Christmas presents from the NZSO….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Wellington Christmas Concert 2010

Works by Britten, Mozart, Respighi, Handel, Corelli, Reger, Adam, Nicolai, Rutter

Aivale Cole (soprano)

Choir and Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

Paul Goodwin (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 9th December, 2010

Musically, this was a heart-warming “something for everybody” concert, presenting tried and true favorites from, for example, Messiah (fascinating to compare performances with what was heard less than a week previously from the Orpheus Choir and the Wellington Orchestra) along with relative concert-hall rarities like Benjamin Britten’s Men of Goodwill and Otto Nicolai’s Christmas Overture. Almost as rare was Respighi’s beautiful L’adorazione dei Magi, the second of the composer’s Three Botticelli Pictures. Another composer whose works rarely make concert-hall appearances in this part of the world is Max Reger, represented here by two Nativity settings for choir and orchestra.

Despite the musical interest of the program, and the excellence of the performances from soloist Aivale Cole, and the choir and orchestra under Paul Goodwin, I thought the event could have been made a bit more festive or Christmassy. True, the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul Choir and Choristers’ Santa-red robes did give a certain ritualistic air to the proceedings, and Aivale Cole’s spectacular dress with its energetic swirls of resplendent colour-energy was certainly eye-catching. But apart from these visual stimulations, there was nothing done or staged to proclaim the event had any more significance than just another concert. I actually felt sorry for the NZSO players, having to “deck the halls” in public not long after returning from an exhausting whirlwind European tour during which they obviously gave their all, wowing the critics and the audiences alike. One would have thought the orchestra had done enough for the year, and could deservedly rest on its laurels for a bit before facing the new challenges of 2011. But, presumably because it’s the “expected” thing to put on a Christmas concert, the musicians, or at least most of them, were there at the party, giving enjoyable and well-played performances of a mixture of interesting and standard repertoire.

What might have made a difference would have been somebody associated with or representing the orchestra actually welcoming the audience to the concert (and I don’t mean via one of those deadeningly impersonal recorded voice-overs which the orchestra uses to announce each event – was it David Pawsey who in the old days used to come out onto the platform at the beginning, and very sweetly ask us to make sure our cell-phones were turned off?). It’s the kind of thing that conductor Mark Taddei for one carries off with great élan when introducing Wellington Orchestra concerts – if somewhat gauche in effect when overdone, it’s nevertheless great to mark a festive occasion with something out of the ordinary like this. Alternatively, being a capital city, Wellington has no shortage of well-known “personalities” whose talents could be thus commandeered  (the city has a new Mayor, of course, who might have been thrilled to be asked to introduce something at the concert). And though it’s a bit of a hoary idea (but no more so than performing the “Halleluiah” Chorus on such an occasion, I might add), the items could have been introduced by one or two or more of these personalities reading something appropriately seasonal either from Scripture, or from literature. These are very basic “impulse” ideas, but doing something along these lines would have helped engender some extra atmosphere befitting the occasion.

Fortunately, the performances carried a certain sound and sense of seasonal celebration to convey an idea of Christmas, beginning with the Benjamin Britten rarity which I disappointingly missed, thanks to an unfortunate car-parking contretemps! Luckily, a reviewer colleague present described it all for me as “engaging and rumbustious, with a jolly fugal finale, played here by the orchestra with plenty of energy and feeling”. I do wish I’d heard it – apparently it was music Britten wrote for a broadcast of a Christmas speech in 1947 made by King George VI, though without the fugue on that occasion, due to time constraints. Britten never had the work published – whether he didn’t think much of it, or was too taken up with other projects, one can’t be sure – but Men of Goodwill had to wait until several years after the composer’s death before the score was made available by Faber Music.

Soprano Aivale Cole looked and sounded magnificent, even though her first offering, Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate, was truncated – contrary to the programme’s indication, she performed only the work’s opening section (my colleague thought she hadn’t sufficiently “warmed up” for the rest, hence the unscheduled departure from the platform). Next was Respighi’s adorable, orchestra-only L’adorazione dei Magi, an enchanting work, featuring orchestral winds performing miracles of rustic evocation, the strings initially held back, then allowed to interact with the winds to create a sense of wonderment and exultation at the Saviour’s birth. While very much a stylistic jump from this to Handel, Aivale Cole’s re-appearance for “Rejoice Greatly” from Messiah certainly continued the Nativity sequence, even if the singer found some of the downward figurations of the opening a bit breathless and intonation-testing – after the central “He is the Righteous Saviour’,  the reprise of the opening found her voice more settled and confident-sounding. Throughout, Cole’s wonderful diction and “ownership” of the words I found a constant delight, though she changed the unidiomatic “He shall Fe-EED his flock” to “He sha-AALL feed his flock”, about which one couldn’t really complain, especially as we even got some modest decoration of the line at the reprise of “Come unto him”. The Wellington Cathedral Choir and Choristers’ first appearance was at the end of this sequence, with a swift, lithe performance of “His yoke is easy”, the interpretation missing a bit of the ending’s irony with the word “light”, but still all beautifully sensitive and finely-graded.

Corelli’s Christmas Concerto began the second half, the opening terse and snappy, but with a lovely gravity of utterance in the slower section that followed. Donald Armstrong’s and Andrew Thomson’s duo violin work was just one of the outstanding features of a performance whose stylish textures, phrasings and rhythms helped bring the work’s pictorial qualities to life – a gorgeous “Nativity” processional sequence, for example, breathed such sweet and serene air as to make the contrasting allegro section properly “bite” before returning to the opening serenities. In both of Max Reger’s Christmas hymn settings the youthful freshness of the choir’s voices also made an incredibly sweet impression, the second of the two settings in particular allowing both men’s and women’s voices individual sequences, and contrasting the strands excitingly with the vigor of the full choir in the choruses. Otto Nicolai, best known as the composer of the opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, chimed in with a substantial overture-like piece, Christmas Overture, written for what seemed like a very large orchestra, whose size proved the choir’s undoing at the very end. But Paul Goodwin and the players captured the Schumannesque beginning of the work to perfection, with cathedral-like archways of sound, leading to episodes by turns agitated and suffused with the radiance of the chorale “Vom Himmel hoch”, the choir joining the festivities towards the conclusion, but sadly proving too “voice-light” and insufficient in number to make much impression alongside Nicolai’s full orchestral scoring.

Other highlights included Aivale Cole’s expansive and lyrical O Holy Night, whose second verse, sung in Samoan, featured a glorious high note at the end which brought the singer screams of approval at the end – and deservedly so. Again the sweet, youthful choral voices were like balm to the ears in John Rutter’s Shepherd’s Pipe Carol and the same composer’s arrangement of Away in a Manger; while a swift, excitable “Halleluiah” Chorus set one and (almost)all up and on their feet in the traditional manner – a good thing, too, because at the end everybody simply walked off the stage and the applause stopped, and that was it, no recalls, flowers, kisses or anything like that – just as if it was the end of another day in the life of an orchestra…….

Ruth Armishaw sings about songbirds and divas at St Andrew’s final concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

From Sondheim to Swann; songs by Victor Herbert, Sondheim, Jonathan Larsen, A L Webber, Christine McVie, Bock and Harnick, David and Arthurs, Bizet, Puccini, Flanders and Swann 

 

Ruth Armishaw (soprano) with Jonathan Berkahn (piano)

 

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

 

Wednesday 8 December 12.15pm 

 

For the last concert of the St Andrew’s free lunchtime series, a departure from the strict canon of classical music might be permitted. This time it proved especially permissible because of the polish and style that singer and pianist brought to the job.

 

Nevertheless, it’s not easy to bring off songs conceived for smoky bars, cabarets or even musical theatre in the severity of a well-lit church on a bright mid-day, with a stone-cold sober audience. Ruth Armishaw did extremely well.

 

Many critics and music lovers cherish an almost automatic aversion to anything that smells of ‘cross-over’, in both directions, and operating with particular PC force where ethnic music is concerned – in that case, condemnation is one-way, applying solely to the white presuming to sing black or brown music. Ruth Armishaw did not risk that censure.

 

She began with a song made famous by Kiri – ‘Art is calling for me’ from The Enchantress by Victor Herbert. With its feet firmly in the land of operetta, this splendid song suited her operatic voice perfectly and her self-confidence carried its story effortlessly. Its rhythm and infectious, hyperbolic lyrics were vigorously yet subtly backed by Jonathan Berkahn whose contribution Ruth called attention to, jazz or pop music style, half way through the concert. It’s one of the traditions that the classical world could usefully borrow.

 

Though I find Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (musical? operetta?) singularly distasteful, ‘Green finch and linnet bird’ lies charmingly without being besmirched by the gruesome story and Armishaw sang it in a way that made clear Sondheim’s affinity with Menotti rather than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

 

The next three songs came from a range of musical theatre pieces for which she reached for the microphone; her voice, the entire atmosphere, was transformed, not necessarily for the worse, though it’s salutary to recall that till the 1950s Broadway and West End singers sang properly, without amplification. This was crooning.  ‘Come to your senses’ from a show called Tick, Tick, BOOM!, which I’d never heard of, became her rather affectingly; though I could understand few of the words and thus the repetitiveness of the music somewhat outlasted its interest.

 

Andrew Lloyd Webber does little for me, apart from the two or three favourites and so the song from Sunset Boulevard was an empty exercise in pseudo melody, handling trivial emotions: no reflection on the singer!  

 

Her voice in ‘Songbird’ from a Fleetwood Mac album suffered through a too obtrusive piano part.

 

She put aside the microphone for the rest of the programme starting with a song from a 1960s musical called The Apple Tree, unfamiliar to me, but look it up in Wikipedia – sounds attractive. The song was gorgeous, reminding me of my belief that the musical hardly survived beyond the 1960s when rock and the microphone destroyed its charm, musicality, its ability to characterise and tell real stories.

 

After that came the successor song to the Victor Herbert at the beginning: a lovely waltz song from 1912 called ‘I want to sing in opera’ by David and Arthurs (whom, again, I’d not heard of) in which Armishaw’s real operatic voice came through again, rather impressively.

 

That reintroduced opera, naturally, and she sang the Habanera from Carmen and ‘Vissi d’arte’ from Tosca. They were well projected, attractively sung with good dramatic character, first sultry, then piously self-pitying (well, isn’t it?).

 

Finally came a number that surprised me – a Flanders and Swan song I didn’t know! – ‘A word in your ear’. It was another little ironical, singer’s song, this time from one who is aware of her shortcomings, to wit, inability to remember the tune, with carefully faulty pitch to prove it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch enough of the words, a pity in the case of a song by that inimitable English pair of the 1950/60s.

 

’Twas a delightful way to end the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts for 2010 which have again been particularly enjoyable, varied and simply excellent: Wellington is greatly indebted to the church’s generous cooperation and to the unflagging, entirely voluntary efforts of organiser Marjan van Waardenberg.

 

 

Bach Choir returns to homeland in visual and aural feast

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach: Jesu meine Freude, BWV 227; Orchestral Suite no.3, in D, BWV 1068; Magnificat in D, BWV 243

Bach Choir, Janey MacKenzie, Lisette Wesseling (sopranos), Andrea Cochrane (contralto), John Beaglehole (tenor), David Morriss (bass), Chiesa Ensemble, Douglas Mews (organ, continuo), conducted by Stephen Rowley

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Sunday 5 December 2010, 3pm

A programme made up of three well-loved pieces by J.S. Bach was bound to please any lover of baroque music.

Jesu, meine Freude is unusually long, complex and varied for a motet. It is full of the most delicious settings of words, including extracts from Paul’s epistle to the Romans. The word-painting is just superb.

This performance did its beauties justice. After perusing the beautifully produced printed programme and looking in wonder at Stephen Rowley’s colourful garb (perhaps appropriate for Christmas) against the sombre black of the choir, one was hit with the splendid initial impact of the music.

Full-toned, meaningful singing and a fine accompaniment on chamber organ from Douglas Mews and a mainly trouble-free performance full of sensitivity and dynamic contrasts made for a most enjoyable and satisfying experience. The women particularly were splendid, with the men not far behind, though the intonation and entries were suspect at times. This choir suffers from the usual shortage of tenors; those they have at times, unfortunately, endeavoured to make up the shortfall with stridency of tone. Probably a somewhat smaller choir is better for this music.

Nevertheless it was a commendable performance; some dropping in pitch towards the end may have been due to tiredness, since this music is very demanding, with its varied moods an settings. Overall, it was a vibrant, joyful and inspiring performance of some of Bach’s most exquisite music.

The Suite was directed by Douglas Mews from the harpsichord, and featured an orchestra of approximately 21 players. I say approximately, because there were three trumpeters, but only one was identified in the printed programme. I suspect another was Danny Kirgan; the third may have been Tom Moyer.

The extended opening Ouverture was robust and quick; it was followed by the sublime Air for strings only, commonly known as ‘Air on the G string’. The brass returned for the dance movements. With much difficult music to play they were not always spot on, but in the main excellent.

Woodwind featured with delightfully floating phrases, and helped to make the whole amply rewarding.

This was not an original instrument orchestra, but one drawn mainly from the ranks of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. To be baroque in style required a greater lightness, and notes to be a little more separated, at least in this acoustic. Yet it was a joyful and enjoyable rendering of a work we hear too seldom. It was inspired to give the singers a rest with music such as this.

The Magnificat in D was an appropriate seasonal choice. As the programme note stated, in many ways this work anticipates the choruses of the Mass in B minor. The use of orchestra, organ, five soloists and chorus makes it of a similar large scale in terms of performers, if not of length and scope. There are no recitatives, allowing the Biblical words flow without interruption.

The words of the Magnificat, from St Lukes’ Gospel chapter one, are split into nine movements, alternating arias and choruses. The opening chorus ‘Magnificat anima mea Dominum’ is brilliant, firstly from orchestra and then from chorus. It is a splendid declamation, sung here with a good, strong sound. Lisette Wesserling sang the first aria ‘Et exsultavit’ without much expression, and a rather hard, piercing quality in the acoustics of this building. However, her vibrato-less tone would be regarded as suitable for sacred music of this period.

A second soprano aria immediately follows: ‘Quia respexit’, which was sung in excellent style by Janey MacKenzie, with feeling and expression. A lovely oboe featured in the orchestral accompaniment.

A hearty chorus is the fourth movement, ‘Omnes generationes’. The fast tempo and florid writing were managed very well. The bass aria ‘Quia fecit’ was accompanied by continuo only, giving a most attractive effect. Morriss’s tone rich and mellow, but his intonation a little suspect at the opening. This was the only contribution Bach allowed the bass,, but it was a fine one.

Next, the duet for alto and tenor with muted strings ‘Et misericordia’ is full of meditative phrases for both soloists. In this case, the tenor was a little too loud for the alto. A tenor voice will almost always stand out, so there was a need for John Beaglehole to modify his tone in order to blend and match his companion.

The chorus ‘Fecit potentiam’ is quite demanding with its florid writing contrasted with chordal statements. This performance was glorious.

John Beaglehole gave a very hearty rendition of ‘Deposuit potentes’, suitable to the subject of the putting down of the mighty from their seats, with a magnificent orchestral accompaniment.

The ninth movement was ‘Esurientes implevit’, and aria for alto. Its accompaniment was a magical flute duet; while Andrea Cochrane made a lovely job of this, her tone was a little light for the modern flutes. It would have been perfectly satisfactory with the wooden flutes of Bach’s time.

A beautiful, floating trio followed, for the three female voices: ‘Suscepit Israel’. To my mind this is the most beautiful part of the whole work, and the soloists’ treatment of it left little to be desired.

The final ‘Gloria’ began somewhat too legato, and was not as successful as the other choruses, but the orchestra was splendid, ending off in a triumphant manner a most worthwhile concert.

The Bach Choir’s performance was of much better quality than it was the last time I heard them. The church was nearly full, and the audience gave the choir, orchestra and soloists a very warm reception.


Wellington Chamber Orchestra, with pianist Claire Harris, plays Beethoven and Sibelius

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Conductor:  Michael Joel with Claire Harris (piano)

Louise Webster: Learning to Nudge the Wind; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor; Sibelius: Symphony No 2 in D, Op 43

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 5 December 2.30pm

The last of the Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s 2010 concerts followed the normal pattern: Concerto in the first half, symphony in the second and something smaller, perhaps new or unusual to fill out the first half. Often scorned, it’s a recipe that survives because it works pretty well; after all it does not proscribe playing an obscure concerto and an avant-garde symphonic piece of some substance in the second half.

This concert began with a new piece that conductor Michael Joel had premiered in Auckland a few months ago with the St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra. It could be described as a symphonic poem but could hardly be heard as a latter-day descriptive piece such as Strauss or Sibelius might have written.

Though her real job is in medicine, Louise Webster’s orchestral writing is by no means amateur. Though Auckland-based, she had childhood experiences in Wellington and had retained memories of the dramatic weather. She created a well-structured piece that was skilful and colourful, made excellent use of wind instruments to depict a violent storm, and strings for calmer interludes. Fading marimba notes suggested lightly falling raindrops. After a short pause a second tumultuous episode followed, creating a shapely structure that was emotionally satisfying; the calm phase at the end left a lingering feeling of unease.

An amateur orchestra can often bring off a work of this kind with reasonable conviction, because the audience has no template in mind and for the most part, its impact can be strong in spite of a less than immaculate performance. That was certainly the case here.

But it’s much more difficult to satisfy listeners in a thoroughly familiar work such as a Beethoven concerto. So the introduction of the concerto was a reminder of the character of the orchestra; the sound rather unvaried and loud, with little elasticity of rhythm. When the soloist entered her playing too seemed to be without much freedom, though she demonstrated her grasp of the music by drawing attention to the inner lines of the piano part. But the prevailing fortissimo in the orchestra may well have driven her to play under greater tension than she would have in a more accommodating environment.

The second movement was a different story; it was taken quite slowly and the piano’s spirit became meditative and thoughtful. Though there were several very good players in the section, the orchestral winds, in particular, seem disinclined to play softly.

One of the features that improved the sound generally was the placing of the orchestra on the floor of the church, in front of the steps leading to the sanctuary, It meant the brass and the timpani were not confined within the smaller space which amplifies their volume. The balance of the timpani, in front of the chamber organ, with other players was natural and very comfortably integrated.

The slow movement leads straight into the finale without pause. Straight away I was struck by the speed that Michael Joel adopted, which seemed at times to be faster than the Claire Harris wanted, for there were several moments when she seemed to be attempting to restrain the headlong pace. The slower sections of the Rondo however were quite admirable, the strings using light bow strokes along with well controlled staccato playing from the wind sections.

The larger orchestra, with triple woodwinds, four horns, three each of trumpets and trombones, plus tuba, was as prescribed for the Sibelius symphony; however, trumpets and trombones were placed at the back of the sanctuary and the usual problem of loudness emerged again (thank goodness the timpani remained on the floor). But the orchestra acquitted itself very well in this work; the impact at full throttle was often rather exciting, while there were some sensitive and attractive passages, particularly in the slow movement. It began with very seductive sounds from timpani, then plucked basses and cellos. If there were brass excesses again later in the slow movement, and in the scherzo and finale, they were outweighed by much fine string playing – I thought the cellos were particularly attractive. And after the entry of the famous ostinato-type tune that dominates the finale, Joel guided the build-up excellently, leaving the impression of a much more professional orchestra that harboured its forces to unleash an emotionally powerful climax at the end. The audience was thrilled and demanded the conductor’s return several times.

Orpheus Choir and Wellington Orchestra deliver “good tidings” from Handel

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HANDEL – Messiah

Ana James (soprano) / Helen Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)

Keith Lewis (tenor) / Martin Snell (bass)

Orpheus Choir of Wellington

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Michael Fulcher, conductor

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, December 4th, 2010

There’s no doubt about it – nothing brings in people quite like the prospect of hearing a “Messiah”. And, as when one goes to something like a rugby test, there’s a parallel sense of occasion, of impending enjoyment, of expectation that the the experience will truly resonate with an amalgam of the familiar and the freshly-minted. So, there, queued up in lines around at least two sides of the Town Hall were, I suspect, many “Messiah veterans” as well as people who would have heard, one way or another, about the “good tidings”, and come to see and hear for themselves just what it was all about.

The last Messiah I heard was given by a different choir, the Tudor Consort, in this same hall two years ago, the differences in style and interpretation between that and the present approach a cause for endless fascination. I remember then actually sitting in the auditorium behind the conductor of the present “Messiah”, Michael Fulcher, for the Tudor Consort’s performance and wondering what his reactions were to Michael Stewart’s extremely  lean, clean-cut and vigorous interpretation of the whole. Of course I was now ideally placed to glean some of those reactions by dint of the present concert, albeit two years afterwards.

So – again a full hall, the same orchestra, a bigger choir than there was in 2008 (a most resplendent-sounding Orpheus Choir), and a very different line-up of soloists. Madeleine Pierard’s vocal beauty and polish easily stole the show on the earlier occasion, but this time the quartet was far more evenly-matched. Ana James was here a silvery-toned soprano, Helen Medlyn the characterful, dramatic mezzo-soprano, Keith Lewis the lyrical, occasionally heroic tenor, and Martin Snell a commanding, richly-toned bass. Conductor Michael Fulcher took a more traditional approach to the work than we heard in Michael Stewart’s hands, with steadier speeds throughout and more “orchestrated” dynamic contrasts in places, which I thought brought out the music’s grandeur and depth of feeling more consistently.

Of course the “swings and roundabouts” syndrome meant that this time round there wasn’t in places the same knife-edged excitement around and about the textures, and one or two of the choruses seemed to play themselves rather than be infused with fresh energies. But these differences were, of course, for the listener part of the meat and drink of the experience, of hearing a familiar work freshly realized, and revelling in the stimulation and resulting discussion that such a new realization gives. As with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, there doesn’t seem to me to be anything one can “do” to Messiah to blunt its effect – it’s one of those almost archetypal masterpieces of art which form an essential part of one’s understanding of human civilization in general.

To go through the performance and tease out every interpretative nuance would need an excess of world and time – any number of felicities could be cited as giving a sense of the whole, and the occasional frailty a timely reminder of the humanity of the enterprise. The soloists always generate great interest, and each of these performed with particular distinction. First up was, of course, tenor Keith Lewis, with his wonderfully poetic, liberally nuanced, yet still commanding, “Comfort Ye” (sounding not unlike a stylistically aware namesake from an earlier Handelian era, Richard Lewis), the voice opening up splendidly at “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness”, freely declaiming (some would call it “mannered”) in places, but for me managing to suggest a compelling spontaneity of utterance. Not a heroic performance, then, but a fascinatingly stylish one – later, his voice demonstrated some frailty at the very top, with the cruel upward leaps of “Thou shalt break them” giving him some difficulty, though he had introduced the aria with a beautifully-realised recitative “He that dwelleth in heaven”.

What Helen Medlyn lacked in sheer vocal girth she made up for in both characterful expression and grave beauty of utterance – the capacity to tell a story was always evident in her singing. Her big number, “He was despised” was heartfelt and emotional at the beginning, then vehement and theatrical in the middle section, projecting the text with her articulation rather than any great power. I liked her allowing some melodic decoration at the opening’s reprise, while keeping intact the aria’s essential simplicity. The same went for her  “But who may abide”, her voice assuming an almost Greek-chorus-like solemnity at the beginning, and then using sharply-focused diction to depict the “refiner’s fire”. Though occasionally having to force her tone, as in parts of “Thou art gone up on high”, her duet with Keith Lewis “O death, where is thy sting?” was put across with engaging energy and spirit.

Vocal girth was what Martin Snell’s bass voice had in abundance, but also great agility and splendid focus throughout. His dramatic experience was evident in his word-pointing at the declamatory “Thus saith the Lord”, though it must be said his runs on the word “shake” were more considered than really seismic. Despite the disappointingly bland orchestral introduction at “For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth”, Snell evoked the gloom magnificently, arching his voice vigorously at “glory”, and summoning the light with great surety. I thought “The people that walked” a shade quick, but singer and orchestra really made something of the words “have seen a great light”. For energy and vigour at a crackling pace, singer and orchestra again sparked from off each other at “Why do the Nations?”, while “The trumpet shall sound” has surely never sounded more assertive and assured in the hall as here on this occasion, with stellar playing from trumpeter Barrett Hocking throughout, fully matching the singing’s grandeur of utterance.

Youngest of the soloists, soprano Ana James nevertheless brought plenty of concert and operatic experience to her task, displaying a bright, silvery soprano voice which charmed at her first entrance “There were shepherds…”, quickened the listener’s interest at “And the angel said unto them….”, and brightly and eagerly scintillated at the words “And suddenly there was with the angel…” It was a sound that contrasted well with Helen Medlyn’s warmly involving tones in “Come unto him all ye that labour”, but really blossomed with “How beautiful are the feet”, the orchestra matching their soloist with beguiling instrumental beauty. Inevitably, everybody waits for two moments in Messiah, one of which is “I know that my Redeemer liveth” – here, Ana James spun her line out beautifully, surviving a touch of awkwardness at a breath-taking moment (literally) at “upon the earth” the first time round, and enchanting us with tasteful embellishments at the main theme’s reprise, with a beautiful stepwise ascent on the word “Redeemer”.

Michael Fulcher’s work with the Orpheus Choir made for many richly sonorous moments and some exciting contrasts in places – the “other” moment in the work, of course is “Halleluiah!”, which here was wonderful in every way. I confess that every time I’m taken by surprise when people leap to their feet for this chorus, and on each occasion it’s an exhilarating experience – the sudden irruptions of timpani and brass (trumpeters Barrett Hocking and Tom Moyer, and timpanist Laurence Reese on tiptop form) never fail to raise goosebumps! But conductor and choir made the most of the other big festive numbers as well, glorious soprano sounds in both “And the glory of the Lord” and “And He shall purify”, and all sections relishing their upward-thrusting lines and their concerted acclamations in “For unto us a Child is born”. I didn’t feel quite enough was made of the contrasting sections of “Since by man came death”, beautifully prepared for by the choir’s hushed opening tones, but needing a bit more attack at “by man came also the resurrection…”, though “even so in Christ” did seem sharper and better-focused. And while “The Lord gave the word” seemed to me to have a dogged quality throughout, elsewhere there was a real sense of the music invariably taking the performers and listeners somewhere. I liked, for instance, the building-up of the “Amen” chorus from tones of quiet confidence at the beginning to sounds of the utmost splendor at the end – beautifully and grandly achieved.

Working hand-in-glove with the singers throughout was the Wellington Orchestra, sounding ever stylish and rising magnificently to the occasion of those resplendent moments. There was the occasional moment where I felt the players weren’t being asked for anything special, such as at the beginning of “For, behold…”, which was more dull than gloom-laden; and some people would have thought that the string scintillations at “And suddenly” were workmanlike rather than celestial. But from the opening of Part Two, with the stern focus of the accompaniment at “Behold the Lamb of God” the concentration of the playing was palpable and arresting; and the strings’ accompaniment to “He was despised” beautifully echoed the singer’s pathos and dignity. And for energy and excitement the sizzling orchestral momentum at “Why do the nations?” really delivered the goods, underlining the contrasting grandeur of the playing throughout “Hallelujah” and during those final choruses.

The standing ovation at the end of what was a fairly long haul, was a richly deserved one – a heartfelt response to richly-committed music-making from all concerned.

Days Bay Opera triumphs with Rossini rarity: The Journey to Rheims

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Opera in a Days Bay Garden. Il viaggio a Reims. Producer: Rhona Fraser.

Musical director: Michael Vinten; stage director: Sara Brodie. Singers as named in the text; an orchestra of piano (Richard Mapp) and flute, oboe, clarinets, bassoon, horn and double bass

Canna House, Moana Road, Days Bay

Wednesday 1 December (repeated on 2, 3 and 4 December)

This production, announced as the Australasian premiere, was staged in the enchanting garden of soprano Rhona Fraser and her husband Professor Campbell McLachlan, where The Marriage of Figaro was so brilliantly staged in March. It lies in a natural amphitheatre in the beech-clad hills behind Days Bay. Rhona had sung in a production of the opera when she was a student at the Guildhall School of Music and she had filed away its potential for use somewhere else.

This was it.

It was in Andrew Porter’s English translation; director Sara Brodie (who had directed Figaro) had brought it into the present day, and had given her cast licence to turn their roles into something that suited their personalities and their own particular styles of humour and their histrionic strengths. There was much that seemed, reading the libretto, to have been invented, and the accretions were always to the point – however you might see that.

A Frankfurt performance

In Frankfurt two and a half years ago, I happened upon a production of this Rossini rarity, and naturally got myself a ticket. I had not spotted it till a day or so before arriving and so had little chance to find a synopsis, though I did have a rough idea of it. It was in its original Italian with German surtitles which was some help, though my German does not really afford full comprehension at surtitle speed. It was not one of their major productions, conducted by Johannes Debus and directed by Dale Duesing; nor did I know any of the dozen principal singers.

Instead of being stranded in the absence of horses for their onward journey to Rheims for the 1825 coronation of Charles X, the party of travellers found themselves on an island without canoes.

I found it moderately amusing, as the direction seemed not to have sparked any infectious sense of the ridiculous in the cast. It was the kind of comedy that the English, or the French, might be better at. That was convincingly proved by the production at Days Bay.

Background

The opera was the first that Rossini wrote for Paris, and accordingly he set great store by it. He employed the greatest voices of the time, including Giuditta Pasta as Corinna. The story was put together by the Italian librettist Luigi Balochi for the Théâtre Italien in Paris to celebrate the coronation of Charles X in 1825 (one of the lack-lustre French kings who followed the defeat of Napoleon; he survived till the July Revolution of 1830 when he was supplanted by Louis-Philippe).

Balochi was later responsible for the French versions of two earlier Italian works that Rossini adapted for the Opéra in Paris: Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse et Pharaon.

It is based in part on a novel, Corinne, ou L’Italie, by Madame de Staël,  the famous littératrice, thorn in Napoleon’s side, mistress of Benjamin Constant, friend of Byron and August Wilhelm Schlegel.

It was performed four times in Paris and then withdrawn by Rossini because he recognised that the essentially ‘occasional’ character of the piece would militate against its lasting success. It was never again performed till recent decades. Rossini may also have had in mind, from the beginning, to cannibalised much of it in another opera. Thus about half found its way into his next Paris opera, Le comte Ory, (which was produced by Canterbury Opera in 2004) and the rest seemed simply to have disappeared and was presumed lost, till the 1970s when manuscript sources were found in the library of the St Cecilia Academy in Rome, as well as in Paris and Vienna, allowing the entire work to be reconstructed.

First: where are we? At Plombières-les-bains; as the name suggests, a spa town, in eastern France. It’s in the département of Vosges, about 60km west of Colmar and 100km south of Nancy at the southern edge of Lorraine. About 250km south-east of Rheims.

The Southern premiere in Days Bay

See a full synopsis of the opera, with names of this cast members inserted, taken from the website of La Scala, Milan, at the end of this review.

The Days Bay version could hardly have been more different from what I saw in Frankfurt; and almost all of it much more successful and entertaining.

The story gathers together aristocrats of several nationalities who exhibit national stereotypes as seen from Paris, none of them too cruel. The 1825 occasion was seen as some kind of return to a normality desired by conservative monarchical forces, in which Europe would be peacefully ruled by enlightened monarchs: it suggested to the production team a shift to a contemporary Europe united by the EU.

The stranded guests never make it to the coronation because no horses can be found to take them the rest of the way to Rheims. While they wait for something to happen, various amusements are devised; the first, which I do not see in the libretto, is a book-signing of a slim volume of verse entitled EU Poetry by Roman poetess Corinna, Amelia Berry, one of the three prime donne.

These volumes then have attached to them, names of things as if for sale: ‘nuclear power’, ‘relics’, ‘orphans’, ‘mail order brides’, ‘watches and chocolate’, ‘minerals’… I didn’t get it, nor could I find a clue in the libretto.

Excellent use is made of the amenities of the house, the swimming pool, the terrace the various doors from the terrace into the house, while the small piano and winds orchestra fits comfortably in a broader extension of the deck on the right. Though without strings other than double bass, they provided a very apt accompaniment.

In spite of the large number of singers, most had succeeded in engraving a personality before the end of the first act, a tribute to both the singers’ accomplishment and the clear and witty characterisation achieved in the brilliant libretto and it present-day glosses.

Rhona Fraser herself sang the role of the hotel manager, Madama Cortese: while never seeking to ape her aristocratic guests, she is confident, unpretentious, with a natural dignity; she sings the part excellently.

The majority of the cast are or have been students at the New Zealand School of Music, and their training at the hands of Emily Mair (till recently), Flora Edwards, Jenny Wollerman and Margaret Medlyn shows. Rachel Day has the small part of Maddalena yet it becomes a quite conspicuous role, vocally and in presence: bossy, impatient. The same goes for another of the hotel staff, Antonio, sung confidently by Charles Wilson, and the local doctor, Don Prudenzio (Thomas Barker), another promising theatrical singer.

Perhaps the most vivid character, as she was in the New Zealand School of Music’s Semele by Handel in 2009 (where many of these singers also performed in a comparably large cast), was Olga Gryniewicz. She seems to have overcome a tightness in her upper range to deliver a performance of the Contessa di Folleville that was strong, funny, sexy and full of character.

Bianca Andrew could have taken a bigger role than that of Folleville’s maid, Modestina (someone needed to display a touch of modesty in this company, though her ultimate purpose was revealed as something entirely different). Don Luigino, a cousin of Folleville, has taken on the job of organising things, and Jonathan Abernethy carried that off effectively.

Among the bigger roles was that of the German Baron Trombonok, who’s a music lover and is responsible for organising the singing of national songs at the end. Michel Alkhouri’s accent makes him no more suited to his role than any of the others (after all they are all foreigners except the English ‘Lord’; but should foreignness be heard through Italian ears in this piece?); with an attractive baritone voice he was an adornment.

Roger Wilson found himself with the scholarly, antiquarian role of Don Profondo that seemed to suit both his vocal range and style as well as his flair for mimicry and droll posturings. He relished its big patter aria in which he delighted the crowd as he compiled an inventory of the travellers’ baggage, leaping unerringly from one accent to the next – one of his famous talents.

There’s a Spanish grandee, Don Alvaro, sung by Orene Tiai, a promising voice but not yet fully confident in such a role, though the quintet in which he sings with his rival in love, the Russian Count Libenskof (Benjamin Fifita Makisi) and their object, the Polish Marchesa Melibea (Maaike Christie-Beekman), along with Roger Wilson and Rhona Fraser was an early high point.

Makisi’s performance had all the expected confidence and polish, which might well have set him far above most of his colleagues; happily, the brilliant line-up of so many less experienced singers but vocally impressive and theatrical gifted, made for a surprisingly even cast.

A duel between the Russian and the Spaniard over Melibea is narrowly averted by a voice from an upstairs window. It is Amelia Berry as Corinna who arrives in time to calm things, and she soon gains the limelight besporting herself provocatively on the garden wall. Her voice too is as captivating as her legs. She becomes something of an EU symbol with blue gown and the EU circle of stars.

Fresh travellers continue to arrive. Englishman Lord Sidney, sung by baritone Kieran Rayner, is garbed with a Union Jack, caricatured punk-style as an eccentric under-cover agent, delivering cryptic reports into his wrist and manipulating a cellphone. If he’s an ineffective lover and generally insensitive to what’s going on, Rayner’s performance, vocally and histrionically, was one of the best of the evening.

Though formally in one act, this production was divided into two. The second opens with the arrival of the French Chevalier Belfiore (tenor Michael Gray). Sure of his amatory prowess, he makes a protracted and unsuccessful attempt on Corinna’s carefully managed virtue: Gray’s is a most polished performance.

After news that all attempts to find transport have failed and there will be no journey to Rheims, a great ensemble in rollicking rhythm develops, each traveller opining in turn that he/she will die of grief. But there’s still love interest to come with a long duet between the Russian (Makisi) and the Pole (Christie-Beekman), which ends this time, in capitulation. Though it’s modern times – witness Lord Sidney’s electronic paraphernalia – the Russian is still represented by the Soviet flag rather than the Russian tricolor.

A final directoral flourish was the unveiling of Modestina’s role as suicide-bomber (motive not explained), who’d evaded discovery by the vigilant punk Lord Sidney.

Delia, Corinna’s maid, was a small role but one that Rose Blake made an impact in. And the rest of this extraordinary cast comprised hotel staff, all of whom exhibited individual talents of a high order: Clarissa Dunn, Simon Harndenm Peter King, Thomas O’Brien and Imogen Thirlwall.

That Rhona Fraser, Sara Brodie and Michael Vinten have demonstrated so convincingly, now for a second time in nine months, how much talent rests under-exploited in Wellington, should alert the city to this wonderful enterprise. It is shameful that the daily newspaper refused to cover it, where a review would perhaps draw attention to it more effectively than does a website (though we say so ourselves).

It is of course too much to expect Creative New Zealand to support something as singular and spectacularly successful as this.

A Postscript

That so many highly accomplished young singers with such well-developed stage skills are available in Wellington is remarkable; and it makes one lament that there is almost no professional work for them in the city.

And it’s to be noted that only four of the eleven on stage for the March Marriage of Figaro were again to be seen in this production; further evidence of the large number of singers ready (or nearly) for a professional career.

Since the merger of the opera companies of Wellington and Auckland, there has been no company based in Wellington for a decade: NBR New Zealand Opera presents fewer productions than Wellington City Opera used to do on its own. Till 2000, Auckland and Wellington, between them, were seeing five or six different opera productions a year (generally three in Wellington and two in Auckland). So the amount of work for singers is now much less.

Perhaps it’s time for some clear-sighted promoters, backed by the city council and its many enlightened, wealthy arts patrons, to restore Wellington’s own company, which would aim at three or even four economical yet stylish and appropriate productions annually in Wellington, employing New Zealand singers, musicians and production staff.

A synopsis from the La Scala website, with the cast of the Days Bay production inserted

The housekeeper of “Il Giglio d’Oro” hotel, Maddalena (Rachel Day), urges the staff to prepare diligently the visit to Reims which her guests are about to undertake, that same evening, to go to the coronation of Charles X, the new king, which will take place – according to tradition – in that city.

After Don Prudenzio (Thomas Barker), the hotel doctor, has closely examined the meals prepared for the guests, to make sure that they conform to his directions, and Madama Cortese (Rhona Fraser) has once again reminded her servants to maintain the reputation of the inn, the Countess of Folleville (Olga Gryniewicz), a pretty Parisienne who is “mad about fashion”, mistress of the handsome French official, the Chevalier Belfiore (Michael Gray), voices her concern because her clothes for the great celebration have not yet arrived.

Don Luigino (Jonathan Abernethy), the cousin of the Countess of Folleville, who is in charge of the arrangements, announces that the coach carrying the personal effects of the noble lady has overturned, damaging its precious cargo of boxes and cases.

At this news, the Countess faints and all the other guests at the hotel crowd around her and try to revive her.

The arrival of Modestina (mezzo Bianca Andrew), the Countess’s surly maid, with a trunk which has been miraculously salvaged from the ruinous road accident, revives the anguished gentlewoman, who is satisfied at having recovered a precious little hat to wear at the celebration.

In the meantime, the Baron of Trombonok (Michel Alkhouri), a German official and music fanatic, elected treasurer for the voyage by the hotel guests, makes the final arrangements with the “hotel manager” Antonio (Charles Wilson), to take care of the baggage and to the eventual needs of the voyagers.

Don Profondo (Roger Wilson), a learned member of various Academies and fanatical collector of antiques, and Don Alvaro (Orene Tiai), a Spanish Grandee, enter and present the beautiful Polish widow of an Italian general, the Marchesa Melibea (Maaike Christie-Beekman), with whom Don Alvaro has fallen in love, to the Baron of Trombonok. She wants to go to Reims together with the other illustrious members of the company.

The arrival of the Count of Libenskof (Ben Fifita Makisi), a Russian gentleman, also in love with Melibea, makes Don Alvaro jealous, and their rivalry is openly expressed in the presence of Melibea and Madama Cortese until the singing of another guest at the “Giglio d’Oro” hotel, Corinna (Amelia Berry), who comes from Rome (in this version, Greece) and whose art is to improvise songs and poetry, is heard from behind the scenes and calms down the heated exchange of jealous rivalry.

Madama Cortese is worried about the delay of Zefirino, the courier sent in search of horses for the journey. She is also thinking about the reciprocated but undeclared love of the English guest, Lord Sidney (Kieran Rayner), for Corinna.

Lord Sidney arrives, lamenting over his woes as a lover. Corinna, having received a letter by hand from Don Profondo, reads it and reassures Delia (Rose Bake), her Greek orphan friend, about the fate of her country and invites her to join the company on its way to Reims. She finally notices the flowers arranged in her room: Lord Sidney’s daily love token.

The Chevalier Belfiore (Michael Gray), finding the poetess alone, tries to seduce her, convinced of his proven prowess, but Don Profondo interrupts him and makes fun of him. He begins to compile the list of valuable objects belonging to the voyagers which the Baron has asked him for.

After a quick exchange of words between Don Profondo and the Countess of Folleville, who has intuited the courtship between the Chevalier Belfiore and Corinna, many of the guests become impatient to leave but the arrival of the Baron and Zefirino creates an atmosphere of gloom: the voyage cannot be undertaken because, in the whole of Plombières, there is not a single horse to be hired or bought because of the vast number of voyagers who are also going to Reims for the grand ceremony.

Madama Cortese raises the spirits of the company by showing her guests a letter from Paris sent by her husband which announces the great festivities being prepared in the capital in honour of the king and to welcome his return: an extremely pleasurable way to console themselves for the unaccomplished voyage to Reims. The Countess of Folleville offers everyone hospitality at her home in Paris.

The proposal is accepted which enthusiasm and they decide to leave the next day with the daily coach for the capital. With part of the money put aside for the voyage to Reims, they will organise that very evening a feast, open to all, to celebrate, in any case, the coronation of the king, and the rest will be given to charity.

Everything is resolved and the Baron tries to settle the quarrel between the Count of Libenskof and the Polish Marchesa, caused by Don Alvaro.

The two lovers are reconciled ant the next scene opens on the illuminated gardens of the hotel in which a rich table has been laid.

The hotel manager Antonio learns from Maddalena, the governess, that the Baron has engaged a company of roving musicians and dancers, passing through the area, to liven up the feast. They soon appear and, with their songs and dances, they commence the festivities.

The Baron announces, in accordance with the rules already agreed, a series of toasts in the musical styles of the various countries of origin of the guests, in honour of the king and the royal family.

At the end, everyone presents request for a poetic performance from Corinna as a fit ending to the feast. The guests therefore propose various themes for the poetess’s improvisation, mainly deriving from the history of France and out of which Melibea draws by lot that of «Charles X, King of France».
After Corinna’s musical celebration and among general acclaim to the king and to France, the performance ends with the praising of the royal family.

Delightful Dvorak excites at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DVORAK – Piano Quintet in A Major Op.81

Cristina Vaszilcsin, Lyndon Taylor (violins) / Peter Garrity, viola

David Chickering, ‘cello / Catherine McKay, piano

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

Wednesday, 1st December 2010

At the end of the first movement of this performance of the Dvorak Piano Quintet I was flabbergasted – here was a group of musicians who had come together just for the occasion performing at a free lunchtime concert in Wellington, giving us playing and interpretation of a stature I was confident I’d not heard previously bettered in this music. I had heard the first violinist, violist and pianist play as a trio before, but within this extended configuration of performers Cristina Vaszilcsin, Peter Garrity and Catherine McKay seemed to me inspired beyond anything previously I’d heard them perform together – obviously the “enhanced” alchemy generated by the presence among the ensemble of Lyndon Taylor and David Chickering (playing violin and ‘cello, respectively) was working brilliantly.

Several things at once registered regarding the group’s playing: – firstly, the beautiful timbral focus of each instrument, at once distinctive and proportioned, each individual line a delight for the ear to follow. Then the unanimity of both attack and of phrasing, five instruments playing as one, yet each seemingly free-spirited, realized both the music’s strength and poetry. Whether one listened to each bar, or a phrase or succession of phrases, one felt the musicians had swallowed the music whole, finding both incidental delight in detail and long-term purpose and strength in the movement’s overview.

So every aspect of the music was given its place – the lyricism of the opening ‘cello-and-piano melody (beguiling tones from David Chickering and Catherine McKay, here), the vigor and point of the response, the depth of colour and texture in the middle voices, the distinctive tone of voices such as the viola’s, and the volatility with which things such as tempi, dynamics and textures would change – but it was the cumulative impact of the whole which truly galvanized our sensibilities as listeners. The quickening of tempi at the movement’s end thus seemed an entirely natural outcome of exuberant release from the energies the playing had built up throughout. Perhaps we in the audience should have forgotten our inhibitions and clapped and cheered at that point – instead we simmered with the excitement of it all, and waited impatiently for the next movement to begin.

The gorgeous viola solos in this work reminded us that the composer himself played the instrument – Peter Garrity’s open-hearted tones were set off beautifully by Catherine Mckay’s piquant piano-playing throughout the slow movement’s opening, one whose melancholy brought out the sunny remembrances of the con moto sections which followed. Here, rhythms were buoyed by enthusiastic pizzicati, with Cristina Vaszilcsin’s and Lyndon Taylor’s silvery violin duetting delightfully recalling happier times, the exuberance marred only by a brief moment of imprecision with the staccato downward phrase at the end. Although viola and violin soulfully revisited the opening, cheerfulness kept on trying to break in – there was a merry dance in whirling triplets begun by the viola, mischievously spiked by the piano in a two-against three game of chase, and a return to the con moto pizzicati impulses, with more cross-rhythms to keep the musicians on their mettle and beguile the listener’s ear – but a stoic sadness seemed to prevail and wander into lonely silence at the end.

As with Schubert’s music, tragedy often sits alongside exuberance and gaiety in Dvorak’s work – and the Scherzo of the Quintet immediately dispelled the previous movement’s sobriety with energies of the most infectious, almost unseemly kind, here brilliantly realized by the players, the “furiant” aspect readily recalling some of the most brilliant of the composer’s Slavonic Dances.  In the middle of it all, a gentle pastoral-like trio played engagingly with rhythms, suggesting a lovely ambiguity of trajection before skipping back into the dash and propulsion of the main dance. At the finale’s onset I thought the tempo a fraction too fast at first; but the players sustained both their articulation and ensemble, Lyndon Taylor’s violin getting a rare chance for its voice to shine alone by leading off the energetic fugal section of the movement, here especially relished by Catherine McKay’s piano-playing. Towards the end, the strings’ arched descent, echoing that of the piano a few bars before, gave regretful notice of the music’s conclusion, the musicians seeming reluctant to release those final graceful stepwise utterances, which grow inexorably into whirling flourishes of brilliance. These last sounds were greeted here with the utmost enthusiasm by a good lunchtime crowd, whose members seemed unanimously of the opinion that they had witnessed some extraordinary music-making.

Shakespeare in Song – choral settings by Cantoris conducted by Rachel Hyde

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs from the plays; Sonnet No 18; and other songs by Gibbons and Ramsey

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 20 November 2.30pm

Here was a most interesting programme, introduced in an engaging manner by conductor Rachel Hyde, who attempted to demonstrate the essential musical quality of Shakespeare’s language and the way in which music permeated Shakespeare’s work and Tudor society in general. For example, she said that someone had counted some 300 musical stage directions in the plays.

To her credit, Hyde kept away from the most common settings of the songs, though many might have waited for them: the agenda was choral settings, so no Finzi or Quilter, no Schubert or Brahms or Mendelssohn; no Tippett and Britten; or less familiar names like Frank Martin, Amy Beach, William Mathias; New Zealanders David Farquhar and David Hamilton are just two who have set the songs – the latter for choir; instead, American and Finnish composers seemed to dominate.

There was nothing from the huge number of operas based on the plays.

One of the curious sidelights to which Rachel Hyde drew attention was that almost all the songs in the plays were written for minor characters, whose role it was to entertain or divert rather than to advance the story; and she expressed doubt, in the event justified, about the success of setting the blank verse of some of the great episodes. She mentioned Komulainen’s ‘To be or not to be’, and I agreed – it quite lacked Hamlet’s profound self-questioning anguish. The only one of that group of four that found tolerable musical setting was ‘O weary night’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

All but one of the songs (William Schuman’s ‘Orpheus with his lute’) were unaccompanied; the Schumann sounded distinctly more secure than some the others, and it made me wonder about the usefulness of denying such support to amateur singers, especially when the choir is small.

Schuman’s fine song set words from Henry VIII, believed to be a collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher. The words struck me, indeed, as lacking Shakespeare’s verbal whimsy.

Many of the songs were either melodically devious with sequences of taxing intervals, or harmonically testing, all of which caused intonation difficulties and some less than precise ensemble and articulation, evident in songs like Lindberg’s ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ (Sonnet 18), or Vaughan Williams’s ‘Over hill, over dale’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The more successful setting of Sonnet 18 was by Robert Appelbaum, capturing a sunny spirit, the music interesting but not too difficult so the choir sounded comfortable.

I approved of the decision not to print the words in the programme, which leads to the prospect from the choir’s side of the tops of heads buried in programmes. Instead, choir members read the lyrics before the performance, some well, some not so well. But it was an excellent idea.

Hyde warned us about the John Rutter setting of ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As You Like It; it was a good start, sounding barber-shop, using bass voices to simulate a string bass underlay, singing ‘Doo-wa-doo’, the modern equivalent of ‘Hey nonny nonny’.

There were two probably non-Shakespearean songs. The first was by Orlando Gibbons, ‘What is our life?’ After the somewhat superficial group by Komulainen, it came as a piece of genuine musical inspiration, though the reduced, and so more exposed, choir did it less than justice. ‘Sleep fleshly birth’ by Jacobean composer Robert Ramsey was again accorded to a smaller ensemble which made intonation less secure and the pulse more difficult to maintain.

There were two songs by American composer Matthew Harris, one of the three settings of ‘It was a lover and his lass’. It, and his other song, ‘Take, O, take those lips away’ from Measure for Measure which brought the concert to an end, were among the more successful as music, and the choir delivered full, confident sound.

There were a couple of other groups, as well as the aforementioned Komulainen’s: Vaughan Williams’s three settings and four by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi. The Vaughan Williams songs did not generally impress me, though ‘The cloud-capped towers’ from The Tempest captured its misty gothic turrents. Another was ‘Full fathom five’, also from The Tempest, but I enjoyed more its setting by Mäntyjärvi – the penultimate song in the concert.

‘Double, double, toil and trouble’ from Macbeth was also in this Mäntyjärvi group; its words were recited by a French choir member whose accent lent it a curiously covenish effect; and the music, too, caught its atmosphere most effectively.

Such an imaginative undertaking deserved good support and the audience of perhaps a hundred responded well.

Festival Singers delight with Rossini’s “Little, Solemn Mass”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ROSSINI – Petite Messe solennelle (for soloists, choir, harmonium and two pianos)

Lesley Graham, soprano / Linden Loader, alto / Jonathan Abernethy, tenor / Roger Wilson, bass

Jonathan Berkhan, Louisa Joblin (pianos) / Thomas Gaynor (harmonium)

Rosemary Russell, musical director

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday 20th November 2010

“Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass—is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]? You know well, I was born for comic opera. Little science, a little heart, that is all. So may you be blessed, and grant me Paradise!”

With these words Gioachino Rossini prefaced his Petite Messe Solennelle, written in 1863, and called elsewhere by the composer the last of his “pêchés de vieillesse” (sins of old age). Characteristically, the music is neither “petite” nor particularly “solemn” – but there’s little doubt as to the work’s sincerity – an expression of faith and piety from one, in his own words, “born for comic opera”.

One of the most engaging aspects of Rossini’s work is its complete lack of sanctimoniousness – nowhere does one sense a feeling, emotion or impulse that doesn’t spring straight from the composer’s essential nature. As with the Stabat Mater, written in 1842, the music unashamedly evokes the theatre in places, an example being the “Domine Deus” section of the Gloria, which featured a ringing, heroic tenor solo reminiscent of the famous “Cujus animam” aria in the earlier work. Tenor Jonathan Abernethy made an excellent fist of this, singing with flair, accuracy and plenty of dynamic and tonal variation – his work featured some lovely high notes in places such as the concluding “Filius Patris”.

Immediately afterwards, soprano Lesley Graham and alto Linden Loader took us to more sombre realms with “Qui tollis peccata mundi”, piano and harmonium setting the scene with piquant and dramatic utterances (great playing from the instrumentalists throughout) leading to further heartfelt sequences such as beautifully essayed chromatic ascents in thirds by the two singers, and a lovely blend by the two at the haunting “Miserere Nobis”, which developed into some positively theatrical Verdian duetting throughout those same words’ final repetitions.

Always one to relish his opportunities, bass Roger Wilson, in resplendent voice, splendidly delivered the “Quoniam”, at once finding the music’s lyricism and energising the sequences up to “Jesu Christe” with the help of Jonathan Berkahn’s vivid, very orchestral piano-playing. With Louisa Joblin on the second piano deliciously bringing extra “galumph” to the accompanying textures, the choral fugue “Cum Sancto Spiritu” sounded simply glorious, director Rosemary Russell characteristically finding a “tempo giusto” which brought out a polka-like “schwung” to the music that even Smetana might have envied.

I hope these descriptions of “flow” throughout just one of the work’s many sequences  will give a sense to readers of the music’s dramatic coursings from episode to episode, with  every impulse the seeming result of the composer’s instinct to speak in a language that comes naturally, with nothing contrived or laid on for a generalised effect. I loved the Britten-like energies of the Credo’s opening, vigorously ascending piano figurations answered by the choir, with the soloists’ contributions dancing in and out among the exchanges. Another treat was the almost Wagnerian “descendit de caelis”, outrageously visceral downwardly-rolling sequences for choir and piano, relished with splendid elan by the performers . By contrast, the “Crucifixus” featured Lesley Graham’s soprano movingly evoking with piano and harmonium something of the awe and pity at Christ’s own suffering in sacrificing his own life for all mankind. Although the second fugue, at “Et vitam” was initially less than tidy between voices and instruments, Rosemary Russell and her sopranos pulled things together, with the cries of “Amen” at the end a grand focal point, before a brief hiatus and final shout of “Credo” ended things triumphantly.

What the sleevenotes of my old LPs refer to as a Prélude réligieux followed, played as a piano solo by Jonathan Berkahn (my recording features the harmonium at this point) – a mesmeric fugal keyboard meditation, beginning and ending with imposing, Beethoven-like chords. In its way, it made a telling prelude to the Sanctus, whose interchanges between soloists and choir had a kinetic energy as well as drama, finely sung, with the men in the choir especially strong. Lesley Graham then made the most of O Salutaris, her equivalent operatic “scene” for soprano, a big-boned and lyrical outpouring, whose mirror image was the contralto solo at Agnus Dei, introduced by portentous piano and harmonium tones, and simply and gravely sung by Linden Loader, balancing dignity with moments of theatrical expression – her cries of “miserere”, supported by lovely chorus work, were truly supplicatory, leaving Jonathan Berkahn to complete Rossini’s piquant piano solo farewell at the end – a wry gesture, entirely characteristic of the composer.

Immense pleasure was to be had from all of this, completing a concert and a year the Festival Singers can, I’m certain, be proud of.

Soprano, trumpet and organ aid lunchtime digestion

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Handel: ‘The Trumpet’s Loud Clangour’ (from Ode to St Cecilia’s Day)
Bach/Gounod: ‘Ave Maria’
Saint-Saëns: ‘Ave Maria’
Mozart: ‘Laudate Dominum’ (from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore)
Handel: Trumpet Concerto in G minor
Fauré: ‘Pie Jesu’ (from Requiem)
Stanley: Trumpet Voluntary
Handel: ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’ (from Samson)

Clarissa Dunn (soprano)
Paul Rosoman (organ and piano)
Andrew Weir (trumpet)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 17 November 2010, 12.15pm

With an interesting programme for an unusual combination, this programme had added appeal for the opportunity to hear and see someone we know as a disembodied voice on radio; Clarissa Dunn is a presenter for Radio New Zealand Concert.

The recital began and ended with performances from the gallery, using the fine church organ.  Clarissa Dunn proved to have a full, florid voice with a velvety quality except in the highest register.  She could hold her own against the organ; Handel did not make her compete with the trumpet part in the first piece.

The well-known Gounod arrangement of Bach’s prelude by the addition of a melody on the words ‘Ave Maria’ received a rather mushy organ registration – but perhaps that was appropriate for Gounod.  Unfortunately the singer sang some of the time just slightly under the note, spoiling an otherwise good performance, which ended with delicious pianissimo.

There were no intonation problems in Saint-Saëns’s setting of the same words.  This was sung from the front of the church, with a rather pedestrian and over-pedalled piano accompaniment – perhaps the sudden switch from organ affected the playing.  A good point was that the lid was down; often at St Andrew’s recently the sound from the piano has been too loud, due to the resonance from the varnished wooden floor.

The trumpet stood in for the mezzo-soprano of the original setting.  Andrew Weir’s control of volume when playing with the soprano was exemplary.  Both performers proved to have excellent control of breath and dynamics.  Flowing lines were beautifully carried on the breath by the singer.

The exquisite ‘Laudate Dominum’ of Mozart was sung admirably, given the limitations of performing with piano rather than orchestra.

A trumpet concerto by Handel followed (which I cannot find in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians); this time the organ part was played on the baroque organ at the front of the church.  The balance between the instruments was splendid , and the use of a two-foot stop in the fast second movement gave a charming effect.  The playing was commendably light and baroque in style, making for a thoroughly enjoyable performance.

Now for something completely different: the delightful ‘Pie Jesu’ of Fauré, sung with organ from the gallery.  Again, some notes were a shade flat, and there was some unevenness towards the end, but on the whole the singing was most accomplished.

John Stanley’s piece showed both trumpet and organ off well, in its bouncy, eighteenth century manner, but it is a rather uninspired piece of music.

Handel’s ‘Let the bright seraphim’ made a rousing end to the recital.  At the beginning I found the organ a little too loud, but it soon modified, and Clarissa Dunn was vocally equal to it.  Both trumpet and singer had their trills all in place; the organ-playing was very fine also.  The words were not clear, but they a difficult to get over in such a florid work.

It was a pity to have neither programme notes nor brief biographies of the performers.  However, Clarissa Dunn gave spoken introductions to the works, in an informal, engaging manner.

I hope to hear more from these three accomplished performers, who are to be congratulated on their interesting and varied programme.