Orchestra Wellington’s second concert featuring Mozart violin concertos and city-named symphonies

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington
Conductor and violin soloist: Amalia Hall

Mozart: Violin Concerto No 4 in D, K 218
Mozart: Symphony No 38 in D, K 504, “Prague”

St Andrews on The Terrace

Saturday 13 June 2020, 4 pm

This second programme in Orchestra Wellington’s ‘recovery’ series of concerts at St Andrew’s continued with the twin themes: the last three of the five violin concertos written in 1775 when Mozart was 19 {if we don’t count the dubious violin concerto “No 7 (K 271a/271i)”}; and the three symphonies that bear place names.

Now in the pandemic’s ‘alert level 1’, this was a full house, if we don’t count the gallery which was not open.

The acoustic of St Andrew’s has given me problems in the past, when amateur or student orchestras have not calmed exuberant brass and percussion players. But here, an excellent professional orchestra guided by a gifted professional musician as both conductor and soloist found the right dynamic levels.

If there was anything to notice it was the balance in the concerto between strings and the limited wind instruments (two oboes and two horns); and the contrast between the delicacy of Amalia Hall’s solo violin playing and the fairly robust body of orchestral string players. But it’s a matter of taste, whether or not closer dynamic affinities between violin and orchestra might have been rewarding.

As was the unvarying habit in the 18th century, Mozart left no cadenzas for his violin concertos, as the virtuoso soloist was usually pleased to compose his own, thus drawing attention to his genius as both composer and performer. Amalia played cadenzas, not too extended, in each movement. Several violinists have published cadenzas for the Mozart concertos, usually roughly in sympathy with Mozart’s period and style. I don’t know whose versions she played, but they were not uncharacteristic of the period and reminded us that she is a world-class violinist.

The symphony in this concert was the latest of the three. ‘Paris’ was written in 1778, ‘Linz’ in 1783 and ‘Prague’ in 1786/87. It was written 18 months before the three last, great symphonies, after The Marriage of Figaro which had a great success in Prague in December 1786, and was perhaps the occasion for Mozart’s visit when the Prague symphony may have been performed. Don Giovanni was premiered in Prague under the composer later in 1787 and that was the subject of a famous German novella, Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (‘Mozart on the journey to Prague’) by the poet Eduard Mörike.

There are more dramatic contrasts in style, in instrumentation, in sheer musical genius between a 19-year-old’s violin concerto and a mature 30-year old’s symphony.

The orchestra did it proud, in part because Mozart had access to flutes, bassoons and trumpets, and timpani too, as well as the oboes and horns used in the concertos. Appropriate baroque timpani were used, lighter and crisper than the timpani normally in use today.

Amalia Hall conducted discreetly from her slightly elevated concertmaster’s seat, and the effects were an idiomatic, well integrated performance: both decently bold and light spirited. Her skilled management was evident right from the contemplative opening Adagio introduction, and on through the Allegro with warm strings and timpani; and particularly in the fugal passages in the quite substantial first movement. The second movement acted as both a thoughtful slow movement and also perhaps suggested, in slowish triple time, the normal but here non-existent minuet, third movement,

It’s a symphony that handles many of the emotional elements of the last symphonies, and they were sensitively captured.  Hall’s guidance in the last movement, marked Presto, was indeed that: brisk and robust, reminding us that we have a fine Wellington orchestra, all our own. St Andrew’s provided a fine venue in a crisis environment for a smaller orchestra and more limited audience. We’ll soon be able to hear it at full symphonic scale (here there were about 35 players) in a more generous acoustic with all the luxuries of a modern concert hall.

Orchestra Wellington restores live music to the city with Mozart at St Andrews

Posted on by admin

Orchestra Wellington
Conductor and violin soloist: Amalia Hall

Mozart: Violin Concerto No 5 in A, K 219

Mozart: Symphony No 31 in D, K 297, “Paris”

St Andrews on The Terrace

Saturday 6 June 2020,  1 pm

This was the first of three concerts entitled “Amalia and Friends” featuring three violin concerti and three symphonies by Mozart:  “Paris”, “Prague” and “Linz”.

After nearly three months of lockdown without live music, this first outing for Orchestra Wellington was an almost festive occasion for its Wellington audience.  Over the past weeks the NZSO has invited us in to individual members’ homes for cameo performances in the “engage@home Play Our Part”, and there has been a multitude of Youtube creations mainly referring to Covid Lockdown situations, but we’ve been starved of live music performances.

With a limited capacity in St Andrews the available tickets “sold out” very quickly and many keen supporters of the orchestra missed out.  Although there was a limit of one hundred in the audience, there were few signs of separation for physical distancing, as many in the audience came in groups and would naturally be comfortable sitting together.  It was a “free” concert but the audience was encouraged to make a koha as names were checked off at the door.

The violin concerto is the last of the five that Mozart wrote while still a teenager and has earned the nickname “Turkish” from the lively dance-like middle section of the final movement.  The orchestra for this work has a reduced string section and only oboes and horns in the wind section.

Amalia made her appearance in an elegant black velvet dress slightly off the shoulder and welcomed the audience.  She then stepped back amongst the strings and directed the orchestra just as Mozart would have done.  But the difference here was that she played with the tutti sections until her solo began.  The first movement is labelled Allegro Aperto – aperto meaning literally “open” – it is thought that Mozart intended this movement to be played more broadly than the “allegro” would suggest.  This was certainly the impression I had with the opening section, assertive yet graceful, followed by a complete change of mood and tempo with the adagio introduction of the soloist.  When she took up the solo she stepped forward, unobtrusively turning pages on her ipad with a foot pedal.

The second movement opened as did the first with an orchestral tutti before the entrance of the soloist. With many modulations this movement seems to be somewhat sombre in mood, which is in great contrast to the Rondo, whose middle section launches into a vigorous dance-like rhythm which has earned the entire work the nickname “Turkish”.  With it’s radical leaps and percussive bass techniques it probably sounded very exotic to Mozart’s audiences.

Each movement features a cadenza, the last two written by Amalia herself.  She has an engaging presence and her performance showed great rapport with this style and in particular she handled the pianissimo passages with faultless delicacy and control.  One member of the audience later told me “her violin sang”.

The “Paris” Symphony was written a few years later when Mozart was, as you might expect, in Paris. It seems he didn’t have a very high opinion of the Parisians and hoped to please the audience with “simple” music and several repeated sections.  It seems he succeeded as the work was greeted enthusiastically at the time, as it was on this occasion.  It was here that he found that he had a much larger orchestra to work with and for the first time used clarinets (and flutes, trumpets, horns, bassoons and timpani).

Perhaps it was because I’d heard nothing but recorded music for nearly three months, or perhaps because I usually hear this orchestra from the far reaches of the Michael Fowler Centre, but in these more intimate surroundings, the orchestra sounded more vibrant with more clarity and more precision than I’ve experienced previously.  What a pity it is that it would not be economic to put on more concerts in similar venues.

 

 

A comprehensive update on the Concert FM crisis; courtesy New Zealand Opera News

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The following is an article from the February-March issue of New Zealand Opera News

The Plight and Future of RNZ Concert

A report and comment on what were the proposed changes to this important Public Service Radio Broadcast Medium

RNZ Concert to be Gutted
On 5 February 2020 this announcement hit the headlines immediately before the Waitangi Day Holiday period on 6 February 2020. This announcement was not signalled in advance and we believe was not sanctioned by the Broadcasting Minister, Kris Faafoi who was blindsided by RNZ CEO Paul Thompson’s announcement, as discussions and decisions were pending about the way forward for public service broadcasting’s planned merging of Radio New Zealand and TVNZ to form a new public broadcasting entity.

We believe that this was possibly a determined political stance by Thompson, although we hesitate to suggest that it might have been a ploy, to angle for increased funding from government, although the resultant outrage was possibly not expected by RNZ Management.

Out with Classical; in with “youth platform”
In the biggest overhaul of its music services in years, Radio New Zealand (RNZ) is planning to cut back its classical music station RNZ Concert and replace it on their FM radio frequency with music for a younger audience as part of a new multimedia music brand. Mediawatch asks RNZ Chief Executive (CEO) Paul Thompson and music content director Willy Macalister to explain the move.

The broadcaster was proposing to remove RNZ Concert from its FM frequencies and transform it into an automated non-stop music station which will stream online and play on AM radio.

It was to be replaced on FM by a service aimed at a younger, more diverse audience as part of a new multimedia “music brand”. RNZ Concert would be taken of FM radio on May 29 and the youth platform would be phased in ahead of its full launch on August 28. RNZ’s music staff were informed about the proposed changes on 5 February 2020 in an emotional, occasionally heated meeting with the RNZ music content director Willy Macalister, head of radio and music David Allan, and chief executive Paul Thompson.

According to documents for staff, the move would eliminate 17 jobs at RNZ Music, including all RNZ Concert presenter roles, from late March. Those would be replaced with 13 jobs at the new youth platform, while four remain in the downsized RNZ Concert service and RNZ Music in Wellington.

The documents for staff say the proposed changes are aimed at securing new audiences for RNZ. While its listenership is predominantly Pākehā and skewed towards older people, the new music brand would target people aged 18 to 34, including Māori and Pasifka audiences, the proposal says.

“RNZ has strong audiences but they skew older. We are thinking five and ten years ahead. We need to start to connect with younger New Zealanders,” RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson told Mediawatch. He said RNZ Concert’s classical music focus has prevented RNZ from fulfilling its Charter’s requirement to broadcast a range of music and performances.

“We are expanding our services off our current resources. There are some tough choices in that but this is a really good story of RNZ getting to more New Zealanders,” he said.

But it’s not a good story for those accustomed to a repertoire of classical music on FM radio for many years. AM transmission is sub-optimal for live concerts and it would be interrupted when Parliament sessions are broadcast on the AM network.

‘Consume’ your classics off ‘Freeview’, says Macalister
“It is still available on Freeview and listening to RNZ Concert is mostly in the home so the ability to consume it in stereo is still there,” said Willy Macalister. The scaled-back Concert will offer recorded music round the clock, but few of the RNZ Concert programmes currently on air will be made after the new music brand is established.

“We are in consultation over that but are going to pull back on some of it,” said Macalister. “We will continue to record and air concerts and support orchestras where we can,” said Paul Thompson. Mediawatch understands the new youth platform would have a playlist spanning multiple musical genres with a heavy focus on New Zealand music. It would be active on social media.

“Genre is no longer relevant to the audience,” the proposal document says. “We intend to be a broad proposition for everyone … but it’s got to have relevance for 18 – 35 year old audience,” Macalister told Mediawatch. “One of the things that streaming services have taught us is that when you look at the top playlists, they’re not necessarily talking about genres of music. They’re talking about emotional state and activities. We’re not the only country that has this kind of brand. Australia, the UK and other countries have vibrant radio returning profits.”

“We’re not chasing dollars. We are commercial-free, and we will play more New Zealand music than any commercial format would sustain” said Paul Thompson, adding that the new RNZ Music would feature news content tailored to the younger audience it hopes to attract.

This all began in 2015
RNZ has been looking at drawing younger audiences with music since 2015 when an internal review concluded its “approach to the delivery of music content remains in a time warp.” A year later – with little fanfare – the ‘RNZ Music’ brand was launched as part of a strategy to bring in new listeners.

At the time, Thompson told Mediawatch he wasn’t interested in duplicating commercial broadcasting on the air or online. “Why would we provide anything the commercial broadcasters are quite happily doing?” he said. “I hope what we do will pull in more people – especially online – but I don’t see it as a massive New Zealand Opera News 34 audience growth initiative,” he said in 2015.

The station also launched youth-focused digital platform The Wireless – which had some music content – in 2014. But the Wireless was closed down and folded into the rest of rnz.co.nz in 2018. “That didn’t have the broadcast component in it and that’s what will make this proposal far more effective,” said Paul Thompson.

Editorial Comment:
It was the arrogance of CEO Thompson, Macalister and Allan in totally misunderstanding the strong audience support for RNZ Concert, combined with the complicit full support of the Board, as stated by Board chair Dr Jim Mather and the total ineptitude in their handing of this issue that really disappointed and angered faithful listeners.

It beggars belief that they were ignorant of how RNZ Concert listeners would respond to this sacrilege in dismantling an iconic treasure, a taonga, of an artist entity, and they did so, scathingly and swiftly and with real passion. Critical comments about the RNZ management’s handling of the announcement of their proposed plans, that would decimate RNZ Concert and actions came thick and fast from previous Prime Minster, Helen Clark, Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, ministers, ex-ministers, parliamentarians, of all stripes to high profile performers for example, such as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and outraged listeners of all ages including from the so-called “18 – 34 years old young demographic” alike.

Clearly the CEO and Chairman of the Board hadn’t anticipated such a powerful reaction, and initially foolishly attempted to defend their actions, complaining about funding levels. To alienate the demographic of their listeners arguably including the most highly qualified intellectuals, and not expect pushback seems folly by Thompson and his managers.

All of that added to the ire of listeners as numerous letters to the editor published in newspapers attest along with petitions attracting thousands of signatures and a #Save RNZ Concert campaign was launched. Thankfully in appeasement, eventually a change-of-heart back-down from Thompson emerged with the plan shelved as proposed for now, with a reprieve for those threatened presenter and music staff positions.

Thompson finally is in discussion possibilities and options with the music staff, but why wasn’t careful and informed discussion held before this, and why should the music staff be presented with the challenge?

Where are the so-called management staff in all of this?
Willy’s previous experience and position at George FM prior to this suggests that the implied “youth platform” was intended as a replacement for RNZ Concert all along, not a coexisting of both genres. So why is one genre to be sacrificed for another, alienating the known 173,000 RNZ Concert Listeners?

And with little or no interest in classical music and the proper future of RNZ Concert how could or would he understand or have knowledge in what he was doing.
Why was he appointed to this position in the first place?

Tacit in this messy fiasco is a mostly silent board, February – March 2020 35 apart from unconvincing and unsatisfactory words from the Chair Dr Jim Mather.

There is so much that is unsatisfactory in this badly managed and organised proposed plan that for any proper lasting resolution there really needs to be a complete cleanout of all of that management team and board for anyone to have any confidence in them, or that they will do the job properly. Where was the proper governance and control that we should and would expect from highly paid people such as these?

Faafoi’s major quandary
The Broadcasting Minister, Kris Faafoi now has a major quandary to resolve, if he can, and the RNZ Management needs to be swept clean and a new and different set of qualified board members and management needs to be put in place. Surely that can happen?

We await with huge interest and hope that a sensible resolution will emerge with RNZ Concert and its talented, expert presenters and music staff essentially remain intact, while any “youth platform” is carefully and thoughtfully considered for Radio New Zealand, now offered a separate FM bandwidth, option so that they can co-exist, on an FM broadcast bandwidth, and most listeners to RNZ Concert can be satisfied with what is on offer.

But the fate of Concert FM is still far from being resolved. Coinciding with the 87th birthday of the original radio station that morphed into the current day RNZ Concert, a large rally with a variety of music, orchestral players, massed choir and opera chorus, and individual speakers addressing the crowd, presented, the musical pieces on the steps and the grass outside of Parliament.

A determined and strong throng of a few thousand made their thoughts on the future of RNZ Concert very obvious, egged on by the exuberant MCs, Linda & Jools Topp, and actor, Wellington Paranormal’s Karen O’Leary.

Hopes inspired by Grant Robertson
Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, Grant Robertson impressed with his eloquent, honest, genuine and impassioned support for public broadcasting and the future of RNZ Concert with a message to CEO Paul Thompson as to what he expected. Speaking to the crowd, he said.. “… the only proposals government were interested in were ones that built on the strengths of Concert FM (sic).”

Given the strength of the argument delivered with such intensity and passion by Robertson, Thompson would be foolish not to accommodate the sentiments and feelings of the vociferous crowd, the minister’s and government stance. The celebratory nature of the colourful, tuneful event was capped off by the singing of “Happy Birthday” and the shared cutting of the cake, by the youngest supporter at 2 years old and the oldest supporter at 89 years old!

We do feel hopeful and heartened by the response of all present and similar gatherings of support elsewhere and in the letters to the editors and editorials and look forward to a satisfying conclusion to this self-generated messy debacle created by the Board, the CEO and his management team at Radio New Zealand.

Originally published in the February – March 2020 issue of New Zealand Opera News; published here with permission from New Zealand Opera News Editor Garth Wilshere, it remains the intellectual property of the editor. 

The composer of Kopernikus, Claude Vivier: interview with conductor Vladimir Jurowski

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Why Quebec composer Claude Vivier was ahead of his time

In the absence of real concerts that Middle C can review, why not publish things of musical interest that might in small part make up for the deprivations we all suffer at present? 

Here is an article that appeared in 2018 in the Montreal Globe and Mail that might interest those who saw Claude Vivier’s opera, Kopernikus, at the recent festival in Wellington. I came across a reference to Vivier in the French magazine, Opéra Magazine: a concert performance of Vivier’s Hiérophanie, scheduled for performance at the Paris Philharmonie (the city’s brilliant new concert hall) in September last.

See Middle C review at https://middle-c.org/2020/03/festival-stages-remarkable-eccentric-opera-by-canadian-claude-vivier/)

In seeking information about Hiérophanie, I found this interview/article. 

Article by Catherine Kustanczy

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published April 13, 2018

This article was published more than 1 year ago. Some information in it may no longer be current.

Many things can be said about the music of Claude Vivier, but one thing is certain: No one who hears it is quite the same afterward. Vivier, who would have turned 70 on April 14th, is a unique figure in music. Orphaned as a baby, he attended Catholic boarding school and later the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, before studying composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. A boisterous figure known for his distinct laugh and an omnipresent sheepskin coat, Vivier’s works, largely biographical, were, as British musicologist Bob Gilmore has written, a way of “confronting loneliness, darkness, terror; of negotiating a relationship with God; of voicing an insatiable longing for acceptance and for love.”

His music combines voice, rhythm and instrumental textures, in French, German, and even imaginary languages. Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Do you believe in the immortality of the soul), his final, unfinished work, concerns a narrator (named Claude) meeting a young man and being fatally stabbed; Vivier would perish in this exact way on March 8, 1983.

An interview with conductor Vladimir Jurowski: his views about Vivier

There have been numerous tributes to Vivier over the past year, with Canadian outlets Soundstreams, Against the Grain Theatre and Esprit Orchestra (the latter being long-time supporters) presenting work. But if the old Canadian trope holds true about foreign recognition being a litmus test for success, then Vivier passes, with flying colors.

One notable tribute unfolded in Berlin in late February. Presented by contemporary classical group ensemble unitedberlin (who have previously explored Vivier’s work), the concert saw Russian conductor and artistic adviser Vladimir Jurowski exercising his music talents and theatrical instincts with equal zeal, particularly during Hiérophanie (1970-71), in which he played a stern priest/judge, directing members of the ensemble through shouts, shuffles and prostrations, in a performance faithful to Vivier’s animated instructions.

Days later, Jurowski led the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester (Radio Symphony Orchestra) Berlin, where he is chief conductor and artistic director, in a harrowing performance of works by Berg, Shostakovich and contemporary Australian composer Brett Dean, whose operatic adaptation of Hamlet was given its world premiere at the Glyndebourne opera festival last summer, with Jurowski on the podium.

As well as being principal conductor of the London Philharmonic, he holds a directorship in Moscow and keeps a busy schedule of dates across Europe. Building creative programs, especially ones featuring 20th-century work, is his specialty, and in the case of Vivier, he notes that “the further away we’re getting from him physically, the more important he becomes spiritually and artistically.”

In 2021, Jurowski begins duties as general music director of the Bavarian State Opera and has indicated that Munich audiences can anticipate lesser-known works alongside opera hits. Will that include Vivier’s 1980 opera Kopernikus? Only Jurowski knows for sure.

Why Vivier in 2018?

He was, in many ways, ahead of his time, and he was beyond time and space. Some people who were very much in their time, like [Karlheinz] Stockhausen or [Pierre] Boulez, made their time, made it an epoch – an era – and in some of their aspects, remain timeless, but in other aspects sound extremely dated. For instance, Stockhausen, who Vivier studied with, a lot of his work sounds incredibly dated today. Vivier, because he was creating his style from scratch, precreated something which came into full effect only after he departed. So now, of course, we can only imagine what he could have developed had he lived any longer.

When did you first hear the work of Vivier?

My personal route was via [French composer] Gérard Grisey . I discovered his last piece, which he also tragically left unfinished, because he died – Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold – and that piece was, in its initial stages, connected to Vivier’s death. So Grisey was trying to pay tribute to his friend, and they were near-contemporaries. I somehow instinctively felt that in the case of Vivier, we have one of those rare, highly romantic cases where the life of a composer and the work of a composer become one thing. In my head, Vivier is sitting up there with people like Gustav Mahler and Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Franz Schubert, those people for whom an artistic expression became an existentialist act which could be life-changing, life-saving or life-annihilating. So without having any facts at hand to prove the case, I am convinced, more than I am convinced about anything else, that Vivier had initiated and planned and nearly, could say, staged, his departure.

You think so?

I’m convinced. Having composed this imaginary death, he felt he had to oblige his own artistic imagination, and go. It’s like one of the traditional Japanese beliefs, that if you cannot change the world and strongly dislike it, you’re supposed to leave the world to its karma and leave. For someone like Vivier, who’d been strongly connected to all sorts of Oriental spiritual beliefs and practices, that was the most natural thing to do. The unnatural aspect of course is the form of death.

So his passing was his final artistic act?

That’s exactly what I feel about it.

What’s it been like to be so involved with a work that demands more as a conductor?

I think that’s to do with me generally being some kind of, I call it bat syndrome, a bat in the sense of it being an animal which has left the world of mammals but hasn’t quite reached the world of birds. I am flying between the worlds.

So you don’t want to be a traditional conductor?

No, it’s boring. There’s a whole new generation, people like Teodor Currentzis – he also goes over borders stylistically – we are very different, but still I think it’s a genuine interest for not just one direction in the music. For me, the predominant points of my artistic being are symphonic music, early music, contemporary music and music theatre. And sometimes I’m even allowed to combine all of them in one.

 

Wanganui Music Society 75th Jubilee Concert includes Wellington guest musicians

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wanganui Music Society 75th Jubilee Concert

Vocal and instrumental music
Various Artists

The Concert Chamber, War Memorial Centre,
Queen’s Park, Watt St,. Whanganui

Sunday, 8th March 2020

Every now and then (and without warning) a “Middle C” reviewer will be overcome by a “questing s

pirit” which will result in the same reviewer popping up somewhere unexpected and writing about an event whose location, on the face of things, seems somewhat outside the parameters of the usual prescription for “Middle C’”s coverage – vis-à-vis, “concerts in the Greater Wellington region”. In this case mitigating circumstances brought a kind of “Capital connection” to a Whanganui occasion, and certainly one that, when I heard about the details beforehand, was (a) eager and (b) pleased to be able to take advantage of the chance to attend and enjoy!

This was the 75th Jubilee Concert given by the Wanganui Music Society in the city’s magnificent Concert Chamber, part of the superbly-appointed War Memorial Centre. The concert was one which brought together musicians who were either members of the Society or who had previously contributed to past programmes – so there was a real sense of appropriateness concerning the event’s overall essence and presentation of community performance and guest participation. And though my own connections with the city and its cultural activities were more tenuous,  I felt here a kind of “once-removed” kinship with the efforts of the Society and its artists, being a Palmerstonian by origin and in the past having taken part in similar events in that not-too-far-away sister-city.

To be honest, however, my presence at the concert was largely to do with a particular piece of music being performed that afternoon – Douglas Lilburn’s song-cycle, Sings Harry must be one of the most quintessential Kiwi artistic creations of singular expression ever made, bringing together, as it does, words and music formed out of the flesh and blood, sinews and bones of two this country’s most archetypal creative spirits, Lilburn himself and poet Denis Glover. The Sings Harry poems were the poet’s homespun observations about life made by a once-vigorous old man looking back on his experiences for better or for worse – and six of these poems were taken by the composer and set to music that seemed to many to fit the words like a second skin.

Glover, at first enthused by his friend Lilburn’s settings, gradually came to disapprove of them, at one low point famously and disparagingly characterising the music as “icing on my rock cakes!”. The work has survived all such vicissitudes, but still today doesn’t get performed as often as I, for one, would like to hear it. Which is where this concert came in, offering the chance to hear one of the piece’s most respected and widely-acknowledged exponents, Wellington baritone Roger Wilson, bring it all to life once more, rock-cake, icing and all, for the edification of those who attended this Jubilee event.

Another Wellington connection was afforded by a second singer, mezzo-soprano Linden Loader, who’s been in the past a familiar performer in the Capital’s busy round of concerts, if mostly, in my experience, as a member of a vocal ensemble rather than as soloist. Here, though, she took both roles, firstly as a soloist in two of Elgar’s adorable Sea Pictures and a folksong arrangement, My Lagen Love by Hamilton Harty, and then joining Roger Wilson for three vocal duets, one by Brahms and two by Mahler, the latter calling for some “characterful” expression which both singers appeared to relish to the utmost!

The only other performer whose name I knew, having seen and heard her play in Wellington as well, was flutist-cum-pianist Ingrid Culliford, whose prowess as a flutist I’d often seen demonstrated in concert, but not her pianistic skills, which made for a pleasant surprise – her partnership with ‘cellist Annie Hunt created a winning “ebb-and-flow” of emotion in Faure’s Elegy; and while not particularly “appassionato” the playing of Saint-Saens’s work Allegro appassionato by the pair had plenty of wry mischief – an affectionate performance! She also collaborated as a pianist with the excellent young flutist Gerard Burgstaller, in a movement from a Mozart Flute Concerto, and then as a flutist herself with soprano Winifred Livesay in beautifully-voiced and -phrased renderings of American composer Katherine Hoover’s evocative Seven Haiku.

Other performers brought to life what was in sum a varied and colourful amalgam of music, among them being pianist Kathryn Ennis, possibly the afternoon’s busiest performer! As well as partnering both Linden Loader in music by Elgar and Hamilton Harty, with Roger Wilson joining the pair for vocal duets by Brahms and Mahler, Ennis then later returned with Wilson for Lilburn’s Sings Harry, and, finally, closed the concert with two piano solos, pieces by Liszt and Khachaturian. I though her a sensitive and reliable player, very much enjoying her evocations with Loader of the differing oceanic characters in the Elgar Songs, singer and pianist rich and deep in their response to “Sea Slumber Song”, and creating a bard-like kind of exotic wonderment with “Where Corals Lie”. Harty’s My Lagen Love also teased out the best in singer and pianist, here a winning mix of lyricism and candid expression, with a nicely-moulded piano postscript.

Piano duettists Alison Safey and Alton Rogers brought flow and ear-catching variety of tone to their performance of the first movement of a Mozart Sonatina K.240, before further treating us to Matyas Seiber’s Three Short Dances, each one given an appropriate “character” (I liked the slow-motion Habanera-like aspect of the opening “Tango” a good deal!). Afterwards came violinist Jim Chesswas, most sensitively accompanied, I thought, by pianist Leonard Cave, the two recalling for me childhood memories of listening to Gracie Fields’ voice on the radio, with a strong, sweetly-voiced rendition of The Holy City, giving me a lot of unexpected pleasure!

Roger Wilson’s and Linden Loader’s “Duets” bracket both charmed (Brahms) and entertained (Mahler) us, the singers collaborating with pianist Kathryn Ennis in Brahms’s “Es rauschet das Wasser” to bring out moments of true magic in the lines’ interaction (ardent, steadfast tones from Loader, and tenderly-phrased responses from Wilson, the two voices blending beautifully towards the song’s end, with everything admirably echoed by Ennis’s resonant piano evocations). After this the Mahler duets were riotous fun, each singer a vivid foil for the other, the characterisations almost larger-than-life, but readily conveying the texts’ none-too-subtle directness.

Soprano Marie Brooks began the concert’s second half, her sweet, soubrettish-like tones well-suited to Faure’s Après Un Rêve, her line secure, somewhat tremulous of character, but well-focused – her pianist, Joanna Love, proved an admirable collaborator, whose sounds blended happily with the voice. Flutist Gerard Burgstaller then impressed with his control and command of line and breath in Mozart’s opening movement of K313, as did soprano Winifred Livesay in Katherine Hoover’s Seven Haiku, her partnership with Ingrid Culliford as mentioned above, distilling some memorable moments of loveliness.

Sings Harry was a focal point for me, of course, Roger Wilson here admirably characterising the work’s unique qualities in his brief spoken introduction, remarking on its essential “elusiveness” for the performer, and nicely characterising his “journey” of involvement with the work. Here I thought singer and pianist effectively evoked “Harry and guitar” at the outset, and caught the whimsicality of the character’s “sunset mind” which followed, in a suitably harlequinesque manner. Of course, Glover and Lilburn whirl us almost disconcertingly through such moments before setting us down in deserts/oases of aching reflection – firstly “Once the days”, and even more tellingly, after the whirlwind of “Come mint me up the golden gorse”, leaving us almost bereft in the following “Flowers of the Sea”, The latter sequence here palpably grew in poignant resignation with each utterance, leaving us at the end “broken open” and completely at the mercy of those ceaseless tides. I thought Wilson’s and Ennis’s presenting of both this and the concluding “I remember” totally “inside” the words and music, and felt somewhat “lump-in-the-throat” transfixed by the ending – Harry, with his guitar, was left as we had found him, but with so much understanding and intense wonderment by then imparted to us……

Kathryn Ennis concluded the concert with two piano solos, firstly Franz Liszt’s well-known Liebestraum No. 3 and then a work new to me, a Toccata by Aram Khachaturian. While I thought the Liszt technically well-managed I thought everything simply too reined-in as the piece gathered in intensity, the expression held back as if the player was fearful of provoking that often-voiced criticism of “vulgarity” made by detractors of the composer and his work, but which in committed hands can, of course, produce such an overwhelming effect! Better was the Khachaturian, presented like some kind of impressionistic “whirl” here, to great and memorable effect – happily, a fitting conclusion to the proceedings!

 

 

Scrupulous and spirited choral concert from Netherlands Chamber Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Festival of the Arts
Netherlands Chamber Choir conducted by Peter Dijkstra

Programme 1:
Brahms: Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen? Op 74 No 1
Three songs for a six-voice choir Op 42 (setting of poems by Brentano, Müller and Herder)
Bach Motet, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied,
Poulenc: Un sior de neige
Martin: Mass for Double Choir

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 7 March, 7:30 pm

The Netherlands Chamber Choir has a fine reputation in the more sophisticated realms of international choirs.

Brahms motet
I have to confess, as a lover of Brahms’s orchestral, piano and chamber music, that neither his Lieder nor his choral works have appealed to me greatly: especially the a cappella pieces.  Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen? (‘Why has light been given to the weary soul?’) is one of a pair of motets published in 1878 about the time of the second symphony and the second piano concerto: it should be capable of touching me more.

After its emphatic opening, the first line drops to piano and in its gloomy and slightly tortuous explorations of the emotions that surround death, it wends its way through sopranos, mezzos and so on, in canon, returning to the pleading ‘Warum?’ The rest of the stanza elaborates on the thought that those near death might actually rejoice.

The MFC might not have been the best space for it, as my feelings about its lack of gusto and animation might have been attributable to absence of any echo.

The later verses do offer more cheerful feelings: the third ‘Siehe wir preisen selig…’, is almost cheerful while the last stanza, drawn, I read, from the Epistle of James (5:11), offering consolation – at least to the deserving through their obedience to God.

It ends with a Bach-like chorale of Luther, which strikes a more compassionate note.

Brahms Lieder a cappella
A second group of songs, Op 46, Three songs for a six-voice choir shifted the tone to the more familiar realm of German Romantic poetry, to the world of Schubert and Schumann, and the choir captured their simplicity and unpretentiousness. The three poems were by Brentano (‘Abendständchen’), Müller (the poet of Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise: ‘Vineta’) and Herder (‘Darthulas Grabesgesang’ – burial song). The material of Vineta rang bells, a gentle Lied in triple-time that celebrated the sounds of bells from a sunken city in the ocean depths; Debussy’s Cathédrale engloutie?; but unlike Gareth Farr’s From the Depths sound the great sea gongs, the tone was pure lyricism; no attempt to imitate bells.

The Herder poem, ‘Darthulas Grabesgesang’, was based on a poem in a collection called The Works of Ossian by the (in)famous Scottish writer James Macpherson. In 1760 he began to publish what he claimed were translations from the original Gaelic of folk poems and epics narrated by Ossian that he had collected. Darthulas is the subject of one of the extended poems in the collection. (“In my day” one heard about Macpherson from good English teachers in the 6th or upper 6th form, and of course at university).

The collection caught the imagination of the pre-Romantic age and was admired by poets and writers throughout Europe, including Voltaire and Diderot, Klopstock and Goethe and Herder. French composer Lesueur wrote an opera called Ossian, ou les bardes which had huge success in the Paris Opéra in 1804. Napoleon was a fan of Ossian too. The main character of the collection was Ossian’s father Fingal (yes, Mendelssohn had like most of his contemporaries, swallowed the wildly Romantic poetic compilation). While it was increasingly dismissed as a hoax it happened to match the early Romantic mood of the late 18th century – in Germany, Sturm und Drang – it’s only fair to say that Macpherson’s work is still not universally considered as plagiarism in its entirety.

A Bach motet  
One of Bach’s great motets followed: ‘Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied’.  It was scrupulously, beautifully sung, but again, somewhat too carefully articulated, with what I felt was uncalled for dynamic and rhythmic subtleties. Yet such is the joyousness of Bach’s setting that it’s impossible not to be delighted simply to hear such a polished performance. I should add that my discovery of Bach’s motets was through their performance by The Tudor Consort under Simon Ravens in the late 1980s, when that choir opened hundreds of Wellington ears to much great choral music that till then had not been well known. The choir which still has a leading place in Wellington’s choral scene, could then easily fill the Anglican Cathedral.

Poulenc’s Un soir de neige
After the Interval the choir sang Poulenc’s Un soir de neige (‘a snowy evening’); its words by Paul Éluard. I didn’t know it, but given my serious love for Poulenc’s music, I enjoyed hearing this careful account. Though its imagery links the death and regrowth of the natural world with that of humans, I didn’t think quite such a sacred tone was called for. Nevertheless, both words and music were rich in poetry and symbolism and I’ve enjoyed re-reading the poem, as well as seeking performances of the setting on YouTube. (Naturally, one uses YouTube to gain familiarity with a work one doesn’t know, and it’s often rewarding to return to it after a performance.)

Martin’s Mass for Double Choir
Finally, the work I’d particularly looked forward to: Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir. The Kyrie struck me as unduly prolonged as a result of its painstaking singing, its rather too studied rise and fall in dynamics, and I confess, embarrassedly, that it didn’t hold my attention till its end.

But the other movements were wholly satisfying, raising a curiosity over its handling of the words and their religious significance. For one thing, there’s the interest in observing Martin’s handling of his two choirs, a tour de force that demands constant admiration and delight. The Credo might be the most difficult for the non-believer to deal with, and here the setting handles it as fairly plain narrative, that one can take or leave.

After the unseasonal applause the Sanctus comes as an interesting contrast between the first verse and the ‘Pleni sunt coeli et terra…’ which injects a lively, refreshing feeling, alternating between common and triple time. It would have been nice if silence had followed the Sanctus for a calm descends with the Agnus Dei and there’s a new spirit of plain piety, wishing for forgiveness of sins (for those who have qualified).

The Mass for Double Choir was sung in Wellington by The Tudor Consort in November last year to a reasonably large audience in the Anglican cathedral. While the cathedral is far from perfect for some music, for a work that’s mostly slow and meditative it is probably the best in Wellington.

At the Tudor Consort’s concert there was no outbreak of clapping after both the Credo and the Sanctus as there was here. That is not really a matter to deplore; rather, it’s a sign that a ‘festival’ attracts people who are not regular concert goers and people who are there because of the element of occasion generated by something called a ‘Festival’.

I enjoyed this performance hugely, but I still felt that for this, especially, a space with a cathedral-like acoustic would have carried its message and its spirit more sympathetically. But that is not a criticism of the performance itself, which, in spite of the few reservations that I mention, was admirably studied and executed with scrupulous attention to the composers’ intentions.

As an encore the choir sang their arrangement of Pokarekareana to noisy delight.

Splendid piano-four-hands recital crowned by the Schubert Fantasie in F minor: Emma Sayers and Rachel Thomson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Piano Duo: Emma Sayers and Rachel Thomson

Arensky: Six Children’s Pieces, Op 34
David Hamilton: Five New Zealand Characters
Schubert: Fantasie in F minor, Op 103

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 4 March, 12:15 pm

Here was a charming and admirable lunchtime recital: the ideal recipe for cleansing your emotions and mind of the wild, eccentric experiences of this year’s Festival: in my case a Kopernikus and a Mad King in close proximity.

Piano duets can be edgy affairs as they demand a perfection of ensemble that’s called for from hardly any other musicians who play together. Apart from the Schubert, this was not heavy-weight material, but the demands in both the Arensky and the Hamilton were no less great.

Arensky for Children??
Arensky’s Six Children’s Pieces might be somewhat modelled on Schumann’s Op 15, pretending to evoke things that children respond to; but if you look at YouTube you’ll see that Arensky really did have children in mind as performers – not any children, mind you. But most of Schumann’s are not very manageable by children.

The first, Fairy Tale (simply Conte in the original French edition), was a very engaging piece, in three – shall we call them phases? – that started quietly, became a little more bold, and ended boisterously. Charmingly articulated. There was a recognisable, amusing and talented cuckoo, followed by tears (Les larmes) that was gently meditative rather than grief-stricken; I couldn’t stop being impressed by the sequences of big four-handed chords that were so perfectly together. It ended with an unresolved cadence.

The charming Waltz would have been rather more delightful for children to listen to than to play. Then Berceuse – cradle song – that was not particularly hushed, but interestingly varied between the four hands; and finally the Fugue on a Russian Theme, which as you’d expect, introduced the child to the mysteries and sophistication of a fugue. Rachel Thomson spoke about it at the end but I missed much of what she said as the microphone was either not working or set too low.

David Hamilton’s Five New Zealand Characters were comparably charming pieces, quite approachable. Their titles hinted, more or less, at what the music depicted, though I will risk attack from some quarters by doubting the success of music that attempts to conjure the song of the tuatara or the long-tailed bat: neither is particularly audible. However, the defence will be that the pieces don’t pretend to imitate sounds, but rather, an individual’s musical feeling contemplating such creatures. The other three: kiwi, fantail and yellow-eyed penguin (perhaps), conjure sounds. However, the pieces are all individual and perfectly attractive, and though they have the virtue of not employing avant-garde characteristics, they sound distinctly of our own time. One of their charming features was the evocation of Scott Joplinesque sounds to depict the penguin.

Schubert Fantasie in F minor
The major work was probably Schubert’s posthumous Fantasie in F minor which really takes its place among his last three sonatas.  It’s really so comparable to the sonatas, apart from things like the return of the first theme of the opening movement at the start of the last. There are four contrasted movements lasting in total about 18 minutes, of musical substance and inspiration that places it among Schubert’s masterpieces of his last year and probably among the greatest of all works for piano four hands.

This was certainly the reason I didn’t dare miss it and, I like to believe, for the slightly bigger than average audience. It began with the first theme lovingly played by Emma, soon joined in the bass by Rachel, re-handling the first theme. Not only was their playing so careful, so perfect in its thoroughly rehearsed ensemble details, but also in the way it moved into the second movement, Largo. Almost the depth of Beethoven, though Schubert’s ineffable lyricism infuses the whole work so perfectly, that there can be no hint of comparison with Beethoven that might suggest Schubert’s inferiority. The triple time third movement, Allegro vivace, is so happy and so spirited that it’s impossible to believe that the inevitability of death within a few months must have been constantly in Schubert’s mind.

The one very distinct break, a total change of mood, from the sanguinity of the ‘scherzo’ to the seriousness and occasional drama of the last, Allegro molto moderato. I wonder if that puzzles pianists: does ‘molto’ qualify ‘allegro’ or ‘moderato’? Does it mean ‘Molto allegro’, but a bit of moderation, or an ‘Allegro’ tempered by a marked moderation.

In any case, what I really wanted at its end, more than a coffee, was a repeat of the whole thing. I can’t remember when I last heard it live, and wondered whether if the gods brought my fingers back to life, I could be partner in a performance of this divine music.

A wonderful start (for me, as I’ve missed the first two or three) to the year of great lunchtime music from St Andrew’s.  

 

Letter from Hon Kris Faafoi: a turn-around on RNZ Concert?

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

After a couple of weeks silence from the Government and Radio NZ itself, this letter seemed to bring us the result that we’d hoped for. Or has it really?

Though the Prime Minister had announced earlier that an unused FM frequency was in fact available, which meant that Concert could continue to use its existing frequencies, while the proposed youth network would use the till-now unused ones, many other important aspects of the service that have been eroded over the past year or so, still look at risk.

What of the plans to fire all 18 existing Concert presenters and other support staff, to turn it into a juke-box broadcaster with no human being announcing the music; and the presumed disappearance of live broadcasts from our orchestras, and other musicians, of talks and documentaries, which have largely disappeared already? Will funding be restored to the level of, say, 10 years ago to allow the service to behave as such broadcasters do in all other civilised countries? And will we see the restoration of a less ‘personalised’, commercial-aping style with its endless, repetitive promotions of programmes whose ‘character’ is artificially generated as if each was competing for your personal attention. And the dominance by the playing of single movements of multi-movement music, as if Concert listeners had suddenly become unlettered, shallow simpletons with a very limited attention span.

The rather perfunctory comment covering these latter questions leaves us in doubt about the Government’s real commitment to a properly staffed, adequately funded and decently presented classical radio network.

This is the only reference in the letter to the above shortcomings:

“As you will be aware, RNZ has now withdrawn its proposal for changes to RNZ Concert. We are pleased that RNZ is taking this approach…”

If that suggests that the ultimate handling of these critically important issues simply remains in the hands of RNZ’s management, what then is the point of a Minister of Broadcasting at all?

The following is the Minister’s reply, presumably sent to all who wrote to him:

“Thank you for your correspondence about RNZ’s proposed changes to RNZ Concert.

I want to assure you that we are aware of the significance of RNZ Concert to New Zealand’s music sector and to its listeners. It is clear that this service plays an important role in the lives of a great many New Zealanders and has a loyal and committed following.

One of the key purposes of public media and a core Government priority for the arts is helping overcome barriers to access, and this is something RNZ Concert does very well for many New Zealanders. It has also been particularly heartening to hear from a diverse range of Kiwi musicians, composers and others in the industry about what RNZ Concert means to them.

At the Cabinet meeting on 10 February 2020, Government agreed it did not want RNZ Concert to lose its FM platform and agreed to explore what would be involved in allocating the currently unutilised 102FM frequency to RNZ’s proposed youth-focussed service. RNZ has publicly welcomed this step.

We support RNZ in seeking to increase its reach to more New Zealand youth and are happy that it now has the opportunity to pursue two goals – to continue broadcasting RNZ Concert on FM radio, while also looking to establish a new service targeted to audiences in the 18 to 34-year-old age range.

As you will be aware, RNZ has now withdrawn its proposal for changes to RNZ Concert. We are pleased that RNZ is taking this approach, and have asked our officials to stay in touch with RNZ on these matters.

Once again, thank you for writing and for taking the time to share your views. Please be assured that you have been heard.

Ngā mihi

Hon Kris Faafoi”

 

NZ Opera’s “Eight Songs for a Mad King” a brilliant, Janus-faced experience

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZ Opera presents
EIGHT SONGS FOR A MAD KING

Music by Peter Maxwell Davies
Texts by Randolph Stow and George III

The King: Robert Tucker

The Musicians: Stroma New Music Ensemble
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Rachel Fuller (keyboard/s)
Luca Manghi (flute)
Mark Cookson/Patrick Barry (clarinets)
Yuka Eguchi (violin)
Heather Lewis/Robert Ibell (‘cellos)
Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion)

Director – Thomas de Mallet Burgess
Production Designer – Robin Rawstorne
Assistant Conductor – Timothy Carpenter
Repetiteur – Rachel Fuller

RNZB Dance Centre, Wellington

Monday 2nd March 2020

Firstly, some background for the curious – the “King” of this concert’s title is King George III of England, who suffered from mental illness throughout his adult life, eventually being removed from his throne and kept under lock and key in Windsor Castle. Over his final decade he lost his eyesight and hearing, and fell prey to frequent manic episodes, by all accounts babbling endlessly as he slid into dementia, and eventually dying in 1820 at the age of eighty-one. The King owned a number of caged bullfinches, and during his confinement became obsessed with teaching his birds how to sing tunes played by a mechanical organ or music-box. This instrument, along with a note identifying its provenance as owned and used by the unfortunate Monarch, came to the notice, almost two hundred years afterwards, of Australian author and poet Randolph Stow, who was inspired to create a series of poems, parts of which were drawn from recollections of witnesses to the King’s outpourings, and directly illustrated his pitiable condition. British avant-garde composer Peter Maxwell Davies set these poems to music, writing with the vocal talents of one Roy Hart in mind, a virtuoso South African singer who had become interested in exploring the range and limits of the human voice.

At the time of the work’s premiere, in April 1969, Davies fully expected “Eight Songs” to remain a “one-off” for Hart, never imagining anybody else being able or even wanting to perform the piece. He was therefore surprised and delighted at how the work soon took on a life of its own, becoming a classic example of a new “music-theatre” genre, which redeployed (and often subverted) existing performance conventions. Davies himself recorded the work with his own virtuoso avant-garde music-group, “The Fires of London”, though sadly for posterity, not with Roy Hart, the creator of the  role – fortunately the soloist on the 1971 Unicorn recording, Julius Eastman, was a worthy successor.

In his notes accompanying the recording, the composer stated that his intention was “to leave open the question – is the persecuted protagonist “Mad George III” or someone who thinks he is George?”. Naturally the work will forever be associated with the monarch in question, given that the song texts contain numerous actual quotations of the King’s words – the novelist Frances (Fanny) Burney was Queen Charlotte’s lady-in-waiting for five years, and during that time she recorded both events and utterances in which the King was central (as an example, the whole of the text of the sixth song, “The Counterfeit” is transcribed by Randolph Stow from Burney’s diary). But the suggestion that the character of the King might also represent any such deluded individual straightaway lifts the work out of its singular and historical confines and into the realm of general human experience, of which mental illness seems in our time to be an increasingly common affliction. Davies reminded us in his notes that until relatively recent times, “madness” was something to ridicule, and in more severe cases isolate, often in the most inhumane and nightmarish conditions; and while treatments and care-environments are nowadays less primitive, the stresses and inbalances that, if ignored, can lead to mental illness are still very much with us.

New Zealand Opera’s innovative production of the work gives audiences not one but two separate and different views of the terrain in all senses of the word – the mindscape of an extremely disturbed individual, firstly (as happened in my particular case) from the “outside” 0f the performance space, visible from the outside through windows, and audible by means of headsets for each audience member. So, first time round, we were seated in the open air, cannily underneath a tarpaulin in a space next to the building in which the opera was being performed – and through the windows we could glimpse the singer performing his on-stage peregrinations, and via the excellent headphones we clearly heard his cocktail mix of song, sprechgesang and random, wide-ranging vocalisings, along with the constant instrumental collaborations from the ensemble – the whole thing was an “outsider’s view”, a process that was observed, but without direct involvement, something that one could easily distance oneself from at a moment’s notice if one felt so inclined.

What a difference after one was ushered inside for the second performance (each took about thirty minutes), to sit right next to the stage (which was a kind of “catwalk” extending the whole width of the audience-space, and with seating on both sides)! Here, we straightaway felt “drawn in” by the immediacies, the sometimes startling proximities , and the “sharing-the-space” phenomenon that can make great theatre (and music-making, of course!). Singer Robert Tucker, looking none the worse for wear after having already given one performance of the piece appeared in close-up somewhat disconcertingly (a) youthful, and (b) dapper, not quite in accordance with my preconceived “image” of a deranged George III, but nevertheless exuding a kind of “authority” from the outset, entering quietly but portentously, and sitting at one end of the catwalk activating a “Newton’s Cradle”, waiting for the first of the instrumental explosions whose force and violence punctuate the music-drama.

In some performances the instrumentalists are positioned in separate giant birdcages, each player representing one of the King’s bullfinches he attempted to teach to sing – here the players weren’t thus confined, but sat as an ensemble at one end of the platform, the singer alternating his attentions between them, his audience(s) and wherever his mind’s fancy took him. And the “double audience” added a dimension to the singer’s confusions, his awareness of interiors and exteriors pathetically expressed amidst his tirades by glances through the windows at an “outside world”. Despite the close physical proximities, the venue’s largely empty spaces behind where we sat and its ample acoustic seemed to me to underline the essential solitude of the King’s existence. His interactions with his musicians and the audience, despite their sometimes startlingly visceral nature seemed all fantasy. “I am weary of this fate – I am alone” sang the character at the conclusion of one of the songs.

The performance in every way was astonishing – Robert Tucker as the King “owned” his character in a way that explored a gamut of human emotion, engaging our sympathies at his “plight” as readily as activating our discomfiture with his volatility. The demands of the role pushed the concept of “singing” into realms of expression which transcended the idea of the voice as a musical instrument as we might generally accept it through what the composer aptly termed “terrifying virtuosity”. But in appearing not as any kind of caricatured asylum-bound lunatic, whose tirades were neither extreme, nor “onslaught-like” as were some of the performers in the role I’ve witnessed on film, Tucker’s delineation of the character always seemed intensely human, in places touchingly bringing out the tendernesses of some of his utterances (as observed by Fanny Burney in her diary), if at times squeamish-inducing (as throughout his “close-up-and-personal” interactions with a hapless flutist, during “The Lady-in-Waiting”, brilliantly carried off by both singer and player). His anger, too, spectacularly vented at one infamous moment in the piece, mirrored a kind of reality of frustration, an impulse in tragic accord with human behaviour gone awry. This “one-of-us” aspect suggested  by the production brought home , to my mind, the “for whom the bell tolls” aspect of our human existence, so that our “relief” at the King’s eventual departure was singed with spots of pity and sorrow and even horror at the finality of the concluding percussive juggernaut, which consigned his heart-rending cries to oblivion.

Conductor Hamish McKeich led the Stroma Ensemble unerringly through a veritable thicket of coruscations, appearing to never miss a beat, shirk an uproar, or delineate a disorder! – and in parallel to these subversions the players sounded the lyrical moments, the dance-tunes and the whimsical parodies (a gorgeous two-step take-off of Handel’s music at one point) with delicious elan, as well as bringing to bear their array of bird-song devices in a veritable “chaos of delight” (alas, Charles Darwin’s words, not mine!). The accordance of theatrical movement with the music was exemplary throughout, the jaunty introduction to “To be sung on the Water” followed by beautiful ‘cello solos evoking a boat-ride down the river, one of a number of enduring memories of the performance.

Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess would have been well-pleased with both the powerful overall impact and the finely-crafted detailed focus his musicians brought to this production. Its dual-performance aspect gives it a singular kind of appeal, no matter in what order one experiences the “outside/inside” presentation, be it a savouring of expectation beforehand, or food for thought afterwards! – It plays again tonight (Wednesday 4th March) at 8:30pm, and then at the same time on both the 5th and 7th later this week at the RNZB Dance Centre next to the MFC in Wakefield St., Wellington.

 

 

 

 

Festival stages remarkable, eccentric opera by Canadian, Claude Vivier

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Festival of the Arts
Kopernikus: Opéra – rituel de mort by Claude Vivier

Directed by Peter Sellars and curated by Lemi Ponifasio
Singers: Roomful of Teeth
Instrumentalists: Ensemble l’instant donné

Opera House, Wellington

Sunday 1 March, 7 pm

It hasn’t been hard to have missed references in the international musical press to a very unusual opera by an unorthodox, fairly obscure composer.

Think again if you imagined you would be presented with a kind of operatic biography of the great astronomer, for he is merely one of a number of disparate historical and fictional figures that feature in Canadian composer Claude Vivier’s work. A work that that is dominated by the contemplation of death, subtitled: the Ritual of Death.

It was composed in 1978/79 and premiered on 9 May 1980 at the University of Montreal where it has had several subsequent productions. Vivier was killed, apparently in a homosexual encounter in Paris in 1983.

Peter Sellars directed its first United States production in 2016 at the Ojay Music Festival in California, in the production that has since been seen in various places including Bilbao, New York, Paris … and finally in Wellington. The work seems not to have been much revived, if at all, through the 1990s apart from in Canada, but has more recently seen several productions, which I enlarge on in an Appendix. One of the co-production names, apart from the Paris Autumn Festival at the Théâtre de la ville, is the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, in Hanover.

The richest variety of reactions have emerged from critics and the general audience, about Kopernikus. It’s been described as a transition from life to death, transcendental, mystical, disorientating, atmospheric, ethereally beautiful, immersive, stirring, mesmerizing, evocative.

Were he alive, Vivier would claim that complaints about the obscurity and the disorientating impact of the work miss the point. It is not perhaps incoherent; but to take a sympathetic view of it, very unusual in its context, its style and language. Its subject matter which can be felt as philosophically and intellectually pretentious, suggest the sort of creation that a gifted undergraduate might produce to show a wide-ranging though recent familiarity with disparate eras and aspects of philosophical, religious notions; a juxtaposition of science, orthodox philosophical ideas laced with varieties of mysticism such as in the role of Agni, the Vedic god of fire.

The words and the music 
One unusual, though plain element arises with Copernicus whose then-revolutionary findings about the movement of the planets and the sun is delivered in normal speech. Vivier suggests that “as he transformed understanding of the universe, death changes our understanding of our lives”.

Similarly pertinent, are later brief references to major philosophers, from Thales and Plato, through Averroes in the 12th century, to Copernicus himself.

We are not confronted however, by music that is problematic. There is nothing wildly dissonant and incoherent such as was favoured by the avant-garde through the latter years of the century. The character of the vocal and instrumental music is unusual, original, even bizarre, yet it has an emotional impact that marks it as genuinely imaginative. It arouses curiosity and much of it can be listened to with simple pleasure. Harmonies are usually conventional though employed in strange ways.

One review from Canada described it as ‘…a surreal experience for the audience’. And continued: ‘The work’s intimate power, manifest weirdness, sublimely sonic harmonies, meditative incandescence and above all, ritualistic remembrance of all universes past and future’.
Yes.

The ‘staging’ was a curious matter; need it really have been in an opera house? For it didn’t use the pit, and the disposition of players and singers was simply functional, influenced by whoever was performing from time to time. Players mingled with singers, and they all moved about, not in a way that suggested a plot or actual events, but simply to position themselves for their next individual offering. That casualness contributed to the agreeable impression that the entire performance generated.

And there’s a dead man lying on a slab in the centre of the stage; at one point he is spoken to directly, “Eternity comes to speak to us and we must listen; sublime revelation is the voice of time…”    He rises miraculously at the beginning of the second part. It wasn’t clear to me whether he then took a particular part or even spoke or sang at all.

Singers and instrumentalists
Both singers and instrumentalists have worked with Sellars elsewhere. All are dressed in white and are together on a partially raised stage with no sets other than chairs and a bed on which a dead man lies.

The seven singers, Roomful of Teeth, cover the full range from coloratura soprano to bass; they each have conspicuous roles and displayed remarkable sympathy with the music, both its coherence and its incoherence. For the most part they sing individually, but there are occasional ensembles that reveal interesting, engaging harmonies, which might technically be dissonances, but they are so beautifully used that they are heard as good examples of intelligent dissonance with genuine artistic purpose. The singers take roles: Copernicus himself and his mother, Lewis Carroll, Merlin, a witch, Mozart and the Queen of the Night, Tristan and Isolde, and a central character: Agni. But the programme notes spell out a great number of subsidiary roles taken by each singer, drawn from Vivier.

Much of the singing is in Vivier’s made-up language and most of the rest is in French and surtitles covered the latter. But it was rarely possible in a single hearing, to identify singers of individual roles, nor is there a story line to create any semblance of a normal opera.

The seven orchestral players the Ensemble l’instant donné comprise a violin, 3 clarinets – – one doubled on a bass clarinet, an oboe, trumpet – not usually visible, and trombone, and there’s a collection of percussion. It was a lively, always energising performance by these seven musicians, conspiring brilliantly with the singers throughout.

Also included in a well balanced programme book, is an excellent, short essay by Clarissa Dunn (of ‘Concert FM’, at least for the moment).

A New York Times review commented: “The best Vivier performances capture his delirious, jewelled grandeur but also his modesty — the earnest intensity of his desire to communicate, even through nonsense syllables.”

 

Appendix
Earlier productions
After its initial performances in Montreal it has been revived there in 1985, 1986, 1988 and 1989; in London in 1985 at the Almeida Festival, in Paris in 1989, and in Vancouver in 1990.

It’s remarkable that it had taken 41 years for it to be heard in New York, and 38 years for the United States generally (at the Ojai Music Festival in California in 2016); but does that say something about relations between the US and Canada, and even more with Quebec: not least about the cultural condition of a country where opera, and classical music generally, are in the hands of the private sector rather than of enlightened state institutions.

It’s fared better in Europe. In Amsterdam in 2014; in 2018 it was performed in the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse; at the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin, in January 2019. And as remarked above, this production was shared with KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, in Hanover. While it’s now, perhaps as a result of its espousal by a director as famous as Sellars, being seen more widely, it has clearly not been eagerly taken up by any of the major opera houses. Its first appearance in New York, last year, was at a minor Brooklyn theatre, the production have been premiered in a planetarium in Buenos Aires; in Paris it was at the normally non-music Théâtre de la ville, which is opposite the major operatic, Châtelet theatre.

A review of a 2001 performance in Montreal in London’s Opera magazine commented that Kopernikus had become Canada’s most frequently performed opera. And it remarked that the performance seen in Montreal came at the end of a cross-country run of performances by Toronto’s Autumn Leaf Productions.

It was that production that ran in Huddersfield in 2000, and was reviewed by Opera magazine’s editor John Allison in February 2001. His very measured review included this observation: “It could easily irritate even the mildest of sceptics, and the compelling grip of this performance was thanks in part to the simple and poetic staging by the Toronto-based Autumn Leaf Performance company”.

It was the simplicity and unpretentiousness of the Sellars’ production in Wellington that moderated the degree of scepticism that I too felt about the ‘story’ aspect of the work.

And I found myself somewhat, by no means entirely, in sympathy with critic Robert Markow’s remark in Opera magazine about the Toronto performance:
“Kopernikus is rich in potential, yet the opera is maddeningly unfulfilling. Beyond the score’s obviously imaginative and original instrumental sound-world, a giant leap of faith is required to connect with Vivier’s autobiographical display of self-indulgence masquerading as a universal initiation myth.”

And I do not share a peremptory dismissal such as this: “Yet within three minutes of the 70-minute ‘opera-ritual of death’, it was evident that Mr. Vivier’s inspiration came from a senseless jumble of eclectic paraphernalia.”

By the way, the name has become an EU issue. There has been a move to change the spelling of the name to the German version, which is as spelt in Vivier’s opera (though in French it’s Copernic). Poland has protested; it is Kopernik in Polish. Copernicus was born Torun which is now in Poland but which over the centuries has been in either Poland or Prussia. One Polish authority has recommended a compromise using the Latin spelling which is Copernicus, which if course has long been the international name.