Christopher Herrick and Leipzig singers at Lutheran Church

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lutheran Church of St Paul, King Street, Newtown 

1 Christopher Herrick (organ) in music by Buxtehude, Bach, Iain Farrington, Boccherini, Flor Peeters and Samuel Sebastian Wesley.

Friday 24 July 2009

2 Ensemble Nobiles – six singers from the Tomaskirche Boys’ Choir in Leipzig. German liturgical and secular music 

Sunday 26 July 2009

Christopher Herrick is one of the world’s most distinguished organists. I spotted his name in an organ journal, listing his concerts on a New Zealand tour. There was one in Wellington and it was at the Lutheran Church of St Paul in Newtown. Where? I didn’t know it and I wondered what could induce a world-class organist to play at what I imagined to be a small suburban church.

However, knowing that an organist is much more interested in the character of an organ than in the popular perception of a venue, it seemed possible that here was an interesting organ which Herrick had discovered. 

Then I started hearing other things about the church. It has a fine piano which is being used for piano recital performances by Wellington piano teachers, and accordingly the church had come up as a possible venue for a piano recital series that’s being discussed.

Music has a strong place in the tradition of the Lutheran church: Luther himself, and then others such as the Bach dynasty; the present Pastor, Mark Whitfield, doubles as organist. The church previously had a small pipe organ, in an alcove above the sanctuary, but it was inadequate. Even as the church had almost signed a contract for a new instrument with an American builder, an interesting one came up for sale in a Dutch hospital. It was built in 1962 as a one manual organ with a permanently coupled pedal range and enlarged with a second manual a year later. When the sale was discussed the addition of an independent pedal department was proposed and a 16 foot pedal stop was installed.

Its opening recital took place in March 2008.

The recital began with five pieces by Buxtehude, arranged to form a sort of suite or at least a coherent sequence, alternating between two praeludiums and two chorale-based pieces around a central toccata. The first Praeludium in A minor (Bux153) offered both a splendid exhibition of the organ’s qualities and of the variety of compositional resources Buxtehude commanded and his ability to make singular shifts in tone and rhythm without losing a feeling of unity.

The organ with its two manuals and limited number of registrations created an ideal clarity and tonal distinction for the two chorale pieces, ‘Komm, heiliger Geist’ and ‘Nun lob mein Seel’ (Bux 199 and 213). The Toccata in D minor (Bux155) may well flourish in a performance on a larger, more powerful organ, but here its striking contrasts, now conspicuously involving virtuosic pedal intervention with a flamboyant flourish at the end.

The rest of the concert offered delightful variety: untroubled by authenticity strictures, Boccherini’s Minuet was beguiling, perhaps a little droll. The fact that a quirky set of pieces like Animal Parade by young English organist/composer Iain Farrington has been composed in recent years attests to the vigour of organ music and a world-wide following. Herrick played three of the twelve highly diverting pieces, including Barrel Organ Monkey that relished both the bravura of a Lefébure-Wély and the nostalgia of the street barrel organ.

Bach arrived at the beginning of the second half in the Trio Sonata No 4 in E minor; pedals busier than ever; with its origin in chamber music with the individual voices so sharply delineated, it was the perfect fit for the organ.

King Jesus has a Garden comprises five variations, from a set of Ten Chorale Preludes by Belgian composer Flor Peeters. Its style varied between serious virtuosity and light-hearted multi-key treatment of the theme, hands tumbling confusedly over each other in the third variation, and finally another pedal display.

The choice of Choral Song and Fugue by Samuel Sebastian Wesley seemed a less than dramatic way of ending the recital; it had some character but mainly of the inoffensive kind. His encore however, Festmusikk by Norwegian Mons Leidvin Takle made a suitably exciting finale.

 

2 On the following Sunday the church hosted a six-voice ensemble from the choir of St Thomas’s church in Leipzig – Bach’s church. The six young man, aged 18 – 19, have completed their last year as boarders at the famous school attached to the Tomaskirche and have all been singing in the choir for nine years. They formed their ensemble, Ensemble Nobiles, three years ago As well as gaining an enviable musical education have also acquired an education of the kind that has long disappeared from New Zealand schools, including the first foreign language from Year 5 and at least one other foreign language a couple of years later.

Their concert took the form of a mass with each section interspersed with a variety of other music – part songs, Renaissance polyphony, little motets and cantata movements, old and new, one by a composer/conductor they have worked with, Manfred Schlenker.

The mass was Schubert’s charmingly naïve Deutsche Messe. I’ve never heard it apart from a performance on CD with full male choir plus organ. This was a totally different experience, one voice to a part, more or less, and a cappella. The Zum Eigang, which opened the concert, was a hair-raising experience, so miraculously balanced, with voices sounding as one, the result of the nine years of listening to each other; and each successive section (eight in all) grounded the entire concert in the style that seemed absolutely native to them. They ranged from Palestrina, Schütz and Byrd through Bach to several little known composers of later periods. A Cantate Domino by one Berthold Hummel (a 20th century one) and three by Hugo Distler, also 20th century, offered variety, displayed textures that were unusual, or dwelt in the lower reaches of all the voices. One of the singers introduced the music, fluently, wittily (not easy to be genuinely funny in a foreign language) and appreciative of the church, the congregation and Pastor Mark Whitfield, who punctuated the concert by playing part of Jean Langlais’s Hommage à Frescobaldi and then Bach’s Fugue in D major.  

I, at least, will be watching musical activities at the church from now on.

Wellington Orchestra On The Town

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BERNSTEIN – On The Town: Three Dance Episodes

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor

(with Michael Houstoun – piano)

BRITTEN – Les Illuminations

(with Benjamin Fifita Makisi – tenor)

BRAHMS – Variations on a Theme of Haydn

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall,  Saturday 25th July 2009

You could tell that it was going to be a night for the orchestra, whatever else happened, from the moment Marc Taddei gave the signal to begin Leonard Bernstein’s “On The Town” with the opening of the first of the work’s Three Dance Episodes, an Allegro pesante whose crackling pace set the pulses racing. The Wellington Orchestra players revelled in the music’s boisterous spirits, managing to inflect the dynamics and point the syncopations at a rate of knots that would have, one suspects, kept even the New York Philharmonic on its toes. A  bluesy muted trumpet solo introduced the second Episode, a kind of “Lass that Loved a Sailor” sequence whose music blossomed into being from melancholy beginnings, strings singing their hearts out at the climax and winds spicing the romantic outpourings with piquant harmonies, the cor anglais at the movement’s end nicely picking up the remnants of feeling from the opening after the more heart-on-sleeve emotions had run their course. The final “Times Square 1944” movement took us into the feisty world of big bands, snappy, raunchy brass, underscored by a jazzy piano obbligato, and with sudden, pulse-quickening lurches into new sleaze-mode scenarios, Debbie Rawson’s eloquent saxophone work characterising the terrific support the winds in general gave to the brass throughout. It all sounded like the work of an orchestra on top of its game, my only quibble being the somewhat bizarre placement of the Beethoven C Minor Piano Concerto immediately afterwards, a chalk-and-cheese alignment whose incongruity was admittedly played down by Marc Taddei’s customary welcome to the audience being given after the Bernstein and as the piano was being rolled into place.

So, there was a sufficient “let’s start again” ambience by the time Michael Houstoun took the stage for the Beethoven concerto, a work that of course marks a threshold in the series of piano-and-orchestra works by the composer – a world of deep and thoughtful expression taking the classical style into more romantic and subjective realms. The orchestra’s urgent, tightly-woven exposition set the scene for Houstoun’s commanding entry, the pianist’s finely-judged masculine-and-feminine exchanges at the outset drawing the parameters of the musical argument to follow, and which the subtle interplay between soloist and orchestra proceeded to explore. I particularly liked Houstoun’s way with the second subject, lyrical and flexible, but also tensile enough to be readily drawn back into the purposeful, even confrontational C Minor world of serious life-questioning business that the music addresses. Neither pianist nor orchestra packed their punches in both assertive and reflective episodes, a tremendous tutti leading to the hushed, almost ghostly development, one with a very “Fifth Symphony Scherzo” feel to it, Houstoun’s withdrawn, almost disembodied tones sounding in awe of the stalking timpani notes and the muttering string figures. The cadenza boldly addressed the issues, Houstoun laying down the music’s law with real commitment, evincing an almost transcendent orchestral response, hard-headed timpani sticks giving the sounds an almost spectral feeling, one which the piano’s downward arabesques matched perfectly, leading to a no-nonsense, hard-hitting statement of mutual assertion and strength of feeling at the end.

Houstoun’s concentration was almost palpable in the stillness and strength of the slow movement’s opening notes, while the orchestra’s ready response was warm and conciliatory but extremely focused, carrying no excess. Throughout the interaction between piano and other instruments was ear-catching, bassoon and flute eloquently dialoguing with the soloist, and the strings perfectly complementing the piano at the opening’s reprise, augmenting with such surety what the solo instrument does. Again, the strings had such a lovely “veiled” tone after the short cadenza’s rapt conclusion, a mood that the ever-so-slight “fluff” on the horn didn’t manage to disturb – such poise and quiet rapture from everybody. After this, I thought the finale found Houston and Taddei in wonderful accord, the pianist dancing along the tightrope with fleet fingerwork and nicely-weighted sonority. At first I thought the winds a bit reticent, but a nicely-breathed, quite “reedy” clarinet solo from Janina Paolo re-established that essential  feeling of dialogue on equal terms, giving the string fugato a proper foil, and sparking off a commanding response from Houstoun, and an equally strong set of sequences leading to the joyous coda, whose rumbustious energy set the seal on what I thought was a great performance of the work.

A work that in its own way matched the visionary aspects of the concerto followed after the break, Benjamin Britten’s “Les Illuminations”, a song-cycle featuring settings of poems by Arthur Rimbaud, extravagant, almost surreal visions of wonderment and excitement. Britten was drawn to French poetry and language, and the evocations of these verses found a ready response from the young composer, with extraordinarily sensitive and imaginative results. Most people would associate this music with a voice of the likes of Peter Pears or Robert Tear; but the work was actually written for a soprano, Sophie Wyss, who gave the first performance in London in 1940. Tenor Benjamin Fifita Makisi threw himself unflinchingly into the work from the outset, responding excitingly to the fierce fanfare-like antiphonal figures played by violas and violins. Makisi had sufficient vocal heft to declaim Rimbaud’s fulsome descriptions of cosmopolitean splendour in the following “Villes”, bringing off the chromatic downward slides in the vocal line with some relish, though he found it difficult to “float” his voice with enough rapturous wonderment in “Phrase”, describing the ropes stretching from steeple to steeple. In general Makisi was happiest with the strongly-focused moments, the marvellous “schwung” of the waltz-like “Antique” with its lump-in-the-throat melodic progressions, and the exuberant declamations of “Marine” with its skyrocketing whoops of pleasure.

At times I thought his voice needed to “free up” somewhat, being unable to escape a kind of “earthbound” quality which prevented episodes like the “Interlude” from truly taking wing. Fortunately the orchestral strings played like angels throughout, focused and incisive in the ringingly declamatory moments, muscular and energetic in rumbustious episodes such as those from “Villes”, and full-throated, warm and rich in the many “singing” passages, like the one already referred to from “Antique”, and responsive to the kaleidoscopic shifts of colour, timbre and intensity continually demanded by the music. The final “Depart” was beautifully done by singer, conductor and players, capturing a valedictory sense of “Enough seen” and an enduring enrichment of experience.

After this the Brahms “St Anthony” Variations for me didn’t really clinch the evening, partly because anything would have been a hard act to follow after the Britten, and partly because Marc Taddei’s treatment of the work was simply too stop-start for the sections to knit together satisfactorily. Taddei did get wonderful orchestral playing, the “village-band” effect at the start with perky, rustic winds and abrupt phrase-endings bringing out the dance-like aspects, with some lovely work from the horns, the “skipping” variation with its attractive syncopations and the following “hunting-horn” episode bringing out excellent work from all sections of the orchestra. But the pauses between the variations seemed to get longer as the work progressed, and the finale, marked “Andante” was moved along so quickly we seemed to be in the midst of the final resounding statement of the main theme before we knew where we were, with the result that it all seemed to pass by too hurriedly – more a vigorous lunch-hour round-the-bays constitutional than a celebratory processional, sadly lacking warmth and heart. Not perhaps the most satisfying finale to the concert that one hoped for, but fortunately there were other moments aplenty which would serve as highlights one could play and enjoy in one’s head, all over again.

Handel’s Semele from NZ School of Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music: Handel’s Semele, conducted by Michael Vinten, directed by Sara Brodie

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Kelburn Campus. Thursday 23 July 2009

Back in 2001 the Victoria University School of Music staged Semele. It was not this opera however, now produced by the New Zealand School of Music, but the version by John Eccles, the composer for whom Congreve actually wrote the libretto. As the programme notes record, Eccles’s setting was never performed and was not heard till April 1972, at St John’s Smith Square in London; oddly, the notes failed to mention the 2001 Victoria University production, also in the Adam Concert Room.

A few years before, I heard a lecture by the late Professor Don McKenzie, a Victoria graduate of and later lecturer in the Department of English, who became Professor of bibliography and textual criticism at Oxford, and a specialist in 17th and 18th century English literature. He tutored a paper in literary criticism In my MA year; he was about the most engaging and brilliant lecturer I ever had, and I credit the best mark in my honours degree to his inspiration.

McKenzie was also a knowledgeable music lover and the subject of his lecture was English opera, a consideration of the reasons that opera in English did not take root around the beginning of the 18th century, as it had in France with Lully in the late 17th century. His lecture dealt with the case of Eccles’s Semele and its failure to be staged, because Congreve’s libretto was too late for the opening of the new Queen’s Theatre in 1702 and when it was finished and set by Eccles by 1707, a planned production at the Drury Lane Theatre fell through due to certain duplicitous activities by the impresario who opened his theatre with an Italian pasticcio. That was the beginning of the fashion of the nobility and upper middle class for opera in Italian.

McKenzie played recorded versions of both the Eccles and Handel versions, arguing that Eccles had found an idiomatic musical style much more idiomatically adapted to the English language than was Handel’s (it was his only opera in English); he even believed that Eccles version (recorded in 1989) was the more beautiful and successful rendering of Congreve’s text. New Grove Opera declares that the Eccles opera was the finest opera presented in London between the death of Purcell and Handel’s Rinaldo in 1711. If it had been performed in 1707 and a theatre had been ready to encourage English opera as a result, he argued there was a good chance that an indigenous opera in English might have taken root. For example, Handel would probably have written his works in English and his imitators would have ensured that an English tradition continued to flourish.

Handel’s Semele was a good choice in the 250th anniversary of his death; it is presumably considered a good piece for students because of the large number of roles; clearly not on account of ease of performance and interpretation. There are ten main roles and choruses of wedding guests and of Heavenly Deities, many of which are duplicated or even triplicated. There are 19 names in the cast list.

The Adam Concert Room is not an ideal place for staged productions, but it is at least flexible. This time the orchestra was placed in front of the organ, an attractive position (since it focused attention of the charming case and pipe-work of the instrument), while the audience was seated on the other three sides. It meant that those on the sides had an impeded view at times.

The stage was furnished very simply, with a large round bed in the centre, a door between the audience seated on the right and those facing the orchestra, and a stair on the right of the orchestra leading to the gallery (not used by audiences) which encircles the auditorium – it represented the home of the gods. The main prop was a huge white sheet used variously to cover some of the sexual activity that is often suggested and sometimes to suggest a distinction between earth and the realm of the gods.

The wedding guests’ costumes are modern; while deities both great and small were in a variety of seductive gear, hot pants were favoured by several of the female deities.

The orchestra of 24 players, in front of the organ, played with a certain vivacity though there was some rhythmic monotony and I did not find the kind of accuracy that I’m sure I’m right in recalling at many of the productions and concert performances by the school of music of a decade and more ago.

Principals were good, particularly conspicuous the two cellos which had much solo, quasi-continuo work to do. The harpsichord continuo was deftly contributed by Julie Coulson.

The chorus was rarely disposed as a group, a phalanx, as is the default position among less imaginative directors, but were often in an outward facing circle that allowed the audience to hear the three or four voices in front of them much more loudly than the rest. It was just one of the marks that distinguished the direction by the gifted Sara Brodie. The result was an assembly of solo voices rather than a normal chorus; the aural effect was interesting and far from objectionable. They behaved generally as individuals and throughout created visual diversion.

Most of the principals were a good deal less secure at the beginning than later, after the impact of the full house had given them confidence and dissolved some of the nerves.

The leading roles were more than adequately filled, mainly by advanced or graduate students. Michael Gray, as befitted an already fairly experienced performer, was well-cast as a lustful and arrogant Jupiter, though not without a little concern for the welfare of the girl he has identified as a likely target – and vice versa.

His somewhat cynical urge, ‘I must with speed amuse her’, as he realizes how desperate she is, not just for his sexual attentions, but also to be elevated to the ranks of the immortals, with some particularly turbulent orchestral playing, was tempered by a lovely ‘Where’er you walk’ which at least sounded genuine. Juno, like Fricka in The Ring, has the jealous spoiler’s role; that didn’t deny Rachel Day (Laura Dawson sang Juno at other performances) some good moments such as her urgent ‘Hence Iris, hence away!’. Ultimately, manipulated by Juno disguised as Ino, Jupiter accedes to Semele’s insistence; Jupiter has by then sworn to comply with Semele’s demands and is appalled when she asks for him to appear in his true, incendiary form: ‘Ah! take heed what you press’ he pleads uselessly; and she is incinerated.

Amelia Berry as Semele (Rose Blake, her alternate) had a big role, credibly oversexed, and she sang attractively too. Though her report from on high, ‘Endless pleasure, endless love’ was sung instead by Iris, Semele’s ‘Sleep, why dost thou leave me?’ and ‘Myself I shall adore’, exhibiting very different emotions, were heart-felt, and she delivered some rather thrilling, if abandoned, top notes in her aria ‘No, no, I’ll take no less’.

Eventually her insatiable appetite and her Olympian ambition are her undoing.

Her more sedate sister, Ino (Bryony Williams – at other sessions, Bianca Andrew), who was also in love with Athamus, rejoices to be awarded as a second prize to the dead Semele’s bride-groom, and turns out to have an aptitude for sex as eager as her sister’s. Keiran Rayner sang Athamus with some feeling, exhibiting impatience with Semele’s procrastination with his ‘Hymen, haste’; but he’s little more than a plaything of the gods.

Omnipresent was Olga Gryniewicz as Iris, which she sang and acted most vividly, a lively presence throughout the opera. She was given Semele’s aria, ‘Endless pleasure, endless love’ (Congreve had given it to Iris in his libretto but Handel changed it to Semele; this production goes back o the original) which she sang from on high with a gusto as if it was she herself was in the midst of it all. A medium-sized role was that of Somnus, the god of sleep, invoked for somewhat nefarious purposes, sung by Joshua Kidd; he sang his famous aria, ‘Leave me loathsome light’ admirably, with a voice ranging from the hushed to ardent pleading.

As I remarked above, the orchestra sounded a little under-rehearsed though there was much excellent individual playing; the staging was imaginative; the cast was excellently disposed and they moved meaningfully. And the singing, both by the many principals and the choruses, was the thing, a good demonstration of the school’s strength.

On the opening night there was a deserved full house; as the only Handel opera Wellington seems likely to see in his anniversary year, and for quite a while, I hope the rest of the season was well supported.

Contemporary Rites – Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer

Posted on by Alan Wells

PESTOVA/MEYER PIANO DUO
Xenia Pestova, piano; Pascal Meyer, piano
STRAVINSKY: “The Rite of Spring”;
DUGAL MCKINNON: “Diktat, Ditty Half-Life”;
CHRIS WATSON: “Coffee Table Book”.

**STOCKHAUSEN: “Mantra”

NZ School of Music Adam Concert Room, 17 July 2009

**VUW Hunter Council Chamber, 19 July 2009

Is ballet music programme music when performed without the ballet? If it is, then is it “about” the dance action onstage, or is it, instead, more “about” the story and images that inspired the ballet’s  scenario in the first place? If so, then Stravinsky (famous for the dictum that music expresses only itself) may, paradoxically, have written one of the greatest tone poems of the twentieth century.

These were some of the thoughts going through my mind as I listened to duo pianists Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer playing “The Rite of Spring”. Their two-piano version provided more resonance and weight than the composer’s own arrangement for one-piano-four-hands, edging just a little closer to the power of the orchestra. At times Pestova and Meyer evoked familiar instrumental timbres (the opening bassoon, the dialogues of muted trumpets): at others they created something fresh and new – from washes of piano arpeggios, to sinister stalking rhythms.

Unexpectedly, rhythm also emerged as a crucial element in Stockhausen’s “Mantra”. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised: after all, “Piano Piece IX” began with a premonitory dose of pre-minimalist minimalism. However, in the 1956/61 piece, the regularly repeated chords were readily deconstructed into irregular flourishes at the extremes of the keyboard. In the 1969/70 “Mantra”, by contrast, a measured pulse recurred many times during the work – at one point with acerbic wit, as when Pestova’s peremptorily iterated high pitch “corrected” a “wrong” note written for Meyer’s part.

Pestova and Meyer’s intimate engagement with the piece enabled them to highlight episodes of lush romanticism and snatches of melody. Despite these, and the extended periods of metre, the 70-minute “Mantra” proved an epic marathon demanding concentration, commitment and stamina – and that was just for the listeners. The duo pianists themselves needed all these, plus exquisite coordination – especially in such instances as when Pestova’s microsecond woodblock had to coincide with Meyer’s attack. For the performers not only had the pianos, but also an array of small percussion instruments (woodblocks, tuned crotales), as well as dials to initiate ring-modulation (an electronic effect equivalent to Cage’s prepared piano, bringing the tone colour closer to that of the crotales).

Expertly controlled by sound projectionist Philip Brownlee, the ring modulation also offered an escape from the prison of twelve-equal temperament, notably in the form of arresting (all the more so for being sparingly deployed) sliding portamenti on piano sustains. With “Mantra”, Stockhausen had returned to more rigorously formulated composition after a period of experimentation with improvisation and chance: had he followed the precedent set by Markevitch, Ives and Wyschnegradsky and tuned one of the pianos a quarter-tone apart, he would have had even more scope for his procedure of expanding and contracting his intervallic material (a process pioneered in the 1920s by Mexican microtonalist Julian Carrillo).

After having been percussionists and vocalizing actors, Pestova and Meyer further heightened the excitement towards the end with a tour-de-force of rushing fugato passages.

Echoes of Stockhausen’s uncompromising modernism were present in Chris Watson’s “Coffee Table Book” in the earlier recital. Intended as the musical analogue of a pictorial volume (as opposed to the structured narrative of literary fiction), the piece was duly episodic, but retained Watson’s characteristic control of the flow of tension.

Xenia Pestova, a graduate of the Victoria University School of Music and pupil of Judith Clark, has always shown a commitment to contemporary (and New Zealand) music. With Luxembourg pianist Pascal Meyer, this seems set to continue with compositions for two pianos. Dugal McKinnon’s “Diktat, Ditty Half-Life”, with its neatly encapsulating concluding gesture, was the first of a series of miniatures for the duo. I look forward to hearing more.

Sing-along Requiem

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Requiem by Verdi

The Orpheus Choir, enlarged with a massed chorus, conducted by Michael Fulcher

John Wells (organ) and Fiona McCabe (piano).

Soloists: Janey Mackenzie, Annabelle Cheetham, Richard Greager and Justin Pearce

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 18 July

The Orpheus Choir has been staging a Singalong or Come’n’sing performance of a major choral masterpiece for as long as I’ve been writing reviews – over two decades. It’s always been popular, a wonderful way of meeting unfulfilled singing ambitions.

If the audience was not as big as you’d expect for Verdi’s Requiem (its first performance in Wellington for eight years) , which fills theatres anywhere in the world, it was because so many of the potential audience were on stage singing. The choir totaled nearly 300.

One might have expected a few weaknesses, but the result of solid rehearsal under Michael Fulcher, Friday evening and all day Saturday achieved a performance of energy, clean attack and ensemble and confidence: its very opening pages were highly impressive.

Signs of the times lay, rather, in the fact that an organ (Auckland City organist John Wells) rather than an orchestra accompanied, with sections for solo voices accompanied by Fiona McCabe at the piano. An orchestra would have been better, but it would have added unaffordable cost. (Help came from a subsidized Town Hall rental and from the city’s Creative Communities fund). Both organ and piano were more than adequate and there were many times (the piano with the four soloists in the Offertorio) when their contributions were most satisfying.

The soloists might not have been New Zealand’s top opera voices, but their performances varied from pretty good to surprisingly excellent. Justin Pearce was clearly nervous at this big assignment, but by the Confutatis Maledictis his voice had settled, admirably fitting the sense of that movement.

Professionally experienced mezzo Annabelle Cheetham and tenor Richard Greager (who stood in for John Beaglehole at short notice) were the most polished. Cheetham shone in the Recordare and Lux aeterna. The tenor’s main outing is the aria common in opera aria collections, the Ingemisco; better suited to his timbre were his parts in the Rex Tremendae, the Offertorio.

Janey Mackenzie sang her soprano role very engagingly: she had a successful duet with Cheetham in the Agnus Dei, and then astonished me with her penetrating, high-lying solo, floating above the choir in the latter stages of the Libera Me: there was nothing better than the conclusion with that varied, magnificent, beautifully controlled movement.

New Zealand Youth Choir: 30th anniversary concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Youth Choir, conducted by Karen Grylls, Guy Jansen and Peter Godfrey

Wellington Town Hall, Sunday afternoon, 12 July 2009

Only a few weeks after the 50th anniversary of the National Youth Orchestra comes the 30th anniversary of the New Zealand Youth Choir. It involved a large number of the choir’s alumni as well as the choirs two previous conductors, Guy Jansen and Peter Godfrey.

The Sunday afternoon concert was the culmination of a weekend of celebrations. Entry was free as a result of practical recognition by both the Wellington Convention Centre and City Council of the choir’s remarkable international stature and the kudos it attracts for New Zealand; for example, almost always winning big prizes on their three-yearly world tours; in 1999 at Llangollen they were ‘Choir of the World’.

I am assured that the New Zealand choir was a first youth choir to be formed in the world. It was inspired in 1978 by the then national officer for music education in the Department of Education, Guy Jansen, (is there such a post today?). He invoked the support of Peter Godfrey, then Professor of Music at Auckland University; Godfrey was enthusiastic and the choir gave its first concert in 1979. Jansen conducted it initially and Godfrey took over for the next six years in 1982.

The story goes that British conductor Sir David Wilcox was so impressed when he guest conducted the choir in 1980 that he founded a youth choir in Britain, and the rest of the world has followed.

This concert was in two parts: the first involving the present choir of 50 voices conducted by the present conductor of 20 years standing, Karen Grylls, and the second half, with the choir boosted to over 150 by alumni, the conducting was shared between Jansen and Godfrey as well as Grylls. The present choir began the concert with the ritual Whanau Te Iwi E, at once calling attention both to the Maori and Polynesian choir members and to the whole choir’s deep instinct for the character of present-day Polynesian music. Ferocity combined with the finest care with harmony and ensemble.

Later the full choir sang Hine e Hine, with a lucid solo contribution from soprano alumna Kate Lineham, and the Ka Waiata, and Christopher Marshall’s arrangement of the Samoan Minoi Minoi: they were among the most moving performances.

But there was much else. A chorus by Ugolini (Quae ista est) followed – nothing could have been more different and I must say the contrast left the latter, the choir divided into three parts, sounding somewhat limp. Mendelssohn’s Ehre sei Gott made a better impact, displaying the choir’s discipline and attention to detail. In the second half Professor Godfrey chose two other movements from Mendelssohn’s 1846 German Liturgy which, with the entire choir past and present, were more satisfying than the earlier piece.

Then followed several contemporary pieces: Jack Body’s familiar Carol St Stephen with men and women divided right and left, Schnittke’s Lord’s Prayer, which did not reveal its character fully.

Most striking of the present choir’s performances under Karen Grylls were the Credo from Frank Martin’s Mass for double choir and Norwegian composer Grete Pedersen’s Jesus gjor meg stille (‘Jesus bring me peace’) creating an extraordinary spiritual atmosphere, with the choir spaced out widely across the entire choir gallery. A sole tenor rising from an underlay of softly murmuring women’s voices, and the Norwegian language, provided one of the evening’s memorable moments.

After that Rautavara’s songs were rather bleak, but the first half came to a lovely ending with the Welsh song Suo gan.

Naturally, the whole choir, alumni and all, that filled the stage and choir stalls after the interval created a richer and more opulent volume of sound, the balance and blending of voices wonderfully managed by all three conductors. Dr Jansen conducted his own beautiful arrangement of the New Zealand Anthem; Lotti’s Crucifixus; again took full advantage of the power and depth of the bigger choir, as did the deeply felt spiritual Lord What a Morning.

After the two Mendelssohn pieces mentioned above, Peter Godfrey conducted Lux Aeterna by prominent composer and alumnus David Hamilton, present in the choir’s ranks and Godfrey called on him to take applause. Its ethereal, long sustained lines showed some of the most refined aspects of the choir’s training.

Karen Grylls conducted the two other Maori waiata, bracketing three of Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs. It seemed a little odd to have chosen as the penultimate items in such a celebratory concert these modest, undemonstrative songs in which the choir, though singing with considerable finesse, really took the back seat behind with James Harrison who sang the substantial solo parts and perhaps behind the colourful and interesting organ accompaniment from James Tibbles.

However, the Ka Waiata did the job of ending in a robust and ethnically apt spirit.

(An expansion of the review printed in the Dominion Post)

Japan Music Fair with five fine musicians

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber music from east and west, Music Fair of Japan

Ilott Theatre, Saturday 11 July 2009

This was the fourth Japanese Festival which has included a concert by Japanese musicians. These are the result of collaboration between the Embassy, the Asia-New Zealand and the Japan Foundations and the Wellington City Council. Where the previous ones have featured only a couple of musicians, this time there were five, including, almost as the star turn, the principal double bass of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Hiroshi Ikematsu.

Those who saw him performing at a concert at St Mary of the Angels last year will have vivid memories of both his extraordinary skill and musical gifts and his virtuosity as comedian and musical acrobat. Here he took an early Italian soprano aria that has recently become popular – Caccini’s Ave Maria (my first encounter on Inessa Galante’s debut CD a decade or so ago); it merely displayed the way he refuses to be limited by the bass’s low register, competing with the violin’s range by playing beautiful legato lines.

What delighted and astonished the full house even more was his transformation of Monti’s famous Csardas from the normally impossible violin showpiece to the same on bass, with a few surprise comic stunts thrown in: some involving pianist Susumu Aoyagi as fall-guy.

Yet the rest were not merely excellent musicians. Violinist Ayoko Ishikawa, who graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium, acted as MC with a delightful playful manner and a joyous way with her phrase endings as she introduced colleagues and pieces of music.

As well as playing a couple of charming Japanese pieces, she played the Meditation from Thaïs, Saint-Saëns’s Dance Macabre and Libertango by Piazzola, with quite a swagger.

The concert had opened atmospherically – the lights went gently down and from the back the sound of the Japanese flute (shinobue) arose, playing the well-known piece from the Japanese highlands, Amazing Grace and it was taken up by the koto which was ready in the front and played by Lisa Kataoka in a beautiful kimono. She continued at the koto, singing charmingly, and was joined by the other instrumentalists in two other pieces. 

We saw the flute player, Takako Hagiwara, in the second half, also kimono-clad, again emerge from behind us and continue playing as she walked slowly down the right aisle. She played a composition of her own on the shinobue and with pianist Susumu Aoyagi played her arrangement from Carmen which was a most impressive virtuosic display.

Finally, the pianist. As well as accompanying many pieces, a model of discretion and sensitivity to the music’s character, he had opened the concert with two Nocturnes (Op Post. and Op 27 No 2) and an Etude (Op 25, No 11) of Chopin. Somewhat angular without much subtlety in the left hand, but his Japanese pieces sounded idiomatic and he left the audience somewhat overwhelmed by his tumultuous playing of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody. 

The concert was free and while the style of music was essentially for popular consumption, we had a line up of superb or at least excellent musicians to demonstrate how a non-European nation with deep traditions of its own, can achieve world class standards and build up very large audiences for classical music.

A lesson that may be pertinent for New Zealand.

Chris Greenslade at St Andrew’s with Schumann, Janáček and Beethoven

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s on The Terrace – free lunchtime concert

Chris Greenslade (piano). Romances Nos 1 and 2, Op 28 (Schumann), In the Mists (Janáček), Piano sonata in E, Op 109 (Beethoven)

Wednesday 8 July 2009

An interesting programme which I’d thought might have attracted more people. When did we last hear Janáček’s piano music? And I’d have thought Schumann would have brought them in too. But I reveal my prejudices.

There are three Romances in Schumann’s little Op 28 set. Only the second is familiar: a very charming piece that I probably encountered in a piano album when I was young. Chris Greenslade, who studied with Richard Mapp at the Massey University Conservatorium of Music and later at the Royal Northern College of Music and is now based at Waikato, opened his recital with the second Romance, handling it with an intimacy and warmth that raised it above the level of a salon piece; confirmed by the attention he gave to the series of disturbing bass chords in its latter stages. No 1, in B flat minor, is a turbulent piece, of relentless arpeggios that spoke in Schumann’s other voice, and which the pianist captured convincingly.

In the Mists was written during the long, dispiriting years, when Janáček was hardly known outside of Moravia, as he waited for Jenufa to be performed. Greenslade understood the frustration that permeates the four movement suite, explored its personal revelations carefully and he also grasped the sense of the uneasy little chord sequence in the right hand. The second movement is perhaps the most affecting and memorable, and Greenslade shaped its narrow-ranging motif to suggest mystery, interrupted by a passage of clattering confusion. In the next movement there was more openness as the pianist gently drew back the blinds to enjoy the sight of the outside world.

Though marked Presto, Greenslade withheld any precipitate rush to grasp what might merely be a spectre, but dramatized the pauses and hesitations that finally gave way to propulsive bass octaves that seemed difficult to stop.

Beethoven’s sonata No 30 has two short movements, and a third movement, somewhat longer, Theme and Variations, that explores the inexpressible. In scale it seems a world away from the immediately preceding sonata – the mighty Hammerklavier.

Just because these late works are held in such veneration, it is common to suggest that it is only the Brendels, Schnabels, Richters and Kempffs who can do them justice; but normally capable pianists who steep themselves in the music’s spirit can produce satisfying performances.

Greenslade’s performance, marred a little by lapses in the last movement, was a credit to him. The first movement was not too hasty, allowing space for the drama to develop. It also provided contrast with the much faster second movement, where fast treble passages lost some clarity. The Theme and Variations – Molto cantabile ed espressivo – opened calmly and there were subtle gestures such as a touch of elasticity in the turning of the main, achingly beautiful melody.

Audiences seem to be increasing for this long-standing concert series. Performances of this calibre will help numbers to grow.

Violin Sonatas at Old St Paul’s: Elgar and Franck

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Old Saint Paul’s: Free lunchtime concert

Violin Sonatas by Elgar (E minor, Op 82) and Franck (A major)

Olya Curtis (violin) and David Vine (piano)

Tuesday 7 July 2009

The sphere of classical music seems more populated by immigrants than any other area, whether of the arts in general, education, or the public and business sectors. That was understandable in earlier times when no tertiary institutions offered musical performance teaching. But since around 1970, one would have imagined that the supply of New Zealand-born and trained musicians would have filled the demand. But note, I am applauding, not lamenting, the often more cultivated character of our immigrant populations.

I wonder if there have been any studies to discover whether the apparently high proportion of musicians from other countries in the industry is the result of positions that cannot be properly filled by New Zealanders, or whether the proportion of musically trained and inclined people is simply higher among those who seek to migrate here.

Violinist Olya Curtis was born and educated in Russia and now divides her time between teaching privately and at Wellington East Girls’ College, and playing in the Wellington Orchestra. She makes a valued contribution to our musical life.

The pairing of these two sonatas ought to have been a success. They have characteristics in common, but one is simply much more popular and loved than the other. The programme note pointed to the very marked difference which has led to the comparative neglect of Elgar’s somewhat sombre piece, but it omits the real reason – a reason which it is not fashionable to account for the essential popularity or neglect of music – the presence or not of beautiful, memorable melody.

It was cold in the church and it was tough to open with the Elgar. Olya Curtis tackled it with care and delivered a sincere account, but clearly she had not been won over by it and she simply did not display great affinity with it, its phrasing, not gauging well how to vary dynamics and tempi, or to find a legato expressiveness to make the most of its (limited) lyrical qualities. Those qualities were rather more evident in David Vine’s accompaniment.

César Franck’s sonata found her much more comfortable with its style and with the emotional content of the music and both players managed the technically testing score well until the last movement when there were a couple of slight mishaps.

But generally, Curtis’s intonation, which was a little wayward in the Elgar sonata, was more accurate and the very tone of her violin seemed to have become warmer and more musical in Franck’s beautiful sonata.

Nevertheless, the regular, free, Tuesday lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s are a happy feature of Wellington’s varied musical life offering a charming visual setting for music that is always worthwhile and well played.

Diedre Irons and Zephyr blow through Wellington Town Hall

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Quintet in E flat, Op 16 (Beethoven), Wind Quintet, Op 142 (Ritchie), Opus Number Zoo (Berio), Sextet for piano and winds (Poulenc)

Chamber Music New Zealand: Zephyr (Bridget Douglas – flute, Philip Green – clarinet, Robert Orr – oboe, Robert Weeks – bassoon, Edward Allen – horn) and Diedre Irons – piano.

Wellington Town Hall, Monday 6 July 2009

New Zealand audiences still seem paralysed, when it comes to the arts, by an inferiority complex towards foreign performers; and additionally, for chamber music aficionados, by a fixation with the string quartet as the only form worth troubling with.

 

Despite this double handicap, there was a good audience in the Town Hall for a group of world-class NZSO principals plus one of our finest pianists, a group effectively indistinguishable from a number of world-famous chamber ensembles.

The unhappy few who stayed away missed a delightful, entertaining concert.

The Beethoven quintet for piano and winds, modeled closely on the work that Mozart considered his finest creation to date, may not be the equal of his late quartets or piano sonatas, but the scrupulous care with which pianist Diedre Irons and clarinettist Philip Green pronounced the first notes, exquisitely slowly, demonstrated their own reverence for the music. This beautifully paced introduction led to the Allegro which they also took at a pace that allowed its beguiling simplicity to be heard as the small masterpiece it is.

The second movement is one of those pieces that seems playable by a young Grade II student, but whose beauties are only fully revealed by a pianist of this accomplishment, and later by the others, in particular a long episode by Robert Weeks on the bassoon. It was a performance whose understated, gently paced character fully exposed this lovely work’s warmth and poetry.

Zephyr commissioned Anthony Ritchie to write the wind quintet which this tour, starting in Invercargill, premiered. Year by year Ritchie’s music has gained in self-confidence, in its handling of familiar forms, patterns and harmonic means, and he invariably writes music that is individual, arresting and beautiful. Attention to the visual or narrative origins of music can be misleading as an approach to ‘understanding’, but Ritchie’s own rather detailed programme reflecting both New Zealand poems and landscapes was there to read. I took care not to read it before listening, but these were indeed the sort of images that arose in my mind, though the folk song, By the Dry Cardrona, had escaped me. Ritchie’s notes were interesting only in an abstract way; for me Copland was glimpsed through the trees and flute sounds suggested Debussy; but these were not influences, let alone borrowings. Though the sounds were complex in themselves, expressed in interestingly shifting tonalities, they made music that was his own and sounded as if it had been conceived as a coherent whole

Opus Number Zoo by Luciano Berio was one of those pieces perhaps inspired by the likes of Peter and the Wolf andBabar the Elephant; each player took turns speaking the little animal fables – and Bridget Douglas’s and Robert Orr’s lines were particularly effective. The words were sardonic and cautionary, momentarily amusing (if I’d been able to catch the words), set to music that suggested Stravinsky – The Soldier’s Tale perhaps – which was mocking and often a clever continuation of the words just uttered; the players extracted all the wit and irreverence to be found in the music which in the end, I have to confess, lacked the substance of a work such as Prokofiev’s.

Poulenc’s Sextet, from the 1930s, was an entirely different matter. A splendid start demands: ‘Look here!’ and the instruments then enter as if the room suddenly fills with a crown of lively chattering party-goers. But the variously sober or sentimental phases are just as entertaining, as Poulenc shows how happy music – written in the depths of the 1930s depression – still has a place in the modern world. It is light music in a sense (like the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro), but cast in unconventional shapes; full of wit, character, colour and brilliantly scored for the instruments, particularly the piano part which Diedre Irons played with such strength and insouciance. The audience clapped long enough to win a repeat of a section of the Poulenc second movement.

(A revision and expansion of the abbreviated review in The Dominion Post)