Vector Wellington Orchestra – ‘1810’

BEETHOVEN – Overture ‘Egmont’ Op.84 / SCHUMANN – Piano Concerto in A Minor Op.54

ROSSINI – Overture ‘The Barber of Seville’ / STRAVINSKY – Ballet ‘Jeu de Cartes’

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 24th July, 2010

The idea of learning one’s history through music seems an attractive one; and the Wellington Orchestra’s 2010 programme has taken pains to forge links in time between the present year and various composers and their works connected with one, two, and three hundred years ago. The latest in this year’s concert series focused upon the year 1810, though only two of the four works on the programme seemed to have an association with that year. Of the others, the Stravinsky ballet Jeu de Cartes was part of a parallel series featuring the composer’s ballet works, and Rossini’s perennially delicious Overture Il Barbiere di Siviglia was included to highlight Stravinsky’s use of one of the most prominent tunes from the work in his own ballet.

One could posibly cavil at the shortish playing time of the concert, just as some of the audience at the NZSO last Saturday night objected to the longer-than-usual presentation. Perhaps room could have been found for another work, or the Rossini replaced by something a bit more substantial length-wise. A positive aspect was that the contents of the concert made a refreshing change from the usual formulaic componentry of such concerts – overture, concerto, symphonic work – one which seldom admits any pieces which don’t fit the mould, and are thus neglected. A soprano could have been engaged and given us a couple of the orchestral songs from Beethoven’s Egmont music. Alternatively, another Stravinsky work could have been included in the concert (one which would have contrasted nicely with both the Rossini Overture and Jeu de Cartes) such as the Dumbarton Oaks chamber concerto, a piece which seldom gets played in symphony concerts because of its awkward length (about 12 minutes).

Of course, less is sometimes more, as my grandmother used to say; and what’s important is quality, more so at times than quantity. I thought this concert had sufficient quality to make it an eminently worthwhile venture. Marc Taddei, as is usually his wont, spoke with his audience before the concert started, emphasising the interactive links between the orchestra and its community, as reflected in both the attendance at concerts and the sponsorship the orchestra receives from locally-represented businesses. In hindsight the speech’s message served as a counterweight to the scenario painted by speakers at an after-concert reception, involving arts funding from Creative New Zealand for the orchestra being cut, a policy that would also affect the NZSO. It would be a pity if the Wellington Orchestra had any of its activities impaired by such a policy.

The concert started snappily and strongly with the Egmont Overture – and a rattling good performance it was, too, athletically directed by Marc Taddei, the playing notable for muscle rather than mass. This is an orchestra which consistently punches above its own weight, and this concert and the playing of things like Egmont demontrated living, dynamic proof of its quality. Only a lack of numbers in the string section disadvantages the balance in tutti passages, where the brass and winds seem to hold sway, without the strings being able to properly soar over the top and exert plenty of tone and muscle.

I was really looking forward to hearing Michael Houstoun playing the Schumann Concerto, partly because I’d enjoyed his Beethoven series with the orchestra last year so much, and partly because I was looking forward to comparing Houstoun’s with Diedre Irons’s performance which I’d heard earlier this year. Well, in a sense the occasion didn’t disappoint, because the interpretations were very different. Houstoun brought all of his familiar virtues to his interpretation, strength, directness and incredible focus, setting up a great sense of flow in the first movement  and achieving a lovely build-up to the first big orchestral tutti – the orchestral solo playing was notable, with both Merran Cooke’s oboe at the beginning and Tui Clark’s clarinet in the dreamy exchanges doing a very lyrical and sensitive job. Occasionally I thought Houstoun’s playing just a bit too abrupt – he’s not really into romantic rhetoric – and so the pianist’s big octaves statement mid-movement had muscle and fire rather than a grand declamatory air. So, in general it was an interpretation which went for drive and urgency rather than any kind of big-boned romanticism.

The slow movement was successful in bringing about a necessary contrast – the exchanges between piano and orchestra were sufficiently poised to give a sense of poetic feeling, though one sensed still a current of urgency beneath it all. What lovely ‘cellos at their big moment in the middle section of the movement! – and then, a beautifully-shaped build-up by the whole orchestra towards the last statement by the strings of this very romantic theme! These were touches of radiance in the midst of what seemed like serious business.

And serious business I thought the players made the finale – it was exciting in its way, it danced and surged, but for me it had very little of the tumbling warmth I’ve always enjoyed in this music. The speeds were very quick, and there was an element of precariousness about the exchanges between soloist and orchestra in places which added to the tension the urgency was already generating. Now call me old-fashioned if you will, but I don’t actually seek this music out as a listener for its dogged, insistent qualities, or its tensions – I’m wanting the music in this finale to evoke surgings of joy and warm-heartedness that I suspect in Schumann’s life were very precious, and savoured to the utmost when they happened for him. The “serene delight” of this music spoken about by numerous commentators was only fitfully in evidence here, and hearing Houstoun play this work left me wondering just how much he actually loved it, if at all. For me, not very much love came across in its performance overall, however impressive along the way I might have found the drive, the virtuosity, the control and the delineation of the themes.

I have to say that Houstoun got a great reception at the end – he was recalled more than once to foot-stamping ovations – so people obviously enjoyed that sense of the concerto being strongly and excitingly delivered. And I would be the first to declare that music can take as many interpretations as there are performers, if that music is delivered with sufficient conviction by those performers; and that one ought to rejoice at such variety stemming from realisations of a single work. However, Schumann’s music doesn’t “play itself”, and for me a certain dogged quality about the playing made it all just a bit one-dimensional.

The Rossini Overture, straight after the interval, was excitingly delivered, via one of Marc Taddei’s no-nonsense entrances – a brisk walk, a leap onto the podium, and a gesture plunging us straight into the music. While I enjoyed some of it immensely, I also want my Rossini to “smile”, and insinunate as much as scintillate – but there wasn’t much subtlety, though the energy was exciting enough in places.

All in all, I enjoyed the first and last items the most at the concert – Marc Taddei seems to have a “feel” for twentieth-century repertoire, as evidenced by previous forays into this repertoire with the orchestra. I thought his interpretation of Stravinsky’s wonderful Jeu de Cartes (The Game of Cards) allowed his players plenty of space to phrase and point in a way that brought it all to life, notwithstanding a couple of hesitant moments. What a feast of a score for orchestral soloists – so many solo lines, like a concerto for orchestra! Especially wonderful was the writing for brass, both solo phrases and in ensemble.

I’ve got to say that I thought the orchestra’s playing had tremendous spirit and character – there were occasional burbles in the brass, which any player will tell you is par for the course if you play such an instrument and your name isn’t Dennis Brain. The strings also had a lot to do, plenty of treacherous rhythmic dovetailing (this is Stravinsky at the height of his “neo-classical” period, revelling in rhythmic complexity and textural juxtapositions). Generally the players acquitted themselves magnificently, the odd purple patch of ensemble aside – as with the performance, earlier in the year, of Danses Concertantes, I feel they caught the “spirit” of the music and characterised the different sections vividly. Especially telling was the music for the Joker, who, throughout the work, was the disruptive “villain ” of the scenario.

The three movements are called “deals” as in a card game – and in the last deal, Stravinsky quotes from other composers’ music, in Rossini’s case directly from the Overture which we heard earlier in the second half of the programme. One could surmise that these quotations are nothing but deceptions on the part of the Joker, who, however, is defeated at the end of the game by a royal flush. Conductor and orchestra contrived to bring out all the theatricalities and chameleon-like colourings of these rites of deception, raising a ripple of mirth with the Rossini quotations, and underlining the finality of the Joker’s fate with the final, brusque quotation of the opening theme, its severity and abrupt closure splendidly conveyed, and leaving no doubt as to the hero/villain’s come-uppance.

HARRIS – Three Pieces for Orchestra

HAYDN – Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major

MAHLER – Symphony No.5 in C-sharp Minor

Li-Wei Qin (‘cello)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 17th July, 2010

This was a blockbuster of a concert, regarding both its overall length and the epic nature of the music throughout its second half. The Mahler Fifth Symphony isn’t the longest of the canon, but it has an epic grandeur that invites big, measured utterances, and the performance by the NZSO and its conductor Pietari Inkinen squared up to the work’s demands magnificently. Earlier we got Ross Harris’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, evocative vignettes of different times, places and personalities, followed by some lively, elegant Haydn from one of the stars of the world of ‘cello-playing, Li-Wei Qin.

Having a piece of contemporary music, and especially a world premiere put onto a programme always gives a concert a special flavour. Such occasions are welcomed with great interest and expectation in some quarters, and received in more conservative circles with attitudes ranging from mild tolerance to avid dislike. Ross Harris’s piece got its foot in the door rather cleverly with its different evocations of three places in Europe associated with well-known composers, one of whom was Mahler, whose name is of course forever linked with Vienna.

The work was a commission from Peter and Kathryn Walls, and was originally intended as a “calling card” for the orchestra to take on their European tour later this year. With each of the three European places named in the piece planned as part of the orchestra’s concert schedule, it seemed an ingenious idea that the orchestra should play at least the movement from the work referring to the concert’s location on each of those three occasions. One would think that concert promoters in each of those cities would jump at the idea of having a visiting orchestra play a piece written about their own part of the world, each piece emphasising an association with a great composer.

I hope the idea of touring the work goes ahead, if only because the music is so good – each piece unerringly captures a world of vivid impressions concerning a place and its effect upon a powerful creative mind. The Vienna/Mahler piece is a spiky, grotesque waltz, not unlike that of the composer’s Seventh Symphony scherzo, from which there is a quote at the music’s beginning. Parts burlesque, reverie, nightmare, and satire, the piece catches a volatility, a juxtapositioning of vastly different moods throughout, the waltz-rhythm as much a tribute to Vienna as to Mahler’s use of the dance in his music. Of the three pieces I thought it the most subtle in that the direct links to the music of the associated composer were the least “signalled”, leaving the world of pastiche far behind.

The second piece, entitled Lucerne/Wagner, began with a tolling bell, the resonances drifting over still waters, evoking the scene that must have greeted Wagner on many a morning while he lived at the Villa Tribschen, on the shores of Lake Lucerne. This was reputedly the happiest period of the composer’s life, so it was interesting that Ross’s tribute had an elegiac, almost valedictory tone, with a cor anglais solo beautifully played by Michael Austin. The last piece was called Dusseldorf/Schumann, the music right from the start restless and agitated, for me reflecting Schumann’s energetic and obsessive activities as a composer and anxieties as a performing musician. Throughout the piece the Schumannesque fingerprints juxtaposed nervous tensions and dream-like fantasisings, with golden “Rhenish-Symphony” horns summoning the composer back from the most distant realms of his creativity, and returning the music to the opening agitations, the piece concluding with an ethereal upward flourish, an ending which seemed to take most listeners by surprise.

People have been quick to point out that such an ending to a piece doesn’t make enough of a rousing impression on audiences, especially when it’s an unfamiliar work. I thought the music’s “not with a bang but with a whimper” conclusion entirely appropriate given Schumann’s tribulations and eventual descent into madness while at Dusseldorf. I was more concerned with the obviousness of one or two of the quotations in the second and third pieces, quotes which pushed the pieces more towards the realms of pastiche – I wondered whether the “Rheingold” and the “Prophet Bird” motifs in the second and third pieces respectively needed to be quite so exposed, especially as, in the “Mahler” movement, by comparison, the references to original work made for a somewhat less cliched effect. Even so, I thought that each of the pieces was quite delectably written, managing to say significant things about the ambience of interaction between composer and location in all three instances – rather like acts of homage from one creator to three others. As such, it’s a very “international” piece that should travel well – and I feel certain the orchestra will have a lot of success with it, wherever they play it, either in part or as a whole.

By dint of his association with Vienna, both as a choirboy in his young years and as a senior composer, Haydn was readily aligned with Mahler for the purposes of this concert. And if there appears to the ear very little in common between them stylistically, each composer did share and express a joy in the countryside which they expressed in their music, Haydn far more so than many of his classical contemporaries, and Mahler through his frequent “nature-music” episodes in his scores. With the latter’s Fifth Symphony, however, the impression is less of evocation of nature than of a kind of neo-classical spirit, the composer declaring that he wanted the work “to combine the contrapuntal skill of Bach with the melodiousness of Haydn and Mozart”. As for Haydn himself, there were touches of rustic vigour in his newly-discovered ‘Cello Concerto in C Major, played here by one of the stars of the world of the ‘cello, Li-Wei Qin.

This was a gentler performance than I was accustomed to, having recordings by both Rostropovich and Yo-Yo Ma, both of whom ride the work using their instrument as a kind of bucking bronco in places, a very exciting and earthy “pesante” approach to which the music readily responds. But Li-Wei Qin made the work his own through gentler, more restrained means, very musical, if in places somewhat circumspect, my impression being that he was putting the music first and the performer second. The scaled-down orchestra kept things on a similar wavelength, concentrating on beauty of tone and unanimity of phrasing, rather than snap and bite. He didn’t make the upward scales in the finale behave like skyrockets, or evoke the madness of a Keystone Cops chase with rapid figurations – it was a performance that spun the music out like gossamer thread, everything more elegant than earthy, and in the end coming off beautifully.

The evening’s heavyweight business came with the Mahler Symphony in the concert’s second half. I thought that, corporately and individually, the players delivered this work magnificently, under the direction of Pietari Inkinen. Right from the opening trumpet fanfare (Michael Kirgan’s playing of this had a wonderfully urgent sense of sounding an alarm to the world, which sent shivers down the back of my neck!), one felt that the players were there for the long haul, bar by bar, bringing out everything they possibly could from the music. I was struck by the excellence of the solo instrumental playing as much as by the ensemble – and this work, as with a number of the Mahler symphonies, abounds in opportunities for solo playing, quite scarily in places where the player is so exposed (as with that trumpet opening).

I can recall hearing at least two previous performances by the orchestra of this work, the most recent being in 2006 with Susanna Mälkki (coincidentally, from the same part of the world as Inkinen)  – and, while I admired Mälkki’s skills and her commitment to other music she conducted here, I thought her interpretation of the Mahler fairly unsympathetic. The work was rattled through at what seemed like a tremendous pace, which brought forth brilliant playing from the orchestra but with so much of what I thought of as the music’s character ignored – its tremendous weight at the start, its charm and circumspection in the middle, and its lyrical beauty and good humour at the end – all seemed to me sacrificed to brilliance. Of course, this is music that, like all great works of a similar ilk, can be played many different ways and still work its magic upon audiences – rarely is a great piece of music performed to nobody’s (or everybody’s) satisfaction.

Thankfully, Pietari Inkinen seemed far more involved with the work’s spirit throughout, taking great pains to characterise strongly the symphony’s three parts – the grim purpose of the first two movements, the dancing energies and nostalgic remembrances of the third movement, and the romance and gurgling good humour of the final two movements all received their dues. Where the interpretation really blossomed for me was with the third movement, the waltz-scherzo, the movement of which Mahler predicted that “conductors for the next fifty years will take it too fast!”. Inkinen seemed to have fully heeded the composer’s warning, and directed a performance with such lilt and charm and sensitivity to changing moods that the whole hall took on a kind of ambient glow at the shared pleasure of it all. The horn section, led by Ed Allen, played like heroes, sounding their frequent calls with golden tones across magically-conceived soundscapes, while the rest of the orchestra danced and ruminated by turns, Inkinen getting from the players real point to the Viennese rhythms throughout.

Another of the work’s features was the contrapuntal character of Mahler’s writing, again in the waltz-scherzo, but also in the finale. Conductor and players brought out these interactive lines with lots of energy, humour and bubble, the music given room to breathe and for the phrases allowed plenty of “point” – in fact the music takes on an almost concerto grosso aspect in places, with frequent quotations from the composer’s own songs and the counterpoint to which the melodic lines were yoked given as much to a variety of solo instruments as to the strings or brass sections. As for the work’s most famous movement, the strings-and-harp Adagietto, beloved of both film-makers and musak-merchants, it was played here so simply and with such pure intensity (at a natural breathing-pace) that it sounded for all the world as though it had been freshly-composed – it just unfolded, strand by strand, episode by episode, to magical effect (and I loved the basses’ choreography throughout their final descending phrase, the players swaying and digging into each bow-stroke as though their lives depended upon the outcome).

My only reservations came with the first two movements, neither of which I thought generated enough “weight” to adequately support what the brass players were doing so wonderfully with the top lines. I didn’t think there was quite enough sense of enormous crushing power in the tread of the first movement, and especially not in those baleful chromatic descents which conclude with percussive strokes that ought to shake the surrounding’s very foundations – I wanted the lower instruments at those points to really dig in and to “thwack”, to bring us right to the edge of the abyss, as it were, generating more of a sense of “Do not go gentle into that good night” throughout what the composer intended to be a funeral march. In the second movement, I felt the music’s baleful aspect was underplayed, the horns for one not given sufficient encouragement to roar in places, and the percussion held in check for most of the movement – that is, until the appearance of the work’s mighty crossbeam, the great brass chorale, where Inkinen seemed at last to really “open the music up” and give us a searing glimpse of something akin to the eternal, the orchestral playing magnificent almost to the point of pre-empting the chorale’s re-appearance at the end of the finale.

Had we experienced this degree of tonal weight and deep intensity earlier in the work, I would want to say that the performance was the finest I had ever heard of the symphony. As it was, Inkinen and the NZSO were able to spectacularly convey the work’s cumulative effect sufficiently for us to take into our hearts something of the composer’s idea of this worlde’s joye. No matter that the concert stretched on into the night later than was usual (a 7:30pm starting time would have helped in this case) – the exhalations of pleasure I heard from people all around me at the exciting conclusion of the symphony’s finale spoke volumes regarding the thrills of the music-making and the success of the concert.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Pietari Inkinen (conductor), Li-Wei Qin (cello)

Arnold Schoenberg: Transfigured Night

Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op.129

Brahms: Piano quartet No.1 in G minor, Op.25 (orchestrated Schoenberg)

Friday 16 July, 6.30pm

A concert with such an interesting programme as this, and with such a superb soloist, should not have suffered so many empty seats; one is tempted to think that some would-be patrons were scared off by the name Schoenberg – or were they all at the rugby?  There was no need to be scared with this programme.

Schoenberg’s five-movement work, Transfigured Night, based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, is very far removed from atonal.  It is based on a string sextet that he composed early in his career, and is scored for strings only.  It is lush and romantic.

Its slow, quiet start opens with cellos only, then violas join in and later the other strings.  Guest principal violist Jethro Marx (who was in New Zealand earlier in the year with the Zukerman Chamber Players) had plenty to do; his solo passages were strong and resonant.  The section’s position to the right of the conductor made the violas more noticeable, and probably made their sound more prominent.

The music becomes more angular, reflecting the distress of the woman in the poem, who is carrying a child by a man other than her lover.  Towards the end of the work (the movements played continuously) there is contrasting quietude and restful resignation.  All was beautifully played, with much feeling in the last section, and finally, serenity and exaltation.

In addition to the guest principal violist, there was an acting principal of the cellos, a young Englishman, who was able to come to the fore in the cello concerto, where he has a duet section with the soloist.  In addition to these two, an Australian clarinettist was brought from Sydney at short notice, when the orchestra’s regular principal clarinet was unable to play, and a guest principal bassoonist from Amsterdam was also part of the line-up.

The high point of a very good concert was undoubtedly Li-Wei Qin’s playing of Schumann’s cello concerto.  The soloist had a rich sound; no doubt helped by the 1780 Guadagnini cello he plays.

This was his first visit to New Zealand, although he lived in Australia from the age of 13 before going to Manchester to study.  However, he has played with the NZSO before, at the Beijing Olympics Cultural Festival in 2008.  His playing of the work was passionate and romantic.  He has an apparently effortless technique, married to good articulation and phrasing.

The duet between the soloist and the principal cellist was played with typically Romantic ecstatic longing.  The soloist was somewhat flamboyant of gesture at times, but what gorgeous and brilliant playing!  It was a thoroughly luscious interpretation, alternately robust and delicate as required. 

The virtuosic cadenza was completely musical in its execution, despite the soloist not having free rein, free of the orchestra, (or ‘free reign’ as the programme notes had it).  One could only agree with the quotation in the notes from Pablo Casals – ‘one of the finest works one can hear – from beginning to end the music is sublime’.

Li-Wei Qin responded to the tumultuous applause with an encore – a little March by Prokofiev which featured double-stopping and left-hand pizzicato, and was quite delightful.

With its very lively movements, this piano quartet of Brahms perhaps lends itself to a full orchestral arrangement more than many would.  However, I found it strange to hear a chamber music work that I know reasonably well, being played by full orchestra.  The effect was of a Brahms symphony.

There was no question that it is a fine orchestration, but I would still rather have it as a quartet.  It sounded heavy and even dull at times, despite the exciting percussion and winds that Schoenberg has employed.  The delicacy one gets with a chamber ensemble was almost entirely absent, though there were glimpses in the second movement’s trio, especially the lovely woodwind sections.

The opening theme, normally on piano, sounded quite strange on bass clarinet (?). Elsewhere there were big washes of sound where in the original there would be subtlety; the work was expansive instead of introspective.

The third movement became pompous, but the themes were brought out well. The gypsy finale suffered less from the orchestration, its gaiety and syncopation were merely amplified, especially by the use of percussion: tambourine, xylophone, triangle, glockenspiel and side-drum.  But at times the unison effect was rather overpowering.  It was delightful to have a small section in this movement scored for string trio alone.