Morton Trio shines in a concert of variety and splendour at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
MORTON TRIO – Music by Kenneth Young, Szymanowski and Brahms

Arna Morton (violin) / Alex Morton (horn) / Liam Wooding (piano)

KENNETH YOUNG – Trio for horn, violin and piano (2007)
KAROL SZYMANOWSKI – Mythes for violin and piano Op.30
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Trio for horn, violin and piano Op.40

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 7th August, 2019

I’m sure that gruff old conservative Johannes Brahms would have been delighted had he known that the music for his Horn Trio would leap over both a whole century and continental and oceanic distances to figure, however fleetingly, as a delightful string of vigorous reminiscences in an Antipodean composer’s work for the same forces! Upon hearing the finale of Kenneth Young’s work at this concert I wondered whether he’d composed the piece especially for the Morton Trio to play in tandem with Brahms’ work on this occasion, though a glance at the programme indicated that the music was written as long ago as 2007. Still, it came up as freshly as new paint in the hands of this group, two of whose members, incidentally (Arna and Alex Morton), had been Young’s students while at the NZ School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington.

On the face of it a horn might seem an impossibly heroic, out-of-doors instrument for chamber music, inextricably associated with vigorous adventure rather than refined, intimate discourse – the sheer scale of the instrument’s potential for strength and power would pose an absorbing set of challenges for any composer wanting to set it alongside any chamber-like forces. Young’s writing didn’t shirk the instrument’s propensity for strength and vigour, while allowing the instrument another of its properties – a “spacious”, open-ended quality, further enhanced by “stopped” or muted notes, Tennyson’s “the horns of elfland faintly blowing”. In fact instruments such as horns
enable chamber music to break those “refined, intimate discourse” stereotypes, and accord the genre its full-blown stature and potential for expression.

Which is what Young’s work did so engagingly, the dialogues animating as the music progressed, the horn rasping in places, the violin responding trenchantly and the piano deciding to “wade in” – the toccata-like exchanges that ensued featuring each instrument at full stretch, expressing the sailent features of the ensemble’s character, before the music turned towards each instrument in turn. So, the violin commanded the stage with a cadenza-like sequence, featuring lovely double-stopped intervals, followed by the piano, its notes spacious and ambient, its mood relaxed and dreamy, inviting both its companions to respond in duet, the horn’s ear-catching stopped notes echoed by the violin, the piano scintillating impulses somewhere in between.

In its single movement, the music readily explored the contrasting moods and ambiences of the instrumental combinations, the music’s “character” swinging between attitudes in what seemed entirely “organic” rather than contrived ways, deliciously “jogtrotting” at one point,  working up enthusiasm to the point of abandonment at another (the horn sounding the alarm at the violin’s gypsy-like antics), then subsiding into further dreams, with the horn noble and distantly heroic once more, the violin responding with gentle, fragrant tones. Suddenly, there it was (Brahms himself might have snorted, “Ha! Any jackass can see that!” all over again!) – I shall, however, risk stating the obvious by registering the “there it was” as the music’s “reminiscing” of the German composer’s main theme in the finale of HIS Horn Trio, the eponymous instrument leading the way! The horn’s encouraging both violin and piano to rumbusticate freely helped vary the pace and mood with some more reflective material, before returning to the Brahmsian fragment, tossing it about with great glee and tremendous elan! What a life-enhancing work it proclaimed itself to be, and especially in these youthful hands!

One of the twentieth century’s chamber masterpieces, Karol Szymanowski’s three-movement work Mythes for violin and piano was played next by Arna Morton and Liam Wooding. IN three movements, the piece draws from its subject matter on Greek mythology, the writing for both instruments replete with complicated harmonies, complex articulations and light, delicate textures, shimmering and vibrant. Szymanowski himself said he had, along with the violinist Paweł Kochański, created with “Mythes” “a new style, new expression of violin-playing, a truly epoch-making thing”, everything “a complex musical expression of the inspiring beauty of the myth”. In the first myth ”The fountain of Arethusa”, we heard flowing waters as the music’s main lines of expression, a spring formed by the goddess Artemis out of the fleeing form of the nymph Arethusa, rescuing her from the advances of the river-god Alpheus.

Rippling textures from the piano activated the stream waters, the violin’s sinuous and silken lines disturbed by the water’s agitations, both instruments so “focused” on their own sound-worlds, yet alchemically ‘entwined” – haunting harmonics from the violin, floating over the piano’s rippling explorations, the delicacies from both instruments building into agitations, the playing here so very visceral and involving! We sensed the effect of the nymph’s transformation, as the spring waters seemed to melt into the impulsive flowing of the whole, the violinist’s extraordinary range of textures and colours breathing more freely over the watery ambiences at the end.

The second myth depicted the unfortunate Narcissus, a full-throated opening from both players, the piano almost Ravelian and bluesy-sounding, the violin radiant, wonderful, long-breathed lines! The double-stopped passages suggested watery reflection as the unfortunate youth caught sight of his own image, the excitement and interest growing, the ecstasy here palpable, the violin surging, buoyed up by the piano’s weight and tone! The double-stopping returned, somewhat eerily, like a “fixed” state holding us in thrall, the music’s ending poised, beautiful and disturbingly static.

Angular and vigorous exchanges marked the opening of the third piece, a sense at once of urgency and abandonment, in the composer’s depiction of the god Pan chasing the nymph-like Dryads about the woodland – agitated figurations from the violinist, fleet-fingered scamperings from the pianist, building up to a tremendous, swirling climax – terrific playing! And what a change overtook the scenario with the evocation of Pan’s flute, here so dreamily conjured up by violin harmonics and gentle, limpid piano sounds, everything mesmerised by the god’s playing. Then, what amazingly quixotic changes of mood and colour in the music, over the final section! – at the very end Pan’s pipes again hold everybody in thrall, until with almost conjurer-like guile, the god and his playmates vanish! A stunning achievement, I thought,  from these two performers!

Back came all three players for Brahms’ Horn Trio, a work written by the composer to commemorate the death of his mother in 1865. Brahms had actually played the horn in his youth, so was well-versed in the instrument’s poetic, “woodland-evocation” qualities, much in evidence in this work’s opening movement. The opening idea, begin by the violin is echoed most evocatively by the horn, a more agitated section “driven” by the piano providing a telling contrast to the lyricism of the work’s opening – these two different sections dominate the movement, strongly underlining the music’s elegiac quality, as much by the poetry of the playing here, as by the characterisation of the quicker, more troubled music.  In the Scherzo which followed we enjoyed the players’ energies, the rhythmic angularities brought out for all they were worth, the teamwork between the three players most exhilarating to watch and listen to – the Trio gave us a tender, nostalgic contrast, rhapsodic in feeling and warm-hearted in effect, throwing into relief the elan and buoyancy of the playing in the scherzo’s return.

Sombre, mournfully-sounded piano chordings began the deeply-felt strains of the Adagio movement, the instruments sounding a gently-voiced lament, the horn then beginning a ritualised contrapuntal passage which the other instruments joined – as the music gradually intensified, the music’s pace quickened and agitated the music’s surfaces before subsiding almost as quickly, leading  us back to calmer, more tranquil realms. Straightaway, the finale gathered us up irresistibly and danced us along its exhilarating, sometimes madcap course – the group’s rhythmic zest and tremendous thrust carried the day right into and through the various sequences, the horn having its moments of unfettered “whoopery”, while playing its part in the music’s overall “give and take”, and helping to give this young ensemble the distinction of being a force to be reckoned with.

Innovative, adventurous, AND intensely musical!! – “Pictures” with Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Music by Debussy, Barber, Alex Taylor, Musorgsky

CLAUDE DEBUSSY – L’Isle Joyeuse (orchestrated Bernardino Molinari)
SAMUEL BARBER – Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra 1945
ALEX TAYLOR- Assemblage (robotic incarnation by Simon Ingram)
MODEST MUSORGSKY – Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrated Maurice Ravel)

(Images accompanying Musorgsky’s “Pictures” courtesy of Tony Mackle
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa)

Lev Sivkov (‘cello)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 2nd August 2019

Such a cornucopia of sound, image and incident, with projected images and robotic contraptions playing an integral part in the proceedings! One certainly sensed that something out of the ordinary was being enacted here in the Michael Fowler Centre, although it must be said that, right from the very beginning, in the foyers outside the auditorium was that familiar “buzz” of expectation which we’ve come to expect accompanying Orchestra Wellington concerts – and then, inside, was the overwhelming impression of a full-to-bursting hall of people instantly making for a kind of frisson of anticipation entirely its own. What a tribute to the work of the orchestra, along with its conductor and management over recent times!

True to form, there was even an unchartered surprise in store for us throughout the evening, conductor Marc Taddei at one point enjoining his enthralled audience to assist in the making of a “virtual reality” cyber-game which involved a player conducting an orchestra, and, in response to this receiving appropriately adulatory, lukewarm or downright derisive audience reactions to her/his efforts. What fun we all had, prompted by Taddei, simulating by turns a few seconds of each of these responses, all duly recorded!

All of it certainly added up to a distinctively “different” evening with an orchestra – and if some of the more experimental happenings were received with as much bemusement and bewilderment as appreciation, it was all part of the experience. Some of these “experiments” I do admit I found it difficult to respond to without sounding impossibly fogey-ish, but, buoyed along by the spirit of adventure and enterprise that marked the whole, I thought it important to set down a reaction as a mark of respect for people’s efforts, if nothing else. I should say, before going on, that musically, I found the evening an enthralling experience – even the Samuel Barber concerto on this occasion, which has in the past never done much for me.

The concert began with Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse though here, of course, in a version orchestrated by the composer’s friend the Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari. The latter used a large orchestra, a measure of the power of Debussy’s original solo piano evocation, which was inspired directly by a painting by the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, L’embarquement pour Cythère (The departure for Cythère), depicting a group of revellers leaving for the island associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It was around this time that Debussy was “escaping” with his lover, Emma Bardac, to the island of Jersey, hence the music’s sensuality and excitement. We were shown Watteau’s painting on a screen above the orchestra during the performance, the image perhaps needing one of those gradually “closing in” views during the music for some of the central detail to involve us more immediately – but nevertheless, a nice idea.

Beginning with lovely, engagingly throaty wind-gurglings, everything delicately energised and transparently coloured, the music danced its way along, the orchestral timbres allowing a more obviously visceral element to the music, but keeping to the fore a constantly-turning, kaleidoscopic quality, the winds nimble and atmospheric, and the brass magically sonorous. The strings took full advantage of their thematic moments of romantic warmth, the whole gradually building up the excitement with surging “La Mer-ish” moments, then bursting forth with a full panoply of orchestral splendour!

After this, Samuel Barber’s “Cello Concerto seemed at first like dried biscuit following a sumptuous dessert, until one got use to the composer’s almost self-consciously fragmented manner in dealing with his themes, the first movement of the work mercilessly “worrying” its material for much of the time. I did think, though, that the playing of Lev Sivkov, the soloist was most impressive. The slow movement, however, converted me to the cause more than anything, a kind of measured Sicilienne, featuring beautiful work from the soloist and woodwind players alike, the oboe singing with the solo ‘cello in a dance-like processional, with all the winds distinguishing themselves in gorgeous outpourings, becoming increasingly fraught with emotion as the music proceeded – deeply moving in effect!

The finale’s full orchestral opening approached a “cry of pain” in effect, though the music quickly moved into gear, crackling with angular energies, Sivkov bringing off a number of fiendish-looking runs the length of the fingerboard, the orchestra by turns muttering and “shouting” the main theme insistently. A seesawing orchestral ostinato built up intensity like an approaching juggernaut, before allowing the ‘cello a little declamatory space, though there was no let-up in the orchestra’s determinedly-renewed onslaught, save for an impassioned solo from the ‘cello that did seem to gain some ambient empathy. A quirky triplet rhythm, another impassioned solo, and orchestra and cellist swiftly dealt the music its coup de grace-like final gesture!

Alex Taylor’s piece Assemblage came inextricably linked with visual artist Simon Ingram’s “autonomous painting robot”, its various manifestations mightily intriguing all and sundry! I wasn’t quite prepared for the “austerity”, let alone the somewhat static nature of the visual result, as the machine took its time to produce single lines, curves, arcs, in tandem with the musical composition. In this particular case the actual relationship between visual artist and composer, machine and music, was, as Alex Taylor explained in his SOUNZ interview, not dissimilar to any of the pictures/music relationship in the Musorgsky work, except that the “source material” for the composer (the machine and its visual creation) was , as he put it “alive, and an active part of the piece”.

As a listener/observer, one had to accept that the experience was “what it was” in terms of having to take in (a) the robot’s workings, (b) the picture that was being crafted by the machine as prompted by its operator, and (c) the music. It was all too much for this “bear of little brain” at a first encounter, my instincts (as with the Musorgsky work that followed, which was “inundated” with visual images) being to focus my attentions towards the music, though the distractions in this case produced more of a bewildered response than anything else, rather like the sailor in AA Milne’s poem from “Now We Are Six” who “never could think which he ought to do first”.

As for the music, orchestral sounds mingling with amplified robotic workings, the result was nothing if not inventive, beginning with low, sinister Fafner-like growls (I had not long ago listened to Wagner’s “Siegfried!), then suggesting some kind of inter-planetary lift-off, coinciding with the robot’s workings and its resulting arc-like markings being shown, enlarged, on the screen. We heard a series of excitable crescendi with differently-scored scintillations punctuating the flow, the effect at times filmic and transcending the robotic workings in terms of imagery suggested, while in other places generating toccata-like frenzies of motoric excitement.

After subsequently gathering its energies for a “birth-pangs” series of mighty efforts, and dragging something from the pupa – with the strings supporting a nobly heroic theme on the brass,  the music triumphantly reached a kind of “breaking free” threshold, suggesting open spaces and wide-eyed wonderment at some kind of journey’s end, the robot’s peregrinations having produced an angular assemblage of circles, as enigmatic as the machine’s actual workings!

Our “virtual reality audience” collaborations having then been mooted and satisfactorily executed, it was time for the evening’s culmination – a performance of Modest Musorgsky’s most famous undertaking, but one with a difference. In keeping with the evening’s focus upon music’s powers of “visualisation”, we were not only given French composer Maurice Ravel’s justly-celebrated orchestral transcription of Musorgsky’s original work for piano solo, but were shown a series of artworks from the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa to accompany the music, images selected to “match the categories of castles, tombs, witches and unhatched chicks”, as the programme note put it.

I wanted this idea to work, as it seemed such an exciting and out-of-the-ordinary thing to do – but as soon as I got the accompanying insert containing what seemed to me to be a huge number of images, I felt misgivings – surely all of this was far too much to “load into” a piece of music whose original conception was of pieces written in response to just ONE single image for each? Straightaway, the idea of showing different images of “people walking about in a variety of contexts” to illustrate the composer’s originally unifying and binding intention seemed to me damagingly discursive and superficial. Where were these people all going, and for what purposes? What was the plan?

In effect, the exercise for me became more frustrating than fulfilling – I felt there were too many vaguely conceptualised images, with most in any case having detailings that were impossible to discern properly at that distance. Occasionally one popped up which was arresting, and whose impact stayed with me – an example was the Waharoa, or gateway, from the Te Papa collection,  something whose power and gravitas could have easily maintained its stunning impact right throughout the playing of the work’s final ”Great gate at Kiev”. The problem of detail could have also been better addressed by having “close-ups” (detail!) from the picture or image selected. Musorgsky would have expected audiences to “enter the world” of each of his specific musical images during their individual courses – no chance of that was possible, here, unless one shut one’s eyes, or focused primarily on the music.

Which was what I eventually did, and which course brought forth such riches! – for, irony of ironies, this performance by Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington was one of the finest, most focused, exquisitely-detailed and richly-characterised I’ve ever experienced. Here was beautifully deep and rich brass-playing, characterfully nimble and artfully-textured winds, string-sounds of every conceivable hue and colour, both rich and delicate, (the players’ eerie pianissimi in “With the dead in a dead language” simply unearthly!), and everything from the deepest and most sonorous percussion to the lightest and most delicate detail. Individual touches such as the saxophone in “the Old Castle” and the tuba in “Bydlo” were vividly projected, the players deserving their own special accolades at the performance’s end, as did, from a justly appreciative audience, the whole orchestra and its conductor!

Voices of the World – Stroma’s ambient “girdle round about the earth”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma presents:
VOICES OF THE WORLD

Works by Celeste Oram, John Psathas, Luciano Berio. Julia Wolfe, Jack Body, Anna Clyne

CELESTE ORAM – An Overture (1807, rev. 2018, 2019)
(devised by Celeste Oram, Rob Thorne (taonga puoro), Ludwig van Beethoven and Stroma Ensemble, with Keir Gogwilt, violin, and Matthew Allison, trombone)

JACK BODY – “Bouyi” (from “Yunnan”2008)
Anna Van der Zee, Emma Baron (violins), Andrew Thomson (viola),Ken Ichinose (‘cello)

ANNA CLYNE – A Wonderful Day (2013)
Patrick Barry (bass clarinet), Thomas Guldborg (percussion), Sarah Watkins (piano),
Callum Allardice (guitar), Ken Ichinose (‘cello), Alexander Gunchenko (double-bass)

JULIA WOLFE – Reeling (2012)
Patrick Barry (clarinet), Thomas Guldborg (percussion), Sarah Watkins (piano), Callum Allardice (guitar), Ken Ichinose )’cello), Alexander Gubchenko (double-bass)

JOHN PSATHAS – Irirangi (Meditation) 2019
Alistair Fraser (taonga puoro), Bridget Douglas (flute)

LUCIANO BERIO – Folk Songs 1964
Bianca Andrew (soprano), Bridget Douglas (flute), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Michelle Velvin (harp), Thomas Guldborg/Sam Rich (percussion), Andrew Thomson (viola), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)

Stroma, conducted by Hamish McKeich

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington

Thursday 1st August, 2019

Every Stroma concert I’ve had the good fortune to attend has pushed back my frontiers regarding what I’d thought of as viable and coherent musical expression, and by use of techniques and/or media that I might have previously regarded somewhat removed from “musical” realms. This “giving voice” to unconventional objects and means could be seen as taking one’s listening back to a time when music existed only as natural sounds which would have then slowly been developed alongside speech as a kind of language, the sounds then imitated by whatever objects came to hand, and which could in some cases be manipulated and varied for different results and purposes.

This latest Stroma presentation “Voices of the World” featured a couple of items which explored the idea of these pure, primitive sounds making their way into and through various human cultures and being gradually shaped for descriptive or expressive purposes. The concert’s first item was one of these, a new, intensely collegial work-in-progress called Overture 1807, rev.2018, rev.2019 (an impressive stand-alone chronology of connection in itself!). The work was the brainchild of NZ-born California-based composer Celeste Oram, an overture to a projected opera-in-progress whose material was “collectively devised and improvised” by a whole host of performer thus far in the work’s life, and included the playing of Rob Thorne, a noted exponent of taonga puoro, and material from 18th Century Vienna (though the overture as heard here extensively quoted Beethoven’s “Coriolan” Overture, a work from the early 19th Century).

Stroma’s programme note most illuminatingly told of one Georg Forster (1754-94), who, as a teenager, accompanied his father, a naturalist and scientist, on the voyage with Captain James Cook on the HMS Resolution between 1772 and 1775, visiting many South Seas Island places including New Zealand. As well as displaying sophisticated ethnographical skills in analysing different Polynesian Societies, the young Forster was a talented essayist whose book A Voyage around the World, published in 1777, earned him great fame as it uniquely combined factual and reliable data with colourful descriptions and observations of the different peoples and their customs, even including notated and translated  Polynesian songs. Goethe, Wieland, and even Beethoven were all said to have read some of Forster’s work, one commentator in the 1930s even suggesting that the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was inspired by a Maori chant!

By way of relating  the work of a great composer to a host of creative impulses that might have preceded it, and even “prepared its way” in generic forms, Celeste Oram chose the composer’s “Coriolan” Overture as the fulcrum around which were encircled various sounds and gesturings instigated by the taonga puoro playing of Rob Thorne – I found this experience a kind of “turned on one’s head” happening, the haunting tones, textures and timbres of the older instruments (including stones) “giving birth” as it were to the impulses that became the Beethoven Overture, by helping create the surrounding agglomerated ambiences. So this wasn’t “deconstructed” Beethoven, but rather “inseminated” (is there a unisex expression for this?) thought, impulse and gesture, all given musical and theatrical expression. Rob Thorne’s taonga puoro evocations of an ancient “being” instigating processes of creativity which, rather than self-consciouslessly wrought had a kind of “uncovered” aspect, made discernable by creative awareness, and leading towards the measures of (here) oddly-syncopated Beethoven that we knew so well, though underlining for us at the piece’s end the infinite patience of the sources of these tones and impulses in returning our sensibilities to the place of origin, though, of course, never to be quite the same again.

Each one of the concert’s next three pieces featured pre-recorded human voices (a duet and two solos) given a kind of freshly-wrought reactive ambience, as likely to contrast with as complement the singers’ sounds. These were “field” recordings, caught on the wing, as it were, and thus requiring from the instrumentalists a similar kind of spontaneity of utterance, an “entering into” the world of the vocalisings in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Jack Body’s Bouyi was something of a “rogue entry” into a catalogue of field recordings from Yunnan province in China, this being actually from Guizhou, a neighbouring province. It featured the voices of two Bouyi women duetting, though no translation was provided.

Two violins began softly and folkishly, evoking a spacious kind of serenity, enlivened by the women’s voices, to which the viola and ‘cello responded – the instruments gave the impression of “listening” to the voices, the instrumental harmonisings tender, sensitive and ambient, contrasted with the voices’ elegant earthiness. The instruments occasionally copied the voices’ interval of a second in places, but always discreetly and resonantly – it all gave an impression of a precious moment in time caught on the wing, to be enjoyed and marvelled at in times to come.

The ambient contrast between this and a similar kind of undertaking by British composer Anna Clyne couldn’t have been more marked, the recording being of an elderly man in a Chicago Street singing and tapping his walking-cane as he walked down the city’s “Magnificent Mile”. Stroma’s resident conductor Hamish McKeich magically appeared to direct this piece which was titled A Wonderful Day. The man’s voice made a great subject – very forthright, his “feeling” very emotional and overt, both in speech and song, the instrumental accompaniments gently “played with” the singer, before cranking the delivery up into a kind of gospel hymn! The piano and percussion helped to “open up” the ambiences, the double-tracking of song and commentary giving the performance a kind of resonance, riding triumphantly atop the traffic noise – a tremendously involving and great-hearted realization, the first of a collection of electro-acoustic recordings of street noises entitled “Chicago Street Portraits”.

American composer Julia Wolfe’s work Reeling used a recording of a French-Canadian singer who possessed an extremely rhythmic and lively vocal style, one generating tremendous momentum from the outset – the instrumentalists took up the vocalised rhythms firstly with fingers and feet, gradually bringing in clarinet, piano, cello and guitar, and finally the double-bass – the “ditty” was challengingly angular and syncopated in rhythm, sounding very street-wise, and clinching the “interactive” illusion when the percussion joined in with what seemed like proper “jamming”. The instruments were allowed a few measures without the singer, keeping the energy levels primed, the players matching the singer’s exuberance with gestures like the clarinet’s “transported” bird-calls sounded at the height of the tumult, and the singer then concluding with a flourish of strung-together cadences almost vertiginous in effect! Fabulous!

One would expect John Psathas’s music to easily replicate such Dionysian exuberances – but here was the composer of View from Olympus exploring a completely different realm of expression, one concerned with hidden, almost metaphysical properties of sounds and music, and evocations of such sounds. Psathas used the word “Irirangi” as a title for his piece, meaning a “faint voice”, a kind of “aspiration” produced by what he called a “reaching out” of realms towards other realms, but equating awareness of this phenomenon with the idea of “meditation”, a listening for these hidden voices (shades, to my surprise, of Robert Schumann’s proclaimed “one soft note for he who listens secretly” in his solo piano work Fantasie in C Major of 1839). As with the concert’s opening “Overture”, the piece here began with sounds equating more to the natural than to the “human” world via recordings of insects, birdsong, and rain, along with taonga puoro  played by Alistair Fraser, to which Bridget Douglas’s flute responded at first with simple, descending figurations, which gradually took on the character of something like an Aeolian harp, with as much breath as tone – all of these delicacies and subtleties attuned and honed our listening sensibilities in a way the composer undoubtedly meant with the word “meditation”, bringing into play the phenomena of normally inanimate objects such as stones being given the capacity to sound and “speak”, and “suggest” to the flute that it absorb these same sounds and “echo” them as the “faint voice” or “irirangi”. Haunting and moving……

As most people know, Luciano Berio wrote his Folk-Songs for the singer Cathy Berberian, to whom he was married. First performed in 1964, these are arrangements of folk songs and melodies from various parts of the world, and scored at that time for voice, flute/piccolo, clarinet, harp, viola, cello and percussion (Berio made an orchestral arrangement  in 1973). He’d set two of the songs, “La donna ideale” and “Ballo” much earlier (part of a student work from 1947 “Tre canzoni popolari”), before reworking them for the later collection. One presumes that the composer’s professed “profound uneasiness” when listening to piano-accompanied popular songs stemmed from his dislike of what he regarded as some kind of “gentrification” of the music, and that his scoring for a chamber ensemble to accompany the singer was meant to bring listeners closer to what he called “the expressive and cultural roots of each song”. Certainly the individuality of each setting is sharply expressed by the instrumentation,  more so than could a piano accompaniment alone provide – though it’s worth remembering that, often, “less is more” in these matters, and that we all (the composer himself included) “hear” things differently…….

As much as I would like to pleasurably dwell on soprano Bianca Andrew’s smilingly-voiced and vividly-characterised realisations of each one of these songs, I must hold myself in check and report merely that she seemed to me to take us right into the ambient realm of each song’s idiosyncratic world – the work of an artist with a gift for direct communication. I never, alas, heard soprano Victoria de los Angeles “live”, but a good friend of mine who did would always recall that singer’s ability to communicate a kind of “personalized” warmth of utterance, as if performing for each individual listener alone – throughout these songs I felt a similar directness of giving from this singer, an invitation to “share” the words and the music, with each item a delightfully individualized experience.

The first two songs aren’t actual folk-songs, but were composed by a Kentucky song-writer, John Jacob Niles – in “Black, black, black” the viola introduced the song, then whispered an accompaniment, before “answering” the singer after the first voice, together with the harp, everything ambient and lovely – “I wonder as I wander” was more processional, like a harp-accompanied carol, the winds contributing gently-floating harmonies, with flute and clarinet impulsively contributing some duetting bird-song! The Armenian “Loosin yelav” featured liquid harp notes and a gentle clarinet descant to the voice, concluding with a flurry of wind notes as the moon was chased into the clouds! – after which the French “Rossignolet du bois” gently told of a nightingale instructing a lover how to woo a sweetheart, voice, harp, clarinet and gentle percussive effects used here to persuasive effect.

What a contrast with the Sicilian “A la feminisca”! – at once herioc and dangerous seafaring sounds, the vocal line declamatory, in places low and trenchant, the accompaniments strident, but concluding with some lullabic assurances! The two Italian songs, “La donna ideale” and “Ballo” are both droll philosophical pronouncements concerning love, the former lyrical, the second energetic, with fantastic instrumental playing and a soaring vocal line rounding up the “whirling dervish-like” energies. More darkness with “Motettu de tristura” from Sardinia, plaintive vocal utterances, with deep, resonant chords, the flute and percussion piquant and pleading – far better to be in the Auvergne, unhappily married or no, as the case may be, in the first song! – the light, pastoral atmosphere here seeming somewhat at odds with the querulous subject-matter (Ironic as only the French can be, perhaps!) With the second Auvergne song we enjoyed the contrast between the viola’s and cello’s grim, sombre soundings, and the quasi-cautionary tale aspect of the singer’s story, the voice arched upwards so freely and expressively, the harp at the end adding a telling, liquidly-flowing  postscript.

As for the concluding Azerbaijan song, with the “untranslatable” words, here it swept along with plenty of elan, the musicians “telling” its unmistakably focused story without need of any translation, the discourse filled with glint, energy, mischief and scandalous revelation, finishing with a slate-cleansing shout, and metaphorically bringing the house down! –  the evening a triumph for Stroma’s avowed goal of engagement of its audiences with new music and new ideas, via performances of unfailing interest and brilliance.

 

 

Emotion-laden concert an appropriate response to the remembrance of the Holocaust

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Music of Remembrance

Compositions by Laurence Sherr

Elegy and Vision (1993)
Flame Language (2008)
Khayele’s Waltz (2018)
Sonata for Cello and Piano – Mir zaynen do! (2014)

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington

Tuesday 30 July 2019, 7 pm

Laurence Sherr is Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music at Kennesaw State University, Georgia. He is a prolific and versatile composer. The son of a couple who escaped Poland just before the outbreak of the Second World War and settled in the United States, he has a strong interest in the Holocaust and Holocaust education. He lectures all over the world on Holocaust remembrance music and first came to Wellington for the 2014 Conference on Suppressed Music at Victoria University of Wellington. His compositions range from the avant-garde to the accessible, and include new timbres, spatiality, nature, and Judaic music. He is especially interested in music as a mode of resistance and a means for survival.

The first work on the programme was Elegy and Vision, a work for solo cello. Sherr wrote it in memory of his brother who died young. It employs cantorial lamentations used in Jewish memorial prayers. Like Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, a transcription of the memorial prayer on the Day of Atonement, the music suits the deep mournful passages on the cello. The repeated phrases, the sounds of crying, the high notes evoke heart-breaking sorrow. Some of the music had the quality of improvisation, but there was also a note of rebellion, with a dramatic passage ending with plucked strings and harsh dissonance. Inbal Megiddo played with great sensitivity and a beautiful rich tone.

The next piece, Flame Language, was performed by Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano), Deborah Rawson (clarinet), Inbal Megiddo (cello), Jian Liu (piano), and Leonard Sakofsy (percussion), conducted by Donald Maurice. This is an unusual combination of instruments with the percussionist moving from one set of percussion instruments to another and adding colourful sounds to the ensemble. The song is a setting of a poem by the Jewish Nobel Prize winning poet, Nelly Sachs, who found sanctuary in Sweden during the period of the Holocaust. The poem, ‘The Candle that I have Lit For You’ comes from a collection of poems, Prayer for the Dead Bridegroom. Although these poems are about the Holocaust, written in Sweden about friends and relatives who were left behind and died in Poland, they are also about universal suffering. The music opens with an extended introduction using the particular tones of each instrument, the clarinet plays Jewish modal patterns, then the mezzo-soprano comes in with a haunting melodic line. Margaret Medlyn sang this beautifully. The various instruments explore the components of the musical theme. It is an interesting work that is hard to place in the context of contemporary music.

Khayele’s Waltz was based on a song written by a fifteen year old girl in the ghetto. It is written for an unusual combination of two instruments: a clarinet, played by Deborah Rawson, and cello, played by Inbal Megiddo. It makes use of a well known Yiddish melody, but set to a dissonant duet capturing the disturbing memory of the period. The cello and the clarinet echo each other, but out of sync, creating uneasy tension.

The final work, the longest, was the Sonata for Cello and Piano, played by Inbal Megiddo and Jian Liu. It attempts to deliberately tell the story of the Holocaust as an act of defiance, resistance and hope of survival. Sherr uses five well known songs embedded in the work, a song associated with resistance in the Vilna ghetto, ‘El Mo V’Rahamim’, the Jewish memorial prayer, sung notably by Cantor Shlomo Katz, spared on the edge of a mass grave from execution when he was allowed to sing this for those who had been killed, and the final movement, a set of eight variations on the Jewish Partisan song Mir Zaynen Do. This song was inspired by the news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the words set to the melody from a pre-war Soviet film. It became one of the chief anthems of Holocaust survivors. The words are:

“Never say that you have reached the very end,
When leaden skies a bitter future may portend;
For sure the hour for which we yearn will yet arrive,
And our marching step will thunder: we survive!”

These were very meaningful words not only for those who survived the Holocaust, but also for young Zionists who saw Israel as a shield against future threats to Jews. It is an impressive and difficult work for the cello, but it is weighted by too much history. Incorporating emotionally laden themes in a piece of music presents special problems. Tchaikovsky did it in the 1812 Overture, Beethoven did it in the Battle Symphony, but these themes were not the substance of the music. In Sherr’s Cello Sonata it was impossible to separate the musical content from the emotion that the contemplation of history involved. Having said this, many in the audience were greatly moved by this long difficult piece, which was brilliantly played by Jian Liu and Inbal Megiddo.

It was an emotionally laden concert, and perhaps this moving reaction is the appropriate response to the remembrance of the Holocaust. It is to the great credit of the New Zealand School of Music that it has staff from different corners of the world capable of preparing, playing and recording this music. All the players participating in this concert deserve our accolade.

The best drawn from Wellington Youth Orchestra in taxing programme under Donald Armstrong

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Youth Orchestra (WYO)
Guest conductor – Donald Armstrong

Dukas: Fanfare to precede La Péri
Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48
Weill: Little Threepenny Music (Kleine Dreigroschenmusik)
Enescu: Rhapsody No. 1 in A major

St Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 28 July 2019, 7 pm

The Wellington Youth Orchestra is the only full-size symphony orchestra for young players in Wellington. The ages of the members range from 25 to 13. They all have to go through a rigorous audition to join. The orchestra has an important place in the Wellington musical scene, not only for the varied and interesting programmes it offers, but because it is a stepping stone for young people who aspire to be professional musicians. A number of its alumni now study overseas or are members of professional orchestras. These include Gemma New, who is now carving out a successful career as a conductor in Canada and the US. In an interview she talked about the sheer pleasure of being part of an orchestra and its sound produced through the cooperation of a large team. This pleasure radiated from more than 60 young musicians who participated in this concert. The programme was designed for orchestral training as much as for its musical interest.

The concert opened with a Fanfare to precede Dukas’ ballet La Péri. Dukas is now mainly remembered for his Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but in his time he was a greatly respected teacher and composer. He was extremely critical of his own music and destroyed most of his works, which almost included La Péri. The ballet is now largely forgotten, but its magnificent fanfare which was originally used as the opener for the ballet is still enjoyed. It was played by the full brass section. Getting an ensemble of brass players to play with the subtlety and clarity that is demanded in an orchestra is a challenge to which these players responded ably. It was a grand piece that made the various brass instrumentalists listen to each other and make their sounds blend.

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings was the string section’s opportunity to shine. The gorgeous rich string sound reverberated in the friendly acoustics of the church. The title and the structure of this work paid homage to Mozart and 18th century divertimento music, but Tchaikovsky renders these in his own Russian late 19th century idiom. The work is in the traditional four movements, ‘ I Pezzo in forma di Sonatina’, ‘Waltzer’, ‘Élégie’, and ‘Finale’. The first movement is a beautiful rich chorale scored for the whole orchestra with the cellos playing lots of fast notes underneath a slower moving passage in the upper strings. The cellos came through with an opulent sound, while the upper strings played the melody with a rich silky tone. The second movement, the Waltz, takes the place of the 18th century minuet. It is the best known part of the work, often played on its own. The third movement is lyrical, elegiac, with a hint of Tchaikovsky’s other worldly fairy tale like music. The final movement goes from a subdued opening based on a Russian theme to a vibrant section of Russian dance sequence. The orchestra played with clear precision and confidence, undaunted by the difficult filigree passages of this substantial symphonic work.

The brass and the strings having had their turn to shine, it was the turn of the winds and percussion to display their skills in Kurt Weill’s Little Threepenny Music. The cultural gulf between the Berlin of the 1920s and Wellington of 2019 is huge, but the group of eight woodwind, four brass, piano, banjo and guitar, and percussion managed to capture the cynical, decadent feel of the popular themes from the Threepenny Opera, all tinged with parody. It is a difficult work with all the players exposed in solo parts. Credit to the whole team for tackling this seemingly light but technically difficult piece. It is very enjoyable music.

The whole orchestra came together for the final work, Enescu’s Rhapsody No. 1. This is an early work, based on popular dance tunes and songs of the time. It uses Romanian dance rhythms that get faster and faster until they get to a quite dizzying speed. It is ebullient, and outgoing, with none of the barbaric quality of the music of his contemporary, Bartók, who also explored the music of Romania. A clarinet, introduces the theme song that is gradually taken up by the whole orchestra. It is exuberant music and the large orchestra in full flight playing these wild gypsy rhythms was a joy to behold.

For an encore the orchestra played Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance from his ballet Gayane. It is a rumbustious, energetic piece, very appropriate for this concert by young musicians to end on.

Donald Armstrong is in appearance modest, self-effacing, but as Associate Concert Master of the NZSO, and vastly experienced conductor of various ensembles, he knew how to get the best from his players. He allowed them to play with confidence, gave them space, air, and freedom to express themselves. He let them play with a bold sound, yet still playing with discipline.

The Wellington Youth Orchestra is a great asset to the city. Such a concert augurs well for the city’s musical future.

The next concert of the WYO is on Sunday, 5 October.

The programme will include Saint-Saëns, Bruch and Glazunov.

 

 

Warming our hearts in mid-winter – Cantoris directed by Thomas Nikora

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Cantoris Choir presents:
A MID-WINTER’S NIGHT
Music by Eric Whitacre, Morgan Andrew-King, Samuel Berkahn, Thomas Nikora, Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven and Josef Haydn

ERIC WHITACRE – Sleep / The Seal Lullaby / Lux Aurumque
MORGAN-ANDREW KING – River of Song
SAMUEL BERKAHN – With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled
ROBERT SCHUMANN – The Two Grenadiers
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Song of the Flea
JOSEF HAYDN – Cello Concerto in C Major (Ist Mvt.)
THOMAS NIKORA – Mass in E Minor

Barbara Paterson (soprano)
Morgan-Andrew King (baritone)
Samuel Berkahn (‘cello)
Liam Furey (piano)
Diana Muggleston (violin)
Thomas Nikora (piano and conductor)
Cantoris Choir

St.Mark’s Chapel, St. Mark’s Church School,
Wellington

Saturday 27th July 2019

This was the kind of programme whose content and presentation couldn’t have done a better job of warming the cockles of both audience hearts and sensibilities, having already drawn our attention via the concert’s title to the evening’s delightful and characteristic seasonal ambiences. Choral items naturally enough made up the lion’s share of the presentations, but by way of contrast and variety we heard two songs for baritone with piano, and a piano-accompanied movement from a Haydn ‘Cello Concerto . Amazingly, too, we were given, during the course of the concert, no less than three (presumably world) premieres of works all written by composer/performers associated with Cantoris Choir, two of the singers and the choir’s conductor. It was all in line with an overall warmth of utterance that suggested “living music”, as if we were at something like a Bach family get-together, with various members coming forward as both creators and performers.

The  work of American composer Eric Whitacre has figured prominently of late in choral concerts worldwide, his range of compositions catering for professional and amateur groups alike. Here we had three of his works, each of  which illustrated both the music’s attractive craftsmanship and ready accessibility as regards performers and audiences. I should have liked to have heard Whitacre’s original setting of Robert Frost’s words from his poem “Stopping by Woods of a Snowy Evening” for his “Sleep” (the composer was denied publishing rights for his work by the poet’s estate, and new words for the setting had to be substituted!), but the alternative text seemed just as evocative for Whitacre’s purposes – the final word “sleep” (shared by the original Frost poem) made a haunting conclusion to a finely-crafted, sonorous performance by the choir.

I recently encountered Morgan-Andrew King on the operatic stage in the NZSM production at the Hannah Playhouse of Puccini’s one-acter Gianni Schicchi (playing the part of one of the avaricious relatives awaiting the death of a would-be benefactor), so was, naturally enough, intrigued to find that he composed as well as performed – his work  River of Song was inspired, he told us in a spoken introduction by the Waikato River, the writing cleverly evoking the movement of water, the piece’s wordless opening  conjuring up a multitude of impulses, currents and streamlets whose lines coalesced in rich harmonic surges that expanded warmly at climaxes, everything truly suggesting that the composer “knew” the music’s subject well.

Another Eric Whitacre piece The Seal Lullaby readily “sounded” its name, the story of the piece’s genesis and history adding to its piquancy – a most affecting lullaby, with a beautiful piano accompaniment. The piece’s wordless sequences took on a “living instrumental” quality, enhanced by the choir’s gorgeously-voiced tunings – lovely stuff!  As a comparison, Lux Aurumque, the piece that followed, by the same composer, had a far more “international” quality, a “sheen” whose quality impressed for different reasons to the Seal Lullaby. At the piece’s end the choir managed some exquisite harmonisings set against held notes.

Samuel Berkahn brought a breath of bracing air to the proceedings with his assertion that his music would, after Eric Whitacre’s, “wake everybody up!”. His piece, beginning with a catchy “waltz-trot” kind of rhythm, was named with words of Wordsworth’s, and set melodic lines to angular piano accompaniments, the voices teetering on the edges of fugues throughout their exchanges, Berkahn hinting tongue-in-cheek at his recent interest in Renaissance madrigals and baroque polyphony, and keeping us “primed” as to their encoded presences.

After the interval, we were treated to two songs, each of whose subject-matter was steeped in the early Romantic era, and given suitably full-blooded treatment via the sonorous baritone voice of Morgan-Andrew King, firstly with Schumann’s ballade-like setting of Heine’s verses “Die beiden Grenadiere”, telling the story of two French soldiers making their way home from the Napoleonic Wars, only to learn that their beloved Emperor had been imprisoned. Schumann effectively contrasts the over-the-top patriotism of the French soldier, complete with the “Marseilles” quotation, with the sombre, utterly downcast piano postlude, superbly “voiced” by Thomas Nikora. King’s beautiful and sonorous voice I thought captured the “heroic” aspect of the song to perfection, though still leaving room for future explorations of the conflicted and contrasting range of emotion from each of the men. However, in Beethoven’s setting of Goethe’s “Song of the Flea”, the singer’s characterisations ignited more readily, working hand-in-glove with Thomas Nikora’s impish, volatile rendering of the piano part, and instantly engaging our interest and delight – marvellous!

Samuel Berkahn returned to the platform, this time with his ‘cello, to perform for us the opening movement of Haydn’s sunny C-major ‘Cello Concerto. With Thomas Nikora leading the way, bringing the opening orchestral “tutti” excitingly to life on the piano, the ‘cellist took up the challenge right from his opening phrase, superbly “sprung” at first, then full-throated and song-like in the second subject group, the solo lines speaking, bubbling and glowing. Intonation was sometimes a bit hit-and-miss in the instrument’s higher registers, but the overall line of the performance remained, thanks to the player’s energy and “recovery instinct” keeping the musical fabric taut and even, and maintaining a sense of enjoyment and buoyancy.

Which brought us to the third premiere of the evening’s concert, Thomas Nikora’s Mass in E minor, a work which the composer told us was inspired by his performing with Cantoris another Mass, that by Schubert, in G Major (D.167), and which Nikora had promised himself he would complete for his fourth year as Cantoris’s music director (time flies!). He mentioned also the Latin Mass’s flexibility and versatility as a text for musical settings, allowing him so many creative possibilities and options. Along with the SATB choir, the composer scored the work for solo soprano, violin, cello and piano.

Beginning with the Kyrie, the composer’s promise that there will be “plenty of fugal stuff” was immediately suggested with the voices’ opening contrapuntal entries, giving way to the solo soprano (the angelic-voiced Barbara Paterson) without a break at the Christe eleison with soaring lyrical lines. The return of the Kyrie was announced by the tenors with clipped, fugal figures, the texture thereby considerably enlivened with staccato chatterings, urgent and insistent, but softened by lyrical utterances from Samuel Berkahn’s cello.

Without a break, the Gloria burst in, the sopranos doing some lovely stratospheric work, and the pianist, Liam Furey, moulding beautiful bell-like chords to accompany “Et in terra pax hominibus”, the section somewhat surprisingly finishing with an “Amen”, allowing the Laudamus te to start afresh – again very fugal, and leading to a fanfare-like “Glorificamus te” with contrapuntal lines encircling the music. Violinist Diana Muggleston sweetly added her instrument’s voice to that of the cello to prepare for the soprano’s contribution to Gratias agimus tibi, an angel’s pure and fervent exclamation of thanks. I did feel here that the music had too many “stop-starts”, and that the whole could have been given a stronger sense of  “through-line” via the occasional ear-catching transition, imagining, for instance, that the morphing into waltz-time at the Domine Deus from the Gratias would have a stunning effect!

A true-and-steady solo voice (that of Ruth Sharman’s) from the choir introduced each line of Qui tollis peccata mundi, the effect moving and empathetic – as was Barbara Paterson’s delivery of Quoniam, being joined as sweetly by the choir’s sopranos after the solo utterances. And, while not as toe-tappingly infectious as Rossini’s “Cum sancto spiritum” fugue from the latter’s Petite Messe sollenelle, Nikora’s setting of the same passage had plenty of spirit, with wreaths of garlanded “Amens” honouring the deity’s glory, and violin and ‘cello lines most satisfyingly adding their voices to the tumult.

The Credo opened urgently, “running” in a fugal sense, and serious and sombre in tone,  the instruments keeping the fugal spin going underneath the voices’ “Et in unum Dominum”, then movingly ritualise the central “Et incarnatus est” with chorale-like accompaniments to the voices’ focused fervour, the soprano further lyricising the line “Crucifixus estiam pro nobis” (He was crucified for us), until the instruments cranked up the running accompaniments to Et resurrexit with exciting, stamping staccato figures. Then, true to intent, the music “grew” a giant fugal structure from Et in spiritus sanctus, all voices woven into the fabric in fine style – a strong, sudden major-key “Amen” brought to an end this impressive musical declamation of faith.

But not the Mass as such, of course – whose next sequence turned convention on its head with a Sanctus set in what sounded like the rhythmic trajectory of a Habanera! It made for a treasurable  “Now that I have your attention” moment, flecked with grins of delight from all sides, especially at the sultry piano glissandi and the exotic touch of the tambourine, giving the words a kind of extra potency in their delivery.  The Benedictus took a rather more circumspect rhythmic character, more of a “floating” aspect generated by “humming” sequences from the choir and a wordless melody from the soprano flowering into something that had the feeling of a heartfelt “personal” faith. The return of the “Hosanna” re-established the feeling of ritual, wordless voice-resonatings and instrumental accompanyings reinforcing the message of glory.

Agnus Dei gave us lovely, floating lines, creating a kind of living, gently-walking mosaic of sounds, snow-capped by a heartfelt “Dona nobis pacem” from Barbara Paterson – which brought us to the fugal (as opposed to “frugal”) Amen, not unlike Handel’s “Messiah” Amen, the tenors’ vigorous vocalisings particularly engaging! – as well as this “focusedly fugal” aspect, the writing included expansive lyrical lines as well, voices and instruments relishing their vigorous and full-throated exchanges right to the work’s conclusion. An enthusiastic reception, partly for the Mass itself and its composer, and partly for the performers’ delivery of the whole concert, carried the evening through in a satisfyingly warm-hearted manner – such pleasure to be had from an evening’s music-making!

 

Cheerful winds of fruitfulness blowing through St. Andrews

Posted on by Steven Sedley

RNZAF Wind Quintet

Rebecca Steel (flute), Calvin Scott (oboe), Moira Hurst (clarinet), Vivien Reid (horn), Oscar Laven (bassoon)

JS Bach: “Little” Fugue in G minor BWV 278
Mozart: Divertimento KV 240
Ravel: Pièce en forme de Habanera
Ibert: Trois pièces brèves
Malcolm Arnold: Three Shanties

St Andrews on The Terrace

Wednesday 24 July 2019, 12:15 pm

This was a concert of cheerful short pieces.

Bach’s Fugue is referred to a ‘Little’ to distinguish it from its longer and very grand ‘Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor’. Bach wrote it for the organ and it was arranged for various different groups, including a wind quintet. It requires very precise, accurate playing by each of the players. The five individual voices have to be clearly articulated and blend. It was a challenge for the musicians and they all coped well.

Mozart’s Divertimento is an early work. He wrote it as Tafelmusik, background music to a dinner at the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg. It was originally written for a wind sextet with two horns. In this arrangement one horn was replaced by a clarinet, and the work was rearranged for five instruments. It probably sounded the better for it. It is in the usual contrasting four movements, Allegro, Andante gracioso, Menuett and Trio and Allegro. Even a little piece like this that Mozart might have tossed off in no time still has the charm, humour, grace and the variety typical of Mozart. It was a very appropriate work for a lunch time concert.

Pièce en forme de Habanera was originally written by Ravel as a Vocalise for bass voice and piano, but has been transcribed for cello and other various combination of instruments. In this arrangement the oboe had the virtuoso solo of the original, and Calvin Scott played it with a lovely beautiful singing tone. The work required unrelenting rhythmic precision from all the players to capture the sensuous feel of the habanera dance.

Trois pièces brèves by Ibert was the only work on the programme originally written for a wind quintet. It has the hallmarks of Ibert, a blend of irony, wit and lyricism. Each of the five instruments gets a turn at starring. The clarinet and flute engage in a banter. The five instruments bounce off each other, their contrasting timbres are highlighted. A short light hearted enjoyable work.

Three Shanties of Malcolm Arnold is a work in three movements, each paying homage to a different sea shanty, some, like the first, ‘What Should We Do With a Drunken Sailor’ is well known, the other two, ‘Boney Was a Warrior’ and ‘Johnny Come Down to Hilo’ less so. Arnold takes each of these shanties and deconstructs them into their melodic and rhythmic components and then reassembles them. The shanties come through as very original pieces.

For an encore the group played a vigorous rendition of Shostakovich’s Polka form his ballet, The Golden Age. It summed up the whole concert, very joyous music.

You can hear these outstanding musicians again as part of ‘The Air Force in Concert’ on Sunday, 10 August 2019, at 2.30 pm at the Michael Fowler Centre.

Two out of three from Puccini’s Il Trittico boldly and confidently presented by the NZSM

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
PUCCINI – Suor Angelica / Gianni Schicchi (from “Il Trittico”)

Cast(s):  Suor Angelica

Suor Angelica………………..Michaela Cadwgan
The Princess………………….Margaret Medlyn
The Abbess……………………Teresa Shields
The Monitress……………….Jennifer Huckle
Sister Genovieffa……………Olivia Stewart
Sister Osmina………………..Lydia Joyce
Sister Dolcina………………..Ruby McKnight
Sister Lucilla………………….Sinéad Keane
Alms sisters…………………..Shaunagh Chambers / Simon Hernyak
Novices and lay sisters……Nikita Aranga / Caitlin Roberts
Ruobing Wang / Emily Yeap
Boy……………………………….Edward Usher

Gianni Schicchi

Gianni Schicchi………………Robert Tucker
Lauretta…………………………Jessie Rosewarne
Zita………………………………..Grace Burt
Rinuccio…………………………LJ Crichton
Gheraldo………………………..Jeffrey Dick
Gheraldino……………………..Edward Usher
Nella………………………………Cheyney Biddlecombe
Betto di Signa………………….Morgan Andrew-King
Simone……………………………Samuel McKeever
Marco……………………………..Masunu Tuua
La Ciesca…………………………Nina Gurau
Maestro Spinelloccio (a doctor)………..Zane Berghuis
Ser Amantio di Nicolao (a lawyer)…….Matt Barris
Pinellino (a cobbler)………………………..Elian Pagalilawan
Guccio (a dyer)………………………………..Tomairangi  Henare
Buoso Donati…………………………………..Gabriel Wee

Director: Jon Hunter
Designer: Sean Coyle
Lighting: Glenn Ashworth
Costumes: Sarah Carswell

Conductor: Kenneth Young
The New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington,

Friday 19th July, 2019

(until Sunday, 21st July)

When Giacomo Puccini first penned his Il Trittico (Triptych), consisting of three short operas designed to fill a single evening (premiered as such in New York in December 1918), various considerations combined to elevate the third of these works, the rollickingly comic Gianni Schicchi, to pride of place in the public’s affections, leaving the other two, the violent, bloody Il Tabarro (The Cloak) and the somewhat sanctimonious Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), to fend for themselves, often elsewhere and in isolation. It would certainly be a tall order to perform all three in a single evening, the time-frames alone creating a certain awkwardness (either with two intervals, or one very long first or second half!). Even then, resources would be fully stretched in terms of casting and of staging, leaving opera houses far more likely to opt for a “double” bill at the most, à la the famous verismo twins, “Cav” and “Pag”.  Of late, there’s been revived interest in going thus far towards Puccini’s original intentions (usually with “Schicchi” as the “drawcard” along with either of the other two).

Here, from Victoria University of Wellington’s Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music we had a classic pairing of tragedy (Suor Angelica) and comedy (Gianni Schicchi) whose contrasts, I thought, worked brilliantly, each to the other’s advantage. Partly I think  due to a welcome circumspection of presentation in both cases, here, neither work was made into a caricature of itself – Suor Angelica’s overtly Catholic ethos wore its religiosity lightly, as did the knockabout comedy of Gianni Schicchi maintain a stylishness that never descended into coarse buffoonery – and this deftness of touch on the part of Jon Hunter’s direction for the most part gave each story the theatricality it needed to work, the climax of Suor Angelica here giving rise to my only reservations in this regard, more of which below.

In keeping with the intimate nature of the performing venue and the corresponding space available, conductor, chorusmaster and musicologist Michael Vinten undertook the task of making a “reduction” of the composer’s orchestral scores which preserved the essential spirit and sound of the originals, and which, if not delivering as much “physical” impact as the full opera orchestra does in places (such as the climax of Suor Angelica), amply suggested a comparable kind of emotional impact. Of course the physical immediacy of the instrumental detailings coupled with the players’ confidence and elan throughout made for stunning orchestral results under conductor Ken Young’s inspirational leadership.

What a vehicle for soprano and mezzo voices is Suor Angelica! The leading role especially runs the gamut of emotion and “fills out” the character in such a short space of time – she goes from being “just another nun” at the opera’s beginning, to a figure of the utmost tragedy within minutes, as another character, one who proves to be her “nemesis”, turns up in the story and whose “hatchet job” on the hapless Angelica is remorseless. As Suor Angelica, Michaela Cadwgan poured herself into the role up to the brim, fearlessly attacking a vocal line which required her in places to push her voice to what seemed almost past its limits in places, readily conveying the character’s intensity and depth of sorrow. Her acting paid full regard to the added tension of maintaining her dignity and bearing as a member of a religious order, while expressing her tragedy of having had to give up what was her greatest worldly joy, her son, before discovering, through the agency of her “nemesis” that her son had actually died without her knowing – the anguish was all too palpable in places, while  in context making total emotional sense.

With her surely-felt dramatic instinct brought fully into play, Margaret Medlyn’s troubled but   still unforgiving Princess made the perfect foil for her unfortunate niece’s desperately-enacted sorrows. We were made to “feel” something of the subtext behind the character’s cruelty and remorseless response to Angelica – a “wicked-stepmother”-like figure but with complex demons of her own. Amongst the other nuns the voice of Jennifer Huckle  resonated steadily and sweetly as the Monitress, while  Olivia Stewart ‘s shining tones enlivened her entreaties to the sisters to observe the rays of sunlight setting the image of Our Lady glowing in the courtyard. All the voices contributed to an essential sense of the ensemble, their surety of “belonging” and contributing to that feeling contrasting all the more with Suor Angelica’s growing desperation to be reunited with her dead son.

Expertly though the production conveyed the ambivalence of the “cloistered” atmosphere with its security/imprisonment dichotomies, and the oppressive ambiences surrounding the visit of the Princess to her virtually incarcerated niece, its staging at the very end didn’t for me catch enough of the transcendence of the story’s climax – the dead boy’s sudden appearance, the “vision from heaven” which draws Angelica towards and up into a numinous web of acceptance and forgiveness. I wanted him to directly “materialise” from the  blinding light which flooded the stage, and be the unequovical focus of things just for a telling instant – but his entrance from the side didn’t for me sufficiently turn into any kind of front-on, fully-focused engagement, missing an overwhelming sense of “revelation” which the music (and the lighting) was doing its best to evoke. It certainly deserved, I felt, at that point,  a surer moment of consummation, which, up to then, had been most whole-heartedly prepared for by all concerned.

Confidence was restored after the interval by the beginning of the opera which followed – Gianni Schicchi – an amusing and ironic vignette involving a photograph of the Donati clan closest to the recently deceased (?) Buoso Donati “freeze-framing” the setting, one which then clicked immediately into the business of the story. This is one of opera’s greatest “ensemble” works, and the give-and-take between all of the “living” characters made for thoroughly convincing and characterful results. All kinds of voices and personalities were registered throughout the interactions, each one conveying its character’s attitude and intent in tandem with engaging physical presence.

Crucial to the action was the information quickly given us by a young man in the group of relatives, Rinuccio, who tells everybody he is in love with and wants to marry Lauretta, the daughter of the well-known “wheeler-and-dealer” Gianni Schicchi, a plan which scandalises his snobbish Aunt, Zita. We were treated to a splendidly open-hearted and ringing-voiced portrayal of the character by LJ Crichton, his tones warm, open and ardent, almost to the very top of his register. If the other voices in the group didn’t match such freedom and amplitude, each still carried sufficient weight and colour to tellingly advance the drama – and the physical interactions were most splendidly choreographed, photo opportunities included!

Of course the attitudes of the relatives to the “upstart Schicchi” change considerable when they find Buoso’s actual will and realise they have been disinherited, and that something needs to be done, quickly. Schicchi’s help is sought, but he is disinclined to help the Donatis when Zita refuses point-blank to allow Rinuccio to marry Lauretta “without a dowry” – which, of course, leads to the opera’s most famous single moment, the girl’s pleading with her father to help, or else she will throw herself into the river Arno (“O mio babbino caro”). Jessie Rosewarne’s direct, simply expressed plea as Lauretta (her singing very much on the trajectory of the dramatic action, rather than self-consciously proclaiming a “great opera moment”) does the trick and wins her father over to the cause, turning the story’s action on a fresh course.

As Schicchi, Robert Tucker rightly dominated the scenario from his first entry, holding everybody in thrall with the workings of his scheming mind, and even convincing us to suspend disbelief at the unlikelihood of the penalty of dismemberment and banishment from the city imposed on people who forge a will having any credence in the 1970s throughout the Western world. Like the “curse” in Verdi’s Rigoletto, this is the stumbling block for me in accepting any “modernising” of the opera’s action unaccountably beloved of present-day productions, however nonsensical the result! Still, here, everything went hilariously and hair-raisingly according to plan, with  both doctor and notary, along with witnesses, convinced that the disguised Schicchi was in fact “dear Buoso”, the deception then deliciously running away from the astonished relatives when Schicchi again turned the story around, proclaiming himself as the heir to the dead man’s house and most valuable assets! – pandemonium!

A great success, then, and an extraordinary achievement on the part of all concerned with both productions, powerfully evoking worlds as different as chalk from cheese! I’ve already mentioned conductor Ken Young’s surety of direction and the dazzling instrumental detailing by the players throughout both works, working hand-in-glove with the onstage action, and  positively oozing atmosphere in both scenarios, aided and abetted by the set, lighting and costumes. Its overall impact, to my mind, worked surely towards director Jon Hunter’s intention that the production express “the enduring power of music”, the raison d’etre of all opera here for all present to enjoy.

 

 

 

A piano recital at St Andrew’s deserving a full house: Beethoven’s Eroica Variations surrounded by circus variety

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts
Pianist Ya-Ting Liou

Couperin: Le rossignol en amour
Gareth Farr: The Horizon from Owhiro Bay
Beethoven: Variations and Fugue, Op 35 ‘Eroica’
Paderewski: Nocturne Op 16 No 4
Rachmaninov: andante from Cello sonata, Op 19 (transcribed by Arcadi Volodos)
Stravinsky: Circus Polka: for a young elephant

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 17 July, 12:15 pm

Her name rang a bell, but I couldn’t recall actually seeing or hearing her play. The Middle C archive revealed that my colleague, Peter Mechen had reviewed an earlier lunchtime recital by her in August 2016 when, inter alia she had played Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänz, later Rameau’s Le rappel des oiseaux. Born in Taiwan and educated mainly in the United States, she now lives in Auckland.

That sort of programming clearly appeals to her: it would have been very interesting to have heard the Rameau and the Couperin that she played today, alongside each other. And centre spot in both concerts was occupied by a major German composer: this time Beethoven’s Eroica Variations.

Couperin
She proved an exemplary baroque pianist, turning Couperin’s Le rossignol en amour, from harpsichord original into perfectly genuine piano music; slow and thoughtful, it was replete with tasteful ornaments that according to the programme note were detailed by the composer. Couperin’s evocation of elements of nature, here, a nightingale, was done very differently from the way a Debussy, let alone a Messiaen would have, yet a perfectly natural way of handling a non-human source. The challenges of Couperin’s keyboard writing were affectionately handled, with no apparent difficulty.

Gareth Farr’s impression of his view of Cook Strait from his south coast house, though three centuries later than Couperin’s evocation of a bird (Farr was born exactly 300 years after Couperin), were curiously related in creating a moment in nature, and in the employment of modest means. It was well chosen on a distinctly chilly day with a southerly breeze: a picture of the often wild coast in a mood of magical calm. Nor sure that I’d heard it before, and Liou’s beautiful performance reinforced for me the unpretentious yet extraordinarily evocative invention that Farr demonstrates. In the sort of music for which he is not so widely appreciated, but which speaks to me much more magically and inspiringly.

The Eroica Variations
I have known Beethoven’s Eroica Variations most of my life though I can’t remember my last live hearing. Dated in 1802, early in his middle period, they not to be approached with an expectation of kinship to the tremendous Diabelli Variations of his last years; nevertheless, these fifteen variations plus an imposing fugue at the end are already at some remove from those of Mozart and Haydn. Their sound and musical evolution quickly restrict composer possibilities to Beethoven alone. Unlike its classical period predecessors, its impact is impressive and I quickly realised I was in the company of a splendidly competent interpreter by nature avoiding any kind of major-work pretentiousness, yet able to bring to life the increasingly original and treatment unique to Beethoven.

The formidable fugal finale alone might have been a splendid lunchtime piece. So the entire work made this a memorable lunchtime experience.

Paderewski, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky 
Then three well-chosen shorter pieces. Apart from the famous Minuet once a standard piece in every young pianist’s album, Paderewski’s considerable output seems to have been off-limits: suffering as neither obviously great music in the tradition of Rachmaninov or Prokofiev, nor acceptably post-romantic, or atonal to compare with Stravinsky or Bartok. This Nocturne was far better than many a composition by a famous executant, mainly for his own use; it handled itself according to the dictates of the composer’s inspiration and developed melodically rather attractively. In any case it was in the hands of a pianist capable of investing anything with charm and musical conviction.

Great Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos’s hair-raising arrangement of the third movement, Andante, from Rachmaninov’s cello sonata for solo piano seems to have multiplied the numbers of notes ten-fold, and so it was a surprise that Liou began without the score on the piano (as she had safely enough till now), but within the first few bars there was a wee lapse calling for a repeat of a bar. Though probably shaken by that she soldiered on but a couple of minutes later stopped again and picked up the score to place in front of her. Volodos’s frenetic adornments might have seemed mere frenzied pyrotechnics for the sake of it – initially they did – but slowly one became accustomed to it as a sort of new ‘normal’ and especially as the main melody began to be audible through the dense undergrowth, it became rather engrossing, overwhelmingly so. Nevertheless, another part of me felt that Volodos’s journey might better have been abandoned, leaving the lovely slow movement to itself.

Stravinsky’s Circus Polka for a young elephant was not the least obscured by following the Rachmaninov (but Liou had the score in front of her again). It’s an eccentric piece and again not for any pianist short of the A-grade virtuoso class on account of rhythmic and tonal craziness, switching back and forth at the end between the polka, 2-in-a-bar, and triple time.

There was a reasonable audience, but here we had a recital of top professional quality that deserved a full house, at normal prices.

Extraordinary music-making from the 2019 Adam Troubadours

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
2019 Adam Troubadours

Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (leader), Sophia Tarrant-Matthews, violins,
Grant Baker, viola / Olivia Wilding, ‘cello

HAYDN – String Quartet in C Major Op.76, No.3 “Emperor”
GARETH FARR – Te Tai-o-Rehua (The Tasman Sea) for String Quartet (2013)
DVORAK – String Quartet in G Major Op.106

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 17th July, 2019

Behold, the 2019 Adam Troubadours! – a name that suggested something adventuresome and “here-and-now”, performers whose defining characteristics would give their music-making real distinction – and so it proved, in a concert for Chamber Music Hutt Valley that disarmed one’s listening by the act of its performers simply surpassing themselves as the evening ran its course. The above are young string musicians selected from those attending Adam Summer Schools for Chamber Music, and their coming-together led to this, a tour sponsored by Chamber Music New Zealand. All were, it seems, mentored by members of the New Zealand String Quartet, who would, I think, be extremely proud of these youngsters and what they have proved capable of doing. In fact a system which fosters performers of this quality, indicates to my mind that whatever is happening in the upper echelons of music education at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music is working splendidly!

One might say this programme was a classic kind of “string quartet concert” format – and here, thanks to a happy combination of performers and repertoire, the results were, for this listener, truly memorable. The Haydn Emperor Quartet which began the evening’s music couldn’t be described as an innovative choice (time enough for such things later!), but it demonstrated that these musicians knew what they were on about, rendering as whole-hearted a performance as I’ve ever heard.

From the beginning, the group’s sound made a bright, eager impression, each player’s line beautifully “centred”, with the various concerted passages a delight. The group strongly characterised each section, contrasting the busy-ness of the interactive development sequences with the earthier, more pesante elements, and conveying such an intensity of involvement with every phrase. The well-known second movement’s hymn-tune-cum-anthem got a rapt, heartfelt reading, with sensitive detailing woven into securely-wrought lines. By way of contrast, the sprightly Menuetto sang its first few measures and then quirkily danced the answering phrases with great gusto, the Trio surprising with a sombre minor-then-major manner, so “inward” compared with the rumbustions of the Menuetto – and such delicate pianissimi! As for the finale, the Adam Troubadours pulled no punches, the opening strident and challenging, single lines flung across the spectrum of interaction like grappling hooks, the musical argument remaining feisty and combatative amongst the players even when in accord at the work’s exciting finish!

Gareth Farr’s work for string quartet Te Tai-o-Rehua (The Tasman Sea) has been reviewed three times before by Middle C, (all different reviewers), having secured a number of performances after its commission by the Australian ensemble the Goldner Quartet  (in conjunction with CMNZ) in 2013.  Enthusiastically acclaimed on each occasion both work- and performance-wise, it gave me enormous fun simply comparing the three sets of previous impressions! – and I couldn’t help forming the opinion that Gareth Farr had here created something of an “Antipodean” classic (I’m using the adjective in a “generic” rather than strictly “literal” sense, of course). But I loved the composer’s candour in writing, in a note accompanying the music, “I intended to write a happy and joyous piece, because that’s the way I feel about my relationship with Australia and New Zealand……the music, however, came out dark, mysterious and edgy” – a case, perhaps, of more “at work” in the creative process, perhaps than meets the eye……(incidentally, Farr contributed another equally apposite comment regarding this piece, one which playfully “begs the question” of its provenance – “a really interesting dinner party for four people”…..)

Beginning the work were a number of terse figurations, initiated by the second violin and carried on by the viola, whether a kind of primitive chanting, or the undulating movement of water, remaining open to conjecture – eerie harmonic-like notes and disembodied tremolandi from the first violin and cello respectively, helped to evoke the ‘mysterious wild”, impulses which gathered focus and girth, reached a point of near-anguish, then broke off and began  (the viola leading the way) an edgy, angular “ritual of rhythm” the voices fugal-like but punctuated with sforzando-like pizzicati from the  cello – great, compulsive writing, here realised by the players with palpable physical involvement! Throughout, Farr evoked an almost Sibelius-like ambience which put me repeatedly in mind of the latter’s incidental music for “The Tempest”, the oceanic swells, the multifarious surface texturings, and the strange, half-lit ambiences of ships and seafarers “caught up” in it all…..

Having demonstrated his acute sense of detailing, leaving no depth unfathomed, no surge unsounded and no ripple unremarked on, Farr then plunged his instruments into a frenzy of concerted movement, enough to set the pulses racing and convey an entirely characteristic “exhilaration of physicality” (while adroitly avoiding the excesses of his somewhat fulsome “Great Sea Gongs”!). After gathering itself, the music rebuilt the intensities, firstly in long-breathed arched chordings and then with Stravinskian “Sacrificial Dance”-like passages (skin and hair flying everywhere!), building to a similar point of climactic excitement! The young  players completed their task by flinging the final phrase at us with a stunning sense of elemental closure that left nothing in its wake but a sense of an incredible listening and interpretative journey completed.

After the interval we were treated to an equally overwhelming performance of one of Antonin Dvořák’s finest chamber words, his Op.106 String Quartet in G Major. This turned out to be a work that demonstrated the composer’s entry into a somewhat more complex and rarified world of creative expression, a  more adventurous style of writing, using fragments of motifs instead of extended themes and with restless, volatile results. The upshot was exhilarating, if disconcerting – a “ride” through a profuse treasure-grove of  brief gestures and fragmented motives, a style Dvořák would presumably have developed further had he been granted more time on this earth.

Right from the work’s beginning we heard sounds whose harmonic explorations maintained a constancy of contrast.  The delicacy of the opening figurations, alternating with tumbling warmth, soon became the movement’s recurring pattern, presenting and developing a panoply of themes and gestures – what seemed like two “theme-groups”, the first one  seemingly more fragmentary than a second, more lyrical one. The harmonic explorations and developments were like an array of “sprung” possibilities, dazed by their own activation, and leaving us dazed in turn! I was simply blown away by the technical and musical mastery with which these young players fitted all of these detailings into a complex but still richly coherent argument – even then it all flashed past with the surest and fleetest of individual and ensembled touches!

The slow movement seemed to exist on two simultaneous planes of expression, in a minor key to begin with and then contrasting the mood with its major-key equivalent – all so rich and heartwarming. Dvořák again seemed to be opening vein after vein of possibility, the music gliding with sublime surety towards radiance, before turning on its heels and striding darkly down a parallel causeway of contrasted feeling! Not every note was sounded with consummate ease or perfect intonation by the players, but that’s because they were all striving to realise the breadth and depth of this music’s emotional reach. The music gave me a feeling not unlike a sensation of being trapped in a dream and turning the details over and over in trying to figure out how many ways it could be differently expressed and understood –  at the very end the players’ tones were so rapt, themselves seemingly entranced with it all.

The scherzo was a vigorous dance, here, both viola and cello extremely Beethoven-like in manner, trenchant and insistent, the mood more so than one usually expected from Dvořák. There was a lovely lyrical episode that one might have presumed was the trio – but the “real McCoy” came later, a lullabic, if elaborately-decorated song-episode, whose mood was constantly energised by fleet-fingered arpeggios and upwardly-soaring lines.

The finale teased our sensibilities with a tender, heart-warming introduction, before picking up its skirts and dancing away, the players alternating joy and abandonment with darker, more intense moments, the composer somehow maintaining a “lyrical” vein of feeling amidst figurations of some energy and agitation!  A peaceful, hymnlike interlude in the midst of the upheavals unreservedly captured our hearts, and an ensuing “dialogue” between recitatives and concerted replies held us in thrall even further…..then, via a string of reminiscing echoes, the players returned us to the main theme, whose energetic spirit took over the performance and danced us all, joyously and wildly, to its end. What a performance!