More power to String Trios – the Aroha Ensemble at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Concerts presents:
The Aroha Ensemble
Haihong Liu (violin), Zhongxian Jin (viola), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

BEETHOVEN – String Trio No.3 in G Major, Op.9 No.1
PENDERECKI – String Trio (1990-91)
MOZART – Divertimento for String Trio in E-flat K.563

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

Sunday, 11th June, 2017

There’s no doubt that the string quartet as a genre has dominated the world of chamber music since the time of Josef Haydn – the repertoire is astonishing in its depth and diversity, and together with the sheer number of ensembles, both historical and contemporary, constitutes almost a world of its own. The effect of this has, I think, tended to downplay the “presence” in the chamber music firmament, of differently constituted groups, and possibly their “status” in the minds of many music-lovers, as being somehow lesser or slighter in content or importance.

Of course there are exceptions which have pressed their claims to greatness as profoundly as most string quartets have – the Piano Trios of Beethoven and the String Quintets of Mozart along with Schubert’s magnificent String Quintet come first and forement to mind. But most String Trios (for example) wouldn’t for many people, I would think,”quicken the blood” at the thought of them being peformed as would be the case with the average string quartet by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, etc….

Well, if anybody thought, with the present programme put together by the Aroha Ensemble (ironically, all three players are members of the well-known Wellington group, the Aroha Quartet!), that the music offered would somehow be of a lesser quality or importance than a like programme of string quartets, he or she would have been most pleasantly surprised and stimulated by the afternoon’s music-making (I shamefully confess to being covertly one of that number, and am forced here to publicly recant my previously-held elitist and somewhat “superior” attitudes towards string trios!).

All three works on the programme gave the utmost pleasure, thanks of course to the advocacy of the players and the immediacy of the venue’s acoustic, as well as the efforts of the respective composers. I was particularly taken with both of the first-half pieces (those by Beethoven and Penderecki) and thought the programme-order made for a satisfying concert of two halves within a diverse single world of expression.

So, we began with Beethoven, and the first of three String Trios published in 1799. One could immediately imagine why this work in G Major is regarded as the most energetic of the set, due to its magnificent opening – a forceful, sonorous declamation (remarkable for three players!) with quirkily suggestive impulses immediately following, in a way that reminded me of Haydn’s humourful style. The tempo then teasingly nudged rather than plunged forwards, with the individual instrumental voices so characterul and full-bodied in their expositions (trialogues, rather than dialogues!) , able to encompass both the lyricism of the second subject themes and the dancing lines which united the sequences.

Darker-browed mutterings heralded the development which plunged into different harmonic realms, touching upon varied texturings and timbres, before the recapitulation of the opening included for us some surprising “lurches” into hitherto unexplored nooks and crannies, the playing consistently conveying a sense of great and biosterous fun, almost Rossini-like with some of the scampering figurations, building up enough momentum for a rousing finish. By contrast, the Adagio’s gently-throbbing lines established a kind of hpynotic dance, varying between dovetailed detailing and strongly purposeful direction, the players seeming to relish the composer’s occasional harmonic waywardness, capturing enough of the listener’s wonderment to make a rich and satisfying journey.

A fleet-of-finger scherzo emphasised gracefulness rather than physicality, a four-note figure used with much imagination, the product more of whimsy than wilfulness – the players saved their energies for the fast-and-furious finale, which they launched with great elan, but also with impressive dynamic control, so that the textures and tones seemed infinitely pliable, pulled back and allowed to fill out at will. But what terrific physical attack in places! The boisterousness took the form of a village dance at one point complete with drone bass, before reverting to an even more breathless pace – completely exhilarating!

Bearing in mind that some of Beethoven’s music sounded bizarre and unmusical to some nineteenth-century listeners, one could hazard an opinion that parallels could be drawn with the effect of parts of Polish composer Krzystof Penderecki’s String Trio upon some present-day sensibilities, even though the latter work is now over a quarter-of-a-century old! (Actually, my favourite off-the-cuff adverse reaction to Beethoven’s music is, I think, a very belated comment by John Ruskin, who, in 1881, observed that what he heard “sounded like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there a dropped hammer”.)

As my own music-listening capacities were immeasurably changed by a first encounter with Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”, so might Penderecki’s ferociously-charged episodes of confrontation which begin the Trio have similarly stimulated other listeners’ reactions and imaginations. At the outset, each “slashing chord” outburst was followed by expressive solo passages for a solo instrument, a lament-like episode for the viola, its melodic line by turns chromatic and angular, followed by a more capricious and dance-like ‘cello solo, and lastly an effortful, almost claustrophobic outpouring from the violin – superb playing from each instrumentalist!

In their exchanges the instruments varied their textures and timbres almost obsessively, suggesting at once widely-ranging and sharply-focused traversals of feeling and imagination, in places somewhat spectral, while in others imbued with the warm physicality of “tumbling down a hill”. To me the music conveyed a sense of experience hard-earned and painfully worked-through, the string textures adopting all kinds of different-characters, from the warmly-resonant legato-sounding to the dried-out “col legno” dryness.

In places I was reminded of Douglas Lilburn’s reference to Penderecki’s music in the second of the former’s iconic treatises regarding creativity in this country , “A Search for a Language”. Lilburn emphasised the character of the Polish composer’s experiences, shared with numerous contemporaries, in what he called a “crucible of European suffering” by way of remarking on the relationship between language and experience, and about how such experiences ought to be “earned”. While acknowledging this creative uniqueness, what I found thrilling was how the Aroha Ensemble seemed to bridge the gap between creativity and execution and realise their own version of the music’s strength of character with plenty of force and surety – a terrific performance!

There remained, for our utmost delight, the Mozart Divertimento, reckoned by many commentators to be the greatest example of the String Trio genre. Originally programmed as the opening work, the Ensemble thought better of the order, and decided to get the huff, puff and bluster out of the way first, clearing the decks for Mozartean sublimity. As it turned out, I would have coped with the order as originally mooted, thanks to the Ensemble’s ability to take their listeners right into the centre of things in the case of each work, and create enduring stand-alone memories of each creative world.

Mozart opens his work gently, but with the music’s pulse hardly missing a beat as it explodes and resonates with energy – a couple of momentary raw tones simply added to the pulsating excitements of the interactions, though the exposition repeat I thought sounded more settled, the tones not as forced, as if the music had found its stride. A mysterious and exploratory development shed new light on things, the players keeping their focus tight and sharp-edged, and bent on getting back to the expositions – I so enjoyed the ensemble’s dovetailing of the lines in the recapitulation, so very conversational and complementary as to warm listeners’ hearts (mine included!)….

A warm, richly-toned Adagio was gorgeously-phrased, bringing to mind the words “music of heaven”, however fanciful they might seem. Some of the poised sequences of this music made it seem as if creation had stopped to listen to the sounds which were being created, while the more energetic passages exuded a fierce ecstasy at the loveliness of everything.

The urgency of the first Menuetto kept the flow of exchange and the trajectory of experience studded with incident, while the walking-pace of the following theme-and-variations Andante, allowed expressions of both lyricism and strength, inwardness and quasi-operatic outpourings, in a kind of ritual of varying textures.

Another quick and sprightly Menuetto followed, with two Trios, firstly a charming sequence that sported some circus-like touches, and later, a lovely, jauntily striding manner. These different aspects and their individual delights were fully relished by the musicians, with the hunting calls at the movement’s end nicely colouring the argument. As for the graceful 6/8 Allegro at the work’s conclusion, the Aroha players caught the music’s god-like “sporting” character, the opening motif like a “call to play” and the delicious scampering sections giving of their energies to the whole, leading to joyous trumpetings and answering affirmations at the end.

Excellent performances of UK and US music from Wellington Youth Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Choir conducted by Jared Corbett; Deputy Musical Director: Penelope Hooson; accompanist: Gabriel Khor

Songs from Britain and the United States

Metropolitan Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Friday 9 June, 7 pm

The Sacred Heart Cathedral is a good place for singing – for both singers and listeners, and so it was especially good to hear this generally well-schooled and enthusiastic young choir, in a wide variety of songs.

The British song tradition
The concert began with an account of God Save the Queen, which prompted no one to stand, because it was clearly an arrangement, and a rather entertaining arrangement of the anthem, by Tahlia Griffis and Will King, two choir members. Each of the later, unfamiliar stanzas took the form of a variation in a musical sense: a nice clean performance, part-singing well balanced, and the last verse especially amusing and harmonically quirky, without becoming conspicuously republican in spirit.

For Gunnar Erikson’s arrangement of Purcell’s charming Music for a While, the choir divided into a group of eight soloists with the words, against humming by the main body of the choir.  There followed other songs by English composers, generally in a folk song vein, by Herbert Howells and perhaps Elgar, and two songs from Britten’s Ceremony of Carols. (I’m not sure whether either the Howells or the Elgar was dropped, as I caught only half of what the conductor said as he introduced the group – nor did assistant conductor Penelope Hooson speak distinctly enough for me to catch all her remarks). Whether Howells’s In Youth is Pleasure or Elgar’s The Snow, it was a delightful performance, lively and luminous.

Penelope Hooson took charge of strong sopranos plus very distinct altos in a lovely rendering of Britten’s ‘Ballulalow’ and the lively ‘This Little Babe’ from his Ceremony of Carols.

There followed familiar folk songs: Bobby Shaftoe, Londonderry Air, and two songs from John Rutter’s arrangements in Five Traditional Songs: ‘O Waly, Waly’ and ‘Dashing away with the Smoothing Iron’. There were ecstatic harmonies and a penny whistle in Bobby Shaftoe, hard to keep in tune; tuning was also a challenge in Danny Boy though that seemed to increase its charm.

Rutter’s setting of ‘O Waly Waly’, employing pure, unison women’s voices to begin, was a fine and successful test of technique and accuracy; the ‘Smoothing Iron’ was a more traditional setting.

Bob Chilcott’s The Making of the Drum, quite extended – maybe 10 minutes? – called on some unusual tricks like rubbing hands together, humming and noisy breathing and later, less unorthodox singing like a four-note motif from women and melancholy part-singing by the men; but the words and the musical sense of the work escaped me, even in passages that were more orthodox. One of those occasions where the innocent listener perhaps tries too hard to find what the composer does not intend to supply or for the audience to worry about.

Songs from the United States
United States songs occupied the second half. More of them were traditional or derived from jazz or Broadway, than in the case of the British songs.

It began with the choir disposed around the side and cross aisles; the singing spread from the front and slowly took hold throughout, so that sections of the choir seemed to come from unexpected quarters as they sang an arrangement of the Appalachian folk  song Bright Morning Star.

Penelope Hooson then directed the spiritual Didn’t my Lord Deliver Daniel and Deep River, both in Moses Hogan’s arrangements. They were well balanced among the sections of the choir, sustaining a uniform tone.

My notes at this stage remarked on what I began to find a bit inauthentic: country or bluesy rhythms turned salon music, which overlies most concertised American folk music. Probably unfair, but my feeling at that moment.

Nyon Nyon by Jake Runestad was new to me; the high-lying words sung by women while men murmured below them, with strange vocalisations, nasal sounds, offered what might be called, perjoratively, noises as distinct from music, which can soon induce weariness rather than delight.

Looking for background on the composer of the next two songs, from Three Nocturnes by Daniel Elder, I found this comment about Ballade to the Moon : “Marked Adagio Misterioso, this evocative work has been appearing on festival lists all over the country, and for good reason – it is an important contribution to the choral repertoire.” (https://www.jwpepper.com/Ballade-to-the-Moon/10283255.item#/).

I’d scribbled remarks like ‘melodic, sentiment – not sentimental, singing moves about the choir interestingly, pretty piano accompaniment’ (and it’s timely to compliment the pianist Gabriel Khor on his lively and supportive playing throughout the concert); and about the second song, Star Sonnet, ‘another slow, inoffensive melody, monotone, basically sentimental  ’.  However, they proved a nice change from the earlier prevalence of over-arranged, Gospel-inspired material.

The rest of the concert included a nice setting of Fats Waller’s Ain’t misbehavin’ and a well-rehearsed if unadventurous account of Gershwin’s I got Rhythm.

There was a rather prolonged series of thanks to sponsors and supporters of the choir before the last two songs; a strange, low-key, hymn-like arrangement of The Star-spangled Banner and a sort of religious flavoured song by Susan LaBarr: Grace before Sleep.

Some reflections
For me, more strongly persuaded of the central importance of Continental Europe in most aspects of broadly western musical culture, the choice of music seemed somehow peripheral. There were virtually no mainstream classical choruses or ensembles or art songs in the programme; the nearest were a few British arrangements of folk songs by important composers. However, the choice of songs within those rather limited genres was eclectic, and the choir’s refinement, control of dynamics, colour, and their flexibility in some off-beat and unorthodox vocal techniques, was often most impressive; and I have to confess that the range of pieces produced an evening of entertaining and well-schooled performances.

I might finally comment on the programme. I see the job of critiquing live music performances as, in part, to create a record of classical music performance in the Greater Wellington region to help future music or other historians to obtain a better picture of activities than is likely to be accessible through the often non-existent archives of a multitude of individual orchestral, choral, chamber music organisations, tertiary institutions and music venues that are of variable accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Basic archival information, time, date and place of the performance(s), was missing. Though it did record the details of all the pieces sung and the names all choir members, musical directors and accompanist.

Choral singing flourishes in Wellington region Big Sing gala concert

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Choral Federation Secondary Schools’ Choral Festival
Big Sing, second gala concert

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday, 8 June 2017, 7.00pm

As I said in 2015 (in a review of the Big Sing National Finale concert), it is marvellous to find so many young people taking part in choirs and obviously enjoying it.  Apparently there are more choirs in the 2017 Festival than ever before, and it seems to me that the standard is always rising.  The fact that all the choirs learn all their pieces by heart is staggering to us mere adults who sing in choirs, to whom this is an almost overwhelming difficulty.  An excellent effect of memorisation is that for the most part, words come over clearly – not always the case when singers are constantly glancing down at printed copies.   Every eye here was on the conductors – except for those few choirs who were able to perform without anyone standing in front of them to direct things.

This year, there will be 10 regional finales.  39 choirs participated in the two evening concerts (the other on Wednesday), from 22 schools in this region, plus one from Tauranga.  As always, the excitement in the hall and the large, enthusiastic audience made for a memorable occasion.  Compared with the first of these events I attended some years ago, not only is the number of participants much greater this time (choirs varied from about 20 members, to one of near 200), the audience is much larger.  Each choir sang one item, chosen from the three it had performed in the daytime sessions.

Everything is run with almost military precision by excellent young stage managing staff, plus the very professional but friendly manner of Christine Argyle, the compère.  The judge was well-known local soprano, Pepe Becker, who made helpful remarks at the awards presentation at the end, comparing attitudes required for singing to those for sport.

The performances were being recorded, so that the judges for the national finale later in the year could choose the best choirs from all the regional concerts.

The printed programme could not contain a lot of detail, but it would be an advantage to have the names of choir directors and composers printed in a less skinny, pale type-face, since during items the house lights are lowered completely, and in between items is a short space of time, such is the precision with which choirs move on and off the stage.

The first choir was Dawn Chorus from Tawa College – over 100-strong.  Like a number of the choirs, it has taken part in most, if not all, the regionals since The Big Sing began 29 years ago.  ‘The Seal Lullaby’, a peaceful song by American Eric Whitacre involved singing in both unison and harmony – the former is often harder than the latter.  Sections of ‘oo-oo’ singing were excellently done; the choir’s tone was good.

Tawa’s Early Birds, a small all-girls choir with a student director, came next singing ‘Homeward Bound’ by Marta Keen.  I found this song rather bland, and not the best suited to this group.

Yet a third Tawa College choir, Blue Notes, consisted of about 30 boys and girls.  Their item was by New Zealand composer David Childs: ‘Peace, my heart’.  This quite complex song was given a very restrained rendition.  It was accompanied by solo cellist Benjamin Sneyd-Utting.  It was a musically satisfying performance.

Whitby Samuel Marsden Collegiate’s 30-strong choir Viridi Vocem performed Gershwin’s well-known ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, the mixed choir employing actions to amplify the rhythm.  Words were clear, but the tone left something to be desired, and there was little variety.

Wellington College, and one of the other choirs, employed a professional accompanist.  Their chorale sang ‘Yo le canto’ by David Brunner, a contemporary American songwriter.  The rhythmic clapping enhanced the good sound the 35 boys made.  The harmony was extremely well rendered, and the intonation was spot on.  There was a feeling of unanimity in this spirited performance.

Boys from this school then combined with girls from Wellington Girls’ College to sing a spiritual ‘How can I keep from singing?’.  It was a very competent performance.

From across the city came 35-strong Wellington East Girls’ College Senior Choir.  They performed the ABBA song ‘Super Trouper’ by Barry Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus, with a student director.  I found the tone and dynamics unvarying.  Although words and notes were very clear, it was a dull performance – though the audience was enthusiastic to be hearing something they knew

The same school’s Multi Choir, of about 60 singers, sang ‘Ki Nga Tangata Katoa’, by Lernau Sio, the choir’s student director.  The performance was accompanied by guitar, and there was a student vocal soloist (amplified).  The choir made a robust, authentically Maori sound, and matched their excellent ensemble with appropriate actions.

From the Wairarapa came two schools forming one choir: Viva Camerata, with students from Rathkeale College and St. Matthew’s Collegiate.  They sang a traditional African Xhosa song, ‘Bawo Thixo Somandla’, transcribed by their director, Kiewet van Devente.  The performance incorporated a lot of movement.

The singing was very good, with a strong, forward sound.

Next came the largest choir of the evening, Wellington Girls’ College’s Teal – reflecting the colour of their school uniform.  Despite the choir’s large size, here was clarity plus, in the excellent performance of Gluck’s ‘Torna, O Bella’, the only truly classical piece we heard all night.  It was a delightful performance of this piece from Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Euridice.

The Year 9 Choir from the same school was smaller, but still numbered about 80 members.  They sang David Hamilton’s ‘Ave Maria’.  The sound was a little too restrained, with insufficient variation of dynamics, and the piano sounding a mite too loud.

New Zealand composer David Hamilton appeared again with yet another choir from Wellington Girls’ College – Teal Voices.  They sang his beautiful ‘My Song’.  And it was beautifully sung, with feeling, fabulous clarity and a great dynamic range.

Heretaunga College’s Phoenix Chorale gave us ‘Skyfall’ by Adele Adkins (not Atkins) and Paul Epworth.  The song is based on the theme music from the James Bond film of the same title.  I’m afraid I found it boring.  It began quietly, but later the singers pushed their voices unattractively.  The students’ faces showed no involvement or communication whatever.

Chilton St. James School in Lower Hutt has featured frequently in The Big Sing over the years.  Its first choir to sing was I See Red.  They sang ‘L’Dor Vador’, a Jewish song by Meir Finkelstein.  The approximately 40 singers sang with delightful tone; both notes and words were very clear.

The school’s second choir, Seraphim, performed a Basque song, by Eva Ugalde: ‘Tximeletak’.  Mastering the language must have been quite an assignment!   Though we couldn’t understand the words, they and the music were clear; it was an interesting composition.

Another long-standing regular at The Big Sing, St. Patrick’s College’s Con Anima choir, sang Phil Collins’s ‘Trashin’ the Camp’, a song from the 1999 film Tarzan.  It was accompanied by electric bass guitar and piano, and featured a brief vocal solo.  The 30-strong choir’s rendition involved lots of movement; the piece was very popular with the audience and was sung with style, accuracy and splendid vocal tone.

To end the evening were performances from choirs at Samuel Marsden Collegiate in Karori.  The first, Ad Summa, was directed by the student who composed the piece sung by the second choir.  First up was ‘Te Iwi E’, transcribed by student Gabrielle Palado, who, Google tells me, is a champion golfer.  The singing was accompanied by actions in the best traditions of the action song.  A guitar was used to accompany this 90-strong choir.  It was a fine performance.

The other choir, Altissime, was conducted by teacher (and distinguished soprano) Maaike Christie-Beekman.  She gave a demonstration of active, intelligent, involving directing.  The song ‘I am a sailor’ was by student Neakiry Kivi.  It was an impressive composition for a student to have written.  Its music was in places quite difficult.  The composer herself narrated, using a microphone, through part of the song; the last part was in te reo.  The 30 singers had wonderful tone, control and blend.  The dynamics were superb.  Perhaps this was the best item of the night.  I rather think this is the same song, given now an English title rather than its Maori equivalent, with which Kivi won the Royal New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary Secondary Schools’ Creative Competition.

Judging was on the basis of the day’s performances as well as those at the evening concert; the same went for the Wednesday sessions and concert – there were awards at the close of that concert too, though the printed programme did not distinguish as it should have between the awards given each night.

There were many certificates presented, but here I list only the cups.  The Victoria University of Wellington College of Education award  for the best performance of a New Zealand composition was awarded to Rathkeale College and St. Matthew’s Collegiate choir Viva Camerata.  The Shona Murray Cup for classical performance went to Wellington College Chorale; the Dorothy Buchanan Cup for ‘other styles of music’ was won by St. Patrick’s Con Anima choir.  The Festival Cup for ‘overall attitude to The Big Sing’ was awarded to Wellington Girls’ College.  Finally, a new financial award from the Ministry of Youth Development, named ‘Spirit of the Festival’ Youth Ambassadors Award, presented   in the form of a framed certificate, went to Heretaunga College.

Every choir member, director, trainer and accompanist deserves congratulations – not ignoring the fact that a number of the choirs sang unaccompanied, with accuracy and consistency, showing excellent musicianship.  Let’s hope that the students will maintain their singing, through youth and community choirs, when they leave school.

 

Engaging recital of once much-played piano pieces from young pianist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Louis Lucas-Perry (piano)

Haydn: Piano Sonata in F, Hob. XVI/23
Debussy: La cathédrale engloutie, No 10 of Preludes, Book I
Liszt: Ballade No 2 in B minor, S. 171
Chopin: Polonaise No 3 in A, Op 40 No 1 (‘Military’)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 June 2017, 12:15 pm

Louis Lucas-Perry’s brief biography printed in the programme writes of performances in Upper Hutt and Nelson (a Grieg Piano Concerto there), of winning a New Zealand School of Music ‘Directors’ Scholarship. He offers no information about the schools attended, but mentions teaching and accompanying the Big Sing, students’ choral festival, and chamber music groups.

I notice that I reviewed a student concert that included him in October 2015; there he also played Liszt’s Ballade No 2.

However, on the evidence of his playing he has reached a very respectable level of both technical skill and musical insight. He opened with Haydn’s splendid piano sonata in F major, a fine response to the key which inspires many composers to music that is open, cheerful, often witty (think Mozart’s piano concerto No 19, Beethoven’s Pastoral and No 8, Dvorak’s American quartet). This was staccato, bright, limpid, delighting in sudden modulations, which clearly also delighted the pianist.

Never mind that the second movement, Adagio, in F minor, changes the mood sharply, with a lamenting tone but employing one of Haydn’s most affecting melodies. Haydn can scarcely release it and it returns, blessedly, time and time again, played with infinite tenderness. The melody has such poignancy that I was convinced that I’d heard it long ago, but not for many, many years. I’m sure that everyone in the audience (of around 70) would have been entranced and that all copies of CDs of it in the library would have disappeared shortly after the concert. The last movement restored the spirit of delight (suddenly Shelley came into my head: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, / Spirit of Delight!’ Though the next lines are not so pertinent – ‘Wherefore hast thou left me now / Many a day and night?’).

Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral doesn’t present obvious, enormous technical problems – merely the huge challenge of playing Debussy properly. So it was played carefully, perhaps too carefully for the strangeness of the imagery to emerge with a great feeling of mystery. After all, it’s in C major, mostly.

Liszt’s 2nd Ballade used to be familiar, played on the 2YC, predecessor radio station to RNZ Concert, dinner music programme. But it’s not much played by professionals today; why not? It contains lots of characteristic Liszt – melodic, passionate, mysterious – and Lucas-Perry clearly responded to it with a genuine Lisztian instinct. The pianist’s own imagined ‘programme’ – the legend of Hero and Leander – wasn’t a bad idea as long as one didn’t try to fit it literally to the story. But there were sufficient thundering bass passages and turbulent storm-tossed seas to fit all sorts of romantic legends. And he did a convincing job of telling the tragic tale.

Chopin’s Military Polonaise too, used to be a familiar dinner-music piece on radio (such times now seem to be filled by arrangements for inappropriate instruments of opera tunes and flashy scraps of well-known popular classics). Lucas-Perry took the march-like music cautiously but again demonstrated an ability to play all the notes accurately and capture the spirit of Chopin quite convincingly.

An engaging and enjoyable recital.

 

Acclamation for Auckland Viva Voce’s remarkable performance of enthralling work on pilgrimage: Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Viva Voce, conducted by John Rosser

Joby Talbot: Path of Miracles

St. Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Sunday, 4 June 2017, 4.30pm

The programme’’s sub-title for the work was “Joby Talbot’s stunning choral depiction of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.”  The blurb was right; this was a truly remarkable work, of just over an hour’s almost constant unaccompanied singing (apart from the periodic use of 8 traditional small cymbals,or crotales), with no applause until the end.

Talbot is a 46-year-old British composer who has written in many genres, including opera and ballet, and for film and television.  This work was composed in 2005, a setting of a commissioned text from Robert Dickinson.  Although the printed programme has a photograph and note about Talbot, there is nothing about the poet, but John Rosser did tell us a little about him in his excellent introductory remarks.  The text is quite astonishing, not only for the fact that 7 different languages are used.  Rosser believes that the three performances by the choir (Auckland [the choir’s home city] and Napier before this one) are the first in the southern hemisphere.

Wikipedia gives little information about Dickinson, who is a British novelist.  The work traces both the story of St. James, who tradition says returned from martyrdom in Jerusalem to Galicia where he had previously preached, and that of walkers on the renowned (and now revived) walk to Santiago de Compostela, where the martyr’s bones were found 800 years later.  Dickinson created a brilliant text, printed in full in the programme – though not always easy to follow, due to the variety of languages, and much repetition, particularly of refrains.

Rosser informed us that there are now approximately a quarter of a million people walking the Camino each year; I know people who have done it, and I have stayed in an ancient village in southern France that was on one of the many routes through that part of the country, and bore on a wall the scallop shell symbol of the pilgrimage.

The men of the choir entered the church first, vocalising on low notes.  They walked to the front and stood in a circle, round a circle of stones.  The notes very gradually rose in pitch until they became high, reaching a scream as the women joined in from the back of the church, and the cymbals joined in.

The women advanced up the church, led by a solo voice.  The singing at this stage was quite loud, but dynamics varied throughout the work   The voices were very fine, and the resonance superb.  All were very precise both musically and in incisive enunciation of all the languages, in this sometimes intricate work.  The musical style in this early part was medieval. This first part was entitled Roncesvalles, the name of the place in northern Spain where the Camino starts, though many started in times past in southern France.  As the pilgrimage progresses, marked by the choir by numerous episodes of walking slowly around the church and into different positions on the platform.  The other parts are named Burgos, Leon and Santiago.

Walking and repositioning were not the only choreographed parts of the performance; part way through the first section the choir began swaying.  Then a bass with a very deep, fruity voice intoned from the pulpit while the choir sang pianissimo.  That was followed by a soprano and tenor duet.  The use of the cymbals was quite beautiful here.

In the second section there was a change to a modern style of composition.  The mood here was more conversational, as though the pilgrims were recounting to each other some of the trials of the journey (apparently ‘the English steal’), the tone being more mellow, with a prayerful quality.  Some of the more ghoulish sections of text conveyed a desolate sound, through both vocal tone and the intervals employed.

A reduced choir sang some of the text, and this produced an effective contrast.  Louder passages followed towards the end of the Burgos section and the deep bass made further utterances.

The women began the Leon movement (of which there was plenty) at the back of the church, intoning much repetition of the opening refrain.  Then the men, describing the land they walked through, sang loudly.  Rich harmony ended this section, at the words ‘We pause, as at the heart of a sun that dazzles and does not burn.’  Here as elsewhere there was consistent tone and pronunciation, and the blend was superb.

In Santiago there was more virtuosic singing  All of it was dynamically interesting and varied.  The first passage in Latin sounded like a chant, but was sung in harmony.  With the concluding words the choir faced and looked directly at the audience, singing ‘Holy St James, great St James, God help us now and evermore.’  The choir walked off, each picking up a stone from the stone circle and placing it with the others in a cairn at the foot of the platform.  They continued singing the last passages from memory, fading as they made a wonderful conclusion to the work as they continued to walk into the porch, still singing.

This was a real choir, unlike TV’s ‘Naked Choir’ contest, of which John Rosser is a judge.  What with mikes and costumes, they are not as naked as Viva Voce, which really does rely solely on its voices.

The choir returned to repeated enthusiastic acclamation, some in the audience rising to their feet in tribute to this outstanding and remarkable performance of this complex but enthralling work, which my mere words cannot hope to adequately describe.  This was a unique experience.

For a very cold late Sunday afternoon, there was quite a sizeable audience in the church.  There was some heating on, but it was insufficient on such a cold day.

 

NZ Opera’s 2017 Carmen surprises, disconcerts and delights

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents:
BIZET – Carmen – Opera in Four Acts

Cast: Carmen – Nino Surguladze
Don Jose – Tom Randle
Escamillo – James Clayton
Micaëla – Emma Pearson
Zuniga – Wade Kernot
Moralès – James Harrison
Frasquita – Amelia Berry
Mercédès – Kristin Darragh
Le Remendado – James Benjamin Rodgers
Lillas Pastia – Stuart Coats

Freemasons New Zealand Opera Chorus
Orchestra Wellington
Francesco Pasqualetti (conductor)
Michael Vinten (chorus director)

Lindy Hume (director)
Jacqueline Coats (assistant director)
Dan Potra (designer)
Matthew Marshall (lighting)

St.James Theatre, Wellington
Thursday, Ist June, 2017

(other peformances: Tuesday 6th June 6:30pm,

Thursday 8th, Saturday 10th June 7:30pm)

There’s almost always a lot to like in any production of Carmen. On the face of things the opera has everything that any theatre-goer-cum-music-lover could wish for – like the Shakespearean character who says “four feasts are forward”, one can say Carmen has the four things which ensure operatic success – spectacle, drama, compelling characters and memorable tunes. Of course, these things don’t make or play themselves, and, despite this review’s opening assertion, I still shudder inwardly at the thought of the most depressing night I’ve ever spent at the opera, in 1994, at Covent Garden, of all places, witnessing a second-rate production of – you’ve guessed it! – Carmen.

Happily, Carmen was one of the New Zealand Opera’s great successes in the still-fledgling company’s 1960s years – opera company founder Donald Munro used to regale us in later times with stories of the Company’s first “Carmen”, the outrageously sexy English soprano Joyce Blackham, whose portrayal of the eponymous heroine was by all accounts extremely “up front and personal”, emphasising her own physical allure and the character’s flirtatiousness – she alone would have been a drawcard for the public, one would imagine.

Fifty-plus years onwards, and from the Wellington Opera House a few metres further down and across the road towards Courtenay Place, relocated at the St.James Theatre, the company presented its latest 21st Century version of Bizet’s out-and-out masterpiece. With a leading soprano from Georgia whose career trajectory listed all the “great” contemporary opera houses, a strong, mostly Australasian supporting cast, marvellous playing and direction from the pit, and a director and designer with interesting and strongly-wrought production ideas, this presentation simply couldn’t help but make a striking and resonant impression, very much on its own terms.

It began with what seemed like some kind of conceptual challenge, austere and confrontational, with the chorus arriving on stage before the opening Prelude began, and “eyeballing” the audience unflinchingly – the contrast between the music’s near-vertiginous energies and the disengaged demeanour of the figures was almost Brechtian in its sense of alienation. Director Lindy Hume had referred to gestures such as these in her director’s notes which the programme carried, while admitting the ideas stemmed directly to her very first production of Carmen for West Australian Opera, 25 years ago! – she explained that her thoughts concerning the opera at that time still seemed to her valid and applicable in broad terms, reflecting her pride in that particular production’s achievement.

That opening gesture set the mode for the first two acts, whose set pieces were treated in like manner, creating in places what Hume herself referred to an “almost surreal and unnatural style”, and setting them apart from the more naturalistic exchanges. As an idea in itself it was interesting and impressive, but for me it drained a lot of the dramatic life out of places in the work, as it stylised these sections almost to the point of inertia, and invariably didn’t match the musical flow of things. The opening soldiers’ chorus had nicely built-in indolence, but I thought the children’s chorus lacked real exuberance and dynamism, their “mock-execution” play with the soldiers too “stagey” and contrived, conveying insufficient spontaneity.

As for the “smoking” chorus, marking the entrance of the “cigarette girls” parading before the admiring glances of the young men, I felt the scene was choreographed to over-calculated effect, wrung dry of any of the sultry insinuation of aspect and manner suggested in the text’s utterances – “…. we will follow you, dark-haired cigarette girls, murmuring words of love in your ears” – and pared down to a kind of slow-motion synchronised walking exercise, viewed dispassionately by the women perched (I’m tempted to use the word “stranded”) on narrow steps and landings, who conveyed the visual impression that they’d seen it all before hundreds of times, and in any case vastly preferred their cigarettes!

Things took a long time to get going at Lillas Pastia’s, as well, with the opening instrumental strains of the Gypsy Song getting little or no stage response until Carmen herself took charge of things – up until then, a languour seemed to hang over the proceedings, a disinclination of the production, it seemed, to convey atmosphere and spontaneity in places that seemed to me to call for it most urgently. With the help of Carmen’s friends Frasquita and Mercédès, the stage action did eventually energise sufficiently to match with the orchestra – but it took a while! A turning-point was the arrival of Escamillo, the Toreador. His was no bloodless, over-stylised character – instead, a truly galvanising force!

Afterwards, the Quintet with the Smugglers rattled like a train over the points in an exhilarating fashion – indeed the whole Act seemed to energise itself with its sense of dramatic weight, from Escamillo’s entrance right to the end – a splendid three-way confrontation between two of Carmen’s prospective lovers and the Smugglers saw the ill-fated corporal Don Jose forced to desert the army against his better judgement, and join Carmen and her bevy of contrabandists on their adventures.

As for Acts Three and Four I found it far easier to assimilate the “stylistic” treatment of the various tableaux, such as the smugglers’ approach to their hideout at Act Three’s beginning – black landform shapes morphing slowly into moving figures, betrayed by an occasional glint of forward movement, the “word made flesh” marriage of action and music superbly realised. Only the transition between the last two Acts, with Carmen left lying on the floor in the wake of an altercation with Don Jose seemed to me to lose some dramatic momentum, leaving we in the audience uncertain of a response as the set numbers clicked over. Fortunately, the remainder of that final Act pulled out all the visceral and dramatic stops, even if poor Escamillo never got to show off his glittering Toreador’s costume!

The production, despite the early-on stage action’s stop-start trajectories, maintained plenty of on-going atmosphere by dint of its imposing settings and evocative lighting. With the costumes we found ourselves mingling with ordinary Seville citizens and its soldiery, with the exception of Escamillo, who was something of a swell in his elegant gentleman’s garb. But from the start here was the proverbial Spanish glare of day throughout the opening scene, gradually giving way throughout Lillas Pastia’s to the all-enfolding darkness, which reached its apogee at the Third Act’s beginning, and its antithesis with the explosions of colour among the crowd at the bullfight scene, before returning us to that pitiless opening light at the opera’s end.

Central to the atmospheric charge of the presentation was the brilliant, rich and evocative backdrop of sound recreated by the playing of Orchestra Wellington under its Music Director Francesco Pasqualetti – both in the numerous instrumental detailings (the horn-playing deserved special mention, as did the various characterful wind solos) and the power and colour-suffused textures of the full orchestral passages, full justice was, I thought, done to the composer’s miraculous scoring. And how supple and sonorous was the chorus’s singing throughout! – the aforementioned languour of the soldiers, the vocal ardour of the young men and the sensual insouciance of the young women factory workers in their “C’est fumee” utterances – then the infectious vigour of both the smugglers in their descriptions of the hapless customs-men, and the rip-roaring excitement of the bull-ring crowds – again, the figures up-front and confrontational, but this time abandoning their emotions to the music, to overwhelming effect!

So to the figures towards whom all of these different elements were directed – the cast of characters! – this was a strong, if interestingly constituted ensemble, the “odd one out” for me being the unfortunate soldier Don Jose, here played with an unrelieved sort of tortured awkwardness throughout, rather like a French Wozzeck, by American tenor Tom Randle. I admit to finding it difficult to understand how such an overtly dysfunctional personality as depicted by Randle would have had any appeal for the character of Carmen – but there was no doubting the disturbing undercurrents and frighteningly insistence of this Don Jose, a besotted individual completely out of his emotional depth with the new-found object of his desire. Randle’s voice, though used most intelligently, was notable more for its raw power than any honeyed tones, except in the couple of places during the “Flower Song” when he sang phrases quietly and affectingly.

Playing opposite him as Carmen was the magnetic Georgian-born soprano Nino Surguladze. Though somewhat cramped by the staging for her very first entry, she was a liquid, mercurial and volatile presence throughout, making the most of the “Habanera”and its detailings with her easeful spontaneity and ready (though never over-modulated) physical allure. Only what I thought was some unnecessary, protracted business with handcuffs at the expense of the commanding regiment officer Zuniga detracted from her sultry, disarming focus. For the rest she was magnificent, even with her back turned towards the audience when first held captive by Don Jose, after the skirmish among the factory girls – her playful seductiveness throughout the Seguidilla completely ensnared her hapless captor, whose doom was sealed from that moment.

So it was in exalted terms for the rest of the drama – Carmen’s initial infatuation and subsequent disenchantment with Don Jose, her playful and resonant encounter with the celebrated Escamillo, her darkly-modulated acceptance of her eventual fate during the fortune-cards scene, and the final, defiant and destructive encounter with Don Jose at the end. Surguladze obviously shared and fully participated in director Lindy Hume’s vision of the heroine as a woman who believes utterly in herself and her values, even in the face of death.

Though she was Carmen’s opposite in diametric ways, Don Jose’s would-be sweetheart from his own village, Micaëla, was here portrayed with admirable character and fortitude by a sweet-toned Emma Pearson, whom I remembered most warmly as an affecting Gilda, from a NZ Opera Rigoletto some years before. She similarly melted our hearts here with her touching rendition of “Et tu lui diras que sa mere” (You’ll tell him that his mother..) from her Act One duet with Don Jose (one of Bizet’s most affecting melodies), and, later in the work, her heart-in-mouth “Je dis, que rien ne m’epouvante” (I say, that nothing frightens me) when looking for Don Jose at the smugglers’ mountain hideout.

Completing the quartet of would-be-lovers was the Toreador, Escamillo, played and sung with predictable verve and compelling vocal authority by James Clayton, who, somewhat surprisingly, as I’ve said, never got to impress the punters in his Toreador get-up (usually a feature of the last few moments of the work when he bursts onto the scene of Carmen’s murder by Don Jose, too late to save her). Along with great self-assuredness, Clayton refreshingly brought out a good deal of the character’s suave, debonair and charming aspect, a change from the sometimes excessive arrogance and macho pride by singers wanting to impress and nothing much else.

The lesser parts were given with all the apparent surety and confidence of those in the leading roles, all New Zealand singers (one feels certain there could, for New Zealand Opera, one day be another New Zealand Carmen)……..Don Jose’s commanding officer, Zuniga, was played imposingly by Wade Kermot, his voice and aspect conveying great authority when in control of the barracks, and face-saving dignity when put in a compromising position at Lillas Pastia’s by the smugglers. James Harrison doubled the roles of Morales, the cool-as-cucumber soldier who first notices the arrival of Micaëla at the barracks, looking for Don Jose; and of the smuggler Le Dancaire, the latter portrayal set alongside that of James Benjamin Rodgers as Le Remendado, the two men a force to be reckoned with as gun-toting contrabandists. They were more-than-likely the partners in the story of the two women, Frasquita (played by Amelia Berry) and Mercédès (played by Kristin Darragh), the pair becoming the smugglers’ secret weapon in the latters’ dealings with the customs officers.

The two women did a splendid job in various contexts, supporting Carmen in the Act Two Gypsy Dance, and the smugglers in the Quintet Nous avons en tete une affaire (We have a scheme in mind), but most tellingly in the famous “Card Scene” Trio, Melons! Coupons! during which Carmen foretells her own death. Amelia Berry’s Frasquita was brighter-toned than Kristen Darragh’s darker, more powerful Mercédès, the two intertwining their voices to perfection in the lively interplay that framed Carmen’s grimmer soliloquy.

With all of its idiosyncrasies and compulsions, the production certainly created a distinctive and memorable compendium of impressions, which I thought gathered force and consistency as it progressed. Even if one takes issue with certain aspects, what can’t be denied is the conviction with which the individual roles were brought to life, and with which the drama as a whole was presented. For my money there was a very great deal to like and to admire, and, by the end of the show, to find convincing and satisfying.

NZSM Piano Students show their mettle at St.Andrew’s, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand  School of Music, Victoria University presents:
Piano Students 2017

Nick Kovacek (Brahms: Rhapsody in B Minor Op.79 No.1)
Jungyeon Lee (Mozart: Sonata in F Major K.332)
William Swan (Debussy: Preludes Bk II – No.12 Feux d’artifice)
Matthew Oliver (Chopin: Etudes Op.10 – No 9 in F Minor)
Mitchell Henderson (Medtner: Sonata Reminiscenza Op.38 No.1)

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

Wednesday, 31st May 2017

 

A pity that the printed programme gave no information about any of the piano students, which would have “fleshed out” each of them a bit more, a smidgeon of biographical information and a comment regarding repertoire preferences in each case, for instance – nothing more than a couple of sentences akin to what each might write on his or her CV. While I thought the Acting Director of the School of Music, Dr. Dougal McKinnon’s written summary of the Music School’s activities interesting, if understandably promotional, I would have welcomed some additional focus on these particular students and their presentations, who and which, after all, were who and what we were actually there for.

I’m presuming these people were graduate students, judging from the interpretative depth I felt each brought to his or her performance, allied to the level of technical skill displayed in each case. What truly impressed me was that each of the five pianists brought with them a strongly-defined sense of how they thought and felt their pieces should go, so that there was no vapid note-spinning or empty display for its own sake, but concentrated and involved musical impulses behind each note, phrase or sequence. Even when fingers in a couple of instances ran ahead of the music and momentarily lost their poise and articulatedness, there was evidence of feeling at the mishap’s root and was quickly picked up and the notes propelled forwards once again.

I don’t wish to imply that each performance we heard had a sameness of either interpretative manner or technical finish – the pieces were too broad in their range of requirements for such an assertion to be made, for one. and the musical personalities of each pianist too individual, for another. I’m merely reporting that each player gave pleasure on his or her own terms with how his or her chosen piece was articulated. First to perform was Nick Kovacek, who chose to play the slightly lesser-known of Brahms’ two Op.79 Rhapsodies, No.1 in B Minor. The playing caught the music’s latter-day “sturm und drang” feeling right from the opening, and nicely integrated the mood-change of the subsequent lyrical musings into the overall flow, before plunging back into the fray with great urgency. Occasionally, the four-note “motif” sounded splashy, with the player attempting too much velocity, though the effect still caught the excitement of sparks flying as the hammer hit the rock. The central lyrical section was voiced beautifully and tenderly, and the pianist made a good deal of the upward-rushing flourishes, especially the second of each pair. After a properly frenetic climax, the pianist pulled us by the heartstrings into the grey vortex of the coda with real feeling and a nice sense of atmosphere.

After a (possibly unscheduled) luftpause, the diminutive figure of Jungyeon Lee appeared, ready at last to play, without the music, Mozart’s F Major Sonata K.332. Whatever doubts the reluctance of her appearance might have engendered among us in regard to the music-making proved completely unfounded. From the very first note I was drawn in by her characterisations of each episode of the music, everything lyrically voiced and beautifully weighted, the opening strikingly contrasted with the energy and anxiety of the following sequence in a well-rounded, never over-emphatic manner. I would have liked to have heard the repeat in which to enjoy it all again, especially as Mozart’s development section in this movement is so compact, to the point of terseness. I liked her dynamic control of the contrasts, again making them tell without undue force, and her nicely po-faced lead-back to the opening, with, apart from a little choppiness with the sforzandi chords, her music-making obeying the composer’s dictum that it should all ‘flow like oil”.

In the slow movement she brought out the music’s operatic lines with real character, such as her lovely, yielding treatment of the melody. She will, in time, find even more varied emotion in the descending right-hand thirds which followed, and increasingly let the figurations just before the reprise of the opening relax and “play themselves” – the music has more tenderness than she was wanting to show, in those places – but everything else had a naturalness of expression which I found fresh and engaging.

The finale was begun with a fine opening flourish, exhibiting the pianist’s sensitive dynamic control, with each phrase given something special. Occasionally the rapid figurations got the better of her fingers – I felt this movement hadn’t “settled” in performance to the extent the first two had, but as a “work in progress” the playing showed great promise, with my interest held over every bar. Many young pianists find Mozart a puzzle, and skate over his music’s surfaces with brilliance and very little else, so it was good to encounter one who articulated the music with such feeling.

Though Debussy was reputed to have admired Mozart’s music, it still seemed like some kind of quantum leap for a listener to make the transition from the above to the world of the French composer’s music, particularly that of Feux d’artifice (Fireworks), the last of the second set of Preludes, here played with considerable brilliance and evocation by William Swan. Indebted to Liszt, whose playing (particularly his pedalling) Debussy thought a great deal of, the music’s opening encompassed mystery, and growing anticipation, before looming excitingly into brilliance and dazzling momentum. William Swan seemed to have both technique and sensibility aplenty in bringing out these qualities, his traversal of the piece evoking in places something of the sensation of riding a particularly lively rodeo horse, though the piece’s quieter and deeper resonances were also well-served by the playing. We heard some beguiling sotto-voce harmonies murmuring their mysteries, but then were galvanised by sudden irruptions of energy and bright iridescence, with a dying drift of drollery at the piece’s end, the echo of a melody amid the burnt-out ambiences of past glories. I thought it an assured and masterful performance.

If Chopin’s Etude No.9 in F minor Op.10 made a less overtly spectacular effect, the music’s strong, purposeful flow at the outset soon established a world whose darkness was largely unrelieved by any extraneous effects. Pianist Matthew Oliver generated plenty of focused energy in maintaining something of the piece’s grim, obsessive character, tempering the gloom with piquant calls which he nicely differentiated, as if voices were calling to a passing traveller from various places high and low, near and distant, and in doing so creating a sense of spaciousness and isolation. The player brought out the wistful delicacy of the ending, a brief chorus of distantly tinkling voices left behind in the darkness. I thought the young man did well to establish the piece’s character, considering its brevity and elusiveness.

The concert’s final work was the most substantial length-wise of the students’ offerings, and probably the least generally-known, though I think pianist Mitchell Henderson was surely overemphasising the composer’s relative obscurity in stating that nobody in the audience would have heard of him! Nikolai Medtner, like his friend and slightly older colleague, Sergei Rachmaninov, was something of a throwback as a composer, one who determinedly clung to traditional modes of composing and professed an anathema to “modern schools”, in his writings repudiating the beginnings and early developments of twentieth-century music.

Born in Moscow, Medtner didn’t leave Russia until during the 1920s, eventually moving to Britain in the 1930s. Unlike Rachmaninov, who as a pianist developed a varied recital repertoire, Medtner didn’t help his own career as a performer by refusing to perform the music of other composers – he found support for his music only in England, but was famously supported by the Maharajah of Mysore, who was a music enthusiast and a gifted amateur pianist, and who, fortuitously for the composer, had developed a great liking for his music. Thanks to the Maharajah’s sponsorship, recordings of Medtner’s works were made, with the composer at the keyboard (concertos, chamber music and piano sonatas, as well as a collection of his songs recorded with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf!), which resulted in a grateful composer dedicating his Third Piano Concerto to the Maharajah himself.

The work we heard was the single-movement Sonata Reminiscenza Op.38 No.1, part of a larger “suite” of pieces which made up Op. 38, also including 3 dances, 3 canzonas, and a “coda alla Reminiscenza.” – the latter uses the work’s opening theme, hence the title. The piece was written during the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and published in 1922. It’s “strolling” opening had a kind of wistful, “nostalgic journey” feeling, taking the listener to a more purposeful sequence of thematic exposition and development, perhaps less Russian and more cosmopolitean in flavour than Medtner’s friend Rachmaninov’s music. Mitchell Henderson delivered this opening sequence with an admirable sense of ebb and flow, characterising with focused intent the different moods evoked by the opening theme and its occasional motivic reappearance, in between highly chromatic sections of, by turns, restrained lyricism and agitated feeling. His playing took us right into the heart of the music’s varied textures, stressing the music’s essential independence of spirit in its wonderful “structured discursiveness”, while never shirking even the most dissonant of the composer’s’s harmonies – in all, here was a wonderful and absorbing quarter-hour’s music-making!

Something of a feast of both repertoire and piano-playing, then, from Mozart to Medtner – spadefuls of gratitude, therefore, to the musicians and their teachers and to the NZSM for enabling such a presentation for our pleasure!

Renowned Bach scholar and conductor Suzuki with fine baroque ensemble Juilliard415

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Masaaki Suzuki & Juilliard415
(Chamber Music New Zealand)

J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suite no.1 in C
Concerto for 2 violins in D minor
Cantata BWV 82a, Ich habe genug
Orchestral Suite no.3 in D

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday, 30 May 2017, 7.30pm

It is wonderful for audiences in New Zealand to welcome back Masaaki Suzuki, this time with an ensemble of students from the famous Juilliard School based at the Lincoln Center in New York.   The 18 instrumentalists came from 8 different countries.

Suzuki, as well as running his own choral and orchestral ensembles and teaching in Tokyo, teaches also at Juilliard.  He is a renowned Bach scholar and conductor, and Wellington audiences delighted in his performing with his musicians two Bach concerts in the 2014 Arts Festival.  His Bach Collegium Japan echoes Bach’s Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, for which some of these works were written.

The ensemble was led by Cynthia Roberts, a noted American baroque violinist.  She bowed, as did some of the other musicians, in baroque style, but I could not tell from where I was sitting if period-style string instruments were in use; the bows did not appear to be, and there was nothing in the extensive printed programme to inform the audience on these points, beyond reference to the historical performance program at Juilliard.

Perhaps this is an academic point; the playing under Suzuki’s hands was crisp, pointed and always strongly rhythmic, and undoubtedly historically informed.

The first orchestral suite was one I was not familiar with.  Its various movements, based on dances, numbered 11 (taking into account that there were two Gavottes, two Menuets, two Bourées and two Passepieds).  Bach added so much to these traditional forms; his musical invention made something new out of something old.  Their traditional metres and structures were preserved, making a work that provided great delight to the audience, and doubtless to the musicians also.

The concerto is a delightful three-movement work that provides plenty of challenges to the soloists, and much pleasure to the listeners.  The features of returning phrases (ritornelli) sections for the soloists and the intricate counterpoint made for a work of constant freshness and colour through the three movements: vivace, largo ma non tanto and allegro.  The conversations between the soloists were always full of interest, but I found their tonal qualities distinct from each other, with that of Karen Dekker, who played second violin, more pleasing than the thinner, at times even metallic, sound from Isabelle Seula Lee.  Nevertheless, their performance, and that of the ensemble, was always vigorous, with plenty of dynamic contrasts

The cantata was for me the highpoint of the concert.  It was first performed in Leipzig in 1727 and was written for a bass singer.  It is this version with which I am familiar, having a fine recording of the lovely aria ‘Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen’ with Rodney Macann singing.  Bach did later versions for soprano and alto and substituted the flute for the original oboe.  The soloist, Rebecca Farley, is a Juilliard graduate, and has a lovely and expressive voice.  I felt that some sections of the music were a little low for her, and there, the notes did not carry well through the auditorium.  There was a short section where the soloist got slightly out of time with the players, and needed Suzuki’s particularly close attention.  By and large however, it was a superb rendition, the words beautifully articulated, and the sentiments of the three arias and two recitatives communicated without seeming effort.  A short vocal encore was a reward for the audience’s enthusiasm for the performance.

It was good to have the lights left on in the Michael Fowler Centre so that the printed words, with translations could be read (it doesn’t always happen!).  Throughout, the ensemble’s playing was sympathetic and supportive, the flute (baroque flute) obbligato in this version for soprano being a characterful contribution, from Jonathan Slade.  The programme note stated that this version ‘…retains the unfathomable yet affirming qualities of the original.’

The last work, consisting of five movements (or 7 counting two Gavottes and two Bourées) was more familiar territory.  After the stately Ouverture, came the well-known Air (often mistakenly called ‘Air on the G String’).  It is deservedly popular, its calmly beautiful procession of notes is supremely serene and exudes quiet confidence.  I did miss the brass in the later movements – our ensemble consisted of strings and woodwind plus harpsichord.

The woodwind players at all times made a huge and delicious contribution to the works in which they played.  All the players made a big contribution to a concert of rich music that entranced the audience, but it is perhaps not unfair to credit particularly the guiding hand and ideas of their distinguished conductor.

 

Solo cellist Christopher Hutton in Wellington Chamber Music’s second 2017 concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Christopher Hutton (cello)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

J S Bach: A Suite Sampler
Britten: Suite for solo cello No 1, Op 72
Reger: Suite No 1 in G minor, Op 131c
Bolcom: from Suite No 1 in C minor
Harbison: Suite for solo cello (1993)
Corigliano: Fancy on a Bach Air

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 28 May 2017, 3 pm

Though originally from Wellington, Christopher Hutton had most of his education in the United States, at Boston University, the Eastman School of Music at Rochester, the University of North Carolina and the University of Delaware, before becoming an associate professor at the Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

He has made previous tours for Chamber Music New Zealand and Wellington Chamber Music, recently as cellist in the Poinsett Piano Trio. This may be his first return visit as solo cellist.

Given the general unfamiliarity with most of the music exists for solo cello (apart from Bach), he put together an interesting, and generally engaging programme.

Bach
It began with a not unsuccessful ‘sampler’ of a movement from each of Bach’s six cello suites, arranged in the same pattern as Bach followed, thus: the Prelude from No 1, the Allemande from No 2, the Courante from No 3, and so on. Apart from those with perfect pitch, the mixture of keys (no two are the same – the Bourrées in E flat followed by the Gigue in D) presented no problem. In the cases of very familiar movements, there was merely the matter of hearing, as each ended, the next actual movement in your head.

Before each piece, Hutton spoke interestingly and fluently, and his confident, unhesitating manner carried into his playing, through the varied phases of the first Prelude as well as the Allemande and the brisk Courante. At times it felt a little too restless. The Sarabande (from Suite No 5), however, was given its due as a more meditative piece. And he struck a clear contrast between the two Bourrées from the E flat suite.

Britten’s cello suite, one of three dedicated to Rostropovich, ‘clearly echoes Bach’, as Hutton says, but in such a way as to rather puzzle an innocent listener, who is likely to be less musically gifted and sophisticated than Rostropovich. It’s one of those pieces that is ‘tonal’ but not necessarily enrapturing. But I am not a reliable observer; I’ve long loved the Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, the operas Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw and Gloriana, the War Requiem, the folk song arrangements, the piano and violin concertos; but some of the chamber music in particular, which some find ‘interesting’, I might find cold, obtuse, calculated, often cluttered with complexity.

However, Hutton gave it a splendidly idiomatic performance though perhaps it was one emphasising its rigour and intellectualism, driving it so fiercely that whatever lyricism and more simple beauty became a bit hard to discern.

Reger
Much more to my liking was Max Reger’s first suite; he, like Britten, wrote three cello suites paying homage to Bach. Forty years older than Britten, he lived just in time to avoid the serialist and other avant-garde pretensions, so his Bach emulations sounded much closer than Britten’s to their source; my notes even went so far as to ask: ‘Bach’s Seventh Suite?’

There were quite extrovert, even exhibitionist, passages but it was essentially musical. The Adagio middle movement was charming, with lengthy passages of double stopping, which made me wonder whether this was a candidate for extracting as solo, Bach-aria-type piece. There was an impressive fugal episode in the last movement which the soloist’s notes likened to Bach’s solo violin sonatas.

Bolcom
Three American composers, all born in 1938, followed. I’m more familiar with William Bolcom’s songs, which are very attractive, than his chamber and other music, but the three movements from his first cello suite had many agreeable features; it was in the Badinerie movement (Bach’s famous example is in the second orchestral suite) that Hutton displayed particular aplomb in handling its bravura character with confident mastery. And he captured the almost flippant spirit of the Alla sarabanda final movement splendidly.

Harbison
Bolcom was born on the west coast; John Harbison was born in Massachusetts. Hutton’s notes remark that his suite for solo cello resembles Bach’s solo violin sonatas and indeed, here was another approachable American composer who successfully took Bach as a model. Less easy to discern was the influence of Britten’s cello fugues, as suggested by Hutton; the blustery Fuga-Burletta, second movement, rather suggested Bach to me. Again, the genial musicality and the engaging scraps of melody that seemed to evolve one to another; the sober Sarabanda, and the rhythmically riotous Giga avoided anything that might alienate a mainstream listener. The music was imaginative, spontaneous in feeling, elegantly composed; and persuasively played.

Corigliano
The last item was something of a playful offering, from the many-sided John Corigliano (best known I suppose as composer of The Ghosts of Versailles, for the Metropolitan Opera, New York). His piece was called Fancy on a Bach Air; in fact, the Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations.  It was characterised by long-breathed melodic ideas as well as very large intervals that, strangely, taxed Hutton’s intonation ever-so-slightly. Yet it was splendidly played, a fine way to end this successful, generally not too challenging, though unusual recital.

Further programme material from Christopher Hutton

Christopher Hutton had supplied interesting backgound notes to Wellington Chamber Music for incorporation into their printed programme.  Space constraints prevented most of the text from being used.

They are reproduced below as they deal interestingly with each of the pieces played. I should add that I refrained from reading them till I had written my review in order not to be influenced by words not available to the audience on the day; naturally, there are certain things that do not perhaps line up with my own impressions of the music. So be it.

Lindis Taylor

Today’s program juxtaposes music from J.S. Bach’s much beloved Suites for Unaccompanied Violoncello with music by later composers who were influenced or inspired by Bach’s music.

As hard as it may be to imagine, J.S. Bach was not widely known as a composer when he wrote his cello suites almost 300 years ago, and as famous as he is now, there is plenty we do not know about the genesis of this music. We do know they were written in Cöthen between 1717-1720. It is uncertain who exactly might have first performed them, but they may have been intended to impress his employer Prince Leopold who was an enthusiast of the Viola da Gamba. Bach surely never intended this music to be used for actual dancing but he knew that his contemporaries enjoyed dance music so much that dance styles were commonly integrated into instrumental music written purely for amusement.

This meant that Bach could readily draw upon firmly conventionalized styles with meters and figuration specific to each kind of dance. As such, each suite consists of an introductory prelude followed by a series of five dances, always appearing in the same order: Allemande (moderate-tempo in 4/4 time), Courante (quicker, in 3/4 time), Sarabande (slow and stately in 3/4, often with a particular emphasis on the second beat), and Gigue (fast, with triple rather than duple rhythmic subdivisions). Between the Sarabande and Gigue each suite has a pair of short dances called Galanteries: Minuets in the first and second suites (moderately quick, 3/4); Bourées in the third and fourth suites (quicker, in 3/4), and Gavottes in the fifth and sixth (relatively quick, in 4/4 time). All seven of these dance styles have their roots in courtly dances that had become standardized in France in the late seventeenth century, and although by 1720 the French court had moved on to newer dances, the older styles were still common in other countries.

Because a performance of all six suites lasts well over two hours, today’s program begins with a “Suite Sampler”, presenting one movement from each of Bach’s Suites, each in a different key. By combining movements from multiple suites one can get an impression of the musical affect of each suite and of the variety of different movements contained within, perhaps whetting listeners’ appetites to seek out the set of six suites as a whole. This set begins with the Prelude of the first, G major Suite, which is almost certainly the single most famous movement of solo cello music ever written. It is remarkably simple, a series of arpeggiated chords that modulate through a number of keys before settling on the dominant (fifth scale degree).

Resolution back to tonic is inevitable, but is withheld. The tension inherent in that delayed gratification builds until the chords of the opening measures return in a cathartic moment of rapture. This is followed by the usual series of dances with the contrasts between each style heightened by the different keys and character reflective of each suite: the introspective Allemande in D minor, the fleet-footed Courante from the sunny C-major suite, the melancholy and extraordinarily sparse Sarabande from the C minor suite, the playful Bourées from the otherwise grandiose E-flat Suite, wrapped up with the brilliant and thrilling Gigue of the D major suite.

Though the cello rose to prominence as a solo instrument in the nineteenth century and cellist-composers wrote for unaccompanied cello, this music has generally not become a part of the modern cellist’s canon. The first solo cello works to have attained the status as standard repertoire were three suites composed by Max Reger (1873-1916) almost two-hundred years after Bach’s suites. Though written in 1914, after Schoenberg’s early forays into atonality and Stravinsky’s landmark Rite of Spring, Reger’s suites are deeply rooted in the richly chromatic tonal harmonies of the Romantic era. Each of Reger’s suites is dedicated to a leading cellist of the day: Julius Klengel (1859-1933), Paul Grümmer (1879-1965), and Hugo Becker (1863-1941). These names are likely unfamiliar to general audiences, but are well-known to cellists as composers of etudes and other music, and editors of music including Bach’s suites – versions of which are still in print from each of these cellists!

The G-major Suite, Op. 131c No. 1, opens with a running sixteenth-note (semiquaver) figuration instantly recognizable as relating to Bach’s prelude in the same key. In Reger’s case, however, the range is greatly expanded, and the simplicity of Bach’s model gives way to much more extroverted virtuosity. This opening movement is followed by an Adagio that is not clearly based on any specific movement by Bach, but combines extended passages of double-stops (common to many of Bach’s Sarabande movements) with intricate, quickly-moving scales. Bach only wrote one movement for solo cello that one might call a fugue (in the prelude to the fifth suite), but he wrote movements titled “Fuga” in each of his three sonatas for solo violin. Writing a fugue for a solo instrument is a challenge, but in the finale of his suite Reger (like Bach before him) uses a relatively simple subject that permits the layering of the theme over (or under) other voices. While not the same as one of the four-part masterpieces of the Well-Tempered Clavier or a fugue for organ, the technique is remarkably effective.

Like Reger, Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) wrote three suites for solo cello, though in this case not as a set, but rather among a series of five works written between 1960 and 1974 for and dedicated to the Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007). The first suite was written in 1964 and premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1965. Inspired by Rostropovich’s playing of Bach suites rather than Bach’s music itself, it still has movements that clearly echo Bach. Both the Canto which recurs in different guises throughout the Suite (much like the Promenade of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition) and the Lamento relate quite strongly to Bach’s Sarabande in C minor in the way they explore the dissonant interval of a half-step (semitone). The Fuga channels the contrapuntal writing of Bach’s fugues, and here Britten comes up with the ingenious idea of including silences in his theme which allows him more leeway in giving the impression of multiple voices (allowing voices in other registers to fill in the gaps).

Rather than imitate the typical kinds of dance movements found in a Baroque suite, the later movements are distinctly Britten. The serenade is played pizzicato throughout, with strings plucked by both the left and right hands. The sarcastic march (perhaps echoing Shostakovich, another composer who collaborated with Rostropovich) has trumpet and drum effects which gradually draw closer and then further away. The fifth movement, Bordone, alternates between higher, scurrying themes played with the bow contrasted with lower and slower notes plucked by the left hand, all layered with a sustained drone D. Later in the movement the quick motive dissolves into the drone itself which then accompanies a plaintive melody first above and then below. In the finale Moto perpetuo the scurrying theme of the Bordone is further developed, culminating in a return of the Canto refrain. The Canto that has been haunting the suite is finally exorcised and at the end of the movement the last note is a dyad of the dissonant half-step of F# and G which resolves to G alone as the open string rings longer. The piece is a real tour-de-force both of composition and as a showcase for the abundant talent of its dedicatee.

The remaining works on this program were all composed within a span of two years (1994-96), and coincidentally were all written by composers born in the same year (1938).

William Bolcom adapted his Solo Suite No. 1 in C minor from his score for Arthur Miller’s play Broken Glass. Like most of Bolcom’s cello works, it was written for the cellist Norman Fischer who now teaches at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The Prelude is a brusque and angular march with percussive effects. That contrasts greatly with the playful third-movement Badinerie. “Badinerie” is a relatively obscure French term that might best be translated to the more commonly used Italian term “scherzo” (joke), and is a title that Bach used in the finale of his second orchestral suite. The final movement of Bolcom’s suite, titled “Alla sarabanda” is a direct homage to Bach with a recomposed version of Bach’s C minor Sarabande
followed by a series of five increasingly technical variations, and followed by a reprise of the theme.

John Harbison’s Suite for Solo Cello is set in four movements, very much in the form of Bach’s Sonatas for solo violin (written around the same time as the cello suites). It begins with a rhapsodic, improvisatory Preludio followed by a Fuga-Burletta which is – as suggested by its title – a comic fugue. It has similarities to the fugues in first suites of both Britten (with its use of silences in the subject) and Reger (with voices layered into double- and later triple-stopped chords). The brief Sarabanda updates Bach’s Sarabandes with 20th-century harmonies, while the Giga (Gigue) finale is a rip-roaring moto-perpetuo inspired by some of Bach’s cello gigues (notably that of the fourth cello suite) and the fast finales of his violin sonatas and partitas.

John Corigliano’s “Fancy on a Bach Air” is an introspective single-movement piece inspired not by any cello music, but rather the Aria of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for harpsichord. It was written in memory of one Robert Goldberg who had commissioned a number of composers to write a series of variations for the 25th anniversary of his wedding to his wife Judy. The set of pieces was to be performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, but before the commission could be fulfilled Robert died of cancer leaving the variations to stand in memorium rather than their original, celebratory purpose. The long-breathed phrases of Bach’s original air are imitated here in long, legato lines, written without notated rhythms to suggest a sense of freedom. It seems an appropriate way to bring this program to a close.

For more information go to ReflectingBACH.com

Interesting organ programme from Tom Chatterton at St James, Lower Hutt

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St James Sunday Organ Recital Series 2017
(St. James’s Church and Wellington Organists Association)

Tom Chatterton (organ)

Elgar: Imperial March (arr. G. Martin)
J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 547
Mozart: Adagio from Serenade no.10 in B flat, “Gran Partita” K.361 (arr. Tom Chatterton)
J.S. Bach: ‘Komm Heiliger Geist’, BWV 651
Londonderry Air, arr. J. Stewart Martin
Vierne: Allegro first movement from 2nd Organ Symphony
Purcell: ‘When I am laid in earth’ (arr. Martin Setchell)
Jehan Alain: Litanies

St. James Church, Lower Hutt

Sunday 28 May 2017, 3pm

Tom Chatterton, a fairly recent arrival from Britain (where he attended Uppingham School, where Professor Peter Godfrey taught before coming to New Zealand), was heard by upwards of 40 people, on the impressive three-manual organ.  His mixing of shorter, more lyrical pieces between longer, more serious ones was good programming.  It was a shame that the Bach Prelude and Fugue was a substitute for Toccata in C, BWV 564 (i), a brilliant work I am particularly fond of, and the Vierne for Bach’s Concerto in A minor BWV 593 based on Vivaldi.  The organist explained that lack of sleep occasioned by his young daughter’s teething necessitated the changes.  However, no loss of technical ability was apparent in the works he played.

Chatterton’s introductions to pairs of pieces were informative, genial, and easily heard.  He introduced the Elgar as being bombastic – but the opening wasn’t, and elsewhere I found it lacking in this characteristic also.  I did wonder if moving the console into a central position on the platform (rather than being on the side, where it sits for church services) meant the organist was hearing the pipes more strongly than the audience was.  However, I did not find this effect in any of the later pieces. However,  in this one I did find the arrangement of the orchestral piece rather restrained for an Imperial March, much of the time.

The Bach Prelude and Fugue was very clear; each part could be distinctly heard, the notes being detached, but not too much.

The Mozart arrangement was interesting, calm and peaceful – but I must admit to preferring the original!

The Bach chorale prelude was a very sprightly one, played presto, its unstoppable momentum employing reeds, had pedals intoning the chorale melody underneath throughout.  It was a masterly performance.

The Londonderry Air worked well as ‘something completely different’.  Lovely flutes with plenty of ‘chuff’ were used to open the piece; later, plenty of variety of registration was used to enhance this beautiful air.

The Vierne movement opened spikily, then there followed passages for full diapason organ; loud episodes were followed in turn by episodes that sounded to me as if rather too great a mixture of stops of different tonal qualities were being employed.  It is a very inventive work (written in 1902), using all three manuals and pedals, with much variation of registration.

Purcell’s beautiful aria gave another quiet interlude.  This was an excellent arrangement, and made a very effective contrast to its predecessor.  It is interesting that arrangements of orchestral and vocal pieces seem to have returned recently to the organist’s palette; for a long time they were frowned on as Victorian and Edwardian excesses not needed in these days of orchestral concerts and recordings; organists should stick to what David Briggs described in a broadcast from Auckland played on RNZ the previous day as ‘indigenous’ organ music (he didn’t).

The final work was the only one to have some notes in the printed programme – without mentioning the composer’s famous organist sister, Marie-Claire Alain, who visited New Zealand.  The plain chant-style opening melody returned frequently sustained through many variations, changes of registration and harmonic shifts.  It was always interesting and at times, arresting.

The whole made up to a varied and pleasing concert.