Category: Reviews – Concerts

A memorable concert from the Aroha Quartet: exciting Ligeti and a Beethoven masterpiece

Posted on by Steven Sedley

‘Metamorphoses’
Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Konstanze Artmann – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello)

Mozart: String Quartet No. 17 in B flat K 548 ‘Hunt’
Ligeti: String Quartet No. 1 ‘Metamorphoses Nocturnes’
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 13 in B flat Op. 130

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Tuesday 7 May 2019, 7:30 pm

With concerts by two string quartets, the New Zealand String Quartet and the Aroha Quartet within two days, the Brodsky quartet on the 20th and the Kiwa quartet on the 26th of May seems like a festival of string quartets. With so much music, it is the works that challenge that makes these concerts memorable.

The Aroha Quartet played Mozart and Beethoven, beautiful but familiar music, but it was György Ligeti’s First Quartet that stood out and made one think. The piece was written in 1953/54. Ligeti was 30 years old. He had survived the war in which he served in a Jewish labour service unit, while both his brother and father died in concentration camps. In the years after the war he studied with renowned teachers at the Budapest Music Academy, Kadosa, Veress, and in particular, Kodaly. He was making a name for himself as a composer of choral pieces and settings of folk songs. His early works were often an extension of the musical language of Bartók. But some of his pieces could not be played under the Communist regime of Hungary: too difficult, too cerebral. His First String Quartet was not performed until he fled Hungary in 1956 and settled in Vienna. He called the piece Metamorphoses; it is a transfiguration, the changes of a four note theme, G, A, G sharp, A sharp over a chromatic bass played by the cello into a series of variations like distinct segments. These segments include vigorous rhythmic sections, peasant dances with heavy stomping of boots, passages that recall Bartók’s night music, gentle, melodic, surreal There are huge dynamic contrasts, barbaric dance themes, humour, sarcasm, buzzing mosquito passages. At the end the piece returns to the four notes it started with. It is an exciting work and we should be grateful to the Aroha Quartet for introducing it to us.

Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13 in B flat is a colossal piece in six movements. It encompasses a whole world of emotions, from the noble opening Adagio followed by an energetic contrasting section, then to the simple children’s playground theme of the rollicking Presto in which voices taunt each other, there is humour, there is the courtly dance of the Andante, the jolly rhythm of the Alla danza tedesca, and ultimately the quartet culminates in the haunting Cavatina that brought tears to Beethoven’s and probably many listeners’ eyes, which is finally resolved in a light-hearted Finale. The great architecture of this work is assembled from simple, at times naïve parts. The Aroha Quartet played it with passion, with beautiful tone and meticulous clear phrasing.

The concert opened with Mozart’s ‘Hunt’ Quartet, one of the half dozen he dedicated to Haydn. Although it shares the key with the Beethoven work, it comes from a different world. Written in 1784, it reflects the last years of the ancien régime, a perceived stability in which all was orderly. It is a beautiful work and The Aroha Quartet captured its spirit.

This was a memorable concert and the Aroha Quartet are one of the great musical assets of our city.

 

 

Orchestra Wellington takes Vivaldi and Piazzolla to Upper Hutt with great success

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Classical Expressions, Upper Hutt
‘Eight Seasons’

A chamber orchestra drawn from Orchestra Wellington, conducted by concertmaster Amalia Hall

Vivaldi: Four Seasons
Piazzolla: The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
(solo violin in both: Amalia Hall)

Expressions Arts and Entertainment Centre, Upper Hutt

Monday 6 May, 7:30 pm

This programme was presented in the Opera House, Wellington on Saturday 4 May. Even considering venues in the central city, there is probably no auditorium as well appointed as Expressions in Upper Hutt’s Arts and Entertainment Centre where I was very happy to catch them.

There were 22 musicians on the stage, perfectly accommodated both visually and acoustically.  In the place of the usual concertmaster, Amalia Hall, was Martin Riseley, associate professor and Head of Strings in Victoria University’s School of Music; Amalia conducted and took the part of solo violin. Those two, along with other section leaders, comprised the ‘Concertino’ players in the Vivaldi pieces.

Yet it was still something of a surprise to hear, right from the opening bars of the first Allegro, playing of such polish, with varied colour and expression, sounding like any of the notable baroque-style chamber orchestras that one hears on the best commercial recordings: crisp and elegant. Though one hears them often on RNZ Concert, and as ‘elevator’ music in all kinds of public places, the experience of a live performance awakened one, with surprise, to the wonderful variety between each movement: so the following Largo had a surprising chill about it, drawing attention, as well as to the soloists, the simple pairs of quavers from the ‘Ripieno’ (the rest of the orchestra) players. And there was still something cool and gently discreet about the third movement, Allegro, as if winter has hardly disappeared.

After each of the Vivaldi pieces, the orchestra played the equivalent Piazzolla concerto (don’t think he called them concerti). All their very different characteristics were fully to be expected. Nevertheless, I can imagine some might have felt they broke up the integrity of Vivaldi’s pieces; though I did not: we are so used to hearing snatches of them in all sorts of situations.

Piazzolla’s Spring conveyed an attractive feeling of lingering cold and increasing stretches of warm weather. Both Vivaldi and Piazzolla employed the solo violin in flamboyant passages which Amalia Hall delivered spectacularly. In Autumn, Brenton Veitch’s cello also enjoyed an extended and meditative episode, later mirrored in another similar solo by Amalia. The colour was generally darker in Winter, and again there was another soulful solo from Amalia, this time with all the cellos. The harpsichord also had attractive passages in this season and double basses were prominent in some of the Piazzollo pieces.

In some ways Piazzolla created a richer more complex picture than Vivaldi, having the freedom to use musical styles of 350 years more complexity (they were written in the 1960s). Even though one could argue that both composers shared a common Latinesque origin, the Argentinian, tango influence removed Piazzolla’s entirely from any useful comparison. One of the oddities was the occasional reference to tunes from Vivaldi: the work of an arrangement commissioned by Gidon Kremer from Leonid Desyatnikov. The insertions were brief, quite cleverly blended, and momentarily drew a smile; nor did they spoil the nature of Piazzolla’s very different composition; Piazzolla seems to be a composer who musicians commonly make free with, arranged for almost any instrumental combinations.

One is never quite sure about the appropriate response to some of Piazzolla’s gestures: the frequent glissandi (perhaps whip-lashes, is a better description), scratchings below the bridge.

Though in the past I have not warmed particularly to Piazzolla, this live performance from an excellent, thoroughly rehearsed ensemble, was both interesting and enjoyable and significantly altered my feelings about the composer. And the linking of the two composers’ descriptions of the seasons was an interesting approach.

This enterprising concert was a complete vindication of the collaboration between Orchestra Wellington, and the Upper Hutt Music Society and the Entertainment Centre.

A large and enthusiastic audience filled the auditorium.

New Zealand String Quartet produce joyousness and profundity for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music
New Zealand String Quartet

Beethoven: String Quartet in A Op. 18 No 5
Jack Body: Bai sanxian (2009)
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 10 in A flat  
Brahms: String Quartet in A minor Op. 51

St. Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 5 May, 3 pm

A concert by the NZ String Quartet is always an event to look forward to. This is the quartet’s 32nd season, and over the years they have gained an international reputation. In this concert they covered a broad period of the musical development of the string quartet.

In 1798 Beethoven was a budding piano virtuoso, who had moved to Vienna and was gradually making a name for himself as a composer. He lived in the shadow Haydn. Like Haydn, he published his first set of quartets, Op. 18, as a set of a half dozen. No. 5, in A major, is playful, with a touch of humour and Haydn-like surprises, a graceful dance movement and an extended set of variations that explore the potential of a simple theme. This piece received an energetic sparkling reading, but for this listener at least, some of the charm, the light touch was missing.

Jack Body’s Bai sanxian was something entirely different. The music of Asian cultures is a recurring theme of Jack Body’s work. He deliberately and provocatively stepped outside the main stream of Western music. This short piece comes from a collection of transcriptions and arrangements of music from some of the Chinese minority nationalities of Yunnan province in South-West China. The string quartet imitates the Chinese traditional instruments, the first violin and cello plucking their instruments while the second violin and the viola carry the melodic line. The music challenges the listener to explore unfamiliar musical traditions, to listen carefully and perhaps ask questions about the universal nature of music.

Shostakovich is a controversial composer. William Walton described him as the ‘greatest composer of the 20th century’, while Pierre Boulez dismissed him as ‘the second or even third pressing of Mahler’. There is certainly a special Shostakovich sound and a Shostakovich perception of what music is about. He is the Holy Fool, who witnesses all the terrible as well as all the joyous things around him. The overall character of the 10th String Quartet is dark, in some places sinister and fearful. It opens with a four note motive played by the solo violin, then the other instruments join in one at a time. An unanswered question hangs over the movement. This is followed by a furious second movement played fortissimo. At one moment the viola and plays on the bridge of her instrument to create the effect of a sinister Mephistophelean laughter. The Adagio is a mournful passacaglia that gradually turns darker. The final movement breaks away from the mournful character of the earlier movements and is jaunty and carefree at the beginning, but then returns to the melancholic air of the whole piece. Life was tough in Shostakovich’s Russia, but he implies that there is light amidst the gloom, life must carry on.

The final work in the programme was Brahms’s Second String Quartet, Op. 51, No. 2. Beethoven’s colossal final quartets weighed heavily on Brahms. How could one write a string quartet that could follow up these works. He had a number of attempts at writing a string quartet and destroyed all of these, until at the age of 40 he published, after numerous revisions, two works with which he was satisfied. Brahms worked in the idiom he inherited and used the language of German folk music, but he deconstructed these haunting themes, broke them up, turned them into deep, meaningful conversations between the four instruments. There is light and joyousness in the second movement and grace in the third, Minuetto, but Brahms never abandons himself to a rollicking good time. In the last movement he revisits the Hungarian czardas that provided many happy themes for his music, but notwithstanding all the jollity, the music is subdued. This was a profound performance.

It was a very satisfying afternoon of music, enjoyed by a large and knowledgeable audience. The quartet’s many years of playing together was reflected in their seamless, smooth playing. May they keep this up for many more years and enrich Wellington’s musical life.

 

The essence of Don Pasquale splendidly delivered by Wanderlust Opera at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Wanderlust Opera
Donizetti: Don Pasquale – selections, in English

Director and narrator: Jacqueline Coats
Piano: Mark Dorrell
Stuart Coats (Don Pasquale), Barbara Paterson (Ernesto), Georgia Jamieson Emms (Norina)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 1 May, 12:15 pm

For several years Wanderlust Opera has been on the road doing what our professional opera company should be doing (did do for a couple of years in the 2000s): taking cut-down versions of opera to the provincial cities and towns. They’ve performed a variety of shows: Sondheim, a pot-pourri of songs from musicals, Cosi fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro.

Pasquale toured eight centres in January and February this year and in August will continue with Tauranga and Hamilton. Unfortunately, Middle C missed the Wellington performance in February. We’re not sure whether there might be another performance in Wellington. This was a very reduced one, in English: just three singers, with the major role of Doctor Malatesta unsung because of Craig Beardsworth’s unavailability.

But the three singers here created a splendid opera-buffa style show, all three delighting in the farcical opportunities that Donizetti and his librettists knew how to exploit. (incidentally, the opera was based on an earlier opera by Stefano Pavesi, Ser Marcantonio in 1810, which was drawn from a Ben Jonson play of 1609, The Silent Woman. Strauss’s late opera Die schweigsame Frau, libretto Stefan Zweig, was also based on the same play).

We skipped the opening scene where Dr Malatesta describes a young lady who will make Pasquale a wonderful wife while Pasquale tells Malatesta of his plan to kick his nephew out of the house for refusing the offer of a wife who will presumably benefit, not the nephew so much as Pasquale himself.  We had Stuart Coats energetically overacting his reaction to the prospect of marriage, the Italian ‘Un foco insolito’, a brilliant waltz-style aria that set the scene irresistibly. Malatesta was present in the form of a small plaster bust.

Ernesto, the nephew, a tenor role, was sung by soprano, perhaps a strange substitution but it was explained that ‘We wanted to use a tenor but none of them could yo-yo as well as Barbara Paterson”. The substitute trouser role quickly became just so right! The confrontation, demands rapid shift from Ernesto laughing at Pasquale’s marriage plan to dismay when he refuses Pasquale’s offer of a bride.

It is Malatesta who is the manipulator, and narrator/director Jacqueline Coats created his presence with lively narrative and gestures; it is Malatesta’s sister, Norina, with whom Ernesto is in love, reciprocally, and whom he seems to be offering Pasquale as wife. She falls in with Malatesta’s plan to thwart Pasquale by producing Norina, momentarily as the shy, obedient, convent-educated ‘Sofronia’, acquiescing obediently to marriage. But then, after the marriage, she turns into Georgia Jamieson Emms, the real Norina, a fearless virago: refusing to obey, ordering clothes, coaches and horses, more servants, announcing she’s going alone to the theatre. Jamieson Emms revealed many of her histrionic talents as she confronted Pasquale and took command of everything with bold yet interesting voice and flamboyant behaviour.

Even though much of the music is left out, there is no lack of brilliant and engaging arias and duets in those bits of the opera that were presented. Donizetti’s brilliant orchestra that supports and comments on the action with wit and sensitivity is compressed into Mark Dorrell’s piano rendition which very often reinforces the emotion, such as when Pasquale realises that he’s been made a fool of and a subdued piano accompanies his pathetic defeat.

In the third act, ‘Sofronia’ drops a note that reveals to Pasquale, who picks it up, that she will meet her lover in the garden that night, and Pasquale decides on divorce. That is easily accomplished since the marriage was a sham. In a full staging the business in the garden can seem a bit protracted; but here we heard nothing that wasn’t a highlight, and those who didn’t know its twists and turns and the many equally brilliant or delightful numbers that were missing, would have been fully convinced by this three-quarter-hour’s worth of admirably sung, accompanied and ‘staged’ Donizetti.

 

Brass septet produces haunting and enjoyable chamber music at the MFC

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Septura Brass Septet: An American in Paris
(Chamber Music New Zealand)

Ravel: Ma mére l’Oye (Mother Goose)
Debussy: Preludes
Gershwin: Three Piano Preludes; Songbook; An American in Paris

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday 30 April, 7:30 pm, 2019

Three trumpets, three trombones, one a bass trombone, and a tuba is not the usual combination for a chamber music concert, but seven principal brass players of London Symphony orchestras got together to demonstrate that brass is capable of producing chamber music. Horns, such an integral part of the brass section of an orchestra, were missing. They might have added a mellower sound to the ensemble, but obviously this was not what these players had in mind. Simon Cox and Matthew Knight, the two artistic directors of the group arranged the music for them. Their guiding principle was that the music should sound as if it was originally written for brass.

The audience was challenged to leave their preconceived ideas of what the music should sound like at the door and listen with fresh ears. The pieces in this programme are well known and familiar, but played by a brass ensemble they all sounded new.

Ravel and Gershwin knew each other and held each other in high esteem; they were both influenced by Debussy. It was this relationship that was the theme that held these works together.

The Mother Goose Suite, arranged from the piano duet rather than the orchestral version sounded colourful. It had a depth that cannot be attained on the piano. The special effects were enhanced by the innovate use of mutes. The beautiful rich sound of the brass was specially effective in the chorale sounding last movement, The Fairy Garden.

The Debussy Preludes for solo piano are lovely miniatures and played by the brass they attained a different, richer sound. The rich brass chords, the underlying bass of the trombones and tuba underscored the well-known melody of the Girl with the flaxen hair played on the trumpet. The trombones produced the humorous sound effects appropriate for the Minstrels. The Sunken Cathedral had beautiful bell like sounds produced with layer upon layer of brass sound. This was a different Debussy.

The second half of the programme was devoted to the music of Gershwin, arrangement of the Three Piano Preludes, short little pieces from the Songbook and the major work, An  American in Paris. Gershwin created a colourful world of his own which encapsulated the jazz age, the frivolity of the 1920s, and these pieces sounded particularly appropriate for a brass ensemble. It was an era after the First World War in which people believed that life was short, people had to make the most of it, live it up, seek happiness in gaiety, but underlying it all there was a touch of melancholy. This was captured by the joyful yet sensitive performance.

Britain has a great tradition of brass music, but this concert was a world away from the usual sound of brass bands. This group had a flexibility that tested the limits of the players’ ability and together they produced a sonority seldom heard. They shed new light on familiar music; one came away from the concert with the haunting sound of beautiful brass playing. It was a concert with a difference, but very enjoyable.

 

The third in the ten-part series of Widor’s organ symphonies from Stewart and Apperley at St Paul’s Cathedral

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Widor Project
Organ Symphony No 3, Op 13, No 3

Richard Apperley at the digital organ

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Friday 26 April, 12:45 pm

This performance, by Richard Apperley, of Widor’s third organ symphony confirmed me as an organ devotee, a condition facilitated by my being free from the (usually ill-founded) reservations that many classical music lovers cherish concerning French music.

This was one of Widor’s first four ‘symphonies’, Op 13, published in 1872, shortly after his appointment to the prestigious position of organist at the church of Saint-Sulpice in the 6th arrondissement (Paris, Left Bank). It is the second largest church in Paris, after Notre Dame, and the organ is the largest of the many built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll through the mid 19th century, in churches all over France and elsewhere. The one in Saint-Sulpice is his master-piece. (The biggest organ in France is in Saint-Eustache and is not by Cavaillé-Coll).

After hearing the second organ symphony a month ago, I felt as if I was meeting an old friend with this one. The complex of rich sounds that Widor prescribes from the organ’s huge range was wonderfully captured by Apperley on the digital organ which the Cathedral has bought awaiting the restoration of the earthquake-damaged pipe organ. As with the previous performance from Michael Stewart, the placing of the console at floor level in front of the choir allowed us to admire the spectacle of the organist at close quarters: the ranging of hands across all four manuals and the feet dancing on the pedals. It’s an experience that in some ways beats a pianist’s virtuosic activities at the single keyboard.

It struck me that the constantly changing registrations at all five keyboards, prescribed in detail in Widor’s score, was a good deal more varied than in most organ performances. Though one doesn’t usually get such a close-up view of the performer’s activities.

Cavaillé-Colle plus Widor produces the organ symphony
The reason that Widor described the work as a symphony is the revelatory experience of the remarkable range of sounds that Cavaillé-Colle’s versatile and spectacular instruments had made available: a lot more symphonic than was possible on earlier organs. Though it’s pointed out that the early symphonies don’t conform to the normal specifications of a symphony (but Berlioz had broken that tradition forty years before), since then it has been the length, complexity, intellectual quality and aesthetic sophistication of later 19th century works that tended to distinguish the orchestral symphony from, say, a suite. Likewise, for an organ symphony.

I had no difficulty in hearing the first movement, Prélude, as introducing a work of symphonic scale, with its chromatic and harmonic qualities, its symphonically evolving thematic material and the thrilling range of near-orchestral sounds. The Minuette, second movement, had a charming pastoral spirit, easily associated with the ‘minuet’ of the classical symphony, with a contrasting middle section that becomes airy and insubstantial, with its modified rhythms though still in triple time. The Marcia, third movement, is the most striking, with a great deal delivered on the powerful ‘Great’ manual, switching suddenly to quieter, more muffled stops on the Solo (or was the top manual the ‘Swell’?). It was interesting to be able to see these transitions, not merely to guess which manual the player was using. The Marcia climaxed in a real militaristic, victorious fff (really? two years after French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war?).

The slow movement was the fourth, Adagio; played with a variety of subtle stops, creating a beautiful rhapsodic quality. I couldn’t help feeling that it was the sort of movement that RNZ Concert, with its obsession with playing isolated movements ripped from the body in which they had been conceived, could make use of. It might even be justified if it were to introduce people to a neglected corner of classical music.

And the last movement, though not labelled ‘Toccata’, has recognisable characteristics of the 5th symphony; marked Allegro molto. Thematically more varied than the famous one, and almost as arresting, it was also a spectacle for the ‘happy few’ in the audience. Apperley’s hands raced vertically as well as horizontally across the four manuals and the 60 odd keys on each, plus agile feet on pedals. But I was left with far more than the excitement of a half hour of organ virtuosity; I’m looking forward to booking part of Friday lunchtimes to hear all the rest, and even exploring the possibility of finding recordings to buy. Joseph Nolan is the one, by the look of it.

Widor’s innovation has had a significant impact on organ music. Wikipedia lists 29 composers who have written organ symphonies, only one of whom predates Widor by a couple of years.

So this is probably an organ exploration with a certain claim to international significance. The musical gifts and the interpretive insights of the two organists involved certainly justify such a claim.

Tudor Consort revives ancient Tenebrae rituals marking the stories of Holy Week

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tudor Consort directed by Michael Stewart

Tenebrae – music for Holy Week
Plainchant, and polyphony by Victoria, Edmund Rubbra, James MacMillan and Gesualdo

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 19 April, 7:30 pm

The number of people familiar with the word Tenebrae is probably getting fewer by the year as religious belief declines and the deep-rooted traditions, including the use of Latin, are ‘modernised’. It’s not just a Roman Catholic Easter observance but it is also in the Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, Western Orthodox and other churches. And since the Roman church ditched the use of Latin in normal services, the spirit of the past is offered in concert settings where the rituals are chanted and sung in Latin.

Tenebrae is a special office particular to Holy Week which used to be observed on the three days preceding Easter Sunday: that is, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. It has now been reduced to just once or twice, and has generally retreated from performance in the small hours of the morning.

The introduction in the programme book explained that there are two parts of the office of Tenebrae: Matins and Lauds. There are three Matins on each of the three days and each consists of three ‘Nocturns’ which begin with an ‘Antiphon’ followed by Psalms, both in plainchant. The following Responsory settings are in polyphony, drawn from words respectively, in the Book of Lamentations, Saint Augustine’s commentaries and the third from the New Testament Epistles.

They are followed by settings of texts that had come traditionally to form part of the office of Tenebrae before the 1955 reforms of Pope Pius XII. Michel Stewart confined the settings of parts of the service to four composers: justified as being considered by some music scholars as among the greatest composers of liturgical music: Tomás Luis de Victoria, Edmund Rubbra, James MacMillan, and Gesualdo.

Matins, Nocturns, Antiphons, Responsories …
The first ‘Nocturn’, after the plainsong Psalm 2, consisted of five settings by Victoria and Rubbra formed the ‘Readings from the Lamentations, answered by a responsory’, which can be chosen from the 27 ‘responsories’ (three ‘nocturns’ on each of the three days), that have become traditional and have been set by various composers., according to the agendas of particular priests. Victoria’s ‘Incipit lamentatio Jeremiae’ was a beautiful, slow example of Renaissance polyphony, that was splendidly enriched in the Cathedral’s big acoustic; it presents difficulties for more recent music, but seems perfectly adapted to this.

The juxtaposition of Victoria and Rubbra seemed to reinforce the impression that their sources of inspiration were very close, only separated, not by any radical compositional transformation such as atonality or serialism, but by a naturally richer sensibility and harmonic freedom. Rubbra’s name is not very familiar today. In the first decades after WW2 his name was better known and I owned (and still might have somewhere) recordings of a couple of Rubbra’s symphonies, as I’d encountered his music on the ‘Concert’ programme of the 1950s (2YC) which was a major part of my musical education. Such programming was far from the narrow and misguidedly ‘popular’ classical music that is broadcast today.

Rubbra’s settings of the ‘Amicus meus’ and ‘Judas Mercator’ might have sounded more angular than Victoria but they were tonal and comparably sombre, though women’s voices became more optimistic towards the end.  Rubbra’s third setting, ‘Unus ex discipulis’ – one of the disciples, deal with the story of Judas…

The second ‘Nocturn’ was based on Psalm 53, and it was followed by both Victoria’s and, instead of Rubbra, James MacMillan’s settings of appropriate Responsories.  It was striking that the 60 or so years from Rubbra to MacMillan sounded far greater than the 350 years between Victoria and Rubbra as a result of the radicalisation of musical language. And his first utterance, ‘Tenebrae factae sunt’ in which Christ calls out ‘God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ was delivered in dense, almost terrifying dissonances that expressed the emotion perhaps more powerfully than any earlier style of composition might have allowed. Not that I under-estimate the power of the musical language of the height of the Renaissance or the most gifted of Romantic composers.

It was somehow most fitting for this tragic, exclamatory phase to be accompanied by the extinguishing one by one, of the 15 candles on the candelabra (or ‘hearse’) at the front of the choir (which, incidentally, made it impossible to read the programme and identify what was being sung). Here was a point at which it was probably a shame for those unfamiliar with the narrative details, to be in the dark… For those unfamiliar; for the non-adherent, or non-believer, its meaning and enjoyment would derive only from the singing.

The third Nocturn began, again with an Antiphon and a Psalm – No 93, rather vengeful in spirit. The Responsories were again from MacMillan (‘Tradiderunt me’ and ‘Jesus tradidit impius’, respectively from the books of Job and Lamentations) and one from Victoria (‘Caligaverunt oculi mei’), about Christ’s betrayal and finally the crucifixion, a piece that expresses the deepest grief.

After the last of the Matins responsories comes the Lauds which were just represented by the ‘Miserere Mei’, Psalm 51, in a setting by Gesualdo, in which verses are alternately chanted and spoken.

By then all candles had been extinguished and the church was in darkness: the final step in the Tenebrae is the Strepitus, or ‘great noise’ which took the form of a fireworks-type blast accompanied by smoke, symbolising the earthquake that followed Christ’s death.

Even in its inevitably abbreviated form, performances of one of the major rituals of the church, dominated by a great deal of wonderful plainchant and polyphony continues to attract good audiences of believers and others. The performance by the Tudor Consort under Michael Stewart was impressively accomplished and deeply moving.

There are times when the use of Latin rather than a vernacular language is a huge advantage. Here we had an admirable programme pamphlet that printed both the Latin and an English translation. Improbabilities of religious tales seem to be far more acceptable sung in Latin (or any other language) than in English where the meaning of words and sentences is unambiguous, and something of the mystery lacking. Even more important is the fact that what we hear when the original language is used, are the very sounds that the composer was setting: his resonse to the sounds, and rhythms of the original language; it’s an important aspect too in arguments about use of the original language in opera and in song recitals.

 

Maria Mo: a fine recital by a promising artist at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Maria Mo – piano 

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C, Op.53 (Waldstein)
Albeniz: Iberia, Book 1
                Evocación; El Puerto; El Corpus en Sevilla

St. Andrews on The Terrace

Wednesday 17 April, 2019

Mario Mo is a talented young pianist at the threshold of her career. She has won awards and scholarships, studied with Katherine Austin at the University of Waikato and then at the Vienna Conservatory and the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She has had a thorough grounding. She played an ambitious programme.

Beethoven stretches the limits of the piano in the Waldstein Sonata and apart from a few glitches Mo coped with these challenges capably. The problem was that because the work is so well known it is hard not to draw comparisons with performances by some of the great pianists. Mo is a thoughtful performer who paid a lot of attention to the phrasing, the dynamic contrasts and melodic flow of the piece. I am sure that with greater experience and maturity her playing will acquire greater fluidity.

The Albeniz pieces were more successful. Albeniz, virtuoso pianist, one of the foremost composers of the latter years of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th centuries had a significant influence on composers of a younger generation, Debussy and Ravel among others. His piano pieces were based on Spanish folk idiom. The best known of these works is Iberia. Mo played these pieces with a delightful freedom bringing out their lovely Spanish lilt. Evocación set the spirit of the work, El Puertocaptured the busy port, expressed through the use of the zapataedo, a lively traditional Andalusian dance. El Corpus en Sevilla is the longest and most dramatic of the three movements. It is a colourful depiction of the Spanish celebration of the feast days of Corpus Christi with its solemn march, religious fervour and ecstasy. It called for a great tonal range and sharp contrasts. Mario Mo gave an enjoyable account of these pieces. This was a fine recital by a promising artist.

Wide-ranging and imaginative song recital at Waikanae: Mellaerts and Baillieu

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society
Julien van Mellaerts (baritone) and James Baillieu (piano) Schubert: song selection

Five Schubert songs
Schumann: Dichterliebe song cycle Op 48
Gareth Farr: Ornithological Anecdotes
Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel
Ballads and legends by Gershwin, Manning Sherwin and Cole Porter

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 14 April, 2:30 pm

The Waikanae Music society had taken this recital from Chamber Music New Zealand’s associate society series. It was about the last of a ten-concert tour around the country.

It was a courageous step since, for many years – decades? – there has been a belief that audiences avoid song recitals; the same belief has been cultivated about piano recitals. There is not a huge amount of evidence for either display of timidity.

This past week I’ve been to a well-supported piano recital at Upper Hutt and this song recital at Waikanae. I’d guess there were around 300 at Waikanae.

Julien van Mellaerts took a degree at Otago University and studied further at the Royal College of Music, London. In the programme notes, neither date or place of birth or education of Baillieu, were mentioned. His biographical notes were restricted to references to his competition successes: British, apart from Das Lied International Song Competition, which not even his own website tells me, is in Heidelberg. The shyness about background details confined to ritual listings of prestigious performance venues and distinguished musical partners, is virtually universal in the hand-outs from artists’ managements.

Nevertheless, both displayed great musical accomplishment and polish.

Schubert
They began with five songs by Schubert: Seligkeit, Der Musensohn, Der Wanderer an den Mond, Prometheus and Rastlose Liebe (three of them by Goethe). Mellaerts handled the challenge of projecting the sense of each poem without costume, props or staging very well: after mastering the music and words, it’s one of the solo recitalist’s hardest tasks. One had to admire his efforts. All but one were sung with what I felt were keenly observed vocal and physical gestures, the voice and manner expressing joy, peacefulness, capturing very well the meaning and emotions of each poem. The exception was well-known Der Musensohn which they took at a speed that seemed mistaken: that is to say, I suppose, not the way I have heard it sung by other singers. Goethe’s Prometheus is a sort of narrative poem which Schubert treats rather like an operatic recitative: it was a harder proposition.

Dichterliebe 
The centre-piece, no doubt, was Schumann’s great song cycle, Dichterliebe, all sixteen drawn from one of Heine’s earliest collections, of 66 poems entitled Lyrische Intermezzo, published in 1823.*

The sixteen settings reflected the violently shifting moods that the lovelorn poet experiences; from the peaceful, Springtime evocation of Im wunderschöne Monat Mai, the anticipatory excitement of Die Rose, die Lilie…, and then the strangely enigmatic Im Rhein, im schöne Strome. Next comes the sudden plunge into realisation/courageous acceptance of his lost love: with perhaps the best known, Ich grolle nicht, where his voice hovers darkly round his empty bravado. It’s curious that Schumann didn’t set the poem that follows Im Rhein in Heine’s collection: it’s Du liebst mich nicht: explicit awareness that she loves him not.

From then on the mood fluctuates between bravery and despair and singer and pianist delivered a convincing series of cries and laments, to end, first with Aus alten Märchen wink es, pleading for redemption through the imagery of the old myths and stories, which he sang in determined optimism, and then, in Die alten bösen Lieder, his evocation of the biggest ever coffin in which to bury his love and pain, and though one is tempted to think he means himself to join his grief in it, life goes on. One of Schumann’s moving post-ludes describes his final grief: he’s saying that only music alone, without words, can express some human conditions.

It’s a wonderful sequence and this was a fine rendering from both artists.

Birds to music
The recital then turned to a most interesting and imaginative new composition: Gareth Farr’s settings of words from Bill Manhire, Ornithological Anecdotes, describing four of New Zealand’s birds, their songs, and their predicament, including the huia which sings: “I lived among you once and now I can’t be found”. They were quirky, touching, firmly urging this generation to repair as far as possible, the carelessness and crimes of past generations. The words, the music, the physical presentation all contributed vividly to an unusual and rather memorable experience.

Songs of Travel
We hear individual songs from Vaughan Williams’s Song of Travel, but I can’t remember a performance of all nine of his settings of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems (the ninth, in fact came to light only about 1960). They are commonly associated with Schubert’s Winterreise: I don’t think very helpfully. As a cycle, if that’s what VW actually intended, they are not as convincing as the great German song cycles, but this warmly studied performance was to be taken seriously. The last song, I have trod the Upward and Downward Slope, emerged impressively, a full-bodied creation that could be felt as an optimistic expression of the value of exploratory effort.

And the recital ended with three carefully chosen songs from musicals: ‘The Lorelei’ from Gershwin’s Pardon My English; then A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, the affecting pre-war song of 1939 that became a hit during the war, and Cole Porter’s droll Tale of the Oyster, which completed a trio of disparate but entertaining numbers. Versatility on display.

The whole was a real delight and it’s to be hoped that Chamber Music New Zealand will seek out other worthy and entertaining song recitalists again.

 

* Schumann was the son of a Zwickau (south-west of Dresden in Saxony) bookseller, publisher and novelist and was thus brought up surrounded by literature. He  became one of the most literate of music critics, founding his own periodical Die Neue Zeitschrift (Magazine) für Muzik in 1834 which gained widespread circulation. It was natural that he read much of the huge output of poetry inspired by the Romantic movement, in English as well as German. Heine was probably Schumann’s most often set poet. Both poet and composer had been unwilling law students, ten years apart, at various universities, with Göttingen in common.

Edo de Waart’s NZSO subscription concert full of charm and affection with Brahms, Elgar and Strauss

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Edo de Waart with Joyce Yang (piano)

Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15
Strauss: Serenade for Wind Instruments in E flat, Op 7
Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme, Op 36 (‘Enigma Variations’)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 13 April, 7:30 pm 

Two professional orchestral concerts on successive days looks more like the style of a significant European city, but here it was the chance to display one of the few remaining signs that Wellington is, or rather, used to be, the country’s cultural capital, a title that has really belonged to Auckland for the past 20 years or so.

Orchestra Wellington celebrated the sesquicentenary (150 years) of Berlioz’s death by programming not just the Symphonie fantastique but also its almost never heard sequel, Lélio: le retour à la vie, mélologue en six parties. Probably the most exciting live performance of the former that I’ve ever heard. In certain respects it outshone the Saturday evening concert by the NZSO; though in part that’s a certain Berliozian fanaticism with which I’m afflicted. .

Nevertheless, to hear such a beautiful performance of Brahms’s first piano concerto made this a richly satisfying event.

Brahms’s Opus 15
The programme note had drawn attention to the relative failure of its first performances, when he was 25, in Hanover on 22 January 1859 and in Leipzig five days later, again with Brahms at the piano when it was again hissed. However, it was performed for a third time in March that year by the Hamburg Philharmonic and was acclaimed: perhaps being Brahms’s birthplace helped there.

Though it is not remarkably different from Brahms’ other works, it can certainly be heard as something new in comparison with the piano concertos till that time. *

This was no barn-storming performance of Brahms; in fact, my early feeling was that, apart from the initial assertiveness, there was a gentle, careful atmosphere both from piano and orchestra. The extended piano passages were poetic and meditative rather than flamboyant which linked it perhaps with Schumann rather than the more flashy compositions by the school of virtuosos who were dominating the piano scene around mid-century. However, it did occur to me that the calmness could have been darkened with a little more uneasiness. The element of unease was left mainly to Larry Reese’s singularly emphatic timpani, vividly supported by other percussionists Sakofsky, Guldborg and McKinnon.

The orchestra has a role equal to that of the piano and the two partners remained faithful to Brahms’s intentions. The orchestral playing was exquisite: lovely warm episodes from cellos, Robert Orr’s specially beautiful oboe playing.

It was probably the unusually discreet and subtle slow movement that might have mystified mid-century audiences: no readily memorable tunes perhaps, yet a great deal of delicate, moving music, with long passages where the piano was accompanied by very slender but exquisite orchestral sounds.

The third movement is enriched with enjoyable fugal (canonic?) passages though within a fairly formal Rondo framework. Its performance had piquant charm, yet remaining largely in the minor key, and both piano and orchestra refrained from much that could be called theatrical or dramatic, but which was wholly engaging through scraps of playful wind music. One of the features that puts it in the class of great classical masterpieces is the taste that avoids an excessively protracted Finale peroration. Right to the end, both conductor and pianist displayed their perfect response to the essentially unostentatious character of Brahms’s music.

Strauss’s Serenade
Apart from chronological connection, there was little kinship between the two pieces in the second half: not much more than having been born about seven years apart. Strauss’s youthful Serenade might have been modelled, instrumentally, on Mozart’s wonderful Serenade for 13 wind instruments (one of which is of course, a double bass – I suppose he could have used a contra-bassoon). But it’s a rather slighter piece, nowhere near the length of Mozart’s, yet quite delightful. The real treat was to have a small group of orchestral players in isolation, producing sounds that were perfectly integrated and homogeneous: the sort of sound that one hears only from recordings by the half dozen finest orchestras in the world.

Next: how about programming the Mozart exemplar, K 361, and soon? and yes, I know it’s 50 minutes long. And while we’re in that environment, I love both the Haffner and Posthorn serenades.

The Enigma Variations are among the most played of orchestral works, especially, I imagine, in English-speaking countries. The NZSO has played it well over 100 times in its career; and in Wellington about 15 times since I’ve been reviewing music (since 1987). And while beforehand, Imight have allowed myself to think enough is enough, the reality usually overcomes such churlishness. It did this time.

These were enthusiastically and vividly etched portraits that held the attention, to some extent through Elgar’s arranging them as one might a more structurally formal composition with varying moods, speeds, musical styles complementing and supporting each other. As often with a timpanist of Larry Rees’s flair, his offerings were often very, err… striking. But most instruments had their moments in the spotlight: my notes remarked on flutes, clarinet… Strange recollections from school crop up: the music master at Wellington College telling us that Elgar was one of the greatest orchestrators; and it was hard to dispute that right from the loving first variation describing his wife, the interplay of strings and winds in II, and the bassoons in III, and so on.

And then the link with Matthew Arnold, through his son Richard, (No V). My affection for prophetic poems like Dover Beach, and this:
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,”

The familiar Nimrod emerged clothed with special affection. And I’m always intrigued by No XIII, identified with asterisks and the title ‘Romanza’, with its possible association with a lady to whom Elgar was engaged till she emigrated to New Zealand, Helen Weaver. It got a lovely gentle performance.

Elgar clearly had a gift for friendship. And the sort of self-revelation which is often implicit in other composers’ works, become more explicit with this. Edo de Waart clearly has an attachment to the composer. I await his performance of Elgar’s second symphony.

Meantime, this might have been an unusual mix of music but it was entirely successful on the night.

 

*The best known of recently composed concertos, in the late 1850s, would have been those of Beethoven Mendelssohn, Schumann, and minor composers like Hummel, Hiller, Ries, perhaps Kalkbrenner, Litolff, Moscheles, Anton Rubinstein. The 1850s and 60s were not a fruitful period for orchestral music.

Liszt’s two were premiered in 1855 and 1857 in Weimar and may have been known beyond Weimar, though perhaps not by the average concert-goer. So apart from Liszt’s, Brahms’s No 1 was the only important piano concerto between Schumann’s in 1845 and Saint-Saëns’s second in 1868 and Grieg’s in 1869.