DIRTY BEASTS and other stories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Oliver Hancock – Three Tolkien Miniatures / Paul Patterson – Rebecca / Little Red Riding Hood

Martin Butler – Dirty Beasts

Nigel Collins (narrator), Diedre Irons (piano)

ZEPHYR – Bridget Douglas (flute), Robert Orr (oboe), Robert Weeks (bassoon), Phil Green (clarinet)

with: Vessa-Matti Leppanen (violin), Rowan Prior (‘cello), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Mark Carter (trumpet),

David Bremner (trombone), Leonard Sakofsky (percussion), Emma Sayers (piano)

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 7th March 2010, 2pm

Music, theatre and story together provided diverting entertainment for an enthusiastic audience of children of all ages at the Town Hall, with something for everybody, young and old and somewhere in between. These settings of different generations of cautionary tales for children by contemporary composers were brought to life by narrator Nigel Collins, with vivid and colourful support from some of Wellington’s finest musicians, some of whom were, at times, tantalisingly difficult to recognise in their various costumes.

A pity the staging of this presentation wasn’t ideal, with the Town Hall platform built out as a smallish square onto which the performers crowded, the musicians in a rather tight and inwardly-looking semi-circle that didn’t help generate enough performer-and-audience contact – we weren’t sufficiently encouraged by the arrangement to project ourselves into the music-making spaces. What it meant was that Nigel Collins and his cohorts had to work all the harder to draw their audience in and enable that fusion with fancy and imagination which makes for memorable theatrical (and musical) experiences. And, if the stage was too small, the venue itself was too big, the empty spaces not allowing that sense of intimacy and involvement between and with all those present, performers and audience members.

This said, the energies and skills of the performers kept up the flow between platform and auditorium – of course, the “nature of the beast” meant that there would possibly be a few surprises in store, everything seeming to be somewhat outside the parameters of a “normal” concert-going experience, which was itself an enticing prospect. The performers certainly entered into the spirit of the entertainment, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves – as did the audience, a few “drop-offs” apart (which is par for the ‘children-entertainment’ course, I would expect).

Nigel Collins’ appearance as The White Rabbit was the occasion for great mirth, though I thought the section describing the predatory habits of wolves, vividly illustrated by the musicians though it was, elongated the somewhat arch Roald Dahl story of Little Red Riding Hood overmuch in Paul Patterson’s setting. Even the narrator’s gorgeously dipsomaniac Grandma didn’t rescue the retelling from its longueurs (partly the author’s fault), though the denoument, with a very modern Miss Riding Hood conquering all, finally got things moving (and I loved the epilogue’s Facade-like strains accompanying Miss Hood’s parading of her wolf-skin coat). Oliver Hancock’s Three Tolkien Miniatures was next, the wind players, helped by some magical piano-string activations, marvellously evoking the dark expanses of the Forest, with its gradually-burgeoning alarms and horrors recalled by the Tolkien poems, focusing upon both Middle-Earth and pre-Hobbit characters.

Paul Patterson’s Rebecca (who slammed doors for fun and perished miserably) brought to mind for those with long enough memories a different, somewhat more punitive era of child-rearing. Projected with a deliciously awful French accent by Nigel Collins, the “contes de fée noir” came to life with the help of the deliciously disguised Emma Sayers on piano and Lenny Sakofsky contriving percussive noises, the latter making excruciating sounds with a number of balloons after releasing a brace of helium-filled ones (an opportunity for child-involvement missed, there, I thought). Nigel Collins mixed up a couple of words in the excitement surrounding the unfortunate eponymous heroine’s demise, but it all added suitably to the furore, which became nicely funereal towards the end (apart from a rogue balloon leaving its mark on the proceedings, doing what balloons do best).

Last was Martin Butler’s “Dirty Beasts”, settings of Roald Dahl’s somewhat nauseously crude poems depicting various interactions between animals and humans. Of the three sections I enjoyed the music for the first most of all, the spiky, chattering writing for winds readily evoking the pig’s rising panic concerning his fate and his vengeful plan of grisly retribution. Somehow the other two realisations didn’t have sufficient visceral impact to be truly memorable, the “Tummy Beast” in particular disappointing us with its refusal to explore any truly gastro-endocrinal depths in the writing – perhaps a contra-bassoon was what was lacking! Nevertheless, appetites were more-or-less satisfied, and a sense of good having more-or-less prevailed sent everybody home contented.

A great concert from the Borodin Quartet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

(The New Zealand International Arts Festival and Chamber Music New Zealand)

String Quartets: No 2 in D (Borodin), No 8 in C minor, Op 110 (Shostakovich), No 1 in D, Op 1 (Tchaikovsky)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 6 March 2010, 7.30pm 

Occupying one of just two chamber music concerts in evening slots in the Festival, this superb group was co-promoted by Chamber Music New Zealand and, as far as the Festival is concerned, may well not have contributed to visitors coming from other parts of the country since the Borodin Quartet is touring all ten centers in which CMNZ performs. There was a full house, in any case.

Their all-Russian programme might not have been very adventurous but the pieces are undoubtedly among the greatest in the repertory.

The first thing that struck me was the feeling of ease and the absence of any ferocious intensity, even in the Shostakovich. The players have not given in to increasingly common habit of adopting casual, stylish clothes and refrain from speaking to the audience (nothing wrong with either of those, let me add). Instead, they simply did their work in the traditional manner, with the clear aim of removing their own individual personalities from the stage and giving the limelight to the music.

They might have played Borodin’s warm-hearted, beautiful second quartet five hundred times but that has not led to anything perfunctory in their approach; one’s attention turned to each player as solo passages arrived, wondering at the intimacy and finesse produced in the famous Nocturne and the effortless fast passagework by the two violins in the last movement, for example, that contributed to the air of delight that enveloped the audience.

Though I must express a slight regret that Shostakovich’s eighth quartet gets played almost to the exclusion of any of the others, most of which are fine works, this was a performance to treasure, as much for its restraint and the group’s determination, again, to dwell on the music’s beauty rather than to highlight the underlying anger and torment that the composer transforms into art. Its darkness, the signature sardonic quality of much of his music, its uneasiness and its cynical gaiety were all there: the group adheres to what I believe is the proper function of art – not to thrust horrors, perversions and ugliness at us but to universalize the nasty or tragic realities of life into shapes and sounds that employ ambiguity, symbolism and suggestion to evoke sympathetic response but that do not repel through literalness and crudity. The three awful down-strokes that return were never ugly, and the emotion was far better expressed through their restraint and beauty.

Tchaikovsky’s first quartet which, like the Borodin, contains one of the most popular and beautiful slow movements filled the second half. Its gentle, even rhythm and the limited range of pitches slowly generated excitement, creating an almost orchestral texture from Tchaikovsky’s skilled composition. The Andante Cantabile revealed again the players’ approach to such music; the shifts from note to note were utterly imperceptible, involving no glissandi, no stop and start; their legato character was immaculate. In the Scherzo the first violin’s febrile, almost bell-like tone turned the music into a spirited dance without motion; nothing bold or too emphatic was necessary to create its atmosphere. I admired the slide into pianissimo and the guileless, un-heralded end.

It was heartening to see the sold-out Town Hall and to think that far more than the normal number of people might have gone home with some inkling of what truly great music making is.

New Zealand Trio in excerpts for the Festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

Music by Beethoven, Ross Edwards, Dvorak, Chen Yi, Ravel, Phil Dadson. David Downes

New Zealand Trio: Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello, Sarah Watkins – piano

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 6 March 2010, 4pm 

(With a contribution from Peter Mechen)

The juxtaposition of single movements from orthodox piano trios and two New Zealand pieces that set music against images was an unusual idea, and one that ran a serious risk of puzzling many of the audience.

To present a concert of single movements risks automatic disapproval by most regular concert-goers and those at all familiar with classical music and its playing traditions. This suggested an effort to court ‘a new audience’ of those unfamiliar with chamber music, or classical music generally. While well-intentioned, the efficacy of such programming is dubious and to have included some very atypical and, frankly, problematic pieces in the programme hardly seemed likely win over any neophytes.

Three of the movements were among the real classics of the repertory: the first movements from Beethoven’s Ghost Trio and Dvorak’s F minor trio, Op 65, and the Pantoum movement from the Ravel trio; the others pieces, both New Zealand and from abroad, were unfamiliar.

As an aside, I must record a certain style-based concern with the trio’s ‘trade name’, NZTrio. In my long career with writing, a fundamental tenet has been the impropriety of abbreviating the names of, inter alia, countries. Look, for example, at the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and the New Zealand Style Book (Government Publications Ltd).

The piano sparkled in passage-work in the Beethoven, the cello spoke eloquently and the playing was of exceptional finesse, balance, refinement, each player demonstrating a polish and virtuosity, perfectly judged dynamics and rubato, that simply puts them in very distinguished company, internationally.

The Dvorak sounded at times like a small concerto, so full and rich was the ensemble, expressing a thoughtfulness, resoluteness, a sanguine quality that are some of Dvorak’s essential characteristics. One of the very small handful of real masterpieces in the 20th century trio repertoire, the Ravel Trio, with its inimitable French sound and its energy, simply left me wanting it all.

Ravel’s movement followed a highly diverting, brilliantly coloured piece by ChenYi, Tibetan Tunes. He is a Chinese-born American and his piece was a successful recycling of a folk tune in western classical clothes and its startling variety of string effects that derived from the Chinese violin, the erhu, were handled with marvellous skill.   

Earlier, we had heard a movement from Ross Edwards’s Piano Trio, written for the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition; it began as a duo for violin and piano, easy, tuneful, in the same class as his well-loved violin concerto, Maninyas. There was a dream-like quality that could not have been more at odds with another kind of dream that we were offered in the last piece in the programme by David Downes.

The last two pieces both used images projected on a large screen as part of the performances. Phil Dadson’s Firestarters, cast in at least half a dozen sections, was used to show the unusual, though by now rather hackneyed, games that some composers liked to play with their instruments: using objects to strike or stroke the strings inside the piano, using two violins propped on chairs in percussive ways; later unusual camera angles focused on the players themselves. What about music itself? I closed my eyes to hear sounds that were of the kind that a thousand other avant-garde composers have created over the past half century.

Let me add that I have always had great affection for Dadson’s music with From Scratch, which I first heard in the 1987 Sonic Circus, the wonderful, but last such jamboree of 24 hours of New Zealand music in Wellington’s Town Hall and Michael Fowler Centre.

In David Downes’s piece, Kingdom, it was the images that dominated, more a film with musical accompaniment, of nightmarish character revealing a weirdly disturbed personality. The images varied from ghoulish doll-like figures representing an unhinged family in a surreal, lunatic eating ritual, interspersed with reproductions of medieval portrayals of the cosmos, astronomical charts, wheels of fortune. On the whole, I didn’t get it,

My colleague Peter Mechen reviewed the concert on Radio New Zealand Concert on Monday and reacted more patiently than I did to these two works. I asked him to allow me to use the notes that formed the basis of his review, in order to allow readers a fairer view of the pieces.

 

“The first of two New Zealand works in this concert was written by Phil Dadson. Phil was, of course the founder of this country’s most original rhythm/performance group “From Scratch”, and has become well-known in the area of experimental and invented instruments, video/sound installations, sound-sculptures and graphic scores.This work was called Firestarters, and it gave the impression, aided by some wonderful close-up camera work of the musicians creatively manipulating their instruments (they did much more than “play” them in an accepted sense!).

“Looking at the screen enabled us to feel as though we had metamorphosed into insects, with an insect’s-eye view of things and an insect’s awareness of barely discernable sounds – because some of these sounds were micro- to say the least.

“Besides the string players, the pianist also contrived out-of-the-ordinary sounds from within the instrument, manipulating the strings with various objects such as a golf ball at one point, and what looked like stones at another (the camera enabling us to “peep” over the instrument’s side and into the heart of the beast). It became as much a visual choreographic outpouring as well as an aural one, and had a kind of unique beauty and grace as such, accompanied sounds of a fabulous, out-of-the-ordinary sense.

“Different sections of the music brought different and innovative sound-makers to play, such as electric fans in the second section, whose tintinabulations against the strings and cases of all three instruments compelled us to listen with what one might imagine was a new dimension of musical awareness. At the end a Dali-esque dissolution of sounds within time was suggested by the players’ rhythms running slowly down to eventual silence – to be aware of such actual dissolution was to again enlarge one’s aural sensibilities in an unexpected and thoughtful direction.

“The concert’s world premiere was a piece by David Downes, written to be played in tandem with a film, a piece of music animation described as an exploration of ritual and fantasy surrounding a family meal. The animations were best described as surreal, though a psychoanalyst might have had a wonderful time ascribed certain subconscious preoccupations with the shapes of the figures and their preoccupations with appetite and obsessive fulfilment, underlined by several close-ups of rodent-like mouths.

“With the Brothers Grimm stories in mind, and the subsequent analyses of the themes, motivations and actions of the stories and characters there for the reading, one could extrapolate at will regarding the composer’s own childhood, and the fantasy/reality syndrome. There was humour of a dark,obsessive kind, underscored by sounds which, in places made one think of Noel Coward’s remark about “the power of cheap music”, while in other places there were more overt references to menace and disturbance.

“The dissolution of order and security at the end, if a trifle cliched, was perhaps to be expected, given that the scenario was dream-like and hallucinatory, but nevertheless the suggested dismemberment and burning of family members made a disturbing impression. Of course, the problem with any piece of music-theatre or animation, is that the eye is sometimes engaged to the detriment of the ear’s ability to register sounds – and something of this process happened for me. I can only report that the composer’s scoring would seem to have underpinned the visuals appropriately, such was the effect of the whole on my sensibilities. I look forward to seeing/hearing the piece again.

“And one could, at the end, only applaud with great wholeheartedness the commitment of a trio of fine musicians in bringing to us an astonishing variety of music and performing it with such incredible verve and skill.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon O’Neill – Wagner Gala

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Anthony Legge  with Simon O’Neill (tenor)

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 5 March 2010

It is interesting and perhaps almost a defining characteristic of New Zealand art, to devote attention to perceived weaknesses in an artist once the rest of the world has acclaimed them, and give perfunctory credit to an artist who has excited everyone else.

Simon O’Neill is being subjected to this a little, though happily, he is able to ignore it in the light of the more positive appreciation from those here and overseas who focus on the virtues of a performer, rather than minor failings or features that are developing.

This concert of excerpts from Lohengrin, Parsifal and the Ring explored music that lay at the heart of these pieces, not just the popular numbers, though the opening of Act III of Die Walküre and the prelude to Act III of Lohengrin were there.

O’Neill’s excerpts assumed a level of familiarity with the works, giving credit to taste and to the audience’s grasp of some of the music’s dramatic and narrative characteristics.

The Lohengrin prelude opened the concert and it signaled Anthony Legge’s approach to the orchestra, and to his view of its role which marked his style throughout. While all the splendour and pageantry called for in the next scene were vividly present, I enjoyed the beautiful warmth and mellowness of the orchestra – the brass was glowing with humanity rather than with cold brilliance; it did not prevent its rising to a grand rhetorical climax.

We first heard O’Neill then in ‘In fernem Land’, which he sings lamenting Elsa’s faithlessness than has forced him to reveal his identity and thus to leave her; it usefully tells the audience something of the Grail legend, connects himself with his father, Parsifal, whom Wagner finally returned to 30 years later. The singing was sweet, melodious and sad, and the orchestra a carpet of shimmering woodwinds and opulent brass. O’Neill’s top notes were splendid, perhaps a relief after the strain that was audible occasionally in his voice in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony the week before, and he raised the emotional tone steadily towards the powerful end.

The Ring came next: excerpts from Die Walküre and Siegfried. I have heard the Introduction to scene 3 of Siegfried Act III, played with more firepower than this, but the compensation was the delicacy of the opening passage, the orchestra’s relishing of its colours, as Siegfried at last penetrates the ring of fire protecting Brünnhilde on the mountain.

This is a much gentler Siegfried than the obnoxious youth in the great scenes with Mime in Act I, and it was wonderful to hear the evolving dramatic realization with its detailed awareness of every word, as he discovers Brünnhilde: an episode usually heard only in the opera house.

Conductor Legge created a splendid rhythmic simulation of racing hooves leading to Siegmund’s bursting, exhausted, into Sieglinde’s house at the start of Die Walküre: one of the most exciting moments in the cycle, double timpani lending weight. Then stillness and we skip 40 minutes of his first encounter with his sister to the point where he is seeking desperately for a sword – the sword his father promised him. The urgent plea turns to brilliant excitement in O’Neills voice as the glint of the sword in the tree that happens to grow by Sieglinde’s (and Hunding’s) house.

One of the cycle’s most ecstatic moments follows as the moonlight suddenly bursts through the house, and brother and sister acknowledge love; O’Neill delivered a ringing, lyrical account of ‘Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond’.

The first half ended with a strongly pulsating Ride of the Valkyries, which opens the opera’s third act.

The second half was devoted to Parsifal and Götterdämmerung. In Klingsor’s evil, magic garden in Act II, Parsifal recognizes the nature of the debilitating wound that has spiritually paralysed Amfortas, the leader of the knights of the Grail. Here O’Neill produced the stentorian voice which has hardly been required earlier in Parsifal, a notch up on his performance in the great semi-staged production in the 2006 Festival. It was world-class, as was the orchestra’s playing, particularly cor anglais and solo clarinet and violin. In the following Good Friday music, oboe and clarinet solos again lent magic and the ending was rapturous.

The Götterdämmerung pieces included both the major orchestral excerpts, Siegfried’s Journey to the Rhine and the Funeral music, and then Siegfried’s final monologue after he emerges from the spell, just before Hagen murders him. Siegfried’s Journey was remarkable in its spirit of light-spirited adventure which, with chilling trombones, turns suddenly to foreboding. O’Neill brought a deep feeling of loss and bafflement in this tragic utterance to his ‘Brünnhilde! Heilige Braut’; he remained standing as the Funeral Music followed, with such power and sense of the hope for the world extinguished: very contemporary in spirit.

On leaving, many were lamenting that neither our opera company nor the NZSO appear to be planning, for lack of adequate funds, the resumption of concert or semi-staged versions of these great masterpieces that the population of a civilized nation should be exposed to from time to time.

Gems of German Baroque at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Calvin Scott (oboe)

Margarte Guldborg (‘cello)

Ariana Odermatt (harpsichord)

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series 2010

Wednesday, 3rd March

Here, throughout this lunchtime concert at St.Andrew’s, was old-world charm and sensibility aplenty, a kind of “window in time” feeling, adding to the pleasure of it all. The music was delivered by three skilled musicians bringing varied instrumental voices and markedly different temperaments to play in their combinations, of the kind that nicely brought out that “baroque” sensibility of contrasting conversation and elaborate soliloquy. A sensitive, small-toned harpsichord threw into bold relief a bright, cheery oboe sound, while the ‘cello took a middle course, now soft-grained, now penetratingly nimble in passagework, always alive to what was suggested by the other two instruments. Contrary to my expectations regarding this composer’s music, the CPE Bach work that began the programme was more than usually urbane and straightforward, played here by oboist Calvin Scott with plenty of warmth and feeling, though I thought harpsichordist Ariana Odermatt took a while to warm up at her instrument, producing steady, but overtly mechanical playing throughout the first movement. The Adagio second movement brought out a more expressive manner, with flexible pulsing from both players and some admirably sustained notes from the oboe. Not even in the finale did CPE Bach reveal his sometimes peppery and idiosyncratic side, apart from a certain insistence in the music’s repeated, stuttering notes at one point, the music remaining highy engaging in a conventionally conversational manner, nicely brought off by both instrumentalists.

The next two items came from “Old Bach”, a Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat major (BWV 998) for solo harpsichord, followed by a sonata written for viola da gamba and harpsichord in G major (BWV 127). The harpsichord solo established a stately, gracious mood at the opening, the formalities being allowed to nicely “unfold” in Ariana Odermatt’s hands. The player seemed not to be inclined to use the upper keyboard of the instrument, except for the occasional “echo effect” in the last movement. With the sonata for viola da gamba (played here on the ‘cello by Margaret Guldborg), the music’s expressive capacities moved upwards several notches – the opening Adagio, though surprisingly light on its feet, was given a soft-grained and sensitive performance. This was followed by an Allegro in which the players again brought out the lyrical than the rumbustious aspects of the music, which might have been thought by some a little too much of a good thing by the time the subsequent Andante had finished – but I loved the way the “held” notes from the ‘cello allowed the harpsichord’s voice to decorate the linear spaces. Happily, the concluding Allegro moderato sparked exchanges of gaiety between the instruments (“gambolling” I wrote), with some skilful rapid passagework by the ‘cellist.

Calvin Scott returned with his oboe for a Sonata in E Minor by Georg Philipp Telemann, for oboe and basso continuo – he produced a lovely, creamy sound in the opening Largo, and set the tone for fine teamwork in the following Allegro, stimulating a skilful give-and-take between the instruments.The brief pastoral Grave was an idyllic moment between two separate energies, the Vivace finale going at a great lick, but with the players finding a balance between driving energy and boisterous spirits – delightfully adroit phrasing from the oboe, and some telling touches from the ‘cello, solidly supported by the harpsichord.An eloquent conclusion to the concert was provided by a sinfonia from one of JS Bach’s cantatas, No.156 “Ich steh’ mit einem Fuss im Grabe” – a heart-easing performance,with musical touches in every register – oboe lyrical and plaintive, ‘cello gently purposeful, and harpsichord tastefully colouristic and decorative.

Simon O’Neill and Terence Dennis in conversazione for Wagner Society

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wagner Society of New Zealand – Wellington Branch

Simon O’Neill (tenor) and Terence Dennis (piano) talk about Wagner and his music, and O’Neill’s emergence as a leading Wagner tenor.

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 28 February 2010

Simon O’Neill was one of the soloists in the performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with the NZSO two nights before; the following Friday he would sing a number of chunks of Wagner, again with the NZSO.

He needed to protect his voice; in addition, he had a cold – he told us his daughter had coughed in his face a few days earlier, and so he apologized for not singing. Instead, he and Terence Dennis presented a conversazione, an extensive talk for about two hours about O’Neill’s career, discussing his beginnings in New Zealand, advanced study in New York, and his performing career which had begun quite seriously in New Zealand; as well as providing an entertaining miscellany of recondite Wagner lore and scholarship.

They began by touching on aspects of O’Neill’s early stage experience in New Zealand which put him well ahead of most other student singers at the renowned Manhattan and Juilliard music schools in New York; he’d sung in Gianni Schicchi, understudied Enrico in Lucia (he was then a baritone) and sung Rodolfo in Canterbury Opera’s La Bohème.

After studying in New York, he soon burst into prominence, with experience first with New York City Opera and later with the Met.  His first audition with the Met had involved the First Armed Man in The Magic Flute, which is seen as a signal mark of a promising tenor career. Then came the invitation to understudy Placido Domingo, who became a powerful friend and mentor. Later, there was Donald McIntyre in the Wagner repertoire, John Tomlinson and many others.

It was not all talk, however. The session had begun with the sound of O’Neill from his recent CD recorded with the NZSO, singing ‘Winterstürme’ from the first act of Die Walküre. If it created an excited anticipation of more heroic episodes from The Ring, Parsifal or Lohengrin, with Terence Dennis at the piano, we were of course disappointed. But the enforced alternative was to be intimate to continuous intense, volatile dialogue, with the musicians falling over each other to embellish anecdotes and to recall additional detail, or, from Terence, to add flashes of absorbing erudition and wonder at the Wagner experiences he has accumulated all over the world, which held the audience spell-bound.

If Simon O’Neill never hesitated from talking with a touching, boyish passion about the luck that had thrust him quite suddenly into the lime-light, he was full of praise and gratitude for teachers, fellow singers and conductors who had helped him, mentored and opened doors for him, from Otago (where Terence Dennis played an important role) and Victoria universities (Emily Mair), and in New York. Warmly generous in his comments about teachers and colleagues, he heaped praise on many of the teachers both in New Zealand and abroad, including Frances Wilson and Marlene Malas at the Manhattan School of Music. New York vocal mentors included such celebrated singers as baritone Sherrill Milnes and mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, who had sponsored him through her own foundation, and there was also a memorable masterclass with Luciano Pavarotti.

It wasn’t till after his time at the Juilliard School that he studied his first Wagner roles, principally Siegmund and later Lohengrin.

Simon recalled how, at Heath Lees’ urging, he’d written to Sir Donald McIntyre from New York and so began a close relationship that proved a key to his advancement in Wagner performance. ‘McIntyre was so generous!… can’t thank him enough!’

But his path led through more conventional music too – Mozart, with Tamino and Idomeneo (the High Priest), the latter his debut role at the Met.

Simon talked about New Zealand performances that were critical, remarkable in his early career. As Dmitri in Boris Godunov for New Zealand Opera and as Parsifal in the 2006 International Festival, which he rates not only as a momentous step for him but as one of New Zealand’s great opera achievements, with its wholly New Zealand cast. It was ‘an amazing event’, he said, marvelling particularly at McIntyre’s performance of Gurnemanz at age 71.  This reviewer shares his opinion about the miracle of that performance, almost equalling the wonderful Meistersinger at the 1990 festival.

His most exciting step was to understudy Domingo as Siegmund in the famous Otto Schenk production at the Met, and sing the role on a Met tour to Japan. He made his significant Met debut as Siegmund in the last season of this famous Schenk production under the baton of Donald Runnicles in a splendid cast that included such noted Wagner singers as Lisa Gasteen (Brünnhilde), Deborah Voigt (Sieglinde) and James Morris (Wotan); he is incredulous that he had to sing that performance onstage having had no orchestral rehearsal.

A veteran Met audience member at those performances was overheard to have said: “This was the finest Siegmund I’ve heard in this house for 41 years”. The earlier singer referred to was presumably John Vickers… indeed James Levine has particularly complemented Simon on the eloquence of his singing, that does recall the Wagner greats of earlier generations; Simon mentioned how he has modeled certain aspects of his approach to singing these roles on the great Wagner tenor Wolfgang Windgassen, and is particularly inspired by the older Wagner greats like Melchior, Lorenz and Völker.

His wide-eyed wonderment at his association with Domingo extended to forcing his feet into Domingo’s boots for the role of Siegmund; and he was bemused at being mistaken on the Met’s tour to Japan for Domingo by a couple of Japanese ladies.

Then Simon described the excitement of his European experiences, singing with the Berlin Staatsoper under Barenboim, in open air concerts of Act one of Walküre at the Villa Rufolo in Ravello, above the Amalfi Coast in Italy (Wagner had stayed there and was inspired by its exotic garden for Klingsor’s Magic garden in Parsifal); he has also appeared at the Waldbühne outside Berlin (Nazi associations through its origins, with the 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium, and all).

Now he’s in demand as Lohengrin, his latest Wagner role. He sang this at Covent Garden and Houston Grand Opera to much acclaim last year.

There were wonderful Bayreuth anecdotes. Unexpectedly asked at his stage audition to sing a passage from Lohengrin, he confessed he needed the score for the words and hadn’t brought it. Wolfgang Wagner and Christian Thielemann were present and ventured to say that would not be a problem: after all, even Wagner’s autograph of Lohengrin was nearby!;… and Simon was overcome with awe.

Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner ( the present joint artistic directors of Bayreuth) offered him both roles of Parsifal and Lohengrin at forthcoming Festivals.

Departing from Wagner, I liked his little story about singing Florestan in his Covent Garden Fidelio. Simon’s mind went blank at the start of Florestan’s opening aria in Act II. The house was quite dark, and suddenly it came to him: ‘Gott, welch’ Dunkel hier’. Someone up there helping…?

Throughout the conversation, Simon would get up and go to the piano to play the introductory bars to various episodes, and sing a few tantalizing phrases.

At the end of the first half, Terence took to the piano, as originally planned, explaining that he was about to play, perhaps for one of the few times in a century as it was long out of print, Busoni’s magnificent transcription of the Funeral music from Götterdämmerung. Not an orchestra certainly, but the powerful emotion was there in his splendid, sombre performance, and this provided the musical interlude to the second half of the session.

Dennis’s frequent interventions were quirky and wonderful. Just one: The 1936 Bayreuth production of Lohengrin, paid for by Hitler was offered as by the Führer as his present for the coronation season of Edward VIII, which never took place. The monarch is said to have responded that he was happy to receive the production “as long as I don’t have to sit through it.’ (you’ll note, no objection to a connection with Hitler however).

Also outside the Wagner realm though close to it, Simon’s recently recorded opera by Chausson Le Roi Arthus (King Arthur) was mentioned, as a proto-Wagner enterprise: he sings Lancelot in this, opposite the Guinevere of soprano Susan Bullock; with Antonio Pappano he went to Rome to sing Beethoven’s Ninth in the wonderful new Auditorio. And, significantly, before Christmas he sang Verdi’s Otello for the first time, at the Barbican Hall in London, under Sir Colin Davis at the eleventh hour – facing the big opening entrance Esultate! for the first time was singularly scary; the London reviews were sensational. In 2012, he sings in the Covent Garden Ring celebrating the London Olympics.

2013 is of course the big year – the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth (and of Verdi’s too – must stay alive for both). And Simon has frightened himself by saying yes to invitations to sing the Götterdämmerung Siegfried in Ring productions at such eminent opera houses as the Met, both the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper in Berlin, at Hamburg Staatsoper, Vienna Staatsoper, La Scala Milan and at Covent Garden.

There are Wagner roles Simon admits he’s still scared of: Meistersinger (the Third Act), Tannhäuser and Tristan. He’s done all the others. He has turned down offers to sing Rienzi in Berlin, several Tristans and Tannhäuser: these are the really exceedingly taxing Wagner tenor roles, and time is on his side for these in the future…..

There was a pretty large audience in the church; all were aware that they might be able to name drop in ten years about hearing O’Neill in his early years.

I have to thank Terence Dennis for reading my account and for making several corrections, amendments and additions. Lindis Taylor


A truly festive “Symphony of a Thousand”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MAHLER – Symphony No.8

(“Symphony of a Thousand”)

Twyla Robinson (sop.) / Marina Shaguch (sop.) / Sara Macliver (sop.) / Dagmar Peckova (m-sop.) / Bernadette Cullen (m-sop.) / Simon O’Neill (tenor) / Markus Eiche (baritone) / Martin Snell (bass)

New Zealand Youth Choir / Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir / Christchurch City Choir / Orpheus Choir of Wellington / Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts Opening Concert Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 26th February, 2010

No, it wasn’t opera, but it was in its own way as spectacular, and as an occasion did give a “festive” kind of thrill for all concerned, which was exactly what was wanted. This most flamboyant of all of Mahler’s works (its nickname “Symphony of a Thousand” stemming from the first public performance in Munich in 1910, conducted by the composer, in which 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists took part) is perhaps the most perfect festival offering that symphonic music can provide. Of course the work can be performed quite satisfactorily with somewhat lesser numbers, as it was on this occasion (three hundred choral voices, eight soloists and a hundred-and-twenty instrumentalists) all of whom when singing and playing together made a wonderful noise in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre!

Spectacle was certainly one of the ingredients of the proceedings, to which was added the lustrous glow of the presence on the podium of one of the world’s most renowned musicians, Vladimir Ashkenazy. Originally finding fame and honour as one of the great interpreters of the romantic keyboard classics, Ashkenazy has for the past thirty years consolidated a “second career” as a conductor, though he continues to perform and record as a pianist. In the past I’d not associated him greatly with the music of Mahler, although he’s conducted the symphonies with various orchestras in different parts of the world, coming to them through his involvement with the music of Shostakovich, the latter a professed admirer of the older composer’s music. Ashkenazy has recorded several of the Mahler Symphonies with the Czech Philharmonic already, but over the next two years there are plans to both perform and record all of the symphonies with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, of which he’s Principal Conductor.

Along with Ashkenazy, the performance boasted an impressive lineup of soloists, one which included two New Zealanders presently building successful career portfolios as performers overseas, tenor Simon O’Neill and bass Martin Snell. With German baritone Markus Eiche the men made a formidable trio of voices, their strength and consistency overshadowing the women’s quartet, in which soprano Marina Shaguch alone seemed completely at home with her part, delivering her soaring lines with an ease and freedom that her colleagues couldn’t quite match. Fellow soprano Twyla Robinson approached her in fervour, even if her highest notes occasionally showed strain; while both mezzos, Dagmar Peckova and Bernadettte Cullen kept their lines secure and reliable throughout. If they seemed relatively underpowered in places when singing solo, they made up for it through their sterling ensemble work, especially amid the feverish energies of the Symphony’s first, and largely vocal part. Soprano Sara McLiver’s brief but mellifluous contribution to Part Two as Mater Gloriosa was another strength of the performance, her voice placed further back than the other soloists for an other-worldly effect, even if her all-too-workmanlike entrance and exit through the choral ranks somehow didn’t go with the ethereal quality of her singing.

Mahler’s intention with this work was to give the impression of “the whole universe beginning to sing and resound…..no longer human voices, but coursing planets and suns”. Ashkenazy very quickly set the music on its course at the start, galvanising his forces into action, almost before the audience had finished welcoming the great man onto the platform, and was settling itself down once again in preparation for the work’s beginning. The music was more fire and volatile energy in Ashkenazy’s hands than cosmic majesty, his precise beat keeping things moving, with the sound-surges erupting like geysers and blowholes, but without ever tipping over into stridency or incoherent noise. During Part One the few orchestra-only passages were packed with beautifully-articulated detail, the sheer effervescence of the string-playing more than compensating for a slight moment of imprecision at the final surge forward in tempo towards the end, where the build-up of overlapping voices and instrumental tones did indeed give the impression of the universe itself bursting into full-throated song.

By contrast with the “music of the spheres” aspect of the symphony’s opening, the second part takes us to the very heart of German Romanticism, Mahler’s setting of the final part of Goethe’s Faust. Here the orchestra paints a stark, rugged landscape representing a world of direct contact between nature and the human spirit – Goethe’s directions, reproduced with the text, speak of “Mountain, gorge, forest, cliff, desert”, with “Holy Anchorites…sheltering in rocky clefts”. Ashkenazy and the orchestra seemed to underline the contrasts within the instrumental prelude between the starker, more jagged and elemental writing, and passages of smoother, warmer legato harmonies, as if representing human aspiration and feeling seeking communion with these wild, rugged natural places. I felt the dry-ish aspect of the MFC robbed the hushed choral entries of much of their resonance and atmosphere, so that the musicians had to work that extra bit harder to convey the depth and fullness of Mahler’s vision – fortunately the performers possessed the necessary skill, concentration and focus to bring out the music’s raw power and sense of awe. Both Markus Eiche as Pater Ecstaticus and Martin Snell as Pater Profundus made the most of their wonderful declamations, the former energetic and passionate, the latter rich and sonorous, if ever-so-slightly troubled by the highest of his notes. As for Simon O’Neill, singing the part of Doctor Marianus, once one accepted a slightly “pinched” quality to his highest tones, his whole-hearted, engagingly radiant acclamation of the Mater Gloriosa, accompanied by the children’s and women’s choruses, readily evoked the presence of the “Eternal Feminine”, and even managed to transcend the incredibly cheesiness of the euphonium-accompanied string passage which Mahler wrote to depict Goethe’s directive “Mater Gloriosa soars into view”.

Throughout, the choruses gave their all, including the children’s choir whose singing made up in charm and point what it lacked in sheer volume, in places. After the magnificently energetic and all-encompassing fervour of Part One, the different choirs girded their loins and with Ashkenazy’s encouragement gave us exactly what the more diffuse Part Two demanded – long-breathed utterances interspersed with episodes of transcendent delight. What Mahler said about symphony – “It is like the world – it should contain everything!” was brought to triumphant fruition by the final “Chorus Mysticus”, whose gigantic paean of acclamation must have rumbled and shaken every fibre of being in the auditorium. Ashkenazy responded charmingly to the enthusiastic applause of the audience at the end by insisting upon repeated bows from the soloists, to further applause, and so on.

It’s well worth recording that, as if these goings-on within the Michael Fowler Centre weren’t enough to proclaim “festive occasion”, there were worlds wrought outside worlds for a wider audience, courtesy of good will and technological wizardry. The performance of the symphony was relayed “live” via big screen and speaker colonnades to a crowded Civic Square, an absolutely splendid gesture on the part of the festival organisers, the orchestra and, one supposes, Ashkenazy himself, as the concert itself had been sold out for many days beforehand. Happily, the weather was kind that evening, and the music-making was, according to my spies, conveyed vividly and truthfully enough to make for a memorable out-of-doors Mahlerian experience. So whether one was outside or within the hall, that sense of the spectacular and extraordinary was all around, which for an Arts Festival is, of course, just how it should have been.

‘Home’, a musical play of New Zealand and World War I

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Weaving Scottish songs into a New Zealand war. (The Fringe Festival) 

Artistic direction: Jacqueline Coats; graphic design: Katie Chalmers; singers: Rowena Simpson and Stuart Coats; piano: Douglas Mews

Tararua Tramping Club, Moncrieff Street, Mount Victoria

Thursday 25 February 2010

The New Zealand war, so advertised in the production’s publicity, turns out to be not the land wars of the 19th century, but World War I, specifically the Gallipoli experience to which it has become fashionable to attribute the emergence of some sort of national New Zealand soul and identity.

The promotion also offers the following: “‘Home’ is an original performance of song and spoken word, weaving the story of Scottish immigrants into the story of a nation.  The performance uses diary entries and letters to tell the story of Maggie, a recent immigrant from Scotland, and Johnnie, a first generation New Zealander, who meet in Wellington just before the outbreak of WWI . The text is set to traditional Scottish folk songs from a book bought in Invercargill in the 1890s.”

It is a duodrama, with an important third performer in Douglas Mews who plays the piano accompaniments to the songs and some music on his own.

The action takes place in the very untheatrical space, a former church belonging to the Tararua Tramping Club. It’s 1910; the only props are two clothes lines with blankets hanging on them; there is no lighting or scenery to help distinguish the changes of place later in the action, from a New Zealand farm to the steep hills of Gallipoli.

After Douglas Mews has played a prelude consisting of a couple of Scottish folk songs, Johnny, Stuart Coats, welcomed us to a concert by the local Caledonian Society. He sings the first stanza of Mairi’s Wedding, calling up Maggie, a recent arrival from Scotland, to sing the rest. There’s initial attraction between them, a tactical blunder that temporarily separates them, then love which is again disturbed for a while by political differences (he’s a Massey supporter – not unexpected for a young man proud of his farming credentials while she, from a poor background, is Liberal), and then the war which inspires Johnny to enlist.

Scottish and North country songs illuminate each phase of the story, some tenuously. But both singers showed a vocal skill, musicality and theatrical flair that gave the piece its reality and proved the main source of enjoyment. Coats’s voice is coloured by a tremulous vibrato that recalls an older singing style that enhances the show’s authenticity. It would not be fair to say that Rowena Simpson’s accomplishment in early music styles through study in Holland and performance with various important baroque and classical ensembles was demanded here but her vocal talents were a major asset in the performance. The broad Scottish accent that she adopted was convincing if a bit hard to understand at times.

The core of the drama is conveyed through letters exchanged between the two, which each reads either as writer or recipient. Knowing, with hind-sight, the high risk of death or serious injury in that ill-conceived campaign, tension was automatic; the story exploited it well and the singers made it more believable than the unforgiving staging might have allowed.

The tension held till the very end when reports of Johnny’s missing were revealed as the result of a not uncommon name confusion, and he returns with only minor wounds to his happy wife.

The story prompted me to reflect on recent reading about the First World War. New Zealanders like to paint the Gallipoli experience as the key nation-building event, forged in the horror of casuality rates per head of population that were something extraordinary.

But it’s odd how our knowledge is so confined to the relatively limited British and Empire involvement in the war.

The chronology in the programme notes that 2721 New Zealanders died at Gallipoli, when New Zealand’s total population was just over a million. In the following year, 1916, the prolonged and hideous battle of Verdun claimed some 160,000 French lives, when France’s population was 40 million, some 60 percent greater than New Zealand’s losses on a per capita basis. German losses were not far short of the French.

 

 

 

Impressive Opera School concert at Wanganui

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Sixteenth New Zealand Opera School, Wanganui

Grand Final Concert. Principal tutors: Paul Farrington, Margaret Medlyn and Barry Mora; tutor, voice and languages: Richard Greager; Director of Performance: Sara Brodie; Italian language tutor: Luca Manghi; Performance assistant: Kararaina Walker

Royal Wanganui Opera House, Wednesday 13 January 2010

Twenty-four singers took part in the Final Concert of the 2010 opera school, reportedly the equal largest number. The difference between earlier line-ups and this was rather in quality than in quantity, though one could reasonably expect an increase in excellence of candidates over the years. The large number of participants meant that no singer gave more than one solo performance, though a few took also part in two ensemble pieces from Don Giovanni. This was probably the biggest audience I have seen at these concerts, boosted no doubt by the timely highlighting of the counter-tenor who had attracted national news coverage.

The evening began with a kairanga delivered by Kararaina Walker and introductory comments from school founder/director Donald Trott, who called for tutors and then the team of administrative volunteers to be acclaimed on the stage.

The recital began with three items under the heading ‘La belle époque’ (broadly the Third Republic period – 1870s till the First World War): first, Rose Blake sang the recitative and aria ‘Je marche sur tous les chemins … Obéissons…’ from Manon, risking hubris as she exalted in her shallow, glittering new life. It was stronger in stylistic grasp and energy than in finesse perhaps.

Bianca Andrew’s aria was from Gounod’s late opera, Cinq Mars, like Manon, in the decade after the Franco-Prussian War, ‘Nuit resplendissante’, A creditable effort with an unfamiliar piece, under good dynamic control if not as robustly romantic as it might have been. Oliver Sewell also sang Gounod – the familiar ‘Salut, demeure chaste et pure’ from Faust. It’s an uncomfortable piece to interpret, to overcome the audibly false sentiment and stagey gestures that are intrinsic to it; Oliver didn’t manage it without a degree of stiffness, both in voice and gesture. Nevertheless, one could read his final falling dramatically to his knees as a proper portrayal of an ultimately hypocritical action.

There followed six Mozart items, ending with a piece from William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge, tenuously linked with Lorenzo da Ponte’s later life in New York.

David Wallace chose to present an untidy, uncouth Figaro for ‘Se vuol ballare’, though he sang it excellently, with a passion. Zerlina’s ‘Batti, batti’ from Don Giovanni was incarnated admirably by Emma Newman; though her dynamics and colour were rather unvaried, her voice is firm and even and her stage presence vivid. In comparable soubrette guise, Cherubino’s ‘Non so piu’ from The Marriage of Figaro was presented by Sheridan Williams rather convincingly, iffy intonation notwithstanding.

She stayed on stage to become the victim of Figaro’s admonishments, taunting Cherubino’s for his imminent departure in the army: ‘Non piu andrai’. Tavis Gravatt’s interesting, grainy baritone, excellent low range, gave it a vigorous authority. Here the rest of the singers provided a comic, never-mind inauthentic, audience to assist in Cherubino’s discomfort. It was one of the many enlivening touches contributed by director Sara Brodie who was responsible for making a sort of coherent performance from each ‘tableau’ that comprised themed numbers.

A change of opera next: Così fan tutte with Despina’s ‘In uomini’, where she urges her two mistresses to take their chances. Amanda Barclay’s voice was agile, true and she was pretty enough to cause her charges to worry. It was one of the best performances thus far.

An ensemble followed, ‘Protegga il giusto cielo’, a quintet of the five leading characters in Don Giovanni. Gravatt reappeared as Leporello with other yet to appear singers, notably Daniel O’Connor as the Don. It was another of Sara Brodie’s vivid and effective little scenes.

Then came the rather incongruous little ode to New York from the Arthur Miller/William Bolcom opera, A view from the Bridge: a reminiscence rejoicing in the superior beauties of New York over Naples, Venice and other ugly Italian cities such as Mozart’s librettist would have been happy to have escaped from, spending his last years in New York. Tenor Brent Read had it under control, with a voice of even quality throughout its range and a grasp of style.

‘On Tenterhooks’ was the title of the next tableau, excerpts exploring moments of crisis, anxiety, impending loss, perhaps a glimmer of hope. These were accompanied by Bruce Greenfield who demonstrated a mastery of the accompanist’s art that had not been quite as marked earlier.

Francesca Geach, in a knee-length green dress, sang Lauretta’s overexposed ‘O mio babbino caro’ from Gianni Schicchi, but it was fresh: quite slow, each word considered, unaffected in delivery. An aria from a second American opera followed: Cameron Barclay sang Martin’s Song from Copland’s The Tender Land, managed its difficult line, awkward intervals, competently though there were disquieting moments; he did well. Daniel O’Connor returned to sing Billy Budd’s lament: ‘Look, through the port’. The very first notes grabbed the audience’s sympathy, speaking of his command of its singular, unimaginable anguish, with clarity and studied care with every word, and immaculate intonation. Here Greenfield’s playing was particularly valued.

Jamie Young had difficulty matching Billy Budd with his ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ from L’elisir d’amore: his demeanour and vocal delivery were a little stiff and unsteady, though the voice has a basic attractiveness and range. Don Giovanni reappeared as vehicle for another ensemble: the minuet which cover’s the Don’s first attempt on Zerlina’s (dubious) virtue at the end of Act I. Alexandra Ioan’ as Zerlina and Kieran Rayner as Masetto, the Don blatantly laying the blame on Leporello. It ended the first half on a high.

As the evening wore on the ‘Sun, Moon and Stars’ changed places and were illustrated by pieces that used the heavens to symbolize human conditions.

As a result of media attention the first singer in the second half sparked a certain excitement: counter-tenor Stephen Diaz had become the talk of all at the school, not so much as the first counter-tenor in the school’s history, but more particularly on account of the sheer quality of his voice. ‘Ombra mai fu’ was preceded by its recitative, ‘Frondi tenere’ in which there was an initial slip, but by the third bar, the audience knew that the rumours were well-based. Not only did he handle the stage demands of this curious opening piece to Serse, sitting on the floor, his back against a leg of the piano, but there was a beauty and naturalness in the voice that spoke of musicianship of high quality. His voice is both strong, penetrating and expressive, and able to command a wide dynamic range and an already wide range of colour.

Diaz did not leave the stage but stayed to watch the next singer, Olga Gryniewycz who sang the Hymn to the Sun from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel; the link(?), I suppose, through its setting in the fantastic world of Russian fairytale, that is, generally south-east of Moscow, in Xerxes’ part of the world.

Gryniewycz is a bright, sparkling little soprano with a very high vocal extension who attracted attention in Handel’s Semele last year. This aria suited her well, though there was little substance in her high notes and unresolved vocal problems are still audible. But here was a vivid actress with excellent Russian and good musicianship.

Another famous Slav opera followed: Dvorak’s Rusalka – the Song to the Moon, sung by Rachel Day. Her voice is accurate, a sound, conventional soprano with agreeable warmth at the bottom of her range; she used striking facial expressions to suggest the curious nature of her dilemma.

Mimi’s ‘Si, mi chiamano Mimi’ seemed connected to the heavens only dimly. However, she sang well, if a little loud towards the end: a somewhat unlikely Rodolfo was on hand to supply a clinch as she finished.

Then came ‘Promises, Promises’, beginning improbably with Hamlet’s non-Shakespearean invocation to wine (‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’) as the means to rid his heart of grief at Ophelia’s death: in the 1868 opera by Ambroise Thomas with librettists Barbier and Carré. French companies are unearthing such neglected works and Kieran Rayner, with a well-schooled voice and natural stage presence, presented an excellent case for this one, waving a wine bottle about the while.

The second promise also derived from Shakespeare, but even more tenuously. Thomas’s opera took serious liberties with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Bellini’s librettist committed no such offence with Romeo and Juliet; Felice Romani (who probably wrote more libretti for the great operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini than anyone else) simply went back to the same 16th century Italian romance that Shakespeare himself had indirectly borrowed from, and further distanced himself by calling it I Capuleti e i Montecchi. The soprano here in the role of Giulietta was Alexandra Ioan singing the popular aria ‘O! Quante volte’; she can act and she looked the part of the delicious young teenager that the young Capulet presumably was; every word, delivered quite slowly, was carefully placed, filled with meaning as well as emotion.

Don Ottavio is usually seen as an ineffective, quailing avenger of the dishonouring of his betrothed, Donna Anna, given instead to sententious, chivalric speeches. Michael Gray had the job of investing his promise of vengeance with conviction; his voice had the right quality, a baritonal flavour that allowed one to discover a little more grit in his vow; he produced some fine pianissimo notes too.

The final bracket was entitled ‘Lovers’ Tryst’, a rather miscellaneous group ranging from Federico’s Lament in Cilea’s account of the same Daudet play that Bizet wrote incidental music for (L’Arlesiana). Andrew Grenon had all the requisites: good stage presence, an attractive voice that he used expressively and under good dynamic control.

Amelia Berry chose one of the classics of 20th century opera, Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, based on a novel called Bruges-la-morte. Marietta’s Song reflects the small-time decadence of post-WWI Austria, a story of obsessive mourning mainly portrayed through the dream of the protagonist. Amelia’s voice was an impressive vehicle in the role, pure and even and rich in the upper register. She seemed transfixed by the words she was singing, just as the audience was.

The only excerpt from The Magic Flute in the concert was Tamino’s salute to the picture he is presented of Pamina, ‘Dies Bildnis…’. Bonaventure Allen Moetaua, whose good tenor voice has more than a little baritone character, took it slowly though at a rather unvarying forte.

Polly Ott was a finalist in the 2009 Lexus Song Quest and brought the evening to a close with the best-known aria from Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix, ‘O luce di quest’anima’. She re-created Linda, a pretty peasant girl with a sweet, little girl’s voice, accurate, agile, reaching, not without some thinning, to some notes above top C. It was a beguiling performance that the audience loved.

Six accompanists shared the work: Greg Neil, David Kelly, Bruce Greenfield, Mark Dorrell, Francis Cowan and Iola Shelley.

Rites of Exultation – The Bach Choir of Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

PURCELL – Come, Ye Sons of Art

HANDEL – Coronation Anthems

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Andrea Cochrane and Katherine Hodge (altos)

Kieran Rayner (bass)

The Chiesa Ensemble (Leader, Rebecca Struthers)

The Bach Choir

Stephen Rowley (conductor)

St Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 13th December 2009

What a tonic after reading the Sunday newspapers to go to such a concert! Here we had music by two of the greatest of all composers bent on celebrating all that’s gracious, noble and glorious about the idea of royal rule, transcending all the all-too-human preoccupation with aspects of human foible, such as scandal, gossip and intrigue, and setting the monarchy itself upon high with tones whose beauty, energy and magnificence ennoble the state of kings and queens. In each composer’s case the music that was produced spoke for the ordinary person, giving tongue to his or her feelings concerning the pride and righteousness of being a much-loved monarch’s subject.

The concert began with Henry Purcell’s Birthday Ode for Queen Mary of 1694, the last of six odes he wrote for a popular monarch, who was to tragically die of smallpox within eight months of the composer writing this final paean of praise for her – Purcell could not have forseen at the time that he would shortly be writing the Funeral Music for his Queen, or that the same music would be performed less than a year later at his own funeral. The words, whose authorship is doubtful (though some think it could be Nahum Tate, who wrote the libretto for Purcell’s most famous opera “Dido and Aeneas”, and the previous year’s birthday ode for the Queen), evoke the spirits of music to celebrate the queen’s birthday – her fondness for music would presumably have inspired Purcell and his librettist to couch their praises for her in the most metaphorically musical ways, a wide range of  instruments giving tongue to joy, celebration and praise – “Strike the viol, touch the lute, wake the harp, inspire the flute!”

Purcell was able to transcend the somewhat earthbound quality of the verses with energising phrasings and rhythms that lift the commonplace up into the realms of great art: The words “Come, ye sons of art, away, tune all your voices and instruments play, to celebrate this triumphant day” when set by Purcell, become a mellifluously-constructed ode to a friend and patroness of music, immortalising her in the process. Before the verses appear, the composer gives us a full Italian-styled three-part sinfonia, concluding with a grave adagio that serves to highlight the solemnity of the occasion and throw into relief the joyousness of the invocations to Art and Music to follow. Purcell’s librettists for these works were not great poets, apart from Sir Charles Sedley, who wrote the verses for the fourth Ode of 1692, Love’s goddess sure was blind. The satirist Thomas Brown, recognising this, wrote the perceptive lines “For where the author’s scanty words have fail’d / Your Happier Graces, Purcell, have prevail’d”.

The playing of the Chiesa Ensemble, led by Rebecca Struthers, was splendid at the outset – strings and trumpets set the scene with bright, shining tones and energised phrasings that brought the music nicely to life – conductor Stephen Rowley chose tempi that allowed phrases to be savoured by the players, whose momentum was generated by dint of accent and phrasing rather than merely speed. After the solemn adagio alto Andrea Cochrane surprisingly took the pulpit for “Come Ye Sons of Art”, placing her alongside the back rows of the choir – a miscalculation, I thought, as she should have been far further forward (in the front, next to the conductor) and more immediate-sounding. She sang very beautifully, but her invocation to the “Sons of Art” had insufficient power and persuasion, due to her backward placement. Similarly, both she and Katherine Hodge were further disadvantaged in “Sound the Trumpet”, not only backwardly-placed, but distanced from the continuo instruments (Eleanor Carter’s ‘cello and Douglas Mews’ harpsichord) who were providing the rhythmic trajectories of the music with such buoyancy. Both singers sang beautifully, blending and dovetailing their tones nicely, and keeping nicely in touch with their instrumentalists; but both of their rather soft-grained voices needed all the forward projection that was available to them, in order to sound the clarion calls that Purcell surely intended.

Having more brightly-focused and strongly-projected tones, both soprano Pepe Becker and bass Kieran Rayner were able to realise more successfully  the more “public” aspect of the Ode.  Kieran Rayner’s declamations sonorously encompassed all but the highest notes without a hint of strain – the  words “Grant, oh grant, and let it have the honour of a jubilee” in particular were clearly and splendidly hurled forth. And the aria “These are the Sacred Charms” was marked by more mellifluous singing from the bass, a momentary voice-slip towards the end apart.  Pepe Becker’s singing of “Bid the Virtues”, in duet with the oboe, while paying less attention, I thought, to word-painting than to the production of beautiful tones, realised some lovely moments, among them a beautifully-arched “Blessing with returns of prayer, their great defender’s care”. Again, I think the backward placement of the singers robbed the words of some of their expression, rather generalising the solo voices’ effect (not that the poetry was anything to write home about, but even the most banal words can be transformed by settings of genius, as here). Soprano and bass shared the festive splendour of the final verse-settings “Thus Nature, rejoicing” with rich and noble tones from all concerned, the timpani flourishes at the end capping off the celebratory effect in fine style.

Handel’s Coronation Anthems, written for the Coronation of King George II and his Queen Caroline in 1727, have proven among the most durable of his works, used in coronation ceremonies of monarchs since then, and regarded as epitomising the composer’s most public and grandiloquent manner. Of course, the music was written for performing in Westminister Abbey, and as such deals in broad brush-strokes of sound, written for maximum public effect. With a choir of fifty voices and instrumentalists numbering in excess of a hundred and fifty, that first performance must have made a splendid noise! St.Andrew’s in Wellington is certainly no Westminster Abbey, but the effect when the Bach Choir’s voices took up the opening words of “Zadok the Priest’ was scalp-prickling. There was a nice sense of processional about the instrumental introduction, Stephen Rowley’s tempi both here, and in the more vigorous “God Save the King” section which concludes the anthem, I thought perfectly judged to bring out the music’s spacious grandeur, allowing the players to put real point and “girth” in their phrasing.

The second anthem, “Let Thy Hand be Strengthened” saw oboe and strings bring a pleasing variation of colour to the music, the singing nicely “rounded” in effect, not perhaps especially pointed, but entirely lacking any mannerism of emphasis or articulation. The minor-key mood of “Let justice and judgement” was allowed all its deep-hued gravity, unfolding and breathing naturally, while the “Alleluias” at the end had plenty of spring and energy. In the next anthem “My Heart is Inditing” I wanted a bit more “spring” from the voices in their opening passagework, something of the kind that was readily provided by the oboes in similar passages throughout. I liked the sopranos’ emphasis on the word “inditing” in their vocal line, something which energised and personalised the words’ delivery. Again, Stephen Rowley managed a tempo at “Kings daughters” which allowed the phrasings of the music to set the rhythmic trajectory of the whole, and again brought out the loveliness of the soprano voices, an effect that was also noticeable, in tandem with the oboes, at “Upon thy right hand”. With the final “Kings shall be thy nursing fathers”, the brass and timpani again came into their own, as they did in the final anthem “The King Shall Rejoice”. Perhaps the concluding “alleluias” were a shade too fast for the choir’s comfort, the voices striving to keep with the conductor’s beat and with the playing of the orchestra – but the effect overall was of great exhilaration and a marvellous sense of occasion, which is what we got, and was, surely, what the composer intended!