Middle C – Page 40 – Classical Music Reviews, Wellington, New Zealand

Kiwa Quartet takes enjoyable, interesting journey through 125 years of quartet repertoire for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on 26/05/201928/05/2019 by Steven Sedley

Kiwa Quartet: Malavika Gopal and Alan Molina (violins), Sophia Anderson (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (cello)
(Wellington Chamber Music: Sunday series)

Haydn: String Quartet Op. 76 No. 2 ‘Fifths’
Webern: Langsamer Satz
Janáček: String Quartet No.1 ‘Kreutzer Sonata’
Mendelssohn: String Quartet No. 2 in A minor Op. 13

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 26 May 2019, 3 pm

Listening to string quartet music is a delightful way of spending a Sunday afternoon. We have had the privilege of hearing three excellent string quartets over the last three weeks, the New Zealand String Quartet, the Aroha Quartet, and now the Kiwa Quartet. It is fortunate for Wellington to have such an abundance of talent around.

The Kiwa Quartet was formed in 2015 as part of a project supported by the NZSO Professional Development Grant. What a great investment that Professional Development Grant was! Investing in the four musicians who formed the Kiwa Quartet certainly paid handsome dividends. First violin, Malavika Gopal, member of the NZSO, studied with the Alban Berg Quartet and was part of a prize winning quartet; Alan Molina, came from America to the NZSO with a wealth of orchestral experience; violist, Sophia Anderson is the Principal Viola of Orchestra Wellington; the cellist, Ken Ichinose had unfortunately injured his finger and was replaced by the very seasoned cellist of the New Zealand String Quartet, Rolf Gjelsten. The four make up a confident, balanced ensemble playing with a rich, beautifully and blended sound.

The concert began with the second of Haydn‘s ‘Erdödy’ quartets, Op. 76, No. 2. This is late, mature Haydn. He was 65 and had developed the art of the string quartet from light background music into substantial music with a wide scope for drama and emotion that leads to the later quartets of Beethoven. This quartet got its nickname ‘Fifths’ from the descending fifth of the first movement, which gives the movement an air of gravitas. The second movement is a charming Andantino, which was played with just the right amount of lightness. The Menuetto had a stomping of peasants’ dance quality typical of late Haydn, and the last movement, Vivace ended the work on a cheerful rollicking note. These Haydn quartets are a challenge for musicians, both technically and musically. There are a lot of rapid notes that have to be articulated clearly and the Kiwa players did this admirably.

For me the surprise of the programme was Webern‘s Langsamer Satz. This is no Second Viennese School of dissonant music that Webern is associated with. This is a lush romantic piece. ‘Langsamer Satz’ means Slow Movement. It was the first composition exercise assigned to Webern by his teacher Schoenberg. The work is in one movement built on three lyric themes combined in different ways and taken to a conclusion of great intensity. It provided solo opportunities for each of the members of the quartet and in particular, the viola. You could wallow in their beautiful sound. The impetus for the work, Webern wrote, was his walk in the Austrian woods with his cousin, Wilhelmine Mortl, with whom he was in love. It is a recollection of a happy time. The music was lost and only discovered many years after Webern’s death. This was probably no accident. Although the music is beautiful, it was not what Webern wanted to be remembered by.

By contrast, the Janáček String Quartet is a tempestuous affair. It depicts psychological drama that contains moments of conflict and emotional outbursts. Janáček wrote that he was imagining a poor woman, tormented and run down, just like the one the Russian writer Tolstoy describes in his Kreutzer Sonata. The work is in four movements. They are all con moto driven, disturbed. The musical language is typical of Janáček, which almost abandons traditional harmony, homophony and counterpoint and makes use of contrasting textures. It may be a reflection of the insecure world of Europe after the First World War. It is a unique string quartet with none other like it.

After the Janáček, the Mendelssohn Quartet returned to the string quartet tradition. In 1827, when Beethoven died Mendelssohn was eighteen years old. His second string quartet was modelled on Beethoven’s late quartets, and is influenced by them. Chuzpah, you might think, an eighteen year old trying to take on Beethoven’s mantle, but Mendelssohn was an amazing prodigy and produced a major work that could stand alongside the great masterpieces. Despite its official number, this was Mendelssohn’s first mature string quartet, although he had written a number of quartets before as well as his Octet.

The String Quartet No. 2 in A minor borrowed the structure of the late Beethoven quartets, and in particular, Op 132, and even some of the Beethoven motifs appear in Mendelssohn’s piece, but the language is distinctively Mendelssohn’s. The first movement starts with a dramatic, slow introduction that quotes the tender love song ‘Frage’, Op. 9/1 which he wrote for a young woman he might have taken a fancy to, a theme that keeps recurring, and this is followed by a spirited passage. The slow movement opens with an extended melody, which devolves into a fugal section echoing Beethoven. The Intermezzo has the lilting melody that is like his Midsummer’s Night music, but also like a simple song he might have overheard in a fair ground. The final movement starts with dramatic chords, again reminiscent of Beethoven and then develops into light filigree music that often characterises Mendelssohn’s, interrupted with sudden contrasting themes as they do in Beethoven, among them even a theme that resembles one from the Ninth Symphony. It is an enchanting work. It is a pity that Mendelssohn’s quartets are not heard more often.

The Kiwa Quartet took us on a long and interesting journey from Haydn in 1797 through Webern in 1905, Janáček in 1923 and back to Mendelssohn in 1827. It was a thoroughly enjoyable voyage. The Kiwa is a fine quartet that can stand alongside the best of New Zealand’s chamber music groups.

Orchestra Wellington’s triumphant concert of two last completed works by great composers

Posted on 25/05/201930/05/2019 by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei

Mozart: Symphony No 41 in C, ‘Jupiter’
Bruckner: Symphony No 8 in C minor (1890 version)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 25 May, 7:30 pm

This promised to be a major concert, and as soon as the first arresting sounds of the Jupiter Symphony filled the MFC, I felt assured that it was probably the most important concert of Orchestra Wellington’s year.

And so I scanned the spaces above the orchestra to assure myself that it was being recorded; and I was dismayed to see no sign of RNZ Concert’s microphones. In the light of the broadcaster’s routine recordings and broadcasts of the Auckland Philharmonia’s performances every Thursday evening, this struck me as an extraordinary decision. Is it another facet of RNZ’s announced plans last year to shift half its operations to Auckland in the interests of balance of some sort? Differences in performance standards between the two orchestras are becoming harder and harder to discern; is RNZ oblivious to the need for all Government operations to avoid the proliferation of activities in Auckland to help achieve more balanced growth nationally? It would be better if Radio New Zealand were to re-establish a presence in Christchurch, if balance really matters.

The Jupiter Symphony
Mozart’s last symphony (that was the concert’s theme, Bruckner’s eighth was his last completed work) is pretty universally considered one of his greatest works. There are endless ways to approach a piece of music, and even more in the case of works of genius such as Bruckner’s most important symphonies: the emphasis in the first movement was on its energy and its rich and elaborate evolution as an inspired and magnificently constructed masterpiece. An emphatic pulse dominated most of the first and last movements though Bruckner never allows uniform tempo or dynamics to dominate any movement. Speed is not the essence of greatness and that was soon clear when the contrasting second theme arrived, quite markedly more discreet and it was these dynamic and tempo contrasts that lent special interest to this performance. Marc Taddei took care with the scale of the sounds, limiting the strings to 10, 8, 6, 4 3, and used baroque timpani, vividly exhibited by Dominic Jacquemard.

The orchestra next showed its refinement in the slow movement where it’s possible to surprise an audience with the most secretive approach to the lovely melodies that emerge as if from profound meditation, with such gestures as sharp quasi-staccato chords from strings occasionally punctuating the quiet. Then the minuet, third movement was played with a brisk, quite danceable rhythm with a strong first beat, that with its rising motif seemed to express a kind of pleading.

The last movement is marked Molto allegro, but is often played rather spaciously in response to the complex contrapuntal interplay that illustrates an aspect of Mozart’s genius that he had not previously explored very much. Other performances that have given more space to the fascinating emergence of Mozart’s handling of the several themes that tumble upon one another and create a marvellous exhilarating experience. The last movement usually takes about 10 minutes, and while I didn’t time it, this seemed to have been despatched in a bit less time.

However, in terms of scrupulous attention to dynamics, the hushed opening phrases and the sudden retreats into meditative passages, the secretive feeling created at the approach of each phase of the movement’s evolution, one was simply electrified throughout. Then there was the sheer excellence and accuracy of the lively orchestral playing and Taddei’s very conspicuous attention to the roles of every section and solo instrument, not to mention the overall architecture of the symphony.

Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony
As if a fine performance of the Jupiter was not enough genius for one concert, Taddei filled out the theme of ‘last rites’ (not his words) with, I might surmise, the greatest of the other last symphonies (other than Beethoven’s) in his judgement: one more than twice as long as Mozart’s. It must also have been a close contest between Brahms’s 4th and Mahler’s 9th (we are speaking of ‘last completed works’: both Bruckner’s ninth and Mahler’s tenth were incomplete).

The orchestra had been expanded to cope with Bruckner’s demands: strings descending from 13, 11, 10…; three each of woodwinds; eight horns, four of which doubled on Wagner tubas (all on the right); three each of trumpets and trombones, three harps (an uncommon sight), totalling about 80. Fewer strings than the NZSO would have mustered it’s true, but one would have to be rather pedantic and gifted with uncommonly acute hearing to perceive it, let alone complain.

The last performance of the Eighth, this time of the first version of 1887, was Simone Young’s with the NZSO in August 2015. It was reviewed by Middle C.
See more details in the Appendix

Most of Bruckner’s symphonies have interesting, controversial histories; the result of the scale and structure and their unconventional musical character, quite strongly influenced by Wagner; but more especially as a result of the extensive revisions that he made, usually as a result of criticism by conductors, critics, colleagues and friends.

Not everyone is interested in the tortured history and context of the eighth; I am.

Bruckner finished the Eighth in 1887, but it was neither published nor performed then as conductor Hermann Levi, to whom Bruckner sent it, said that he couldn’t ‘make it his own’.
See Appendices

Bruckner ran into further critical hostility at the first performance. The most notorious was from the Brahms-devoted (and therefore antipathetic towards Bruckner) Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick who had routinely attacked Bruckner’s earlier works.
See more detail in Appendices

Orchestra Wellington’s performance was of a monumental yet totally absorbing character. Considering that this is Wellington’s ‘second’ orchestra, with a number of extra players, the performance was tight and cohesive, full of energy, and thoroughly deserving of recording. While there was singularly fine playing from most instruments in solo passages, a lovely subtle solo oboe for example, and evidence of very effective rehearsal in the clarity and richness of string ensemble; and Dominic Jacquemard’s excellent timpani was often thrillingly conspicuous even if occasionally a little too prominent. The fine body of horns, four of them doubling on Wagner tubas, always created rich, heart-warming choruses.

The Scherzo is untypical of the usual bubbly wake-up after the ‘boring’ slow movement (well, this is before the slow movement). The outer layers are both richly inventive even though built on typically Brucknerian repetitive themes, far from merely jolly, superficial fillers. It was not only a journey into the sunlight but a wonderful, emotionally enriching experience that to my ears expressed the best of both worlds: sparkle and the most opulent of horn-led passages through the steady triple rhythm that made this a Scherzo that was far more than an episode to entertain the cloth-eared who need overtly jolly music.

The middle section, Trio – Langsam, lasting about five minutes, provided a perfect space in which to relish this variation on the homogeneous character of the whole hour-and-a-quarter-long symphony; much of it resting purely to strings with subtle, discreet horns, trumpets, woodwinds.

The most transfixing, spell-binding movement is of course the great Adagio, Feierlich langsam, doch nicht schleppend, which lasts about half an hour. Here was the full justification for the eight horns and the frequent substitution of four of them by Wagner tubas delivering long-breathed, elegiac chorales, never hinting at anything overtly religious in spite of Bruckner’s profound religious convictions. I think that perhaps here is best found the beauty of a quartet of Wagner tubas, including in Wagner’s own use of them. The magic of three harps could be understood here too, though it did help to be able to see the three players together. The slow passage towards the ultimate brass-rich climax was paced beautifully, with the arrival of cymbals and triangle, quickly subsiding with the return of the gentlest, aching four-note, descending melody from horns. I should have asked for an encore.

But the last movement, Feierlich, nicht schnell, announced by arresting demi-semi-quavers from strings or brass only momentarily changed the scene. It’s followed by what could pass as an extension of the Adagio of several minutes before the somewhat astonishing, spell-binding, timpani-led episode. There were moments when, uncharacteristically, I did feel that passages demanding opulent string playing could have benefitted from more players, but it didn’t detract from the gravity and grandeur of the music during that episode; generally the strings more than adequately balanced the sounds of the brass.

Of the gigantic finale Bruckner is alleged to have said: “Hallelujah!… The Finale is the most significant movement of my life.”

The near capacity audience in the Michael Fowler Centre might have said the same if it had occurred to them. Though there was long and rapturous applause I was surprised that no one stood to acknowledge Marc Taddei’s achievement. That he conducted the work without the score might not have been so remarkable in the Jupiter Symphony, but it was in the case of this masterpiece nearly three times as long.

APPENDICES

The NZSO’s first performance of the Eighth was from Franz-Paul Decker in 1985 (the orchestra had lived nearly 40 years without it!), and there have been performances by Matthias Bamert in 1999 and Laurence Renes in 2007; and there was an Auckland-only performance under Heinz Wallberg in 1991. As mentioned above, Simone Young’s 2015 performances were of the original version.

Rejection and revisions
When Bruckner invited him to conduct the symphony (he had conducted the hugely successful first performance of the Seventh) Hermann Levi replied that he found it “impossible to perform … in its current form. As much as the themes are magnificent and direct, their working-out seems to me dubious; indeed, I consider the orchestration quite impossible. I just can’t make it my own!” He added: “Don’t lose your courage, take another look at your work … maybe a reworking can achieve something”.

Those criticisms led to a tortuous series of revisions, cuts and ‘corrections’, even the insertion of new music, that have provided rich material for scholarly examination and created a confusing range of possible performance options.

He reworked it by making cuts, enriching the orchestration, and writing a new sombre, spiritually subdued ending for the first movement, “with a deathly fade to silence”, as Alex Ross wrote. He submitted a second version in 1890 for publication. It took two years to find a publisher, in 1892, and it was premiered under Hans Richter later that year.

The first version was longer than the revised 1890 one, though not all recorded performances reflect that: Eliahu Inbal’s performance of the 1887 version, which I have, runs 74.83 minutes (but Sergiu Celibidache’s wonderful performance of the Novak 1890 version lasts an hour and forty minutes!). The 1887 version, which was premiered after Novak’s publication in 1972, was conducted by Hans-Hubert Schönzeler in 1973 (his biography of Bruckner is extremely perceptive and absorbing and thoroughly worth looking for); the earlier version has now had many performances, including by Georg Tintner, Michael Gielen, Kent Nagano, Franz Welser-Möst and Simone Young.

Reception of the first performance
Hanslick wrote of the symphony’s first performance of the 1890 revision, in Vienna in 1892 not quite as savagely as he had of earlier works; he noted generously that it was ‘interesting in detail, but strange as a whole, indeed repellent’. Bruckner’s admirer Hugo Wolf however wrote that the symphony was ‘the work of a giant’ that ‘surpasses the other symphonies of the master in intellectual scope, awesomeness, and greatness’.

Quotes on the critical treatment of Bruckner
Alex Ross in a review of the Eighth Symphony in The New Yorker in 2011, wrote:

“Bruckner, with his vast, slow-moving structures and relentlessly sombre tone, can seem impassive, even inhuman. He has always aroused as much distrust as love. Mocking Bruckner is a hoary pastime, going back to the days when the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick dismissed him as a proponent of “nightmare-hangover style.” There is also the matter of Bruckner’s posthumous link to Nazism; Hitler embraced Bruckner as a German national hero and used bits of his music as sonic décor at the Nuremberg rallies. Although Bruckner did little to encourage such treatment—the mainstay of his world view was devout Catholicism, not pan-German nationalism—the association lingers in the public mind.”

A Guardian article (Tom Service, December 2013) summarises what the author suggests should be the listener’s reaction:

“This is a piece that is attempting something so extraordinary that if you’re not prepared to encounter its expressive demons, or to be shocked and awed by the places Bruckner’s imagination takes you, then you’re missing out on the essential experience of the symphony. If you think of Bruckner only as a creator of symphonic cathedrals of mindful – or mindless, according to taste – spiritual contemplation, who wields huge chunks of musical material around like an orchestral stone mason with implacable, monumental perfection, then you won’t hear the profoundly disturbing drama of what he’s really up to. That unsettling darkness is sounded right at the start of this symphony. Instead of setting out on a journey in which the outcome is certain, in which everything is its rightful place in the symphonic, tonal, and structural universe, Bruckner builds his grandest symphonic edifice on musical quicksand.”

Another colourful characterisation quoted by The New Yorker in 2014, from the 1923 book Musical Chronicle by critic Paul Rosenfeld, wrote that Bruckner, “a balding Austrian church organist, echoed not so much the elegance of ‘waltz-blooded Vienna’ as ‘the uncouthness of the Allemanic tribesmen, his ancestors, who smeared their long hair with butter and brewed thick black beers’.”

“Under every grief & pine/runs a joy with silken twine” – Martin Riesley plays unaccompanied Bach at St.Andrew’s, Wellington

Posted on 24/05/201927/05/2019 by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace Church presents:
MARTIN RISELEY (violin) – Music by JS BACH and LYELL CRESSWELL

JS BACH – Sonata in G Minor BWV 1001
Adagio / Fuga / Siciliana / Presto

JS BACH – Partita in B Minor BWV 1002
Allemanda / Corrente / Sarabande / Tempo di Borea

Interval – Talking about the organ
Susan Jones (minister) and Peter Franklin (organist)

LYELL CRESSWELL – “Burla” for solo violin (from “Whira”)

JS BACH – Sonata in A Minor BWV 1003
Grave / Fuga / Andante / Allegro

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

Friday 24^th May, 2019

This was a benefit concert to help raise funds for refurbishing the Church’s pipe organ.

Bach himself wasn’t known as a violinist to the same extent as he was a keyboard player, yet according to his son, Carl Philippe Emanuel, “he played the violin cleanly and powerfully”, and his familiarity with the instrument is evident in the way he wrote his six Violin Sonatas and Partitas (BWV 1001-1006), so they could “stand alone” as compositions without the customary basso continuo (“senza Basso”), as were the six Suites for Violincello solo (BWV 1007-1012). All were written during the years around 1720, while Bach was Court Musician to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cőthen, at a time when he was taken up with secular music – his Brandenburg Concerti and Orchestral Suites also date from the same period.

In his excellent programme note accompanying the concert (though it was uncredited, the use of the first person singular pronoun when talking about performing this music was an obvious giveaway!) violinist Martin Riseley refers obliquely to Bach’s possible intention, as expressed on the autograph with the words “Sei solo” (You are alone), of enshrining something deeply personal within this music. In 1720 the composer’s first wife had died, even more tragically, unbeknown to him while he was absent from the court, perhaps giving rise to the remark “the loneliness and intimacy of the violin, without bass” in Riseley’s commentary, examples of which quality abound in these works.

As with the playing of a different soloist in a concert last year here in Wellington featuring Bach’s music (Raeul Pierard playing the ‘Cello Suites – see the review at https://middle-c.org/2018/11/baching-at-the-moon-cellist-raeul-pierard-at-st-peters-on-willis-wellington/) it was revelatory to experience this music in an “ongoing” rather than a “single work” context, with Riseley also making reference to the “journey” made by this music across the different individual pieces, for him, unequivocally linking the music in between the opening G minor Sonata and the Chaconne of the D Minor Partita – something of a pity, therefore, that we weren’t able to physically experience this entire span, here, in a single concert. Still, the point was made sufficiently by what WAS played this evening – and despite both an interval and a separate, unrelated item by New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell interpolated in the flow, the connections seemed to “crackle into life” again when the violinist returned to Bach’s music, the A Minor Sonata BWV 1003, to conclude the evening’s concert.

Beginning with the Sonata No.1 in G Minor, I was immediately struck by the violinist’s variety of timbre, colour, tone and intensity as the music’s phrases were “sounded”. It was as if my sensibilities were being taken on a constantly augmented journey whose trajectories were beguilingly difficult to predict, and diverting to try and follow. Following the opening Adagio, the Fuga (Fugue) presented us with an equally compelling game of double-voiced propositions and potential resolutions. The voices were inseparable, yet constantly seeming to challenge one another to undertake intervals or harmonies that led to worlds of expression one didn’t anticipate. And what trenchant intensities at the end of the movement!

Angular, almost awkward-sounding in places, the Siciliano seemed “overladen’ with its own material at first, before the gentle rhythms gradually shaped the figurations with resonances of what had gone before. By contrast, the Presto’s tumbling 3/8 urgency teased my ear with its rhythmic ambiguities in places, Riseley marking the repeats with great flourishes and compelling attention with his playing’s molto perpetuo energies and variety of touch.

Each of the movements in the following B Minor Partita were followed by a “double” or variation, thus named by the ‘halving” of time values and the resulting “doubling” of note numbers. Hence the opening Allemanda, with strong, stately dotted rhythms whose figurations alternate between a ‘snap” and a triplet, was transformed into a dance of evenly-paired semiquavers for its “double”. The Courante (taken from a French term, to “run”) had a strength and rigour which in the “double” became a Presto, marked by bowing whose variety gave great cause for delight.

Next came the dignified Sarabande, profound and ritualistic with spread chords and sustained tones of great intensity – perhaps not every single note here hit its mark directly, but the commitment to the task was compelling. The “double” used triplet quavers to enliven the Sarabande’s stateliness, the piece’s beautiful symmetries filled with variations of touch and tone. Finally, the Tempo di Borea (like a Bouree) featured a well-known double-stopped opening, by turns energetic and whimsical, its “double” a more flowing, less “punctuated” outpouring, emphasising the piece’s line rather than its rhythm, with plenty of variety of touch, if a somewhat po-faced concluding note.

At this point in the concert we were “diverted” by an interval with a special feature, a plea for “organ donors” to make themselves known, re the individual pipes of the somewhat ailing St.Andrew’s organ. With the parish minister Susan Jones and the organist Peter Franklin providing an entertaining commentary with music, they made the best possible case for the cause of making a commitment to the organ’s refurbishment, suggesting individual donors “sponsor a pipe” from the organ – a brilliant and attractive idea!

In no time at all we were off again, on a different kind of diversion, one involving the music of New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell, a piece called “Burla” (suggesting a kind of burlesque?) , written for Douglas Lilburn’s eightieth birthday, but also part of a larger work “Whira” (Maori for “violin” or “fiddle”). The music in effect sounded not unlike overtures made by a terpsichordian wasp attempting to form a dance-duo with a somewhat reluctant hornet! The piece had a striking “visceral” effect in places, employing some deep, grainy “horse-hair on gut” sounds which illustrated the mechanics of friction rather than the latter’s more conventionally musical application – and then included a throwaway fragment of what sounded to me like the phrase “Sings Harry” from Lilburn’s eponymous song-cycle, right at the end. An Antipodean, heat-of-day variant of Bartok’s “Night Music” perhaps? Whatever the case, a brilliant and engaging performance of the piece by the violinist.

Concluding the programme was Bach’s A Minor Sonata for Solo Violin BWV 1003. The music’s dignified, easily-moving opening encompassed both contemplation and exploration at the beginning, while opening the music’s vistas as it proceeded. Riseley’s performance didn’t hold anything back, embracing whole moments of circumspection and ambivalence of intent, even as the music went straight into the Fuga, maintaining an alternate relaxation and emphasis that brought out an extraordinary kind of 3-d aspect to the music, a view encompassing both the immediate and the middle distance – masterly playing! He had the measure of those seemingly endless”spins” which transcend time and place so that we were ourselves transported, particularly throughout the Fuga’s second half.

The C Major Andante was compellingly and expansively-phrased – it had something of the itinerant fiddler about it, something big-boned, yet with a “musing”, self-absorbed trajectory, sounding very “folky”, and with a suggestion of the “drone” in the bass – almost a kind of “Winter Journey” in itself – amazing music! The minor-key figurations of the Allegro finale had echo-like phrases following one another in quick succession, filled with suggestiveness and playful touches amid the po-faced purpose of it all – the piece’s concluding low A was enough, I would think, to ensure that we would all want to come back to St Andrew’s in a fortnight’s time to conclude the music’s journey!

Note: Martin Riseley will be playing the three remaining Sonatas and Partitas of JS Bach at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church on Friday 7th June, at 6:30pm

NZSM Orchestra speaks its concert presentation’s name with skill and conviction at St.Andrew’s

Posted on 21/05/201902/06/2019 by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music presents:
DARKNESS AND LIGHT
Music by Mozart, Britten, Rod Biss and Tchaikovsky

MOZART – Symphony No.35 on D Major K.385 “Haffner”
BRITTEN – Sinfonia da Requiem
ROD BISS – Four New Zealand Bird Songs
TCHAIKOVSKY – Fantasy Overture “Romeo and Juliet”

Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Tuesday, 21st May, 2019

Though having just tut-tutted elsewhere over the NZSO’s somewhat loose “title” attached to its most recent concert, I’m much less inclined towards adverse comment regarding the NZSM Orchestra’s publicity legend for ITS latest presentation, “Darkness and Light”. It’s a reasonably apposite description of the moods of what was being played at the evening’s concert, conveying something of the music’s range and impact as was performed, here brilliantly and most satisfyingly, by the NZSM forces.

Wellington continues to lack a satisfactory mid-sized venue with enough room for orchestral performance, though ensembles such as the NZSM Orchestra still manage to cope with cramped spaces and acoustics at places such as St.Andrew’s, and, as here, make the event “work” in the face of these drawbacks. In fact, the NZSM Orchestra under Ken Young’s direction seems to have achieved a level of expertise and consistency over their last few concerts I’ve attended which generates a tangible aura of expectation and excitement around each occasion – in itself, a significant and substantial affirmation of the worth of the School and what it achieves.

The programme cast its net widely, over time and physical space – first performed in 1783, Mozart’s “Haffner” Symphony (named after a childhood friend of the composer’s from Salzburg in honour of the former’s elevation to the nobility) has become one of the best-known of his symphonic works, while New Zealand composer Rod Biss wrote his “Four New Zealand Bird Songs” in 2014, over two hundred years later, and on the other side of the globe. The remaining two works bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the music’s various connections and associations including Europe , the United States and Japan – a cosmopolitean affair!

Beginning the concert with the Mozart “Haffner” Symphony, Young and his student musicians flung themselves at the music with all the exuberance and energy those notes demanded, their figurations by turns skyrocketing and cascading, the first movement a brilliantly joyous celebration, the moments of circumspection as delicate and inwardly “charged” (a beautiful minor-key exchange between strings and winds) as the energetic runs were exciting and “bubbly”. Grace and poise were on show throughout the Andante, winds and horns steadfastedly “floating” their lines over the strings’ ethereal exchanges, while the Minuet was here given more energy and spunk than one usually hears in this movement, even if one missed some of the music’s charm, especially in the Trio. Of a piece was the Finale’s performance, the opening hushed and expectant, the energies bursting out like a firecracker, looking forwards to Beethoven’s as yet unwritten Second Symphony in its irrepressible momentum. The players’ propelling of the rushing passages was terrific, both soft and loud, and their split-second alternations great fun, like a musical cat-and-mouse chase! Altogether, this was as brilliantly-focused and compellingly-played a performance of this work as I’ve ever heard live, invigorating and “edge-of-the-seat” right to the end!

Nothing further from all of this could have been imagined than the opening of Benjamin Britten’s “Sinfonia da Requiem” which followed, percussion and lower brass mercilessly assailing our sensibilities, and plunging us into the darkest realms of tragedy and privation. Britten’s work, dedicated to his parents, expressed the despair he felt at their separate passing, more recently at his mother’s unexpected death when the composer was 24. The titles of each movement reflect something of Britten’s coming to terms with his loss through intense suffering towards gradual acceptance.

Oddly enough the work’s actual genesis was via the Japanese Government, who were commissioning music to mark 2,000 years of the Japanese Empire. Britten’s offering of the Sinfonia was predictably rejected by the Japanese, who were offended by the unequivocal Christian nomenclature (Latin titles for each of the movements) accompanying the work – the composer had rather naively expressed to a friend the idea that the music had “plenty of peace propaganda in it”. The Japanese refusal of the work “rescued” Britten from the subsequent embarrassment of his music’s association with a country who had since entered into the war against the Allies.

This performance went on as it began – from the opening’s fearful depths the music began its torturous treadmill-like journey through the music’s “vale of tears” in search of some kind of illumination, whatever its shape or form. The players took up the challenge, braving all privations in giving conductor Young the searing intensities and fearful abyss-like depths that the music’s progress required. The second movement’s Dies Irae (marked Allegro con fuoco) then awakened, with tongued winds and bouncing strings leading to great tattoos of percussion, and ghoulish triplet rhythms from the brasses mocking the laments we’d heard in the first movement, a “quick march” fiercely pushing the music towards a frenzied build-up and reiteration of a hammering motif and an eventual disintegration of a serial-like motiv, whose repetitions gradually ran out of steam.

Amid this entropic scenario, a new world began to take shape, the wind players giving voice to the sounds of fresh air blowing over the devastations, echoed nobly by the horns. Strings joined in with the echoings, Young inspiring his musicians to build towards a magnificent peroration, a kind of paean of renewed hope in faith, love, and the glories, warts and all, of human existence.

After an interval we were treated to a different, closer-to-home response to human behaviour, one dealing with its impact upon the natural world, our own immediate wilderness inhabited largely by birds, and increasingly besmirched and despoiled by human greed. It’s becoming an all-too-common scenario, and one whose recent manifestation at a beach north of Auckland inspired local composer Rod Biss to collaborate with poet Denys Trussell during 2014 and produce a set of songs, the second of which represented a protest at what seems to me to be an obscene “rich development” of Te Arai Beach, the natural home of one of New Zealand’s mot endangered birds, Tara-iti, the Fairy Tern.

Tara-iti was the first of the set to be written – on its completion, both composer and poet thought its impact would be enhanced by being made part of a set, and so three other songs followed. The work was first performed, as here, by mezzo-soprano Margaret Medlyn as part of a SOUNZ recording project involving the NZSO strings and harpist, and associate conductor Hamish McKeich. This evening’s performance was (as far as I can make out) its public premiere, with both the composer and poet present (both summonsed to the platform at the end – and even though it was rather clumsily done, with only the composer actually mentioned by name, we in the audience DID get the idea that the “other” man was Denys Trussell!)

The opening Dawning featured diaphanously drifting chords preparing the way for a beautifully buoyant vocal line, the words superbly delineated by Medlyn, making every utterance count throughout the music’s soaring, swooping, drifting progress. The beginning of the second song, Tara-iti, had a similar drifiting kind of gait, the accompaniment infused with a sense of fragrant, vulnerable beauty, though the vocal line had an angularity and a sadness whose quiet lament-like delivery hinted at unresolved tensions.

Pizzicati notes accompanied the pukeko’s awkward peregrinations throughout The Purple Swamphen as Pukeko, the words and sounds paying tribute to the bird’s clownish behaviour and maverick aspect. However, by far the most impactful of the songs was the last one, Karearea, (New Zealand Falcon), the vocal line unaccompanied at the outset, the singer’s voice magnificently alone in the skies before the strings opened the vistas below to thrilling effect. Medlyn didn’t spare her considerable resources throughout, pushing ever higher to upper reaches in the company of some dramatically searing string work, before her final, serenely majestic utterance allowed the strings and harp a last defiant counter-flourish. All of this made for an epic tribute to a bird regarding itself, in the face of things, as master of its own natural world – alas, a world now under threat from a different kind of arrogance from another quarter.

After Ken Young had heartwarmingly made a point of paying a public tribute to the work of one of the stalwarts of the School of Music who had just announced his retirement, senior technician Roy Carr, present at the concert to acknowledge the tribute and our response, there remained one more item on the programme. It was left to Young and his players to present the much-loved “Fantasy Overture” by Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet – and by crikey, did they put the music through its paces! I’ve sat through a number of live performances of this work and heard so many recordings as well, to the point where I usually find myself preferring to listen to something else – with the piece’s popularity, unfortunately, has often come deadening routine, the gestures sounding empty and clichéd and the melodies chipped and worn through over-use. Yes, I know there’s always someone listening who’s come to the music fresh (as I did once, spellbound by its beauties), but it’s the “that old warhorse” aspect that I often find comes through, even when played by the most prestigious of orchestras.

Here, somehow, it was if conductor and players had “found” some hitherto neglected piece and were resurrecting it for a new era of listeners! – I was gripped right from the beginning (though smiling at a woodwind mishap in the very first chord!), compelled by the urgency with which the players shaped their phrases, the whole having a dramatic “line” which vividly characterised the well-meaning actions of the young Romeo’s mentor Friar Lawrence, and imbued the music’s course with through-line tension that never abated. The battle music had tremendous attack and verve, the agitations really catching fire, while the contrasting love-music wove a gossamer spell over the proceedings, including a seraphic touch from the harp and some beautiful cor anglais tones. The renewal of internecine agitations between the houses focused the sharpness of attack even more, giving the militant version of Friar Lawrence’s theme terrific punch and the warrings even more desperation – and while the lovers’ theme had its great moments before being swept away with everything else in the maelstrom, Young encouraged his players to keep the music’s driven, merciless aspect, to the point of sheer exhaustion. Even the funeral music gave us no peace, but a haunted, throbbing ache throughout. And despite the beauties of both the wind and string-playing throughout the epilogue, the final timpani onslaught proclaimed the death of love and beauty in no uncertain terms.

After this performance, life could never be quite the same again – so, very great credit to the players and their conductor for a splendid concert!

Memorable, Houstoun-led recital of gorgeous piano quartets at Waikanae

Posted on 19/05/201924/10/2019 by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society

Michael Houstoun and friends (Martin Riseley – violin, Gwendolyn Fisher – viola, Andrew Joyce – cello)

Brahms: Piano Quartet No 2 in A, Op 26
Fauré: Piano Quartet No 1 in C minor, Op 15

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 19 May, 2:30 pm

Concerts featuring Michael Houstoun, alone, or with others, have usually attracted big audiences at Waikanae. This Sunday afternoon concert, which attracted, I’d guess, around 400, couldn’t have been accommodated in any of the usual chamber music venues in Wellington other than the too-large Michael Fowler Centre or perhaps St Mary of the Angels. The advertised line-up for this concert had included Andrew Thomson on the viola; he was replaced on account of a shoulder injury by distinguished Chicago-born, UK resident violist, Gwendolyn Fisher, here as guest associate principal viola in the NZSO.

Brahms’s second piano quartet
What impressed me at once was the delicacy, intimacy of the playing, which is what the notes themselves as well as the markings call for; apart from the occasional more arresting moments, the beauty of this favourite piano quartet derives from its melodic subtlety and charm and Brahms’s instinctive gift for exploiting the musical potential of the piano quartet which had not been much employed by the great composers: really only Mozart and Schumann (those by Beethoven and Mendelssohn were youthful works). Though it’s in A major, usually a buoyant, happy key, its spirit is restrained, and that characterised most of the first movement, perhaps to the point where it risked affecting something of the music’s energy. Was there a bit more ‘non troppo’ about the playing than ‘Allegro’? Nevertheless, the singular virtues of the playing – clarity, flawless ensemble, lyricism, the flowing, triple rhythm, unity of feeling – eventually came to be of far greater importance, doing full justice to this inspired masterpiece.

The slow movement, Poco Adagio is a remarkable creation, particularly in Brahms’s boldness with prolonged, near-silences, that alternate with rhapsodic episodes that seemed so suited to the collective temperament of the players. Perhaps as a result of the first movement’s refinement, it sometimes seemed emotionally rather close to the feeling of the previous quarter hour. Occasionally, it was possible to feel that the piano was in charge of the sound world; but though I don’t much like singling out individuals in chamber music, there’s that almost uncanny episode early on where Andrew Joyce’s beautiful cello sounds duet with Houstoun’s rhapsodic arpeggios.

Though I love it all, the Adagio haunts me and that’s what this performance did.

Though the Scherzo, third movement, cannot be regarded as jocular (it’s oddly marked Poco allegro) it certainly doesn’t avoid some discreet animation. But that’s an emotion that Brahms leaves mainly to the Trio section whose dynamic moments struck with a sudden burst of energy. With the return of the Poco allegro, I found, somewhat to my surprise, the character of the piano rhythmically a bit brusque, not quite as febrile as the sounds in my head were expecting.

Whatever has gone before, convention expects the last movement to be energetic and probably full of optimism. Up to a point, it was: though still scrupulously sensitive and in lovely accord. But there was a feeling of caution and a calm that lay just below the level of the notes and hardly ever burst forth even with the sort of abandon that Brahms could allow himself. If one might have felt there was a shade too little joie-de-vivre, I think what these musicians played was profoundly in accord with what Brahms composed, and was reproduced here in uniformly beautiful playing. The spirited acceleration of the last few bars did create a fleeting spirit of real delight.

Fauré’s Op 15
Fauré’s first piano trio is probably the best loved of his chamber works. And I found this warm-hearted performance true to this fairly early example of his complex, somewhat enigmatic nature. It began with what I felt just the right amount of energy and charm; any moments when the music strayed or seemed to be distracted seemed to enhance rather than detract from the essence of Fauré’s art.

The second movement came alive with interesting dancing rhythms that shifted evasively and the central, muted section created a gorgeous tapestry of sound. In the third movement, Adagio, I probably expose an odd reaction by sensing a pre-Elgarian quality (30 years too early). It was one of the many occasions when the score sounded like a piano solo along with a separate string trio, most elegantly played.

And the playing of the last movement, Allegro molto, happily confirmed the sound that was in my head from the many hearings of this charming piece, where the solo moments fitted happily with each other and with the warmth of the entire movement.

Where does Fauré’s music come from?

Chamber music in France till about the time he wrote this, in the late 1870s, hardly existed. In chamber music I can think only of Franck’s four early piano trios and a few works by Lalo composed before this Fauré work (a couple of piano trios, a string quartet and a piano quintet, none of which I’ve heard). Saint-Saëns wrote a piano quartet and a piano quintet in his teens and another quartet in the 1870s but they seem to be ignored. French music was dominated by opera, and few composers even attempted to buck its popularity. So the mainly opera/ballet composers till around the 1870s (Boiëldieu, Auber, Hérold, Halévy, Adam, Thomas, Gounod, Offenbach, Hervé, Lecocq, Delibes) neglected chamber music as well as, for the most part, orchestral music (apart of course from Berlioz). Outside of France, Schumann is regarded as an influence on Fauré, but Schumann’s chamber music doesn’t strike me as having much in common with Fauré’s.

If you’re curious about that era of French music (as I am), an interesting place to start is the website of the Foundation/Palazetto Bru-Zane, based in Venice, but which has made a big impact through co-productions of neglected ‘Romantic’ and late 18th century French opera, with numerous French opera houses. In his bicentenary year, Offenbach’s huge output has benefitted greatly; even more than did Gounod in his bicentenary last year.

Farewell Michael Houstoun
This was a gorgeously delivered recital, and a fitting way for Michael Houstoun (probably) to bring his association with the Waikanae Music Society to an end (he has announced his retirement at the end of this year). The society is just one of many musical presenters that has been rather heavily dependent on his name on their concert bill-boards for performances that have meant the difference between breaking even and operating on an eventually fatal deficit. He has been one of a mere handful of New Zealand pianists who gained an international reputation; and he was one, perhaps the only one, to have come back home to enrich the musical life of New Zealand. He has been an important contributor over the many years of the Waikanae society’s concert series and this was certainly the occasion for the many long-standing audience members to reflect on the numerous memorable performances that he has given.

Memorable, Houstoun-led recital of gorgeous piano quartets at Waikanae

Posted on 19/05/201925/05/2019 by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society

Michael Houstoun and friends (Martin Riseley – violin, Gwendolyn Fisher – viola, Andrew Joyce – cello)