully phrased reservations. It seems not to be possible that another orchestra, in a country like New Zealand might have found a young conductor who was doing himself and his orchestra a power of good; like a Simon Rattle making the Birmingham orchestra equal to the best in Britain, and a Maris Janssons raising the Oslo Philharmonic to international rank, or perhaps Andris Nelsons who’s now in charge of Birmingham (notice: two Latvians? A smaller country than New Zealand). Can’t happen here?

A couple of Naxos CDs of Sibelius have won high praise, but for many people, that’s not important; Naxos isn’t Deutsche Grammophon is it?

Personally, I’m much more sanguine.

In the first concert, I sat middle stalls, not where I sit very often, and it was wonderful. Finlandia began, with its portentous rhetoric flowing from the sonorous body of strings, the weight supported magnificently by the basses and cellos. They breathed deeply, overflowing with Finnish national passion, turning to a quasi-religious hymn that sustained this most emotional of national musical poems.

It was the obvious way to start the festival and certainly, on that first evening, it seemed to me a great idea. (Which is not quite the same as being a commercial success).

Though I heard the expected comments about the soloist in the violin concerto, egos noting that there were weaknesses and asking why we could not get a big name to play the piece. But this was a Finnish show, Inkinen and Leppännen are friends and the latter is not only an excellent orchestral concertmaster, but a considerable soloist.

In fact Leppännen’s performance was, in most ways, extremely fine, and whether it was just sentiment on my part, I sensed real empathy between violinist, conductor and orchestra. The opening passages were sheer magic from both orchestra and soloist, conjuring a dim Arctic light through tremolo strings. His extremely refined pianissimos were sheer magic and there was no remaining calm during the well-planned climaxes in the first movement.

The orchestra’s double bass section has, perhaps through the leadership of Hiroshi Ikematsu, become a force to reckon with, creating a dense luxurious sound that can never be excessive. This concerto can use a great deal of that quality, particularly in the second movement, and it was deeply satisfying. There were, I suppose, signs of tiredness, slight flaws in scales and arpeggios in the last movement, but far more important was the feeling of complete artistic unity that drove the work with such emotional power.

The Fifth Symphony has become the most popular. Compared with the hushed, wintery opening of the Concerto and the deeply meditative hymn in Finlandia, the Fifth is summer time. This performance was so carefully prepared, with an ear to the most careful balances, yet suggesting happiness, though not perhaps, an unbridled joyousness.

Bassoons make themselves felt here as much as heard, and their passages, over shimmering strings, were memorable. The second movement curiously betrays its origins in the mid-century symphonists, but Sibelius takes command with characteristic wind symphonies that the orchestra played with all their usual refinement and warmth.

If I had any disappointment, perhaps it was with the handling of the emergence of the thrilling ostinati that drives their way through most of the last movement. Inkinnen seemed to have judged the rate of acceleration and of the crescendo correctly enough but, as with the performance of No 2 on Saturday, that longed-for sense of impending climax didn’t take hold of me early enough. Perhaps it’s age.

Lunchtimes in Wellington churches

1 Organist David Trott for lunch at Old St Paul’s

A recital of popular classics on the organ

Tuesday 15 September

Lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s and St Andrew’s on The Terrace have taken on certain characteristics. While St Andrew’s has tended towards the more serious repertoire, catering for those whose interest in classical music is reasonably wide, Old St Paul’s seems to aim, at least some of the time, at the popular end of he spectrum.

David Trott’s organ recital was a good example of the latter. There was no printed programme and he introduced each piece in a friendly, casual tone, laced with anecdotes that sometimes had less to do with the music than with his own musical life.

If his selection was not entirely familiar, it offered no challenges. Generally they were well suited to the light, attractive registrations available on the church’s organ; such as the piece by 18th century organist and pedagogue Michel Corrette that employed a glockenspiel-like stop, and popular Bach pieces – Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (‘Jesu bleibet meine Freude’) from Cantata 147 (Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben) and the Air from the Third Orchestral Suite (‘On the G String’). These suited the instrument and its player admirably; but less successful was his little arrangement of the main theme in the last movement of Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony which demands far more dramatic weight that could be found here.

Trott played a distinctly odd-ball arrangement that combined elements of the Water Music and the Royal Fireworks music; his treatment of Pachelbel’s Canon went overboard with changes of registration in almost every bar: perhaps it was intended as a spoof.

Checking first that there were no priests present who might take offence, Trott played Mendelssohn’s splendid War March of the Priests from his incidental music to Racine’s Athalie. It used to make a regular appearance on programmes like Dinner Music at 6pm on the old YC network of my youth; its dramatic harmonies sound so good at the organ and though, again, a grander organ would have made it more exciting, it came off, nostalgia giving it an extra burst.

2. New Zealand School of Music voice students at St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 September

I missed the first four items in the St Andrew’s concert next day from the vocal students at the New Zealand School of Music: It meant that I didn’t hear either Laura Dawson and Sophie Kemp who did not sing again later. The rest exhibited admirable features.

Rachel Day has a voice that projects well, but her Richard Strauss song ‘Ich trage meine Minne’ needed greater refinement of tone and dynamic control, and those were the qualities that most of the singers still need to acquire.

She returned later to sing the Jewel Song from Faust, where she conveyed the giddy excitement, ‘hitting’ the notes but missing the interspersed lyrical touches.

Bridget Costello did well to sing the ‘Pie Jesu’ from Fauré’s Requiem, managing dynamic variety well though the piece demands more polished legato singing. She sang a song by John Ireland, Spring Song, with a more reined-in voice, some delicacy and carefully displayed emotion.

Bryony Williams tackled a long aria from The Creation: ‘On Mighty Pens’. It was a strong, convincing performance, showing her dramatic sense and a reasonably controlled top, but her voice wearied towards the end. She balanced that with the rather sentimental Elégie by Massenet (it’s from the incidental music, for cello and orchestra, to Leconte de Lisle’s play Les Erinnyes).

Bianca Andrew won marks for choosing an aria from Barber’s Vanessa (the opera that Kiri Te Kanawa made her mark in a few years ago) ‘Must Winter come so soon?’. She returned to sing the big coloratura aria ‘Non piu mesta’ from Rossini’s La Cenerentola, preceded by the recitative ‘Nacqui all’affano e al pianto’; she moved about sensibly, sang at a reasonable pace and so got all the notes; Emma Sayers’s lively pulse at the piano contributed delightfully.

Kieran Rayner sang three items, each with Emily Mair at the piano. First, Strauss’s ‘Ruhe meine Seele’, which impressed me, though I only caught the last of it; then Ashley Heenan’s arrangement of the sea shanty ‘Lowdown Lonesome Low’ (familiar to radio aficionados in Donald Munro’s performance). It’s a challenge to bring off such songs without embarrassing artifice and Rayner has the personality to do it convincingly, varying the tone and using dynamic variety with intelligence.

He was given the honour of bringing the little concert to an end with the aria he sang in the Wellington Aria contest in August, ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ from Thomas’s Hamlet; not perhaps the therapy that a psychologist would recommend, but Rayner made an excellent case for it.

Young Musicians Twelfth Annual Concert with NZSO players

Michael Monaghan Young Musicians Foundation

Twelfth annual concert, conducted by Peter van Drimmelen and Kenneth Young

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday 13 September

It had been announced some time before the concert that this one was the last under the current arrangements; arrangements that began in 1996, with the formation of a trust to remember an NZSO violinist, Michael Monaghan, inspired by violist Peter van Drimmelen, with the first of the annual concerts in 1998.

They have consisted of performances by eight secondary-school, and occasionally younger, musicians, accompanied by players from the NZSO and others. All concerned have given their time free while other costs have been met from supporters and sponsors.

Peter van Drimmelen has been the driver throughout and he has decided that now is the time to withdraw from the project.

Before the final item on the programme, several people spoke: Ian Fraser, a former CEO of the NZSO, Chris Finlayson, Minister for the Arts, who spoke of the importance of the enterprise and its achievements, and finally the Education Office of the NZSO told the audience what it had expected to hear: how the scheme was to carry on.

Deserved praise went to Peter van Drimmelen.

In brief, it is being taken over jointly by the NZSO Foundation and the orchestra itself and it will be expanded to provide comparable activities in other centres.

The Foundation’s remaining funds will be handed to the NZSO Foundation.

Though it would be reckless to claim that standards of performance have improved out of sight, it might not be altogether wrong. I can remember earlier concert in which there were several very impressive performances but one or two that didn’t quite measure up.

This time all eight reached a very high standard, with the last two, cellist Lucy Gysbers and violinist Julian Baker, giving particularly polished performances.

Whether by chance or by a certain amount of tweaking the selection, the concert formed a satisfying programme. The opening piece was a most successful choice – French flutist/composer Benjamin Godard’s Valse, a delightful blend of Straussian Vienna and Offenbachian Paris in a showpiece for the flute in which Jae-Won Um displayed a sure instinct and played attractively.

In the slow movement from Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, and in several subsequent pieces, the roguish acoustic of the cathedral took its toll; though probably not so bad from the front seats, at the rear, bass sounds were unduly exaggerated. Sometimes it created an interesting effect that was not too out of place; at other times, in parts of the Sibelius, the orchestral bass instruments weighed heavily on the violin. With the benefit of a very warm-toned violin Chikako Sasaki got inside it successfully.

Sophie Rose Tarrant-Matthews played the last movement of Beethoven’s third Piano Concerto, again subject to an overbearing acoustic, but strikingly musical; her dynamics and her easy and natural phrasing, avoiding rigid rhythms, were always obvious.

Asaph Verner was even more tested by Ravel’s big orchestra, rich in high woodwinds and percussion, in the first movement of his frightening Concerto in G. Balance between the piano and the orchestra was again hard to achieve, but a fine, brave talent was conspicuous.

The second half was devoted entirely to stringed instruments. Claude Lily Tarrant-Matthews (was this a first, with two siblings among the chosen?), only 11 years old, gave a surprisingly mature performance of the slow movement of Mozart’s third – G major – Violin Concerto. She took it slowly but made full use of that opportunity to explore its lyrical beauties.

Benjamin Pinkney was the only player to tackle a New Zealand piece: Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Concerto, first movement. An interesting work, but it was difficult to assess the performance because of the stridency of high woodwinds and the distraction of too much going on in the orchestra to the detriment of the viola’s role.

The middle movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto was played with considerable accomplishment by Lucy Gysbers. Though soloist and orchestra found balance difficult, her playing was confident and very musical.

Finally a little-heard Violin Concerto by Kabalevsky was the choice of Julian Baker. He played its first movement, something of a showpiece, happy and boisterous in fine Soviet style, with good grasp of its style, unostentatiously yet with flair.

There was perceptible relief at the concert’s end from the audience on the announcement about the programme’s continuity. While there are still enormous deficiencies in the teaching of music in schools and simply in exposing children to classical music, this initiative goes some small way to redressing the shortcomings. May it flourish now, and nationwide.

Chorus And Keys – Festival Singers with Organists

CHORUS AND KEYS – Festival Singers and Wellington Organists

DVORAK – Mass in D Major

Works by PURCELL, SWEELINCK, MATHIAS, MENDELSSOHN and J.C.BACH

Festival Singers

(Rosemary Russell, director)

Soloists: Clarissa Dunn (soprano) / Rosel Labone (m-soprano)

John Beaglehole (tenor) / Kieran Raynor (baritone)

Organists: Paul Rosoman, Jonathan Berkahn, Judy Dumbleton

Church of St.John’s in the City, Willis St., Wellington

Saturday 12th September 2009

This was a concert devised by Wellington organists and the Festival Singers to present music which combined the sounds of voices and organ. Similar concerts with the same forces have been held in the past during the annual “Organ Week” festivals, but 2009 being the 50th Anniversary of the Wellington Organists’ Association, this became a special occasion, celebrated in fine style with performances of a variety of music from different times and places.

I wondered at the very beginning whether the word “birdsong” ought to have been added to the concert’s title, as the first sounds we heard were those of the kakapo, the haunting and evocative notes allowed to resound in the spaces of St.John’s in the City for some seconds before organist Paul Rosoman began his first item, Jan Sweelinck’s attractively melancholic set of variations on a old German tune Mein junges Leben hat ein End. This manuals-only work imparted a charming, chamber-like feeling, though a brilliant trumpet stop invigorated one of the variations excitingly. Voices provided a contrast with the next item, Purcell’s well-known anthem Rejoice in the Lord Always, featuring soloists Rosel Labone and Kieran Rayner, blending their voices characterfully as they exchanged attractive antiphonal episodes with the chorus. Both soloists and chorus made sonorous and strongly-focused contributions throughout, the former at the reprise of “Rejoice”, while the latter produced a stirring impact at their final massed entry.

If the J.C.Bach “Organ Duet” Sonata showed neither Paul Rosoman nor Judy Dumbleton at their best (perhaps through nerves and/or lack of rehearsal time), each made amends with a solo performance afterwards – first, Paul Rosoman gave a powerful reading of Mendelssohn’s Allegro, Choral and Fugue, the imposing toccata-like opening alternating great rhythmic drive and sinuously-wrought chromatic progressions, before relaxing into a major key in a way entirely characteristic of this composer (it would never have done for “Old Bach”, whose music Mendelssohn revered above all other, but whose musical sinews were obviously made of sterner stuff). The subsequent Chorale and Fugue were strongly characterised, with plenty of tension and sharp focus, before the music was triumphantly brought home in splendid D Major. For her part, Judy Dumbleton gave an exhilarating and open-aired reading of Eugene Gigout’s E Major scherzo, with reedy timbres and hunting-horn echoes to the fore, the playing not note-perfect, but with just the right amount of joie de vivre. The trio section particularly delighted us, the rhythmic phrases skipping along and jumping between registers, and managing to get the last saucy word in after the Scherzo’s brassier timbres had returned.

After the interval came the Dvorak Mass in D Major, a work I’d not previously heard, and an absolute charmer. The music began with a “Kyrie” whose lilting, lullaby-like accents built to more stirring utterances, leading to the “Christe” in which soprano Clarissa Dunn beautifully interwove her lines with that of the choir.

Throughout, the energetic triumph of the “Gloria” was splendidly directed by conductor Rosemary Russell, and featured some nice solo work at “Domine Deus”, with Kieran Rayner particularly sonorous at “Qui tollis peccata mundi”. In the “Credo” I liked the deceptively gentle altos-only beginning, with the whole choir bursting in at “Patrem omnipotentem” to great dramatic effect, as were the exchanges between choir and soloists at “Deum de Deum”. More lovely singing from Kieran Rayner, as well as from alto Rosel Labone, brought true mystery and reverence to “Et incarnatus est”, helped by beautifully reedy organ tones from Jonathan Berkahn’s playing. A harsh, confrontational “Crucifixus” was brought off with great strength of purpose, while tenor John Beaglehole supplied plenty of heroic energy in “Et ascendit in caelum”, the choir a shade shaky with the fugal writing at “Et iterum venturus”, but bringing it together well at “Cujus regni”. More good work from altos at “Credo in unam sanctam” and tenors with their “Confiteor unum baptisma” brought us resoundingly to the repeated and majestically-delivered final cries of “Amen!” at the Credo’s end.

The “Sanctus” which followed featured some lovely work in thirds by the women, their high lines leading surely to the celebratory “Hosannas”, and contrasting nicely with the rapt and reverential tones of the “Benedictus”, the organ again reedy and atmospheric, the choir sustaining the tones well (women a little more securely and surely than the men), and relishing the return of the “Hosannas” with glorious and vigorous outpourings of tone. The “Agnus Dei” gave the soloists further chances to shine, the tenor leading the way with nicely lyrical, suppliant petitionings, echoed by the altos and sopranos from the choir, and joined by soprano Clarissa Dunn with some beautifully-floated high notes. As for the concluding “Dona nobis pacem” it was beautifully managed here, the minor-to-major modulation nicely brought off, and the hushed choral entries giving the work an appropriately valedictory feeling at the close.

Not programmed on paper, but included as an item in the concert as a (somewhat specious) “filler” between the 19th and 20th centuries was Britten’s organ piece “Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria”, introduced and played by Jonathan Berkahn. Despite its brevity, the music made a big and imposing overall impression in Jonathan Berkahn’s hands, with majestic tones at the start, spiced by some glorious dissonances, and followed by a nicely processional fugue which explored contrasting bell-like sonorities and different rhythmic patternings through to a gradually receding conclusion. After this, the festive irruptions of joyful sounds occasioned by William Matthais’s setting of Psalm 67 “Let the People Praise Thee, O God” brought the concert to an exuberant conclusion, the Singers enjoying the Walton-like rhythmic syncopations of the writing as much as the celestially floated unisons of the music’s more luminous episodes. A great and celebratory way to end a concert.

Wellington Orchestra and Houstoun in Beethoven 4

Tangazo (Piazzolla); Piano Concerto No 4 in G (Beethoven); Symphony No 104 in D ‘London’ (Haydn)

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei with Michael Houstoun (piano); dancers from Footnote Dance

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 12 September 2009

The fourth in the Wellington Orchestra’s subscription series continued the orchestra’s theme of combining the symphony with dance and movement. An imaginative enterprise but it presents quite surprising aesthetic problems.

The concert opened with an interesting dance piece by Astor Piazzolla, perhaps the only Argentine composer many classical music followers have heard of. His fame rests on taking tango music into the concert hall, taking its essence and subjecting tango rhythms and melodic motifs to classical techniques.

The piece began with basses and cellos playing slow, sonorous, elegiac ideas, soon picked up by violas and violins in quasi-fugal fashion: it might have been Tchaikovsky or Mahler. As it proceeded dancers came up the aisles and sat on chairs on stage.

When tango music emerged, one of the dancers rose, the female in scarlet, making arching, long-legged, tango-style gestures as she stalked across the stage. Unfortunately, neither the male nor the other female quite matched her command of the idiom; and one kept hoping that some arresting, authentic tango would develop; it didn’t quite happen.

I did not envy the dancers, called on to perform on a bare stage, without scenery or props, dancing to music that had really been gentrified, turned into polite concert music, stripped of most of its essential sensuality. Theatricality was missing.

What followed was an entirely different matter.

Michael Houstoun’s presence throughout this series of Beethoven piano concertos has certainly been the key to their success. His playing, again, was immaculate, finely shaped and with discreet dynamics and rhythmic flexibility. It was perhaps too discreet for the orchestra to pick up for after the piano’s famous opening, the orchestra didn’t quite prolong and develop the musical features that were implicit in those phrases, but when the piano re-entered the temperature rose subtly. The first movement cadenza thus proved a particularly engrossing phase.

The slow movement could well be called merely an Intermezzo, but it is of singular beauty and the orchestra judged its character and scale with great sensitivity. This was an excellent collaboration between piano and orchestra, creating a wonderful stillness, a stylish sense of occasion.

The size of the orchestra will be defended on ‘classical’ grounds; this is so, but the smaller the band, the more testing are matters of balance, absolute unanimity in the string playing and in blending of winds and strings. While it may have been better to defy ‘classical’ strictures a little and risk a few more strings, the whole performance, embroidered by very fine wind playing, again reinforced how important it is that this orchestra be maintained at good strength and in good morale. .

Usually the London Symphony seems one of the weightiest of the 12 that Haydn wrote for his two London visits. If this performance didn’t present it as of quite the grandeur of Mozart’s last three, for example, that too may have been a question of orchestral size.

Conductor Taddei changed the orchestra’s string seating for the symphony: from the left, first violins, violas, cellos, second violins, and it offered a subtly better sound picture.

After the somewhat less than monumental Adagio introduction, the Allegro itself gained stature as it got into its stride; there was energy and vivacity. The Surprise-Symphony-like fortissimi in the varied Andante were effective, as was the woodwind quartet that adorns it and Taddei knew how to dramatise the quirkiness of this typically off-beat Minuet and Trio and to keep interest alive throughout the novelties of the last movement.

There was a pretty full house, if one ignored the scattering of empty seats in the stalls. It’s a pity that the quality of the seats in the stalls – too close together – encourages the audience to sit in remote parts of the gallery.

Guitars at Old St Paul’s Lunchtime concert

Guitar music by Andrew York, Radames Gnatali, Brahms, Piazzolla, Paulo Bellinati

Wellington Guitar Duo (Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty)

Old St Paul’s, Tuesday 8 September 2009

The guitar is not, perhaps, an instrument that you think of as devotional, adapted to what you do in a church. In fact, however, the delicacy and subtlety of this string instrument sits very comfortably in a fairly small church, especially one with such architectural and historic beauty as Old St Paul’s. The guitar, after all is a close relative of the lute and its keyed descendants such as the clavichord, harpsichord or spinet.

To its disadvantage is the relatively small repertoire of music of more than a century old, and the dominance of much of its recent repertoire by Hispanic dance music, not to mention the universe of popular music. We are not used to thinking about guitar music as being as important or as valuable as that of instruments more central to western European music tradition.

So it is common to fortify programmes with arrangements of acknowledged classical pieces: on this occasion the candidate was the Andante, Theme and Variations movement from Brahms’s String Sextet, Op 18, one of his best loved works, and music that, through John Williams’s arrangement, sounded extremely well on two guitars, overlooking those parts in which your mind’s ear longs for the low sonorities of a viola and cello. Its gently shifting harmonies seemed to be just what a sensitive guitarist would choose, though a repeated accompanying figure became monotonous in the fourth variation.

The programme of Christopher Hill and Owen Moriarty began with a piece by United States composer and guitarist Andrew York. His Sanzen-in was inspired by the ancient temple and garden in Kyoto which, with gently syncopated rhythms in common time, evoked a past but not perhaps a Japanese past; the flavour was generalized Latin rather than Asian.

The rest of the programme was of South American music: by two Brazilian composers, Radames Gnatali (two pieces from his Suite Retratos) and Paulo Bellinati. Gnatali was born in 1906 in Porto Alegre (get out your atlas) and his four movement Retratos was composed in 1956 and arranged by the composer for many different solo instruments and ensmbles . The beguiling waltz, Ernesto Nazareth, recalled music like Granados’s Valses poeticos, with its attractive rubato and dreamy character; the second, Chiquinha Gonzaga, presumably named for a musician friend, exercised the two players’ rhythmic dexterity.

Bellinati’s Jongo ended the recital. Written in 1978, using one of the many Brazilian dance rhythms, it has become a standard in the guitar repertoire, and the duo’s performance was highly accomplished.

There were two very contrasted pieces by the famous Argentinian, Astor Piazzolla (which Christopher Hill explained he had transcribed from a recording because of difficulty in obtaining scores – one hopes, not just to avoid paying royalties). One, Zita, was one of his characteristically elaborate and complex tangos where one admired the players’ ensemble through the spiky, unpredictable rhythms; the second was Whisky, and indeed created a feeling of happy disorientation.

A programme of this kind made me aware both of the riches that the past half century have brought to the guitar repertoire and the depths of (at least my) ignorance of the world of Latin American music, apart from the few obvious names. Would it have been a good idea to have used a recital like this to elevate this music, by its presentation, to the status of a comparable recital of European classical music, with documentation in the shape of informative programme notes about the composers and the music?

It seems a shame to perpetuate the impression of guitar music, and Latin American music generally, as light-weight and not worthy of musicological attention, by not offering background material of interest to a (let us assume) musically cultivated audience such as comes to these concerts.

 

Keeping the piano recital alive – Stephen De Pledge

Stephen de Pledge – Piano Recital at the Town Hall

Music by Beethoven, Debussy, Mayerl, Brahms,
Psathas, McLeod, Harris, Prokofiev

Wellington Town Hall, 8th September 2009

It had to happen, sooner or later – a piano recital at a major Wellington venue, the Town Hall, no less (the event graduating from the Ilott Theatre presumably by dint of weight of public interest, even though the Town Hall galleries were closed to the public). The artist was Stephen De Pledge, one of New Zealand’s finest pianists, presently on a nation-wide Chamber Music New Zealand tour. There’s an opinion afoot that piano recitals don’t attract as much public interest as do other musical events, a disturbingly blinkered sentiment which, if given enough currency, could do a lot of harm in the wrong quarters. Imagine a situation where concertgoers were thus deprived of regular opportunities to hear “live” a sizeable body of the Western world’s greatest and most significant music!

Some of this music was presented with admirable aplomb and considerable sensitivity at Stephen De Pledge’s Town Hall recital on Tuesday evening. The very cosmopolitan programme spanned a number of centuries and covered a variety of styles, attitudes and emotions – if Stephen De Pledge seemed more at home with some of the pieces than with others, his presentations were always expertly crafted and constantly thought-provoking.

I thought his Beethoven classically restrained and elegantly gradated, perhaps a bit too mellifluously delivered to convey the “Pathetique” Sonata’s full revolutionary force – his sinuous keyboard sheen gave the fiery allegros in the outer movements more of a Mendelssohnian feel, though in the first movement he scored points with his “back to the very beginning” repeat (which I had never heard done before), and the charged quality with which he invested the dramatic pauses and silences that abound in the music. His sensitivity brought an almost coy reticence to the slow movement’s great theme, less a case of “strong men wiping away silent tears” than an inwardly-expressed delight. The minor-key middle section was lightly etched, again sensitive and intimate almost to a fault, never singing full-throatedly, but content to delineate the delights of order and serenity. Again, the finale, though it had moments of almost Lisztian brilliance such as just before the main theme’s recapitulation, was notable here for its order and restraint, reminding us that the composer, for all his revolutionary impulses, still lived in an aristocratic age.

Before continuing with the Debussy Stephen De Pledge spoke to the audience, as he continued to do throughout the recital, in this case offering some thoughts regarding the contrasts between Beethoven and the music he was about to play.  He had only to touch the first few notes of Reflects dans l’eau from Debussy’s Book One of Images to convey to us his absolute identification with the composer’s sound-world – all the limpid textures and colours of the music were captured in an enchanting sound-web of suggestion. The Hommage à Rameau which followed was a beautifully wrought fusion of antiquity and timelessness, while the final Mouvement tripped the light fantastic with bell-like cascades of light at once singing and shimmering, the music’s extraordinary “layered “quality realised to the full for our delight. The two Billy Mayerl pieces which followed brought to our attention the work of a classically-trained composer and performer who sought fame playing the popular “syncopated” music of the age, but whose music is informed with all kinds of “serious” influences. Stephen De Pledge charmed and lulled us with the graceful melodic elasticity of Shallow Waters, before whirling us along a madcap Railroad Rhythm faster than any British Rail passenger would have expected to go, complete with raucous whistles and clattering point-changes, the disappearing juggernaut saluting the exhilarated traveller with a farewell whistle at the end.

The second half was launched with Brahms’ two Op.79 Rhapsodies, played at times with almost elfin textures, more sinuous and lean than is often the case with performances of this composer’s music. If I occasionally wanted more girth and melodic glint in the big moments, I appreciated the playing’s remarkable poise and control, with many new things brought out in the accompanying figurations. The pianist then “placed” the three Landscape Preludes (taken from a set commissioned by De Pledge from a number of New Zealand composers) as a central oasis of calm between the storms and stresses of the Brahms and Prokofiev items. I loved John Psathas’ Lisztian explorations of harmony and texture in the first Prelude “Sleeper”, and felt that De Pledge similarly brought out both the detail and drama of Jenny McLeod’s West Coast evocation, and the essential solitariness of Ross Harris’s A landscape with too few lovers, a meditation on worlds which have only remembrances.

Concluding the recital as scheduled was Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata, one of the “War Trilogy” works, and sounding suitably confrontational in Stephen De Pledge’s hands. His treatment of the first movement I thought more anxiety-ridden than savage, bringing out the music’s intermittent dark lyricism in between the fiercer episodes, and articulating the contrasts with great command of detail. The slow movement’s sombre beauty nicely flowered, the pianist bringing out the orchestral quality of the writing in the impassioned middle section, before drawing the remains together for reassuring words of comfort at the conclusion. The finale took no prisoners, its three-note motto hammering the toccata-like argument home, De Pledge moving from elfin lightness through sinuous strength and steely brutality towards a breathlessly cataclysmic climax. Despite his exertions the pianist then gave us a palate-cleansing encore, appropriately another piece of Debussy, The Little Shepherd from Children’s Corner, by turns animated and wistful, and as with the Book One Images, magically recreated.

The Aroha Quartet at an evening at St Andrew’s

Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op 54 No 1; Szymanowski: String Quartet No 2, Op 56; Beethoven: String Quartet in E flat, Op 74 (Harp)

The Aroha Quartet: Haihong Liu and Beiyi Xue – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Saturday 5 September 2009

The Aroha Quartet, comprising four Chinese players, three of them in the NZSO, has been around since 2004. I heard what I think was their first public performance, at Old St Paul’s in Wellington, and was very impressed; I have heard them since then and have enjoyed their programmes and their performances. But the group has not really achieved what it might have if the players had been able to devote more time to playing together. They have now suffered a slight set-back with the loss of their cellist Jiaxin Cheng, after she married Julian Lloyd Webber; she has been replaced by NZSO cellist Robert Ibell, an experienced chamber musician, formerly cellist in the Nevine Quartet which has disbanded.

Once again, the quartet put together an excellent programme, of one of Haydn’s less often heard quartets, Beethoven’s splendid Harp Quartet (not for the harp), and Szymanowski’s second; that was the best thing in the concert.

The programme notes comment that Haydn’s Op 54 quartets are ground-breaking and that No 1 is among his most popular. If that is so, I have been neglectful, not having heard it played live before. But it is indeed an adventurous piece: lively, witty, varied, entertaining. I had mistaken the start time – 7pm – and missed the first and some of the second movement; the minuet was highly diverting, never mind an occasional slip, and the players made the finale a thing of teasing boisterousness.

The best known work was Beethoven’s Op 74. Here it was possible, in spite of the absence of the kind of polished ensemble and virtuosity that we are used to hearing on recordings by great quartets, simply to enjoy the frank and disarming enthusiasm that’s so infectious in players like these. If the somewhat startling dynamic outbursts in the open phase of the first movement sounded a bit unconvincing and there was some smudgy ensemble in the Scherzo, all it did was do highlight a musicianship and technical skill that was generally irreproachable; their grasp of the style and intellectual character of the music was of a high order.

It was in the Szymanowski quartet that these talents could best be enjoyed; most of us did not have the sounds of some famous recording in our ears and were therefore more ready to hear what the Aroha Quartet did as definitive. Its shape is unusual, the first and last movements, using folk-like tunes, quieter and more lyrical than the second movement which is marked Vivace, scherzando. The haunting effect of the opening passage, with its muted strings played at the octave, and tremolando violin and viola, caught the mysticism that had entered the composer’s imagination through his involvement with eastern philosophy. All changed in the second movement with a big extrovert melody that suddenly turns assertive, even violent.

Though the repertoire of the string quartet is probably even larger than that of the symphony, so there is no urgency for new works, the Aroha Quartet made a good case for the more frequent dusting off of Szymanowski’s two quartets.