A somewhat impromptu lunchtime recital proves a delight at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Fleur Jackson (violin), Olivia Wilding (cello), Lucy Liu (viola), Ingrid Schoenfeld and Catherine Norton (piano)

Beethoven: Piano sonata in C minor, Op 30/2, movements I and 3
Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 129 – arranged for cello and piano, movements 2 and 3
Bloch: Suite (1919) for viola and piano, movements 2, 3, 4

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 November, 12:15 pm

Having left the reviewing duty unplanned, both Lindis Taylor and I found ourselves at this recital, mutually unaware of each other at the time; we decided to combine our impressions. Prizes (a free annual pass for the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts in 2018) for successful identification of the origin of the various remarks.

This programme was arranged at short notice after the originally scheduled players withdrew. Three separate duos, it proved very engaging, even though each pair played only some of the three or more movements. In principle, one should regret that such truncations are made, as they distort in some way the composer’s original intention. In the circumstances however, and given how well each piece was played, it was an interesting and musically satisfying recital.

The first performers began Beethoven’s none-too-easy Allegro con brio first movement with excellent attack, beautifully integrated. The lively staccato character of the music seemed to belie its minor key; Ingrid Schoenfeld’s lively, ear-catching piano and the bright, buoyant sound of Fleur Jackson’s violin, spiced with well-placed emphases not only characterised the first movement, but continued without the calming Adagio cantabile of the second, to the third movement, Scherzo, which persisted in the spirit of the first, in a dancing spirit, full of optimism.

Schumann’s Cello Concerto doesn’t quite rank alongside those of Dvořák, or Elgar, even of Saint-Saëns or Haydn; but it’s a charming work. Being less familiar, there was not the same feeling of something major left out, in spite of the fact that there is no break between the three movements and in the way they simply merge, one into the next, lends the whole work a particular integrity. To start with the Langsam, second movement, worked very well, and the elimination of the orchestra didn’t seem at all barbaric.

Olivia Wilding and Catherine Norton were finely paired in the expressive opening; the cello has much double stopping while Norton’s piano was a model of subtlety and sensitivity; resulting in a very convincing feeling that Schumann might actually have written it as a sort of cello sonata. One can miss the scale and colour of an orchestra in such a reduction, but the music spoke for itself, uninhibitedly.

The success of the seamless transition from the second to the last movement might profitably have been a model for later concertos, except that it removes some of the crowd-pleasing drama from the conventional concerto structure. The challenges of the Sehr lebhaft finale did not daunt Olivia Wilding, brilliantly executing the lightning shifts from deep bass to high notes. It was a scintillating performance.

Ernest Bloch can often seem a very serious composer, but in the three movements of his Suite (in four movements) for viola and piano, he imagined the islands of Indonesia, which he never visited. They were full of interest, of light and shade. Lucy Liu and Catherine Norton began with the second movement, Allegro ironico, subtitled ‘Grotesques’. The enchanting opening phrases from both viola and piano might have been animals padding through the jungle.

The Lento third movement (‘Nocturne’), a pensive piece, revealed gorgeously rich tone from the muted viola, while it was rewarding to pay attention to the piano part that Norton handled with great sensitivity. The last movement, Molto vivo (‘Land of the Sun’), included some sequences influenced by Chinese music. Strong, confident playing left a Debussyesque feeling and the sense that the suite probably deserved a more prominent place in the viola repertoire. Both players were absolutely on top of the music, technically and interpretively.

It might have been a somewhat impromptu concert but between them the five players delivered an interesting, thoroughly enjoyable concert of works that one might dare call great.

Wellington’s professional chamber choir ends successful second year

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Inspirare – a professional choral ensemble directed by Mark Stamper, with Tawa College’s chamber choir, Blue Notes, conducted by Isaac Stone

The Cycle of Life: Music by Kerry Marsh, David Childs, Gwyneth Walker, Daniel Elder, Rautavaara, Ben Parry, Morten Lauridsen, Matthew Harris, Stenhammar, William Finn, Jeffrey Derus, Sandra Milliken, Zachary Moore and Copland

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 5 November, 3 pm

Middle C attended and reviewed the inaugural concert by this professional chamber choir on 4 September 2016, and we reviewed their previous concert on 13 August this year.

Each of those concerts had a theme, and so did this one: The Cycle of Life using two of the immediate seasons: Winter and Spring – symbolising death and life, characterising the nature of those seasons from a North American perspective – probably the north-east where the seasons are very distinct.

Mark Stamper introduced the concert, and at once encountered an unfortunate difficulty: an unresponsive microphone; although he spoke more loudly, I wasn’t able to understand much of what he said, perhaps impaired as I was sitting in the gallery. That mattered as one relies on a certain amount of oral commentary because song lyrics were not provided in the printed programme which, in the circumstances, would have been useful. Otherwise, the stylish programme was evidence of the polished, professional character of the concert.

The concert followed the pattern established earlier, of involving a young choir to sing either on their own or as part of a larger ensemble. This time the associated choir was Tawa College’s Blue Notes, under Isaac Stone (who’s also a member of Inspirare).

The choir set itself a hurdle from the start by choosing the theme of Winter, symbolising Death, which prescribed music likely to be cold, elegiac, melancholy, though it was by no means always despairing in spirit. The second half restored the balance with Spring with its celebration of renewed life.

Blue Notes took its place at the beginning; they opened with an evocative piece, Justin Vernon’s Woods (arranged by Kerry Marsh, who seems to dominate the credits for the performing version). It’s based on a single motif, and starts with one, then two voices before additional vocal lines build to a dense ensemble engaging in the entire choir. A nice piece for a versatile college choir that could tap their likely predisposition for popular, genuine, thoughtfully sentimental music. It was a splendid demonstration of the choir’s talents, their dynamic control and engaging tonal synthesis.

Next was Peace, my Heart, by New Zealand composer, David Childs, now a prominent figure in the United States choral music scene. Blue Notes won a Silver Award at the 2017 Big Sing choral festival with Peace, my Heart. Calm, meditative, consoling, it called for a cello obbligato which, hinting momentarily at the Bach cello suites, was sympathetically played by choir member and all-round musician Benny Sneyd-Utting.

The college choir then retreated and the women of the adult choir took over (I failed to notice whether the girls from Blue Notes had remained to support the choral element, but on reflection, realised they must have), beginning with Gwyneth Walker’s In Autumn (a departure from the general theme of the concert). Though the poem was read by the conductor, it was not really a substitute for being able to read the words: songs are only partly the music, and it deprives the listener of an appreciation of the way the music reflects the sense of the poem. However, this first offering by Inspirare itself spoke emphatically of a choir comprising fine voices that had been scrupulously rehearsed. It opened with two soloists from the choir, soprano Inese Berzina and mezzo Linden Loader, from which the course of the song gradually intensified. Fiona McCabe’s rippling piano accompaniment lent it an unusual quality, supporting high lines created by the women.

The toughest work in the programme followed: Finnish composer Rautavaara’s Suite de Lorca, settings of four poems from various parts of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca’s oeuvre. Mostly stark, bleak pieces that seem to presage the poet’s grisly death at the hands of Franco’s fascists. Capturing their character convincingly, in Spanish, (and it was particularly good to have the translated words on an insert) they began with the galloping ‘Canción del jinete’, addressing Cordoba, the destination that he will not reach (Lorca was actually killed near Granada). ‘El grito’ (the scream) perhaps a gloss on Munch’s famous painting, its fearfulness was followed, strangely, in the same key, by ‘La luna asoma’ (The Moon Rises), at once bright and chilling, punctuated by Pasquale Orchard’s mezzo voice rising high over it. There was no hint in the uneasy ‘Malagueña’, of a more familiar evocation of the Malaga to be found in Albeniz or Granados. (‘Death comes and goes from the tavern’). The choir’s fine command of the emotionally powerful poems and their unflinching settings was outstanding.

Ben Parry’s The Ground lies hard again reflected a bleak though changeable picture of a winter landscape. And Winter was finally summed up in a set of unforgivingly gritty Mid-winter Songs by Morton Lauridsen. Here, in particular, I felt the need of the words to make better sense of the music, for my earlier experience of Lauridsens’s compositions hardly prepared me for these five sharply contrasted, harmonically tortured songs. The skilful handling of their evidently challenging lines spoke again of an impressive level of vocal talent as well as polished ensemble and blending of voices.

The scene brightened with Spring, as Blue Notes opened the second half with Matthew Harris’s setting of It was a Lover and his Lass; clear and bright, breaking its uniformity with a startling modulation in the middle. Another Scandinavian gesture came with Stenhammar’s September, evidently sung in Swedish, here was a song that reminded one of its descent from the more familiar path of classical song from Schubert through Grieg and Wolf…

Benny Sneyd-Utting took to the piano to accompany I Feel so much Spring from a music theatre piece, A New Brain by William Finn. Though in a distinctly Broadway idiom, it was comprehensible in emotional terms, both verbally and musically, and was presented in a comfortable, idiomatic manner. This was the last song in which Blue Notes sang by themselves.

There were two songs by Jeffrey Derus. Afternoon on a Hill was listed as a premiere, but I came across it in a YouTube clip – to a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay whose name was familiar from my student years. A harmonically dense, complex song, it nevertheless communicated a joy in open spaces, offering a fine demonstration of the choir’s versatility, tonal and dynamic flexibility.

The concert was dedicated to the memory of Evelyn Tuuta. She was one of the first people Stamper met in Wellington, and she gave him the words and tune, ‘Hutia te rito’. It was to become the basis for Stamper’s desire to bring the music of America and the Maori people together, with a special commission, a project that he discussed with American composer Zachary Moore.

Inspirare’s website records Stamper’s account of the piece’s origin:
For our Inaugural concert, we wanted to bring together the previous world of the conductor (America) with his new world in New Zealand. What better way to do that, than to have an American composer arrange a Maori tune and text for Inspirare. Zachary J, Moore was commissioned to use this tune, with the permission of Evelyn Tuuta’s iwi and the blessing of the Maori Language Commission of New Zealand. He utilised this tune, wrote a new one as well and then juxtaposed them into a wonderful setting for SATB, piano and percussion. The piece features several soloists, along with the rich harmonies of the ensemble. Hutia te rito has been published and is available for sale.

The welding together of the Maori element and these words helped shape Inspirare’s first concert, in 2016.

The title refers to the growing stem of harakeke (New Zealand flax), and a website gives the translation:

“Pull out the shoot,
Pull out the shoot of the flax bush
Where will the bellbird sing?
Say to me
What is the greatest thing?
What is the greatest thing in this world?
I will say
The people! The people! The people!”

As well as the choir, two solo voices contributed: Megan Corby and Isaac Stone; and Jacob Randall, James Fuller and Nathan Carter performed on drum, maracas and cymbal.

The result, the combination of music that was characteristic of both the Maori and American spirit lent the piece a particularly strong individuality: not setting out to demonstrate compositional sophistication or to formulate a complex philosophical statement, but to express a fundamental human truism, from which an elementary emotional quality emerged.

Derus’s other song, If I could give, was another commission by Inspirare whose website records remarks by the composer:
‘If I Could Give’ offers a simple message: “To live life to fullest, conquer yours dreams, and hold each treasured moment close”. Collaborating with my dear friend and poet, Courtney Prather, we created a work that is infused with adventure and the exploration of dreams. Mark Stamper, artistic director of Inspirare, and I chose to incorporate piano and cello with the remarkable sound of Inspirare to develop a piece that will end the concert. My musical concept was inspired by the idea of taking snapshots of a persons life by giving a distinctive motive for each stanza of text. I am honoured to collaborate with Mark and Courtney on “If I Could Give” and eagerly await its world premiere in November 2017.

The cellist was again Benny Sneyd-Utting, with Fiona McCabe’s piano accompaniment. A reflective tone, unpretentious and involving, gave the song an immediacy, in which a depth of emotion was an artless product of all the varied vocal colours and dynamics that the choir commands.

But it wasn’t the final piece. That was ‘The Promise of Living’ which ends Act I of Copland’s opera The Tender Land.  Though it was slow to make much of an impression after its 1950s premiere, its modest musical strengths have steadily taken root, particularly around the time of the Copland centenary in 2000.

The accompaniment was from the piano duet of Fiona McCabe and Rachel Thomson; Blue Notes choir returned and took their places intermingling with their older colleagues. Male voices here were particularly impressive and the duets, the larger ensembles and even individual voices translated very successfully for a relatively small choir though naturally, it hardly rendered the interaction between individuals who sing in the original score. The traditional end-of-act-one finale built steadily to, perhaps not a Rossini climax but a very satisfying end that is likely to have encouraged audience members to explore the opera.

Apart from the emergence of an enterprising professional choir in the city, Mark Stamper’s efforts also bring to our attention several unfamiliar (to me at least) United States composers, and the existence of a strong choral tradition that is producing a great deal of surprisingly challenging, but also approachable, attractive music in his country.

 

Orchestra Wellington out-performs the fireworks with a stunning “Petrouchka”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PETROUCHKA

TABEA SQUIRE – Colour Lines (commission from Orchestra Wellington)*
CARL NIELSEN – Violin Concerto Op.33
IGOR STRAVINSKY – Petrouchka (Ballet – Revised 1947 Edition)

Arohanui Strings – Sistema Hutt Valley (Alison Eldredge – director)*

Andrew Atkins (conductor)*
Suyeon Kang (violin)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Saturday 4th November, 2017

Audiences can be curiously unpredictable, on occasions exhilarating and galvanizing masses of energy to be part of, caught up in the excitement of either enthusiastic or rapt responses to some performances, (especially those involving soloists) and then for no apparent reason, every once in a while, strangely under-responsive. Why this sudden out-of-the-blue observation, going a little against the grain of my normally unrelieved positivism as a music reviewer?

It was Saturday’s Orchestra Wellington concert that left me feeling a little bemused, after I’d experienced warmth and enthusiasm aplenty on the part of the audience in response to the efforts, firstly, of the youthful Sistema Strings, playing both a group of demonstration pieces and taking a vital role in composer Tabea Squire’s newly-commissioned work “Colour Lines”, and secondly, violinist Suyeon Kang, in giving us a rapturously beautiful performance of that concert-hall rarity, the Nielsen Violin Concerto, with plenty of tensile strength and winning gossamer-woven lines.

In each of these cases the performers’ energies were accorded the kind of reaction from the listeners that reflected the music-making’s outstanding and warm-hearted qualities. However, I thought that, on the same performance “Richter-scale”, the audience’s reaction to the concert’s second half, a breathtakingly brilliant realisation by orchestra and conductor of Stravinsky’s music for his ballet “Petrouchka”, by rights ought to have been something along the lines of a twenty-minute standing ovation!

That such a stunning realization of the work didn’t seem to me as forthcoming as it fully deserved could have been because (1) there had already been a lot of applause in the concert already, due to the presence of the Sistema students, (2) the remarkable violinist Suyeon Kang had already taken the lion’s share, with her gorgeously elfin-like performance of Nielsen’s Violin Concerto (including a round of spontaneous applause at the first movement’s conclusion) and (3) Petrouchka of course ends not with a Firebird-like bang, but with a subdued whimper, from which listeners have to then re-activate those glowing embers of enthusiasm and get them bursting into flame once more. So the audience response conveyed what I thought W.S.Gilbert might have described as “modified rapture”, instead of conveying (as I and a colleague afterwards were both feeling) a sense of “Did we really hear that? It was mind-blowing!”

Overall, the concert’s trajectory lent itself to a kind of “from seeds to forest giant” progression, with tremulously awakened beginnings demonstrated by the cutest brigade of junior string-players one could imagine, all under the sway of their director, Alison Eldredge. All of these were introduced by Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei, and included OW’s assistant conductor Andrew Atkins (unfortunately not credited in the programme for his efforts with both the Arohanui Strings, in their introductory items, and in directing the combined ensemble in the commissioned piece “Colour Lines” by Tabea Squire).

This was a work whose composer conceived as involving both the student players and the orchestra proper, by using ‘”free-time” notation in places to allow the younger players the means of continuously contributing to the music’s texture. A chorale which appears in various guises during the piece eventually blends with the younger musicians’ efforts. I was struck by the confident orchestrations throughout, a definite character emerging with each of the sequences, making for strongly-etched contrasts (scintillating upper strings are then “cooled’ by the winds near the opening, before a lovely dancing interaction develops between strings and winds beneath warm horn tones, the latter then assuming a ”stopped” out-of-phase effect which kaleidoscopes the music into yet another world of wonderment).

I recall both my Middle-C colleague Rosemary Collier and myself being delighted by Tabea Squire’s work for string quartet “Jet-lag” at a 2014 concert, a piece with something of a similar sharply-etched sense of character, obviously wrought by a composer with an ear for textures and the on-going ambiences. What mischief, and indeed, even danger, was let loose with the burble and ferment generated by the brass in their “hornets’ nest” sequence! – again contrasting with the nobility of the chorale voiced by those same instruments not long after – reminiscent of Hindemith, here, as the strings muscled up to join with the tutti in gestures of satisfying finality, snappy and definite. I thought the music most skillfully and confidently focused and blurred its edges all at once, throughout, as the title suggested it might.

Relatively unknown compared with its Nordic cousin written in 1904 by Sibelius, the slightly later (1911) Violin Concerto of Carl Nielsen’s proved equally as strong and fascinating a work, and certainly as difficult to play, if not more so. Like Sibelius, Nielsen was himself a violinist, though neither composer would have attempted to perform his own concerto, despite Aino Sibelius describing her husband’s playing of the work’s solo part during its composition as “on fire all the time.….he stays awake all night, plays incredibly beautifully,…he has so many ideas it is hard to believe it….”

Nielsen’s work, unlike Sibelius’s, turned away from the standard three-movement concerto form, the composer casting the work in two large movements, each with a slow and quicker section (some commentators alternatively describe the work as having four movements). The music began strongly, dramatic and declamatory, the soloist (South-Korean-born Australian violinist Suyeon Kang) meeting the orchestra’s initial challenge with full-throated recitative-like passages whose striking quality of tensile strength and flexibility of phrasing instantly compelled and held one’s attention throughout. I wondered whether, in the big-boned virtuoso sequences, Kang’s tightly-woven silken tones would fill-out sufficiently to provide a sufficient match for the orchestra’s more assertive gestures – but such was her focused concentration her instrument seemed able to “inhabit” the music’s dynamics in an entirely natural and unselfconscious manner. From these trenchant responses right through to the Elgar-like lyricism of the Praeludium’s final musings, she held us in thrall.

Nor did she shirk the physicality of the jolly “cavalleresco” opening of the allegro, with its vigorous exchanges, rapid running passages, and sudden moments of introspection, all leading to a solo cadenza which mirrors the quixotic moods which have gone before in the music, before dancing back to the allegro’s lively theme. And such was the breathtaking skill with which she swung into the movement’s dancing coda, and traded playful feints and gestures with the orchestra right to the end, that the audience responded with some spontaneous unscheduled applause (to which Marc Taddei, after acknowledging the soloist and the clapping, remarked “But wait! – there’s more!”).

The slow movement featured lovely playing throughout the opening sequences from the winds, joined by the horns, and some beautiful Sibelius-like accompaniments in thirds for the soloist, whose utterances seemed bent on expressing some kind of private sorrow. The horns offered comfort at various points, as did the strings, so that the music’s abrupt recourse to a kind of droll waltz seemed almost Schubertian in its stoic, at times quirky and humourful resignation, the orchestra occasionally launching into moments of mock seriousness, none of which last for very long. One thunderous episode provoked an angular cadenza from the soloist, during which, at one point, she played simultaneously a drone bass, a repeated pizzicato note and some bowed figurations, all most divertingly and unselfconsciously. It was a remarkable performance from all concerned, and fully deserved a response which matched in enthusiasm that given to another Korean musician in the MFC just over a week ago, Joyce Yang, after her Rachmaninov concerto performance with the NZSO.

We reformed after the interval to the sounds of fireworks outside, which were soon well-and-truly put in their place by a performance of Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet “Petrouchka” from Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington which I couldn’t imagine bettered in terms of precision, skill, atmosphere and overall theatrical and musical impact. Every sequence, every scene, every tableau came alive, the music-making bringing into being both dance and drama, and forming a kind of triumvirate of successful evocation of artistic achievement. At its conclusion I felt sympathy for Marc Taddei and all the players who deserved to be brought to their feet and given individual acknowledgement – but the trouble was, there were too many of them! Nevertheless I thought that all the winds and all the brass players were simply heroes, and that Andrew Atkins deservedly got his dues after all, for his superb piano-playing. Very great honour, of course, to Marc Taddei and his all-encompassing direction of the score. For all these reasons and more, I could have clapped for much, much longer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Berkahn and friends with formal and informal music for lunchtime

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Town and Country: folk tunes plain and fancy

Items by Hummel, Dussek, Lyons, O’Carolan, Matteis, Alexander, Brahms, O’Brien, Wells, Griffiths and Berkahn

Jonathan Berkahn and friends

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 1 November 2017, 12.15pm

This programme replaced that originally scheduled at short notice, due to illness.  The pieces were mainly Scots, Irish and English, or were based on songs from those nationalities.  The latter were infrequently heard examples of their composers’ works.  Jonathan Berkahn gave a brief spoken introduction to each of the items.

It began with Berkahn playing piano, first in Thème Anglais “The Plough Boy” varié, Op.110/1 by Hummel.  This delightful variation on a well-known English folk song received a very effective performance, but it was at times over-pedalled, reducing its clarity.  It was given excellent dynamic variation.

Turning to the piano accordion, Berkahn then played in folk style the self-same traditional English song, along with two others: Hesleyside Reel and Morpeth Rant.

The composer Dussek was next, with A favourite song, arranged as a Rondo.  The song turned out to be “Oh dear, what can the matter be?  Johnny’s so long at the fair”.  It was a charming piano piece, one of a number of songs of the British Isles arranged by the composer for various instruments.  It made another addition to an interesting collection of unusual music.

Then a couple of Irish pieces; “Miss Hamilton” by Cornelius Lyons (c.1670-1812) and “O’Carolan’s Concerto” by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738).  Both these pieces were originally written for harp.  The first had a very song-like melody, while the second was more folksy.

Berkahn showed his versatility by playing “Ground after the Scotch Humour” by Nicola Matteis, a Neapolitan composer (fl.c.1670-after 1713), on the treble recorder, with Bernard Wells playing piano.  However, the latter was too loud for the gentle recorder tones.  Since the piece consisted of repetitions of the ground, it became rather tedious when the upper part could not always be heard clearly. There followed two traditional Irish songs, the second played by Berkahn on the tin whistle; they were succeeded by attractive arrangements of them for piano, made by Arthur Alexander in 1929.

Onto the big name: Brahms.  From his piano sonata no.1, Op.1 (with which I was not familiar) the Andante (Nach einem altdetschen Minnelied), based on a song (probably not a minnelied according to Berkahn) for which both German and English words were printed in the programme.  A simple movement, it was pleasant – and soporific!

A modern French piece “Crested Inns” and an Irish item by Paddy O’Brien “Poor but happy at 53” (if I heard correctly; these two were not detailed in the programme) were short and pleasing, but repetitive, folksy pieces.  Bernard Wells played flute with Berkahn’s piano.

The concert ended with three short polkas, by Bernard Wells, Emily Griffiths and Jonathan Berkahn.  The flute and piano accordion were joined by an unnamed folk fiddler for these jolly last pieces.

 

 

Imposing commemoration of 500th anniversary of Lutheran Reformation

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Reformation: A Lutheran vespers service

Cantata Vespers by J S Bach

The Chiesa Ensemble (chamber ensemble of NZSO players)
Vocal soloists: Anna Sedcole – soprano, Rebecca Woodmore – alto, John Beaglehole – tenor, David Morriss – bass
Organ: Rick Erickson; harpsichord: Michael Stewart
The choir of Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul, directed by Rick Erickson

Violin Concerto in E, BWV 1042 (solo violin: Anna van der Zee)
Cantata: ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’, BWV 80
Motet: ‘Der Geisthilft unser Schwachheit auf’, BWV 226

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Sunday 29 October, 5 pm

This was an ecumenical service, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, led by Bishop Mark Whitfield of the Lutheran Church of New Zealand, in the Anglican Cathedral, with choral support from the Cathedral choir. Earlier in the year, there was a commemorative service that involved the Roman Catholic Church at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, jointly hosted by Cardinal John Dew and Bishop Whitfield.

Ordinarily, such religious events would not attract the attention of the classical music reviewing industry. But all the important branches of the Christian church have paid attention to music and have been extremely important contributors to the composition and performance of music. In fact the music used by the early church survived, in the first few centuries mainly by oral tradition, and after the invention of notation, in manuscript records of plain chant and soon, of polyphony. The increasing sophistication of music through the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance was almost entirely thanks to the church in (almost) all of its persuasions.

So it was probably no accident that Martin Luther who was one of many who sought to reform the character of Christianity, and the most significant one, breaking from the Catholic church, was an excellent musician who knew that his message would be most successfully disseminated with the help of music.  (We were reminded that the Church of England is not, strictly, a Protestant church, since its separation from Rome by King Henry VIII was almost entirely a matter of a break with Papal authority and the appropriation of the assets of religious houses, but not a matter of immediate or important doctrinal change).

And it was especially appropriate to mark this anniversary with the music of J S Bach who, as well as being perhaps the greatest composer in the western musical tradition, was certainly the greatest composer of religious music (ahem, careful! – Victoria, Palestrina?), most of which was for use in the Lutheran church.

So the service began with a ‘Prelude’, comprising the first two movements of Bach’s Violin Concerto in E, with Anna van der Zee as solo violinist. Its performance in the great reverberant space of the cathedral invested it with a particular spiritual dimension, where the virtually vibrato-less playing was given a human touch through its tonal undulations. It was a good idea to have the other two violinists and the violist standing, a gesture that seemed to draw attention to the chamber music-like performance. The second movement offered the opportunity to draw further attention to the beauties of the music and to the subtle effects produced by varying the weight of bowing during sustained notes.

It was followed by Rick Erickson’s performance of the chorale prelude, Ein feste Burg, on the digital organ (given the unavailability of the main cathedral organ): not too conspicuously different in terms of tonal quality, but not so capable of grand, imposing climactic moments; though perhaps less important given the amount of quite elaborate decoration with which it was clothed.

There followed a variety of Lutheran hymns of the 16th and 17th centuries and one based on a 3rd century Greek chant.

The next piece by Bach was his motet Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, which is the second of the six motets listed in the BWV, Bach catalogue. Much less familiar than Singet dem Herrn; Komm, Jesu, komm or Jesu, meine Freude, the performance was distinctive through the preponderance of high voices that were, naturally enough, especially striking in the acoustic. On the other hand, that meant that words (in the German of course) were not clearly articulated.

A setting of the Magnificat by the 16th century Italian composer Giovanni Giacomo Gastoldi preceded the next Bach work, the complete cantata, ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’, BWV 80: no doubt the performance that was central to the entire Vespers service. It opened with the choral setting of the first verse, after which the four soloists took turns in the sequence of arias and recitatives. Beginning with the deeply impressive performance of ‘Alles, was von Gott geboren’ from bass David Morriss and soprano Anna Sedcole: his warmly illuminated, hers decorated ethereally, with a lovely cello obbligato.

The choral verse, featuring the familiar choral section, accompanied by trumpets and timpani, had the effect of anchoring the whole performance. Then tenor John Beaglehole’s recitative ‘So stehe dann bei Christi blutgefärbten Fahne’: much high lying, yet confident and accurate, and he was joined by alto Rebecca Woodmore in a lovely aria with the accompaniment of oboe(s), sounding deep and rich enough to be an oboe d’amore; her voice was splendidly firm and well placed.

Finally, the Offering was passed during the orchestra’s playing the last movement of the concerto, always a deeply felt yet high spirited piece.

The occasion no doubt proved an interesting and moving occasion for believers in the congregation, while the range of music, and not merely the Bach, offered a chance for all to gain an understanding of the musical context of the Lutheran Reformation.

Rachmaninov – jubilation and bitterness, but sheer poetry from Joyce Yang

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
RACHMANINOV
Vocalise Op.34 No.14 (transcribed by the composer)
Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor Op. 30
Symphonic Dances Op.45

Joyce Yang (piano)
Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 27th October, 2017

A beautifully put-together programme, this, devoted to the music of Rachmaninov, and in almost every way, superbly delivered! There could be no doubt, however as to who the “star of the show” was – Korean-born American pianist Joyce Yang gave what seemed to me a performance in a thousand of the composer’s fearsome D Minor Concerto, regarded by many as one of the most technically difficult works for piano and orchestra ever written. Earlier, the NZSO and conductor Edo de Waart had breathed into life a deliciously-poised orchestra-only version of the wordless song, Vocalise, in an arrangement devised by the composer. Then, following the concerto, came a performance of Rachmaninov’s very last work, his “Symphonic Dances” , written in 1940, three years before his death. The first two of the dances came off best, here, particularly the first, with its beautifully-played saxophone solo – I confess to being a tad disappointed with the final dance’s performance, feeling that it was wanting in “bite”, and needing more wildness and desperation in its execution.

The Vocalise, which began the programme is one of those pieces which has been arranged or transcribed for a variety of instruments – it began life as a wordless song which concluded the composer’s Op.34 collection, entitled “14 Romances for high voice and piano”, and was written specifically for the voice of the great Russian soprano Antonia Nezhdanova, Rachmaninov wishing to give the singer a vehicle for displaying the beauty of her voice without recourse to words. The composer was to subsequently arrange the work both for voice and orchestra accompaniment, and for orchestra alone, although more recent sources suggest that Rachmaninov originally wrote the work for Nezhdanova to perform with orchestra AFTER the rest of the songs were already written for voice and piano, the Vocalise being subsequently added to the “Romances” collection. Among the various arrangements, the most unusual is probably that for theremin and piano, arranged by Clara Rockmore (nee Reisenberg), who was the electronic instrument’s most well-known exponent during the twentieth century.

This was a gorgeously-played performance (the conductor’s very first of this work, as he tells us in the programme’s introductory note), enabling the NZSO strings to really show their mettle, and delivering all those qualities which bring out the work’s inherent tenderness, lyricism, depth of feeling and range of intensity. The strings at first had the lion’s share of the playing, but they were gradually joined by the winds, firstly seeming to merely echo-phrase-ends, but then to increasingly augment the harmonies of the textures, as well as contributing counterpointing lines. Towards the end the music becomes strongly reminiscent of the slow movement of the composer’s Second Symphony, by dint of a clarinet solo which takes over the theme for a few measures before surrendering it again to the ascending strings.

Though in some ways moving from the Vocalise to the D MInor Piano Concerto seemed like something of a “quantum leap”, the links between the two works were here more than usually stressed by the character of the concerto performance, soloist Joyce Yang giving one of the most poetic and sheerly beautiful realizations of this work I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing!  She and Edo de Waart had played the piece together at least twice before with different orchestras, so the interpretation was “of a piece”, with the give-and take between soloist and orchestra replete with understanding and fluency.

Among what marked out her performance for me from so many others was her conveyance of involvement with every note of the music she played – nothing sounded mechanical or “less important” (as either “fillip” or transitional” sequences), but all had its place in a kind of organically-conceived whole. Another thing was, as I’ve said, her remarkable poeticizing of so much of what she played – never did she seem interested in virtuosity for its own sake. Whatever “display element” was in the solo part was there because of the music, and nothing more.

In addition, neither have I heard another pianist bring out to the same extent the music’s impish, quixotic aspect – she found a spikiness in some of the figurations that I thought equated with Rachmaninov’s contemporaries such as Prokofiev,Ravel and Bartok, and even in places, Gershwin. Humour isn’t often a quality one associates with Rachmaninov’s music, but the way Yang articulated some of the filigree passage-work in places made me smile at the playing’s sheer character – this was no faceless perfection, seamless articulation, bland liquidity or pure decoration on show – every note, as I’ve said, had its own raison d’etre, in this performance.

I confess I had to go back all the way to 1993, and Peter Donohoe’s performance of this work with the NZSO under Nicholas Braithwaite, to recall the same wonderment and pleasure at hearing this work “live” – an example of such shared alchemy of interpretation was during that brief, but telling sequence just before the final first-movement reprise of the work’s opening, when the piano gently drifts a repeated bell-like sequence of notes across an ambient crepuscular soundscape enriched by soft horn-chordings – like Donohoe did, Yang drew out this passage exquisitely, once again allowing the notes to speak their character and make an indelible impression upon the listener, however brief and fleeting…..

As for the notorious “virtuoso” elements of this concerto, Yang showed us that she could certainly “finger it” with the greats, as well as match the orchestra in tonal depth when she needed to, putting all of her physical weight into the playing of the heavier chords, such as in the massive first-movement cadenza, and again during the build-up to the final peroration at the work’s very end, and letting her fingers and wrists do the work in the more scintillating passages. People expecting virtuoso thrills got an amazingly musical version of the same from their soloist, one which realized all of the work’s necessary excitement and exhilaration.

No greater contrast with the concerto could have been given to us than what Yang played as an encore – an enchanting performance of one of the most beautiful of Grieg’s “Lyric Pieces”, his “Nocturne” from the “Lyric Suite”. Though it seems heretical to say so, I could have gone home happily after hearing this, feeling as if I had heard a piano articulate all the intrinsic beauty that it was possible for the instrument to express. Of course, I stayed! – lamenting the degradations that have resulted over the last generation of years in visiting artists such as Joyce Yang NOT giving solo recitals in tandem with NZSO appearances, as used to invariably happen in the (good) old days! A modestly-resourced Music Society such as that in Waikanae, which hosts world-class artists such as Alexander Gavrylyuk consistently and successfully organizes piano recitals – why can’t the NZSO do the same with their visiting artists, any more?

Though the first half was a hard act to follow, the orchestra and Edo de Waart did their best with the composer’s compositional swan-song, the “Symphonic Dances”, which appeared in 1940, three years before Rachmaninov’s death. The composer wryly remarked, “I don’t know how it happened – it must have been my last spark!” – but upon closer analysis of the music itself one can hear alongside all the echoes of the past and allusions to previous works, a spirit determined to raise its voice not only in protest at and defiance of the critics who reviled his works, but in bitterness and anger at having lost his homeland and his sources of inspiration. Had Rachmaninov lived for another ten years and been able to work further through these feelings, who knows what else he might have achieved?

The work itself was received with some negativity on all sides – with bewilderment by some of the composer’s “fans”, who were expecting more lyricism and lush orchestrations along the lines of the Third Symphony and the Paganini Rhapsody, and with a good deal of both half-hearted enthusiasm and outright derision by the critics, some of whom by this stage had made Rachmaninov-denigration a kind of “sport” (readers should look up the critical warblings of one Pitts Sanborn for a particularly vicious example of this, in relation to the composer’s Fourth Piano Concerto).

Rachmaninov described himself to an interviewer as “a ghost wandering in a world grown alien”, not being able to either “cast out the old way of writing” or able to “acquire the new”. Despite this assertion, the Dances’ relative toughness, leanness of orchestration and rhythmic asymmetries are nowadays regarded as evidence of the composer’s very apparent awareness of what was happening all around him. This is opposed to the more institutionalized view of Rachmaninov as some sort of nineteenth-century compositional throwback almost right to the end. As Brahms would have said, “any jackass” could hear elements of the old Rachmaninov in places throughout the music, the aching, yearning lyricism, the exciting rhythmic snap of certain figurations, and the oft-quoted “Dies Irae” theme which haunted his work from his First Symphony onwards.

The first two dances were beautifully done, the highlight being the saxophone playing of Simon Brew in the first dance, Rachmaninov writing one of his most beautiful melodies for the instrument, before allowing the strings to take over and repeat the melody, to lump-in-the-throat effect. The whole was framed in sharply-accented, no-nonsense rhythmic fashion by de Waart and his players, who took just as readily to the spooky waltz-rhythms of the second movement, a kind of Russian “Valse Triste”, and gave its melodies a proper “yearning” quality most characteristic of the composer.

Where I craved some more “bite”, a tougher, harsher, more urgent response to the music was in the third dance, whose Stravinsky-like rhythms for me “sat” too heavily – de Waart’s steady-as-she-goes way with the music I thought produced more a feeling of petulance and bad-temper rather than galvanizing, sharply-etched bitterness. With the “Dies Irae” and exerpts from the Russian Orthodox liturgical Chant “Blessed is the Lord” literally “fighting it out” in the music, I wanted more sparks flying, more combustion, more sense of triumph over bitter adversity at the end. Perhaps while on tour with this piece de Waart and the orchestra will push this piece further and further to its limits, and achieve a harder-won but ultimately more cathartic and appropriately triumphal conclusion to an already momentous concert.

At last! Michael Houstoun’s Beethoven recordings for Rattle reach the Diabelli Variations

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

BEETHOVEN – Diabelli Variations
(33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli Op.120)
Michael Houstoun (piano)

Rattle CD RAT D070 2017

Early in 1819, Anton Diabelli, who was a music publisher in Vienna, and something of a dilettante composer, wrote a waltz, and invited all of the leading composers of the time in and around Vienna to compose a single variation on his work. Diabelli’s intention was to publish the collection as a complete set, planning to raise money for patriotic and humanitarian purposes relating to the recent Napoleonic Wars.

Included among the composers Diabelli approached were Carl Czerny, Franz Schubert, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart , Johann Peter Pixis, Simon Sechter, the Archduke Rudolf, Wenzel Tomaschek , Jan Vorisek and Ludwig Van Beethoven. The young Franz Liszt, though not included in the original list, also contributed a variation, at the insistence of his teacher, Carl Czerny.

Beethoven’s response to the invitation has received fanciful treatment at the hands of his various biographers, with the much-derided Anton Schindler at the forefront of source material for the popular legend – that the composer refused to take part in the project, deriding Diabelli’s waltz as a Schusterfleck, or “Cobbler’s patch”, and only changed his mind when Diabelli offered to pay him handsomely, whereupon Beethoven determined to show Diabelli what he could do by quickly writing not one variation, but thirty-three! It’s now more readily accepted that Beethoven from the very start was interested in the idea, straightaway planning a considerable number of variations. And, contrary to what both Schindler and Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny claimed, Beethoven did not write the complete work “in a merry freak” (Czerny’s words), but worked slowly and fitfully on his sketches, completing twenty-three of the variations by the end of 1819 before laying them aside to finish both the Missa Solemnis and the late piano sonatas, then, early in 1823, returning to the work and completing the set of thirty-three (the mind boggles at the sheer creativity of all of this!).

DIabelli subsequently published Beethoven’s work as Vol.One of a two-volume set grandly titled “Vaterländischer Künstlerverein” (Patriotic Artist’s Association), the second volume of which contained the 50 “other” variations by the remaining composers! Since then the world has all but ignored the efforts of all of these but Beethoven’s, on behalf of the publisher’s modest but fruitful little creation.

Where Schindler did seem to “get it right”, in the view of most commentators, was in his remark that the composition of this work ‘amused Beethoven to a rare degree’, that it was written ‘in a rosy mood’, and that it was ‘bubbling with unusual humour’. Alfred Brendel, whose thoughts concerning the work Michael Houstoun frequently quotes in his fascinating notes reproduced in Rattle’s booklet, elsewhere cites another commentator, Wilhelm Von Lenz, a somewhat more reliable biographer than the enthusiastic but over-imaginative Schindler, Lenz calling Beethoven “the most thoroughly initiated high priest of humour” and the variations “a satire on their theme”.

To Brendel’s assertion that the “Diabellis” are “the greatest of all piano works”, Houstoun responds that he has “no argument” with such a view, and that the only comparable work in keyboard literature could be JS Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”. Houstoun comments further that for him, the “Goldbergs” deal with spiritual certainty, whereas with Beethoven’s work, all such boundaries are challenged. He makes the analogy of Beethoven trying to “punch holes in the very fabric of the cosmos” with this work, which seems to me another way of saying that the composer is taking nothing for granted, and wants to see if there’s something else beyond normal human perception.

The Rattle booklet as well contains Houstoun’s own thoughts on each of the variations, which to me seems an invaluable insight into how the pianist views not only the music as a whole, but the function of each of its parts – we are taken into the workshop of recreation, as it were, and given the chance to experience for ourselves how the interpreter’s thoughts and words relate to his delivery of the music.

To my ears Houstoun succeeds brilliantly in “making the word flesh” so to speak. With playing less “nuanced” throughout than is the case with some pianists’ I’ve heard, he gives his listeners a strongly direct reading of the music, enabling us to get to grips with the notes quickly, rather than us having to first get to grips with the interpreter’s playing of some of them! I think he’s also suggesting that we, as listeners, have to do some work ourselves on the huge range of possibilities the music is giving to us. An active, creative kind of listening rather than a passive, “washing over one” response is required, though Beethoven’s quixotic humour certainly helps keep one in thrall!

Having applied brushstrokes of wit, charm, excitement and thoughtfulness to his realisations of most of the pieces, Houstoun, with wonderful surety, then tackles the radically different world of the final five Variations, opening up realms of intensity which transcend what we’ve so far heard. The first of the group of three C Minor pieces prepares us for what follows, as the music gradually descends to the depths of sorrow and loneliness within a sound-world resembling that of the slow movement of the “Hammerklavier”, the Bach-like No.31 described by the pianist as “a searching lament” and given the title “beacon of sorrow”. After plumbing these depths, Houstoun then electrifies us with his playing of a briliant Handelian double-fugue, NOT, as an applause-garnering conclusion, but a monumental release of energy leading to Beethoven’s greatest “surprise” of all in this work – a finale in the form of a Minuet, here patiently and sublimely realised by the pianist, in his own words, “the perfect endless ending”, the music moving like planets slowly circling the sun, with cosmic, god-like serenity.

If you already have Michael Houstoun’s Rattle set of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, you will want this disc as an essential companion – and if you don’t have any of Houstoun’s Beethoven, then what better entry-point could you have than this, arguably the pianist’s finest single Beethoven recording? In a world already replete with recorded performances of this work, Houstoun’s can proudly take its place as one of the most strongly-focused and beautifully recorded – altogether, a most satisfying issue!

Outstanding concert to mark disasters at Aberfan and the Pike River: music by Schubert and Karl Jenkins

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Simon Brew and Jonathan Griffith

Massed adult choir, children’s choir and screen projections
Solo voices: Jenny Wollerman (soprano) and James Clayton (baritone)
Solo instrumentalists: Ingrid Bauer (harp), Monique Lapins (violin), Buzz Newton (euphonium), Lavinnia Rae (cello)

Schubert: Symphony No 8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’
Karl Jenkins: the Benedictus from The Armed Man and Cantata Memoria for the children of Aberfan

Michael Fowler Centre

Monday (Labour Day) 23 October. 2 pm

Concerts by the Wellington Youth Orchestra in the past, in my experience, have been poorly promoted and have played to an audience numbering just a few score.

This one was very different. Hand-bills had been thrust into the hand at most concerts in the previous fortnight and there were interviews on radio and in the press drawing attention to the tragedies that the orchestra had decided to commemorate.

The concert came about through the conjunction of separate elements. Last year a concert in New York had performed a cantata by Karl Jenkins commissioned by, among others, a Welsh Television channel, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster.

The result was Jenkins’s Cantata Memoria: for the children of Aberfan. It was performed by United States conductor Jonathan Griffith, the conductor of Distinguished Concerts International New York. Among the performers there was Wellington resident Wim Oosterhoff who conceived the idea of bringing the work to New Zealand. The project was a formidable one; Oosterhoff persuaded Griffith to come to Wellington to conduct the Wellington Youth Orchestra and a 300-strong choir that included 60 children, arrayed behind the orchestra.

It was to combine the work in memory of Aberfan, Cantata Memoria, with music to mark the Pike River disaster seven years ago: a movement, the Benedictus, from Jenkins’s choral work, The Armed Man, a mass for Peace (which had been written to mark the advent of the new millennium in 2000).

The Unfinished Symphony
The concert began however, with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, chosen no doubt because of its focus on a work that the composer left incomplete; a composer whose life too was incomplete: it is hard to think of a composer, even among the many who have died young, of such genius that he would probably have produced the greatest music written since Beethoven, having already come close to that point when he died.

The symphony was conducted by the orchestra’s permanent conductor Simon Brew who had also rehearsed the Aberfan oratorio and the piece from The Armed Man.  It was a fine performance of the Schubert, one that could well have come from a totally professional orchestra, such was the remarkable elegance and pathos of the conception. And there was strikingly beautiful playing by violins, then cellos, horns, choruses of majestic trombones and each woodwind section in turn. The contrast in spirit between the sombre opening and the more sanguine Andante con moto second movement, marked a performance of real sophistication.

Benedictus for Pike River
Jonathan Griffith took over after the interval with the Benedictus from The Armed Man, employed sympathetically to commemorate the Pike River disaster. It is dominated by one of Jenkins’s most gorgeous creations, the solo cello episode which was played exquisitely by Lavinnia Rae; lovely children’s voices. The massive attack by brass and percussion towards the end had the required shock impact.

Curiously, unlike a reference in the Aberfan work later, no context was found to refer to the culpability of the Pike River mine owners whose guilt and prosecution seems quietly to have been forgotten.

The Cantata Memoria for Aberfan 
The Cantata Memoria was strikingly accompanied by images projected on a large screen behind the performers, and they were successfully related to the subject of the relevant passages. Rain rippled down a window to the delicate accompaniment of Ingrid Bauer’s harp; there were landscape scenes from the air which seemed to be a mixture of New Zealand and Wales.

The two soloists, James Clayton and Jenny Wollerman delivered important and moving passages; after the baritone’s grief-laden lament, the children’s choir (impressively, they sang their parts without the score) turned to face a photo of Aberfan engulfed by the collapsed mountain of mine tailings.

As choir members chanted the names of the victims of the catastrophe which were also projected on the screen one by one, with a pointed reference to a culpable National Coal Board (what about the private owners of the coal mines?). Later the euphonium, played by Buzz Newton, accompanied Clayton, in a telling sonic association, and the euphonium had several significant later episodes. Elsewhere, Monique Lapins’ violin led the emotional journey, along with the children’s choirs repeating the Agnus Dei, with Wollerman and Clayton repeating some of the most powerful words from the Latin Mass, ‘qui tollis peccata mundi’.

Then the Lacrymosa from the Requiem Mass, was accompanied alternately and impressively by euphonium and James Clayton’s voice, though the impact to my ears was not especially grief-laden.

Jenny Wollerman’s major part in the performance arrived with the bright, consoling words, ‘Did I hear a bird?’, the orchestra accompanying onomatopoeically as swans flew across the screen and that spirit was sustained as the two solo singers shared the singing of a Welsh folk song in a calm, reflective manner.

In a school playground, as children played hot-scotch and other games, harpist Ingrid Bauer accompanied, tapping the wood sounding board of her harp.

The concert attracted a good-sized audience, probably among the biggest I can recall for a WYO concert, and a standing ovation greeted the highly impressive performances by adult and children’s choirs, the Wellington Youth Orchestra, special involvement by singers Jenny Wollerman and James Clayton and by instrumentalists Ingrid Bauer, Monique Lapins, Buzz Newton and Lavinnia Rae; plus the thorough preparation and leadership by Simon Brew and Jonathan Griffith.

 

Alexander Gavrylyuk – transcendental pianism at Waikanae

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Alexander Gavrylyuk at Waikanae
JS BACH (trans.Busoni) Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
HAYDN – Keyboard Sonata in B Minor (No.47) Hob. XVI:32
CHOPIN – Etudes Op.10 – Nos. 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, & 12
SCRIABIN – Piano Sonata No. 5 Op.53
RACHMANINOV – Preludes Op.23 Nos 1, 5 / Op.32 No.12
RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No 2 Op.36 (1931)

Alexander Gavrylyuk (piano)
Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 22nd October, 2017

I reviewed Alexandre Gavrylyuk’s astounding recital at Waikanae last year, reflecting on that occasion, on the pianist’s ability to enchant his listeners with every note, and in doing so, display a Sviatoslav Richter-like capacity to invest each sound with a kind of “centre of being” which suggests that the interpreter has gotten right to the heart of what the music means. Last time, it was the very first note of the Schubert A Major Sonata D.664 which straightaway held me in thrall (https://middle-c.org/2016/05/11403/May) – this time round, the shock of the first item’s opening was palpable in the hall, Gavrylyuk galvanising sensibilities near and far with the opening of Feruccio Busoni’s transcription of JS Bach’s D Minor Toccata and Fugue BWV 565.

I had heard Busoni’s transcription of this work before in concert, and remember being disappointed on that occasion by what seemed to be the limited range and scope of Busoni’s realisation compared with the original – such wasn’t the case here, as Gavrylyuk’s playing seemed to take us as far as was physically possible on the piano towards the sheer impact of the organ’s power and majesty. An organist friend of mine afterwards said that it wasn’t quite the same as experiencing the thrill of those massive organ sonorities – to which I was tempted to respond (but thought better of it!) with the remark that what the pianist was missing was a cloak and a mask covering half of his face! On reflection, though, I’m glad I stuck to musical considerations!

Truth to tell, Gavrylyuk needed neither cloak nor mask to convey the music’s splendour – and (perhaps because I wasn’t an organist) I didn’t think he even needed the organ! Certainly I was thrilled to at last encounter a performance that realised something of the transcription’s evocation of the original’s glory. In fact Gavrylyuk’s playing gave us ample sense of the music’s huge sonorities in pianistic terms, while achieving a transparency of articulation often clouded by the organ’s resonances. The pianist seemed to put all of his physical weight into the Prelude’s concluding chords, and hang onto the resulting resonances for dear life, keeping us transfixed by his and the music’s alchemic power.

He then began the fugue quietly and serenely – as if a vision had appeared in the midst of the tumult. The fugal voices took on such character, each voice having a kind of eloquence suggesting the transcriber’s complete identification with the spirit of the original. Each of the sequences had both momentum and flexibility, with the pianist’s through-line giving us a real sense of “journeying”, at once taking in every detail while keeping a sense of purpose about the whole. I thought the dynamic range employed by Gavrylyuk along the journey astonishing – thunderous footsteps set against sonorous whisperings, and a gamut of eloquence in between. The whole was built up to a peroration of extraordinary power and elaboration, concluding the work with huge, properly “crashing’ chords, whose lingering aftermath stunned our responses for some time to come.

What better antidote (for all the right reasons) to such massiveness was the music of Haydn, which Gavrylyuk slyly and mischievously then set into play, rather like letting a mouse loose to scamper around and over the body of a now-sleeping elephant! Such was the pianist’s focus, we were soon transported into this new creature’s sound-world, the music of this B Minor Sonata slowly but surely adjusting its size-scale, moving from sly mischief to playfulness with the warmer, confident major chordings mid-exposition, the whole reinforced by the repeat. We then heard from the pianist in the development a miracle of fluidity between assertive and meltingly beautiful playing, Haydn’s genius being recreated for us by another like-minded genius of the keyboard. Nowhere was Gavrylyuk afraid to differently emphasise detail when revisited, reinforcing a sense of the music being created for us there and then, for our pleasure.

The Menuet was at first all exquisute grace and sensibiity, the pianist weaving gossamer threads into a pattern,taking care not to break any of the strands – then, with the Trio things became darker and more robust, geniality of a more forthright kind, with a dissonant sound or three thrown in for good measure (the right-hand ostinati clashing with the left-hand figurations), a mood which lightened once again at the opening’s return. The finale’s Presto marking brought playing from Gavrylyuk one associates with those pianola rolls made by “greats” such as Josef Lhevinne, Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninov and Moritz Rosenthal – all feathery brilliance and rapid-fire octaves, before plunging back into a repeat! Then, after wowing us with this “do you want to see that again?” gesture, the pianist suddenly drew the music back, and with a few knowing looks and quiet gestures, packed it all away in a box – and it was all over! – one imagined the shade of Haydn allowing the ghost of a smile to warm its features at both Gavrylyuk’s playing and our bemusement.

I’d recently been listening to some recordings of Chopin’s etudes, so was more than usually ‘attuned” to them on this occasion – Gavrylyuk had chosen six from the composer’s first of two sets, his Op.10, begin with No.3 in E Major, a piece whose opening melody has been used innumerable times in different arrangements over the years – to my surprise the pianist played the melody “straight”, without any broadening at the climaxes first time through, then began the middle section softly, building up its intensities with ever-increasing power, before playing the lead-back to the beginning with the same simplicity as was delivered the opening. This time Gavrylyuk allowed the famous melody more space and ambience, drawing more poetry from it without ever resorting to sentimentality.

The pianist’s wonderful fleet-of-finger skills dazzled us in the F Major No.8 Etude, the right hand the elusive butterfly, the left hand the sober, serious plodder trying vainly to maintain contact on ground level, everything played with wonderful freedom and independence of hands. Such filigree brilliance played no part in the F Minor Study No.9 that followed – here the energies were intense and driven by the pianist, a throbbing, agitated base pursuing a fugitive melody, one which occasionally sent up beacons of light as signals of distress, urgently-repeated notes which eventually fell back into the midst of a frisson of quietly-despairing figurations.

No.10 in A-flat Major, despite looking and sounding fiendishly difficult, was given a compelling ebb and flow of feeling and tension, Gavrylyuk proving he was human after all by dropping a couple of right-hand notes in the flurry of decoration at the end of the middle section. However, it seemed that, whatever the music’s diffculties, the pianist seemed to relish the prospect of engaging with every note of it – both here and in the opening of Etude No 11 in E-flat Major Gavrylyuk conveyed both a sense of rapturous anticipation and intoxicated delight at doing what he was doing, the E-flat Major’s arpeggiations exquisitely timed and beautifully varied in emphasis and shading. And so to the notorious C Minor “Revolutionary” Etude, the last of the set, with its right-handed thematic lacerations (every phrase like a dagger plunged into a beating heart) yoked with the left hand’s rapid runs and frequent turns, a rushing, agitated torrent, but here given frequent changes of emphasis and colour by way of a narrative, one involving conflict, heroism and, at the piece’s conclusion, defiance even in defeat and disillusionment.

If what we’d heard thus far was ample food for thought, our capacities were fully extended by the recital’s second half, Gavrylyuk giving us in broadbrush-stroke terms as beautifully-contrived an assemblage here, with similar kinds of ebb-and-flow. As with the Bach transcription in the first half, the Scriabin Sonata’s opening straightaway sent an electric thrill through the hall, the pianist’s physical attack riveting our sensibilities and holding us in thrall for all that was to follow. The composer called this, his Fifth Sonata, “a big poem for piano”, and we certainly got from Gavrylyuk a most dramatic reading of its essential qualities – demonic energies set against withdrawn mysticism, physical bravado contrasted with intensely poetic feeling, and grinding dissonance relieved by moments of intense, simple loveliness. Gavrylyuk’s astonishing technique took us on the music’s somewhat hair-raising rife to the abyss’s edge, before suddenly returning us to a state of wide-eyed wonderment at some intense fragility, some passing embodiment of beauty. Always was a sense conveyed of the music trying to reach out to something ineffable, either through beauty of utterance or madcap humour or physicality marked by extremes of exhilaration/desperation. Where we were being taken to through the composer’s assemblage of self -absorbed enchantments was anybody’s guess until the music’s final declamations, Gavrylyuk gathering up all of his energies, and hurtling up the keyboard towards a zenith of spent realisation, marked with a flamboyant gesture of finality – we loved him for it!

At first it would seem that the music of Scriabin’s exact contemporary Rachmaninov might here, in comparison, pale in impact and eloquence – but Gavrylyuk’s scheme of following something cataclysmic with its antithesis worked beautifully, here, with his playing of the first of the latter composer’s Op.23 Preludes, music that powerfully spoke of simple, deep-seated emotions, bringing us down-to-earth once more in the wake of Scriabin’s cosmic galivantings! The pianist opened up the music’s vistas unerringly towards what Rachmaninov called in every piece of music “the point”, that moment to which all before it led and from which all fell away from, for him a defining characteristic in both his own playing and his composing. Gavrylyuk seemed to understand this, taking us to such a moment where the piece’s obsessive figurations reached their “moment” before allowing the tensions to slowly unwind, taking their time as part of the experience.

The well-known No.5 in G Minor, marked “Alla marcia” was played by Gavrylyuk less as a march and more of a scherzo-like dance, with occasional impulsive thrusts both of dynamics and phrasings, a volatile, even “dangerous” reading, not unlike the composer’s own. The “trio” section featured dark, swirling waters, with both treble and “alto” melodies strongly-etched, and darkly counterpointed – the reprise of the opening rhythm was built up with rapid purpose, the music growing more and more menace-laden with every phrase – so orchestral in effect! At the end I was glad that Gavrylyuk played the composer’s original throwaway ending, without the emphatic G minor chord that he later added (and recorded!).

From Rachmaninov’s later (Op.32) set of Preludes, Gavrylyuk gave us No.12 in the more remote key of G-sharp Minor. This was music which scintillated sharply and coldly at the outset, the pianist displaying razor-sharp responses to the bleakly-atmospheric texures, and the unforgiving, almost Dante-esque fatalism of the music, the theme a declamation of something like a Slavic equivalent of the portal-phrase “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, grim and gloom-laden music.

Right from the beginning of the recital’s final work, Rachmaninov’s Second PIano Sonata in B-flat Op.36, it seemed as if a “battle of the titans” was being enacted in Alexander Gavrylyuk’s hands, between Rachmaninov’s and Scriabin’s music – the Sonata’s opening threw down a jagged and confrontational Sonata’s earlier with the Scriabin – however such considerations were soon put aside as we became caught up in the web and waft of the music’s progress, here majestic and monumnetal, there volatile and angular, and working with the same building-blocks of sound shaped and moulded in countless different ways. Before the lyrical second subject arrived we heard it resounding in the figurations, growing out of the previous material – Gavrylyuk played it so touchingly, like a thing of great fragility – “A world in a grain of sand” as William Blake wrote. After flowering and rhapsodising, it was taken along with a tremendous rhythmic thrust towards a more agitated, scherzo-like world, Gavrylyuk building up the agitations to the strength of cascading church bells – fantastic! The pianist gave the music all the time in the world to breathe, its extension of the lyrical material so tender, filled with the composer’s characteristic “endless melody” , here and there reminiscent of Enrique Granados’s “The Lover and The Nightingale” in places.

But with what explosive energies the music came to life with in Gavrylyuk’s hands once again – the pianist took the music’s raw power and flung it across the vistas, varying strength with dizzying dexterity in places, then, going with the work’s amazing all-encompassing variations of mood, again bringing out a more lyrical and ruminative sequence before returning to the attack – how much more this music is “conflicted” than Rachmaninov’s large-scale works of the previous decade, the Third Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony. Gavrylyuk took us through the conficts and agitations towards the grandeur of the work’s last few pages with the ardour of a foot soldier and the surety of a general. It was as stunning a display of all-encompassing musicianship as any I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness.

Spring hailed in impressive exhibition of 20th century French choral songs by Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir conducted by Karen Grylls
Salut Printemps!
Accompanied by Rachel  Fuller with Catrin Johnsson, vocal consultant

French music for Springtime: Debussy, Mark Sirett, Lili Boulanger, Jean Adsil, Poulenc and Donald Patriquin

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Saturday 21 October,  7:30 pm

Here was a concert to which many of us attended, blind. The publicity had mentioned Debussy and Poulenc (and these were indeed the only well-known composers) and “romantic chansons and a quirky song-cycle”. It was dedicated totally to songs in French, mostly by French composers.

I guess the programme was assembled through the wonderful resources of Google and Wikipedia by searching ‘vocal music for Springtime’; though perhaps I underestimate Karen Grylls’ encyclopaedic familiarity with the entire choral repertoire through all ages and all countries! .

Instead of printing the words and their English translations in the programme leaflet, the person I took to be the choir’s ‘Vocal Consultant’, Catrin Johnsson, recited translations in an admirably clear and well-articulated voice from the front, before each song. My shorthand was not up to noting the salient points, and so, here and there, I have also had recourse to the Internet.

On the whole, French choral music from the late 19th to mid-20th century is not very familiar, and so, the only music that was at all familiar to me were the pieces by Poulenc. Nor was all the music by French composers: Sirett is Anglo-Canadian and Donald Patriquin, from Quebec. Jean Absil was francophone Belgian.

Debussy’s Salut printemps
It began with the eponymous piece by the 20-year-old Debussy, a setting of a poem by Anatole de Ségour. He may have been a rather obscure poet, but this poem was also set by other composers, suggesting that he was not unknown. Almost everything Debussy wrote in his early years was vocal, songs, and this looks like his first choral work, for female voices with piano accompaniment. It was certainly a charming evocation of Spring – light in spirit, and with a sympathetic piano accompaniment that at times was a little too prominent in the cathedral’s hard acoustic. The unnamed soloist made a particularly lovely contribution.

Mark Sirett turns out to be a Canadian, though not Québéquois, who’s got a high profile as composer and conductor in Canada. He was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1952, educated in Iowa, but returned to work and teach in Alberta and Ontario.

He wrote Ce beau printemps, a bright, optimistic, a cappella piece based on a poem by the great 16th century poet Pierre Ronsard. It was a predictable song for mixed choir celebrating love in the Springtime; somewhat more thoughtful and less full of delight that one might have expected; just rather lovely.

A group of Trois chansons by Debussy followed. The Old French (Dieu! qu’il la fait bon regarder!; Quand j’ay ouy le tabourin; Yver, vous n’estes qu’un villain) gave them away as Renaissance poems, by Charles d’Orléans. Again, an unaccompanied group, and another solo female contribution was very attractive; she sang the words while the choir performed wordlessly. Markedly wintery sounds emerged during the third song denouncing Winter (‘Yver’ – Hiver).

Lil Boulanger used to be referred to as Nadia’s (the remarkable teacher of numerous famous 20th century composers) less-known sister; but it was Lili who was the gifted composer and her fine music has gained a firm foothold in recent years. Her three songs: Hymn au soleil, Sirènes, and Soir sur la plaine, settings of different poets, were most imaginative, and to me, among the most colourful and delightful of the concert. The first and third were for mixed choir while the men retreated for the particularly gorgeous Sirènes. (the poet, Grandmougin). The last, Soir sur la plaine, by the noted symbolist poet Albert Samain (c.f. Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud), was an impressive, minor theatrical piece, with exchanges between male and female soloists, and the body of the choir, splendidly performed.

Le bestiaire was a group of songs, no doubt those referred to in the promotional stuff, as ‘a quirky song cycle’. It was a minor zoological foray, the little poems by Apollinaire, dating from 1911, set for unaccompanied mixed choir by Belgian composer Jean Absil in 1944. That was a long time after Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, which might have remained lurking in the background, perhaps nourished by Erik Satie in the meantime. Would serve as useful revision for your French zoological vocabulary. They were sung in the true spirit of the words as well as Absil’s settings which were both clever and droll.

Two groups of songs by Poulenc came next, not in the least the same spirit as the Absil songs; Nos 2 and 3 of his Quatre petites prières de saint François d’Assise. They took us to the heart of Poulenc’s singular religious awakening in the 1930s, though they were composed in the 1940s. ‘Tout puissant’ and ‘Seigneur, je vous en prie’ were settings for a cappella male voices, and Poulenc’s marked individuality was immediate, melodically confined to a rather limited range of notes.

The same composer’s Les Petites Voix is a set of five songs from 1936 for unaccompanied women’s voices; they sang three: La petite fille sage, Le chien perdu and Le hérisson (hedgehog). The droll verses were theatrically narrated, lines clear, amusing and well balanced, and as with everything in the concert, pitched with a keen ear to the acoustic character of the church (as usual with Karen Grylls).

Finally, Donald Patriquin, a Québéquois, though his biography (McGill and University of Toronto) and list of compositions are evenly balanced bilingually. The choir sang J’entend le moulin, amusing, with dancing, dotted rhythms, prancing up and down, sexual differentiation between men and women singers. Fast, energetic, hypnotic in its incessant rhythms and melodic phrases. It made a fine finish to a highly impressive concert.