Opera arias and songs: Handel, Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, Mozart and others
Wellington Chamber Orchestra – family connections
ANTONIN DVORAK – Serenade for Winds in D Minor Op.44
TABEA SQUIRE – The Suneater – for Recorders and Strings
HELMUT SADLER – Concertino for Recorders and Strings
JOSEF SUK – Symphony in E Major Op.14
Wellington Chamber Orchestra
Soloists: Members of the Recorders and Early Music Union
Conductor: Gregory Squire
St.Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington
Sunday 6th December, 2009
Family ties involving both composers and performers were brought into play through this concert – firstly, on the strictly compositional front, works by both Antonin Dvorak and his son-in-law Joseph Suk featured on the programme; while Wellingtonian composer Tabea Squire’s commissioned work “The Suneater – for Recorders and Strings” received skilled and committed advocacy from musicians whose ranks included both of her parents, conductor Gregory Squire and leader of the Recorders and Early Music Union, Katrin Eickhorst-Squire. I was interested in the conductor’s (and, presumably, the orchestra committee’s) decision to play Tabea Squire’s new work TWICE on the programme – while it seemed a laudable thing to do for a new piece, helping the audience to take in so much more of the work’s essence on a second hearing, one would hope that Greg Squire would want to extend such advocacy to all new music he conducts. His enthusiastic and engaging spoken introduction to the work emphasised the importance of repeated hearings to the understanding of any unfamiliar music – by way of example he amusingly quoted his first encounter as a student with Brahms’s First Symphony.
However, it was not Brahms, but his great contemporary, Dvorak, whose music opened the orchestra’s programme, the Serenade for Winds, Op.44. This was a work which obviously represented another formative musical experience for the conductor, who described the prospect of directing the piece as akin to a dream come true. Something about this piece truly engages people – the friend I happened to be sitting next to in the audience bent over and whispered to me “This is my funeral music” just as the piece was about to begin! It’s certainly a most lovable work, one which the Chamber Orchestra wind players (helped by a ‘cello and double-bass) relished with delight, digging into the dotted rhythms of the opening with great enthusiasm and managing some nice dynamic variation through the lead-back measures (lovely clarinets in thirds, nicely answered by horns) to the opening’s return. The second movement (a trifle fast for the players’ articulation at the outset) deftly pointed the contrast between the lyrical opening and the scherzo-like trio section scamperings, even if some of the instrumental solos had treacherous twists, and the tricky rhythmic dovetailings at the end of the scherzo-episode fully stretched the group’s capabilities as an ensemble.The players got a lovely colour at the slow movement’s beginning, horns, bassoons and strings laying down a rich carpet of sound on which the individual solos could be floated; and while there were smudged instrumental lines in places, ensemble was good and the overall feeling was right. A good, strong and forthright opening set the finale on its way confidently, and even if the ensemble subsequently lacked the sheer weight of tone to bring to bear to the growing excitement of the rhythms and exuberance of the fanfares at the end there were heartwarming moments, the most engaging being at the recapitulation of the work’s very opening, sturdily and strongly played.
Tabea Squire’s work for recorders and strings was inspired by Keri Hulme’s iconic novel “The Bone People”, in which story appears a “Suneater”, an idiosyncratic device made of wires, mirrors and crystal which spins when placed in the sun, and which is accidentally broken by its maker. Further inspiration for the composer came from various world mythologies that have developed “sun-eating” stories explaining the oscillations in nature between darkness and light. The music explored a range of colours and hypnotic rhythms which suggested these processes. Right from its eerie Aeolian-harp-like opening on strings, through exchanges both throaty and piping-like with various recorders, the piece unerringly evolved a strongly-wrought atmosphere, somewhat reminiscent of Holst’s “Neptune” in places. I liked the oscillations between rich strings and more astringent winds, which moved the sounds away from such remote “unknown region” ambiences and into more volatile and interactive realms. The intensely “breathy” effect of the recorders gave the last section an almost primitive feel, the instruments’ earthy, “wrong-note” harmonies moving the sounds as a block out and away from the string ambiences, like a separation of disparate elements, each to their own realms. A second playing of the piece focused these thoughts concerning union and dissolution even more strongly, though I found it was interesting how uniquely “charged” the first performance felt, compared with the repeat, when things simply sounded “different” – everything with more focus a second time round, but less ethereal and magical in effect.
Helmut Sadler’s pleasant but largely unremarkable Concertino for Recorders and Strings filled in an entertaining quarter-hour’s listening, from the “Walk in the Black Forest” aspect of the opening movement, with its out-of-door, almost cinematographic ambiences, and rumbustious attention-seeking tones from the massed recorders, through some quasi-exotic harmonisings in attractively ritualised marches and processionals (some lovely, sensitive solo and ensemble work from the wind players) to a final agitato movement, whose slower middle section was marred by some poor wind tuning, but whose livelier sections were well-upholstered by the strings and deftly negotiated by the “group of soloists”.
The family circle aspect of the concert was completed by the orchestra’s performance of Josef Suk’s Symphony in E Major, an early work, in many ways indebted to the influence of Dvorak, who was Suk’s teacher as well as becoming his father-in-law, but with many original and beautiful touches. As this was the only full orchestral outing of the afternoon for the players they made the most of things, and gave the performance all they had. Before the performance Greg Squire spoke of the composer’s later, darker works, such as the Asrael Symphony, written in the wake of the deaths of both Suk’s father-in-law and his wife, and emphasised by comparison the relatively sunny nature of the earlier symphony. The playing was marked by some lovely solo work in places – a single horn at the start, the clarinet introducing the second subject – and Greg Squire asked for and got great rolling cascades of sound in places, strings capped by festive brass, triumphant and buoyant. Similarly, for the slow movement, my notes read “lovely solos from clarinet and oboe, rich string accompaniments, playing captures the music’s volatility – everything full-on…” The orchestra realised plenty of the scherzo’s dancing energy and spirit, with only the trio section sounding less happy due to some string-intonation lapses. As for the finale, although too long (the composer’s exuberance getting the better of his judgement with too many episodes and climactic denouments) Greg Squire’s and his orchestra’s concentration never flagged, keeping the narrative well-paced and nicely detailed. There were some tricky exposed passages for strings that sounded uncomfortable for the players at one or two purple points, but more importantly, the epic sweep of the music was conveyed to us in as full-blooded a manner as was required.
Messiaen’s La nativité du Seigneur from organist Richard Apperley
Cathedral of St Paul, Wellington, Friday 4 December 2009
This was the third year that Anglican Cathedral has presented Messiaen’s Christmas celebration on the big organ. Though it didn’t draw as big an audience as Messiah a week earlier at the other cathedral, the Happy Few enjoyed a commanding and brightly coloured account of Messiaen’s early masterpiece. It was written in the year of my birth, though I was much older that he was at its composition (28) when I first got to know Messiaen – probably over 40.
Though the organ at St Paul’s is capable of producing the characteristic sounds of the English organ, it is strong in vivid brass and treble woodwind stops, well adapted to the qualities of post-Romantic French organ music, and it was these that attracted Richard Apperley in the performance.
This characteristic was vividly heard at the start of the first piece, La vierge et l’enfant, opening with trembling, tiny, bell-like sounds, conveying the dim, cold atmosphere of the wintery manger. And Desseins éternels, with the presence of constant underpinning of deep pedal notes, Apperley again depicted a subdued feeling of awe, of the divine mystery.
It was with Le Verbe that the organ first expressed itself in bolder diapason sounds, though after a mere three minutes or so, Messiaen offers a musical version of the Word, employing the cornet stop in gentle, meandering lines, over obscure pedal harmonies.
Apperley’s penchant for piercing treble registrations emerged again in Les Anges, culminating in an imagining of angels fluttering their wings.
From that, the ugly descent to Jésus accepte la souffrance, was a remarkable experience, with fearful, heavy pedals treading out Christ’s three burdens of suffering.
I have been familiar with Marie-Claire Alain’s recorded performance (among others); the motion of a swaying procession of the Magi to be found in her playing makes it one of the most singular episodes; I did not feel quite that effect in Apperley’s playing. While his registrations were brighter, he nevertheless captured the sense of mystery, of being drawn towards something of which the wise men have only an uneasy premonition.
The last part, Dieu parmi nous, always seems a most remarkable creation, with its feeling of chaotic mingling of many elements, sparkling, fast-fingered joyousness, toccata-like episodes; Apperley distinguished himself here through the vivid contrasts he presented on different manuals, loud, penetrating stops riding over a subdued murmuring background, and the series of Bachian chordal passages, eventually building to a growing ecstasy with the series of teasingly unresolved chords that creates the kind of organ peroration that seems fundamental to the French school and to the French flair for dramatizing religious experiences. It was fully realized in this brilliant performance.
St Andrew’s: Valerie Rigg and Tessa Olivier in Vitali Chaconne and Prokofiev sonata
Chaconne in G minor (Tomaso Vitali); Violin sonata No 2, Op 94 (Prokofiev)
Valerie Rigg (violin) and Tessa Olivier (piano)
St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wednesday 2 December 2009
This turned out to be a highly impressive and enjoyable recital of two famous works.
Valerie Rigg played with the NZSO for 19 years, eventually as principal first violin, and she also had a professional career in England, Germany and Canada. She now lives again in Wellington.
She and Tessa Olivier (who emigrated from South Africa in 2002) played these pieces at a September concert at Old St Paul’s, which I heard. This week’s performance displayed a noticeable advance in their playing of both pieces.
Wikipedia states that the manuscript ascribed the Chaconne to “one ‘Tommaso Vitallino’ who may or may not be Vitali” (his first name is spelt variously with one or two ‘m’s). Further, Wikipedia notes that it “is generally known in a heavily recomposed version by German violinist Ferdinand David” who, as you know, was the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the dedicatee and first performer of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. In fact, some believe it could have been a pastiche by David, of several motifs by obscure Baroque composers; it appeared in a collection edited by David called Die Hoch Schule des Violinspiels.
In 1911 it was further ‘enhanced’ by French violinist Léopold Charlier who produced what is described as an even more taxing version. It was this that Valerie and Tessa played.
If we accept the kernel of the composition as authentic, the original piece could predate Bach’s solo violin works, since Tomaso was born 20 years before Bach; but it sounds far more ‘modern’ than Bach’s Chaconne, for example, because of the frequent and very radical series of modulations through which the variations move, a rather uncommon baroque procedure. In fact, scholars note that none of Vitali’s authenticated works are remotely like the Chaconne.
It has been called ‘astounding’, ‘a gripping tour de force’; that’s what I thought.
The Chaconne became very popular after its emergence through Ferdinand David, though I cannot ever recall hearing it played live; regardless of its provenance, it deserves to be included in violin recitals, and I welcomed this opportunity to hear it, both at Old St Paul’s and at St Andrew’s.
It was not a performance quite to compare with Milstein or Heifetz perhaps; but merely to play it marks out a violinist as pretty distinguished for it is indeed a highly challenging piece technically. Valerie Rigg had its measure, confidently, right from the stately first announcement of the main theme, in terms of its musical energy and her approach to its varied tempi and pyrotechnic elements that become increasingly hair-raising.
Tessa Olivier’s piano accompaniment, in the nature of a continuo but with a lot of individual interest as piano partner, was accurate and sympathetic, though there were moments when the two seemed rhythmically not quite at one.
The same boldness and confidence characterised their playing of Prokofiev’s second sonata which was his own arrangement of his Flute Sonata (so it’s normally labelled Op 94b). Prokofiev’s music demands high technical skill, and a rhythmic pulse and momentum that exists in a strange kind of neutral emotional environment. In spite of the variety in the treatment of the themes and their undeniable musical interest, there remains a feeling of non-commitment – not on the part of the players but in the music itself.
The second movement has the feel of a moto perpetuo, in a spirit that is brusque and staccato; the performance was not perfect but splendidly outgoing and committed. Perhaps the real test lay in the playing of the calm Andante movement, beautifully realised through a common vision that maintained a steady focus. In the last movement – Allegro con brio – when writing originally conceived for flute was never far away, its pace was a little less exuberant than I was familiar with; but it gave Prokofiev more space, becoming even more appropriate and successful as a violin piece, combining lyricism with virtuosity. Those qualities, as in the first two movements, were the final demonstration of the admirable interpretative skills of these two musicians.
Messiah from Kapiti Chamber Choir
Messiah by Handel. Conducted by Guy Jansen with Kapiti Chamber Choir, members of the former Bel Canto and friends, and an orchestra
Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday 29 November 2009
It looked as if this would be the first year, in living memory, that none of our choirs had scheduled a Messiah, when news came of a performance by the Kapiti Chamber Choir, one of Peter Godfrey’s former choirs. Conducted by Guy Jansen, it was likely to be as fine a performance as any we have heard, and so it has transpired.
There were two performances: the first on Sunday 22 November at Paraparaumu and the second in Wellington on the 29th. Today, it is more common to use rather smaller choral forces than a few decades ago when huge Victorian choirs were favoured. The performances in Handel’s time didn’t exceed 40 or so. On Sunday there were 40 singers.
The result was one of the most splendid performances I’ve heard.
Part of the secret was the addition of members of the former Bel Canto choir and friends: that was an ensemble of mainly professional solo voices, founded by Jansen in 1987 and disbanded in 1998 after he left to teach at the University of Queensland (what a shame no New Zealand university grabbed him).
They added to the strength and spirit of the entire ensemble, sharpening attack, dramatizing dynamics and expression, and generating an exciting, vivid sound; the distinct choral groups allowed the music to be passed from one to another in an electrifying, dramatic way; and each group took certain choruses on its own. With Jansen’s inspiring leadership, they produced sounds ranging from magical calm to awful fury. I used to feel at times that Bel Canto’s drawback lay in the strength and individuality of many of the voices, not properly merged in a uniform sound. It was not evident here.
All the solo roles were taken by eight Bel Canto (and friends) singers, almost all in fine voice; they happen to be still among Wellington’s best singers.
One of the things he drew attention to in his pre-concert talk, was the belief that success lay in rooting the singing in the meaning of the words, their sounds and rhythms. And that became very clear in the performance; it lent every number, every line, its particular character; clarity of diction too benefitted from this attention. It struck me first during the chorus’s singing of ‘Every Valley’. Care with sense and dynamics, word colours, rhythms and ornaments were all gained from the attention paid to this aspect.
Particularly striking were sopranos Janey MacKenzie (‘How beautiful are the feet’: ethereal high notes) and Barbara Graham whose bracket was confined to those following the Pastoral symphony ending emotionally in quite operatic character in ‘Rejoice greatly’.
However, I dare not make distinctions between the others, basses Roger Wilson (fearsome in ‘Thus saith the Lord’ and clarion high notes in ‘The trumpet shall sound’) and Rodney Macann (who joined Alison Hodge in ‘But who may abide…’, alternating benevolence and wrath, and his own ‘Why do the nations’, all outrage); and tenors Ed Hintz (pure high notes in the opening ‘Comfort Ye’) and John Beaglehole who sang ‘Thy rebuke hath broken his heart’ with real anguish. Soprano Lesley Graham sang two major arias in Part 3, ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ and ‘If God be for us’; the two altos: Alison Hodge’s ardent ‘O thou that tellest’ was embellished with a fine violin obbligato, while Denise Wilson shared ‘He shall feed his flock’ capably with Janey MacKenzie.
The small orchestra played like professionals; strings were polished, confident and energetic, oboes lovely, trumpets commanding; and Jonathan Berkahn’s contribution to continuo was often marked, and though I was not aware at the time because his name was not in the programme, it was Douglas Mews who opened up the main organ to add to the excitement of the final numbers, creating an ecstasy of religious triumphalism. There was a standing ovation.
(An expansion of the review in The Dominion Post)
Guitar’s Song and Dance – the old and new worlds of Gunter Herbig
Gunter Herbig – Classical guitar
Music by Luys de Navarez, J.S.Bach, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Douglas Lilburn and Agustin Barrios
Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon
Sunday 29th November 2009
During the nineteenth century Franz Liszt was the greatest exponent of the transcription – he used the piano to help popularise orchestral and vocal music whose performance would have otherwise been confined to places and venues where there were orchestras and musicians able to present the music as written. Another instrument whose range and flexibility made it an admirable vehicle for transcriptions of all kind of music was the guitar – one that Liszt unfortunately never turned his hand to – and during the nineteenth century people such as Anton Diabelli, the Bohemian virtuoso Johann Casper Mertz, and the Spaniard Francisco Tarrega were responsible for guitar versions of music by people such as Mendelssohn, Schubert and Paganini, though the last two did themselves actually write directly for the guitar. It struck me, while listening to guitarist Gunter Herbig give his inspirational concert recently in Old St.Paul’s Church, how versatile the instrument actually was – a good deal of the programme was made up of transcriptions of both songs and works for other instruments, yet the guitar seemed admirably suited to express the music’s essential elements. My point in citing Liszt’s well-known transcriptions for piano at the beginning of this paragraph is to thus draw a favourable comparison with similar kinds of reworkings of music to be played on the guitar.
Gunter Herbig’s programme spanned several centuries and continents, being described as “a musical journey from the Old World into the New World” A small degree of amplification was used throughout the concert, which seemed somewhat obtrusive to my ears right at the start, but one quickly adjusted to a point where it was hardly noticeable. Herbig began with some pieces written by the sixteenth-century Spanish composer Luys de Narvaez, a song “Cancion del Emperador”, and two sets of variations. The song had a wistful and melancholic air, with elements of ritualised movement suggesting dance-steps, while the sets of variations contrasted nicely with one another, the first “Diferencias sobre Guardame las Vacas” cheerful and forthright, the other Diferencias sobre otra parte” more ruminative and varied in voicings and in timbre.
The next item was a transcription by Herbig of J.S.Bach’s Partita in D MInor BWV 1004, written for what the guitarist called “prepared guitar”, which meant that a steel wire was inserted beneath the strings of the instrument to colour the sound. The result was not unlike those throaty timbres one associates with early keyboard instruments of the kind that Bach himself would have been familiar with – the clavichord and the early fortepiano. I must confess that part of me was at first wondering why anybody would want to emasculate the beauty and purity of clearly-voiced classical guitar timbres, but I got used to the sound after a while. The somewhat spectral tones of the doctored instrument certainly reflected something of the turmoil that would have afflicted the composer at the time of writing this music, with the unexpected loss of his first wife. Whenever the playing’s intensity heightened, the astringency of the sound sharpened, so that the more introspective moments, robbed of their intrinsic tonal beauty, took on added poignancy in Herbig’s hands. Best of all was the great concluding Chaconne, whose forthright flourishes just before the return of the final tragic statement of the theme made for wonderful drama and deep expression.
After the interval we heard the Five Preludes of Heitor Villa-Lobos, a guitar classic of its kind, as it were – but one with a difference, here, as Herbig was using a new edition of the work incorporating earlier handwritten manuscripts by the composer of these pieces, featuring differences to those of the published versions commonly known. These are wonderful works, the first a baritone-like aria with a duetted middle section, the second a quixotic dance whose central episode darkens (rather like a cloud crossing the sun) with flurries of chilly breezes, and a third (a favourite of mine) a recitative- like exploration of surrounding spaces, with beautiful progressions reminiscent of Grieg’s Norwegian March from his “Lyric Pieces”. A fourth seems like a nature-piece, declamations with whisper-echoes from great distances, sudden agitations and then silences filling up the remaining spaces, apart from a final strum of farewell, while the last is appropriately a Latin dance, here played with commanding colouration and rhythmic flexibility.
Nobody who knows the voice-and-guitar version of the song-cycle “Sings Harry” should be surprised that Douglas Lilburn wrote for the solo instrument. His “Seventeen Pieces for Guitar” (published in 1975, but written throughout the 1960s and 70s) were composed largely at the instigation and encouragement of guitarist and artist Ron Burt. Gunter Herbig played a set of pieces called in the programme “Six Canzonas” – two of these, including the poignant “Flowers of the Sea” from the “Sings Harry” cycle, were from “Seventeen Pieces”, while the other four were transcriptions of music written originally by the composer for Shakespearean productions in Christchurch in the 1940s. Together, the pieces made a gentle, somewhat melancholic impression, indicative, one suspects of a solitary inner landscape, with wistful, even lament-like melodies, measures and processionals, sparsely accompanied.
It was left to “the Paganini of the Paraguyan jungle”, Agustin Barrios, to disperse the pall of introspection that had been thrown over the proceedings, with a romantic waltz (Vals No.3), played with plenty of charm and rhythmic freedom, and two song transcriptions, “Julia Florida” and “Villancico de Navidad”, whose colour, rhythmic verve and depth of feeling amply demonstrate why some regard Barrios as the greatest of all guitarist-composers. Following his death in 1944 he was neglected by the world at large until a new generation of performers rediscovered his work, and restored his reputation as a composer. Gunter Herbig’s playing, as throughout the concert, brought it all to life with considerable elan and skill, concluding a most successful evening at the wonderful Old St.Paul’s.
Lunchtime at St Andrew’s: Mozart Trio, Strauss Violin Sonata
Mozart: Trio in E flat, K 498 (‘Kegelstatt’) with violin in place of clarinet; Violin Sonata in E flat, Op 18 (Strauss)
Cristina Vaszilcsin (violin), Peter Garrity (viola), Catherine McKay (piano)
St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wednesday 25 November 2009
These three players have been tantalizing us with Strauss’s youthful, highly coloured violin sonata, with performances of just the first two movements (at Paekakariki) and of the Improvisation movement alone (at the Friends of the NZSO concert a week earlier); I’d heard both. Here at last we heard the whole thing, though it was not without its curiosity even here.
As the players prepared to start the second movement (Improvisation), Cristina dashed off to get her mute; she then played her first two notes – alone; Catherine got up from the piano and went out and when she didn’t come straight back Cristina left too. Time passed. Concert organizer Marjan Waardenberg went out too and we waited; one or two people left, but the first movement had been so compelling that almost all remained seated, hopefully. A good five minutes later they all returned and calmly began the second movement.
Catherine had had a nose-bleed.
It was the energy and rapport displayed by these two players that was striking; one sensed a strong shared commitment to and sympathy for the sonata which is an early work, written aged about 23, and not universally admired; it is given to exploiting both Strauss’s fecund compositional gifts, a romantic imagination fed by a growing admiration for the aesthetic of Wagner and Liszt; I found it curious that I was here and there reminded of Franck’s sonata, even though Strauss could hardly have known it since it was written only a year earlier.
Even though marked Andante, the first movement creates a passionate impression that belies the actual underlying tempo, and it was this impulse and thrust that animated the performance most strongly. The second movement suffered not the least from the pianist’s brief ailment; in fact it was as if the problem inspired an even more rhapsodic, expansive performance, filled with graceful phrasing and ecstatic piano filigree supporting the violin’s more legato lines.
The third movement was the place for even more highly romantic effects, endless scales and decorative arpeggios played as if they were much more than flashy gestures, then a middle section where the violin became playful in a perfectly wholehearted way. There was always the sense of impassioned momentum that sustained a constant awareness of the larger picture.
They had begun the concert with Mozart’s wonderful clarinet trio, with the clarinet replaced by Vaszilcsin’s violin. Not only did the violin quite seduce me with a feeling that this might well have really been the sound Mozart had in mind, so natural and gorgeous was it, but the different environment also lent the viola greater distinction than it had, at least in the traditional sounds lodged in my mind, alongside the clarinet.
In the Rondeaux allegretto (last movement) the violin’s summery joy and warmth led to a feeling of deep, if very histrionic, soulfulness which the viola reflected in its lovely duo with piano in the middle section. I am given to exclaiming about performances that are unlikely to be excelled this year, but this was such a performance, of two wonderful works that are too rarely heard.
Musica Sacra: These Distracted Times
Directed by Robert Oliver; comprising Baroque Voices (director: Pepe Becker) and Academia Sanctae Mariae (led by Gregory Squire)
Music by Henry and William Lawes, John Jenkins, Richard Dering, Thomas Tomkins, Matthew Locke
St Mary of the Angels, Wellington; Sunday 22 November 2009
I found myself unusually intrigued by the last concert of Musica Sacra’s 2009 series, dwelling on the music of the Civil War period in England in the mid-17th century; for interest in English music has tended to wane with the death of the composers who were active in Elizabeth’s and James I’s reigns, such as Orlando Gibbons, Peter Philips, Thomas Campion, John Dowland…
Though this concert included music from both before and after those 20 years of strife and the subsequent Commonwealth – the 1640s and 50s (Richard Dering was dead by 1630 and Matthew Locke was born in 1630 and lived till 1677), most of the music was touched in some way by either the gathering clouds or by the strife itself. Catholic liturgical music was banned and most musical composition was directed towards domestic music; the Puritans did not object to music per se.
Those central to the years of the Civil War were John Jenkins who lived from 1592 till 1678, and Henry and William Lawes (though William was killed in battle in 1645).
The older brother, Henry, is presumably well known to Wellingtonians as a result of the very rich Milton collection in the Turnbull Library which has been expanded to encompass Milton’s literary, musical and political contemporaries. Milton’s masque Comus was written to be set by Henry on commission from the Earl of Bridgewater. Though his music was lost, an adaptation of Comus was later set by Thomas Arne and was very popular; that version was performed in Wellington a few years ago by an opera group, Brio, led by Lesley Graham.
Milton wrote a Sonnet, his No 13*, in praise of Henry Lawes for completing a certain play. It first appeared as the introduction to Henry and William Lawes’s Choice Psalms of 1648.
Henry Lawes’s setting of Psalm 9, ‘Thee and thy wondrous deeds’ opened the concert: a setting for five voices, strings and organ, which set the tone for the evening. It began with Pepe Becker, at her peak, a pure yet warm soprano, so fluid and brilliant that one feared she would outshine the other singers. But they did match her in their different, perhaps not quite as remarkable, ways; in duet with her, tenor John Fraser held his own, and both Jane McKinlay and alto Andrea Cochrane established themselves confidently in solo passages as well as in the several trios involving two or three women.
Bass David Morriss in particular has emerged with greater confidence and his lower voice has gained splendid strength; in Locke’s ‘Ad te levavi’ (Psalm 122), and elsewhere, he impressed with skillfully decorated lines.
The programme took the form of Psalm settings and several Latin motets with continuo, by Dering (most of whose life was spent outside England) and Locke; these were interspersed with readings by Morriss. Although the amplification made some words hard to catch, they were amusing and pertinent, especially those from Nicholas L’Estrange’s collections of anecdotes (generally the decent ones, which are in the minority) and his brother, Roger’s Truth and Loyalty Vindicated.
One related a protest by ‘One Mr Saunders’ who remonstrated with people talking during an instrumental performance: “This is not vocal music,” he is reported crying out.
The two groups involved in Musica Sacra are alike in their sensitivity to the style of the music they play and achieve a degree of harmony of tone as vocal and instrumental ensembles that is remarkable. The three women, sopranos Becker and McKinlay, and alto Cochrane, created an especially beautiful blend in the Matthew Locke motet ‘Audi Domine’; but the five together achieved almost as much perfection.
The instrumental ensemble accompanied, in various configurations, sometimes both violins, Greg Squire and Shelley Wilkinson, Robert Oliver on bass viol and Douglas Mews on the chamber organ; sometimes the organ alone. As well as contributing an ultimate polish and balance to the singing; they played several purely instrumental pieces such as a Fantasy Suite by John Jenkins (involving demanding virtuosity) and two sonatas by William Lawes for all the instruments.
Mews played a solo piece for organ by Thomas Tomkins which gave the concert its name: A Sad Pavane for These Distracted Times; Tomkins’s life extended from the last 20 years of Elizabeth’s reign till 1656. He was a Royalist and the Pavane was composed a few days after the execution of Charles I in 1649; sounding from a somewhat earlier, happier time, this was a beautiful, intelligent performance, its tone elegiac and lamenting.
Even if interest in the less familiar music of the past is driven to some degree by the frustrations felt by audiences at much of the music of the past century, the benefits are huge; as with this concert, the explorations are not only unearthing less-known music of famous composers and obscure composers who were the links between many of the greats, but are also bringing to life music from totally neglected periods such as the early 17th century.
We are so lucky to live in a period when so much musical exploration is happening, unprecedented in any earlier time. For none of the composers in this concert was familiar to any but the musical historian till recently, and all are worth getting to know.
*John Milton’s Sonnet No XIII (to Henry Lawes)
Harry whose tuneful and well measured song
First taught our English Musick how to span
Words with just note and accent, not to scan
With Midas Ears, committing short and long;
Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng,
With praise anough for Envy to look wan;
To after-age thou shalt be writ the man,
That with smooth aire could’st humor best our tongue.
Thou honour’st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing
To honour thee, the Priest of Phoebus Quire
That tun’st their happiest lines in Hymn, or Story.
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Then his Casella, whom he woo’d to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory.
“Cultural Property” – The New Zealand String Quartet at Te Papa
John Psathas – Abhisheka
Michael Norris – Exitus
Juliet Palmer – Egg and Tongue
Ross Harris – Variation 25
Jack Body – Three Transcriptions
New Zealand String Quartet
(Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman, violins,
Gillian Ansell, viola, Rolf Gjelsten, ‘cello)
Te Marae, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington
Sunday November 22nd 2009
This programme of string quartets by New Zealand composers is being recorded by Atoll Records, the enterprise serving as a well-deserved tribute to not only the composers but also the New Zealand String Quartet for their advocacy of home-grown music over the years. And although a number of these works have been recorded before by the same ensemble, it’s a splendid idea to bring together the group’s updated “take” on pieces that have either already are or else show signs of becoming classic genre works in the ever-burgeoning stockpile of New Zealand compositions. Pieces like John Psathas’s Abhisheka have already developed something of a “performance history” which suggests a welcome longevity, as does Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions (though might the latter work benefit from a rather more mood-inducing title, such as “Three Travelogues” or something?). No such equivocation hampers Juliet Palmer’s intriguingly-titled but lesser-known Egg and Tongue, which dates from 1994, a deliciously “layered” piece bringing impulses, gestures and styles from various sources. The other two works on the programme were both 2009 premieres from Nelson’s Adam Chamber Music Festival, each piece suggesting in its own way a fruitful gestation of advancement in terms of future audience appreciation.
John Psathas’s Abhisheka represented the composer’s first sustained attempt to come to terms with through-composed stasis and spaciousness, though works such as “Waiting for the Aeroplane” (1988) featured episodes of similarly-conceived stillness and inward reflection. Here, the players beautifully “grew” the sounds out of the silences, subtly and unhurriedly exploring the piece’s different colours and textures along the way, and blending exotic melodic lines with faraway ambiences whose hypnotic spell seemed to transcend time and space. Reflecting the composer’s interest in writings by a Buddhist mystic at the time, the music suggested a creative fusion of impulse with reflection, encompassing occasional melismatic movement alongside a deeper, and perhaps inexplicable peace – the abhisheka of the title refers to the process of sprinkling and pouring into a receptive vessel that ineffable state of calm acceptance so alien to normal human “modus operandus”.
Juliet Palmer’s viscerally engaging Egg and Tongue made a great foil for the inward intensities of John Psathas’s work – though it was interesting how again episodes within the music set motion against long-breathedness in a different kind of way. The work suggested something bubbling constantly just beneath a surface whose “skin” would occasionally rupture and fragment – but never catastrophically, the impetus of accented movement being gathered in as quickly as the patternings irrupt. I felt there was an almost “hoedown” element trying in places to get out, its efforts at liberation giving rise to wonderfully startling sonorities, the crunching of four-note patternings against “jamming” pizzicati; while at other times held violin notes exchange like resonating bells, then, in the midst of a “battle of pizzicati” the same instruments excitingly swoop and soar like air-raid sirens. I loved the kaleidoscopic aspect of the piece, its patternings, mirrorings and (in places) volatile dissolutions, not the least of which was its wraith-like conclusion, the violin tones seeming to dissolve in the very air.
Ross Harris was one of two composers present at the Te Papa Marae to hear their work being played (Michael Norris was the other). Ross spoke about the impression made upon him by hearing Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” played by a string quartet, so that his meditation, also for string quartet on the 25th Variation of Bach’s work seemed like a natural outcome of the experience. Variation 25 began by underlining the original work’s lyrical qualities, then introducing downwardly chromatic harmonies to “charge” the music with a kind of late romantic aura, filled with grave, scented beauty. Impassioned accents and phrase-beginnings vie with more circumspect passages, before a closely-worked scherzando-like episode invigorates the music, then gradually pares away the excess, until the notes take on a more pointillistic aspect as the piece explores different harmonic directions. A lovely solo from the violin, underpinned by the viola’s voice, calmly finishes the work.
While New Zealand composers often draw direct inspiration for their work from their immediate physical surroundings, they’re as liable to respond to wider cultural stimuli representing universal themes and preoccupations – so it is with Michael Norris’s Exitus, an exploration of four different geographical and cultural conceptions of afterworlds. The different scenarios are in themselves intensely poetic and descriptively colourful and varied, and the composer’s response does each of them rich justice. For example, Quidlivun, the Inuit afterworld, is the “Land of the Moon”, whose realisation draws largely peaceful sounds from the instruments, with occasional quasi-vocal intonations suggesting some kind of resigned lament, against a backdrop of patterned repetition that puts one in mind of a mantra or chant. Conversely, the Mayan Xibalba sounds a more fearful place, suggested by pungent-harmonied chords with slashing szfordandi, creating an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere; while the Norse Niflheim, the northern region of icy mists and fogs, features a spectral hymn-like melody played sotto voce by violins and viola, leaving the cello to explore some hauntingly stratospheric sonorities, with lovely, eerie harmonics. Finally, the North American Choctaw Indian afterworld of Oka Lusa Hacha (Black Water River) describes a trial by water for souls wishing to enter the proverbial Happy Hunting Grounds, the higher violins driving the primitive rhythms on while viola and ‘cello intone with great expressive force the rites of passage, dramatically exchanging roles at one point before the quartet of voices plunges as one into a concerted drive towards the place of destiny, the textures gradually dissolving and disappearing with a brief and disarming flourish.
A “return to life” came with Jack Body’s Three Transcriptions, similarly exploratory, if more “here-and-now” manifestations of humankind’s endlessly varied music-making – something of the alchemic spirit of Franz Liszt’s transcriptions for piano of all kinds of music was evoked by these realisations for string quartet, all from different parts of the world. What struck me from the outset was how the composer contrived to explore timbres from the instruments quite foreign to normal expectations regarding a string quartet’s “sound”, the melody in the first piece Long Gi Yi having, for example, a haunting and exotic vocal quality, around which the other instruments wove a sinuous ambience. The second piece, from Madagascar was called Ramandriana, a dance originally played on an eighteen-stringed bamboo tube zither, the quartet tossing pizzicato and arco phrases back and forth with great brio, across simple and compound rhythms. Finally, the slashing Ratschenita from Bulgaria with its wild 7/8 rhythms underpinned by guitar-like strummings and foot-stampings inspired exhilarating energies and momentums that got everybody’s juices pulsing and tingling in properly life-enhancing ways. A great concert, then, in a most stimulating environment – full marks to all!
Odes to Joy – Wellington Orchestra with Michael Houstoun
BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat “Emperor”
ELLINGTON – Suite “The River”
RESPIGHI – The Pines of Rome
Michael Houstoun (piano)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Vector Welington Orchestra
– with players from:
RNZAF Central Band,
Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass Band,
Titan Hutt City Brass Band
Wellington Town Hall, Sunday 22nd November 2009
You’d be hard put to devise a more celebratory conclusion to a season of orchestral concerts than this one, with both Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto and Respighi’s sonic blockbuster “The Pines of Rome” in the programme. Of course, Michael Houstoun’s performance of the Beethoven was the last in his presentation of the complete series of the piano concerti, giving the occasion a kind of “double-whammy” effect, and at the concert’s conclusion leaving us quite exhilarated with the energy and vitality of it all. I admit to enjoying the Duke Ellington work “The River”, even if it seemed to me to be a bit of “determined to be different” programming, interesting though the music was to hear – but perhaps I’m showing my prejudices regarding both the application of musical “novelties” to programmes and the parallel neglect of homegrown music. With only one New Zealand work (Jack Body’s “Pulse”) to its concert-programming credit throughout 2009, and one (admittedly a premiere by John Psathas) over four concerts next year, I’d be tempted to observe that the orchestra isn’t putting across much of an indication of compositional activity in this country to its concert-going public, given that scheduling one New Zealand work per season is better than having none at all.
Having gotten the gripe out of the way, I can more freely plunge into the business of reviewing Sunday’s concert, which was a great success – firstly, Michael Houstoun came, saw and conquered with his spirited rendition of Beethoven’s largest and grandest piano concerto, while the two second-half works by turns tantalised and thrilled us with their displays of different kinds of orchestral virtuosity, the sultry rhythms and colours of Duke Ellington’s dance-suite, and the full gamut of instrumental brilliance and power generated by Respighi’s Roman picture-postcards. The combination of exciting solo and orchestral playing and the inimitable Wellington Town Hall ambience made for plenty of thrills and, for me, after-glowings of satisfaction.
No-one ever plays the “Emperor” these days as I first heard it played, which was in the grandest possible manner on a recording made by Daniel Barenboim with the great Otto Klemperer at the orchestral helm – totally anachronistic, but still glorious and overwhelming! Vestiges of that formative magnificence, I confess, haunt my perceptions of other performances experienced since, and with which I constantly struggle, as with all first loves – Houstoun’s and Marc Taddei’s conception was a lean and fiery one throughout the first movement, the playing generating considerable orchestral excitement in the opening tutti, and providing an interesting foil for the soloist’s slightly more detached and Olympian manner. I liked the way Taddei encouraged the orchestra brasses, the horns occasionally rasping with scarcely-contained ebullience, and wonderfully contrasting their manner with the beautifully-phrased poetry of the wind playing. As for the strings, their warm tones and incisive playing was a joy – only in places such as immediately after the “battering exchange” between piano and orchestra mid-movement, where they share canonical phrases with the piano did I feel they lacked the numbers for their playing to “tell”. Houstoun’s playing encompassed all of these moods with both initiatives and responses that took us to the music’s four corners – incisive when needed, lucid and cogent in argument, and ruminative at certain cadence-points, he realised the composer’s “generosity of spirit” to which he made reference in a programme-note containing his own, thoughtfully-expressed views of the whole concerto series.
After the first movement I found parts of the remainder of the concerto a tad less engaging – the slow movement was very pure, with concentrated feeling and tightly-conceived lines, but for me the merest shade driven in places where I wanted the music to stand and catch its own stillness, and make listeners aware of their own breath-taking….I thought it lacked some of what the Germans call “innigkeit”, an inward intensity and concentration that banishes all other awarenesses of things. A moment that did work beautifully was the hushed lead-in to the finale, the piano’s sudden surge of energy into the rondo-theme excitingly breaking the spell and causing exhalations of pleasure from some fellow-listeners in the hall. Houstoun had an uncharacteristic moment of lack of poise in one of the rondo episodes, but quickly recovered, enjoying the music’s exhilarations and contrasting episodes of playful teasing with the orchestra, even at one point anticipating and reaching a downbeat before Taddei and the orchestra could get there, to no great harm in the flow and ebb of it all. At the end, a well-deserved standing ovation seemed to abruptly and surprisingly come to an end, as if people were expecting something would be said from the platform by somebody, who never actually appeared. If there were flowers for Houstoun, one hopes he received them backstage, at least – his achievement in presenting the whole series of concertos with Taddei and the orchestra during the year deserved the warmest and most heartfelt acclaim.
After the interval, Marc Taddei spoke with the audience about the orchestra’s 2010 season, a schedule which I thought had been very nicely devised – a feature had been made of centenaries of pieces of music and their composers, with works connected with 1910, 1810 and 1710, as well as with the present (John Psathas’s commissioned work “Djinn”). Of course, this configuration worked against including any New Zealand composition except a new one, which was the case with the above work (“Che sara, sara” as the song goes – but I shall return, teeth bared, snapping at the orchestra’s programming heels, in 2011!). In truth I thought the schedule showed rather more flair and imagination regarding repertoire than did the NZSO’s already-published 2010 prospectus, with mouth-watering things promised such as Elgar’s Violin Concerto played by award-winning violinist Feng Ning, and Saint-Saens’ wonderful “Organ Symphony”.
I had little idea what to expect of the Duke Ellington work “The River”, though it seemed on the face of things to resemble Smetana’s well-known “Vltava” from his “Ma Vlast”, the idea of tracing the course of a river from its source through different episodes to either a lake or a larger river or even the sea. One of the sections of the score was titled “Village Virgins”, causing some conjecture regarding how such beings could be rendered musically (Smetana’s “virginal” equivalent, not actually in “Vltava” of course, but elsewhere in “Ma Vlast”, was the war-maiden Sarka and her fellow-Amazons). In the event, the suite of seven movements featured plenty of recognisably “bluesy” rhythms and textures which could have hinted at the music’s origins, but also some full-blooded cinematoscopic orchestral all-togethers, expertly scored by “the Duke”. I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d got my sequences of what I was hearing in line with the programme’s titles, but the ballad-like opening “Spring” with its melismatic horn parts made a great impression, with lovely playing from all concerned. Another movement to impress was the “Giggling Rapids” episode, evoked by a piano solo and agile brass, with terrific percussion work from Jeremy Fitzsimmons. I also liked the section called “The Lake”, beginning with great stillness, and sensitive detailing from the winds over the top of a broadly flowing tune from the lower strings, which eventually became a kind of “Begin the Beguine” from the brass. Finally, just as the virgins were getting into the swing of things during their section, the lights began to dim, and, as the music finished everything in the hall dissolved into blackness, like the end of a scene from a movie – very atmospheric and nicely brought off. Joseph Haydn, of course, would have loved it!
The empty seats in both “organ galleries” had meanwhile been filled by bandsmen and women carrying various shining instruments, in preparation for Respighi’s work to follow – and what a performance it was! I thought the orchestra boxed, as the saying goes, pounds above its actual weight, capturing all the brilliance and gaiety of the opening section at a scintillating tempo, but one which didn’t “flatten out” the rhythms at all, keeping everything nicely spiked and buoyant. The change to a deep, sonorous ambience for the second section was utterly compelling and dramatic, with Tom Moyer’s trumpet-playing true and sweet, if simply too close and unatmospheric (if he had been offstage it would have been a truly magical moment) and Taddei and his players building the great central archway to brilliant effect. The third section featured more beautiful solo work, this time from clarinettist Moira Hurst, summoning up the enchantment of a nightingale’s song, and setting the scene for the ghostly procession to follow, an eerie, plangently-voiced cor-anglais solo ((Madeleine Sakofsky) seeming to awaken the shades of returning armies marching upon the still-sleeping city. Taddei set a marvellously slow tempo, eschewing the virtuoso romp through this section that spoils many recorded performances by crack orchestras, and instead vividly capturing the sense of a human juggernaut inexorably approaching, and menacing in its power. By this time, the array of brass players on both sides were on their feet, ready to awaken the citizenry and salute the homecoming heroes. What sounds they were! – as the brass players from the Central RNZAF Band, the Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass Band and the Titan Hutt City Brass Band gave voice to their instruments, along with the deep tones of the Town Hall pipe organ, along with the orchestra playing at full stretch enriching the soundscape with the loudest tones I think I’ve heard in the Town Hall since a performance of the Berlioz Requiem I heard given thirty years ago. Simply overwhelming! Bravo!