Keeping the piano recital alive – Stephen De Pledge

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stephen de Pledge – Piano Recital at the Town Hall

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

Wellington Town Hall, 8th September 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Aroha Quartet at an evening at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrating the 200th anniversary: Haydn and the New Zealand String Quartet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Haydn String Quartets: Op 64 No 5 (The Lark), Op 74 No 3 (The Rider), Op 20 No 5, Op 77 No 1 (Compliments)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman – violins, Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – cello)

St Mary of the Angels, Saturday 29 August 2009

Peter Mechen has written a review of the first of the two concerts by the New Zealand String Quartet on Tuesday 25 August, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Haydn. That concert contained, not only 21 excerpts from the quartets, from Op 1 to Op 103, but also recitations by the four quartet members from letters and memoirs recorded by a number of biographers and commentators. (Admirably, the programme listed the references so that the audience could seek out some of the books the next morning at library or on internet).

That tour de force of musical adventure and theatrical entertainment was not repeated in the second concert which I heard on Saturday (it had been played first on Thursday 27 August in the Hunter Council Chamber).

This repeat of the second programme was held at 6pm, in part, presumably, to enjoy the evanescent light of day as it dimmed through the stained glass, allowing the church soon to be lit only by prolific candelabra (in the singular it’s ‘candelabrum’, by the way).

For this they chose four of their favourite quartets, and played them with profound affection, brilliance and insight.

Many of the popular quartets have acquired nick-names; three of the four were The Lark, The Rider and Compliments. The earliest was from Op 20, published in 1772, a group that was nick-named The Sun, presumably on account of the publisher’s engraving on the cover. Just as the earlier concert had been a revelation in terms of the growing maturity and the increasing complexity and sophistication of Haydn’s writing, so the comparison between the two quartets in the second half, Op 20 No 5 and the Op 77 No 1, 30 years apart was very striking.

The former is a serious work, in F minor, and the themes of the first movement lend themselves to imaginative development that evidences the compositional learning Haydn already commanded. Though it was the Op 33 set, ten years later, that inspired Mozart’s set that he dedicated to Haydn, it is easy to understand how the style, shape and melodic evolution of this earlier quartet would have impressed the younger composer.

The first movement impresses with a convoluting, ever-expanding theme, and the quartet managed to portray its unusual character without excessive minor-key sombreness; on the other hand the thoughtful, quite elaborate Minuet does not present the normal unbuttoned peasant dance; and the unusual Adagio, a Siciliano in triple time ends with typically Haydnesque flippancy. All of these unconventionalities the players handled with calm understatement. And then there’s the fugal, though quite short, last movement; just to show that he wasn’t simply a tunesmith.

The rapport and compatibility of the string quartet members and their marvellous command of the notes justified the performance of this relatively early quartet.

Op 77 No 1 (Compliments) has a far more varied and confident character, each instrument offered a great deal more individuality, all manner of original, vacillating rhythmic and melodic touches in the first movement ending with enchanting scales from Rolf Gjelsten’s cello. It was written, indeed, after the publication of Beethoven’s Op 18 set and in many ways it demonstrates an intellectual and artistic breadth that Ludwig would have embraced. I have rarely heard the quartet playing with greater accomplishment and in an accord so completely engaged.

The first half contained the more diverting works – familiar, brilliant, melodic: The Lark, clearly justifying its name, with Helene Pohl’s violin soaring beautifully in the first, too short, movement; with one of the loveliest of Haydn’s slow movements in a ravishing performance; and a vivace finale which they turned into a scintillating prestissimo.

The Rider was one of the quartet’s earliest Haydn quartets and for me, their handling remains unexcelled. They tackled the opening Allegro with such a carefree, open air spirit, in spite of its minor key (the common classification of major and minor modes as happy and sad really is nonsense). The slow movement, somewhat reminiscent of the great slow movement of the Emperor quartet, highly ornamented, so different in tone from the adjacent movements, was laid out exquisitely. The infectious galloping rhythms in both first and last movements faltered at none of the hurdles and the lower strings supported the sure-footed gallop: so fast, so ‘con brio’ in the final Allegro, that its excited breathlessness hinted at the mood of which Mozart was master in The Marriage of Figaro.

‘Hideous Love’ offered by Brio, opera ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Excerpts from Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and Verdi: Un ballo in maschera, Il Trovatore, Rigoletto

Brio: Janey MacKenzie, Jody Orgias, John Beaglehole, Roger Wilson; piano: Robyn Jaquiery

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 26 August 2009

The success of the somewhat heterogeneous range of voices comprising the vocal ensemble Brio lies in their energy and histrionic flair and the plain delight they four take in what they undertake. On this occasion Roger Wilson replaced the ensemble’s usual baritone Justin Pearce.

Acis and Galatea was given a semi-staged performance by New Zealand Opera a few years ago in the Opera House. It is a hybrid work, classed as a masque, a hybrid dramatic form that possibly has more in common with the French opéra-ballet, practised by Lully and Campra. First performed in 1718, it was Handel’s first dramatic venture in English; his only other dramatic piece in English, a true opera, not counting oratorios, was Semele.

Roger Wilson began with Polyphemus’s aria, ‘O ruddier than the cherry’ – one of those arias that one wishes was in Czech or something we didn’t understand. The odd case of a love song that seems more designed to dismay than to seduce. I was as struck by John Beaglehole’s tenor aria – as Acis – ‘Love sounds the alarm’, a vivid, penetrating performance.

Towards the end of the aria Janey MacKenzie, as Galatea, and Wilson joined in with a display of theatrical ferocity that truly shook the altar.

If the final quartet, now including Jody Orgias, didn’t offer the most beautiful blend, it was dramatic, diction was clear and it did what is most valuable – encouraged us all to rush to the library to borrow score or recordings.

The Italian version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (why the reference to Berlioz’s 19th century version?) might not have exemplified hideous love, but Jody Orgias, as Orpheus, evoked a bereft figure and her unusual timbre did grief very well. The following duet, ‘Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte’ between Orgias and MacKenzie was the more credible, given the marked contrast in their voices. Beaglehole took over the role of Orfeus to sing ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ with feeling and minor intonation flaws.

The rest of the concert was Verdi’s. First, the night scene in Un ballo in maschera where Amelia consults Ulrica with Riccardo observing. Jody’s singing captured Ulrica splendidly, filled with foreboding, while Janey captured the timorous Amelia’s anxiety very well.

The next case of unlikely, if not hideous, love was that between the Conte di Luna and Leonora in Il Trovatore. Roger Wilson as the unhinged count, expecting to get Leonora on condition of freeing Manrico, again summoned fearful Verdian rage, while MacKenzie’s part gave her an opportunity for some impressive bravura singing.

The last excerpt was the great quartet from the last act of Rigoletto, where each character reveals starkly different emotions, and here they were delineated with remarkable vividness.

The group’s regular pianist, Robyn Jaquiery supported all the singing colourfully: the piano was raised to the middle level of the steps that rise to the sanctuary: an excellent improvement both in visibility and sound.

NZSO/Todd Corporation: promoting our young composers

Posted on by Alan Wells

NZSO/TODD CORPORATION YOUNG COMPOSER AWARDS

ALEX TAYLOR: “fray”;
NATALIE HUNT: “Rain II”;
PIETA HEXTALL: “Portrait”;
TABEA SQUIRE: “Vee Dub and the Little Tiger go Wandering”;
CORWIN NEWALL: “Significant Figures”;
HANNAH GILMOUR: “Though It Lingers”;
LIZZIE DOBSON: “A Study in Scarlet”;
ARNA SHAW: “Timatanga”;
MINTO FUNG: “The Chase”;
ROBBIE ELLIS: “Feral”;
AJITA GOH: “Freedom is Not Free”;
MATTHEW CHILDS: “Alone In The Night”.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hamish McKeich

Michael Fowler Centre, Monday 24 – Tuesday 25 August 2009

The Todd Corporation’s – and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s – support for the Young Composer Awards makes it one of the most important arts sponsorships in the country. Their promotion of the growing point – the apical meristem – of creative artistic development promises to deliver a much greater return in cultural benefits than the (more typical) funding that goes into many, more prominent, areas. As conductor and co-adjudicator Hamish McKeich put it, where else in the world would young people write such imaginative, fresh and varied pieces?

On occasions like this it seems almost de rigueur to say (as indeed McKeich did say), that the standard this time was higher than ever. I cannot entirely agree: in my view, I feel we have reached something of a plateau (albeit a gratifyingly high one). Certainly this year I found nothing as striking as the 2008 winning score, Alexandra Hay’s compellingly adventurous “Nocturnis Bellum”, which I covered in my review for “Salient” – (Google: alan wells september music month, or go to http://www.salient.org.nz/arts/music/classical-music-september-music-month)

However to be fair to McKeich and his fellow assessor Ross Harris (who mentored the young composers), while the best of 2009 might not have equalled that of 2008, the least satisfactory piece this year was arguably better than the comparable composition last year.

Aucklander Alex Taylor came closest to matching Hay’s achievement. His “fray” belonged to the same world as the very accomplished wind/string quintet “Four Abstracts” which Taylor presented at this year’s Nelson Composers’ Workshop and, like the quintet, was based on a single chord. The orchestral “fray” was an atmospheric study in the exploitation of clusters, sometimes sustained and static (occasionally with an “electronic” ambience), and sometimes moving in a closely woven microtexture. Taylor demonstrated an assured control of tension and release, and changes – even when abrupt – were always adroitly managed. During one magical moment, a high piccolo note was deftly thrown into violin harmonics.

Taylor, a first-time participant in the NZSO/Todd Awards, would have been my choice to win. Nevertheless it was another first-timer, Natalie Hunt, who did win. A graduate of Wellington’s New Zealand School of Music, and the 2009 National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence, Hunt is an experienced young composer (though her evocative tone poem “Only to the Highest Mountain” for the NYO is the only other orchestral score of hers I had heard). Her NZSO/Todd submission “Rain II” opened with jaunty, jazzy pizzicato on contrabass (perhaps closest in spirit to her work for the Saxcess saxophone quartet): this was contrasted with a mournful, molto vibrato melody on the solo cello. A marimba ostinato began to add momentum, then suddenly a high, expectant sustained note made an inconclusive end – the pulse quickened just as the piece was about to die. It felt much more like the introduction to a longer work, than a complete composition in its own right. It was this unfinished quality that made the judges’ decision a surprising one for me.

Hunt admitted to being under a time constraint – the rush to meet the submission deadline. Fellow NZSM graduate Pieta Hextall, too, faced an issue of time: in her case, the stipulated limit on overall length. Hextall’s “Portrait” had as its core a central, ostinato-driven rhythm piece (reminiscent of “Impetus” in the 2008 Awards, and even more of her “Second Etude for Bassoon and Piano” – the sort of music Philip Glass might have written if he’d had any imagination). Framing this was a texture piece: rarefied, spare, carefully paced (similar to her “Third Etude” – the sort of music La Monte Young might have written if he’d had any imagination…). As with Hunt’s “Rain II”, I felt that “Portrait” could have gone on to develop further – there was so much more potential there.

This was Hextall’s third appearance at the Awards. So too for another NZSM student, Tabea Squire (NYO Composer-in-Residence in 2008). Her whimsically titled “Vee Dub and the Little Tiger go Wandering” hinted at Bruckner in its wide string tremolandi and grand chorale-like gestures, and Glass in its repeated ostinati, but was ultimately unlike either (someone suggested the pastoral Vaughan Williams as well, prompted perhaps by the “VW” of the title). Squire made sensitive use of soloistic timbres in addition to solid orchestral chords, and created a convincing flow of tension without the need for any single definitive climax.

Both Hextall and Squire have undertaken extensive university study. Corwin Newall, likewise making a third appearance at the Awards, is still at school (Dunedin’s Kaikorai Valley High). His cheerful, resolutely tonal “Significant Figures” showed an increasing competence in writing colourfully for orchestra, while retaining a youthful exuberance and abundance of musical ideas.

Waikato University is notable for encouraging its students to write for orchestra. The four represented last year employed fairly conservative tonal idioms, but with great facility in some very attractive compositions. Two of these young composers returned in 2009. Hannah Gilmour (who won a special commendation in 2008 for “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”) brought “Though It Lingers”, which packed in (perhaps a little too tightly within the restricted length) poised, suspended moments, urgent climaxes, and an expressive violin solo. Her compatriot Lizzie Dobson offered “A Study in Scarlet”, a genial score with some sombre undertones, less bright than its title might suggest (and a stark contrast to Dobson’s frenetically driven toccata for orchestra “Ricercare per Vita” of 2008).

Arna Shaw (then living in Christchurch) received a special mention in 2007 for best first entry. This proved a prescient judgement. Now studying at Wellington’s NZSM, Shaw displayed significant progress in her well-constructed “Timatanga”, balancing koauau glides on the flute, and solemn string laments, with driven rhythms and forceful climaxes. A further NZSM student, Minto Fung, provided an very short but engagingly witty tone poem “The Chase”.

Music with a narrative or pictorial element was indeed strongly in evidence. “Feral” by Robbie Ellis bore a programme note describing a secretive, sinister creature. Ellis’s composition was characteristically energetic: dark and restless with exciting climaxes and only rare moments of respite. With his feeling for theatre and an ear for unusual orchestral effects, the Auckland University graduate (now resident in Wellington) utilised “jet-whistles” on the flute, rapid parallel chords on the trumpets, a “blood-curdling scream”, and instructions for lighting manoeuvres. The Orchestra entered enthusiastically into the over-the-top spirit, vocalisations and all. They voted it their favourite piece.

Aucklander Ajita Goh’s “Freedom is Not Free” was inspired by the inscription on a Washington DC Korean War memorial. The string ostinati and stately brass chorales reminded me (again) a little of Bruckner, while the splashes of unexpected colour from harp and vibraphone recalled Goh’s own, more lyrical “Reflection” from last year.

Also suggestive of Bruckner was Matthew Childs’ orchestration in “Alone In The Night”, in that there were hardly any solos, and extensive use of instrumental groupings – rather in the manner of organ registration. Rhythmically tricky, this score employed many changes of time signature.

I have, regrettably, no information on Childs. In contrast to last year – which was organised by the excellent Roger Smith – no scores were made available to reviewers (my phone message of enquiry was not returned), and some of those that I did see (courtesy of the composers) contained no biographical notes. This event is worth constructive, critical evaluation – witness the number of young composers who have appeared in previous Awards (such as Claire Cowan, Ryan Youens, Robin Toan, and Karlo Margetic) who have been taken up by the NZSO-Sounz Readings.

Recordings made over the two days, together with interviews by Jeremy Brick, will be broadcast later in the year by RNZ Concert, in programmes in their 8 pm Sunday evening “Young New Zealand” series.

Haydn with Strings attached

Posted on by Peter Mechen

An overview of Josef Haydn’s String Quartets

New Zealand String Quartet

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Tuesday 25th August, 2009

“Music begins where words leave off” as the old saying goes, suggesting that the two media are sometimes best left to their own devices, and that their combination needs to be handled with surety and skill. However, by using both spoken words and music (more easefully as the evening progressed) the New Zealand String Quartet managed in their presentation “Josef Haydn and the String Quartet” to bring the composer to life as the author of one of the most life-enhancing creative endeavours to grace the civilised world. Had there been any complete CD sets of the quartets for sale at the door afterwards, I would have compulsively bartered what resources I could have mustered, in order to leave with one, as a result of the NZSQ’s advocacy.

Haydn began composing String Quartets with his Op.1 set in the late 1750s, and for the best part of the next fifty years continued to produce an unsurpassed body of work in the genre. His efforts concluded with his final, unfinished quartet in 1803, intended to be the third of a set of six, but whose completion at that stage of his life was beyond his powers. The quartet members patiently and skilfully delineated this progression by the composer through various stages of his career with precise biographical information, anecdotes and quotes in tandem with quartet movements used as musical “signposts”. The players’ spoken delivery soon lost a certain “stiffness” at the outset, as they warmed to the ambience of both the auditorium and the audience, their story-telling and detailing in words and music exerting an ever-increasing fascination throughout the evening.

There was so much to take in thoughout – from the incidental anecdotes relating to specific movements (the “fleeing from a whipping” aspect of the Presto of Op.1 No.3, and the interaction with fellow-composer and performer Dittersdorf at a beer-hall where a scherzo of Haydn’s is being played – Op.33 No.5 – to the latter’s mock-dismay), the composer’s sense of humour (righteous indignation from historian Charles Burney at Haydn’s flouting the rules of composition in works like the finale of “The Joke” Quartet Op.33 No.2, and Haydn’s own attitude to these rules, writing “con licenza” over the Allegro of Op.55 No.2, with its catchy dotted rhythm and closely-worked contrapuntal development set against unexpected rhythmic irregularities), as well as general observations such as regarding the composer’s religious beliefs (the beautiful hymn-like Affetuoso of Op.20 No.1).

All of these musical realisations the NZSQ took in its stride; and while not all detailing was perfect, the playing was consistently characterful and engaging. We were able to feel the composer’s discomfiture in his unhappy marriage by dint of the almost Straussian solo violin part in the Adagio of  Op.54 No.2, which combines recitative and lyricism in a startlingly candid way; and at the other end of the human interaction scale we felt the warmth of the regard between Haydn and Mozart, characterised by the Presto finale of  Op.55 No.3. There was, too, the liberation of the composer from Esterházy, and an encounter in London with Sir William Herschel, the astronomer, and Haydn’s scientific initiation into the vastness of the cosmos, and the resulting awe of creation, expressed in the adagio of Op.71 No.2. Towards the end we heard the Andante grazioso from the composer’s final unfinished quartet, and then the bizarre post-mortem odyssey of Haydn’s head, a black-humoured tale suitably capped with the high-jinks of another marvellous movement from the composer’s oeuvre, the Presto from Op.76 No.5.

This was great work from the New Zealand String Quartet – a well-rounded and affectionate salute to a composer whose work, despite its popularity, seems inexhaustible in what it brings to us for our continued pleasure.

Bach organ recital from Mews at St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Lindis Taylor


Lobet den Herrn:  Winter organ series at St Mary of the Angels: Douglas Mews

Bach: Partita on ‘Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig’, BWV 768; Sonata No 2 in C minor, BWV
526; Prelude and Fugue in E flat (St Anne) BWV 552

Church of St Mary of the Angels, Sunday 23 August 2009

This was the second in the series of three recitals on the Maxwell Fernie organ at St Mary of the Angels. The first was by the, shall we say, organiste titulaire of St Mary’s, Donald Nicolson. This one was by the City organist and keyboard specialist at the New Zealand School of Music, Douglas Mews. After the concert he talked in the organ loft to those interested, about the music and the organ. It was interesting to hear his comments, shorn of the usual breathless veneration of Fernie’s handiwork (to which I have subscribed), noting some of the quirks and difficulties to be encountered with the instrument’s registrations.

However, here was a fine concert of some of Bach’s great organ works, culminating in the
bold and sanguine St Anne Prelude and Fugue (though, as he noted, the tune was merely a bit like the hymn known to Anglicans as St Anne’s or ‘O God our help in ages past’; Bach would not have known it). It is thought that the two parts were probably not composed to be linked in the way they eventually came to be published.

The rest of the programme was not of particularly familiar music.

The Partita BWV 768 is a set of eleven variations on the chorale, ‘Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig’, of delightful variety, starting with its exposition that involved sprightly duets between pedals and manuals. Each variation led to quicker, grander or more elaborate treatment and Mews exploited some of the more entertaining stops discreetly on the way, including nasal reed stops in the third variation. It ended with a commanding summation of the piece’s essential spirit.

The set of six organ sonatas, BWV 825 – 830 are less familiar than the sets of sonatas, suites and partitas for cello, violin and other keyboards. They were probably written in Bach’s first years at Leipzig – the mid 1720s – and to some extent made use of recycled music; they may have been written as studies for his oldest son, Wilhelm Friedmann. They are not easy, a compilation of the technical problems that a gifted student would want to master. However, their tone is generally genial, tuneful and not burdened with heavy textures, and the Fernie organ proved an admirable instrument in the hands of Mews.

The St Anne Prelude and Fugue was the most imposing of the three pieces: the prelude enjoyed certain droll figures, such as the planting of single heavy treads on the pedals, dotted rhythms. The fugue may not be a heavyweight but it is rich in imaginative devices and developments that Mews made even more interesting with his spirited, rhythmic playing and the expert, sometimes droll choice of stops.

Last Night of the Proms with Wellington Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Vector Wellington Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir conducted by Marc Taddei with Helen Medlyn (mezzo soprano) and Donald Nicolson (organ)

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 22 August 2009

Wellington’s experience suggests that there’s no such thing as the Last Night of the Proms. The big audiences – this one was sold out – justifies the Wellington Orchestra’s decision to stick with a good thing, or at least a rewarding thing, so the adjective ‘last’ has to be understood as a relative term. One wonders how Wellington would turn out if another of the scores of nights at the Proms were presented; they have long been the way to get an assured audience to listen to unfamiliar or new music, which would be otherwise difficult to sell to the British public.

The fact is of course that, although presented in a music venue, by a symphony orchestra and other musicians, the event is not really about music. It’s about a ritual: coloured balloons, silly hats, waving Union Jacks (albeit with little gusto), standing up and making a noise some of which doubles as singing.

Marc Taddei is the ideal front-man, just a little larger than life, unabashed by the need to act the fool with unembarrassed conviction.

Though the pattern and perhaps the secret of its longevity is sameness and familiarity, there is usually at least one gesture towards something different, like a New Zealand piece. This time they got it out of the way quickly: David Hamilton’s Zarya (Russian – Dawn), which had marked an event in space exploration; it was a stagy fanfare with dominant brass and organ that sounded pseudo-festive, as if the composer was striving to create something brilliant, momentous but not quite feeling it in his bones.

That out of the way, the normal fare follows. Handel’s Zadok the Priest, had a strangely unimpressive performance. The long introduction by strings that should move with increasing excitement through the splendid sequence of harmonies over a steady rhythm, was seriously underpowered, mainly by the small string numbers, and matters only somewhat recovered with the choir’s more convincing though hardly overwhelming arrival.

Is there any connection between these signs of orchestral weakness and the unexplained resignation of the highly successful General Manager Christine Pearce?

Helen Medlyn threw herself into the spirit of the show from the beginning, even though the two Handel arias were hardly festive; as she herself remarked, they were both sad (and neither of them was in English). The first, the famous ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Rinaldo, the second, the very unfamiliar ‘Furibondo spira il vento’ from Partenope which no one would have heard of a few years ago; it’s one of the most recently unearthed of his operas. Helen gave them her best, florid passages and all, but the orchestra hardly lent her lustrous or energized support.

I was glad that she demonstrated to an audience, many of whom were probably unfamiliar with a singer without a microphone, that a real voice can fill the hall perfectly well. When it came to the Noel Coward songs in the second half however, she succumbed, though Coward would probably have been horrified. Microphones did not come into use for musical comedy and light opera till the 50s, and of course it’s been downhill since then.

But at least she demonstrated how the device could be used with subtlety and to expressive effect.

Her utterly over-the-top performance of the A Bar on the Piccolo Marina was one of the best things in the evening (a memorable demonstration of ‘slipping into something loose’; see the lyrics – http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/a/abaronthepiccolamarina.shtml).

The Polovstian Dances from Prince Igor followed, with the welcome presence of the choir (I remember hearing them played by orchestra only on radio many times in my youth without realising that they were ‘choral’ dances). Again, it was the choir that gave them the colour and energy they need so much.

When the strings again sounded uninvolved at the start of Walton’s Crown Imperial March I wondered whether it was the position of my seat that was affecting my experience; I don’t think so.

The second half is the time for flags and noise, and music inherited from an age of jingoism and xenophobia. First was Eric Coates’s Dambuster’s March, celebrating one of the much vaunted but more useless exploits of the Second World War, which succeeded in drowning hundreds of civilians but made no dent in Germany’s arms production capacity; then Elgar’s first Pomp and Circumstance March with its cringe-making words, and Rule Britannia, ironical in an age when the country has difficulty even ruling itself.

However, the audience made Marc Taddei’s job easy by responding spiritedly, singing along, regardless. And Donald Nicolson’s brilliant organ flourishes contributed greatly.

As for Henry Wood’s classic, Fantasia on British Sea Songs, as usual, it was much abbreviated, ending with the hornpipe, Jack’s the Lad (fifth of the nine parts): it accelerated too early, a phenomenon known in other contexts as ‘premature ….’, and so its excitement was compromised. There were good moments: Brenton Veitch’s cello solo offered a lovely calming phase; and a happy clarinet solo by Moira Hurst stood out. Last year the London Proms dropped the Sea Songs: what of the future?

The concert came to and end with the audience on its feet for the most part, in Rule Britannia, ‘No place like home’, ‘Hine e hine’ and ‘Auld lang syne’.

Even though this formula remains popular, and it does expose people to a real orchestral experience, I do wish we got some different music, such as is heard at Vienna’s New Year Concert or Berlin’s Waldbühnen concerts.

Extreme Lands

Posted on by Alan Wells

Frances Moore (voice), Anna McGregor (clarinet), Ben Hoadley (bassoon), Pia Palme (contrabass recorder), Dylan Lardelli (guitar), Nell Thomas (accordion), Takumi Motokawa (percussion), Charlotte Fetherston (viola), King Pan Ng (erhu).
CAROL MICALLEF: “Cigarettes for Ping Pong”;
HERMIONE JOHNSON: “The Deep Blue Sky”;
ALEXANDRA HAY: “Moon Song”;
KING PAN NG: “ExtremeLand”.

Massey University Theatrette, 21-22 August 2009

“Extreme Lands” was an event incorporating sound (live and recorded), words, and images, imaginatively curated by Wellington composer Alexandra Hay.

There were four items on the programme, beginning with “Cigarettes for Ping Pong” by experimental singer-songwriter Carol Micallef, which she sang in her attractive voice, accompanying herself on a tiny retro synth, with the aid of erstwhile guitarist Dylan Lardelli on viola.

Alexandra Hay’s own work, “Moon Song”, utilized a text by Branwen Millar, ingeniously presented as an interplay between words projected onto a screen, and words vocalized by Frances Moore. Each section was associated with a different aspect of water, for instance The Harbour, Ice, Tap, and Open Bodies. Hay’s use of electroacoustic sound files, such as the warm enveloping introduction, and the undulating filtered white noise underlying the voice in “The Harbour”, were reminiscent of the use of electronics in her atmospheric “White Rain” for amplified flute (which won the Victoria University composition competition in 2006). On the other hand, the exploitation of extended techniques on the live instruments (down to transferring the conventional western violin tremolando onto Ng’s traditional Chinese erhu), reminded me of her daring demands on the NZSO in the quietly powerful “Bellum Nocturnis” (winner of the 2008 NZSO/Todd Corporation Award).

Hay’s fellow graduate from the Victoria University NZ School of Music, Hermione Johnson, has been interested in very low sounds, and very high sounds. In “The Deep Blue Sky”, she joined Hay in exploring very soft sounds, and non-standard ways of playing instruments. Intense concentration on the barely audible world of the bellows-breath of Nell Thomas’s accordion, the bowed bridge of Dylan Lardelli’s guitar, and the key clicks of Ben Hoadley’s bassoon, drew the listener in, until the first tentative notes of definite pitch began to emerge towards the end of the piece.

King Pan Ng’s “ExtremeLand” relied mainly on projected images and recorded sound files to carry its message (encompassing the ends of a geographic spectrum, from Burmese refugees to icy landscapes). The performers seemed to have little to play: for them, it might have been “avant karaoke”. The images, however, stayed on in the mind, particularly those of the victims of the Myanmar junta.

Alastair Carey with the Clerkes of Christ Church, Oxford

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

English anthems and motets, including Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices and Purcell’s ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’

Hugo Janáček, Alastair Carey, Gregory Skidmore (the Clerkes); Pepe Becker (sopano), Robert Oliver (viol), Douglas Mews chamber organ)

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Wednesday 19 August 2009

The former tenor and director of The Tudor Consort, Alastair Carey, who left Wellington to pursue a career in England found his way into the choir of Christ Church (it does not employ the word ‘college’, though it is one), Oxford. The choir is one of the several distinguished university choirs which include, variously, professional singers – ‘lay clerks’, boy choristers and undergraduates; it is the choir of the college after which Christchurch was named because John Robert Godley, one of the city’s founders, had studied there.

Carey teamed up with two of his colleagues, all of whom have also performed with other notable choirs in several countries, to take advantage of this connection; and the three singers had sung in Christchurch before arriving in Wellington.

As the backbone of the first half of the concert, they used Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices, punctuating it with anthems and motets by other Tudor and Restoration composers.

The impact of the three voices in their first piece, Sheppard’s ‘In manus tuas’, was revelatory, producing a sound of superb blend and stylish elegance, of a polish and finesse that is not common. The baritone, Gregory Skidmore, had a voice of particular beauty, and in the Gloria of Byrd’s Mass, it emerged, additionally, with robust energy.

Most of the intermediate pieces were by Dowland: songs of loss and distress, which provided an unleavened sequence of suffering and lament. Purcell’s two anthems, ‘Lord, what is man, lost man?’ and ‘What hope remains now he is gone?’ did little to lift the air of self-pity and tragedy, beautiful though they were. However, variety was present as most of the songs – as distinct from the a cappella mass – were accompanied by Robert Oliver on the bass viol with Douglas Mews on the chamber organ.

Carey himself took a solo role in Purcell’s ‘Flow my tears’, with organ accompaniment, producing attractive, sustained lines in a tone of subdued lamenting.

The second half moved forward a century, apart from the rather charming lullaby, ‘Quid petis, O fili’ by the shadowy Richard Pygott, to consist mainly of Purcell. In the Purcell songs, the three men were joined by soprano Pepe Becker whose voice was sometimes obscured by other more prominent parts, but often her striking timbre made an impact, for example in Purcell’s ‘Hear me, O Lord’ when voices and the instruments sounded in turn, creating an interesting narrative and texture. While in the next song, ‘Thy word is a lantern’, counter-tenor Hugo Janáček and Becker created diverting rhythms and varied timbres. The music was now distinctly more modern, the composer paying attention to vocal and instrumental timbres for their own sake.

A hymn, ‘O Lord my God’, by Purcell’s predecessor, Pelham Humphrey, who had an even shorter life than Purcell (he died at 26), drew attention to a great talent. New Grove remarks that Pelham’s personality ‘embodied much of the spirit of the Restoration court … a minimal respect for institutionalized morality…’. The hymn provided a long and impressive duet between tenor and baritone in quite adventurous style.

The familiar ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’, introduced by a striking organ prelude, brought the bracket of Purcell to an end. The concert itself then moved into the 18th century to end with Boyce’s ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’, signs of gallant style, the singers proving equally comfortable in this very different music, with a bold passage from the baritone and Pepe Becker’s soprano rising clearly above the male voice textures.