Accomplished though unusual Donizetti Trio assembles a mixed bag programme: some very successful

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music Hutt Valley
Donizetti Trio (Luca Manghi – flute, Ben Hoadley – bassoon, David Kelly – piano)

Music by Vivaldi, Donizetti, Chris Adams, Respighi, Ben Hoadley, Bellini (via Eugene Jancourt) and Bizet (via Peter Simpson)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 19 June, 7:30 pm

The Donizetti Trio is a fairly rare beast; it rather looks as if three musician friends had the idea of playing as an ensemble, but were faced with the problem that hardly any music existed for their combination, and so they set about forcing other material to fit their needs.

That can work well, and to a degree, it did.

To start with, Vivaldi looks a good idea as he wrote hundreds of concertos including many for flute and orchestra; and this one, which exists in two versions. The first version, RV 104, is the more richly scored, for flute or violin and chamber orchestra, including bassoon as a bass component of the continuo. That’s the one we heard. Later he re-scored it to include (RV 439) in his Opus 10, stripping the orchestration, including the bassoon part.

The playing by both flute and bassoon was very convincing, quite virtuosic here and there, particularly in the Largo movement; though at times the bassoon was confined to its more elementary, accompanying function. Given that this version rather relied on its chamber ensemble backing, it left the piano with a burden that it could scarcely discharge. Nevertheless, the pianist revealed a sensitivity to music that was written neither for harpsichord (as it might have been in Vivaldi’s day) nor for piano.

Then came the piece that inspired the trio’s name, a Trio in F (for these instruments), one of Donizetti’s quite numerous chamber pieces which included a number of string quartets and many pieces for various other combinations. As one might expect, the writing is rather conventional, yet attractive and very listenable. And the affectionate performance could well have been felt to endow it with a significance that the even composer had not imagined.

Visual inspiration for Chris Adams and Ben Hoadley 
Chris Adams is an Auckland musician and composer. His Contemporary Triptych employs these three instruments in a singularly original and vivid way. The first, ‘Melancholic Aggression’, beginning with repeated chords (rooted I’d guess, about bottom C), that was eventually joined by the bassoon at the bottom and then flute at the top, moved slowly, without changing tonality, gradually becoming more varied and intense. The second, ‘Beautiful Machine’ was musically more lyrical (by now we get the idea of pictures embodying fundamentally contradictory emotions; in fact, though inspired by the art in Sir James Wallace’s collection). Though if the idea was to create something visual, it didn’t; nor did I need it. ‘Integrated Disconnect’: flute and bassoon duetting, as we’re told, in a disconnected way, while the piano drifted about, seemingly unconcerned. The limitations of the three disparate instruments were somehow exploited successfully to create a piece of music that succeeded in its intentions.

The leap from a triptych based on a non-existent visual source to Ben Hoadley’s arrangement of the Adoration of the Magi, the second of Respighi’s Botticelli Triptych, proved to be rather to the advantage of Adam’s piece. Hoadley was attracted to it as Respighi’s scoring of the medieval hymn ‘Veni, veni Emanuel’, quoted in it, is conspicuously for flute and bassoon. In spite of that, the task of compressing Respighi’s largescale orchestration into a piano part was a bit too hard.

The first piece in the second half was by Hoadley himself: Three poems by Gregory O’Brien, for alto flute and piano, but without a singer (and of course, without the composer’s bassoon), but the voice was hinted at by hard breathing sounds. There was a cool jazz interlude, a series of rolling figures at the bottom of the piano and some beguiling, soft lyrical passages from the flute. Only with the last poem, ‘Winter I was’, did a human voice appear as Hoadley emerged to speak the poem. It was one of those occasions in which more questions and not-understood sequences arose than clarifications.

Opera arrangements 
Finally, two fantasies, potpourris, from opera. Inevitably they got the biggest response from a fairly large audience. One of many arrangements of tunes from Bellini’s Norma: this one was by 19th century Paris Conservatoire bassoon professor, Eugene Jancourt, and suited the trio admirably; it suited the audience too, with the string of familiar arias from ‘Casta Diva’ onwards. The settings were attractive and they were played evocatively, almost as if real singers had materialised.  (It’s sad that the opera has hardly been seen in New Zealand in modern times apart from a Canterbury Opera production in 2002. That was the first professional production in New Zealand since the 1928 tour by the Fuller-Gonsalez Italian Grand Opera Company. Yet Norma was one of the operas brought by the very first touring company in 1864/65 and it was among the productions by many of the touring companies through the 1870s and 80s).

Even more familiar for today’s audiences is Carmen. One Peter Simpson (about whom I can find nothing on the Internet) arranged four pieces most effectively for these instruments. The combination here seemed to energise the three players to create sounds that evoked the character of the opera and its music remarkably.

The audience response at the end proved that my feelings were not isolated.

 

 

Inspirare as singular performers of Brahms choral pieces and part songs

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Inspirare
Mark L. Stamper, artistic director

An Evening of Brahms: Resolution to Love

Vocal soloists: Alex Gandionco (soprano), Eleanor McGeechie (alto), Richard Taylor (tenor) and Joe Haddow (bass)
Rachel Thomson and Emma Sayers (piano) and Donald Armstrong (violin)

Central Baptist Church, 46 Boulcott Street

Saturday, 15 June 2019, 7:30 pm

This was a concert of music by one composer only, Brahms, and does not stray from traditional classical repertoire. Yet, apart from the piano solo, Rhapsody in G minor, Op 79, No 2, and the first movement of the Violin Sonata No 3 in D minor, Op. 108, the vocal works in the programme are seldom heard.

The concert opened with Vier Quartette, Op.92, sung by Alex Gandionco, soprano, Eleanor McGeechie, alto, Richard Taylor, tenor and Joe Haddow, bass. This is comparatively late Brahms, rich in texture. The four songs are settings of poems by four different poets, Daumier, Allmers, Hebbel, and Goethe. The first, ‘O schöne Nacht’ celebrates a lovely night, sweet comradeship and the young man who steals quietly to his sweetheart. The second, ‘Spätherbst’, is melancholy, the grey mist drops down silently, the flowers will bloom no more. The third, ‘Abendlied’, is about joy and anguish, life is like a lullaby. The final song, ‘Warum?’ asks the question: why do songs resound heavenwards and invoke warm blissful days. The four voices harmonized to beautiful effect.

Zigeunerlieder was sung by a group of eight, two sopranos, two altos, two tenors and two basses. These songs are not authentic gypsy songs, but they present an exotic quality through the use of Hungarian intervals, irregular rhythms and syncopation. They are a reflection of Brahms’s interest in what was considered at the time, exotic gypsy music, as in his better known Hungarian Dances. These songs are set to the text by the Hungarian folk poet Hugo Conrat. The performance by the small group of singers required great discipline, highlighted by the solo singing of tenor Theo Moolenaar. The ten songs are about love, longing, homesickness, disappointment, exile.

Liebeslieder Waltzer is a collection of eighteen short love songs in popular Ländler style, influenced by Schubert, whose Ländler he edited, but these also contain reference to Johann Strauss, who was at the height of his popularity. These were songs by the rest of the choir of sixteen voices, notably accompanied by two pianists, Emma Sayers and Rachel Thomson on one keyboard.

Inspirare is a vocal group like no other in Wellington. They are all individually, highly trained singers; they sing with precision, yet with appropriate lyricism and the concert reflected a sheer love of singing. The two instrumental interludes added to the enjoyment of the evening. Mark Stamper, the musical director of the group played the Brahms’s G minor Rhapsody with sensitivity, Donald Armstrong, associate concert master of the NZSO and Rachel Thomson of the New Zealand School of Music performed the first movement of Brahms’s third violin sonata with deep understanding and a beautiful tone. This greatly enhanced the concert of vocal music.

At the end of the concert, in response to the warm applause, the choir walked off the stage and came forward to stand alongside the audience and sang the beautiful Irish Blessing, arranged by Graeme Langare. This was a lovely conclusion to a memorable concert.

Inspirare are noted for their innovative, interesting programming. Their concerts are not to be missed.

The NZSO “reclaims the night” for Baroque composers at St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
THE NIGHT  – music by Corelli, Telemann, Vivaldi and Fux

Bridget Douglas (flute)
Vesa-Matti Leppänen (director/violin)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

CORELLI – Concerto Grosso in D Major Op.6 No.1
TELEMANN – Overture/Suite in D Major TWV 55:D.21
VIVALDI – Flute Concerto in G Minor Op.10 No.2
FUX – Overture in D Minor E109
TELEMANN – Overture/Suite in D Major TWV55:D.22

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Saturday, 8th June, 2019

To my great relief the NZSO abandoned the idea of presenting this, the second concert of their Baroque Series, in Wellington Cathedral, the first concert there having been a mixed blessing of an affair, with the building’s cavernous acoustic the main impediment to enjoyment of the music. The strictures of the Capital’s current “earthquake-risk” regulations regarding many of its buildings has made finding a venue for concerts involving either large ensembles and/or vocal groups such as choirs, something of a near-intractable “business”. The continued unavailability of the Town Hall is the chief disruption, affecting chamber music as well as both orchestral and choral events; and the council’s spending priorities have now of course been torpedoed by the unexpected closure of the Public Library, whose restoration in whatever shape or form would almost inevitably take priority.

My apologies, at this point of my discourse, for not sufficiently “cautioning” the readership about the non-musical content of the above paragraph, which should have been earmarked with some kind of Government Health Warning regarding its sub-normal percentage of “cultural well-being” content. Anyway, I shall hereby “rescue” the remainder of this article for music, with a description of the concert whose heading “The Night” also graces this review! Most helpfully for all concerned, except for, perhaps, the hard-working players, this presentation was played twice in one evening here at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, presumably to cater for the audience numbers expected in the concert’s original, and much larger venue. I attended the evening’s later performance, and can report that the playing in no way sounded either “fatigued” or “over-cooked” through repetition, everything wrought freshly and immediately.

I enjoyed the programme hugely, featuring as it did music by composers whose work often falls into the “heard about but seldom heard” category – even Vivaldi, for all the popularity of his “The Four Seasons” concerti can be more often named than his music “sounded” for concert-goers these days. Telemann, too, though receiving a recent fillip in the NZSO’s previous “Baroque” Concert with his wonderful “Water Music”, isn’t played as often as his music warrants the attention – though as part of his spoken introduction to the items played tonight, leader Vesa-Matti Leppänen went out on a limb for the composer by confessing that Telemann’s was “his favourite” baroque music!

As for Corelli and Fux, the first-named, Arcangelo Corelli, has enjoyed some “added-value” renown with his use of the well-known Portuguese “La Folia” melody in parts of both his Violin Sonatas and his Op.6 Concerti Grossi, his borrowing “picked up” by none other than Rachmaninov who wrote a set of piano variations “after a theme by Corelli”, of course, none other than the “La Folia” theme!  Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1741) achieved fame throughout his lifetime not only as a composer but as a theorist, with his treatise on counterpoint “Gradus ad Parnassum” becoming perhaps the single most influential book on Renaissance polyphony ever written, influencing practically all the important composers of the classical era. Earlier he had been Court Composer to the Austrian Emperor Leopold I, Kapellemeister at St.Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, and Music Director at the Imperial Court, the highest position of any composer in Europe. He composed operas and oratorios besides instrumental works, but then confined himself to sacred works for the final ten years of his life, after his wife’s death. It was left to Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, also Mozart’s cataloguer, to bring out a biography, and a catalogue of Fux’s work, and thus help reinstate his importance as a composer, midway through the nineteenth century – though his reputation as a dry-as-dust theorist and relatively insignificant composer still needs more pro-active campaign work!

Corelli’s first Op.6 Concerto Grosso began the concert, with rich, warmly-bowed playing throughout a graceful introduction, the voices varied and mellifluous – the first of a number of surges of allegro-energy brought out virtuoso playing from cellist Ken Ichinose, ably supported by his colleagues, the opening movement’s music switching spontaneously between a kind of poised pre-excitement, and exuberantly-released running energies, extremely theatrical and dramatic in effect. The following episodes featured beguiling exchanges between the concertino (solo instruments) and ripieno (accompanying forces), the former involving sweet, sinuous playing from solo violinists Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Janet Armstrong, the music constantly on the move, here suggesting a stillness created by the murmur of continuo instruments only, and there joyously alternating the sweetness of solo string-lines with the richness and grandeur of the full band.

The first of Telemann’s two Overtures (alternatively called “Suites”) in D Major (TWV 55:D.21) covered a lot of musical ground in its quarter-of-an-hour of glory, bringing winds and horns to the platform to diversify the range and scope of the piece’s sonic territories. After a proudly vigorous dotted-rhythm opening, with fabulous oboe and horn exchanges flavouring “civilised” strings with bracing “out-of-door” ambiences, we got a warmly relaxed  “plainte” (complaint), followed by the “madcap dance” (which Vesa-Matti warned us we were in for!) a Réjouissance like no other! Like a sane moment amid mad outbursts, the Carillon charmed our sensibilities, a liquid pizzicato setting off the pair of oboes’ graceful and delicious lines. Back to tumult we were taken with the “Tintamarre”, a piece setting out to “make a din”, the lines garrulous and unrelieved, mercifully brief! The following Loure seemed to me somewhat tipsy of gait, well-intentioned in its fulsome insistence, but making as if to wobble at speed! The concluding Menuet would have none of these foibles, marshalling the strings in the direction of “a good show” though the quirky trio brought smiles with the winds almost garrulously echoing the oboes’ phrases…..

At the other end of the concert stood, sentinel-like, another Telemann Suite, also in D Major TWV 55:D.22), and just as “characterful” a work as its concert companion, this one sporting its own subtitle – Ouverture jointe d’une suite tragi-comique – and taking further the idea of linking music of a specific character to people and situations, an idea that had become very popular in France at the time, especially in keyboard music. In this music Telemann portrayed various human ailments, proffering as well, by way of compensation, a number of quirky remedies.

A sprightly introduction was punctuated by timpani and drums, the music energised further by a jig-like figure, presumably depicting rude health. Not so the laboured, pain-ridden walking gait of “Le Podagre” (according to Vesa-Matti, depicting somebody afflicted with gout!) – two remedies followed, a mail-coach, the trumpets sounding its arrival amid measures of energetic dancing (the characterisations amusing in their brisk, unequivocal application!). Next was L’Hypochondre (Hypochondria) which  gave no rest or relaxation, the melancholy punctured by fevered anxieties. Here, the remedy, Souffrance héroïque (heroic suffering) marched in on the full ensemble (broad grins all round!). There remained the sin of Pride, sounds of overweening self-importance filling the vistas with grand contrivance in the form of resounding drum and trumpet-led cadences of ostentation! All was then blown away by fast and furious figurations from strings and winds, madhouse characterisations underpinned gloriously by brasses and timpani, the deadly sin delivered its come-uppance in grand style!

Though more overtly “serious” in intent, an Overture by the intriguing Johann Joseph Fux gave notice as to our loss with his relative neglect – a confident, bright-toned introduction strutted its stuff, the strings double by oboes bright and assertive throughout, the allegro leaping eagerly forwards, marshalling its varied lines, both concertino and ripeno, oboes to the upper strings what the bassoon was to the lower lines, giving the tones edge and colour, and contributing to the “schwung” of the music’s trajectories.

Fux’s melodies demonstrated a leaping, athletic quality in sequences like the Menuet, equally exploring a different vein of expression in the Aria, the oboes long-breathed and lyrical, singing in tandem with the strings until being moved along by the Fuga’s urgently-propelled lines, the themes tossed about most energetically, the string lines occasionally pulsating with shivers of excitement before joining in the solemn stepwise Lentenment transitions towards a warm-hearted Gigue, strings and winds echoing the dancing figures, a final Aria section restoring the occasion’s dignity, winds and strings bringing the dance to a somewhat wistful strings-only conclusion.

Captivated as I was by all these delights, the evening had already delivered its coup de grace for me immediately after the interval, with the appearance of flutist Bridget Douglas to play the concert’s most overtly spectacular item, Vivaldi’s “La Notte” Flute Concerto, one of a set of six which comprised the composer’s Op.10 – it was certainly the most visually arresting of the evening’s performances, the figure of the soloist taking on a kind of alluring sorceress-like aspect in her red dress, putting all of us in thrall with the spell cast by her playing and the evocative choreography of her movements, along with that of the other players, a scenario whose potency was enhanced by the use of imaginative backdrop lighting.

In terms of the musical language it was probably the concert’s most accessible item, owing to the music’s kinship to the well-known “The Four Seasons” set of concerti in places – in fact part of one of the slower sequences of the music seemed almost like a direct crib by the composer of his own music from  the “Autumn” concerto out of that work. The rest, however, was of a piece with the work’s title – a kind of foreboding generated at the beginning, then impulses of the most volatile and unpredictable kind, tremendous playing from the soloist herself and split-second support from her instrumental cohorts, before the opening mood returned, giving way to another quick section called “Phantasms” – then came the Largo movement reminiscent of “The Four Seasons” before a final Presto skitterishly completed the music’s nightmare, the work concluding on an extraordinarily portentous, minor-key trill.  Phantasmagorical stuff! – all part of a presentation that would have enlarged the average listener’s appreciation of the fantastic array of depth and variety to be found in Baroque music.

Martin Riseley in the second splendid recital of Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas, benefit for St Andrew’s organ restoration

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Martin Riseley (violin)
Bach solo violin partitas and sonatas plus New Zealand composers

Bach: Partita No 3 in E major; Sonata No 3 in C major; Partita No. 2 in D minor
Gareth Farr: Wakatipu
Psathas: Gyftiko

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 7 June, 6:30 pm

At one of last year’s lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s Martin Riseley played one each of Bach’s solo partitas and sonatas, and it led to the suggestion that he might play all six of them. And so he did: he played the first three last month and here were the last three.

This second recital was a generous benefit concert to assist with the restoration of the pipe organ; and Susan Jones spoke about its necessity while organist Peter Franklin gave pithy demonstrations of the character of the organ and examples of its deficiencies.

I should also remark at my surprise that this splendid recital didn’t attract a full house, as I think there are no greater works in the violin repertoire, and Riseley is among the finest violinists in the country.

Though Martin’s notes printed in the programme leaflet are admirable and revelatory (and worth asking St Andrew’s whether they can be emailed), I cannot resist the temptation to share some other particularly illuminating remarks. Here’s what Hilary Hahn wrote to accompany her performances recorded on YouTube: Alongside Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin and Bach’s six cello suites, his Partitas and Sonatas (three apiece) for solo violin stand out among their comparatively few siblings as magnificent music written for an unaccompanied stringed instrument. And while they also represent the zenith of polyphonic writing for a non-keyboard instrument, Bach’s sonatas and partitas were also crucially important in the development of violin technique. With their colossal scope, huge technical demands, and musical complexity, and notwithstanding their awesome intellectual intensity, these creations greatly transcended anything that had preceded them…’

Partita No 3 in E
Riseley began with the third partita and worked in the reverse of the order in which they appear in the Bach catalogue; so that he could end with the second Partita and its great Chaconne. 

The Preludio of the E major Partita is a cheerful, energetic movement to which Riseley contributed the warmth of his fine violin and his own expansive and generous playing. But it’s the Loure that strikes one as contributing something rather special. Forgive me for commenting on this unusual musical dances: best described, from an Internet site: ‘A slow, dignified, French dance of the 17th and 18th centuries usually in 3/4 or 6/4 time. The name derived from a bagpipe used in Normandy; the dance is usually in 6/4 time and has been described as a slow gigue. Examples are found in Bach’s E major partita and in the fifth of his French suites’ (musicterms.artopium.com).  It’s a reticent, meditative piece whose spirit seems to remain throughout the whole partita.

The Gavotte is one of the more familiar pieces, fresh and spontaneous, while the obligatory menuets are more subdued, the second one takes a more subdued character, almost sounding as if it’s moved to the minor key, though it hasn’t.

Psathas: Gyftiko 
Then came the first of the New Zealand interludes: Psathas’s Gyftiko (or γυφτικο; though not in my Greek dictionary, ‘daddy’ according to ‘Google translate’). Though a test-piece for the Michael Hill Violin Competition, it’s quite an elaborate and substantial piece: melodic, frenzied, unpredictable, and Riseley would presumably have impressed the judges if he had been a competitor.

Bach Sonata No 3 in C 
The third sonata is an imposing piece too: sombre, polyphonic in its Adagio, but its extended Fuga is its core and Riseley allowed its rather near spiritual affinity with the Chaconne of the last partita into view; its imposing fugal structure was its most impressive feature, often sounding as if two or more instruments were involved. Its tone was often so mellow and rich that I looked for a mute on the bridge, but it wasn’t there. The subdued Largo offered no foretaste of the splendid, well-known finale – an Allegro assai with which Riseley brought the first half to a joyous and brilliant conclusion.

Wakatipu 
Gareth Farr’s piece for the Michael Hill competition, Wakatipu, provided the filling before the second partita, and its Chaconne. Competition pieces have historically been little more than hair-raising technical exploits, but both Psathas and Farr offered much more significant and interesting works and I enjoyed the chance to hear both, so seriously and brilliantly played.

Partita No 2 in D minor 
The second Partita is about half an hour in length. Its movements were omitted from the programme: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Chaconne. Riseley noted that it should really be heard in the order that Bach prescribed – after the A minor Sonata (unlike other sets of pieces, the first four sonatas and partitas are in minor keys; only the third of each is in the major). Its D minor key takes charge of its spirit: sombre and serious and profound. The Allemande opened with a sense of wonder, with long, even passages that anchored it through its long piano episodes. The Courante can hardly be called jocular; neither is it spectacular technically, simply preparing us for the first of the two slow, triple-time movements: the Sarabande, which in turn offers in mood, a hint of the spirit and complexity of the Chaconne, though we pass through the humane, cheerful Gigue that’s not really a great technical feat, unlike the great Chaconne to come.

To be present for this performance was a wonderful experience: no hearing from even the greatest violinist on air or an excellent recording can match the live experience; certainly not one as excellent and as satisfying as we heard from Martin Riseley. All the complex emotional, technical and interpretative demands that Bach presents were so beautifully executed and revealed. Here was a performance that made me quite forget Busoni (whose famous piano version I do love), as I became enchanted and overcome by the music’s endless invention and the dynamic and rhythmic variety that the player must deal with. As a long-time lover of the cello suites, this made me realise that none of them contains a movement that approaches this Chaconne.

The audience response at the end was immediate, noisy, even rapturous, and they all knew they has made an infinitely better choice for a Friday evening than the unfortunates who weren’t at this unique recital.

Orchestra Wellington – gone vinyl to splendid effect with live Beethoven

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Symphonies Nos.1 & 3
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Symphony No. 1 in C Major Op. 21
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Op. 55 “Eroica”

(recorded “live” at the Michael Fowler Centre:
Symphony No. 1 on 13th May 2017 – Engineer, Graham Kennedy
Symphony No. 3 “Eroica” on 2nd December 2017 – Engineers, Darryl Stack, Steve Burridge

Orchestra Wellington OWTOWN 001/1-2 (LP issue)
(also available on CD – Concordance Records)

I was there at the 2018 concert when conductor Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington launched their ground-breaking classical recording release of two Beethoven Symphonies, recorded “live” at separate Michael Fowler Centre concerts the previous year – and what was more, caught on two splendidly appointed vinyl discs which were displayed most tellingly to a visibly gobsmacked and positively enthusiastic audience. Being an originally-pressed vinyl aficionado, I failed to take much notice of what Marc Taddei might have said about the CD issue of this release, though I registered that such a thing did and does exist, obviously giving the pleasure to be had from these splendid performances even wider currency.

For, to borrow from the words of the old song, I only had eyes for the startlingly, vividly-presented  2-LP vinyl set, one disc snow-white, and the other fire-engine red, both discs being enthusiastically brandished by the conductor (oh! – those poor, precious record surfaces – careful!!) their colours replicated with the words “Orchestra Wellington LIVE” on the outer gatefold sleeve housing the LPs. The publicity I’ve seen since makes much of the recent phenomenon of a “vinyl comeback” amongst the music-buying public, with artists across the board declaring for a number of reasons their newly-found allegiance to the grand old, tried-and-true medium; so a venture like this puts the Orchestra into the forefront world-wide of matters pertaining to the presentation of music in a lasting format.

I was thrilled to get hold of a copy of the LP set, though its arrival coincided with “troubles” developed by my equipment, so that I had to take the recordings for their first hearing to a friend’s abode and listen to them on his (admittedly, far superior to mine in quality) system.  We played the opening movement of the “Eroica”, and, thanks to the skills of recording engineers Darryl Stack and Steve Burridge, found ourselves in what sounded like “the best seats in the hall”, the full flavour of what I remembered from the actual concert coming across as an even more beautifully-balanced sound-picture, and with plenty of “audience ambience” to add to the occasion’s impact.

I reviewed the concert at which the “Eroica” was played in Middle C soon afterwards – https://middle-c.org/2017/12/cataclysmic-conclusion-to-orchestra-wellingtons-diaghilev-season/ and hearing the performance again merely confirmed my opinion as to its quality – what struck me afresh when I finally got the chance to hear the whole of the symphony on my “restored” sound equipment was a characteristic that it shared with all of the “great” performances I had heard, whether monumental, like Klemperer’s or Barbirolli’s, or swift and incisive, like Toscanini’s or Karajan’s, a sense of an unbroken, vibrant musical line sounding and resounding throughout the whole work. This was brought about less by speed than by a sense of unremitting forward movement, enabled by incisive orchestral attack and clearly-focused phrasings – not a bar, not a phrase, not a musical sentence in this performance reflected anything but the inevitability of the whole, the viewpoint of an eagle’s eye. Even what seemed like the most discursive sequences, such as the famous Trio of the Scherzo, featuring the three playful horns, or a most charming variant of the finale’s opening “Prometheus” bass theme in triplets, here ear-catchingly played by solo strings, kept the argument moving forwards, whether teasingly or quirkily, always with the work’s end in the conception’s ear.

New to me was the performance of the First Symphony, which took up Side One of the first of two discs. Taddei and his players gave Beethoven’s somewhat off-beat opening to the work plenty of sounding-space before the strings nimbly set the allegro dancing, the rushing figurations turning to gossamer at the conductor’s tempo, in places the playing sounding as light and airy as thistledown! Having been brought up in this Symphony with the renowned “Kingsway Hall bloom” on the strings in Klemperer’s 1950s version (captured for all time in what was perhaps London’s most well-known recording venue), I thought the sound here beautifully balanced by engineer Graham Kennedy while honestly reflecting the hall’s clear but ungiving quality. If there was little “bloom” the players at least generated whole spadefuls of bubbling energy, each one thrusting upwards, eager to be released.

I enjoyed the ongoing concert ambience in between the symphony’s movements – leaving the microphones “on” was an inspired, enlivening idea, readily recapturing the “whole” occasion’s atmosphere, one which the performances had worked so hard to help bring about in the first place.
The second movement’s brisk, eagerly-phrased dance firmly placed the work in the “Haydn” era, Taddei and the players generating moments of dramatic insistence in the movement’s development section, both strings and timpani accentuating their dotted-rhythm figurations to thrilling effect!  I liked, also, how the Scherzo’s gait wasn’t rushed, but had space in which to “point” the rhythms, and allow the timpani’s contributions plenty of clarity, the Trio similarly relaxed and contrastingly lyrical in character – I have to confess I especially enjoyed the unexpected second-half repeat when it came, in the recap of the opening!

The finale sounded here very Leonore No.3-ish at the outset with trumpets and drums prominently sounding, Taddei then getting his strings to “tease” in a delightfully po-faced way before the allegro skipped its way into the sound-picture. Brimful with infectious energy as things got properly going, the playing gave detailings like the timpani figures opportunities for plenty of robust prominence, with the churning vortex mid-movement gaily teased back into the mainstream by the chirpy winds. It was left to a celebratory, festive-sounding coda to round off the work, bringing forth instant and enthusiastic acclaim from an appreciative audience at the end.

So, these are two remarkably compelling and attractively presented performances! Very great credit to all concerned for this venture, in my view admirable and successful on all counts! Orchestra Wellington’s Marketing Manager Marek Peszynski has already aired some further recording ideas and options – one waits with bated breath to see what will come of it all. The idea of combining popular repertoire with contemporary New Zealand pieces is a laudable one, but there are some New Zealand classics that could do with some help along the way – David Farquhar’s challenging, ambient, descriptive and resonant First Symphony for one! We will all have our wish-lists, but I’d like to think that we’ll also equally get behind and support whatever this remarkable orchestra and its inspirational music director, together with its enterprising and progressive administration, will come up with next!

 

 

Restorative music from the Restoration, performed by “The Queen’s Closet”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Queen’s Closet presents –

Music by William Corbett, Matthew Locke, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, William Croft, Henry Purcell, Godfrey Finger, Godfrey Keller, Phillipp Jakob Rittler

The Queen’s Closet – ensemble
Peter Reid (trumpet and cornetto)
Gordon Lehany (trumpet and recorder)
Peter Maunder (sackbut and recorder)
Sharon Lehany (hoboy)
Hyewon Kim (violin)
Jane Young (‘cello)
Lachlan Radford (d-bass)
Laurence Reese (percussion)
Kris Suelicke (harpsichord)

City Gallery, Civic Square, Wellington

Saturday, June 1st 2019

A well-ordered programme, a cornucopia of colourful-sounding instruments, a group of skilled, expressive players and a relaxed, spontaneous-sounding presentation whose varied amalgam of fascinating and engaging sounds ensured a most attractive and resounding early evening’s music-making were the sure-fire ingredients of this concert from the early music group “The Queen’s Closet”. The ensemble’s name is derived from an eponymously-titled room found in a National Trust house located in Richmond, London, the room regarded as representing the most lavishly-detailed preservation of 17th Century fashion and style of décor in existence.

Considering the historical and cultural importance of such a place, one might expect any group aligning themselves to it by name to be somewhat rigorous in recreating authenticity of voice and perfection of detail, perhaps even to an inhibiting or stultifying degree. However, such potentially museum-like responses in performance seem unequivocally NOT to be the group’s raison d’etre, according to an open, freshly-expressed note in the concert’s written programme, which I’d like to quote:  – “What we aim to do is make the historic modern, rather than aiming to conduct historical enactments of the past. When this music was first heard it was fresh and modern – we seek to make the music new and contemporary for audiences in our time and place, recreating the joyous spirit of the Restoration”.

It seems to me a well-thought-out attitude to music-making in general, imbuing the sounds through skill, focus and enthusiasm with an immediacy of reaction, a living, breathing set of responses. Thus we in the audience were engaged by these ancient sounds through the music-making’s “living value”, one that easily transcended time and space, and imbued us with that same “new and contemporary” spirit, the sounds both joyous and captivating!

Kicking off this resoundingly festive event was an Overture in D major from an English composer William Corbett (b.1680) who played in and composed for both theatre and instrumental concert ensembles – he led theatre orchestras in London such as that at the Haymarket, and later became the Director of the King’s Band. His D major Overture made a bright, stirring initial impression, with percussion adding weight and brilliance to the brasses during the music’s introduction, before an allegro daintily danced in on the strings, soon being joined by the rest of the ensemble, everything then beautifully and variedly detailed over a number of movements.

A “Curtain Tune” (possibly one composed for a production of “the Tempest”) by Matthew Locke (b.1621) kept the “theatrical” aspect of things to the fore, with Larry Reece’s timpani making an exciting “opening-up” of the vistas towards the piece’s end. At first it made a marked contrast to the gentle stepwise opening of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Sonata VII, “Tam Aris Quam Aulis Servientes”, with the trumpets (Peter Reid and Gordon Lehany) answering one another across the platform, with violin and hoboy (oboe) adding their comments, the strings in a continuo kind of role throughout. The trumpets varied this with a dotted rhythm variation accompanied by a tambourine, after which the hoboy and violin had a charming, impish exchange, with the two trumpets joining in the discourse – a beautiful and graceful moment of solemnity! – following which the brasses called to one another to bring the work to its close. I was interested that Biber (b.1644), though not a “Restoration” composer as such through working in Salzburg, was said to have had a definite contemporaneous influence upon the English music of the time.

Throughout the evening the musicians took turns to demonstrate the efficacies of their particular instruments, a process that would have worked even better for me had I not been sitting in the very back row of the auditorium, as I found some of the voices difficult to properly hear. Peter Reid , the trumpet/cornetto player, presented no such problem, his voice happily emulating the instruments’ pleasing audibility, by way of demonstrating for us two kinds of cornetto (“little horn”, incidentally) including a larger “Cornetto Muto”. At the conclusion of a piece which followed, by an unknown composer (a jolly dance!) from a collection of music known as the Magdalene College Part-Books, percussionist Larry Reece talked about his timpani, built in 1830, brighter and sharper-toned than modern orchestral timpani. He also elaborated, most interestingly, upon the practical application of “kettledrums” (often mounted on horseback) in warfare, different sounds conveying different messages to troops on the battlefield.

Appropriately there followed an “Overture with Noise of Cannon” by William Croft (b.1678), very Handelian-sounding, trumpets and drums dominating, following which a fugue, instigated by Hyewon Kim’s nimble violin and Sharon Lehany’s hoboy, furthered the discourse most engagingly, the music’s energy further invigorated by Jane Young’s cello and Lachlan Radford’s double-bass! A beautiful and sombre processional followed, fraught with feeling and the players’ almost palpable engagement with the sounds, before violin and hoboy (again!) roused themselves and danced their way into and through the final movement – splendid!

Purcell’s Symphony from Act V of “King Arthur” here carried a dignity and quiet authority, with beautifully-voiced fanfares exchanged across vistas of imagination and recreation. However, Godfrey Finger (b.1660), I thought, provided one of the evening’s highlights with his Sonata for Trumpet and Hoboy – a heavenly discourse between the two instruments was beautifully supported by the continuo of Kris Zuelicke’s harpsichord and Jane Young’s ‘cello, morphing into a kind of running bass (reminiscent of that in Purcell’s “Sound the Trumpet”, from his “Birthday Ode for Queen Mary”). A stirring call to arms followed (great trumpet-playing from Peter Reid), was then overtaken by sudden melancholy! – the hoboy stricken with sorrow, solemn of movement, downcast of spirit – lovely, heartrending work from Sharon Lehany!  Eventually, he veil of angst was lifted by both instruments, and contentment restored.

Another Trumpet Sonata followed, this one by another Godfrey, with the surname of Keller. Beginning with a sprightly “statement and answer” sequence, the trumpet “played” with the endless permutations of this, before reversing the sequences in the next section, the ensemble “calling the tune” this time, as it were. A gentle 3/4 melancholy pervaded the next section, with lovely, delicately-moulded lines here for the sackbut, from Peter Maunder. A running bass, heroic trumpet and celebratory opening of the last movement brought out some lovely exchanges, the ensemble as a whole generating an almost alchemic “feel” for tempi and instrumental balances, producing mellifluous results – the timpani “rounded off” the festive ambience with suitably reinforced “effect”!

Sackbut player Peter Maunder talked briefly about his instrument, clarifying further for me its distinctiveness from a trombone, and telling us something I hadn’t before realised, that sackbuts and trombones were historically associated with church, as opposed to trumpets’ better-known martial connections and horns being always bracketed with hunting. In the next piece by Matthew Locke (Music for the play “Psyche”), Peter Maunder’s playing of his sackbut in a recitative-like passage during the introduction brought out the most beautiful tones, a lovely cantabile, followed by a stately dance movement.  The solo lines reminded me of the trombone solo in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture”, the playing beautifully-phrased and sumptuously-toned.

Last on the programme was the music of Phillipp Jakob Rittler (b.1637), the piece being a Ciaconna, or Chaconne. At the outset the music was slow, stately, relaxed and quietly joyous, with various percussive bells and cymbals adding to the gradual agglommeration of texture and ambience, everything more and more animated and wide-ranging! Antiphonal trumpets had a fine old time as did other instrument “pairs”, such as the violin and hoboy. The music reached its apex, then gradually receded, leaving us with dying tones and “fled is that music?” echoes of mingled regret and pleasure. At the concert’s end the weather outside was even more frightful than when I came at the beginning – but the palpable enjoyment of both the music and its performance throughout the evening amply compensated for my twice-told soaking!

 

 

 

Mozart the wonderful vehicle for supporting an important charity from Karori Classics

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Karori Classics: Purely Mozart
Anna van der Zee and Emma Brewerton (violins), Christian van der Zee and Lyndsay Mountfort (violas), Alegria Solana Ramos (cello), Ignacio de Nicolas Gaya (flute)

Mozart: Flute Quartet in C, K 285b
Mozart: Quintet in G minor, K 526

St Mary’s Church, 176 Karori Road

Friday 31 May, 7 pm

This third concert in the 2019 series, Karori Classics was a benefit concert for Cystic Fibrosis New Zealand, for it’s a wretched condition that afflicts the child of two of the players, Emma Brewerton and Lyndsay Mountfort.

We were sorry to have missed the earlier two concerts; the first, on 1 March, by duet pianists Beth Chen and Nicole Chao, known as Duo Enharmonics; and the second on 22 March for an interesting mixture of pieces involving the flutes of Kirsten Eade and new NZSO flutist/piccolo player Ignacio de Nicolas Gaya in music by Reger, Karg-Elert, a Haydn quartet played by Baroque music group the Orion Quartet (and a composer referred to in the website as J W Bach – presumably a misprint for another Bach).

This, obviously, was a more orthodox programme, which naturally raises more serious expectations. Though there was also an extra-musical interest in that all six players formed three pairs, maritally or romantically speaking. Flutist Ignacio de Nicolas Gaya was here joined by his partner Alegria Solana Ramos, cellist, together with core players named above.

Mozart’s Flute quartet K 285b
They played the third of Mozart’s four flute quartets (the first three are curiously numbered K 285, K 285a and K 285b and the fourth is K 298 in the Köchel catalogue).

Even though the character of players and their instruments didn’t create an especially uniform sound, especially between violin and cello, such niceties are not very significant in a group containing a non-stringed instrument. It was a charming performance, with its sanguine and lyrical first movement, Allegro. The second is a theme and variations, a form that can be dull and predictable in the hands of an ordinary composer, but even though Mozart is on record as disliking the flute, he wrote a totally diverting movement here, with the penultimate variation a secretive, reclusive affair and a deliciously enlivened final variation, which they played with affection and conspicuous pleasure.

The string quintet K 516 is the fourth of the six that he wrote; the first was an early work, and the second, in C minor K 406, was a transcription of his wind serenade K 388. That leaves four great, mature works, and K 516 was alone among them in a minor key. Many a Mozart devotee regards it a one of his greatest works, and I sensed that even without being told that secret, the audience listened with rapt attention as its sombre, reflective spirit unfolded; that was particularly striking through the near quarter hour of the first movement (not a moment too long and the longest movement in any of the quintets). Even though, as with the flute quartet, the tonal ensemble between the instruments was not the main feature of their playing, and the warm beauty of Alegria Solana Ramos’s cello constantly caught the ear, the five players displayed a unanimity of affection and even a degree of awe that made it a singular, lovely experience.

These early evening Friday recitals are very much worth watching out for.

 

 

 

 

Stroma enhances Wellington with music inspired by where sea meets sky

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Stroma Conducted by Hamish McKeich

Ingram Marshall: Fog Tropes (1981)
Mark Carter, Mathew Stein, (tpt), Samuel Jacobs, Julian Leslie (hn), David Bremner, Shannon Pittaway (trb)
Deidre Gribbin: What the Whaleship Saw
Anna van der Zee and Megan Molina (vn), Nicholas Hancox (va), Robert Ibell (vc)
Eve de Castro-Robinson: Pearls of the Sea (2005)
Bridget Douglas (fl, bass fl), Carolyn Mills (harp)
Tristan Murail: Treize couleurs du soleil couchant (1978)
Bridget Douglas (fl), Patrick Barry (cl), Anna van der Zee (vn) Robert Ibell (vc), Kirsten Robertson (piano)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Reflections (2016)
Anna van der Zee (vn), Nicholas Hancox (va), Robert Ibell (vc)
John Rimmer: Where Sea Meets Sky 2 (1975)
Bridget Douglas (fl), Patrick Barry (cl), Megan Molina (vn) Robert Ibell (vc), Kirsten Robertson (piano) Thomas Guldborg (percussion)

Hannah Playhouse

Thursday 30 May, 7:30 pm

Stroma is a mixed chamber music ensemble drawn from musicians of the NZSO. It performs contemporary experimental music. This programme included music by New Zealand, American, Irish, French, and Icelandic composers, but in particular, it honoured the 80th birthday of John Rimmer, one of New Zealand’s most iconic composers.

The programme started with fog horns, recorded in San Francisco Bay. A brass sextet of two horns, two trombones and two trumpets engaged in a dialogue with the fog horn against a background of the swirling sea and the squeals of sea birds. Ingram Marshall is an American composer influenced by minimalism trends of the 1960s. He says about Fog Tropes that “It is possible to listen to your pieces as a kind of tonality ‘behind the fog’, with gradual changes in layers of sound and ‘shadows & lights’. It seems that sometimes there’s a kind of impressionist colour in which we could find smaller sound particles.” It is these shadows and light that the listener can seek in this work.

From fog horns the programme moved to disaster at sea, the sinking of the whaling ship, Essex, in 1820. Deidre Gribbin is from Belfast. What the Whaleship Saw is a work for string quartet. It depicts the calm sea, then the storm that led to the tragedy. It is an impressionistic work. The strings generate sounds of sheer beauty without melodic progression, the peaceful calm sea is shattered by the disaster of the wrecked boat, then calm music again as the boat sinks but echoes of sea shanties appear in the background to illustrate the ill-fated sailors.

New Zealand composer Eve de Castro-Robinsons’s Pearls of the Sea follows up the sea theme. It writing for an unusual combination of instruments, a bass flute and a harp is a challenging exercise. The work is inspired by a poem by Len Lye. It exploits the aural potential of both instruments, the flute explores the range of sounds that can be produced, like the Japanese shakuhachi, trombone, foghorn and even low tom-tom. The harpist stretches the limits of the usual use of the harp by banging on the frame of the harp, and sweeping the strings to create a swooshing sound.

From the sea, the programme moved on to colours. Tristan Murail, a French composer, is associated with the ‘spectral’ techniques, the use of properties of sound as the basis of harmony. His Treize couleurs du soleil couchant tries to capture colours in sound. Like Monet in his painting, it uses patterns of sound as building blocks of music and repeats the same musical idea thirteen times as Monet did in paint the same scene over and over again. It is scored for a combination of instruments widely used by modern composers from Schoenberg to Messiaen, violin, clarinet, cello and piano.

Reflections by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir is a string trio in which instruments form overlapping ‘waves’. The music is composed as much by sounds and nuances as by lyrical material.

The final work is by John Rimmer, leading New Zealand composer and Associate Professor of Music at Auckland University. It is a tribute for his 80th birthday. His Where the Sea Meets the Sky 2, is an impression of a plane journey across the Tasman Sea. In this, he tries to capture the qualities of light seen through an aeroplane window. It was prompted by a poem of Ian Wedde in which the sea does not meet the sky. Originally Rimmer wrote this work for an electronic synthesizer, which he reworked for a live ensemble, a combination of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, which aims to capture the electronic sounds of the original version.

Hamish McKeich, musical director of Stroma, and the thirteen musicians from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra challenged the audience to think of the nature of music. The music was far from the usual concert repertoire, strange for some, lacking in usual points of reference, but it enhanced the musical experience of those who took the trouble to listen. The Wellington musical scene is richer for having an ensemble such as Stroma in its midst.

 

Delightful St Andrew’s recital from NZSM piano students: Bach, Haydn, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Prokofiev and Henry Cowell

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts
Piano students of the New Zealand School of Music

Alexander Jefferies: Brahms’s Rhapsody in G minor Op 79, no 2
Helen Chiu: Haydn’s Andante and Variations, Hob XVII:6 (Sonata, un piccolo divertimento)
David Codd: Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat, Op 27 no 2 and Henry Cowell’s ‘The Tides of Manaumaun‘
Jungyeon Lee: Bach: Prelude from English Suite No 4 in F and Prokofiev’s Sarcasms No 1
Cecilia Zhong: Debussy’s Children’s Corner: Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum, Jimbo’s Lullaby, The Snow is dancing, The Little Shepherd, Golliwog’s Cakewalk.

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 29 May, 12:15 pm

Though Middle C has been catching the weekly lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s pretty regularly, we have sometimes been a bit neglectful in writing about them. This one was harder to duck.

Student recitals almost always reveal a player or two of considerable distinction, in addition to which we have the experience of watching live performers playing music, a phenomenon that is becoming ever more rare, as disembodied versions of music dominate our hearing and are listened to indiscriminately: radio, conventional recordings on CD and vinyl again, downloading and streaming through Netflix and YouTube and the like, of recordings or live performances. Not to mention the quantity of dehumanised music actually composed for performance by machines. It’s all accustoming us to what have to be considered pale, dehumanised reflections of the real thing.

What about the concert?

First year student Alexander Jefferies played Brahms’s familiar Rhapsody in G minor, Op 79 no 2, as you’d expect from a music student early in his career: most of the notes there, plenty of spirit, though a way to go yet.

Helen Chiu showed an impressive talent, first in speaking confidently, with knowledge of the music’s background, of one of the pieces that Hoboken classified simply as ‘piano pieces’ (Hob XVII) – that is: not a sonata, but sets of variations, fantasies and other miscellaneous works. Its subtitle calls it a ‘sonata, a little divertimento’. It turned out to be familiar and Helen made it musical and interesting, technically fluent and idiomatic.

David Codd was a less experienced pianist, but played this familiar Nocturne thoughtfully, with sensitive rubato and other evidence that the music was a living creature. And he followed with a piece by an American composer of the generation of Gershwin and Copland: Henry Cowell whose reputation seems to have been obscured in recent years, though I’ve long been familiar with his name if not his music. His The tides of Manaunaun, written about 1917, began like Debussy but quickly leapt about fifty years ahead, taking Charles Ives by the throat, to produce dense music that might have shocked even Schoenberg at the time. It seemed to cry out to be scored for large orchestra, weighty in the percussion department. It was an interesting, technically pretty challenging piece: a capable and impressive performance.

Jungyeon Lee was another third year and she played the Prelude to Bach’s fourth English Suite with clarity and intelligence. Then the first of Prokofiev’s Sarcasms – not a standard genre of piano music, but one grasped the composer’s intention in this alert, stylistically conscious performance, both lyrical and teasing.

And finally Cecilia Zhong played Debussy’s Children’s Corner – all six pieces, running the recital ten minutes or so over time! But I’m not complaining as one doesn’t often hear them played. It’s a collection made more interesting through the availability of recordings from piano rolls by the composer in 1913. They cover a very wide range of moods, play, games and kinds of music. Serenade for the Doll appealed to me in particular, but the entire suite is one of Debussy’s most delightful works, and here was a performance by Cecilia Zhong, an accomplished post-graduate student, that revealed all the fun and variety and Debussy’s charming affinity with children.

So ended a very engaging concert that made one, again, grateful that we live in a city with a down-town tradition of bringing music students from the university to help enrich our traffic-congested, culturally barren lives.

 

Chamber Music Hutt Valley celebrates 40 years – no more appropriately than with the Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
The AMICI Ensemble

Music by Rossini, Piazzolla, Mozart and Spohr

ROSSINI – Sonate a Quattro No.1 in F Major (arr. for wind quartet)
PIAZZOLLA – Three Tangos (arr. for violin and double-bass)
MOZART – Oboe Quartet in F Major K.370
SPOHR – Grand Nonetto in F Major Op.31

The AMICI Ensemble
Patrick Barry (clarinet) / Robert Weeks (bassoon) / Andrew Joyce (‘cello)
Robert Orr (oboe) / Samuel Jacobs (horn) / Bridget Douglas (flute)
Gwendolyn Fisher (viola) / Donald Armstrong (violin) / Oleksandr Gunchenko (d-bass)

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt,

Monday, 27th May, 2019

What a surprise to discover that Rossini’s youthful Sonate a Quattro No.1 in F Major was here masquerading as a wind quartet! – in fact, I was going to add, “in true Rossinian fashion” before I discovered that the arranger was one Frederic Berr, a clarinettist who similarly refurbished for wind quartet no less than five of Rossini’s youthful “String Sonatas” , and provided a sixth from an “Andante and Variations” by the composer to complete the set. I had long known this music in a version for string ensemble of the original quartet (double-bass instead of ‘cello!) from a famous LP recording by the renowned Academy of St.Martin-in-the-Fields directed by Neville Marriner  – so when flutist Bridget Douglas began the enticing and gracefully-descending opening figure of the sonata, I pricked up my ears in utter delight at the well-remembered beguilement of this music’s figure and movement.

The string quartet original had sprung from the fertile mind of the twelve year-old Rossini in 1804, on holiday at a friend’s country estate, the host, Agostino Triossi, a double bass -player, for whom the boy composed these works (Rossini in later life called them “Six dreadful sonatas” elaborating with the words “composed by me……when I was at a most infantile age….”), Rossini himself taking the second violin part in the first performances at Triossi’s house, recalling that his own playing “was not the least doggish, by God!”

Whether in string or wind form the music is, in fact, a joy, thanks to the precocity of the composer and the skill and experience of Frederic Berr in making his arrangement –  the latter had, of course an advantage of variation over the original in the differentiation between flute and clarinet tones as against the two violin parts! The whole performance breathed an air of utterly relaxed music-making, to the point of incorporating a luftpause for a page-turn during the course of the Andante – very civilised! The carefree, “down by the river” melody which began the finale was delivered with plenty of “schwung”, never rushed, and allowing some deliciously bubbly playing to emanate from the horn in its contrasting sequence.

Astor Piazzolla’s music will forever be associated with the tango, but as a revolutionary, rather than a traditionalist. Becoming a virtuoso bandoneon player, he worked with traditional groups before the pianist Artur Rubinstein, sensing his talent, advised him to go and study with the Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera. This developed his interest in modern classical music and encouraged him to seek further tuition as a composer with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, who advised him to continue exploring the music of his roots, and fuse the forms with his knowledge of other musical styles to create something new. Despite criticism from traditionalists he went on to develop Tango Nuevo, which incorporated elements of jazz and classical music; and in which he constantly evolved adventurous and experimental methods of expressing his ideas.

Three of his Tangos were presented here by violinist Donald Armstrong and double bassist Oleksandr Gunchenko, all arrangements by another double-bassist German-born Andreas Wiebecke-Gottstein. What struck me was the aplomb with which both musicians performed this repertoire, bringing out the inherent physicality and gesturing associated with the sounds, making it “all of a piece” in a way that enabled the music to express its character – thus we caught and savoured the first Tango’s sultriness in both sight and sound – its title, J’attends (an allusion, perhaps, to the dance’s origins as incidental music played by musicians in bordellos) reflected in the pent-up tensions generated by the piece’s ready receptiveness to stimuli, the music impulsively moving here and there, but ultimately held to ransom by the need to await some kind of “arrival” or “happening”, physical, emotional or spiritual. The second, and at the outset, more sombre setting, proved more volatile in its growing physicality, the dance pulsating more and more strongly, before turning inwards, but then growing again, the ending defusing the seriousness with some cheeky pizzicati.

The third Tango was a livelier affair, the bass-player’s rapid alternations between arco and pizzicato, with occasional percussive touches, sounding more conventionally “jazzy” than the other two pieces, both musicians putting across a “to the manner born” air with the suppleness of their gestures and the fluency of the music’ trajectories, winding the rhythm down at the end most beguilingly. An enthusiastic audience response possibly encouraged the players to “treat us” to another piece, a fantastic, play-as-you-go pizzicato sequence by the bassist, leading to a mesmeric “pick-up-the-bow” sequence involving eerie harmonies and almost sleazy movements, the players transforming our surroundings into a world rich, strange and flecked with impulses of danger….the reaction from the auditorium was rapturous!

Returning to relative conventionality (but WHAT conventionality!), we were then given Mozart’s sublime Oboe Quartet, allowing Robert Orr the chance to shine as the sole wind player amid a clutch of strings! I liked the bright, perky oboe sound, characterful but never overbearing – the dialogues between various lines are so fluent and detailed throughout the exposition (repeated), making the more fluid, dreamy development section seem like another world, just for a few moments…..the Adagio gave the oboe the chance to really “sing”, which Orr enabled beautifully, the line filled with inflected detailing and delight. Finally, the Rondeau, with its sprightly gait, and lovely “vertiginous” central section for the oboe, allowed the soloist to spin and loop-the-loop as if in unfettered and exuberant flight for a few precious moments, before returning to the formation! A simple stepwise ascent to a top F, and the music’s delight came to a graceful end.

The evening’s final work was the Nonet, or, more properly, the “Grand Nonetto in F Major Op.31” by Louis Spohr.  Donald Armstrong outlined for us some of Spohr’s distinctions as a musician, including certain innovations he pioneered and helped establish, one being the invention of the chinrest on the violin, another his pioneering of the conductor’s baton. He was an exact contemporary of Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s pupil, and was himself on friendly terms with Beethoven. He produced symphonies, operas, concertos and various works for small ensemble, including this Nonetto, one of the fruits of a long-term contract between the composer and an impresario by the name of Johann Tost, who purchased from Spohr the exclusive performing rights to the latter’s chamber music – Spohr (unlike certain other prominent composers of the time) being of an amenable nature, the deal proved mutually beneficial!

The work couldn’t have better “set off” either the individual instruments or their groups against one another throughout the four movements, the composer employing an opening “motto” theme at the outset with great skill and invention, to what seemed like both the players’ and the listeners’ delight! Each succeeding movement had its own particular flavour, the scherzo seeming at first to leave behind the mellifluous atmosphere of the work’s opening, with deliciously dark string tones pursuing a romantic adventure, though the winds soon brightened things up! The players brought out the fun of the major/minor key alterations, before Donald Armstrong’s violin charmed us with a birdsong-like Trio whose sweetness all but banished the thought of the journey still to come, as almost did a second “interlude” introduced by the clarinet, a gently-insinuating chromatic figure augmented most winningly by the other winds.

The  slow movement, marked Adagio was begun raptly by strings, and continued radiantly by the winds, the contrasting timbres conjuring appropriately “inwardly-sounded” resonances with the strings and more “al fresco” ambiences through the winds, the two groups interchanging their timbral characteristics most attractively throughout, repeating a slower version of the four-note motto introduced at the work’s beginning. The finale took us from contemplation to comedy, beginning with a running figure resembling a silent movie sequence, whose drollery was further enhanced by the introduction of a syncopated rhythmic pause at the end of each phrase, one whose “chink” simply cried out repeatedly to be filled, the winds duly obliging before the end! It was all part of an overall agglomeration of delight shared in both playing and listening, reaching its apex at the work’s engaging and fully-occupying conclusion! Bravo, Amici!!