Kugeltov: Klezmer music opens the St Andrew’s Concert Season

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Klezmer music old and new

Robin Perks (violin), Tui Clark (clarinet), Ross Harris (accordion), Malcolm Struthers (double bass)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Monday 8 March 2010 midday

(N.B. Ross Harris has drawn my attention to a mistake and to a couple of other misunderstandings in my review and the review has now been amended.  Wednesday 10 March)

The series of lunchtime and early evening concerts at St Andrew’s opened with a highly diverting concert of Klezmer music – the music of the Jewish cultures of Eastern Europe, whose traditional language is Yiddish, derived from Middle High German, mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slav and Romance languages.

The group’s name, Kugeltov, dervives from Kugel which means ‘ball’ in German. A Kugel is a staple of Jewish cooking and it originally referred to balls of noodle dough. (The programme note included a recipe for ‘Malcolm’s Kugeltov Cake’).

Their music, likewise, echoes these cultures, so lovers of the music of Serbia and Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania, Greece and areas of southern Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus will find much delight.

The series revives one of the original elements of the New Zealand International Arts Festivals: concerts by mainly New Zealand musicians at lunchtime and in the early evening, playing music of all kinds (apart from commercial popular stuff). The concerts were hugely popular from the start and reached their peak in the festivals of 1990 and 1992, under Chris Doig. It is a mystery that festivals in the last decade have so reduced the amount of music generally and turned their backs on these fine opportunities for New Zealand musicians to stand alongside overseas artists in concerts that are cheaper and more informal than the NZIAF itself. They also offered an extra draw-card for visitors from elsewhere who look for things to do during the day.

The musicians offer another example of the way professional Wellington musicians get involved in popular music of all kinds. Two of these players are in the NZSO – Robin Perks and Malcolm Struthers, one in the Vector Wellington Orchestra – Tui Clark, and Ross Harris, who taught  at Victoria University and has other lives as composer and French horn player, not to mention a commitment to Klezmer music.

So the quality of the playing was one of the striking features. Nothing was more striking than the frequent clarinet sallies from Tui Clark, a player of lively brilliance with an uncanny instinct for idiomatic styles rendered with excitement and real delight.

The first piece, by Ross Harris, opened with an exciting, anticipatory, plucked bass intro, followed by squealing clarinet rushes and staccato phrases; accordion and violin soon fleshed it out.

The second medley of three tunes opened with Robin Perks’s perfectly idiomatic gypsy sounding violin, that turned from melancholy to a wild, foot-stamping dance.

Most of the pieces, many consisting of two or three distinct tunes fused in cunning ways, were of genuine folk origin, and ten tunes were by composer/accordionist Ross Harris.

The centre piece was Ross Harris’s Klezmorphology, which was the most extended and took the genre to areas remote from the simple Klezmer, almost losing sight of its origins at times and becoming a piece that may well please conventional chamber music lovers, and there were many at this concert.

The quite large audience clapped along with the infectious final number, the popular Klezmer tune, Hava Nagila. The series has got off to a great start.

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Keith Lewis in Festival song recital with Michael Houstoun

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Songs by Purcell, Jenny McLeod, Britten and Barber

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 7 March 2010, 7.30pm  

This weekend two New Zealand tenors were the stars, at least in the singing department. Yet there could hardly be two tenors inhabiting more different terrain. Simon O’Neill has staked out Wagner as his territory and has already made an international impact there.

Keith Lewis would seem as foreign to Wagner as O’Neill would (at this stage at least) to Dowland, Purcell or Handel. He has certainly sung opera, though it has not included many of the top twenty. He has built a considerable reputation in Mozart which he has sung in many opera houses, including Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Rome, Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, San Francisco, Zurich, Madrid, Hamburg, Monte Carlo, La Fenice in Venice… and other 17th and 18th century opera: The Coronation of Poppea, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Armide, Handel’s Semele, one or two bel canto pieces like The Barber of Seville, Maria Stuarda and I Capuleti e i Montecchi. More modern operas include Salome, The Makropulos Case, Die tote Stadt and Lulu, The range of his repertoire also includes Berlioz’s Requiem, his Te Deum, La damnation de Faust, and Lélio (the sequel to the Symphonie Fantastique), and a variety of choral works.

Sorry about the quasi CV….

But his other strength is in the song repertoire and this festival concert offered impressive evidence of his accomplishment in a challenging and artistically interesting range. Conspicuously absent were any German lieder, operatic arias, French mélodies (apart from his encore), or the enormous range of Italian classical songs, folk songs, Grieg, Tchaikovsky or Granados, the English Renaissance era, and so on. …

So this recital began with a fascinating group of Purcell songs, three of them with piano realisations by Britten. The piano parts were indeed striking, though they had the effect of altering the flavour of Purcell quite markedly. The famous Frost scene (‘What power art thou’) from the semi-opera, King Arthur, was not one of those, though obviously arranged for keyboard from the original score.

They were arresting, a revelation in the sense of making them something else; in Britten’s not-so-subtle colourings, they suggested a variety of other composers. The latter-day harmonies surrounding the steady tread of ‘So when the glittering Queen of Night’ hinted at Brahms or Reger, never mind the unlikely falsetto singing that Lewis slipped in and out of. But then the descending three-note motif made clear the affinity with Marais’s Sonnerie de Sainte–Geneviève du Mont–de–Paris (presumably borrowed by Marais whose piece was written in the 1720s, but perhaps that idea was simply in the air at that time). The magnificent music of ‘Not all my torments’, also from the collection Orpheus Brittanicus, tested Lewis’s command of baroque ornamentation, for the decorative effects were endless and difficult and I found some of his sounds less than ideal.

The Frost scene from King Arthur is a remarkable, original episode (the work was memorably done by Victoria University about a decade ago), and Houstoun ‘s striking piano part, tip-toeing through the accompaniment to Lewis’s impressive rendering of this vivid operatic landscape. The last Purcell song, ‘Evening Hymn’, which came from the other Purcell collection, Harmonia Sacra, created another very different atmosphere: calm, melodic, with a few discreet ornaments, ending with a livelier Alleluia.

The centre piece of the recital was Keith Lewis’s commission of a song cycle from Jenny McLeod of Janet Frame poems. (Upbeat on Radio NZ Concert last week did interviews with both composer and singer). Most were selected by McLeod herself; they were not easy, either to sing or to hear, but it took little to recognize real music which I thought might start to take root in the mind with further hearings. There’s always a question, in making such a comment, whether it suggests failure as second performances are scarcer than first ones.

Though he must have approved of the settings, there were signs of difficulty and strain in some of them: the piano part too was highly demanding, not any easier as a result of the considerable independence of voice from accompaniment. I derived great enjoyment however, from concentrating from time to time on the piano part.

The most curious, and moving perhaps was Lament for the Lakes, the verse in the tradition of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, nonsense words set among real words that lent a particular transcendental power to the fiercely felt grief at environmental desecration – not of course confined to the battle over Lake Manapouri, with New Zealand ever more destructively in futile pursuit of Australia? Lewis was not flawless towards the end of this song.

McLeod draws special attention to Song No 4, ‘Promise’, dealing with ‘the most heinous aspects of United States foreign policy in the 50 years prior to the Obama administration’. The text, and its setting, again derive their force from the suggestiveness and ambiguities that this kind of poetry and this music, succeeds in expressing. It is a stirring example of the ability of poetry, music and the arts generally to engage with the great political issues of the day which has always been an important role for the arts.

The poems tilled all manner of soils however, some witty in either a Brittenish or Waltonesque manner, some suggesting serial methods. The vocal parts might have taxed Lewis in the learning; the piano parts too were highly individual, mostly fast, complex, but ear-catching in the sense of enticing further exploration; some I spoke to felt they were too remote from the words, but I felt that, while calling for far more notes than the voice part, the accompaniments, so wonderfully played, adorned and supported the songs.

There followed groups of songs by Britten and Barber. The Britten songs, to Auden poems, are classic examples of the oneness of poet and composer, and while difficult enough, are very much at the heart of Lewis’s art and sit well with his voice.

The first, ‘Let the florid music praise’ has kinship with the Nocturne from Britten’s Serenade, and each of them expresses such individual emotion though it is hard to define.

Barber’s songs are simply beautiful though I felt that in the first one, W H Davies Love’s Caution, the music attempted to follow individual words and phrases too closely, not a problem later when for example in Joyce’s ‘Of that so sweet imprisonment’ captured the overall spirit most sensitively. Yeats’ The Secrets of the old again seemed, with its animated, conversational tone, to be a real song. The last song, The Praises of God, derived from an 11th century poem, was lit equally by voice and piano, the latter bright, lightly athletic in its support.

As an encore Lewis departed from the English language for the first time (unless you regard the Janet Frame’s Lament for the Lakes as a foreign language). Reynaldo Hahn’s À Chloris, his most famous song which sounds as if it’s straight out of a Lully opera. I think there may have been many in the audience who’d have liked a little more of such music, for it was most seductive.

Why does the Festival use such lightly-inked type in their programmes? In the desirable and attractive dim lighting of the hall, the notes were impossible to read (though the words of the songs, on separate Xeroxed pages, were fine), even after I reached for a stronger pair of glasses.

New Zealand String Quartet count TEN

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schubert: Quartet no. 1 in G minor/B flat major, D.18; Berg: String Quartet Op.3; Ross Harris: The Abiding Tides; Beethoven: String Quartet no.,11 in F minor, Op.95 ‘Serioso’

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 7 March 2010, 4pm 

The concert was part of a splendid weekend of music.  It was a pity that the riches of a couple of days and an evening were not also to be found throughout the Festival.  I was shocked to discover that the Michael Fowler Centre was only in use four times.  Past Festivals have shown that this large venue can be filled for opera on numerous nights, for several symphonic concerts and for other shows as well.

The New Zealand String Quartet is known for innovative programming; Sunday’s concert was another example of this.  It was true Festival fare, with both old and new works.

The programme opened with an early Schubert quartet, which was new to me.  The programme notes say that it was probably composed when young Franz was 13.  It was given an affectionate performance which fully exposed its beauties, particularly in the two dance movements –  menuetto and andante.  Though a relatively uncomplicated work, it had complexities too.  The composer had plenty to say, in the competent hands of the New Zealand String Quartet.

Its sombre opening had a profound effect, followed by an animated yet warm presto vivace.

The lyrical minuet was Schubert at his most charming, while the courtly andante dance which followed must have been appreciated in the early nineteenth century Schubert drawing room in which it was first played.

Alban Berg’s was also an early quartet, written 100 years after Schubert’s (the significance of the title of the concert was that the works were written in 1810, 1910, 2010 and 1810).

The work featured 12-tone technique, with resulting clashes.  It used a variety of bowing techniques, especially in the first of the two movements.  Contrasted with these, there were delicacy, declamation, and moments of great beauty, particularly in the much busier second movement.  Other techniques that characterised this movement were the use of harmonics, pizzicato, and mutes.

The NZSQ played this often difficult music with great command and assurance.  After 100 years, the work still impresses as adventurous and avant-garde.  The total effect is somewhat bleak and hard.  At times it is plaintive; at others, calm.  What it has to say, it says with asperity.

The commissioned composition by Ross Harris to poems especially written by Vincent O’Sullivan proved to be a passionate piece of work, with a brilliant ending.

Copies of the words of the poems were distributed; the fact that they are in English does not guarantee that the audience can hear all of them.  The copies were eminently readable, unlike the palely inked typeface of the programme.

However, from where I sat, almost all of Jenny Wollerman’s words came over clearly and beautifully.  The imaginative, lyrical poems and musical settings were quite delightful.  This work certainly deserves more hearings.  It was very effective if a rather depressing series of visions of the sea.  It was versatile in both poetic and musical languages.

Variously describing the journey and sinking of the Titanic, the doomed voyages of ‘Boat People’ and the coming of a tsunami, the poems and music were constantly interesting.  The word-setting was first-rate, as was the writing for string quartet.

The fourth song, ‘Remember’, had an enchanting accompaniment which featured pizzicato, and delicious solo violin.  In the short seventh poem, ‘Light’, the music seeped out slowly, to the words ‘Light seeps its grey/Composure on the mild day’.

Jenny Wollerman’s singing was perfect for this work.  The clarity of her notes and words served poet and composer extremely well, as did the quartet’s performance of the apt writing for the strings.

Beethoven’s ‘Serioso’ quartet looks towards the profundity of the late quartets, yet has brief moments reminiscent of some of his quartets in lighter mood.  However, solemnity quickly returns, only to be overcome briefly at the end by a major key affirmation that seems to say ‘and yet there is hope’.

It was played with vigour and commitment by the New Zealand String Quartet.  Not a nuance passed unnoticed; indeed there were colours aplenty to enhance this magnificent music, the most familiar of the works in this superb programme.

Organics for free at the International Arts Festival in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

John Wells – Organ Recital at the Wellington Town Hall

JS Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 / Frank Bridge – Adagio in E Major

Alfred Hollins – Concerto Overture No.2 / Cesar Franck – Piece Heroique

Josef Rheinberger – Sonata No.3 “The Pastoral” Op.88 / Alfred Louis James Lefebure-Wely – Sortie in B-flat

Saturday 6th March

Douglas Mews – Organ Recital at the Wellington Town Hall

Edwin Lemare – Marche Moderne / Erima Maewa Kaihau –  A koako o te Rangi (Whisper of Heaven)

JS Bach – Prelude and Fugue in A Minor BWV 543 / Brahms – 2 Chorale Preludes Op.122

Tchaikovsky (arr. Lemare) – Fantasy Overture “Romeo and Juliet”

Sunday 7th March

Each one of these recitals was given for free at the Wellington Town Hall, both showing off the resplendent grandeur and variety of tones of the Town Hall’s recently refurbished organ. Of the two recitals I enjoyed John Wells’ as a whole better, largely because of the programming, though both his and Douglas Mews’s recitals had some very fine and interesting things in them. Each featured  some resplendent Bach, Wells treating us to the old warhorse the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (which showed off the organ excellently) and Douglas Mews the A Minor Prelude and Fugue BWV 543, a tighter, rather less theatrical and Gothic work, though one with some light and shade during the fugue, via an episode of contrasting registration, before the final payoff returned us to imposing magnificence. But John Wells’s programme showed us more of the instrument’s byways via works by Frank Bridge, Alfred Hollins and Josef Rheinberger, then concluding with some absolutely delightful music by Alfred Louis James Lefebure-Wely, a lovely Andante from a larger work “Meditaciones Religiosas” and a “Sortie in E flat” of a kind that would be played as a postlude to a Mass at a Parisian Church such as Saint Suplice.

What came off best for me in Douglas Mews’ recital, besides the Bach Prelude and Fugue, was a charming work by Erima Maewa Kaihau, one called “A koako o te Rangi” (Whisper of Heaven), music which readily evoked a strong, rich period charm. I was moved to try and find out something about Erima Maewa Kaihau, a name I didn’t know (as it turned out, to my shame!) – born in 1879 at Whangaroa, she was given the name Louisa Flavell by her European father, whose background was suffused with romantic conjecture. He was supposedly descended from a member of the French aristocracy who escaped the bloodshed of the Revolution, and also from a musician connected with the court of the Austrian Emperor. On her mother’s side her whakapapa could boast the Nga Puhi chief Hone Hika of Ngati Rahiri. Maewa married Henare Kaihau, by whom she had six daughters and two sons – Kaihau was the MP for Western Maori until about 1920. Maewa’s musical talents expressed themselves readily in song-writing, most famously with the song  “Haere ra”, known in English as “Now is the Hour”, and also “A koako o te Rangi” (“Whisper of Heaven”). The latter was recorded by the famous singer Ana Hato, but I don’t as yet know who made the transcription for organ solo. Erima Maewa Kaihau died in 1941.

I thought it was unfortunate that Douglas Mews chose to conclude his recital with a transcription of Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” Overture. In theory the idea had some interest, but in practice it wasn’t a success – the transcription, though it suited some aspects of the work (the slow wind chording at the beginning, for example) failed to deliver the goods in other places. What disappointed me most seriously was the conflict music between the Montagues and the Capulets, which sounded both underpowered and rhythmically out-of-sorts. I could imagine that transcriptions of this sort would have had their place in the days when symphony concerts were less common and accessible to people than they are now, and this was the means by which a lot of music got a hearing at all. As such, the exercise had, I suppose, a kind of historical-kitsch value. But really, Tchaikovsky’s music wasn’t done any favours; and I couldn’t help thinking that, if organists really wanted to play symphonic music they ought to investigate (or make) transcriptions of things like the Bruckner symphonies, whose harmonies, textures, and rhythmic trajectories would seem far more suited to the instrument. I could even, I think, really enjoy a work like the Cesar Franck Symphony in an inspired transcription – there would be some point to hearing in transcription such works which probably owe some of their gestation to the activities of their composers in the organ-loft. However, I fear that, on the evidence of what we heard, some music might well be left well alone!

DIRTY BEASTS and other stories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Martin Butler – Dirty Beasts

Nigel Collins (narrator), Diedre Irons (piano)

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

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

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

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 7th March 2010, 2pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

A great concert from the Borodin Quartet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

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

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

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 6 March 2010, 7.30pm 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand Trio in excerpts for the Festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

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

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

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 6 March 2010, 4pm 

(With a contribution from Peter Mechen)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon O’Neill – Wagner Gala

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

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

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 5 March 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gems of German Baroque at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

Calvin Scott (oboe)

Margarte Guldborg (‘cello)

Ariana Odermatt (harpsichord)

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series 2010

Wednesday, 3rd March

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

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

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

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

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wagner Society of New Zealand – Wellington Branch

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

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 28 February 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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