NZ String Quartet and bassist Ikematsu in Sunday concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

String Quartet No 1 The Kreutzer Sonata (Janáček); Exitus for string quartet (Michael Norris); String Quintet, Op 77 (Dvořák)

The New Zealand String Quartet and Hiroshi Ikematsu (double bass)

Wellington Chamber Music Society

Ilott Theatre, Sunday 21 May 2009

I believe the audience for this concert in the Ilott Theatre was a little larger than had been expected, perhaps due to the presence of another contributor, NZSO principal double bass player, Hiroshi Ikematsu. Many will have heard him in concert with chamber groups and word could have got out that he was a player of remarkable accomplishment and talent.

My initial thought, looking at the programme, was that this piece by Dvořák may not have been a very clever choice to display his skill and musicality. At the end of the concert, this feeling was still lurking.

However, the concert began with Janáček’s Kreutzer Sonata quartet, a nice choice for those who had seen the interesting theatrical performance last year that told Tolstoy’s story in which the Beethoven violin sonata is the catalyst for a deadly extra-martial affair, intimately tied to the playing of the quartet by the Nevine Quartet.

Though I do not place importance on the non-musical sources of compositions, their programmes or aspects of the composer’s experiences, what is common knowledge can crop up; sometimes it gets in the way, sometimes it might provide a rewarding context.

In the case of such a deliberately named piece, the story can hardly be avoided. Ever since re-reading the novella a few years ago, the constant background of the railway journey in the narrative, the clicking of wheels on rail joints, has seemed to me present in the cello’s spiky notes that punctuate the first theme that recurs, passed from player to player.

Commentators differ on the nature of the Janáček’s message, some arguing that it is possible to hear aspects of the novella in great detail, others pointing to a great difference between Tolstoy’s and Janáček’s views of love and marriage.

Some quartets see the music more romantically than others. In the hands of the New Zealand String Quartet there was little ominous in it, though they gave voice to an agitation that’s present in parts of it; however, the very deliberate theme that first violin Helene Pohl announced, warm against the second violin’s tremolo, suggested no more than expectancy.

There was more unease in the second movement especially from the tremolo violin passages, chillingly sul ponticello, and similar effects recur in the third movement. Gillian Ansell’s viola contribution was striking throughout, seeming to find more angst and soulfulness than one hears in some performances. 

By the end, we had been in the grip of a tale of pity and of something irreconcilable in human nature, not simply tragedy.

I heard Michael Norris’s Exitus at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson in January and it was interesting to hear it again: I confess, it was the composer who told me that he had shortened it in certain ways for these later performances; I did not pick it.

There is a common stylistic thread running through all four sections, with predominant use of high harmonics and tremolo, high tensile bowing, so lightly touching the strings that the pitch becomes indistinct.

The subject is the rituals surrounding death in four different cultures: interestingly, neither the Greek underworld, nor Maori/Polynesian myths about the passage to the afterlife, with which we are probably most familiar, were treated. It was Inuit, Mayan, Nordic and the Choctaw tribe of American Indians and their Black Water River experience that were explored. Each part evoked something of the environment and, with very limited expressive means, suggested the experience of the soul passing through whatever screening system each people believed led to the other world.

For example, the Mayan piece, Xibalba, created a rather frightening underworld scene through short upward bow strokes, long held notes interrupted by spiccato and emphatic thrusts by all four instruments, effects that are far from routine but which the players handled as if they were mere warm-up exercises.

In Nelson I had felt that the end could have followed the third piece, Niflheim, the equivalent of the Adagio movement, since it ended after a passage of very high shimmering harmonics from the cello, dying so perfectly. 

In the end I still felt that the problem of the piece was a too unvarying stylistic character; in spite of the subtle differences from one to another, the very subject matter that imposed a too uniform tone on the whole piece when one’s instinctive need was for something in the sun, among the living. But I have no suggestions….

Finally, the showpiece for the double bass. As I hinted, the bottom line of this piece by Dvořák hardly offered this brilliant player scope for the range of lyrical, legato, melodic, not to mention the amazing virtuosic skills of which he and his instrument are capable. It was confined, in fact, to music considerably less interesting than the cello enjoyed (and the cello collected bits of melody quite often), yet even within these limitations, the pizzicato and the fairly unadorned bowing of the bass line was uncommonly musical and provided a deep and rich underpinning for each movement.  

But the work as a whole falls into the class of the serenade or divertimento rather than of the string quartet. Happy tunes, some recurring too often, folk rhythms, all very skillfully written; and all the players gave it an affectionate and lively performance. But surely Dvořák would have come across the Paganini of the double bass, Bottesini, who was 20 years his senior, and would have known what the lovely instrument could do.

 

New Zealand School of Music Classical Voice Students

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by Rossini, Debussy, Finzi, Mozart, Harris, Head, Messiaen, Schumann, Menotti, Donizetti

Rachel Day, Rose Blake, Issac Stone, Sophie Kemp, Laura Dawson,  Imogen Thirwall, Michael Gray, Olga Gryniewicz

Accompanist: Emma Sayers (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wednesday, 20th May

Recitals such as these can amount to less than the sum of their parts if not organised and prepared for well; and the announcement at the concert’s beginning that several of the students had colds as a result of excessively wintry weather didn’t do anything to lift expectations of what was to follow to any great extent. However, what we should have taken into account was the enthusiasm and sheer determination of these young singers to make the most of what this concert offered them; and in fact the listening experience was packed with interest and intensity due to every bracket of songs being that particular vocalist’s chance to shine.

Rachel Day had the responsibility of beginning the recital with two songs by Rossini, from a set of three called “La regatta veneziana”, describing the scene at a Venetian gondola race, during which a girl excitedly encourages her lover, both before and during the event, to try his best to win. Her “salty tang” timbre admirably suited the songs, as did her engagingly focused “out-front” projection, putting across plenty of tumbling warmth and enthusiasm, and finding her high notes well. The two Debussy songs that followed were delivered with contrasting subtlety and atmosphere by Rose Blake, “Clair de lune” demonstrating a nice sense of the song’s shape, and “Fantoches” (Puppets) confidently and entertainingly suggesting storytelling abilities.

Isaac Stone was possibly one of the sufferers referred to at the concert’s beginning, as he seemed not to be able to project the lower tessitura of Gerald Finzi’s “Come Away, Death”, although the lighter, more lyrical episodes were nicely shaped, and the expressive points were well noted. “Who is Sylvia” exhibited a similar lyrical sensitivity. Sophie Kemp overcame some nervousness to sweetly deliver Barbarina’s “hankerchief” aria from Mozart’s “Figaro”, and relaxed somewhat into Ross Harris’s setting of Bub Bridger’s “The Swans”, confidently enunciating the meaning of her words.

Laura Dawson’s bracket of Michael Head’s songs was most impressive, her authoritative singing able to make her softer notes “tell” as significantly as her fuller declamations, and her interpretations of each song capturing a unique atmosphere with subtly-applied variation of emphasis and colour (supported by some superb playing from Emma Sayers). After “The Gondolier” came “Rain Storm”, whose opening notes were delicately-coloured and sensitively placed – the singer survived a slight voice-discolouring on the first of two high reaches towards the end, but beautifully managed the second one –  altogether, these were a memorable pair of performances. Different, less imposing, but as authoritative in a more whimsical manner was Imogen Thirwall’s singing of Messiaen’s Trois Melodies, varying bright and subtle tones and using face and gesturings well to convey the quizzical sense of “Pourquoi?”, then relishing the wistfulness of the reflective “Le Sourire” (another beautiful accompaniment from Emma Sayers), and the drama and resignation of the final song “La Fiancée Perdue”.

Michael Gray’s ardent, thrusting performances of three of Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” songs were also a highlight of the concert, the first “Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen” bright and eager, urgent to the point of vocal tightness, but with the interpretative heart in the right place; then a delicately-delivered “Hör ich das Liedchen klingen” and a forthright “Ein Jüngling liebt eine Mädchen” with lovely “pinging” notes at the beginning. Finally, Olga Gryniewicz demonstrated her communicative and theatrical skills with two operatic exerpts, the first being “The Black Swan” from Menotti’s spooky “The Medium”, sung with elegant phrase-turnings and nicely-shaped notes, if a bit monochromatic in colour during the middle section, though with fine ardour and a confidently floated high note at the aria’s conclusion. Then, to finish, we were treated to Norina’s cavatina “Quel guardo il cavaliere” from Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”, the opening lyrical and confident, the line drawn strongly, the ensuing coloratura nicely ‘sprung’, warming up as the music dances onwards, and  enabling the singer to triumphantly negotiate without mishap the high work at the end – impressive enough!

Very, very great honour and ample plaudits to the participants on this occasion, for giving us a wonderful concert.

NZSO with Steven Osborne in Shostakovich, Beethoven, Webern

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Conductor: Matthias Bamert with Steven Osborne (piano)

 Passacaglia for Orchestra, Op 1, by Webern, Piano Concerto No 1 (Shostakovich), Symphony No 7 (Beethoven)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington. Friday 15 May 2009

There were many NZSO followers who were sorry when Matthias Bamert, who had several years as assistant chief conductor of the orchestra, did not become Music Director. However, he maintains his earlier, highly fruitful relationship. On paper, the programme looked a little odd; Webern has never become a much loved composer, apart from among a small band that sees music as an analytical challenge and professes to derive pleasure from esoterica.

His Opus 1, the Passacaglia, however, is another matter. Written before falling in with the rigours of Schoenberg’s 12-note system, it demonstrates the huge talent that seemed ready to carry forward the German tradition of Brahms and Wagner, Strauss and Mahler – and the young Schoenberg of Verklärte Nacht and Pelléas and Mélisande. It is a work, like the two Schoenberg pieces mentioned, that arouses the hope that perhaps there’s a lost corpus of works by these composers that continue the tradition of communicable music, or that suggest, more constructively, that we have not given the later angular, intellectual works a fair go, and we should try harder: that of course is the proper approach.

For the Passacaglia is a passionate and engaging work which, given expose such as the tone poems of Strauss and Schoenberg enjoy, would seem to be a candidate for popularity. It’s a set of variations on a fairly sombre theme but which lends itself to a wide range of emotions; naturally, everyone points to its likely derivation from the last, Passacaglia, movement of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.

We could hardly have had a more persuasive advocate for this piece than Bamert, whose credentials extend to every corner of the repertoire. Perhaps shamefully, I confess this was my first live hearing, and I was overwhelmed by the searing emotional richness, dynamic range and opulent orchestral canvas, and the evidence of Bamert’s aural imagination in laying it out, at once well-ordered and expressive.

There were no romantic langours, no self-indulgent excesses of rubato or dynamics; yet the orchestral detailing, the entrancing patterns of colour achieved through effects like muted tremolo passages for strings and brass, offered plenty of scope for the construction of a narrative background. And it prompted regret that Webern was soon to turn his back on such gifts.

It would have been hard to conceive of a greater contrast between the 1908 Webern and Shostakovich’s first piano concerto of 1933, both written around the age of 25. The former a strenuous effort to meet the over-heated expectations of late romantic Vienna, and his mentor Schoenberg in particular; the latter, an ebullient display of the youthful confidence and popular success that the young Shostakovich had won, in a soon to be shattered Communist dream. The word sardonic, almost automatically used to describe its character, suggests a hidden, anti-communist agenda; but is it correct to attribute to the composer, as early as 1933, incipient disillusionment with the system?

Again, Bamert proved his infallible taste and stylistic instinct, not to mention burning energy and an ability to inspire the orchestra to the greatest intensity, whether handling the frenzied excitement of the fast, circus-like passages or the moments of sentiment and even profundity in the Lento, or pointing up the array of parody quotes from all and sundry.

Steven Osborne was his ideal collaborator, capable of matching whatever speeds were adopted and responding precisely to the abrupt tempo and mood changes. The work is scored with no wind instruments, timpani and the trumpet being the only instruments to off-set the strings. The effect, made vivid by the riveting performance that was as much a show-case for the orchestra’s virtuosity as for the pianist’s, was to emphasise the brilliant, hard-edged piano and trumpet and the contrasting legato of the strings – black and white rather than full colour.

But it also drew smiles of delight from the audience, surprised by the rare, conspicuous appearance of wit in music. A piano encore in the shape of an improvisation on a jazz piece by Oscar Peterson could not have been better judged. Though it did prompt thoughts about the absence of visits in recent years by major figures of the jazz world. Have we heard anyone of the stature of Keith Jarrett in recent decades?

Finally, after the interval came Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The first two movements could have been called ‘studied’ or metronomic and they were, but they were also alive with a tension that was almost hypnotic, over a bed-rock pulse from rich basses and cellos.

I must have heard a performance of the symphony in my youth in which the Scherzo was so without variety that I developed an aversion to it, and what I felt were tedious repeats. Words scribbled on my cuff during this performance included ‘energy’, ‘intense’, ‘varied colouring in winds’, subtleties’. In other words, I didn’t long for that final chopped-off reprise.

I was prompted to note the conductor’s gestures during the last movement. They are compact, yet free and compelling, there was graceful bounce in its rhythms, a delicious bite in the strings; all sections of the orchestra created an opulent, integrated sound.

 

Cantoris – Amaryllis and Absalom

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Madrigals by BYRD, TALLIS, GIBBONS and TOMKINS
Cantoris, conducted by Richard Apperley (guest conductor)

St.Peter’s Church, Willis St., Wellington, Saturday 9th May, 2009

Cantoris is one of a number of Wellington-based choirs whose activities serve to bring to local audiences a richly diverse range of the choral repertoire in committed and skilful performances. St. Peter’s Church on Willis St. provided a picturesque and elegant setting for this, the first Cantoris concert for 2009, featuring madrigals, sacred and secular, with one’s pleasure further enhanced by a beautifully-printed programme containing texts and commentaries about the music. Conducting Cantoris for the first time was Richard Apperley, Assistant Organist at Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul, and previously of Lincoln Cathedral in the UK, where he also formed and conducted the Cathedral Chamber Choir. With the help of Tessa Coppard, the choir’s assistant conductor, who rehearsed the programme before Richard Apperley arrived, the singers were amply prepared for the not inconsiderable demands made by a widely-ranging programme of sacred and secular music by Tudor composers.

In a programme note, Richard Apperley confessed to being a devotee of the music of Thomas Tompkins (1572-1656), a composer whose work began the concert with a setting of a Psalm text O sing unto the Lord a new song, a work which demonstrates, according to Apperley, the composer’s fondness for full-blooded expressiveness, using constantly changing tonalities and syncopated rhythms. The singers got over a somewhat nervous beginning to the piece, with tones and rhythms that strengthened in focus as the piece progressed. The voices took time to properly blend, but their differentiations added colour to the lovely antiphonal effects from the women, the whole acquiring a kind of appropriately raw fervour by the time the “Alleluias” at the end of the piece were delivered. Tomkins was again the composer of two laments using Biblical texts from the story of King David, concerning the deaths of his sons, Jonathan and Absalom – the first Then David mourned challengingly slow, taxing the sopranos with their high entries in thirds, and the choir elsewhere, and the second When David heard having a particularly “stricken” quality, well-captured by the voices, the performance extremely moving at the words “O my son”, and handling the “layered” receding ending into silence with control and skill.

Tomkins’ six-voice anthem Woe is me followed, the voices supported by a nicely sustained organ accompaniment. The music has an attractive “rolling” aspect which the choir brought out well amid exchanges of phrases between the women’s voices. Another anthem,
O God the proud are risen against me set for eight voices, vividly evokes conflict and its resolution – although the basses took a while to get the pitch of their phrases, the sopranos came to the rescue with beautifully-held long notes at “slow to anger”, and the choir achieved a properly celebratory climax with the words “great in goodness and truth”.

In general the choir seemed more at ease performing Orlando Gibbons’ music, with rounder tones and securer harmonic tuning. Gibbons’ madrigal The Silver Swan brought forth nice work from all sections, as did a second madrigal Ah dear heart, whose sensitive beginning inspired sweet-toned work from the tenors and later, sonorous archways of splendour from the basses  with long lines held together well. William Byrd’s work, too, seemed to bring out a consistent strain of engagement with Cantoris, whose voices under Richard Apperley’s direction caught the infectious gait of the madrigal This sweet and merry month of May with its skipping rhythms at “for pleasure of the joyful time”, its pleasantly pastoral merrymaking aspect contrasting strongly with the meditative beauty of the following Lullaby, before switching back to pastoral themes with Though Amaryllis dance in green,a tricky, syncopated rhythm-feast of a madrigal, confidently sung by the choir, relishing the piece’s many-stranded aspect and “snapping” rhythms.

Byrd’s Vigilate was another work in which the choir gave of its best, the strength of the writing matched by confident, declamatory tones at the outset, realising the urgency and directness of the work’s focus, with lines and interchanges kept going with spirit and clarity (a nice touch being the basses’ deliberately “gauche” timbres at the moment of cock-crow). Perhaps not every opportunity was taken to characterise the music fully, but the final cries of “Vigilante” went with an infectious swing. Byrd’s great contemporary was Thomas Tallis, whose five-part Te Deum concluded the programme, a hymn of praise whose English text allowed us to savour some of the composer’s word-painting, and appreciate the choir’s responses to the text – for example, catching the music’s rolling aspect of “The Holy Church throughout all the world”, and responding to both the surge of grandeur at “Thou art the King of Kings, O Christ” and the harsh pointedness of “the sharpness of death”. Again, if not all of the composer’s variation of mood and feeling was fully realised throughout, there was still a sense engendered of a great musical journey, with Richard Apperley and the choir making the most of “O Lord, in Thee have I trusted” at the triumphant conclusion of the piece.

Two organ solos played by Richard Apperley, one by Tomkins and the other by Byrd, gave even more variety to a concert whose repertoire and presentation made an interesting and absorbing impression throughout a most enjoyable evening.

L’Italiana in Algeri from the NBR New Zealand Opera

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

L’Italiana in Algeri by Rossini 

Conducted by Wyn Davies, director: Colin McColl, set and lighting design: Tony Rabbit, costumes: Nic Smillie, chorus master: Michael Vinten.

Singers; Wendy Dawn Thomson, Conal Coad, Christian Baumgärtel, Warwick Fyfe, Katherine Wiles, Richard Green, Kristen Darragh.

St James Theatre

Saturday 9 May 2009

The first of the two staged productions from New Zealand Opera in 2009 made a hit of an opera that is not really in the top twenty, even in Italy.

The Italian Girl has one of Rossini’s familiar, effervescent overtures, a couple of well-known arias and a lot of music that is infectious and witty, but a plot that is pretty thin.

It was last seen in New Zealand in 1983 in a production by Mercury Theatre in Auckland, the successor to the short-lived National Opera of New Zealand.

In the past 30 years, there has been a huge revival of interest in Rossini’s oeuvre of round 38 operas, most of which are not comedies. In his day he was more famous as a composer of dramatic opera. Among the comedies, one can think, after The Barber of Seville, only of La Cenerentola, this one and Il turco in Italia; there were several one act comedies – farces, burlesques – from his early years and in his last years in Paris – Il viaggio a Reims and Le comte Ory. All the other 30-odd operas are tragedies, dramas drawn from antiquity, medieval romances or from recent literature.

L’Italiana in Algeri

The secret of such comedy was fully understood by Conal Coad who took the part of Mustafa, the Bey of Algiers (Governor of the Ottoman province). He has shortcomings in western eyes, and these are mocked by presenting his character without the stock gestures of cheap farce. Coad knows that comedy depends on adopting an outwardly serious demeanour, with careful limits to stock comedic gestures, allowing pomposity and lack of self-awareness to be observed rather than drawn crassly to our attention.

Thus his every movement was pregnant with satire or self-evident foolishness; and his very presence on stage caused smiles: he was the essential focus of the comedy, and he triumphed.

The Italian Girl, Isabella, was sung by Wendy Dawn Thomson, a graduate of Victoria University and virtually runner-up in the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World. She has sung at Covent Garden, Opera Australia, Scottish Opera, Opera North, among others and at major festivals. She is a splendid actress with a voice that is rich in histrionic character, though it was not, on the first night, particularly large: not as I remembered her in The Death of Klinghoffer in Auckland in 2005.

Degrees of under-projection also affected other singers, something not evident when they were at the front of the stage. Thomson’s performance consisted, however, as an opera singer’s must, in far more than simply good singing; she threw herself round the stage, used her limbs and her face expressively, drew all eyes to her whenever she was on stage.

I assumed that Christian Baumgärtel, as her lover Lindoro, had vocal problems in the early stages, as his voice was strained, reedy in ‘Languir per una bella’. But in his duet with Mustafa, ‘Se inclinassi…’, the hilarious water-skiing coup de théâtre, all was forgotten. By the second act he seemed more comfortable, as both his acting and singing expressed confidence and greater ease, finally displaying the form that justified his journey from Germany.

The most striking aspect of the production was the staging. It was presented as an onlooker’s view of a filming of the opera as soap opera, with an amusing, showoff, sometimes obscene film director (Stephen Butterworth), gesturing and shouting unscripted instructions to performers and camera and lighting crew somewhere in the gallery.

Above and behind the stage was a screen on which was projected in real time, what a camera in the wings stage left was capturing on the stage below the screen. It puzzled and distracted to begin with, but one got the hang of it.

It could have been a mess, but director Colin McColl had developed his idea, with set and lighting designer Tony Rabbit, with such confidence and so convincingly, that it had its own logic and the audience totally accepted it; more, they loved and were enchanted by it.

However, it’s a pity that Colin McColl’s notes, seeking to justify the setting by likening Rossini to today’s soap-operas, both denigrates the greatness of Rossini and ridiculously elevates the contemptible squalor of most of today’s TV theatricals. And the character of the production might reinforce that unfortunate comparison in the minds of less aware audience members; that was the excuse for skimpy-clad, non-singing ‘beach babes’ (I’m not sure what the beaches are like around Algiers city). My feeling was rather, that it would have persuaded sceptics that opera is absolutely not a museum art, any more than Shakespeare or Michelangelo are.

But all the hilarious stage business would have meant nothing if not underpinned by Wyn Davies’s management of the musical shaping, its tempi, the Rossinian spirit and élan, the orchestral discipline as well as imposing the final degree of ensemble between soloists, orchestra and chorus. (I hope it will be noted that I do not refer to the conductor, as most reviewers do, as simply the conductor of the orchestra: he conducts the entire performance).

The chorus was one of the performance’s great ornaments; though not numerous, their polish, clarity and energy was a credit to the work of Michael Vinten as chorus master. (It’s all male, in spite of the opportunity for using soprano and alto castrati, seeing they are eunuchs).

I particularly enjoyed the patriotic chorus in Act II where a combination of the basic stage green, the red t-shirts and white of some costumes reflected the Italian flag as well as spelling Viva Italia: foreshadowing Verdi’s ‘Va pensiero’ in Nabucco.

The lesser characters can seem rather secondary in some productions, but here the strength of both Warwick Fyfe’s Taddeo and Richard Green’s Haly made their roles both significant and memorable. In his notable Act II aria ‘Ho un gran peso sulla testa’, Fyfe, corpulent in white, had both striking physical and impressive vocal presence. At each of Green’s entries, particularly his aria ‘Le femmine d’Italia’, his imposing bass demonstrated his wide experience at ENO in London and the medium-sized house at Bremerhaven.

The Bey’s wife, Elvira and her maid, Zulma – Katherine Wiles and Kristen Darragh, were both splendidly cast and there was some debate in the interval about whether their figures and legs, rivaling the three beach-babes, had recommended them for the roles as much as had their vocal gifts. Wiles’s interventions were particularly vivid – one would hardly have thought she needed Isabella’s guidance in assertiveness. Darragh was clearly distinguished in the several ensembles.

This production is a brilliant combination of a passable libretto and sparkling music, all viewed through a production that plants it vividly and consistently in the present day.

Post scriptum

I enjoyed the performance so much that I went along to the second one on Tuesday (11 May), got a seat high in the gods. But there, little blemishes that I had ignored on Saturday loomed a bit larger: the shrill piccolo in the overture which I’d put out of my mind, was more annoying as it recurred at other points in the performance. Likewise I’d left little misgivings about the orchestra’s playing unexpressed; but in the gallery, where the orchestra’s sound seemed amplified above the voices, occasional untidiness in ensemble and obtrusive volume, crowding the singers, was noticeable as it had not been centre stalls. But their playing was very much at the very decent level of the many German opera house orchestras that I’ve heard.

Again I found tenor Baumgärtel’s voice a bit thin, even pressured and unbeautiful, though his acting wholly compensated. And my pleasure was confirmed in the voices and histrionics of the other singers. Nor could I fault the treatment of the work, the business of the filming, the entr’actes enlivened with the dispatch of singers not needed in the next scene, marshalling the chorus and the singers for the next act, retouching makeup, quick reviews of the action and so on; but it became a little tiresome occasionally.

Though McColl’s treatment was risky, it worked, and a second viewing gave me no reason to fault it, as an acceptable, goofy version of an opera that you can do almost what you like with, such is its fundamental silliness. At my distance from the stage, the surtitles were hard to read, often not visible, and I gauged that they were probably too high on the screen for the dozen back rows: there seemed no reason for them not to be at the bottom of the screen, where they would have been visible to the whole house. The texts however, were pithy and well judged. Like Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail, it dealt with the then popular subject of the nature of the Muslim world, and contacts between Christians and Muslims. Strangely, though the Balkan conquests by the Ottoman Empire in the previous century had posed a serious danger to Christian Europe, and their armies were near the gates of Vienna just before 1700 – the Austrian Empire was saved only by the timely arrival of a Polish army – attitudes towards Muslims were far more tolerant and even amused than they are today in certain countries.  Then there were no human rights commissions to object to stereotyping and ridiculing of a religious community. And so a Muslim leader could be pilloried for behaviour considered not comme il faut by polite European society of the time.

Lexus Song Quest 2009, Auckland, and Wellington recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Reviews of the Final of the contest in Auckland and the recital in Wellington by the three prize-winners

1. Auckland

Six finalists with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Lloyd: Julia Booth, Aivale Cole, Kristen Darragh, Andrew Glover, Wade Kernot, Polly Ott.

Auckland Town Hall. Thursday 23 April

In the second half of the contest, when all six finalists sing opera or oratorio arias with the NZSO, it was the fifth singer who caused the sensation. She sang an aria from Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, not very familiar, entitled ‘Es gibt ein Reich’. She sang it with extraordinary insight, passion, care with its pace and articulation: in short here was a stunning, real Strauss soprano, of which we have only produced one other – Kiri Te Kanawa. Yet this singer has an arresting beauty of voice, an earthiness and power that is different from – I hesitate to say greater than – her great predecessor.

Her name is Aivale Cole and she is from Wellington. I recall first hearing her in a small opera called Classical Polynesia at the 1998 International Arts Festival, and have watched her progress over the past decade, among other things gaining first prize at the prestigious Australian Opera Studio in Perth. And she has started to win principal roles in major opera houses.

The audience burst into a frenzy of shouting and applause as her Strauss aria finished and you could sense a general feeling that most people present knew the result then. And when she sang ‘Ritorna vincitor’, Aida’s great aria from the opera of that name, the big audience did a repeat performance.

Adjudicator, the great German tenor Siegfried Jerusalem, awarded her first prize.

The other finalists were not at all to be dismissed however. Auckland bass Wade Kernot gained second prize; as he had in the 2007 contest. He has a powerful, resonant bass voice that remains firm below the bass stave, but is at its most attractive in the middle baritone range. The first half of the contest comprised lieder and songs, accompanied by pianist Terence Dennis, and Kernot impressed at first with a Brahms lied, ‘Verrat’, investing it with convincing drama. His arias were ‘Se vuol ballare’ from The Marriage of Figaro, effective if not spectacular, but the great monologue of Philip II of Spain in Verdi’s Don Carlo, ‘Ella giammai m’amo’, did seem to put him in serious contention, with its deep insight into a lonely king reflecting on the path his barren life had taken.

Of the three not rewarded, I felt Kristen Darragh had been unlucky, for her song by Hahn was gorgeous, the aria ‘O mio Ferrando’ from Donizetti’s La Favorita arresting, and she gave a very impressive rendering of Lucretia’s aria from Britten’s opera on the Shakespeare poem. However, she was vindicated by inclusion in a principal role in L’Italiana in Algeri shortly afterwards.

This was one of the strongest contests of the many I have attended: all we need now is enough real opera activity to employ all the talent that emerges from our academies and universities.

(an edited version of the review for The Dominion Post)

2. The winners’ recital in Wellington. Aivale Cole, Wade Kernot and Julia Booth with Terence Dennis (piano)

The Opera House, Wellington; Thursday 30 April

There was a big audience at the Opera House for the Wellington recital by the three place-getters at the Lexus Song Quest held the previous week in Auckland.

This was the first time the contest has presented such recitals, believed to be compensation to the rest of the country because Lexus has stipulated that the finals should be held every time in Auckland. It will be recalled that Mobil, based in Wellington, had rotated the final around all the main cities and that, ironically, some of the smallest audiences were usually in Auckland.

The recital was a quite different experience from the competition final. The atmosphere allowed singers to respond more openly, in a more relaxed manner without the competitive tension. The singer who responded best to this was runner-up Wade Kernot. His Brahms lied, which had been dramatic enough, but monochrome, was now a most interesting and varied narrative. In addition he sang a droll Beethoven song, ‘Der Kuss’ with sufficient gestural accompaniment to make its ironical points amusing.

Instead of ‘Se vuol ballare’ which he’d sung in Auckland he sang the Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni which was a brilliant showcase for his studied comic skills and for a voice capable of pointed tonal variety. On the other hand, his great Don Carlo monologue was rather more involving than Fiesco’s ‘Il lacerato spirito’ from Simon Boccanegra which he sang in Wellington. And ‘Ol’ Man River’ suited him, not merely because of its low notes but because he could invest it with such a feeling of defeat.

Away from comparison with the other three singers, the gap between Julia Booth and the first and second place-getters was more noticeable; she seemed to have lost some stature on account of the greater maturity and assurance of the other two singers. In ‘Die Forelle’ her voice seemed smaller and less warm than in the Auckland Town Hall and her second lied, Böhm’s ‘Still wie die Nacht’, sort of lesser-Schumann, though nicely sung, was less interesting. In comparison, her adventurous Britten song, ‘A Poison Tree’ had marked her Auckland performance as well-schooled and well-understood.

Her arias in Wellington were generally more comfortable. She sang none of the same pieces as in Auckland: now it was the touching ‘Il est doux, il est bon’ from Massenet’s Herodiade (made familiar on CD by Gheorghiu), and ‘Ain’t it a pretty night’ from Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah. Her voice tends to thin at the top, but her middle register is attractive and expressive. After Cole’s and Kernot’s consummate duet ‘Bess you is my woman now’, Julia was not well placed for her singing of Gershwin’s early song ‘The Man I love’  (originally for inclusion in Lady Be Good of 1924). An interesting tune for sure, but in Booth’s hands too fragile.

The third prize went to soprano Julia Booth, Canadian-born to New Zealand parents, a Waikato University graduate. She probably gained credit for a challenging Benjamin Britten song, ‘A Poison Tree’, which she handled very intelligently; and perhaps for Dvorak’s Song to the Moon, and Liu’s last aria from Turandot, ‘Tu che di’ gel sei cinta’.

Ensembles were an interesting feature. The Flower Duet from Lakmé was a fetching blending of Julia Booth and Aivale Cole, the trio from Così fan tutte, slightly less so, alongside Wade Kernot’s imposing Alfonso.

I was anxious that my opinion of Aivale Cole’s triumphant singing of the aria from Ariadne auf Naxos (‘Es gibt ein Reich’) would be vindicated by her singing in Wellington. While in this piece her voice was more even and opulent in the recital than in her earlier items, it was perhaps the one time that I missed the Strauss orchestra, as wonderfully supple and sensitive as Dennis’s accompaniments were.

But before that she had sung the three songs from Korngold’s Op 22; the first two were good if not really demonstrative of her quality, which appeared more convincingly in the flowing melody of ‘Weil ist stille eingeschlafen’. Her other opera offering was the famous La Wally aria, ‘Ebben? Ne andrò lontana’, which, rather expectedly, displayed her talents at their best, her tone dramatic, vividly expressing her anguish.

In her last bracket of American songs, her choice, apart from her duet from Porgy and Bess with Kernot, was ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’, arranged by John Carter, easy and fluent; again it revealed a voice and a musical sensibility capable of finding the authentic style and spirit of almost anything.

Christopher Hainsworth at the organ of St Mary of the Angels

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘Last Night of the Poms: an homage to the Silver Fernie’

Church of St Mary of the Angels, Wellington, Saturday 19 April 2009

One did not know quite what to expect from Christopher Hainsworth’s humorous and cryptic title of his concert. But it certainly disclosed one of the aspects of the concert: his sense of humour with its double entendres and puns; ‘Elgar-rhythms’ for example (get it?); an arrangement of a Csardas by one Monti (‘not of the Python family’). Christopher talks about the music and how he’s handling it; it’s pitched at a somewhat unsophisticated level, not assuming, for this concert, much musical knowledge.

Hainsworth was raised and educated in Wellington, and after taking degrees in French and music from Victoria University took a doctorate at Toulouse. That led to academic posts in that region as well as in New Zealand (Waikato University) and he is now titular organist at Béziers Cathedral in the département of Hérault in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. This recital was in part to launch a CD celebrating a 1974 radio broadcast by Maxwell Fernie at his Saint Mary of the Angels organ (Radio New Zealand tapes are now lost), and he played several of those pieces. They included a Berceuse by Eduardo Torres and a Pastorale by Lefébure-Wely. This CD is referred to in the article below, by Nicola Young.

The purpose of the concert was to celebrate his teacher, Maxwell Fernie, organist for the last 40years of his life at the church of St Mary of the Angels, and who designed and supervised the building of the famous organ housed in that church. It is undoubtedly an instrument unique in New Zealand, designed according to French and Belgian taste and traditions in which Fernie was steeped. Though it is only a three-manual instrument, it is sufficient for the church, one of Wellington’s most traditionally beautiful in the neo-gothic style.

So it was not surprising that the most striking characteristic of Hainsworth’s playing was his comprehensive mastery of the individuality of the registrations of this organ which he knows intimately, and tightly executed, sometimes cheeky ornaments, neatly inflected.

Though on occasion Hainsworth could show a flair for massive couplings and multiple registrations, his playing on the whole was limited to single or very few stops at one time, though they could alternate and change kaleidoscopically. He exploited its most brilliant qualities in the most startling and colourful ways, often with keen wit but always with restraint and taste.

It is therefore inappropriate and unkind to comment on the music itself, which was light, popular in tone, avoiding altogether any of the major works in the organ repertoire. It was a mixture of English and French music from an essentially mass-audience, 19th century kind of recital: bits from Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony (in its short span showing how exquisitely he could emerge through shrouded, dark stops to full diapason splendour), a Handel organ concerto, the above mentioned pieces by Monti and Elgar and the famous Purcell tune, the Rondeau from the incidental music to Abdelazer which Britten used in his Young Person’s Guide.

Perhaps many of us were hoping for some interesting and more meaty French music, not to say even Bach. But another time perhaps.…

Re-Master: Maxwell Fernie – organist

Another view of Maxwell Fernie by Nicola M J Young

This article appeared recently in Tommy’s Lifestyle magazine and is reproduced with the author’s permission.

Wellington’s musical landscape was transformed when Maxwell Fernie returned in 1959. After five years as organist at central London’s Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, he had been longing to get home. Max was director of music at St Mary of the Angels in Boulcott St for 41 years and organist for nearly as long; during this time he sent seismic shocks through the capital’s Roman Catholic schools and ensured St Mary’s had an organ as good as any (and better than most). His obsession with organ design and performance and choral music still reverberates through the capital, 10 years after his death at the age of 89.

Now a CD has just been launched in New Zealand and France, based on a radio broadcast made by Max in 1974: ‘Christmas Maximus’, performed by Christopher Hainsworth (a New Zealand classical organist based in Beziers, France), on the pipe organ Max designed. The CD replicates the broadcast’s programme, together with some of Max’s favourite Christmas music, a composition by Douglas Lilburn, and a number of French pieces selected by Chris Hainsworth. Max was the quintessential Wellingtonian, despite his years studying at London’s Royal Academy of Music and working abroad (with a stint in New Zealand’s Expeditionary Forces in Egypt during WWII).

His immaculate dressing (including homburg hat and floppy silk handkerchief) was a novelty to the generations of Roman Catholic school children to whom Max introduced some of Europe’s most glorious ecclesiastical music. His brilliant teaching, exuberance, panache, perfectionism and excoriating wit were eye-opening (and slightly terrifying) to Wellington children raised in the very buttoned-down 50s and 60s, as he trained school choirs, conducted recitals and concerts, taught piano and organ, and performed – often J S Bach, his favourite composer, and nearly always with the extemporisation for which he was renowned. At the end of the 11am sung Mass every Sunday, parishioners and devotees from afar would stay seated while Max played and played – many years on, my not-particularly-musical ears can recall the joys of his ‘Christus Vincit’ and, at Christmas, ‘Personent Hodie’.

Max also established the Schola Polyphonica which, for its 21 years, was generally considered the finest choir in the country; it specialized in Renaissance music (in particular 16th century polyphonic music) and performed with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on a number of occasions. Max was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 1954, a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, awarded the OBE in 1974 for services to music and the Papal Cross pro Ecclesia et Poniface in 1989. He was Wellington’s city organist for 27 years, and supervised the brilliant restoration of the Town Hall’s organ

(considered one of the best organs in the world). Organ restoration is fraught with fashion and politics: the butchered modernisation of Auckland Town Hall’s organ in the late 1960s led to 30 years of complaints and outrage, culminating in its recent restoration – back to the original brief. His lasting legacy, however, was the organ at St Mary of the Angels built to his own specifications.

Before Max was even thinking of returning home from London, the parish priest at St Mary’s sent the details of a proposed new instrument – a modest ‘two manual’ organ. This was no use to Max; instead he designed a more complex organ, determined Wellington would have an organ suitable for all music: baroque to contemporary, with particular emphasis on the pipes’ clarity (essential for his beloved contrapuntal music). He ‘borrowed’ his favourite Westminster Cathedral pipes overnight to copy their specifications and even tracked down details of other specialized pipes from, for example, the cathedral in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The Maxwell Fernie Trust was founded by his widow, Greta, to continue Maxwell Fernie’s legacy by awarding an annual scholarship of $10,000 to promising New Zealand organists and conductors of choral polyphony. The first scholarship will be awarded next year, on the centenary of Maxwell Fernie’s birth. The Trust aims to raise $100,000 through donations, bequests and fundraising events. The Trust has produced two CDs, both $32 (including postage) and available from secretary@maxwellfernietrust.com:

Christmas Maximus: featuring French organ music played by Christopher Hainsworth. Tenebrae Responsories 1585: sung responses for Holy Week, composed in 1585 by Tomás Louis De Victoria and performed by the Schola Polyphonica. The CD has been digitally remastered from the original 1981 recording made at St Mary of the Angels.

www.maxwellfernietrust.com

PULSE – Vector Wellington Orchestra’s first 2009 subscription concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Body – Pulse; Beethoven – Piano Concerto No.1 in C Major, Op.15; Janáček – Sinfonietta

Vector Wellington Orchestra: Marc Taddei (conductor); Michael Houstoun (piano); Members of the Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force

 

Wellington Town Hall

 

Saturday 18 April 2009

 

First things first – full marks to Vector Wellington Orchestra’s programming flair for this concert, bringing together such an interesting juxtapositioning of works to open its subscription season. The remaining concerts in the series don’t in my view have quite the same enterprising zeal (we could have done with at least one other New Zealand work, for example, to counterweight things like Duke Ellington’s Suite from The River and Piazolla’s Tangazo). No matter – Michael Houstoun’s performances of all the Beethoven piano concertos will, I’m certain, more than compensate, along with crowd-pleasers such as Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Respighi’s Pines of Rome.

 

It’s interesting that both the Wellington Orchestra and the NZSO chose works by Jack Body at the beginning of their respective seasons. I have nothing but admiration for Body’s music, and consider his orchestral works excellent concert choices, but am left wondering when any of our local orchestras are going to get around to giving neglected works by, say, David Farquhar, John Rimmer, Edwin Carr and even Douglas Lilburn (his First Symphony languishing in concert-hall obscurity) the chance to become repertoire classics of a homegrown kind, music which can be heard alongside and compared favourably with any from anywhere.

 

Still, it was fascinating to compare the performances of Body’s music by two different orchestras and conductors (albeit in different works), Melodies with the NZSO a fortnight previously, and Pulse with the Wellington Orchestra in the present concert. The NZSO and Pietari Inkinen scored points in matters of ensemble and polish, but regarding flair, colour, atmosphere and rhythmic excitement, Marc Taddei and the Wellington Orchestra seemed to me to have a distinct edge, taking us right inside the intoxication of ritualistic frenzy noted by the composer when observing the original New Guinean fire-dance from which much of this music was transcribed.

 

There’s been some discussion regarding Jack Body’s transcription pieces, with opinions expressed as to the validity of regarding the works as original compositions – but Jack himself has no such inhibitions regarding his sources or inspirations, describing his Pulse as ‘a radically conceived composition for orchestra based completely on transcription and quotation’.

 

The work liberally quotes from Beethoven’s Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Stravinsky’s ballets Agon and Le Sacre du Printemps, though the ‘borrowings’ are intriguingly, at times even gruesomely refracted (Beethoven ‘synthesised’ by Berlioz?) through a pulsating latticework of rhythmic and textural incident, making the point that all music worldwide and through the ages is derived from ‘pulse’. Interestingly, it was as much melodic as rhythmic pulse which Body’s use of those quotations brought out – and who would have ever thought that the opening chord of the Eroica would give rise to smiles and chuckles from an audience?

 

Michael Houstoun then took the stage to give us the first instalment of his much anticipated cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos with the orchestra, beginning with the First (actually composed AFTER the Second, but published as No.1 in C Major).

 

Houstoun gave us poised and finely shaped playing at the outset, his first entry and subsequent taking up of the leaping octave theme slightly more relaxed and mellow than Taddei’s opening tutti with the orchestra, which seemed at first a little edgy in places in intonation and rhythm. A beautifully-pedalled ambient glow from the pianist marked out the development’s beginning as a magical entry into a realm of enchantment, anticipating something of the romantic feeling of the work’s Largo movement. The cadenza was a marvellously exploratory exercise in modulation, Houstoun occasionally gathering up armfuls of tonal weight and splendour, which would then be tossed aside in favour of differently constituted ideas, in a way that I found fascinating – and I liked the witty “Yes? – No….Yes!” series of indications from the piano regarding the orchestra’s reentry point..

 

The slow movement was gorgeously introduced by Houstoun’s opening paragraph, one which I felt Taddei and the orchestra took a little time to warm to, some unexpectedly brusque phrase endings from the orchestra suggesting that the players’ concentrated feeling for the music didn’t quite extend to the whole of some of the passages.

 

With Houstoun, there’s not a note I think that hasn’t cost him a great deal of thought regarding where it fits in the scheme of things, so that you get the feeling that he values it all so much and presents it as something cherishable and to be taken seriously. The reprise of the orchestra’s reply to the pianist’s opening was more lovingly shaped by Taddei, as if things had by then come into wider focus; and the rest was characterised by some rapt exchanges between piano and orchestra, a momentary ‘blooped’ brass note at one point reminding us of how expertly delivered everything else was.

 

Altogether, the performance was a wonderful realization, with the ebb and flow of the argument between soloist and orchestra nicely maintained. The only thing I miss with Houstoun, and this was especially evident in the concerto’s finale, is a ready sense of humour – nothing is ‘cheeky’ or just a wee bit outrageous or simply ‘thrown away’ though, I must admit that at one point during the Rondo Houstoun surprised me by finishing a phrase on a diminuendo when I was expecting an upsurge of tone, which made me smile. In all other respects it was a very strong interpretative viewpoint, as always with this pianist, and one I suspect that would stand up to repeated hearings and remembrances really well – I look forward eagerly to the remainder of the Beethovens from him during this year.

 

In a sense Janáček was a kind of Beethoven of his time, wholehearted and expressive in his emotions, single-minded in his pursuit of musical ends, totally uncompromising in the face of diffidence or hostility of others towards his music, and obsessed with the musical ‘idea’ ahead of its execution, pushing things to extremes in search of his goals. His Sinfonietta was originally planned as a set of fanfares for a gymnastics festival in Brno, but the work then took hold of the composer and grew into five movements for full orchestra.

 

Resplendently filling two rows of organ gallery seats in the Town Hall on Saturday night, the dozen or so members of the Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force made a stunning initial impression with their playing of the opening fanfares, even if Marc Taddei’s tempo was, I felt, a shade too quick for them to get successfully around the treacherous syncopations of the toccata-like middle section, which could have done with more ‘point’ rather than speed.

 

But the players were able to fill out the grander phrases with marvellous tones, aided and abetted by the hard-working stick-flailing timpanist Stephen Bremner. The second movement, played attacca, brought in the full orchestra with its utterly different sonorities to great effect, strings and winds playing their hearts out – though the players at first found the tempo changes between different sections unsettling, causing ensemble difficulties and affecting incisiveness at points.

 

Things came together nicely to herald the epic brass statements (played by three of the Central Band ensemble’s trumpets), creating a stirring, open-air feel around the proceedings, their highest notes having a kind of snow-capped splendour, with one player surviving and quickly rectifying a false entry towards the dying fall of one of the phrases.

 

The orchestra really came into its own in the third movement – a melancholy string phrase at the start was underpinned by deep, sonorous notes from the tuba, and plaintive winds echoed the opening string phrase – after which the orchestral brass announced itself, quite magnificently, with nicely nimble work from Peter Maunder’s solo trombone, and waves of great black tone pinning back our ears and bringing forth appropriate shrieks of terror from the winds. The horns couldn’t quite keep their ‘whooping’ up at the cracking pace Marc Taddei set when charging towards the movement’s climax, but it was a small blip on a mightily impressive sound-sequence.

 

More fanfares in the fourth movement were this time played keenly and crisply by the orchestral brass, with strings supplying an agonized counterpoint, and one of the percussionists bashing the tubular bells for all he was worth! Taddei and the orchestra also nicely brought out the folkish aspect of the last movement’s introduction, before Moira Hurst’s clarinet and Timothy Jenkin’s piccolo began to screw up the tension, leading the way into a kind of chaotic vortex of confusion which the composer resolves with a cymbal crash and a trumpet call, the fanfares of the opening returning with a kind of full orchestral counterpoint adding to the ceremonial magnificence. Was the tempo a shade too fast for the brass once again?

 

Taddei did broaden the pulse for the coda, which was spectacularly delivered by all concerned, an overwhelming final chord bringing out the raw grandeur of the music.

 

The Tudor Consort in Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday by Carlo Gesualdo

The Tudor Consort directed by Michael Stewart

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Friday 10 April

The re-creation of entire liturgies of the medieval and renaissance church has long been a popular activity for early music groups and The Tudor Consort has a long history of such achievements under all its directors from the founder, Simon Ravens, on. Some have been intensely rewarding, but the Tenebrae Responsories of Gesualdo (1560-1613), (cf Campion and Monteverdi, both born 1567, Shakespeare, born 1564), were a challenge.

They were undoubtedly a challenge for the choir, which their director Michael Stewart led admirably through twelve polyphonic motets of extreme complexity and harmonic originality.

Gesualdo’s music was engrossing, but there was simply too much chant, and I wondered whether we would have lost anything if each had been somewhat abbreviated.

Familiar as I was with Gesualdo’s music, I was repeatedly surprised by the chromatic part writing that must have been alarming dissonance to the ears of 1600. The effect was remarkably modern, as tortured contrapuntal lines expressed in music the sometimes cruel and harrowing images and events that the words of the Responsories called up: they narrate the events at the Last Supper, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

The Tudor Consort has always paid attention to the theatrical element, and here, we had the church dimly lit by candles on the columns separating nave from the side aisles and a candelabra of a dozen candles in the sanctuary behind the singers. One by one they were extinguished, the tradition of the Easter Tenebrae services, till only one remains, representing Christ. And we’d been warned to desist from applause till the traditional ‘Great Noise’ broke out, signifying the earthquake reported after the crucifixion.

The service is in three sections, one each for the three days in question, each introduced by an Antiphon and Psalm, chanted from the pulpit by Michael Stewart, then three alternating Lessons, drawn from the Bible and Responsories, that represent Christ’s words or thoughts and later an observer’s comments on the Crucifixion; the lessons and antiphons are chants while the Responsories are Gesualdo’s music.

It was the Antiphons and Lessons that introduced each Responsory, handled very well I must say, but to rather extended and unvarying chant, that I felt might have been abbreviated, for no one, I imagine, was following, in the dark, the English translations in the programme.

Chants, dare I say, are of limited interest, while Gesualdo’s music for the Responsories is remarkable, original, exciting, expressive, dramatic in its attention to the drama of the words of each piece.

The Tudor Consort sang throughout with their accustomed clarity and precision, stylistic awareness, careful diction and varied colouring and dynamics.

 

Music in the time of Monet – Note Bene at Te Papa

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Choral songs by Debussy, Lili Boulanger, Poulenc and Ravel

Nota Bene, conducted by Christine Argyle.

The Marae, Te Papa

Saturday, 4 April 2009

One of the musical accompaniments for the temporary exhibition entitled Monet and the Impressionists was an hour-long, free concert by Wellington chamber choir Nota Bene. It was founded in 2004 by Christine Argyle whose voice is familiar to listeners to Radio New Zealand Concert and it has become known for its varied and perhaps quirky programmes, such as one entitled Sentimental Journey which recalled the character of broadcasting before most of the choir were born. The choir also operates in the market-place as a ‘choir-for-hire’ for weddings as such.

In 2007 I commented in a review that “it’s always impossible to predict the character of the next concert; so far, each has been a unique creation, built around a musical idea; not an academic concept, but something that lends itself to a programme that is invariably entertaining.”

This Saturday afternoon concert did not fall into that class for its character was prescribed.

It was a free concert, open to the rest of the museum and ordinary museum visitors, attracted by the sounds, came and went; some stayed standing at the back – every seat was taken; some drifted away.

Its setting was the first thing to remark. The uniquely designed marae or concert room if you prefer, decorated in the most remarkable way by Cliff Whiting, one of the most imaginative of Maori artists who has used traditional figures but juxtaposed and coloured them in a unique way. And there was something perhaps incongruous in a group of formally dressed singers performing French music mostly from the early years of the 20th century.

The ensemble began with three Debussy choral settings of three poems by the 15th century Charles duc d’Orléans: ‘Dieu! Qu’il la fait bon regarder’, ‘Quand j’ai ouy le tambourin’ and ‘Yver, vous n’estes qu’un villain’.

Only the second of the set struck me as of much interest; the others showed Debussy paying somewhat ritual homage to the age of Dufay. The third one was made delightful however by the group of soloists: Jane McKinlay, Marian Willberg, Peter Dyne and Jonathan Kennedy.

Lili Boulanger’s songs (‘Soir sur la plaine’, ‘Les sirènes’ and ‘Hymne au soleil’) were scattered through the programme and were more seriously interesting, illuminated by Emma Sayers’ colourful and individual piano accompaniments which enchanted my ear, particularly the first two which really were perfect aural equivalents of Monet . Anna Sedcole, Patrick Geddes and Kennedy again.

There were three songs by Ravel (‘Nicolette’, ‘Trois oiseaux du Paradis’ and ‘Ronde’) that hinted at folk song, sometimes droll, Satie-esque, with witty changes of tone,

Pianist Claire Harris played three Novelettes by Poulenc that punctuated the concert, they recalled now Couperin, now Satie, were flippant, spiky and the last an unpretentious, charming, rocking piece.

Whether it cast light on the Monet paintings I cannot say and whether the excellence of the choir with its splendid, lively singing registered with this varied audience, I cannot guess, but it can only be a good thing for Te Papa to use its spaces regularly to present other than the visual arts.