Goldberg Variations from NZSO musicians with Stephen De Pledge – “a journey of life with its full gamut of emotions”

Posted on by Steven Sedley

J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations

(arranged for ensemble by Dmitry Sitkovetsky and Heribert Breuer)

Vesa-Matti Leppänen Director/Violin
Stephen De Pledge Fortepiano

Members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday, 22nd July 2020

Bach’s Goldberg Variations is one of the greatest, if not the greatest set of variations in the keyboard repertoire. Count Kaiserling, Elector of Saxony, commissioned Bach to write it for his protege, the young keyboard player, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. The work consists of thirty variations on a theme, an Aria, that Bach might have heard or found in his wife’s, Anna Magdalena’s, notebook. Playing this great work in an arrangement for harp, strings and wind players was challenging and perhaps controversial programming. For the purist meddling with such an iconic work is sacrilege. Over the years, however, there were many arrangements of these variations, for the modern piano, very different from the two keyboard harpsichord that Bach wrote the piece for, and for different combinations of instruments. Vesa-Matti Leppȁnen used a selection of arrangements for strings by the Russian violinist, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and for other instruments of the orchestra by the German conductor Heribert Breuer.

This entailed re-imagining the work, employing sounds, timbres, that were outside the scope of a keyboard instrument. Right from the beginning, the beautiful Aria played by flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon, harp and strings was a haunting introduction to an amazing musical journey. Following the Aria, the first variation was played by Stephen de Pledge on a forte-piano, bringing out the phrasing and dynamic possibilities of the fortepiano, a new instrument in Bach’s time and not much to Bach’s liking. After the next two variations, a solo harp (Carolyn Mills)  introduced an entirely different and unexpected bell like sound. Variation 4 was a light-hearted dance movement played by the winds. This was followed by a wind chorale, demonstrating what striking beautiful sounds a combination of four wind instruments can produce. Then strings played a Gigue, a foot stomping dance that was never far from Bach’s world. Fugal passages were played by various of combinations of instruments, but always keeping the joyful spirit in mind. A slow gentle richly decorated Sarabande was played as a violin solo with string accompaniment, which was followed by a quirky fast variation. The fifteenth variation, played by the winds, was a slow melancholy passage, a stark contrast to the previous one. Then all the musicians disappeared into the shadows at the back of the stage and harpist Carolyn Mills played a magical repetition of the the opening theme.

During a brief break Stephen de Pledge talked about the instrument he was playing, the fortepiano, and its development.

After the break the reiteration of the theme was followed by a grand French Overture played by winds and a selection of strings. In contrast, the next variation, a canon, was played on the fortepiano alone. Then all the strings came back and played a delightful dance-like variation. Following that, the next variation was played on fortepiano alone, giving Stephen de Pledge a chance to demonstrate the subtleties possible on the newly developed keyboard instrument. Then a sombre canon was played by winds and strings. A fugal passage by the whole ensemble was followed by a virtuosic variation on the fortepiano. A light-hearted canon for bassoon, clarinet and violin led to a beautiful dark Adagio, the emotional high point of the piece. This was contrasted by a virtuoso toccata on the fortepiano. Then came a bright interplay among the strings and a jolly resolution of what went on in the previous variations, played with gusto by the whole ensemble. Finally we arrived at the concluding piece, the Quodlibet, based on popular songs, probably sung by Bach and his brothers when they got together. To conclude the work the opening Aria returned with an emotionally charged rendition by violins and then the keyboard alone.

Throughout the performance the various musicians walked on and off the stage like ghosts, as they were needed. The MFC stage provided a theatrical setting with subtle blue lighting in the background setting the mood. At the end of the performance all the musicians retreated into the dark, leaving the fortepiano playing on his own, the lights were dimmed and the audience was left to reflect on a journey that was not a mere musical experience but a journey of life with its full gamut of emotions.

Performing this vast work in the large space of the Michael Fowler Centre presented problems. At times the strings, particularly the violins were overshadowed by the more penetrating sound of the winds, but this is a mere quibble. We should be grateful to the musicians, mostly principals of the NZSO, for their meticulous, inspired playing and particular to Vesa-Matti Leppȁnen for putting it all together from different sources.

To record the concert on https://live.nzso.co.nz/concerts/, available on YouTube, so that people could enjoy it in their living rooms from Kaitaia to the Bluff, is a wonderful initiative of the NZSO. It is exactly what a publicly funded organization like the NZSO should do.

A splendid St Andrew’s lunchtime concert from NZSM voice students

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Classical voice students the New Zealand School of Music with David Barnard (piano)

Simon  Harnden: ‘T’was within a furlong of Edinborough Town’ and ‘Sons of the Sea’ by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Michaela Cadwgan: L’invitation au voyage’ (Duparc)and ‘Donde lieta uscì’ from La Bohème
Grace Burt: ‘Chanson Triste’ (Duparc) and ‘Chacun à son goût’ from Die Fledermaus
Matt Barris; Valentin’s aria from Faust and ‘Silent Noon’ by Vaughan Williams
Ruby McKnight: ‘Signore ascolta’ from Turandot and ‘Nana’ from Falla’s Seven Spanish Popular Songs
Morgan Andrew King: Prince Gremin’s aria from Eugene Onegin and ‘Ol’ Man River’ from Showboat
Lila Junior Crichton: ‘O Columbina’ from Pagliacci and ‘Oh is there not one maiden breast’ from The Pirates of Penzance

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 22 July, 12:15 pm

From a purely musical point of view, this was an interesting recital, with a very wide range of songs and arias, a lot familiar, some not, but very worth being exposed to. One song I didn’t know at all was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s ‘Sons of the Sea’. Once upon a time those three names together (in a different order) would have meant only the great poet linked with Wordsworth. Now I suspect, as a result of the disappearance of much in the way of English literature from schools (and now even being thrown out of our National Library), the black English composer of the late 19th century may be better known. It was sung by Simon Harnden whose rich bass voice did justice to its dramatic character; as it had expressively to his earlier song, Purcell’s ’T’was within a furlong of Edinborough Town’.

Interesting that we had here four males and three females: the balance is more commonly otherwise. The second male voice was that of Matt Barris. He sang Valentin’s baritone aria from Faust, ‘Avant de quitter ces lieus’, feelingly expressing his anxiety about Marguérite while he’s away. His second song was Vaughan Williams’s Silent Noon which he sang attractively, with careful restraint.

The third male was bass Morgan-Andrew King. He sang Prince Gremin’s wonderful aria from the last act of Eugene Onegin, catching its noble character but delivering it rather too quickly. And later he sang ‘Ol’ man river’ from Showboat, with calm dignity.

Lila Junior Crichton, a tenor, sang two late 19th century arias. The first a familiar aria from Pagliacci: in Act II Beppe (Arlecchino) serenades the ultimate victim Nedda (Columbina), with ‘O Columbina’, capturing its fluctuating rhythms well. Then, from The Pirates of Penzance, ‘Oh, is there not one maiden breast’ from; not terribly familiar but attractively lyrical in Crichton’s hands.

Two of Henri Duparc’s few, precious songs came early in the concert. Michaela Cadwgan sang perhaps his best-known: ‘L’invitation au voyage’, which I have a somewhat personal relationship with. First it drew attention to the piano part, and then to Michaela’s strong, perhaps a bit too strong at the top, voice. But it suggests promise in the opera house, which was evident in her singing of the poignant ‘Donde lieta uscì’ from Act III of La Bohème.

The second Duparc song came from Grace Burt’s mezzoish voice: ‘Chanson triste’ was nicely modulated, her voice dynamically disciplined throughout. Prince Orlovsky’s ‘Chacun à son goût’ from Die Fledermaus is a droll aria from what I consider the greatest of all operettas. It’s a travesti role, a bit of a challenge, needing a conspicuous flamboyance to bring off well, and it got that.

Soprano Ruby McKnight sang Liu’s touching aria ‘Signore ascolta’ in Turandot; it doesn’t really need a voice as large as McKnight’s to deliver it, but with accurate intonation, it was a fine performance. And she later sang ‘Nana’, one of the seven Spanish popular songs (folksongs ere) by Manuel de Falla (good to see the proper translation of ‘Seven Spanish popular songs’: they’re not ’seven popular Spanish songs’ – a significant difference). If she didn’t capture the Spanish flavour perfectly, her performance was distinctive and arresting.

As student recitals go, this was a splendid three-quarter hour; a major part of that success was David Barnard’s unerring piano accompaniments that claimed the orchestra’s role very convincingly.

 

Camus’s La Peste … our Covid-19 … the sterility of opera … and …

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Camus’s novel La Peste: the production in Oran, Algeria, of Gluck’s Orphée. A metaphor for the static, morbid condition of opera … and of our civilisation?

I subscribe to Opera News, the magazine published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, New York. It is the United States’ principal opera magazine.

The August 2020 issue is, unsurprisingly, short on articles on forthcoming operas and reviews of new productions across the States and elsewhere. But there is a number of articles on people and issues connected with opera which make the current issue a very good read.

One of the unusually interesting articles, inspired in various ways by the pandemic, is by David J Baker.

Here is the article:

‘It may surprise people to learn that Albert Camus once wrote about opera – in his definitive novel about a twentieth century epidemic. La Peste (The Plague) includes a bizarre, disturbing scene in an opera house. Seventy-five years after its publication, the novel can still speak to us about such a plague, and even more about opera.

‘Yet Camus describes a very different epidemic from ours. Social distancing, let alone the use of masks or a shut-down of stores and other public places, is never mentioned or practised in the novel; instead, the Algerian city of Oran, where the novel takes place, is ‘distanced’ – cut off entirely from the outside world for almost a year.

‘A touring opera troupe, trapped in Oran by the quarantine, has decided to continue to perform Gluck’s Orphée, which makes up its entire touring repertoire. They have presented it every Friday evening for the duration of the plague. The opera is always the same; yet the house is sold out each time. Like the overcrowded restaurants, bars and cinemas described in the novel – such a contrast to our recently vacant cities – the plague city’s municipal opera house has helped to satisfy the citizens craze for distraction from the mortal threat they face.

‘An anomaly in Camus’s plague is that people are satisfied with watching, over and over again, the same film or play or opera, because no new material is coming into the city. In Camus’s hands, this restricted repertoire, and audiences’ acceptance of it, becomes an especially apt way to typify one effect of the epidemic – limited choices, repetitive behaviour, numbing distractions, the sense, familiar today as well, of living on a treadmill, in a closed circle.

‘But why select Gluck’s Orphée as the one opera played weekly throughout the long months of the Oran plague? Orpheus is one of the most symbolic of all mythological figures: in Western aesthetics and consciousness; he epitomises the power of art (specifically music), a power stronger than death. In operas by Monteverdi, Gluck and others, his lyre and his voice work the miracle of rescuing his wife from Hades – from death itself.

‘Attending one of Oran’s weekly performances, Jean Tarrou (one of the narrators) is intrigued by the posh audience as couples begin to file in ostentatiously, well-dressed, mingling and clearly regaining some of their habitual (pre-plague) assurance. During the performance, Tarrou begins to notice something unusual on stage. The Act I ‘ariettes’, we are told, are sing by principals and chorus with “facility” and “grace”. Then, almost imperceptibly, the Orphée (a male singer, as was traditionally more common with French performances) “inserted tremolos” that were not part of his Act II aria and, “with a slight excess of pathos, beseeched the master of Hell to heed his pleas. Certain jerky gestures escaping him seemed, to the more savvy spectators, a stylistic effect that added appreciably to the singer’s interpretation”.

‘Only during the duet in Act III, “the point where Eurydice escaped Orphée” does the audience begin to react. And, “as if these noises from the audience confirmed the singer in what he was feeling, at the moment he advanced to the footlights, Grotesquely, stretching his arms and legs in his antiquarian costume, and collapsed,” overturning scenery in his fall. The orchestra falls silent, and the audience begins to leave the theatre “at first discreetly (as they would leave a church, or a funeral) and then in a desperate, disorderly rush”.

‘The narrator and his companion are left alone, confronted with an image “of what their life had become: the plague onstage in the form of a contorted tragedian and, in the hall, signs of luxury now useless … forgotten opera glasses, and lace garments discarded against the crimson upholstered seats”. Art – like its more frivolous accessories among the elite audience – falls prey to the ravages of the epidemic.

‘Opera audiences in 2020 are being spared such dreadful scenes, thanks to the precautions taken during “our” pandemic. We are also deprived of live opera altogether. How significant is this aesthetic and social loss in the greater scheme of the pandemic? Should we complain about the plight of the opera world when we appreciate the mortal risk of the coronavirus – which, in a small distortion of a word used by Sartre and Camus, we can call an “existential threat”?

‘At the end, when normal life returns, one minor character says: “What does the plague really matter? It’s life, that’s all”. Afflicted for years with tuberculosis, and starting this novel during the war, Camus saw life as struggle and resistance, a response to our “absurd” condition. In a less momentous sense, this philosopher, novelist and playwright may have seen opera, too, as not without absurdity. Perhaps, in presenting a company and a theatre with a repertoire of just one opera, he was presciently suggesting one of the weaknesses of this art form as it is practised  and marketed today; the opera scene in La peste could be taken as parody, as a metaphor for opera’s basically fixed, unchanging repertoire. Few new works keep the repertoire alive and growing; what we see on stage, as in Camus’s scene, is a form of death.

‘When the curtain goes up again – on our cities, and in our opera houses – we can hope that it’s not just a return to business as usual. Our pandemic has brought painful reminders of social disparities, prompting calls for reform. What remains to be seen is how our plague will affect arts institutions. Will we return to the opera marketplace as Camus depicted it so starkly, in his exaggerated dramatization – as a shrinking repertoire, a moribund institution, a privilege for the few?’

The author is identified thus: David J Baker, whose translations of the Camus excerpts appear here, taught La Peste and other novels to undergraduates while preparing his PhD in French.

Opera News is a relatively low-priced opera magazine. New Zealanders can subscribe for US$69.99 per annum, for 12 issues. It was the price that first attracted me about 30 years ago and I have been a subscriber ever since.
Opera News has for many years been much more than simply a newsletter for well-healed ‘Friends’; it offers a fair view of the surprising extent of opera in the United States and Canada (there are about 150 professional opera companies, members of Opera America), as well as some news and reviews from elsewhere.

Apart from the injury currently being inflicted on the performing arts world-wide, opera is flourishing in terms of the numbers of opera companies. The wretched condition of opera in New Zealand is not typical of its extent elsewhere. 

Lindis Taylor

Ghost Trio haunts sensibilities long after final notes in concert sounded

Posted on by Peter Mechen

A remarkable lunchtime concert by the Ghost Trio at the Adam Concert Room….

Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin), Ken Ichinose (‘cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio In C Minor Op. 1 No.3
MARTIN LODGE – Summer Music (2001)
SHOSTAKOVICH – Piano Trio in C Minor No.1  Op.8

Adam Concert Room, Te Kōkī NZ School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, 17th July 2020

I had heard the Ghost Trio perform the same Beethoven work more than a fortnight previously (a concert reviewed below by my colleague, Steven Sedley), though this time round it was coupled to a different programme. Instead of the remarkable Piano Trio Op.1 by Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik (which I would have liked to hear again), the musicians chose to branch out in a different direction,  with each of the accompanying works expressing what I thought was a certain affinity with Beethoven’s music. We heard Kiwi composer Martin Lodge’s engaging “Summer Music”, whose effect was a kind of miniature out-of-doors, “Pastoral Symphony-like” sound-adventure, interlacing both natural and human noises. This was followed with a Piano Trio written by the then sixteen year-old Dmitri Shostakovich, a work whose Beethovenian “charge” of emotion alarmed the young composer’s professors at the Petrograd Conservatory as profoundly as was Josef Haydn disturbed by the boldness of his most famous pupil’s Op.1 C Minor Piano Trio.

As with the St.Andrew’s performance, the players drew their listeners into the composer’s world of dark and serious purpose from the very opening phrases, the sequences generating a disturbing quality throughout the instrumental interactions which never relinquished its grip. Sitting closer to the players in the Adam Concert Room this time round I felt involved all the more in the constant flow and ebb of  intensities, the explosive nature of the music’s dramatic contrasts, and the disconcerting upward\downward semitone shifts of the opening theme in places. Though the gloom was occasionally leavened by a contrasting, if briefly-wrought lyrical theme, any sunnier prospect was quickly clouded over again in no uncertain terms, the first-movement repeat emphasising the thrall in which we were held – and the development was similarly charged with tensions, light and darkness unceasingly pushing and shoving one another to one side – it was quite a ride!

The theme-and variations second movement promised some relief from Beethovenian brow-beating, and the players responded at the opening with some nobly-wrought sounds – perhaps it was partly due to the music’s playfulness but I found myself listening as much to the playing’s solo lines as to the concerted effect of the music-making throughout, the dialogues and “trialogues” as involving as the ensembled sounds – I relished the playful pizzicati of the third variation, the soulful cello solo of the fourth, and the sparkling chromatic keyboard runs of the fifth (all beautifully executed and characterfully dovetailed), to mention but a few ear-catching features.

As much scherzo as minuet, the third movement fused a certain wistful quality with playfulness, the piano’s frequent decorative figurations making a marked contrast with the occasional emphasised accent – again, the musicians gave the music’s angularities full scope to proclaim the work’s character, while allowing a fantastic element (those strangely-echoed resonances which suggested in places hidden voices directing the ebb and flow of things) some treasurable moments of sleight-of-hand, even magic.  As for the prestissimo finale, the players found more character than mere “virtuoso roar” with which to give voice to the music’s agitations, their nimble articulations (the pianist especially fleet-fingered!) creating wonderment and delicious anticipation as well as excitement, with the composer reserving the biggest surprise for the hushed, somewhat “spooked” coda, the musicians voicing the mystery and unease of it all to perfection at the end.

I hadn’t heard Martin Lodge’s “Summer Music” for some time but thought its appeal as instantly-involving as ever, with “hit the ground running” energies at the outset leading the listener into a world of vividly-wrought happenings. Both music and performance came across as remarkably organic, with swirling piano figurations and swinging thematic lines eventually giving way to sequences of stillness, the world stopping to listen to itself and inviting us to eavesdrop. Out of these breath-catching pointillistic etchings returned those same songs, a yearning for the natural world amid “humanity’s mad inhuman noise”, perhaps? – all very “Scene by the Brook”-like in its rediscovered innocence –  and leading into and through various undercurrents of pulse  to a beautiful and wistful blending of action, nature and memory at the end. The performance here caught me up in its vivid response to the music’s “story” and its accompanying array of alternating bustle and beauty.

So to the Shostakovich Trio, an equally remarkable evocation of the sixteen year-old composer’s thrall to a young woman, Tatyana Glivenko, whom he had met on holiday in 1923 in the Crimea (he was actually convalescing from tuberculosis at the time) – the music grew partly out of material he’d written for other works he had since abandoned, a Piano Sonata and a Quintet. Though nothing serious developed from the encounter with Tatyana, Shostakovich kept in touch with her by correspondence for many years. Two years after completing the Trio, the youthful composer performed the work as part of his application to continue his musical studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and was actually accepted, though his continuing ill health in the end forced him to remain at the Conservatory in Petrograd.

This single-movement work owed much of its bold, almost cinematic character to the composer’s part-time job as a cinema pianist playing the accompaniment for silent films. Shostakovich’s sister Zoya remembered that her brother and two of his friends actually used the cinema accompaniment as a rehearsal for the Piano Trio on one occasion, remarking that “the people whistled and booed!” But Shostakovich’s music from an early age seemed to revel in these characteristics, a family friend, the novelist Konstantin Fedin recalling hearing the boy playing his own compositions to guests at the family home – “….unexpected works which forced one to listen as if one were in the theatre, where everything is so clear that one must either laugh or weep.” Despite, or perhaps because of this ready accessibility, the Trio wasn’t published during Shostakovich’s lifetime, and had to be reconstructed from various sources, the missing last twenty or so bars of the piano part in fact “recomposed” by his pupil Boris Tishchenko.

Again, this was a remarkably involving performance, the players at full stretch in the more virtuoso, densely-woven ensemble passages, but “owning” their full-blooded expressionist character as great-heartedly as they did the more lyrical and unashamedly romantic passages, the whole almost Mahlerian in its all-embracing fervour. To comment on this or that individually-wrought passage seems of less importance than marvelling at the concerted “sweep’ of the music’s realisation by the ensemble – long may the Ghost Trio’s efforts continue to thrillingly haunt their audience’s sensibilities thus!

Wellington Chamber Music attracts full house for its first post-Covid appearance at Sunday concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Music

Vesa and Friends: horns and strings
Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin), Andrew Thomson (violin and viola), Andrew Joyce (cello), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Samuel Jacobs and Ian Wildsmith (French horn)

Beethoven: String Trio in E-flat, Op 3
Mozart; Horn Quintet in E-flat K 407
Beethoven: Sextet in E-flat major Op 81b

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 12 July, 3 pm

The first in Wellington Chamber Music’s 2020 concert series attracted a near full house (though without the gallery open), for a programme that looked very attractive. Though, in the event, neither of the two Beethoven works would have been familiar to most.

How appropriate that the group’s first post-lock-down concert should be music by two of the world’s very greatest composers.

Throughout his earlier years Beethoven wrote several ‘miscellaneous’ chamber works. Some are familiar because they are so engaging, such as the Octet Op 103, reworked as a string quintet; and the Quintet for piano and winds; Op 16 probably inspired by Mozart’s Quintet K 452, for those instruments; and a Septet in E flat, Op 20 for strings and winds, which probably inspired Schubert’s Octet. Not forgetting the delightful Sextet, Op 71 is for winds alone. I used to have a cassette tape with some of these on it which was much played on car journeys years ago, alternating with Mozart’s Posthorn and the Haffner serenades; two young sons rarely complained.

Beethoven’s first string trio 
But neither of the Beethoven pieces this afternoon was quite as familiar or were in the class of Mozart’s wonderful Divertimento, K 563, which had been published the year Beethoven before wrote his Op 3. One knows the charming Serenade for string trio Op 8 and perhaps the three trios of Op 9, but I was surprised to realise I didn’t know Op 3.

Viola and cello seemed to lead the way at the beginning and indeed throughout the first movement, their weight seemed to dominate, which may have been produced mainly by Andrew Joyce’s particularly rich and warm instrument. It was not a matter of balance, but rather the fact that Beethoven provided music in which equality between the three was unusually conspicuous. The Andante was similarly democratically distributed among the three players; and again the rather low-lying, delicate, triple-time music created an unusually serious feeling. The Trio is in six movements, like the Mozart Divertimento, with two minuets separated by an Adagio. There’s a feeling of unusual uniformity of spirit in the work, even as the movements change tempo, sometimes key, and whether it’s a Menuetto or a gently paced Adagio.

Mozart’s horn quintet, K 407, was one of several remarkable pieces that he wrote for long-standing family friend, horn player Joseph Leutgeb. Instead of the conventional string quartet (plus Samuel Jacobs’ horn), the second violin is replaced by a second viola (Andrew Thomson), which naturally tended to subdue some exuberance. But the horn flourished in the church acoustic, perhaps rather too much at times, though that’s the result of our ears having been seduced by the engineered sound during the recording process: the normal imbalance is suppressed. The Andante, middle movement, was seductive, while the last, Allegro, revealed the nature of the challenges the Mozart threw at his friend (as he also did with the four horn concertos), such that even on a horn equipped with valves, and played by a superb executant, one could be rather filled with wonder – and delight.

Beethoven Sextet Op 81b 
Beethoven’s Sextet for string quartet and two horns (Jacobs of the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington principal horn, Shadley van Wyk), is also a somewhat less familiar work; it’s again in the key of E flat (a favourite for horn players). The sounds produced by the pair of horns was so enchanting in itself that their tendency to outpace the strings was hardly noticeable, and it was certainly a nice partnership. The pair of horns dominated the quietly lyrical slow movement too and again they demonstrated how a beautifully composed horn duet can rather capture the attention, though the in-between remarks by the strings seemed perfectly appropriate and they remained true to themselves.

So by the end, one could reflect that neither Mozart nor Beethoven had failed to recognise that way winds, and especially horns could enhance the delight that’s already plentiful with a plain string quartet.

Wellington Chamber Music can be well satisfied with their break-out from lock-down, both musically and with a numerous audience; and many, particularly Samuel Jacobs, introducing the Sextet, exclaimed at the delight of being at a real, excellent chamber music concert again.

 

Well contrived and performed recital of piano music from NZSM students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Piano students of the New Zealand School of Music
Shangrong Feng: Haydn: Sonata in C, Hob. XVI 48
Liam Furey: Beethoven: Sonata in G minor, Op 49 No 2
Boulez: Douze notations pour piano (1945)
David Codd: Chopin: Nocturnes Op 27, nos 1 & 2
Vincent Brzozowski: Mendelssohn: Variations sérieuses

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 July, 12:15 pm

This was a thoughtfully contrived hour-long recital: and an interesting range of music, even if only one piece was composed after 1850.

Haydn Sonata
Shangrong Feng’s sonata by Haydn is one of the 50-odd that he composed, which have not till recently been universally considered worthy of performance by professional pianists even though they were generally written for eminent adults. No 48 in the exhaustive Hoboken catalogue (1789/90) was among the last of the 52 recognised by Hoboken. The first movement is marked Andante con espressione; it was at the indicated pace although I’d have described Shangrong’s playing as thoughtful, even analytical, rather than expressive. Her touch was subtle and discreet, sometimes Scarlatti-like, particularly in her handling of the little ornamental phrases. And the second movement, a Rondo (Presto), was in sharp contrast, by no means pitched at a less than highly accomplished player.

Is it time for someone to undertake a series of Haydn piano sonatas? Just the kind of exploit that would sit interestingly in a St Andrew’s series…

Liam Furey played the second of Beethoven’s two Op 49 sonatas, generally regarded as ‘easy’, and they are indeed generally tackled by students, around grade IV (speaking personally). But in the hands of someone who is conspicuously far beyond that, it responds to the attention of an accomplished, mature performer. In some ways it represented a nice affinity with the preceding Haydn sonata and the second movement, a minuet, with two contrasting ‘trio’ sections, is gentle and superficially undemanding; Furey played it charmingly, seriously.

Boulez’s Notations
There could scarcely have been a starker contrast than the twelve ‘notations’ by Boulez. One shouldn’t allow the name Boulez immediately to shut down one’s expectation that nothing comprehensible is about to be heard. These extremely varied pieces had the virtue both of not being too long, and of actually persuading the listener to set aside prejudice and to find the whole package interesting and genuinely musical. The second of the short pieces brought something of one’s usual Boulez experience, and from then one’s curiosity and attention was sustained.

Their performance by Furey was rewarding, both in admiring his courage and tenacity (and did I really observe that, like all the other players, he played from memory?), and in exposing one to a major figure in the musical world of the last century.

David Codd played Chopin’s two nocturnes of Op 27: both are around five minutes in length. The first two minutes of No 1 are very subdued while the middle section is quite animated with Chopin’s typical melodic flavour. The second Nocturne (in D flat major) is the more familiar; it was a delight to listen to both in such sensitive performances.

Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses
Finally, from Vincent Brzozowski came a relative rarity: Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses. It’s regarded as his best piano composition and one can recognise that. It’s attracted admiration from critics and many pianists and of course it stands in sharp contrast with most of Mendelssohn’s other piano music; it was written in 1841 in response to an invitation to contribute to the cost of a Beethoven monument in Bonn. Musically, it’s challenging in performance and musically impressive. Its title “sérieuses” sets it apart from most of the similar works of the period which tended more commonly to be virtuosic show-pieces rather than serious musical structures.

I’ve heard it several times though only once in a live performance. Its serious character and its descending, minor key theme are neither charming nor engaging (to me anyway); its academic and formal character has always seemed too conspicuous, at the expense of melody and emotional expressiveness. So it has never taken root in my memory and I have never come to like it particularly.

However, Brzozowski’s playing of this rather formidable, if undeniably bravura music was impressive. Though it was not flawless (and such an achievement is limited to only the most distinguished pianists), it was certainly thoroughly studied and its forbidding difficulties were handled ably.

I should comment here however, that these thoughts have prompted me to dig out and listen to various recorded versions (Nikita Magaloff, Richter, Brendel, Perahia) and my admiration for it has grown as a result.

In all, this was an excellent recital, and again we are indebted to the School of Music, exposing the surprisingly big audience to some slightly off-the-beaten track music in very capable performances.

 

“Emperor of Composers” – an eponymous Piano Concerto and a lovely Symphony, “live” from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”
–  Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”
Diedre Irons (piano)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday, 8th July 2020

Following its hugely successful inaugural post-lockdown concert Ngū Kīoro… Harikoa Ake (Celebrating Togetherness), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has refocused its concert activities on rather more conventional repertoire with this all-Beethoven presentation, a sure-fire audience drawcard which certainly worked its magic in that respect, the result being a sold-out Michael Fowler Centre for the concert. An additional attraction was the presence of Diedre Irons, one of the country’s finest pianists, as the soloist. Most enterprisingly, the orchestra made arrangements for the concert to be streamed “live” on both radio (RNZ Concert) and on “Facebook” by RNZ Concert’s recording team and camera operators. My experience of hearing previous concerts I’d attended in the Michael Fowler Centre via recordings by RNZ Concert had already disposed me positively towards the results achieved by the latter, often securing a finer, better-balanced sound than I’d had when attending the actual concert – so people who had recourse to viewing and/or listening to the broadcasts were, in my opinion assured of an excellent musical experience sound-wise!

In addition, the “live-stream” audience was advantaged by an informative commentary from the Concert FM announcer, as opposed to the complete lack of documentation available in either written or spoken form for the concert-hall audience – I was surprised no programme was printed for distribution, the ticket-holders having been “informed” that “a printable programme was available on-line”. To my way of thinking, this situation was a poor advertisement for the orchestra and especially when one of the items performed, Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, had a definite and informative “programmatic” aspect which, had it been printed and distributed, would have helped people new to concerts to enjoy the experience more deeply (the usually-eschewed audience-clapping between movements which took place on this occasion suggested that there were a number of people present unfamiliar with the music and with concert-hall conventions.

Nevertheless, the crowd was a cheery one, and the buzz of excitement beforehand was palpable, no doubt partly a reflection of people’s delight at having a real, “live” concert to attend once more, and partly a response to the programme’s undoubted appeal – it was something that altogether seemed to reflect and revitalise the world of live music-making as it existed before the pandemic’s ravages. What better composer than Beethoven could be chosen to reflect in his music this “revitalisation”? Of course, with so many great works to choose from, the concert organiser could hardly go wrong – easier, though to choose the “Emperor” Piano Concerto as the stand-out work among Beethoven’s compositions in that genre than to suggest a Symphony, where there are so many equally great ones! As it turned out, the “Pastoral” was an inspired choice – though what more arresting way might there be to begin a concert than with a piano concerto whose “title” is “The Emperor”?

True to its nickname, the work was here grandly begun, with each of the three opening orchestral chords bedecked by answering solo flourishes from the pianist, Diedre Irons, resonating from these arresting gestures in differing ways and setting the tone for an intriguing interplay of interpretative energies from orchestra and piano throughout the movement. Conductor Hamish McKeich and the orchestra then set off as they meant to go on, gathering the music’s detail up and into a trajectory of sure-footed, finely-graded purpose, each statement beautifully “terraced’, flowing from one another with its own character shining forth (some wonderful horn-playing) but keeping both ebb and flow subject to the overall rhythm’s driving energies. Irons’ piano-playing was straightaway more expansive in reply, savouring her phrases with characteristic point and focus, but opening up the poetic vistas and ensuring that every note, it seemed, was given its proper weight, reaffirming its place in the scheme of things.  This slight duality of purpose between orchestra and piano was evident with every orchestral tutti,  McKeich and his players pushing the basic pulse ahead by a notch or two, followed by Irons’ slight expansion of those same pulses as if responding to the beat of a slightly different drum. One couldn’t fault Irons’ eloquence in what she did, though in one or two places I thought the left-hand passagework seemed slightly too emphatic at the expense of forward movement. Still, the music’s line was always engagingly maintained on both “sides”, nowhere more so than in the exchanges leading up to the recapitulation of the work’s opening, begun with orchestra and piano hammering chords at one another at point-blank range with great gusto!

Conductor and players got a lovely “colour” at the slow movement’s beginning, capped off beautifully by the flute’s  voice joining the strings. The piano’s entry instantly enchanted, with the winds seeming almost loath to properly dove-tail their utterances with the soloist’s opening phrases for fear of breaking the spell, but unhesitatingly joining in later, horns contributing a kind of “dreamy fanfare” carried on by the winds over the pianist’s poetic musings. Later, flute, clarinet and bassoon exquisitely took up the music’s lines with the piano in tow, right to the movement’s precipitous edge, with the sounds teetering on the points of the music’s far-flung pre-echoes, and “the horns of elfland” softly beckoning, the piano then plunging into that exhilarating hurly-burly of the finale’s beginning, daring the orchestra to do likewise! Again, Irons’ manner was grand and expansive, obviously the fruit of her deep love of and familiarity with the music, a warm and rich response to Beethovenian energies, as much glowing and retrospective a viewpoint as immediate and spontaneously-wrought. McKeich and his players matched her every impulse, gesture and outpouring with sounds that rounded off the colour, variety and wholeheartedness of the music and its performance.

The concert’s second half wrought for us a different kind of sublimity, perhaps a more solitary and personal outpouring of emotion on the part of the composer, in the form of the “Pastoral” Symphony, written  a year or so before the “Emperor” Concerto. Famously described by Beethoven as “more an expression of feeling than painting” the work nevertheless has enough pictorial elements to constitute a seriously-regarded “programmatic work”, the three middle movements in particular depicting specifically-described natural and human-generated phenomena, such as a brook’s rippling water, various bird calls, a village band, and a violent thunderstorm.

I so relished the first movement’s performance, here – I thought McKeich and his players straightaway caught that “first, fine careless rapture” of experiencing nature at first hand, a true “awakening of pleasant feelings” as described by the composer. I loved how the playing suggested the rusticity of the sounds, through the ever-so-slight “chunkiness” of the rhythms, avoiding any sense of glibness or picture-postcarding. The famous “walking rhythms” of the first movements development section were deliciously realised, the crescendo in each case having a “glowing” quality, a true “expression of feeling” which overwhelmingly suffused the senses. All the instruments involved covered themselves with glory, here, with the rhythmic gait of the strings, the singing quality of the winds and the sonorous glow of the brass producing a memorable evocation of contentment.

For me the “Scene by the Brook” wasn’t quite so effusive at first, the string figurations not given the “room” for the stream waters to gurgle and babble as I would have liked – but the winds were, by way of compensation, encouraged by McKeich to play out and generate a scenario of exquisite beauty, with beautiful exchanges of timbre and colour among the various instruments. The conductor’s encouragement of whispered tones from the strings throughout placed the emphasis on the winds and created something of a Beethovenian “chaos of delight” through the birdsong – and the nightingale, quail and cuckoo imitations at the movement’s end were sublime!

The scherzo, styled by the composer as “Peasants’ Merrymaking”, involved me the least of all the movements, save for the wind-playing – oboe, clarinet and horn played their parts to perfection as “not very confident” village musicians doing their best! Despite the efforts of the players I thought McKeich’s tempi here produced a somewhat bland effect, not rumbustious and “hearty” enough at the beginning, and with too extreme a tempo change for the more vigorous sections, certainly one beyond the capabilities of a rustic village band! The storm, however, was sensational, with the timpanist using hard sticks (and possibly “authentic” drums – what articulate skins!), all of which imparted real menace to the thunderclaps, augmented by the screaming winds and baleful brass – a terrific onslaught!

Came the finale, introduced by gorgeous wind and horn solos, and sublimity returned, the balances beautifully judged, the tempo allowing a radiance sufficient room to flourish and suffuse the ambiences, and the playing filling out the ample spaces with a heartwarming generosity. I liked, as with the first movement, how McKeich again got a certain chunkiness of articulation in places, maintaining a rustic kind of feeling and entirely avoiding any slickness or unwanted glossiness to the end result – the work’s rapt conclusion rounded off a singular and rewarding concert experience.

 

 

 

 

Ghost Trio makes an auspicious debut at St.Andrew’s with music by Beethoven and Panufnik

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Ghost Trio: Gabriela Glapska, piano, Monique Lapins, violin, Ken Ichinose, cello

Sir Andrzej Panufnik: Piano Trio Op.1

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in C minor, Op.1 No3

St. Andrews on the Terrace

Wednesday 1 July, 12.15 pm

 

This was a concert of music by two young composers living more than a century apart, still finding their musical language, but already foreshadowing the great works they were to produce later. Panufnik is hardly a household name. He was a prolific composer of 10 symphonies and other orchestral works, songs, chamber music and piano pieces. He was not yet twenty when he wrote the  Piano Trio in C minor as an ‘Exercise’. The piece opens with a dramatic piano solo with the violin and cello picking up motifs, elaborating and expanding them. The opening movement is an exercise in sonata form. The stormy beginning devolves into a beautiful lyrical passage. The second movement, Largo is a song with a tinge of sadness. The final movement, Presto is a Rondo, with a manic dance theme. To me the piece sounded like Debussy, rather the works of the young Panufnik’s great contemporary composers like Schoenberg, Hindemith or Prokofiev. This piece, like all of Panufnik’s music written before the war was lost during the Warsaw uprising of 1944 and Panufnik recreated it from memory in 1945, after the war and revised it again many years later. It is a very agreeable introduction to the music of one of the last century’s significant composers.

Beethoven’s three Piano Trios, Op. 1, were played at Count Lichnowsky’s palace probably in 1793. Beethoven was 23. He had learned from Haydn, had recently moved to Vienna, and these pieces were his calling card. Haydn considered the C minor Trio problematic, hard to understand, but the work gained popularity when published.  It heralded that here was a new, important musical voice, with powerful things to say about the turbulent world that Beethoven would later explore in works such as the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata or his Fifth Symphony. The first movement is built on a profound gorgeous melody developed in the interplay of the three instruments. The second movement, Andante Cantabile is an extended set of variations on a song-like melody that is at the heart of the piece. This is followed by a jolly Menuetto and Trio. The finale is a forceful Presto with a playful theme and a spectacular piano part that would have given Beethoven an opportunity to display his virtuosity.

This was an outstanding performance. The three musicians formed a cohesive ensemble. The pianist, Gabriela Glapska came from Poland to complete a PhD in performance at the NZ School of Music and now works there as an accompanist. She played with a natural ease and fluency, that she shared with the other two musicians. Monique Lapins  joined the NZ String Quartet last year. Her playing was notable for a beautiful tone and sensitivity. Ken Ichinose is the Associate Principal Cello of the NZ Symphony Orchestra and a very experienced chamber musician. He provided a secure clear and beautiful base line for the ensemble.

It was great to be back at the St, Andrews regular Wednesday lunch time concerts. These are such a feature of Wellington’s musical life. The audience was much larger than usual, perhaps because people were starved for live music, but almost certainly because they had anticipated an exceptionally fine concert.

First in the world with a normal public concert : NZSO’s record, celebrating the emergence from Covid 19 lock-down

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Soloists:
Eliza Boom – soprano; Simon O’Neill – tenor; Maisey Rika – ‘vocalist’; Horomona Horo – taonga pūoro
Singers from Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and schools in the Wellington region

Gareth Farr: From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs: I. ‘The Invocation of the Sea’
Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1: VI. ‘Les Toréadors’; Duet of Don José and Micaëla: “Parle-moi de ma mère”; Suite No 2: VI. ‘Danse bohème’
John Psathas: Tarantismo
Maisey Rika: Tangaroa Whakamautai and Taku Mana
Puccini: La bohème: duet – “Mi chiamano Mimi”, tenor aria – “O soave fanciulla”
Verdi: Otello: tenor aria: “Niun mi tema”
Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Op. 59
Tomoana: Pōkarekare Ana

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 26 June, 6:30 pm

The orchestra announced that this was the first post-pandemic concert by a professional symphony orchestra anywhere in the World in front of a full audience: the extraordinary achievement of intelligent and clear-sighted management of our response by government and people.

The programme’s content and balance was carefully thought out, with a couple of pieces by established New Zealand composers, opera arias, Māori songs and one extended orchestral work. And there was a particularly rapturous feeling in the large crowd which was obviously thrilled to be in the Michael Fowler Centre once more. It was a fine occasion for the orchestra to show its confidence in conductor Hamish McKeich. It enjoyed a sold-out house.

After some appropriate Māori ritual from the taonga pūoro player Horomono Horo, the concert proper began imaginatively with Gareth Farr’s From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs. The oceanic tone-poem has become genuinely popular both on account of its musical material and through the composer’s flamboyant use of large numbers of tuned and untuned percussion. John Psathas’s Tarantismo, which ended the first half, was less remarkable and rather less familiar, but it offered the orchestra interesting emotional and technical challenges. Both works got performances that were thoroughly accomplished, spectacular and vivid.

There were three impressive singers: Tenor Simon O’Neill is a well-known international opera singer and soprano Eliza Boom; her name was unknown to me but she revealed a most attractive and polished voice. I looked in the usual places for some biographical details. Interesting: she has just gained a place with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.  See http://elizaboom.com/biography.html .

A third voice was heard in the second half: Māori singer Maisey Rika; her contribution was a remarkably synthesis of Māori and European musical traditions.

Opera excerpts
In the first half O’Neill and Boom sang the Act I duet by Don José and Micaëla “Parle-moi de ma mère” from Carmen: initially the two voices failed to coalesce perfectly but by the time the big tune arrived, they were well matched, credible and impressive.

In the second half Eliza sang “Mi chiamano Mimi” from La bohème, her voice easily penetrating the occasional heavier orchestration; and the two then joined for the duet that follows, “O soave fanciulla”, as Mimi and Rodolfo suddenly get to know each other… . O’Neill then departed from familiar repertoire to deliver Otello’s “Niun mi tema”, his anguished outpouring after killing Desdemona, not a commonly sung stand-alone aria. It was a striking departure from the otherwise celebratory spirit of the concert to touch on jealousy and tragedy, possibly a subtle reference to the dangers of political or race-driven hatred. (Not that either Carmen or Bohème are particularly filled with joy or comedy).

Before and after the Carmen arias the orchestra played striking excerpts from the suites based on the opera. They were a delight, exhibiting the composer’s many-facetted genius; it’s rare to hear them played live, by an excellent symphony orchestra.

Maisey Rika and co
The second half was introduced by a talented, charming young Māori soprano, Maisey Rika (she was described, in pop music terminology, merely as ‘vocalist’). She was accompanied by Horomona Horo performing on taonga pūoro, uttering subtle sounds – perhaps a koauau , which suggest the deep tones of a mellow, low flute. He accompanied his singing with gestures typical in the performance of waiata. In addition, electronic sounds emerged, managed by Jeremy Mayall, with visuals projected on a screen. Maisey Rika, wearing a flowing, ruby-coloured, loose gown, a near match to the reddish robe worn by Eliza Boom, sang two items, named in the heading, above. Both were engaging, interesting and sophisticated; in a certain way, rather haunting. Her voice is warm and flexible, extensive in its range and colourings.

The blending of taonga pūoro and conventional orchestral instruments was variably successful: sometimes intriguing, sometimes a bit over-orchestrated: that was particularly the case with the second song, Taku Mana. Nevertheless, it was a striking demonstration of how to succeed, quite movingly, in grafting Māori music on to European symphonic language.

And Maisey spoke briefly, dedicating her songs “to those who had kept us safe”.

The item I’d most looked forward to (of course) was the Rosenkavalier Suite.  As well as it was played, exploiting the large orchestra that was available, the early passages somewhat unpersuasive, not particularly evocative of the marvellous delights that are to be found in the opera. But from the arrival of the waltz music one was carried away.

The concert ended with Pokarekare Ana, from members of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and singers from Wellington schools, the three solo voices and taonga pūoro, accompanied by electronics. The audience was invited to join – the words were conveniently at hand in the free programme. These kinds of gestures can sometimes seem out of place; but this fitted perfectly, a blending of Māori music and poetry, with sophisticated European music.

This was also the occasion to mark the departure of former Chief Executive Chris Blake and the confirmation of his successor, Peter Biggs. And it was a strong endorsement of the role of Hamish McKeich as Principal Conductor (in residence). His control and inspiration were both visible and audible.

At the end, the audience went wild: everyone on their feet, shouting and whistling like I’ve never heard before.

The orchestra has survived in excellent health, and we can look forward to an even more exciting musical year; bearing in mind however, the risks that still lurk beyond our borders; and especially, the importance of not offending the gods by proclaiming success, by exaggerating human missteps or demanding normality prematurely.

 

Moving and delightful recital of German Lieder at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Will King (baritone) and Nicholas Kovacek (piano)

Brahms: Vier ernste Gesänge (Four serious songs)
Schubert: ‘Frühlingsglaube’; two songs from Die schöne Müllerin: ‘Am Feierabend’ and ‘Der Neugierige’; ‘Nacht und Träume’; ‘An die Musik’

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 24 June, 12:15 pm

Though we missed St Andrew’s lunchtime concert last week celebrating the survival of live music in public places, this was warmly encouraging with a back-to-normal audience, from two graduate students at Victoria University’s School of Music.

The last time I heard Will King was in Eternity Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro in 2017. Though I’d like to hear him again in opera, this recital showed him as a mature and accomplished Lieder singer, and in particular, one who could deal properly with Brahms’s sombre Four Serious Songs.

What is striking about the first of them, ‘Den es gehet dem Menschen’, is the contrast between the uniform seriousness of the voice, often in contrast with agitated, flashing piano accompaniment. It demonstrated the beautifully controlled lyrical voice over a spectacular piano part that evoked a sort of frenzy. That spirit of the second song is very different. ‘Ich wandte mich’ expresses acceptance of death through the singer’s calm delivery, with occasional appropriate gestures, to suggest that Brahms is explaining what he himself clearly finds philosophically compatible in his contemplation of death.

I find it interesting that several great composers who were confessed non-believers (Berlioz, Verdi, Brahms and Fauré) were comfortable taking thoughts from the Bible to deal with a ‘humanist’ point of view. Each composed what are among the greatest and best-known Requiems).

The third song uses words from Sirach or Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes) one of the so-called Apocrypha or books that were removed from the Protestant Bible in recent times. The words contemplate death as felt by one in full possession of his life; and then by one who is old and weak, with nothing more to hope for: ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du’.  It could well have been a self-portrait in Brahms’s last year, and the song and the way both singer and pianist delivered a calm and comforting performance, captured its essence.

And the last song is the famous passage from Corinthians I, 13: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels’, sung with a clear, humane feeling that would be endorsed by believers and non-believers alike. The four songs are not among Brahms’s most popular perhaps and I may have heard only one previous live performance; but they are universally admired, and need to be more performed.

Unhappily, we can no longer expect to hear music of this kind on our debased Concert Programme.

Five Schubert songs completed the programme, which was a bit shorter than is usual (regrettably). All were among Schubert’s best known and most loved. Uhland’s poem ‘Frühlingsglaube’ (Faith in Spring), gained through the reticence of both performers.

Two songs from Schubert’s wonderful settings of Wilhelm Müller’s cycle Die schöne Müllerin followed: ‘Am Feierabend’ (‘Evening rest’ or ‘After work’) set to happy, hopeful music in triple metre; but when it ends with the miller getting no sign that he is even noticed by the mill-owner’s daughter, the rhythm falters. .

And ‘Der Neugierige’ (The Inquirer), in which the miller, next, asks the brook whether the miller’s daughter loves him, there is again no response. The transition from buoyant hope to despair was deeply felt.

‘Nacht und Träume’ is the setting of a poem by Matthäus Casimir von Collin, brother of the author of the play Egmont for which Beethoven wrote the famous overture. It is one of Schubert’s later songs: deeply moving, a good example of a beautiful setting of a poem of no great distinction but which inspires a great composer to capture its calm and underlying disquiet, never revealed or explained.

And finally one of the most poignant of Schubert’s Lieder: ‘An die Musik’, a setting of a simple, touching poem by Schubert’s friend Franz von Schober. Again, it’s a quiet, intimate, restrained song, addressed as it were to a lover – ‘Music’.

This was a fine recital the honour for which music be shared by singer and accompanist. And it renewed my long-standing feeling that audiences today have too little exposure to the real treasures of classical song – especially Schubert and Schumann. I have always counted myself lucky to have been introduced to this music by two German teachers in the lower and upper 6th form who, remarkably, were music lovers in an otherwise artistically sterile institution, and we listened to and sang (after a fashion) many of the best known Lieder as well as many folk songs. Unfortunately, my German vocabulary remains rather confined to the language of those Romanic poets who inspired their composer friends.

Oh for a series of recitals, including the great cycles by Schubert and Schumann, from resident singers including, naturally, talented students, that would expose the happy few to the real thing.