Category: Reviews – Concerts

Fairly rare but totally delightful music from the Koru Trio at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime Concerts at St Andrew’s

Koru Trio (Anne Loeser – violin, Sally Pollard – cello, Rachel Thomson – piano)

Ravel: Sonata for violin and cello
Dvořák: Piano Trio No 4 in E minor, Op 90 ‘Dumky’

St Andrews on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 18 September, 12:15 pm

One of the delights of the lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s is the quite sharp contrasts from week to week between students, semi-professional and fully professional musicians. Last Wednesday we heard a group of vocal students from Hawkes Bay: a group of young singers, several very promising, who’d studied with the Napier-based Project Prima Volta.

This Wednesday, three full-time musicians with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performed a surprising and delightful programme of major but very different classical works.

Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello is rarely played, though I’d heard it before, once played, I think, by members of the New Zealand String Quartet; nor is Dvořák’s trio in E minor (the ‘Dumky’) often played, though well enough known and Middle C has heard and reviewed it at least twice before.

Written about 30 years apart, the two pieces exemplified the huge stylistic differences that had emerged over that time. Ravel wrote that this sonata was stripped of the usual elements that enrich music: while there are tunes, they are plain rather than voluptuous, its textures are sparse, harmony is a dirty word, and the usual kinds of embellishment, with variations and ordinary counterpoint are not of the usual kind. The immediate sound strikes one as spare yet it still seems determined to appeal to an audience. There’s no suggestion of atonality, let alone 12-note ritual. The Ravel of the string quartet or La Valse is invisible. It’s one sort of ‘neo-classicism’.

I‘m not sure whether what Ravel does is strictly described as bi-tonality – performing in two distinct keys – but it was often suggested in my ears. The second movement, labelled Vif, opens with pizzicato on both instruments, and it returns often on the violin. Its lively rhythm makes clear its scherzo origin which the players handled with apparent ease. The third movement, Lent, is carefully constructed; it’s the longest movement and its continued use of elements of the tunes in the first movement treats them so differently that they seem fresh, creating a genuinely pensive atmosphere.

The cello seems to dominate the last movement, Vif, avec entrain, music that, were it not for the shapes of the tunes, the modulations and the equality between the two instruments, its ancestry in Handel or Mozart keyboard music might not be too remote.

My memory of the last hearing is of music that really didn’t engage me; this time, either I was simply more open now to Ravel’s musical intentions, or these two players created a totally coherent piece that stood on its own feet, actually making sense of it, emphasising its plain musical inventiveness and attractiveness. They simply won me over and left me with the kind of impression that I expect Ravel sought.

The Dumky Trio presented no difficulties with its idiom, its musical material or the way in which that material was handled. However, what we experienced at this concert might have been the kind of contrast that Dvořák was hoping to avoid: the juxtaposition of his deliberately popular, accessible, recognisable music, and whatever less tuneful, more academically admired music it might have been compared with in the 1890s.

Dvořák said: “my Dumky trio is very tricky to perform”, and it’s been noted that the cello has an important role in the exposition of the ‘Dumka’ themes, evident from the very first notes.

It’s in six movements, but the composer asks the first three to be played without pause, making a sort of ‘first movement’ of around 12 minutes long. I can remember previously trying to keep track of the movements, and failing, as each is in the rondo shape: ABA(BA), with quick and slow episodes within each ‘movement’, sometimes repeating the B section a second time.

“What alarming contrasts!”, I scribbled during its opening bars. There is only one theme in the first movement, though it changes its nature constantly, between the opening melancholy to optimism and delight. It begins Lento maestoso (though by no means pompous), suddenly breaks out in an animated moment of dance which is entitled Allegro quasi doppio movimento. And that returns again to enliven the end of the movement.

The start of second movement, Poco adagio, is recognisable, opening with slow chords at the piano, and makes sense of the title, Dumky (dumky is the plural of dumka). Basically, a slow dance, Ukrainian in origin, the word cognate with the Russian word to think or consider. The lower house of the Russian parliament, post 1905, was the Duma which mean ‘deliberation’. Dvořák used Dumky in a number of works, including three of the Slavonic Dances and the Piano Quintet, Op 81.

The second movement, Poco adagio, follows the same pattern as the first, deeply meditative for a couple of minutes before bursting into a Vivace non troppo that ends in a short cadenza for the cello to prepare for the return of the Poco adagio.

Though the aural picture you carry away might be light-hearted and contented, more of it is accurately described by ‘dumka’, being contemplative even sad, and that’s how the fourth movement Andante moderato begins,, with a just occasional brighter patch, labelled Allegretto scherzando. The next movement, Allegro, initially fails that test, starting in a distinctly pensive way.

Though it’s a delight from beginning to end, there are plenty of subtle details that need to be scrupulously handled: constant mood changes, sharply contrasted dynamics within a bar, switches from staccato to legato, not to mention key changes that keep the music interesting, even though the average listener is probably unable to identify exactly what is happening.

The three musicians dealt admirably, enchantingly with all these testing aspects of the composition; and even though it ran well beyond the normal 1pm finish time, I was aware of no one leaving. Most might have enjoyed a total replay.

 

Wondrously unified piano trio gives two of the greatest works for Chamber Music New Zealand

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music New Zealand 
Viktoria Mullova Trio (Mullova – violin, Matthew Barley – cello, Stephen de Pledge – piano)

Schubert: Piano Trio No 2 in E flat D 929
Salina Fisher: Mono no aware
Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 14 September 7:30 pm

Musicians of the stature of Viktoria Mullova are much rarer visitors to New Zealand now than they were 30, 50 years ago. Then the entire season of chamber music concerts arranged by the then Federation of Chamber Music Societies consisted of pretty distinguished international players. Something of a commentary on the relative decline of New Zealand’s economic standing, as well, I suspect, as a trend away from classical music towards varieties of more popular music, in the main-stream .

This tour was no doubt initiated by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra with which she played the Sibelius Violin Concerto last Thursday: a most enraptured listen.* Much more collaboration of this kind needs to take place. Barley and De Pledge also gave very interesting recitals for CMNZ in Napier, New Plymouth and Palmerston North, featuring, for example, cello sonatas by Debussy, Beethoven (the A major) and Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel.

Mullova sprang to international attention in 1983 when she and her then lover, Georgian conductor Vakhtang Jordania, fled from Finland to Sweden. Only the bare musical story is ever permitted in the musician CVs printed in programmes today. Other personal snippets about her are interesting of course, including her relationship with the late Claudio Abbado.

Schubert: Piano Trio No 2
All of this, as well, naturally, as her justified musical stature, made this one of the most rewarding concerts of the year. And to have chosen these two piano trios was an impeccable decision. For me, the Schubert trio always recalls the use of the Andante con moto movement in the famous 1975 Kubrick film Barry Lyndon (which the programme note alludes to), alongside quotations from Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and one of Schubert’s beguiling German Dances and much else.

I was in no mood to attempt any spotting of flaws or interpretational shortcomings: anyway, I’m sure there were none. And so I simply succumbed to the players’ immaculate ensemble, with no sign at all of any one of them seeking more than a third of our attention. That was interesting in the first movement where, in fact, the piano does sometimes seem to take the lead melodically, certainly in busyness, while violin and cello dwell rather on the pensive figures. More important is the sheer genius of the composition, it melodic variety and complexity, all of which was expressed so vividly and perceptively.

Kubrick’s choice of the second movement was singular, spoke highly of his musical sensibility in making use of an underlying lamenting tone (not that I can recall exactly what kind of scene it illustrated). I have always felt that it delivers a far deeper emotional message than the equivalent movement in the B flat trio; it has always seemed to me that the E flat trio, in entirety, was more interesting, both musically and emotionally. The piece is also notable for the richness of the last movement: no light-weight exercise here with an ordinary rondo treatment of cheerful tunes; instead, it’s caste in quite elaborate sonata form that lasts almost a quarter hour. At the end there was not a moment’s feeling that you’d heard any of the tunes or their wondrous transformations too often. There only remained a regret that the whole work had to end so soon, after a full three-quarters of an hour. Its utterly committed performance did it full justice.

Salina Fisher, ‘mono no aware’ 
The little piece by Salina Fisher, ‘mono no aware’, that opened the second half was well positioned. For just cello and piano (it had been in the cello and piano recitals by Barley and De Pledge mentioned above), could not have been less connected to what had gone before or would follow. However, it held the attention, not through any sort of histrionics, but through an impression of something indefinable, fleeting, evanescent…  And that’s what the Japanese words ‘mono no aware’ mean, and so it’s pronounced ‘mono no awáray’ (no diphthonged vowels please!). It refers to the transience of things, awareness of the impermanence of beauty, particularly symbolised by cherry blossom. You can read a more detailed explanation in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware; inter alia, “a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life”.

And so, it would have been a mistake to seek any specific emotion or tale in the understated composition that Barley and De Pledge played with sensitivity and sympathy.

Ravel’s Piano Trio
The emotional shift to Ravel’s piano trio was considerable. It’s commonly regarded as the finest piano trio written since 1900, and among the most successful works in the entire field of chamber music. The very first bars were magical and clear-headed, utterly remote from any sense of pending war; it was written in early 1914 but not finished till after the war began and Ravel was desperate to enlist. They captured the meandering feeling of the Modéré first movement; both Ravel and Debussy made a point in this period of employing French instead of foreign names for musical terms. The opening exposed each instrument in turn, vividly, yet the main impression was of three very individual musicians creating a marvellously integrated, meandering and harmonious piece.

Incidentally, there’s a significant film connection with the Ravel trio too: Un cœur en hiver (‘A heart in winter’, 1992) directed by Claude Sautet. Bits of Ravel’s chamber music are played, and I recall the scene where part of the trio is played; Paris-based New Zealand pianist Jeffrey Grice acted the pianist, but strangely, the piano part itself was played by Howard Shelley. An interesting, not a great, film, made memorable through music.

The second movement is entitled ‘Pantoum’; it’s the equivalent of a scherzo in spirit and shape, another stage in the evolution from the original lively, dance-like Minuet. Its name signifies a connection with a Malayan poetic form, though Ravel didn’t explain. There was a certain lack of clarity towards its end, though its determined animation shone through.

The third movement, which is modelled on the Baroque passacaglia (Passacaille) began with mysterious piano murmurings, soon echoed by strings whose hushed quality was enhanced with mutes. Though it’s sometimes remarked, as the programme note does, that Ravel was influenced by aspects of Asian music and that the third movement suggests a circular character, it is of little significance for the listener. The players captured the movement’s disquieting, deeply thoughtful mood.

Nor is the last movement, Animé, anything less than a wonderful culmination at the level of creative inspiration, and one could clearly hear a certain impatience, either to get the piece finished or in order to enlist in the army that battled the German invasion. The trio succeeded in conveying the sense of confusion through the tumbling harmonies as each instrument seems at times to assert itself above the others.

A bigger than average audience heard and applauded this wonderful recital.

* Footnote

Contrary to my surmise, it was Chamber Music New Zealand that prompted Viktoria Mullova’s tour to New Zealand, through the initiative of Stephen De Pledge.

Percussion-driven “Carmina Burana” with the Orpheus Choir a triumph

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington presents:
CARMINA BURANA

CASEY CANGELOSI – Jazz on Saturn
NEY ROSAURO – Marimba Concert No. 1*
Yoshiko Tsuruta (marimba)*
Orchestra Wellington Percussion Ensemble

CARL ORFF – Carmina Burana (arr.Wilhelm Killmayer)
Amelia Berry (soprano)
Declan Cudd (tenor)
Joel Amosa (bass-baritone)
Wellington Region School Choirs –
Wellington East Girls’ College CANTATA /Wellington Girls’ College TEAL VOICES
Kelburn Normal School / Scots College / Catholic Cathedral Children’s Choir
Samuel Marsden Collegiate Choir
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Thomas Nikora / Stephen Clothier (pianos)
Orchestra Wellington Percussion Ensemble
Brent Stewart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 7th November, 2019

Oddly enough, nowhere in the programme could I see mentioned that this was a version of Carl Orff’s most renowned work prepared by his “disciple” Wilhelm Killmayer in 1956, and authorized by Orff himself, 20 years after the original composition, one allowing smaller instrumental ensembles the opportunity to perform the piece. While relishing the prospect of hearing the Orpheus Choir’s “different” take on the composer’s evergreen “Carmina Burana”, I was nevertheless wondering how the absence of a full orchestra would “work” in music that relies for a good deal of its impact on instrumental colour and weight of tone. I needn’t have worried in the slightest, as it turned out, as the sheer energy and coruscating excitement generated by the voices, the two pianos and the ensemble of percussion instruments under Brent Stewart’s direction made for suitably overwhelming results – different, but just as impactful. And though one registered an instrumental phrase here and there with less “projection” than in the full orchestra version, what was BEING played almost everywhere caught us up most thrillingly in a “here and now” of it all that left no need for comparisons – just a feeling of being immersed in an oceanic surge from all concerned of total and utter commitment to the music.

We were given an enticing taste of the excitement in store for us in the concert’s main work by the Orchestra Wellington Percussion Ensemble’s presentation of two first-half items, the first featuring the Ensemble alone, in an explosive item whose energies recalled the great days of Wellington’s own “Strike” percussion group (one of whose members, Jeremy Fitzsimons, was in tonight’s ensemble). This was a work called “Jazz on Saturn”, written in 2018 by American composer Casey Cangelosi, for percussion quintet – the programme note promised us, among other things, “an exuberant finale – complete with party poppers!” Unsure of what PRECISELY this meant, I was nevertheless grooving most uninhibitedly with the music’s almost Dionysian exuberances in places, while registering, within a basic trajectory of pulse the most beguiling contrasts of texture and colour – mere touches and splashes of gentle scintillation whose whisperings were as impressive in their own way as the ensemble’s’ full-on virtuoso roar – when at the explosive end of an irresistible crescendo the air was suddenly filled with a fusillade of confetti and streamers amid the ensemble’s concluding payoff!

Orpheus Choir Director Brent Stewart who came on stage to introduce and direct the next item apologised to the first few rows of the audience for their unexpected confetti-shower amid great amusement, though I was half-waiting for him to generate further merriment by requesting of those same bedecked rows of people something like, “Now, could we have it all back, please?”

Stewart then introduced and led a warm welcome to the Japanese-born New Zealand-domiciled marimba soloist Yoshiko Tsuruta, appearing to perform what has become the “Concierto de Aranjuez” of the marimba world, a work by Brazilian composer Ney Rosauro, his “Marimba Concerto No.1”, a piece which, according to the programme note, has received over 3,000 performances since its composition in 1986. As graceful and spectacular to watch as the music she played was to listen to, Tsuruta demonstrated complete and utter control and poise in her delivery of this most attractive music, easefully wielding two mallets in each hand as if endowed with the same by nature, and coaxing, both energetically and hypnotically, the music from her enormous instrument – the largest marimba I’d ever seen!

Rhythmically angular and motoric at the beginning, the music relaxed into a more song-like mode as the first movement progressed, the sounds quixotically exploring contrasts between vigorous and lyrical. The second movement opened mysteriously, low sounds providing a contrast with fragments and scintillations, creating a vast and resonant sound-space into which were released some evocative creations. A third movement seemed to me to comprise variants of a sinuous waltz-theme, darkly portentous and symbolic of time slowly passing……..an angular-rhythmed introduction brought in what seemed like a final movement, one whose six-plus five rhythm created in itself beautifully choreographic movements and gesturings, a solo cadenza allowing the player some repose from the tyranny of insistent trajectory, before once again rising to the challenge of the final, vigorous gestures which concluded the work.

And so, to the second half of the concert, and “Carmina Burana” – I thought it was a wonderful idea to project the English translations of Orff’s Latin texts for us to read and enjoy during the work, even if the exercise straightaway reinforced my feeling that most conductors I’ve heard in concert or on record take the famous opening chorus “O Fortuna” too quickly to my ears, turning what the words indicate is a harsh, piteous lament – one that concludes with the words “mecum omnes plangite” (Weep with me, all of you!) – into a jolly, rousing, foot-tapping number, with the dark, ominous rhythms left to skate merrily along the music’s surface! Brent Stewart’s tempo at the outset, while making for superficially exciting results didn’t really explore the music’s dark, pessimistic mood – but neither did Marc Taddei’s treatment of the same passage in Orchestra Wellington’s 2014 performance of the full version, again with the Orpheus Choir.

Fortunately, the rest was, in a word, magnificent! Stewart’s insistence on urgency between verses and choruses in numbers such as the following “Fortune plango vulnera” (I weep for luck’s wounds) kept the music’s juices flowing, as did the choir’s crisp articulation of their lines – and the sheer energy of both Thomas Nikora’s and Stephen Clothier’s piano playing combined with the excitement generated by the other instrumentalists to really pin back our ears!  Then it was suddenly all light and air with beautiful, birdsong-like piano and percussion sounds at the beginning of “Primo Vere” (In Springtime), the words almost breathlessly chanted, as if the singers were mesmerised by the music’s beauty, the “ah-ah” passages particularly magical in effect.

Baritone Joel Amosa delivered his “Omnia sol tempera” (The sun soothes all things) with great sensitivity, fining down his head-voice to poetic, almost vulnerable effect in places – later, he brought plenty of energy to his “In Taberna”, though he was at full stretch throughout the higher passages – as he was with the Third Part’s “Dies nox et omnia” (Day, night and all things), which he nevertheless hung onto throughout the outlandish voice-changes with great determination – however, he greatly relished his rollicking part in the third section’s “Tempus et iocundum”, along with the soprano’s and children’s voices.

I particularly enjoyed the theatricality of the performance, such as the vivid painting of the opening “Floret silva nobilis” (The noble wood) we heard in the cantata’s second part, where women’s and men’s voices enacted a vignette of longing – the women’s plaintive “Ubi es antiquus meus amicus?” (Where is my old lover?) answered by the men’s “Hinc ecqitavit” (He rode away) in heart-breakingly jogtrot rhythm! This was followed by an almost visceral depiction of an older woman “glamouring” herself up to catch a younger lover – “Seht mich an, jungen man!” (the words lapsing into German at this point!), the choir humming a seductive chorale in-between the verses with almost insouciant suggestiveness. Another intensely theatrical moment was superbly realised by tenor Declan Cudd, in his depiction of the roasted swan singing of happier days before suffering his ignoble fate on the spit – vivid and anguishedly-coloured singing from the tenor, punctuated by lamenting interjections from the men’s voices – “Miser! Miser modo niger, es ustus fortiter!” (Wretch that I am! – now black and roasting fiercely!).

Soprano Amelia Berry had to wait for the cantata’s third part “Cour D’Amours” (Court of Love) to be heard, though as is usually the case, the effect was arresting, with the pianos, tinkling percussion and children’s voices sweetly preluding the soprano’s entry with their “Amor volat undique” (Love flies everywhere). Berry’s sweetness of tone captured our sensibilities in an instant and held us still, as she did also with “Stetit puella” (A girl stood) over its two verses. And though at full vocal stretch with the cruelly-demanding “Dulcissime” (Sweetest one), Berry held her stratospheric vocal line steadfastedly and truly, till all was properly given and spent.

How resoundingly everybody then poured their energies into the following  “Ave formisissima!” (Hail, most beautiful), here given plenty of space and weight, the stage-surround lights suddenly and effectively joining in with additional illumination! And if the concluding “O Fortuna” again went like an express train, the concluding bars of the work reaffirmed the undoubted effectiveness of this percussion-driven version of Orff’s choral masterpiece, with sounds saturating the precincts of the hall and occasioning a rapturous audience response! Definitely a triumph for all concerned!

 

 

 

 

Asher Fisch, Louis Lortie and the NZSO in splendid form with classical masterpieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Asher Fisch with Louis Lortie (piano)

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18
Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, Op 24
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 6 September, 6:30 pm

Asher Fisch is taking this NZSO programme with pianist Louis Lortie on a four city tour. It’s his first visit to New Zealand, though I encountered him as conductor of the production of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Adelaide in 2004 (it was an Australian production, in some kind of reaction to the cycle borrowed from the Châtelet Theatre in Paris, six years before).

Rachmaninov’s Number Two
‘Rach 2’, along with the Tchaikovsky No 1, are probably the most popular of all piano concertos. The opening is magical: seeming to emerge from nowhere and by no means easy to invest with definable feelings; however, they got it absolutely right, with the slow emergence of the crescendo of rich, opulent sounds. Perhaps the piano was a bit recessed during the following violin-led passage, but the balance was recovered and Lortie’s command technically and interpretationally was immaculate.

I was seated centre stalls and was a little surprised how, in full-orchestra passages, individual instruments tended to be obscured, while those less densely orchestrated had impact and clarity. All the usual wind instrument strengths were there – particularly, a beautifully pure solo horn passage expressed peace after Rachmaninov’s long period of depression following the shameful performance of and reaction to his first symphony.

There was fitful applause at the end of the first movement which I charitably ascribed to a genuine feeling that it had been particularly moving.

The second movement offers lovely solo opportunities to flute, then clarinet, over calm rolling arpeggios from the piano. My pleasure increased here as I reflected on how long it had been since hearing a live performance of this richly romantic masterpiece. There are several near-solo, piano passages that serve as kinds of cadenzas with quite subtle music from individual instruments, till eventually an actual cadenza takes over, rather briefly, followed by a resumption by dreamy, legato strings. Again, Lortie’s performance was of the greatest subtlety, wonderfully in sympathy with the entire work.

The last movement, more rich in tumbling bravura, is also music of engrossing variety of emotion, pace, with a return in the first few minutes of a meditative beauty; and it resumed its basic character, maintaining a fast pace to the finish. Rachmaninov’s orchestration never drew attention to itself but it is a major element in the concerto’s greatness and that was thoroughly exploited in the subtlety of its performance, wrapping itself sensitively around the piano part.

Greatly loved, some might even call it hackneyed, it might be; but that in no way diminishes its reputation, and this evening’s performance confirmed its standing most convincingly.

It puzzled the audience at the end when Lortie manoeuvred himself back to the piano and another chair was brought out; and it dawned on us that Fisch himself was going to take part in an encore. I didn’t recognise the duet movement they played, though it was pretty clearly Mozart era though I didn’t think it was actually him. So I was surprised to learn that it was in fact Mozart: the second movement, Andante, from his Sonata in D for piano duet, K 381.

Tod und Verklärung
In the second half German classics held sway. Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung is among the composer’s earlier compositions and for many, his most moving (for me too). Written aged 24, immediately after Don Juan, it always feels like the music of a much older composer, long exposed to the pains of life and realities of death.

My last recollection of it by the NZSO is in 2010, under Alexander Shelley.

Immediately, it created a sombre mood of a unique character, opening without first violins, confining the orchestra to second violins, violas, cellos and bases, bassoons and timpani.  But soon its mood is modified as first violins enter as well harp and flute. The sudden outburst by timpani, trombones and tuba, announcing the struggle between life and death, was more stunning than I have ever heard before. It quickly subsides as the orchestra’s handling of the tortured mood and dynamic changes took charge, expansive, with a sort of profound grandeur. Bridget Douglas’s flute created a trembling agitation depicting one part of the battle.

Through the turmoil of near-death experiences, Fisch never allowed the tension and excitement to subside. Its singular beauties were constantly threatened but never overwhelmed by brass-led crescendo passages that depicted the dying man’s agonies, and his reflections on a heroic life, on love, on his pursuit of ideals. Interestingly, Strauss commented on the fact that while Don Juan started and ended in E minor, this work dwelling fundamentally on death starts in C minor and ends in C major, the most sanguine of keys.

There dwelt, throughout, a powerful, ecstatic feeling that one might consider the epitome of late Romantic sensibility. That is certainly the way I have always felt about it, since first hearing it in my 20s, and the many hearings since then have not altered my opinion or reduced the profound impact of the work. This performance confirmed again my love of its conception, enhanced strongly in this musical realisation from Asher and the NZSO.

Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture
It seemed slightly odd to end the concert with an overture, though I could tell, given the decision to perform these works, that arranging things in terms of length and in handling the piano in the easiest way, led to this sequence. Before the concert I had wondered whether scheduling it last might have encouraged the orchestra to follow the overture with the Venusberg music, the ballet music that Wagner had to write for its 1860 Paris Opera production, and which is often played immediately after the overture in concert. Given that the concert ended a quarter of an hour before usual, that would have been entirely possible.

Asher Fisch emphasised the pseudo-religious character of the music with the tune from the Pilgrims’ hymn, evoking sounds hinting at an organ in the apotheosis of a religious occasion.  But the equally important element in the overture is the Venusberg music, which is expanded in the ballet that became Act I, scene one in the Paris version, and Fisch drew from it all the wildness that is inherent in it, with as much as possible of the erotic freedom permitted in a respectable concert. The overture ended with a grand return to the pious strains of the Pilgrims chorus, leaving no doubt about the success of conductor and orchestra in handling this rather over-the-top music.

The performance of overtures, which used to be a standard way of opening concerts till a couple of decades ago, should be resurrected. This case, even though in an unorthodox position in the programme, at least offered an example of the sort of music to be found in scores of the once popular and well-known overtures that introduced and illuminated most concerts in the old days; and more importantly, are still an ideal way for young people to be won over to classical music.

Korngold: exploration of beguiling Lieder one didn’t know, from Georgia Jamieson Emms

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime Concerts at St Andrew’s
Georgia Jamieson Emms (soprano) and Bruce Greenfield (piano)

Lieder by Erich Korngold: settings of poems, mainly by Eichendorff, from Op 9 and Op 38

St Andrews on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 4 September, 12:15 pm

Middle C has been neglecting its responsibilities with respect to the wonderful lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Partly the result of our diminished ‘human resources’ and partly … well, other things.

There are notes for two or three of them that seem to have failed to find a first sentence, but given time, some the right words and thoughts might emerge on the RNZAF woodwind quintet, six hands at the keyboard, recorder and harpsichord…

The name Korngold doesn’t seem to be found in the average survey of German Lieder, not even among the lesser figures like Marschner, Hiller, Berg or Pfitzner. But since the word is merely the plural of the German word for ‘song’, and applies to German composers strictly speaking, almost all German composers from the late 18th century will have things called ‘Lieder’ among their compositions. But in the course of writing this and exploring books and the internet on the composer and his music, it’s clear that has been a somewhat serious omission. I’d known little more than Korngold’s most famous, precocious opera Die tote Stadt and some of the film music written in Hollywood after he left Germany when Hitler arrived.

Most of the songs Georgia chose were also early and four were to poems of Eichendorff which were most commonly chosen by the famous German Lieder composers: Schumann, Brahms, Strauss and Wolf (Schubert died before much of Eichendorff’s poetry became known). I was interested to discover several recordings of both cycles; since I’d heard none of them before, I must report that further hearings by singers like Barbara Hendricks and Angelika Kirchschlager increased my respect for and enjoyment of them.

The six songs of Op 9 were composed between the age of 14 and 19, and it was not difficult to hear rather unsophisticated tunefulness. One tries to hear influences and I succeeded in hearing, in Schnneeglöckchen, the sounds of early 20th century American operetta: Romberg, Friml, Herbert…, perhaps not the richness of the best of those, but a genuine, Liederish character. The second song was Nachtwanderer, whose theme is very close in subject and in certain musical hints to Goethe’s Erlkönig, but certainly suggested nothing of the song Schubert wrote at about the same age. Neither was the next song, Ständchen, again set to an Eichendorff poem; Schubert’s Op 889 is of ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ from Cymbeline., and his Ständchen in the cycle Schwanengesang is by Rellstab. There are several poems with the name and various settings of several of them. Korngold’s had a sparkling character, and it was one of the few that showed evidence foe me of his gifts: a gift for melody.

Liebesbriefchen revealed something wistful and interesting musically, in spite of a rather modest little poem. Das Heldengrab am Pruth was a gentle, touching little song with interesting piano accompaniment that captured bird-song charmingly. (I notice that Renee Fleming recorded it recently on a DVD anthology). I think Georgia said that Sommer was written for Lotte Lehmann to sing with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which would have accounted for a piano accompaniment that was orchestrally a bit clangorous; translation ‘blackbird blaring’? That is not in the least a criticism of Bruce Greenfield’s carefully considered and sympathetic accompaniments throughout the programme.

Knowing that the last two songs, from the Fünf Lieder of 1948 were from his last decade invites one to find more musical maturity and emotional depth; and I did. Georgia began with the second song in the cycle, Der Kranke (The Invalid), also by Eichendorff, expressed in gentle, morbid tones with a repeated descending phrase in the piano. The recital ended with the first poem in the cycle: Glückwunsch, words to a beloved that seemed to hint as much at uncertainty as to unalloyed happiness. They offered further opportunities to admire Georgia Jamieson Emms’s colourful and expressive voice.

They ended with a song that Korngold wrote in his late Hollywood years: an afterthought for the film Escape Me Never which was a bit of a flop. But it was a nice way to end a very interesting and rather beguiling 40 minutes.

This exposure has led me to some exploring of Korngold. I’ve long had a recording of Die tote Stadt, which becomes darkly seductive for much more than the dreamlike, beautiful ‘Marietta’s Lied’ (Glück, das mir verblieb). Many years ago, when the Concert Programme (as it was then) used to broadcast hour-long sessions on operas on Sunday mornings, William Southgate spoke about Korngold’s second-best-known opera, Das Wunder der Heliane. Its touch of the supernatural has haunted me and one prone to expressionist sentimentality has longed to see/hear a production. Not in this country…

Lazarus String Quartet, with one New Zealander remaining, at end of adventurous tour with highly interesting programme

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Music
Lazarus String Quartet (Mayumi Kanagawa and Jos Jonker – violins; Albin Uusijärvi – viola; Alice Gott – cello)

Mozart: Quartet No 16 in E flat, K 428
Bartók: Quartet No 2 in A minor
Beethoven: Quartet in B flat, Op 18 no 6

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 1 September 2019, 3 pm

Here was an interesting ensemble that formed in 2007 when four University of Canterbury students got together, winning a ROSL Arts/Pettman Scholarship in 2010 which took them to study at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover. That led to concerts that have included St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, Poland and elsewhere, and at music festivals (the Edinburgh Fringe and Heidelberg Spring festivals).

The original members, all Canterbury graduates, were: Emma Yoon and Julianne Song (violins), Lindsay McLay (viola), Alice Gott (cello).

This New Zealand tour was organised by the one remaining New Zealand member, Alice Gott, and has taken them to eleven towns in New Zealand, from the famous Mussel Inn in Golden Bay, Wanaka, Otago University, Waiheke island, All Saints Church in Howick, to Gisborne and finally Wellington.

Their 2013 tour through New Zealand included a Wellington concert, also promoted by Wellington Chamber Music, that was reviewed on this website on 22 September 2013.

Mozart in E flat
This concert began with one of the six quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn, having been inspired by Haydn’s Op 33 set (though the E flat sonata is said to reflect Haydn’s Op 20 set). It opens with a few unison octaves played with warmth and simplicity that doesn’t seem to suggest any particular mood or clear musical character; the essence of the piece seems to be in the detailed and elaborate handling of the themes. The second movement presents a more serious tone and one is very aware of the extremely careful writing and treatment of the evolving pattern of Mozart’s material. One feels that the music is conspicuously important to the composer, and one is constantly aware of the painstaking care Mozart is taking with its every turn. These players understood the task they faced – not particularly difficult technically, but certainly spiritually and in the characterisation of the music. The mere fact of its great length, around 15 minutes, attests to that.

The Menuetto is superficially more straightforward; the players only need to find a course through a movement that normally offers a more light-hearted moment, but here displays a notably thoughtful character; they did that. Nor is the last movement, though Allegro vivace and fairly lively rhythmically, unduly buoyant and carefree; it remains a serious composition. The players’ close attention to its dynamic shifts and emotional variety kept it very much alive and filled with interest.

Bartók’s No 2
Bartók’s quartets are widely regarded as the most important since those of Beethoven, charting a course that’s radically new as well as musically rich. No 2 was written during the First World War and it shows, for the composer was deeply distressed by the privations Hungary was subjected to. It can fairly be regarded as not strongly unified as each movement presents such a distinct character. It opens in a secretive way, hinting at atonality, an impression derived mainly from its unorthodox melodic shape. I’m sure genuine tonal roots can be demonstrated.

The players had clearly absorbed Bartók’s aesthetic pretty thoroughly, reaching a level at which their playing created a sense of naturalness and inevitability in the music, especially in the meditative passages, and the underlying emotion was often quite apparent. I don’t claim to find Bartók’s music particularly congenial or easy to find delight in, but here, and especially in the second movement, Allegro molto capriccioso, the energy and the melodies, alien as they were, registered. The music was clearly expressing excitement in its own way and even when that’s in a ‘foreign language’, a receptive mood and open ears can make it interesting, even arresting. It transcended the small matter of being in a strange, unfamiliar idiom; a feeling that should surely be a thing of the past.

The third movement was rather harder to reach: remote, secretive, their playing was extremely careful, sensitive, and they drew out alien emotions so that the dissonances and unfamiliar sounds were never disagreeable. Bartók himself confessed to finding a formal template ‘difficult to define’. It goes without saying that the performers’ challenges are formidable, yet they played in a lively and persuasive way, even suggesting that they gained considerable emotional comfort in its performance.*

Beethoven’s Op 18 No 6
After the Interval, it was Beethoven’s Op 18 No 6. If my attention in the first two works seems to have been dominated by the ensemble playing rather than by individual characteristics, they were more conspicuous here. The cello on the one hand, warm and rhythmic, and the violin, quite penetrating it its prominence, particularly, leading the way in the second movement. That is particularly charming, with a memorable step-wise first theme, and though its beauty creates a hope for repeats and simply for more, it’s far shorter than the equivalent movement in the Mozart quartet. The final notes were singularly touching.

The third movement, Scherzo: Allegro, is a study in quick dynamic contrasts and very light, brisk gestures. Short as it is, there’s space for a quickly despatched trio section, all of which the quartet handled with a feeling of genuine authenticity. It’s the last movement that departs significantly from the usual shape of a string quartet. The first section is entitled Malinconia – Adagio, and the composer wrote that it must be treated with the utmost delicacy; the players obeyed scrupulously: and it emerged secretive and arresting. But even at its now Allegro pace, there remained a lightness or tentativeness, at nothing much more than mezzo-forte dynamic level. There’s a momentary return to the melancholy theme before the final dash.

The programme was structured most thoughtfully: stimulating, mainstream pieces that had very distinctly unusual features, and a major piece of relative modernity, if it’s still possible to employ that word more than a century after its composition.

* Addendum

A Bartók perspective
As an uncalled for footnote to the comments on Bartók, I came across a particularly interesting 2007 lecture on the second quartet by Professor Roger Parker of Gresham College, London, that ended with this comforting perspective on Bartók’s six quartets.

Famously, these quartets explore, and make demands on, their four instrumentalists in ways unknown (indeed, unimaginable) in previous times. You’ll hear plenty of that in a moment or two. It is interesting, though, that while in the 1950s and 1960s the Bartók quartets were regarded as among the most austere and demanding imaginable, these days they have begun to seem more mainstream and approachable. Of course, this was always supposed to happen to modernist music: when I was a music student forty years ago, we were endlessly assured that contemporary music which seemed to us incomprehensible would, with repeated listening and industrial-strength doses of aural training, sound as limpid and predictable as Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Well, I’m here to tell you that we tried, even tried hard, and it didn’t. A work like Webern’s Op. 27 sounds just as strange now as it did forty or, for that matter, eighty years ago, and my guess is that it will sound strange forever. But Bartók, even the relatively austere Bartók of the string quartets, is different. Younger players such as those we will hear today come to the music without preconceptions, without thinking that it must be impenetrable and harsh; and as a result they make more sense of it, or at least a different kind of sense: while not ignoring its challenges, and while remaining respectful of its demands, they connect it more easily to its nineteenth-century roots, and so (I think) help us understand it more clearly.

Two sides of a genius – Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies from Edo de Waart and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
JOY – Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies

BEETHOVEN FESTIVAL – Symphonies 8 in F Major Op.93* and 9 in D Minor Op.125 “Choral”

Sabina Cvilak (soprano) / Kristin Darragh (m-soprano)
Oliver Johnston (tenor) / Anthony Robin Schneider (bass)
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra*
Edo de Waart (conductor)*

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 31st August, 2019

This, the final concert in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven Festival, presented two symphonic works at what seemed like opposite ends of everything – black-versus-white parameters of style from a composer of genius. Beethoven in his Eighth Symphony appears to be “playing” with the form, parodying the classical symphony, satirising fashions and fads, heightening and debunking all kinds of gesturings and yet still producing a forward-moving, radically original work of art. On the other hand, the Ninth Symphony seems, from its very beginning, to put the listener in touch with a kind of basic life-force that finds its full expression in Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” with orchestral sounds inviting the use of words as an aid to symphonic expression for the first time in the form’s history.

It can be seen from these descriptions that the two works have practically nothing in common except their composer’s name and the degree of freedom and innovation employed in the music’s being. To thus present them in the same concert would ensure a musical feast of uniquely diverting, and, for some, even bewildering, variety. However, as with almost all of this composer’s work these pieces can survive practically any kind of treatment involving musical intent – so we were guaranteed a fully absorbing and thought-provoking evening’s listening!

I’d already heard and enjoyed these musicians’ traversals of the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies two evenings previously, remarking in my review that the intensities of music-making seemed to gather and coalesce more purposefully as the evening progressed, finally bursting fully-forth in a performance of the Fifth Symphony’s finale that brought the house down. Here, the same kind of pattern somewhat uncannily emerged, with the great “Choral Symphony’s finale, the “Ode to Joy” releasing such surges of energy as had merely been hinted at throughout the music-making earlier in the evening. It was as if everything had been almost “tailored” for maximum effect towards that final movement, and specifically focusing on the entry of the voices with their message for all humankind!

In theory this approach eminently suited the evening’s musical journey, with the opening Eighth Symphony’s elegance and fluidity emphasised by Edo de Waart’s meticulous approach, a quirky detailing or three thrown in for good measure – while the Ninth Symphony which followed grew its mighty concluding oak-like girth from acorn-beginnings, the intended space of the whole work “suggested” by the first movement’s purposeful gesturings and the scherzo’s energies, except that the actual “substance” came with those voices and the instrumental support they received. As an intellectual construct the scheme was eminently satisfying, though I confess to missing the excitements of a more “visceral” approach in the playing –  I do like things even quirkier in the Eighth, and more epic and rugged in the Ninth’s first two movements …. but, chacun à son gout…..

By contrast with Thursday evening’s attendance at the MFC, which featured a noticeable number of empty seats, tonight’s house was packed full – and my Middle C colleague Lindis Taylor reported a similarly pleasing state of things for Friday’s performances of Nos. Six and Seven. I wondered whether the orchestra might have been better advised to split the four concerts over two weekends or even a fortnight, in the interests of affordability or accessibility –  still, no doubt it was something of an achievement to get the levels of attendance that it did over four consecutive nights of concerts!

So, we began with the Eighth Symphony – but not before we were told – at once poignantly, and heart-warmingly – that tonight’s gig was the cellist Roger Brown’s last concert with the NZSO after 20 years in the orchestral ranks, which occasioned affectionate and appreciative audience applause. Then we were off, Maestro de Waart and his players flinging the opening phrase across the expectant vistas with purposeful energy, everything clear, precise and well-chiselled, the timpani direct and sonorous. A demure, precisely-groomed second subject provided the contrast, while the development set about stocking up the argument with richly-varied textures, building things so very beautifully towards a splendidly forceful full-orchestra statement. The horns having then shown us what nobility of tone and timing they were capable of, the music stuttered to a somewhat quizzical conclusion!

Then came what sounded like a taste of the “new” (Beethoven perhaps inspired by the newly-invented metronome of his friend Johann Maelzel) with an Allegretto scherzando second movement that seemed to pay homage to the “mechanical” of invention and regularity, the music, however, spectacularly “misbehaving” at the end and breaking free of such constraints with gleeful gesturings! I was diverted by this, but thoroughly enjoyed the “old” which then followed, a Tempo di Menuetto, played with delicious “old-world” languour, and featuring a trio in which the double basses literally “stole the show” with their ear-grabbing accented accompaniments of the winds!

What elfin scamperings there were at the finale’s beginning, followed by a truly off-the wall summons to unbuttoned hi-jinks! A contemporary English review of this work commented that “Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony depends wholly on its last movement for what applause it obtains; the rest is eccentric without being amusing, and laborious without effect.” More balanced was the view of Sir George Grove, who described it as full of “those mixtures of tragedy and comedy….which make (Beethoven’s) music so true a mirror of human life….equal to the great plays of Shakespeare….for the same reasons.” Inclined to whatever view, the listener is nevertheless carried along by the sheer energy of it all – de Waart didn’t overplay either comedy or drama, letting the finely-controlled orchestral playing allow us to make of the music what we wanted!

And suddenly (well, after the interval) we were faced with another work, one whose sounds seemed to mirror a different dimension of awareness, a new awakening to the world! So very hushed was the opening (the strings at first seeming more like slivers of light than sound), that the opening crescendo was suddenly upon us, muscular and thrustful rather than monumental and titanic – a mode that seemed to me to dominate de Waart’s interpretation of the instrumental parts of the work. While not straitjacketed, the lines were kept tensile throughout, with the timpani prominent, though more dramatic and whiplash than rugged and epic. There was no rhetoric – the mid-movement cataclysm, for example, almost took us by surprise with its suddenness, the timpani splendidly impactful, the strings and winds giving it all they had, the brass grimly hanging on to their reiterated single note – and then the crisis was passed, and the great river of music flowed onwards.

I thought the scherzo splendidly launched, with the timpani again focused and incisive – as the strands of impulse bonded together and danced along, the music took on an almost bucolic feeling, the energies good-humoured rather than incisive and grimly-focused, the mood further celebrated by the repeats. The Trio section thrust its way into the music’s trajectories, the wind-playing a joy, the horns lovely, the oboe solo delectably-phrased, and the strings judging their crescendi to perfection. Was the scherzo’s return slightly more sharp-edged, more urgent? – perhaps I’d gotten used to the music’s bucolic mood by then…..

The slow movement’s opening phrases moved swiftly and lightly, in accord with what we’d already heard, the impulses fluent and air-borne rather than time-arresting, the strings leading things forward to what’s always seemed to me to be the music’s “inner sanctum”, here the repose had a quality more “on the wing” than one holding time in thrall. But the playing was divine, winds and horn fervently communing, and stimulating a surge, a flow of energy, whose accompaniment even had a “swing” to it! I did want more sense of “leading up” to something with those brass shouts, however – surely more of a “transformational moment” than we got, here? Other listeners will possibly disagree – but I was wanting to be “imbued” with some kind of great “feeling” at this point, and felt not a little perplexed and disappointed at its rapid passsing, which emotion persisted right to the movement’s end…….

No time for any further self-communings – the vocal soloists had by now taken the stage and something was definitely brewing! In crashed the finale, with its “horror chord” leading the way! I wasn’t aware of the performance “hanging fire” in any way, here, except that a couple of people said to me afterwards that “it (the finale) took a long time to get going!”. What I registered was the growing excitement of it all, the brusque dismissal of the work’s previous themes and the impulsive reaction to the first appearance of the “Joy” theme. The melody itself here resembled a “song of the earth” with those superb double-basses, then beautifully “forwarded” by the ‘cellos and violas with the bassoons, and flowering with the violins’ treatment, before the winds and brass rang it grandly out at the climax.

Again the “horror chord”, and its accompanying tumult! – but this time the bass soloist (Anthony Robin Schneider) demanded our attention, with his “O Freunde, nicht diese töne!” – and the whole performance took wing, soloists and choir scaling the heights of physical impact and emotion and inviting the players and their conductor to join them, and spread the “joy” among their enraptured audience. I particularly enjoyed the work of both Schneider and mezzo, Kristin Darragh, and thought the work of the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir was overwhelming! Here we got the full, transcendental force of the music’s reaching out for the stars at “Über Sternen muß er wohnen”, and the full-blooded vigour of both voices and instruments in the fugal “Seid umschlungen, Millionen” – the work’s range and scope realised in this all-embracing panoply of creative and recreative human energy!

Has it all defined an orchestra and its conductor? Sergei Rachmaninov, asked once why he didn’t play more Beethoven Piano Sonatas, said, characteristically, “The Beethoven Sonatas contain everything – and no one pianist can play everything!” True, in a sense, but how one wishes that he HAD played and recorded them all, nevertheless! And how instructive in so many ways when performing artists, faced with a totality of creative achievement, attempt to realise something of that totality, as here! Very, very great honour to Edo de Waart and his splendid band of musicians for enabling so many of us to make all or even part of that precious journey with them so resplendently.

 

Compelling, relentless performances of Beethoven’s sixth and seventh symphonies continue the NZSO’s festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart

Beethoven Festival: Symphonies Nos 6 in F, Op 68 “Pastoral” and 7 in A, Op 92

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 30 August, 7:30 pm

When I looked around at the audience at the third of the Beethoven concerts and saw that every last seat was occupied, right to the far sides of the stalls, I felt I needed to retract my post-script remark about Wednesday’s audience, which was indeed not very large. I needed to consider that there were probably many who couldn’t afford all four and had to make a hard decision – which two or three would be most exciting?  And with works in all four programmes that were unmissable, many opted to sacrifice the early ones in the belief that they were, naturally, less great. While that’s not true, the notion that it might be was enough.

Another introductory comment: my earlier review of the first three symphonies mentioned earlier performances under De Waart; I listed 1, 3 and 7, forgetting the Choral which was played, with two of the same soloists, last November (it was reviewed here by Rosemary Collier).

The Pastoral Symphony
I don’t know why I was unexpectedly delighted, and surprised, as the orchestra launched with such spirit and enthusiasm into No 6. There’s no preparatory introduction to warm up or to allow the audience to settle down via an  Adagio molto, or a Poco sostenuto. We have arrived at once ‘auf dem Lande’ (Beethoven broke tradition at once by using German movement names; and it left no doubt that Beethoven was composing what was the first ‘programme’ symphony in any real sense – music that overtly paints a picture or tells a story).

Beethoven’s mood is felt throughout the auditorium from the very first phrase, and the orchestra left us in no doubt, with every section sounding full of the delight that Beethoven had created in his score. While flute and oboe were conspicuous early, all woodwinds had their place in the sun, playing as if they rejoiced in the pleasure they were bringing to surrounding peasants (a situation more conspicuous in the third movement, of course).

The second movement – the scene by the brook – was also at an above-average speed, even though the pleasure depicted here is more passive. Bridget Douglas ‘s bird-like flute was again prominent along with bassoon (Robert Weeks), clarinet (Patrick Barry) and Robert Orr’s oboe, all played much more distinctive roles than their usual job of being modestly integrated in the entire orchestral fabric. All produced sounds of the most pure and open quality. Their apotheosis was the later cuckoo imitation.

And though the third movement opened with warm, energised strings which pervaded it, keeping the almost transcendent joyousness well grounded; the  important role of the woodwinds, as well as horns, flowed through it.

The memorable element in the storm scene of the fourth movement was the startling, even frightening intensity of the Laurence Reese’s timpani.

If I’d imagined that the performance might have exhausted the possibility of even more beautiful music, the utterly rapturous last movement which combines a shepherd’s song with the composer’s ‘joyous and grateful feelings nach dem Sturm’, there was a quality about the playing that risked inducing tears of joy.

I had not really expected to be so moved by the performance of a symphony which one knew so intimately; however, I was somewhat (read: considerably) undone.

The Seventh Symphony
The first thing noticed about the orchestra’s constitution for the A major symphony was the space to the right of the trumpets, previously occupied by trombones, now vacant. It did not indicate any retreat into the 18th century.

Though No 7 is generally considered one of the dramatic, even heroic, odd-numbered symphonies, that’s not how it opens. A firm, emphatic chord is followed by steady but calm woodwind phrases lasting three or four minutes before the infectious and, in this performance, joyous dance tunes, Vivace, take over, with those growling string accompaniments satisfyingly prominent.  It’s long, near a quarter hour, and the pulse didn’t falter.

The orchestra opened the Allegretto (second movement), with its subdued lower strings creating an almost secretive atmosphere; in fact the entry of the first violins is unusually delayed, and in the key of A minor now, it created a certain air of expectancy, perhaps tension, that held the audience in an uncanny calm.

The third movement is named ‘Presto’, not Scherzo, but that’s what it is, in Rondo form, and De Waart launched into very fast. Even with the alternating, slower ‘trio’ section (meno presto assai) it remained driven by the same relentless energy, delivering repeat after repeat to the point of….well, hypnosis…. I have sometimes found it one repeat too many, but not this time; it was totally arresting.

At the end of the Presto, I sometimes sense disbelief that that last movement can deliver excitement more intense than the first three movements. De Waart allowed no pause to the fast, shocking start of the Allegro con brio, an instruction that sometimes seems rather an understatement. Here, ‘con fuoco’ or ‘con furia’ might have better described this performance, for a while at least. But there was something in his conducting that even hinted at acceleration, which would have been impossible given its current relentless pace.  And throughout all the compelling tumult, the orchestra was held together, hardly a blemish perceptible, sustained by the conductor’s unostentatious yet inspiring leadership.

Though the entire audience didn’t stand (Wellington audiences are extremely discriminating) the smaller numbers represented the entire house on its feet in many other places.

 

And then we heard……Symphonies Four and Five from the NZSO in its Beethoven-fest……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
DESTINY – Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies

BEETHOVEN FESTIVAL – Symphonies 4 in B-flat Op.60 and 5 in C Minor Op.67

Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Thursday, 29th August 2019

My Middle C colleague Lindis Taylor having reviewed the opening night of this momentous occasion (one would expect that performing the complete Beethoven Symphonies would be something of a milestone for any orchestra that takes itself and its “craft” seriously), it was my “turn” with the following two works of the canon. This was in no way tied to any preference for any particular work on the part of either of us – I could just as happily have reviewed the first three symphonies, as Lindis could have the following two. I simply happened to have a friend who wanted desperately to go with me to hear the Fifth Symphony – and so the arrangement was duly made. Of course, each of the “Nine” of Beethoven has a kind of distinction which at once singles it out from its fellows and binds it to what has gone before and comes after, so in a sense, wherever one “dips into” the canon of these works one comes up with fascinating ponderables, delights and revelations!

Robert Schumann, ever the one to “poeticise” a creative impulse, statement or finished work of art whether his own or another’s, declared that Beethoven’s “Fourth” Symphony, standing as it did between the mighty “Eroica” and the cataclysmic “Fifth” resembled “a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants”. In a sense, Beethoven almost HAD to write something that contrasted with such a world as brought into being by his previous symphony, though in its own way, the Fourth continued the composer’s exploration of symphonic possibilities very much in line with each of its predecessors – Schumann’s delightful characterisation of the work serves more as a starting-point for our senses than an out-and-out appraisal of the music’s merits.

Having said that, artistic endeavour has an endearing habit of attracting many colourful and telling responses bent on conveying an “essence” or a “character” belonging to a work – I’ve always enjoyed, for example, a potent description I came across somewhere of the hushed, shadowy and sombre effect of the Fourth’s opening measures – almost forty bars in length – as “4 am”, and find myself, while listening to most performances, conjuring up in my minds’ eye suitably dark, desolate and unpeopled vistas! Then, with the Fifth Symphony, there’s novelist EM Forster’s famous response of one of his characters in the book “Howard’s End”, to the “ghostly” parts of that work’s Scherzo, equating the music with the footsteps of “a goblin walking quietly over the universe from end to end…” and followed by others, “phantoms of cowardice and disbelief” – until the composer appears and scatters them with “vast roarings of a superhuman joy”.

I’d been told that all seats for the last concert in the Beethoven series, one featuring the “Choral” Symphony, and paired with the Eighth, had been sold – so I was surprised (as my colleague had been the previous night) to find the occasional whole row in the MFC galleries empty as well as spaces dotted around the stalls – I would have thought that the Fifth Symphony concert, as much as that for the Ninth, would have been a real drawcard.  My friend and I were sympathetic when a couple of people at the interval who were sitting alongside us turned and asked us which Symphony it was that we had just heard – but somewhat perplexed when they then asked us what it was that was coming next (were we REALLY in a concert hall in Wellington?)

The music, for the moment, crowded out extraneous thought, as the concert began – with a dark and mysterious B-flat chord whose development took our sensibilities to realms entirely removed from anything found in the aforementioned first three symphonies. Conductor de Waart kept the pulses ticking over throughout, eschewing the “stillness” of many a more romantically-conceived realisation I’d previously heard, with the focus firmly propelled towards the great outburst that launched the allegro, the orchestral playing alert and urgent, with timpani prominent, and wind and brass bolstering the string lines. A delectable “plunge” into the repeat enhanced our pleasure enormously, while the development brought to us those mysterious re-explorings of the opening, underpinned by the timpani, whose crescendo excitingly returned us to the energies of the allegro’s reprise.

Though de Waart’s purposeful way with the slow movement made something of a literal, almost “ungiving” impression with the opening figures, his players brought out the music’s lyricism, the wind-playing in all its forms a dream to experience! Particularly telling was the “vista of loneliness” generated by the solo clarinet, followed by the most heart-warming passage of birdsong from the flute, the contrasts between the two so breathtakingly characterised! After this the syncopated rhythms of the Scherzo set rumbustious accents against winsome lines, the two characters here deliciously “playing” with one another – then, each of the “Trio” sections were like balm for the senses after the hustle and bustle, the horns finally capping off the energies with a round-up call!

De Waart would have been particularly pleased with his players’ efforts throughout the finale – the players achieved a thrilling synthesis of strength and style throughout with some “star turns” where appropriate, such as the various winds’ helter-skelter renditions of the opening figure – the bassoon’s jaunty manner was an absolute delight! I liked also the great “hammerings at the door” which grew out of the molto perpetuo rhythms in places, and the double basses’ almost nonchalant rumblings as they demonstrated that they were up with the play as well!

So, after such disciplined and tightly-woven music-making, what was in store for us with the genre-defining Fifth Symphony? At the outset, de Waart seemed to emphasise the music’s severity and line, rather than any rhetoric and theatricality, the opening “integrated” into the urgency of the whole, with none of the sounds “held” for effect, but quickly moved onto the next phrase. At the development, the horn utterance remained part of the on-going argument rather than presented as an imperious statement, as was the return of the “Fate” theme – emphatic, but remaining “in tempo”, the oboe allowed the merest bit of give for its solo. However. with the string/wind/brass exchanges towards the end, we realised that the music’s tensions had been steadily building throughout, as the groups seemed, suddenly, to begin “fronting up” to one another, with the horns particularly vehement-sounding – most exciting!

The players launched the second movement quickly and eagerly, the great brass shouts at the phrase ends magnificently underpinned by the double-basses with tremendous thrust! The playing had such concentration, such focus, it sounded as if the musicians were “discovering” the music phrase-by-phrase as it went along, with nothing routine or pre-conceived – I felt an air of engagement throughout, not from any great over-emphasis, but from a sense of purpose, resulting in as many rapt and contemplative moments as there were stirring ones. The scherzo continued this process, so that the horns didn’t balefully blare their great repeated-note opening, but integrated it with the music’s overall movement, leading nicely to the double-basses’ great flexing of corporate muscle, echoed by the bassoons and the rest of the band, anxious to join in with the fun!

Then, of course, came the aforementioned “goblins walking across the world” section, here suitably angular and grotesque, the atmosphere suitably “charged” with mysterious expectation, the timpani eventually taking over from the winds and strings, the sounds magnificently held in check until the firmament was rent by the music’s unstoppable surge into C major, the brass finally allowed to roar out their music, and the rest of the orchestra conflagrated by the sheer energy of it all. De Waart’s control enabled everything to “speak”, but encouraged an on-going vitality, incorporating the spooky return of the scherzo’s “goblins” and the composer’s “vast roarings” putting the latter to flight once and for all, the strings singing out in tandem with the bassoon, piccolo and flute, and the music’s surging towards a communal joyousness at the end – the concert as a whole a true “darkness-to-light” journey of the human spirit, and a privilege to witness. Those many people who leapt to their feet at the C Minor symphony’s end in the Michael Fowler Centre in appreciation of what they had heard obviously thought so too!

 

 

Rewarding start to the NZSO’s Beethoven Festival from Edo de Waart

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart

Beethoven Festival: Symphonies 1 in C, 2 in D and 3 in E flat, ‘Eroica’

Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 28 August, 7:30 pm

While under Edo de Waart’s musical direction the NZSO has performed several Beethoven symphonies (I recall only 1, 3 and 7) the last complete cycle was a valedictory series (well, his penultimate year) by Pietari Inkinen in 2014. And De Waart is following the same, strictly chronological order, with the first concert devoted to Nos 1, 2 and 3.

Looking back at what I wrote about the first Inkinen concert, I find I’m making a similar and, I suppose, not uncommon observation that there is not the sort of marked difference between Nos 2 and 3 than is sometimes believed to exist. De Waart signalled that in the incremental enlargement of the orchestra between each of the three. No 1 used two horns and strings numbering from 10 down to three basses; in No 2 there were three horns, 12 first violins and four basses, while the Eroica employed four horns, 14 first violins, descending to six basses.

No 1 in C major
The C major symphony opened in a sort of secretive manner that was immediately captivating, strings and winds sounding separately quite a lot but always with a beautiful feeling of carefully balanced ensemble. Beethoven’s scoring and the smaller orchestra allowed individual instruments to emerge clearly.

There’s slightly more Haydn than Mozart audible in  the first symphony but it’s not fruitful to dwell on the composer’s predecessors, for you don’t have to be very perceptive to hear already what can only be Beethoven’s voice, a melodic individuality and a way of handling the shapes of phrases.

Like many of Haydn’s London symphonies, its slow movement, Andante cantabile con moto, is in triple time, and its performance enhanced its gentle character, its minuet-like character which sounds, in some ways more like a minuet than the third movement itself. The Menuetto was Beethoven’s only named minuet movement; while, in the sprightly way De Waart took it, the Menuetto seemed to be striving to be a Scherzo.

I remember how, when I first heard the symphony in my teens, being captivated in the last movement, Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace, by the way Beethoven teased the listener with successive ‘attempts’ at the rising major scale, in G for the moment, rather than the home key of C. The touch of restrained wit seemed to be present throughout De Waart’s performance, and it seemed to draw attention to other games, such as the tossing of the theme back and forth between winds and strings.

No 2 in D major
Not only does each successive symphony grow in length and instrumentation, but also in melodic and formal complexity. For my ears, there’s as much evolution and elaboration between 1 and 2 as between 2 and 3. And De Waart created a mood in the first movement in which the D major key sounded very much more mature and meditative that its predecessor, with its more elaborate orchestration and melodic development; all of which was spread out at a moderate speed – it lasted about 12 minutes; it commonly comes in at about 10. The sense of maturity and calm seriousness, dictated I suppose by the key of D, was consolidated by the Larghetto second movement which shifts to A major, confirming its emotional richness, compared with the first symphony.

After writing this I came across an anonymous quote from a contemporary (1804) review of the D major symphony which is in line with my own feeling about it:

“It is a noteworthy, colossal work, of a depth, power, and artistic knowledge like very few. It has a level of difficulty, both from the point of view of the composer and in regard to its performance by a large orchestra (which it certainly demands), quite certainly unlike any symphony that has ever been made known. It demands to be played again and yet again by even the most accomplished orchestra, until the astonishing number of original and sometimes very strangely arranged ideas becomes closely enough connected, rounded out, and emerges like a great unity, just as the composer had in mind.”

Commentators commonly remark on the synchronous appearance of Beethoven’s distressing Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802 confessing his dismay and wretchedness at his increasing deafness, and I hear this in the symphony’s general mood.

While it’s labelled Scherzo, the third movement seems not to conform particularly to its meaning: ‘joke’ or ‘jest’. Thus it doesn’t suggest any great departure from the spirit of the rest of the symphony.  The last movement persists with the somewhat sombre mood of the other movements, and the orchestra continued to relish the greater sophistication and occasionally teasing seriousness of the movement.

The Eroica
And so, I really don’t share the common view that it’s really only with the Eroica, that the real Beethoven emerged. Its fame derives in part from its intended dedication to Napoleon and Beethoven’s shock when he crowned himself Emperor in 1804, scratching out the dedication. And there’s its grandeur, its greater length and the enlarged orchestra; and its surprising and unusual turns of tonality and orchestral texture. At least one writer has noted that Beethoven could in certain respects have modelled his E flat symphony on Mozart’s E flat symphony, No 39 (inter alia, its first movement in triple time, its second in duple time).

That writer argued his case, concluding: “Even from his earliest works like the Opus 1 Piano Trios, Opus 9 String Trios, opus 5 Cello Sonatas, and Opus 2 Piano Sonatas, Beethoven’s breadth of spiritual vision, his profundity of emotion, his sky-lifting wit and unconstrained audacity are fully developed.”

I don’t claim that there are aspects and elements of No 3 that exist in a mature shape in No 2; they are merely less conspicuous, not so fully formed, suggesting that these signs of genius are present and will soon emerge.

Its main claim to fame is the profoundly impressive Marcia funebre, its second movement, which introduced a powerfully expressive emotionalism of a kind not heard before. Here, Beethoven does, emphatically, transcend anything he’d written before; the challenge is to perform it in a way that reveals its genius without exaggerating the emotion. De Waart’s approach to it was through restraint and an elegiac spirit that was controlled and thoughtful with no hint of unrestrained or even suppressed grief.

The Scherzo, which Beethoven clearly uses as an injunction of ‘life goes on’, after its timid first bars, rang out as an expression of optimism and human delight, perhaps also in the natural world.

To have put the three symphonies in chronological order is at once an obvious and a revelatory approach; I only hope that the audience took away the same message that I did, that, apart from the Marcia funebre, the first two are not far behind the third.

De Waart’s taste and instinct for finding the middle ground, neither too reticent nor to flamboyant, led to performances that were temperate and assured, without vices. They left Beethoven’s voice and intelligence to be understood and heard without input from an egotistic intermediary.

But …
While it’s reported that there’s a full house for the last concert, with Nos 8 and 9, the audience on Wednesday rather worried me. Though the gallery was reasonable well inhabited, the stalls looked little more than half occupied. And more empty seats appeared around me after the interval. Is Wellington…New Zealand…on an irreversible cultural decline as a new generation, less exposed to great music in school and in the general musical environment, is simply less broadly educated.