Unusual trios for contrasted groups, influenced disparately by viola d’amore and the Holocaust

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music of Sorrow and Love
Archi d’amore Zelanda and the Terezin Trio

Archi d’amore Zelanda (Donald Maurice – viola d’amore, Jane Curry – guitar, Emma Goodbehere – cello)
Michael Williams: Suite per antichi archi
Boris Pigovat: Strings of Love (2016)

Terezin Trio (Katherine McIndoe – soprano, Reuben Chin – alto saxophone, Heather Easting – piano)
Ellwood Derr: I never saw another butterfly

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 18 May, 12:15 pm

This lunchtime concert combined two young chamber groups in music that touched on tragic themes and conditions of the heart, physical and emotional. Perhaps they were to be seen as metaphysically linked.

We have heard several performances by Donald Maurice’s Archi d’amore Zelanda; the last let us hear both the viola d’amore and the modern viola; in fact the last outing was just a fortnight ago, as part of an octet playing Vivaldi.

Today, they played two pieces commissioned by them and which will have their ‘world premieres’ in a forthcoming trip to Poland where they will play at the Europejskiego Centrum Muzyki Krzysztofa Pendereckiego w Lusławicach (or European Center for Music, Krzysztof Pendercki, Lusławice), a small town east of Krakow. Check it out on the Internet.

It is an important cultural centre with origins as an intellectual and artistic centre in the 17th century. It is not far from Penderecki’s birthplace, and the composer bought the old manor in 1976 and restored it to create a music centre, with a beautiful contemporary building opened in 2013.

The Trio will also give concerts in Krakow and Warsaw.

Michael Williams
Suite per antichi archi was commissioned from Hamilton composer Michael Williams.

His piece touched on the heart, and its first movement was named for the heart condition, ‘Arrhythmia’, an obtuse reference to music with varying rhythms. For the first few minutes all three instruments were plucked, rhythmically though in varying bar-lengths; then viola d’amore and cello returned to bowing. The music might not have been too complex or academic, but it was attractive, untroubled. The second movement, Cavatina, was slower and elegiac, with much attention to the lower strings of all three instruments; there was a hint of Spanish music guitar of the 17th or 18th centuries (Hopkinson Smith’s concerts at the 2014 Festival stimulated my interest in and enjoyment of it). The third movement was a fugue, with the bowed instruments used mainly in that way, gaining speed subtly as the mood lightened and became dance-like, though remaining in an antique mode.

Boris Pigovat
Boris Pigovat and Donald Maurice have formed a partnership/friendship since the composer wrote a Holocaust Requiem in 1995, with an obbligato viola for Maurice, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nazis’ atrocity, Kristallnacht. Atoll Records recorded it by the Wellington Orchestra under Taddei with Maurice as violist.

The latest fruit of that association is Pigovat’s Strings of Love.

Because I hadn’t heard very much of what the musicians said about the music, I asked Donald Maurice for some help and he gave me the following about this piece.

“Much of [Pigovat’s] music since [the Requiem] is reminiscent of those ideas [in the Requiem], in particular in his viola sonata, and in this new piece, Strings of Love, there are similar ideas to the ‘Lux Aeterna’ from the Requiem. It also includes a clear quotation of the nursery lullaby ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby, on the Tree Top’. This poem was believed to have been written by a pilgrim who travelled on the Mayflower and it was a comment on the way the American Indians rocked their babies to sleep by hanging their bassinets off tree branches. This observation about the significance of the theme in the trio is my own, not from Boris!”

So there was dreamy quality in the viola and cello in the opening part, then a kind of a popular tune, with perhaps the influence of a guitar, though the viola dominated the melody. The mood lightens and the tempo increases towards the end. Both the music’s intention and its performance were of attractive clarity and should help create a nice repertoire for the innovative combination of viola d’amore, cello and guitar which, judging by the sort of music they inspire, evokes feeling that relate Renaissance or Baroque sensibility to contemporary musical values and social issues.

Ellwood Derr
I never saw another butterfly was written in 1966 around poems written by children in the terrible concentration camp at Terezin in Czechoslovakia. So it has an affinity with the much later written Third Symphony of Gorecki.

It’s composed for a trio, appropriately entitled Terezin: soprano, alto saxophone and piano. Soprano Katherine McIndoe has, in only a couple of years, established an attractive record in competitions and small opera performances, such as with Days Bay Opera. It’s a strong voice with a keen-edged vibrato that might need watching in years to come, but which showed admirable accuracy in the early quasi-atonal music and an air of electrified fear in the section so marked. Her spoken words came almost as a shock.

Reuben Chin’s contribution on the alto saxophone too, was most accomplished: twittering and bird-like (rather than simulating a butterfly) in the Prologue; while the calm, Debussyish, accepting spirit of ‘The Garden’ hardly disguised the underlying hopeless grief that is embedded in the music. Throughout, Heather Easting’s piano lent expressive and sympathetic backing, often rather dominating the scene as near the end of the fourth section, marked ‘Fear’.

I had hesitated about coming to this concert, thinking one of my colleagues was to review it, but was engrossed by both these unfamiliar trio ensembles right from the start.

 

Bach Choir offers rewarding looks into Purcell, Mozart and later English music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Choir of Wellington conducted by Peter de Blois, with Douglas Mews – organ

Soloists: Sharon Yearsley, Maaike Christie-Beekman, James Young (replaced by the conductor), Simon Christie and Chris Buckland – soprano saxophone

Purcell: Te Deum Laudamus and Jubilate Deo, Mozart: Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339; James Whitbourn: Son of God Mass; Parry: Hear my words, ye people

Church of St Peter, Willis Street

Sunday 15 May, 3 pm

This concert had been scheduled for Saturday 16 April but, as explained by conductor Peter de Blois, there was an organ problem which required an organ transplant (probably a hoary one for organists).

De Blois also announced another change; the tenor was indisposed and so his place was taken by the conductor who happened, fortuitously, to be vocally equipped in a suitable way.

Purcell’s Te Deum Laudamus and Jubilate Deo
The earlier music came in the first half: two of Purcell’s last church compositions, written a year before his death in 1795, at the ripe Mozart and Bizet age of 35 or 36 (depending on what dates you observe for Purcell). The Te Deum Laudate and Jubilate Deo are often linked: Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate follow the same model.

The Te Deum was composed with orchestral accompaniment and, though I didn’t know that at the concert, I made unappreciative comments about the organ registrations in my notes; though I conceded that the contrast with the choral singing was ‘interesting’. Oh for accompaniment by brilliant trumpets and strings, something that one yearned for in the Mozart too!

Bass Simon Christie opened the singing strongly and confidently and mezzo (listed as ‘alto’) Maaike Christie-Beekman followed with rather impressive handling of the highly decorated melismatas from the verse ‘ The glorious company…’. Though the choir’s singing was generally well integrated and accurate, the entry of three soloists at ‘To thee all angels cry aloud’ introduced a rather more polished element; particular musical were the soprano-alto duet episodes, and the solo contributions from soprano Sharon Yearsley, and when De Blois’s tenor parts arrived they were perfectly comfortable.

One of the most affecting episodes was Christie-Beekman’s ‘Vouchsafe O Lord…’.

The Jubilate Deo is set to more lively music, with well-balanced choral singing; Douglas Mews’s organ playing was sympathetic. Again, Maaike Christie-Beekman’s voice proved splendidly appropriate to the music, tripping through the quick dotted rhythms, and again there was charming soprano-alto duetting. Another interesting duet was between the alto and bass where the bass had the melody much of the time, though pitched lower.

Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339
Mozart’s Solemn Vespers fulfilled my linguistic preference for Latin (Purcell’s setting was in English). It’s some time since I heard the entire work, his last for Salzburg Cathedral; though the ‘Laudate Dominum’ has the familiarity of a popular opera aria. The soloists are not such a constant presence as in the Purcell, so one paid greater attention to the chorus. After a moment of uncertainty early in the ‘Dixit Dominus’, the choir performed well, with plenty of energy with the momentum of the triple rhythm. It quickly served to remind me of the greatness of this music that seems somehow to be ranked below the Mass in C Minor or the Coronation Mass or of course the Requiem; with little justification.

The ‘Confitebor’ offered fine opportunities for the soloists, with short episodes for the two men which sounded very well. The four soloists in the ‘Beatus Vir’ enjoyed a striking moment, from ‘Gloria et divitiae..’ and again at ‘Jucundus homo’, singing through the verse one by one, sort of in canon. And the soprano here sounded especially practised and polished.

They did well in the fugal ‘Laudate Pueri’, with inflections that seemed to show meaning of the words. And the drop in dynamics as they entered the final verses, ‘Gloria patri et filio..’ found dramatic qualities in the language of the Psalm (113), which always raises Mozart’s liturgical music above the merely religious. The ‘Laudate Dominum’, of course, offered Yearsley an arresting solo opportunity; and it’s not without lovely choral episodes. Heard in the context of the six parts of the Vespers service, the ‘Laudate Dominum’ does not really stand out in isolation from the marvellous music in all parts of the work.

The last section, the ‘Magnificat’, ranks with other great settings of that text and the choir did it energetic justice, with a final gathering of splendid solo forces; and bold choral singing, though once again, high trumpets and pulsing strings were missed, in spite of Douglas Mews’s very creditable efforts on the organ.

James Whitbourn: Son of God Mass
It was a good idea to separate Parry from Mozart with a piece written in the 21st century. Whitbourn’s Son of God Mass, written in 2001 for a BBC documentary, employed an obbligato soprano saxophone, in the hands of Chris Buckland, and it’s actually scored for organ accompaniment. So the organ part, presumably with detailed registrations, was interesting in the fabric of the singing. Much of the organ part was comfortably low pitched, better integrated with the voices. As a quote from the review of a recording remarks, comparisons with Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble are inevitable, though not invidious. Not all the Mass is used.

It’s melodic in an unapologetic way, the music is varied in articulation and dynamics, speed and rhythms, and the saxophone does unusual, somewhat spiritual things. It uttered a loud cry at ‘Domine fili unigenite’ and remained at hand through the start of the ‘Credo’, where the words were pronounced slowly and deliberately.

The choral parts are not too challenging, yet there were plenty of opportunities for dramatic outbursts: the ‘Hosanna in excelsis’ provided an obvious occasion for a bit of ecstasy. The final Amen ended with voices and saxophone way up high. An attractive and successful piece.

Parry’s Verse Anthem
Returning to Parry, Hear my words, ye people was written in 1894 for a diocesan choral festival at Salisbury Cathedral, to be sung by combined parish church choirs, so it’s not too hard. But the parts for soprano bass, and the organ are more taxing. It might be for that reason that I had the feeling that the organ was not always on the same page (excuse the popular cliché) as the choir.

I also felt that this music, conceived for the huge space of an English cathedral, called for a generous acoustic that would wind the sounds around the side aisles and up into the vaulted ceiling before returning to human ears in the nave in careful confusion. Minor choral weaknesses could be disguised and the impact enhanced, to suggest more of a colourful and grand religious, even spiritual, ritual. All four soloists had happy moments in the limelight; the bass enjoyed quite a dramatic experience, though it went a bit low for his comfort at one point.

The main weakness for me was the descent in the last phase, to a very ordinary hymn, O praise ye the Lord, that sounds just like the thousand other hymns sung in Anglican and other protestant churches around the world.

Yet in many ways, this work represents much that was excellent in English 19th century music, and from the 21st century perspective, it can be judged more generously than ‘Parry and Stanford’ were by many critics and audiences of the mid 20th century. We are probably seeing a timely revision of these attitudes.

Marvellous programme of string sextets from Amici Ensemble and Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier
Amici Ensemble
(Wellington Chamber Music Trust)Anthony Ritchie: Ants: Sextet for Strings, Op.185
Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence, Op.70
Brahms: Sextet in G, Op.36

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 15 May 2016, 3.00pm

It is heartening and impressive to see that a New Zealand composer has written 185 opus numbers and indeed, as I write, Anthony Ritchie’s flute concerto is being broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert. His Sextet was commissioned this year by Christopher Marshall for the Amici Ensemble. This work is apparently a follow-on from his octet, appropriately named ‘Octopus’. Taking the first syllable of the new work’s grouping might have been dangerous, so instead we have the first syllable of the composer’s name.

The movements are titled ‘Hatchling’ (or as in the heading to the programme note, ‘Hatching’), ‘Working’, ‘Anteater’, ‘Self-impaling’ and ‘Survival’. These occasioned a certain amount of joking between my neighbour at the concert and me; especially the second to last movement title; at my home the ants self-impale in the electric socket over the bench. My neighbour (and reviewing colleague) thought that this was obviously working as a means of pest control. However, the music proved that even ants can be inspiring.

All the players are members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: Donald Armstrong and Malavika Gopal (violins), Julia Joyce and Andrew Thomson (violas) and Andrew Joyce and Ken Ichinose (cellos).

The five movements of the sextet were played without a break, and it was not always easy to tell where they changed. The pentatonic opening created a delightful mood, contrasting busyness with a spacious feeling from the first violin especially, displaying the very skilled string writing that characterised the whole work. There was much rhythmic drive and energy; pizzicato and sul ponticello (playing close to the bridge) techniques were utilised. In both first and last movements there were sections of a moto perpetuo character. Other motifs and diversity of rhythms revealed a variety of qualities. The whole was accomplished, enjoyable, expressive, and fun.

At the conclusion of the Tchaikovsky work, my neighbour remarked that it seemed almost orchestral in nature; my reply was that the recording I have is indeed played by a string orchestra (22 players). Nevertheless, it was rewarding to hear Souvenir de Florence played in its original form, though the quality, animation and volume of sound achieved by these players, in the fine acoustics of St. Andrew’s, made it hard to realise at times that we were hearing a sextet and not a string orchestra. It was wonderfully rich and sonorous playing.

The allegro con spirito first movement lived up to its designation, right from its passionate opening. It was both dynamic and exciting, alternating with lush moments played with complete unanimity. There were insistent motifs and rhythms. The slow second movement was, as Donald Armstrong told the audience in his introductory remarks, more Italian in character than were the other movements. Some of the music was enchanting, with gorgeous melodies, and a long, bewitching passage of luscious, grandiose, incisive chords, as in a choral composition; they sent shivers down my spine. The superb cello playing of Andrew Joyce in a solo melody exemplified again what many of us heard on a bigger stage on Friday evening when he played the beautiful cello solo in Brahms’s second piano concerto – and again in a solo passage in Shostakovich’s first symphony.

The third movement is shorter and lighter in tone, but not without energy and vivacity, especially in passages of folk-inspired tunes, and echoes of the previous movement. It ends quietly. The allegro finale should have had us dancing in the aisles, such was the animation and rhythmic vitality of the music. The fullness of tone was always impressive. As the excellent programme note by Julie Coulson ended “The movement concludes in a frenetic, headlong rush that leaves no doubt of Tchaikovsky’s sense of triumph.” In which he was quite justified.

I have hunted in vain for the programme of an early evening concert from those distant, halcyon days when there were many classical concerts in the International Festival of the Arts. The Sextets of Brahms, which were new to me, were played by an ensemble led by Carl Pini, at that time based in Christchurch. What I did discover, though, was that in the 1992 Festival there were, in addition to the New Zealand String Quartet, three string quartets visiting from overseas for the Festival! What a plethora of fine music we had in those Festivals! Concerts were well attended, I recall.

As the programme note stated, the first movement wavers between two tonalities, a feature typical of Brahms – it occurred in the 2nd piano concerto played on Friday, and in a number of his motets and other choral pieces. Soon there is a bold melody from the cello, soon repeated, that reminded me of some of his lovely lieder. This was followed by a violin melody, and wistful interchanges between the instruments. More fine melodies later made the whole a very satisfying movement.

The scherzo second movement produced long, winding passages that had a mysterious quality, apart from the jocular presto trio section, which was more like a gipsy dance, with much pizzicato backing it. The slow movement again did not quickly reveal its tonal home. Again, pizzicato ornamented the melodies, lessening the solemnity somewhat. The tempo and spirit livened up for a time, before lapsing back into pensive mood, with its undulating phrases and rhythms.

The finale restored life, colour and sparkle. Once more, there were dynamic solo passages for the cello. Comparisons are unfair, but… compared with Tchaikovsky, Brahms shows plenty of inventiveness, in a less exuberant style; the exciting ending perhaps gave the lie to that remark.

It was marvellous to hear these works from outside the standard chamber music repertoire. The three substantial works brought out uniformly excellent playing from the ensemble. The concert was being recorded by Radio New Zealand Concert, so we may look forward to hearing it again, via radio.

 

From nothing, whole worlds – Circa Theatre’s 40th Birthday production of King Lear

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Circa Theatre presents:
William Shakespeare’s KING LEAR

Director: Michael Hurst
Set and Lighting: Andrew Foster
Costumes: Gillie Coxill
Music and Sound: Jason Smith
Producer: Carolyn Henwood

Cast:
King Lear – Ray Henwood
Earl of Gloucester – Ken Blackburn
Goneril – Carmel McGlone
Regan – Claire Waldron
Cordelia – Neenah Dekkers-Reihana
Fool – Gavin Rutherford
Duke of Kent – Stephen Papps
Edmund – Guy Langford
Edgar – Andrew Paterson
Duke of Albany – Todd Rippon
Duke of Cornwall – Peter Hambleton
Oswald – Nick Dunbar

With: Alex Halstead, Callum McSorley, Charlotte Cook, Connor McNabb, Hailey Ibold,
Jamie Wallace-Thexton, Jordan Murphy, Kelly Willis-Pine, Monica Reid, Morgan Hopkins,
Olivia Fox and Samantha Geraghty

Circa Theatre, Wellington

Saturday 14th May, 2016

Shakespeare got his “King Lear” story from an early chronicler, Holinshed, (who had in turn got it from an earlier source). As well as this there had been an anonymous stage adaptation of the story “doing the rounds” and performed in London about ten years before Shakespeare’s play appeared. Both of these told the story of the semi-legendary Leir of Britain and his three daughters Gonorilla/Gonerill, Regan/Ragan and Cordeilla/Cordella. In both Holinshed’s version and the anonymous play, there is a happy ending, with the aged king reinstated on the British throne by his daughter Cordelia’s arrival with her husband the King of France’s troops to defeat the armies of the traitorous dukes of Albany and Cornwall.

Shakespeare’s dramatisation, with its bleaker denouement to the story held the stage until the Puritans closed down all the theatres in 1642. With the Restoration theatres were reopened, but a new generation of playgoers found the uncompromising tragedy of the Bard’s Lear too much to stomach – this  encouraged the Poet Laureate of the age Nahum Tate to rewrite the play along the ”happy ending” lines of the earlier versions. It wasn’t until over a century later that the great actor Edmund Kean reinstated Shakespeare’s tragic end to the drama – and even then the battle for fidelity’s sake continued to be fought well into the first half of the twentieth century over heavily cut scripts, and reducing or taking out supporting roles by various managers, directors or actors themselves, wanting to emphasize the role of the eponymous leading character.

Today, people responsible for productions pride themselves upon up-to-the-minute historical research and textual fidelity, even if there’s an equally compulsive desire on the part of directors to update the context of the play’s action, ostensibly for purposes of better connecting with modern audiences. It seems that British comedian Michael Flanders’ throwaway line during the course of his and Donald Swann’s revue “At the Drop of a Hat” concerning a dissertation on Tudor England theatrical performance – “Anything to stop it being done straight!” has become true of most present-day performances of theatrical and operatic classics.

Stage traditionalists must feel as though they get a hard time of it these days, but they can take heart from the pleasure and satisfaction to be had when encountering updated productions whose creators and organizers know what they’re about. So it was on Saturday night at Circa Theatre with director Michael Hurst’s production of Lear, which seemed to me to be securely grounded in its own “time”, the ambience suggesting the Second World War era, and the context one of military conflict. Once the frisson of encountering the update’s impact at the play’s very beginning – a shadowy, almost “film noir” scenario featuring people furtively smoking and soldiers with guns checking the environs in a “put that light out” kind of way – had been squared up to, and the King and his court been introduced to us in their gloriously-arrayed mixture of 1940s military and civilian clothes, we settled down to listening “past” our visual realignments and into the heart of the business, contained of course in the language and its interchanges.

Lear’s court resembled a smartly-run consortium’s board-room, one involving both military and civilian personnel. And there, in the commanding personage of Ray Henwood was the king himself, autocratic and imperious, walking with a stick, and wielding it with complete authority. His daughters and their respective entourages awaited the King’s pleasure, Goneril and Regan, the two eldest, seeming to anticipate the demand that they declare absolute and unequivocal love to their father. The elder sisters spoke in reply first, Carmel McGlone’s Goneril honeyed of voice, beautifully modulated and completely without spontaneity, and Claire Waldron’s Regan fulsomely sing-song but mechanical, and sounding increasingly like clockwork as she proceeded – both declaring their actual feelings and intentions as clearly to all excepting their father as if they had spoken their thoughts out loud.

A marked contrast came with Lear’s questioning of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, portrayed with youthful wholeheartedness by Neenah Dekkers-Reihana, her sincerity palpable and vulnerable in manner, but steady and unswerving in effect, engendering shock among allies and antagonists alike – the King’s anger was perfectly in context with his disappointment at Cordelia’s “Nothing” answer and his “Nothing will come of nothing” warning reply. The reaction to all of this of Lear’s uniformed right-hand man, the Duke of Kent (played by Stephen Papps) I found a bit puffy and blustery of manner at first, but once his defence of Cordelia in front of Lear had earned him his banishment, and occasioned his return in disguise to continue serving his master, I thought the actor’s portrayal as a loyal retainer deeply moving, rich in truth and honesty.

Articulating his “stand up for bastards” speech while having his way on an office desktop with some acquiescent “temp” girl, was something of a virtuosic theatrical feat on the part of Guy Langford, playing the role of Edmund, illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, a loyal friend of Lear’s. Very much the young rake on the make, Edmund racily and almost engagingly outlined for us his scheme to undermine his half-brother’s legitimacy in his father’s eyes, and wheedle his way into favour with either (or both) Goneril and Regan. He made the most of his “heavenly portents” speech before convincing his brother Edgar that the latter had incurred their father’s displeasure, and that he (Edgar) had better go and hide out until further notice. I liked how Edgar (played by Andrew Paterson) convincingly presented a more rough-hewn, less “courtier’d” manner than his half-brother, credible in his despair at his father’s anger, and his bewilderment regarding what he might do to right the alleged wrong.

Edgar’s course, to take refuge in the countryside as a beggar, brought him into direct contact with the estranged Lear and his Fool (the latter a virtuoso portrayal by Gavin Rutherford of one of literature’s most powerful archetypes, the wise jester – more of him below….) at the height of a storm. In some of the most visceral language ever accorded the elements by any storyteller or poet, the words became stinging, biting, oak-cleaving cataracts and hurricanes. All of this was superbly and variedly detailed by Henwood, his character’s troubled place in the cosmos transfixed at that moment by a squared volume of rain-spattered light mid-stage, drawing our focus into the square and similarly flailing our own sensibilities – a most telling piece of interpretation and production. Having been then directed by the solicitous Kent to a hovel, Lear encountered Edgar, disguised as “Poor Tom”. Andrew Paterson’s portrayal forcibly put across the character’s deranged quality with heightened volume and dramatic gesture. Though much of his diatribe couldn’t be deciphered, his piteous sotto-voce asides kept the character’s purpose clear for us amid all the bluster.

So to Gavin Rutherford’s Fool, something of a “Billy-Bunter in an airman’s cap” Fool, but obviously a force to be reckoned with, a presence off whom Lear’s own words bounced and faltered, as when the king responded to the banter about making something from nothing with a hollow-sounding and throat-catching “Nothing can be made out of…….” And how tellingly was the Fool’s “old before thy time” jibe underscored with just enough music of derangement as to indicate Lear’s unnerving by his own fears, with “Keep me in temper! – I would not be mad!” Throughout, the characterizations of each of the actors made me more aware than ever of how both the Fool and Kent tried to protect and safeguard their lord and master, Kent from his enemies without and the Fool from Lear’s own foibles within.

As for Ken Blackburn’s playing of Gloucester, the portrayal graciously and naturally conveyed the character’s one-dimensional amiability right at the outset, along with a comprehensive lack of insight into either of his sons’ true mettle. This obtuseness led to his downfall at the hands of ruthless ambition – and only in the wake of his savage blinding by both Regan and her husband Cornwall in revenge for his continued support of the king, did the first glimmerings of truth begin to shine for him from within. The blood-drenched beginning of this process brought us into direct contact with Peter Hambleton’s single-minded depiction of Cornwall’s ugly thrust towards power, and, even more disturbingly, Regan’s naked blood-lust, Claire Waldron here most viscerally and repellently conveying her delight at Gloucester’s disfigurement. Less overtly but as slyly evil was Nick Dunbar’s beautifully-crafted Oswald, ostensibly a tool of his mistress Goneril’s machinations, his impulses at her beck and call, his manner as pragmatic as any soldier of fortune.

Small wonder, then, that Gloucester’s subsequent wanderings with his son Edgar (disguised as a beggar and becoming his father’s unidentified protector) evoked such pity and even (after his abortive suicide attempt) an almost sacramental transfiguration into a martyr-like figure, one who had paid a price for his understanding of things and for his short-lived reunitement with the child who truly loved him. His coming-together with the crazed Lear on the heath was a moment of sweetness amid the carnage, a briefly applied balm of shared understanding, here, with the flower-bedecked Lear embracing the blinded and blood-drenched figure of Gloucester, their theatrical duet beautifully voiced by both Henwood and Blackburn, a moment for the ages.

With the other treacherous sister, Goneril, and her husband Albany (Todd Rippon subtly and effectively  signalling his ambivalence as a conspirator in the scheme of things, perhaps, like his father-in-law, a man more sinned against, etc….), their dissolution seemed partly wrought by the former’s long-standing marital dissatisfaction. How cruelly and unequivocally Shakespeare characterized this with Goneril’s brief Act 4 tryst with the free-wheeling Edmund, complete with suggestive body-language and hints of impending mutual delight. As for Carmel McGlone’s transported, almost orgasmic delivery of “O, the difference of man and man!”, it ironically brought the house down, the more effectively so for its sudden, highly-modulated expression! By contrast, I thought Todd Rippon nicely judged Albany’s awakening of his own strength of character, both in the face of his wife’s intention to cuckold and usurp him as a husband through Edmund, and in his rediscovery of a sense of loyalty to his king, leading to those words of his bitterly-wrought understanding at the play’s end – “…speak what we feel, not what we ought to say”’.

Director Michael Hurst’s acute observation in his programme note that Lear “goes too far”, beyond what words can say or do, was conveyed in a myriad ways by this production, by its sheer noise, by its stricken silences, by its insensible furies, by its sardonic humour, by its grim desperations and its blazing illuminations  and by its unspeakable brutalities set against displays of equally unspeakable love. On stage were both experienced actors playing in a sense their own ripened experiences, cheek-by-jowl with various youthful players fronting up to snippets of ideas and concepts which had the potential to change, modify, augment, enrich their own as yet youthful existences – Lear’s doomed yet enduring gesture of union with his daughter Cordelia – “we two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage” spoke for this outlandish theatrical amalgam of old and young as beautifully and deeply as any other quality one might think of.  For Circa and for the people involved in this production it all seemed to this audience member as beautiful and as deep as one might have a right to receive.

Memorable NZSO concert with rising young conductor and acclaimed pianist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gustavo Gimeno with Stephen Hough (piano)

Brahms: Piano concerto No 2 in B flat
Gareth Farr: From the Depths sound the Great Sea Gongs, Part I
Shostakovich: Symphony No 1 in F minor

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 13 May, 6:30 pm

I am sometimes tempted to think that the publicity by the NZSO, which I usually find rather cluttered with over-used superlative clichés, has the unfortunate effect of deadening the impact of those few occasions when something really very special is about to happen. It would have been a pity if constant, indiscriminate hype had numbed discerning concert-goers to an occasion when some extravagant superlatives were warranted.

Nevertheless, the language of the early May press release about tonight’s concert announced a performance by one of our era’s finest pianists, Stephen Hough, and a young Spanish conductor who has been seriously acclaimed in no merely routine manner. Gimeno has been garlanded with praise by very discriminating audiences, orchestras and critics from his 2014 debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and on through the Orchestre National de France, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Dresden Staatskapelle, and others, all in little more than a year. He has just been appointed principal conductor of the Luxembourg Philharmonic; strangely, Bramwell Tovey, last week’s NZSO conductor, was their conductor in the early 2000s.

Brahms’s second piano concerto was placed first in the programme, and so the focus was mainly, as is normal, on the pianist rather than on the conductor, though the grandeur and rapture of the orchestra’s part could not be missed. Of course, that could be put down simply to the fact that our orchestra usually plays like that.

Untypically at that time, apart from Beethoven’s fourth concerto and Schumann’s, Brahms here uses the piano at the start, serenely, with velvety horns, but it’s quickly overtaken by a far more grandly dramatic spirit; and the piano is never absent for very long. The concerto was also a departure from the usual, in the 1880s, having four movements, widely criticised (e.g. ‘an inappropriate attempt to imitate symphonic form’), and in including no cadenzas of a formal sort.

But today, judgements based on such conventions seem tiresome and pedantic. The overwhelming response to the concerto is naturally to the weight, imaginativeness and excitement of the piano part, and that was vividly expressed, but this performance also demonstrated its overwhelmingly symphonic character, to which the pianist was an equal contributor. It fulfilled my own feeling that it is at least the equal of the second symphony and violin concerto before it and rather more weighty than the lyrical third symphony after it.

Stephen Hough’s playing was both meticulous and full of bravura and it was a delight to be able to watch his energetic and balletic playing as well as merely hearing it (I usually don’t bother to seek a seat with a view of the keyboard). It was one of those performances that unfurled just as I envisaged it in that ultimate ‘ideal’ version that takes root in the mind – an amalgam of all the performances you’ve ever heard and that you couldn’t attribute to a particular pianist or orchestra. Hough was responsive to each emotion or gesture, whether subtly lyrical and rhapsodic, or carelessly capricious, enjoying moments of bravura, or dancing with emphatic rhythms – through his hands, not with extravagant arm and body movement.

The orchestra handled the opulent music with arresting rhythmic flexibility, particularly in the scherzo, second movement. For all its weight, the economy of the orchestration is conspicuous, with very few occasions when more than one section, perhaps over a discreet bed of strings, or a soloist – oboe or cello for example – played at a time. Such economy allowed the conductor to exploit big moments the more dramatically.

Gareth Farr’s piece was moved to after the interval. Incidentally, I was not impressed when ushers allowed quite a large number of later-comers to take their seats between movements one and two, some down the front, climbing over people. Let people in by all means, quickly and silently, but insist they remain standing at the back.

Farr’s From the Depths sound the Great Sea Gongs has become one of New Zealand’s most popular orchestral pieces. It’s a showpiece for percussion, with a mesmerising array of rototoms, manned by three percussionists, dominated the stage, rather than actual gongs; so it’s a celebration of the percussion-driven music of various Pacific nations, including Japanese taiko drumming and Bali gamelan. Our Spanish conductor, raised in a musical culture in which strong and exciting rhythms feature largely, sounded totally in control of it. Of course, in contrast to the abstemious Brahms who, as I noted, uses his orchestra fastidiously, in Farr’s even larger, Straussian-sized band, everyone was fully committed: triple winds, five horns and so on. And they made a splendidly exciting, emphatically musical, noise.

In spite of its shameless exuberance, for which the composer would of course make no apology, it’s still real music, and its popularity is properly earned.

Then came one of the most famous first symphonies, up there with Schumann’s, Brahms’s or Mahler’s; and written much younger than any of those. It was written during the early Leninist years of the Revolution, when the relationship between the regime and writers and artists was good and when books and music from abroad were freely available and visits by western European musicians were common.

So touches of Stravinsky and Hindemith and several others ‘progressive’ composers can be heard in this student piece; the influence of Petrushka is strong, particularly in the first two movements. But the word ‘student’ gives entirely the wrong idea of the maturity of the work, which lies in the character of the music itself, and the absence of any hint of ordinary youthful exuberance. Though one could sense his anticipation of a career in which the huge talent of which he was well aware, would flourish and be recognized.

There are many events in the music that one assumes have an emotional meaning, such as the stunning piano chords that bring the second movement to a rude conclusion, seeming to announce an end or a banishment. The Lento that follows seems to draw attention to what some consider at the dominant theme: Death; hardly an expected subject in a first major work by a teenage composer; and Death also commands the last movement, conspicuous in such gestures as the bare timpani eruption, three times repeated. And it might be expunged in part through the anguished and beautiful cello soliloquy.

Gimeno’s view of the work, was both powerful and vivid, seeking clarity of texture, and revealing as much as possible of the characteristics mentioned above. It is permissible to wonder that a conductor who is perhaps no more than a decade older that Shostakovich was at its composition (19), could draw from it such energy and emotional depth, as well as sheer orchestral virtuosity.

This concert, for its pretty big audience, will surely find itself on lists of the most memorable of the year.

 

Beguiling, wide-ranging guitar recital from Owen Moriarty a fine substitute for lunch

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Owen Moriarty – solo guitar

Music by Turina, Nikita Koshkin, Santiago de Murcia, Tarrega and Donal Macnamara

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 11 May, 12:15 pm

As noted in my review of the recital by NZSM guitar students on 20 April, this programme was to have been by the students, while Moriarty would have played on 20 April.

It was well worth the wait. Each of Moriarty’s recitals produces an extraordinary range of music either written or arranged for the guitar, from all eras from the Renaissance to the present. This recital spanned from the early 18th century to about 1980.

First was Turina’s Hommage (sometimes – perhaps in Catalan – Homenaje) a Tarrega. Like the other famous Spanish composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Turina composed few works for guitar; but many of the piano pieces have been transcribed for guitar. He wrote five, this ‘Homage to Tarrega’, being his last for guitar. It has two movements: Garrotin (Catalan for ‘stick’) and Soleares (I guess it has to do either with the sun or being alone). The first a steady-paced piece in common time, the second more flowing and perhaps Andalusian in character.

The amplification worried me a bit at the beginning – it diminished some of the subtlety of the music and its performance, but I stopped noticing quite soon.

Then came the most unusual of guitar pieces, Nikita Koshkin, a prominent Russian composer and guitarist, born in 1956. The Prince’s Toys is evidently one of his most famous pieces, a story paralleling Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges – the tale of a spoilt, cruel young prince who’s nasty to his toys and suffers his retribution. But without the microphone, I caught little of what Moriarty said: there are twelve pieces in the suite.

The three movements that Moriarty played exhibited the surprising and often highly virtuosic range of sounds available to a skilled guitarist, sometimes combining gentle strumming under a more prominent melodic line, involving left hand plucking; surprising quiet passages; tapping or merely brushing the belly of the instrument while other hands (so it often seemed) perform high-speed acrobatics from end to end of the finger-board.

Santiago de Murcia (the region between Andalusia and Valencia) was a decade older than Bach and Domenico Scarlatti; most of his music is lost, but Moriarty described the discovery in Mexico half a century ago of a revelatory collection of his music, and other music has been discovered recently in Chile, though there is no suggestion that he ever travelled to Latin America. The three movements of his Sonata in D, arranged by Bill Kanengiser, who was one of Moriarty’s teachers in Los Angeles, revealed a melodic and stylistic gift that draws on popular musical traditions. There was a slow and gentle middle movement in triple time, of singular charm, and a lively gigue-like last movement that was both subtle and fluent; and so were they played.

Then came three pieces by Tarrega himself: an Alborada, hushed tones suggesting a slow dawn, Rosita, that seemed full of reminiscences, quite taxing technically; and then the Jota, which I encountered first (half a century ago?) in the splendid piece by Glinka: Jota Aragonesa, which I haven’t heard on the radio for decades. There are many others, including the entr’acte to Act 4 of Carmen, by Liszt and Saint-Saëns, etcetera. It evolved in various ways and was quite extended, though it still ended rather too soon.

Finally, in a sort of family reminiscence, of which I caught little, Moriarty talked about an Irish piece by Donal Macnamara who lived in the 18th century; A Gaoth Andheas (something about the south wind). Typically Irish in tone, gently lamenting and nostalgic. The programme note follows a website that I too stumbled on: “South Wind was written in the 1700s by “Freckled Donal Macnamara” in homesickness for his homeland in County Mayo, as described in Donal O’Sullivan’s wonderful book, “Songs of the Irish.”

A delightful recital to be sure!

 

Vibrant and wholehearted – Wellington Youth Orchestra and ‘cellist Matthias Balzat

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:

BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.1 in C Op.21
TCHAIKOVSKY – Pezzo Capriccioso for ‘cello and orchestra Op.62
ELGAR – Variations on an Original Theme “Enigma” Op.36

Matthias Balzat (‘cello)
Wellington Youth Orchestra
Andrew Joyce (conductor)

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Hill St., Wellington

Tuesday 10th May, 2016

A joy, right from the beginning, this concert, which featured bright-eyed and bushy-tailed orchestral playing from a talented ensemble of young musicians, squaring up to a couple of well-known classics and an engaging cello-and-orchestra concert rarity.

Under Andrew Joyce’s on-the-spot direction, the music in every instance took off, the Beethoven with bright-eyed and chirpy accents, the Tchaikovsky piece with bold, impassioned wing-beats, and the Elgar with gentle, early-morning ruminations developing into gestures with warmth and strength. In the case of each piece the music’s character was quickly established and consistently maintained, the players responding to their conductor’s clearly articulated beat and guidance regarding dynamics, accents and timing.

I thought the Beethoven Symphony was an inspired choice for these players, a work by a young composer eager to make his mark upon the world, and ready to challenge conventions and established rules right at the outset. Here we got strong, almost confrontational chording from the winds at the beginning – a kind of “are you listening?” statement, designed to break into idle concert chit-chat and grab people’s attention. I liked the big-bonedness of that opening, making the following allegro all the more disarming with its light touch and cheeky aspect, and contrasting with the insouciance of the winds’ delivery of the “second subject” (what dry old terms these are!).

We got the repeat as well, to my great delight, though Joyce and his players didn’t give the “surprise” chord at the beginning of the development too much emphasis, keeping it nonchalant and droll – a kind of “Well, what did you expect?” sort of statement. The recap. came across strongly and with textures beautifully blended, with some athletic counterpoints bouncing off the strings’ bows with great élan in places, nicely rounded off by festive touches from the brass.

A poised, and patiently built-up slow movement was beautifully weighted by conductor and players, with lovely colours from the winds in the development, and great ensemble work – then at the recapitulation the ‘cellos distinguished themselves with a beautifully-shaped counter-melody. At times the high string passage-work lost its sweetness, but such lapses were only momentary. The Menuetto (really, a scherzo!) skipped along energetically, with only a lack of synchronization between lower and upper strings troubling the occasional extended phrase. The winds again made a lovely contrast in the trio, though the strings struggled with the unanimity of some of their awkwardly syncopated replies.

The finale’s droll cat-and-mouse phrases created great expectation straight after the opening chord, with the violins then running away merrily at the allegro, a little TOO smartly in places ! However, in the development section things locked together well, with the dovetailing of the rushing, see-sawing passages nicely managed. No repeat this time, but the strings were obviously relishing the cut-and-thrust of their exchanges, and the all-together orchestral banter of the coda, with everything brought together for the final, triumphant chords. Overall, I thought it a most satisfying performance.

Tchaikovksy’s soulful, long-breathed world of heartfelt expression seemed a long way from Beethoven’s, at the outset of the second work on the programme, the Pezzo Capriccioso for ‘cello and orchestra. The passionately-sounded ‘cello line was addressed with great feeling and beautifully-modulated tones from soloist Matthias Balzat, whose performance overall was, to put it mildly, both brilliant and commanding. Throughout the piece’s lively middle section, the soloist’s bow danced upon the strings and the left hand literally flew over the instrument’s fingerboard, striking the notes rapidly and truly, and making a spectacular impression.

Matthias Balzat is already a veteran of a number of instrumental competitions, at which he’s achieved a great deal of success – a first prize in the 2014 National Concerto Competition, and a second prize in the 2015 Gisborne International Competition. He’s currently studying with James Tennant at Waikato University, and is obviously a young musician who’s worth watching out for.

After the interval we settled down to enjoy Elgar’s affectionately-wrought set of musical tributes to the people he felt closest to as a man and as a composer. The work is a straightforwardly conceived set of variations on a theme, the title “Enigma” being bestowed by the composer without explanation, as if there’s a hidden theme or a kind of link between the variations that has never been explained. The different variations are more individual allusions to certain shared experiences with the composer, rather than “character portraits” as such.

At the beginning the theme itself was beautifully shaped, tenderly and lyrically delivered, with a sonorous lower-string counterpoint brought out most soulfully towards the end. The first variation (CAE), depicting Elgar’s wife Alice, featured beautifully floated interchanges between strings and winds, with noble brass at the conclusion, a complete contrast to the repetitive figurations of a pianist friend (H.D.S-P.), steadily and mechanically completed. There was pleasure, too, at the wind-playing in R.B.T., clarinets and bassoons having great fun bringing wide-ranging tones and registers into play.

Andrew Joyce kept the driving rhythm of the following variation (W.M.B.) absolutely steady following its exciting attacca beginning, a completely different kettle of fish to the romantic charm of R.P.A., the strings rich and sonorous, the winds chatty and charming, if not quite always together. Ysobel allowed the solo viola a moment of glory, which was beautifully played, while the following Troyte highlighted the timpanist’s rhythmic skills just as tellingly in a wildly swirling episode – and how well and excitingly the strings “pinged” their entries in this piece, throwing the snarling brasses into splendid relief!

Some beautiful wind playing – charming conversation and gentle laughter – during W.N. gave us some relief from these previous storms and stress, before the music took us to the centrepiece of the variations, the much-loved Nimrod. Here, the composer recalled discussions with a friend on the beauty of Beethoven’s slow movements, the players respond to their conductor’s encouragements with patient, long-breathed playing, and together building towards something majestic and visionary. Afterwards, Dorabella brought out sensibilities back to earth with finely-judged wisps of exchange between winds and strings and another graceful viola solo.

Anything but graceful and finely drawn was G.R.S., the initials belonging to the owner of a bulldog whose favourite pastime of diving into the river to fetch a stick thrown by his master, was here set to music by Elgar. As in the earlier “Troyte” the string-playing pinged and crackled with precision under the conductor’s guidance.

String-playing of a vastly different sort was inspired by the immediately following B.G.N., a ‘cello solo, played here with fine intonation and warm tones, and then repeated by the entire ‘cello section, whose fine, ringing upper notes did the players (and very likely their conductor) great credit!

The especially enigmatic thirteenth variation, with its three asterisks in place of a name or initials, famously contains a quotation from Mendelssohn’s Overture “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage” – after a winsome theme is tossed about by strings and winds, there’s a drum roll, a clarinet quoting the overture’s theme, and the lower instruments presenting the throbbing of ship’s engines. It all came together here with excellent focus on the detail and plenty of heft given the music’s pulsating power and implacable movement.

And so to the composer’s self-portrait, E.D.U., being Alice Elgar’s abbreviated name for her husband – Joyce and his players hit their stride at a fast clip, galloping towards the first big orchestral climax with gusto, one which came with tremendous impact. Everything, including the reprise of Alice’s music in her variation, was kept moving – and if there was more ferment than finesse throughout the last few pages, the excitement and sense of the music’s arrival was overwhelming in its power and splendour. I felt that, at this point, those aspects of the performance were given priority here, and rightly so.

It all made, I thought, for a splendid concert-going experience, thanks to the repertoire, and the totally committed performances – certainly one that anybody who enjoyed skilled, vibrant and whole-hearted music-making would have similarly enjoyed.

Forty years celebrated by Wainuiomata Choir, in excellent spirits with fine choral music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Celebration Concert – singing in the valley for 40 years

Music by Bruckner, Handel, Stainer, Clausen, Mendelssohn, Fauré, Seiber, Purcell, Praetorius, Tavener, Rheinberger, Te Rangi Pai and Leonard Cohen

Wainuiomata Choir, Musical Director Sue Robinson, accompanist Elizabeth Marrison, with string ensemble and Fiona McCabe (piano)

St. Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Sunday, 8 May 2015, 3.30pm

The concert, first performed in Wainuiomata a week earlier, consisted mainly of items performed at significant concerts during the choir’s history, such as the ten-years anniversary. The choir was formed by John Knox soon after his return from several years working in London, where he sang in the Bach Choir, conducted by the famous Sir David Willcocks. John’s collaborator was Bill McCabe, Fiona’s father. John Knox conducted the choir for many years; others have followed.

Not only but also, Knox was chair of the Orpheus Choir of Wellington for a considerable period, where he facilitated a number of important events, not least bringing Sir David to New Zealand to conduct it and other choirs, including the Wainuiomata Choir This started a pattern of frequent visits here by Sir David. John started the annual choral workshops in Wellington, run by the Wellington Region of the New Zealand Choral Federation, which are still going. There were other initiatives too.

The choir still boasts two original members, one of whom gave brief historical notes at the conclusion of the performance. Their fine accompanist has been with them for 15 years, and Fiona McCabe was accompanist in the past; she told us of the encouragement she received from John Knox, and that she first accompanied at the age of ten!

Several items were sung a cappella, including the first, ‘Locus Iste’ by Bruckner. This sublime motet is treacherous; while beautiful and evocative (‘This place was made by God, a priceless sacrament, it is without reproach’), it presents intonation difficulties. Here, there was a strong bass line and good tenors who did not fall into the traps that are there for them, but the women’s tuning dropped a little at times. The choir sang with pleasing tone, enunciation and vitality.

‘Let God arise’ is from one of Handel’s Chandos Anthems. The performance with strings and Fiona McCabe playing the piano was commendable. The level of piano tone was just right for choir and strings not to be overwhelmed. The piano lid was on neither long stick nor short stick, but resting on a hymn-book, so it was just slightly open. Timing and rhythm were excellent, as was the handling of florid passages – so important to making baroque music live. Through all the items attacks and cut-offs were precise.

‘God so loved the world’ from Stainer’s Crucifixion is another a cappella item that can so easily go flat. The phrasing and dynamics were paid more than adequate attention, but falling notes sometimes fell a little far. Nevertheless, it was a worthy performance. ‘Set me as a seal’ by René Clausen was not quite so successful. Repeated notes were sometimes flat, but otherwise the performance was satisfactory. Words came over well.

Mendelssohn’s lovely ‘He watching over Israel’ from Elijah fared better. A good pace was maintained, and the choir sang with verve. Mendelssohn’s soaring melodies came through thoughtfully and joyously. Another highlight in the choral repertoire is Fauré’s Requiem. The ‘In Paradisum’ movement is demanding to sing (and pitch suffered here, too), but it is ecstatic music of an elevated quality that is utterly uplifting.

There followed a sequence of dances (tango, foxtrot, habanera etc. – about 12 in all) for piano duet by Mátyás Seiber, played by Elizabeth Marrison and Sue Robinson. The pieces were quite delightful, and the duetists played very well together, always spot on. The music was fun, but with due credit to the pianists, the concert would have stood on its own without these, coming as they did just before the interval, when the choristers would get a break anyway.

The ‘Sailors’ Chorus’ and ‘Sailors’ Dance’ from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas were given vivacious, characterful rendition, facial expression and a certain amount of physical movement adding to the animated nature of the music, much enhanced by the playing of the strings and piano.

Animation remained for the chorus ‘And the glory of the Lord’ from Messiah. As in other places, Sue Robinson made brief comments, sometimes humorous, about the pieces as well as mentioning the occasions on which the choir had previously sung them. All parts were accurate here, although the fine tenor section was a little too loud sometimes.

Next up was ‘Jubilate Deo’ by Praetorius. Sue Robinson taught the audience to sing this brief utterance as a 6-part round, and very successfully, too. The choir were distributed around the audience to assist. There’s an innovation other choirs could follow!

While the attacks in Tavener’s ‘Mother of God here I stand’ were excellent, some drop in intonation crept in again, and high notes were a bit shrill. These things are, of course, more obvious in a cappella items. Rheinberger’s ‘Abendlied’ followed, then an arrangement by Dorothy Buchanan of ‘Hine e hine’. It began with English words, with the chorus in Maori followed by a verse in Maori. I did not particularly like the elaborate piano accompaniment (though no reflection on the accompanist); the simple but effective melodies seemed compromised by the former.

The final song was ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen, in an arrangement by Roger Emerson. Here again, the audience was invited to join in, in the chorus.

It was an ambitious programme, particularly with the number of a cappella items. The choir is fortunate to have many good singers, particularly in the male departments, where choirs are often deficient. The audience was treated to a sampler of very fine choral music, and the choir could feel confident in looking forward to another forty years of enjoyable music-making.

 

 

The Orpheus Choir and Orchestra Wellington at Sea with Brent Stewart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington presents:
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – A Sea Symphony

also – MENDELSSOHN – Overture “The Hebrides”
BRITTEN – Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes”

Lisa Harper-Brown (soprano)
James Clayton (baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 7th May, 2016

Avast, me hearties!  Time to batten down the ‘atches and splice yer mainbraces, ready to lend an ear to these ‘ere tales o’ the Seven Seas, as retold by the Cap’n ‘n crew of the good ship Orchestra Wellington, with sister-vessel Orpheus ready to heave-to for the grand sail-past!…….well, that’s probably enough nautical language to give readers an idea regarding this concert (in fact I was starting to get worried as to where my next seafaring expression was coming from, so I’m happy to return to “landlubber mode” for the remainder of this review!

From the moment the orchestra launched into the opening of Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides” Overture, we were all truly at sea, our sensibilities registering the ebb and flow of the oceanic swells, the tang of the salt spray and the sense of wide open spaces created by both wind and brass, bird calls and ship signals pushing out the vistas towards distant islands and horizons.

The whole piece is a truly remarkable recreation of a maritime scenario, one which many New Zealanders will readily identify with as a result of living so close to the sea – in fact conductor Brent Stewart expressed in a program note his own affinities with the ocean as a result of various childhood experiences. As the overture proceeded one sensed his direction of the music becoming freer and increasingly “taken up” by the music’s evocations along the way, especially with those moments of deep repose in between the watery undulations, and with the contrasting excitement of his “whipping up” the canonic strings-and-winds exchanges midway through.

Things were very beautifully rounded off by the duetting clarinets (one instrument most beguilingly becoming two) towards the end, leading to a final frenzy of waves breaking over a rugged coastline, the conductor again pushing the tempo and encouraging from his players a vigorous and exciting ferment of activity, which abruptly died away, leaving the opening theme as a single distant, haunting bird-call – here, only the final note seemed to me a shade too abruptly curtailed for its distance to properly register.

More oceanic splendours were to be had with Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from the opera “Peter Grimes”.  I enjoyed the fresh, bracing tang of “Dawn” with its opening bird-cries, and was gripped by the incredible depth and dark-browed spaciousness of the lower instruments with their portentous replying crescendi. The tolling bells of “Sunday Morning” burst forth without ceremony, a true “attacca” and at a terrific pace, the counterpointing winds throaty and characterful, squawking with what seemed like native dialects!  After an angular exchange between strings and winds, the bells returned with terrific impact, even though a couple of the decrescendo-strokes didn’t through some kind of attrition quite “ring true”.

The third Interlude “Moonlight” sounded to my ears more pointillistic than atmospheric, the brass, winds and percussion notes brought out, and given a spiky-sounding character, not merely in the manner of a pretty nocturnal picture – even so, the biting incisiveness of the final “Storm” took one’s breath away with its fury and frenetic pace. The players dealt with their conductor’s pacing brilliantly, throwing fingerfuls of detail about in what seemed like an uncalculated and spontaneous-sounding way, which worked spectacularly well. A shadowy and goblin-like sequence featured spiked winds and moaning strings which were taken up by the baleful brasses and hurled down the cliff-edge onto the rocks below – shattering!

The Orpheus Choir, along with soprano Lisa Harper-Brown and baritone James Clayton, took the stage with the orchestra after the interval for the evening’s REAL business in hand – Ralph Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony. Written between 1903 and 1909, the piece was its composer’s first full-scale symphonic work, and at once placed him not only within the British choral tradition, but in the ranks of the symphonists following Parry, Sullivan, Stanford, German and, most importantly, Elgar. The work also reflected a current vogue among British composers (Holst and Delius as well) for settings of the poetry of American Walt Whitman.

During the time Vaughan Williams took to complete this symphony he spent three months studying with French composer Maurice Ravel. While the finished symphony shows certain stylistic and harmonic influences stemming from Ravel (and French music in general) the composer of the Pavane pour une Infanta defunte and Rapsodie Espagnole paid tribute to his pupil by exclaiming at one stage that Vaughan Williams was “the only one of my students that does not write my music”.

As might have been expected with a first symphony from a young composer the work has an arresting opening, attention-grabbing brass chords and a full-throated choral declamation, hurling forth the words “Behold! – the sea itself!”  Here, the choir’s voices galvanized our sensibilities right from the beginning, though for whatever reason the brasses’ attack on the initial notes was curiously soft-grained, lacking for me a certain scalp-prickling quality, both here and at the fanfare’s reprise after the first sequence concluding with “the long pennants of smoke”. Elsewhere, the playing was very much “on-the-spot” from all departments, and all sections of the choir sounded glorious from where I was sitting.

I was eagerly awaiting the contributions from the soloists, both of whose work I had previously encountered. Starting almost conversationally, with his “Today, a brief, rude recitative…”, baritone James Clayton steadily built up the energies and intensities towards “and the winds piping and blowing”, before giving us a sonorous “And out of these”, and then relishing his full-blooded exchanges with the choir at “untamed as thee!”. Soprano Lisa Harper-Brown threw herself splendidly into the swim of things with a commanding “Flaunt out, O Sea!…”, her voice strong and steady there and later with her “Token of all brave captains…..”, and riding excitingly over the massed textures just before the movement’s rapt “All seas, all ships” concluding phrases.

At the beginning of the slow movement, conductor and players caught the dark depths and charged stillnesses of the orchestral writing. I wanted at first a slightly stronger line from the baritone, whose words didn’t quite carry to me through the accompanying textures, though once the horns began their processional at “A vast similitude interlocks all” the singer’s energies found a new gear and conveyed more tonal presence and clarity. After the choir had regaled us with its sonorous “This vast similitude”, it was left to the soloist and orchestra to return us to the hushed sonorities of the opening, conductor and orchestra once again evoking the dark sounds of the “old mother….singing her husky song”.

The scherzo, subtitled “The Waves”, for chorus and orchestra, was delivered with terrific élan throughout, amid traditional sea-shanties and wind-borne spray singing and dancing above the “myriad, myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks….”. The Orpheus’ voices relished their interaction with the swirling textures of the orchestral writing, with the different instrumental groups on top form and in perfect accord. Vaughan Williams’ use of chromatic and whole-tone scales to depict the action of the waves and the spray-laden ambiences contrasted stirringly with the nobilmente striding theme depicting “the great vessel sailing”, the choir left at the end to exultantly pin back our ears with their final, unaccompanied “following!” – a great moment!

Traditionally composers have a lot of trouble with the final movements of their symphonies – but Vaughan Williams seemed here in his fourth and last movement “The Explorers” to produce his best music of the work. Conductor Brent Stewart allowed his forces plenty of space and time at the outset, floating the chorus’s brooding “O vast rondure, swimming in space” steadily, almost ritualistically, against a beautiful orchestral tapestry characterizing the “processions of suns, moons and countless stars above”. Moving to describe the “myriad progeny” of Adam and Eve as “baffled, formless, feverish, with never happy hearts”, the composer set disembodied offstage voices in a manner not unlike in Wagner’s “Parsifal” intoning the words “Wherefore unsatisfied soul?” and “Whither, O mocking life?”, here magically realized by some of the Orpheus’s female voices.

Again, each of the soloists performed wonders, from their fresh and eager interchanges at “O, we can wait no longer”, and throughout the rapt beauties of “O Soul, thou pleasest me!”, rising to an ecstatic climax at “O, thou transcendent” – the solo violin needed in places more ethereal as well as occasionally surer tones, but otherwise reliably supported the voices in tandem with the winds. Then at the chorus’s “Greater than stars or sun”, the soloists enjoined us amid a volley of nautical terms, to “shake out every sail”, without delay – “Away, O Soul – hoist instantly the anchor”, to the accompaniment of hornpipes and jigs punctuated by enthusiastic percussion crashes and cries from the chorus to “Sail forth, steer for the deep waters only” – truly stirring stuff!

After chorus and orchestra exhausted themselves declaring that they “will risk the ship, ourselves and all”, amid frenetic energies and terrific upheavals of energy, soprano and baritone brought the work to an ecstatic conclusion, equating these, the Soul’s oceanic journeyings with life and its challenges and fulfilments, and sharing with the chorus and orchestra a richly-wrought sense of continuing exploration, with all voices murmuring “O farther, farther sail”, as the music gradually disappeared. Thanks to an inspired performance from Brent Stewart and his forces, we were given, by the end, a real sense of the vastness of the composer’s vision and his determination to realise his view of things in his big-boned, full-blooded music.

NZSO ‘wastes its sweetness upon the desert air’ with some splendid, approachable, 21st century music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aotearoa Plus
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bramwell Tovey with Stephen de Pledge (piano)

Bramwell Tovey: Time Tracks
Magnus Lindberg: Piano concerto No 2
Christopher Blake: Voices (premiere)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 6 May, 6:30 pm

Above all, this concert again raised for me the old controversy about the handling of new music. Whether it is best to ghettoize music that is unlikely to find a large audience, or to place these pieces carefully in concerts that include an irresistibly popular masterpiece.

If the intention is to persuade the timid to expose their minds to something unfamiliar, the size of Friday’s audience showed again that approach No 1 does not work, for very few of the ‘conservatives’ would have been there, and so the hope of getting the reluctant to open their ears, failed.

It’s not as if much music being composed today uses the kinds of artificial notions of what the basic patterns of melodic structure should be, so widespread at mid-century. Though polytonality is often used and conventional melody often seems avoided in case it suggests that a ‘serious’ piece of music is really lightweight, much music, including what our own composers produce can actually be enjoyed by simply opening the ears, without prejudice.

Tovey’s opera suite from The Inventor
This first visit to New Zealand by English-born, Canadian conductor, pianist and composer, Bramwell Tovey, revealed an accomplished, versatile musician who has conducted a number of distinguished orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Montreal and Melbourne Symphony, and the Philadelphia orchestras. He has been conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra since 2000. His compositions range across many genres, including the 2011 work for Calgary Opera, The Inventor, which was well received there. This concert began with the premiere of an orchestral suite, Time Tracks, the second suite that Tovey has drawn from his opera. The opera tells the true story of a charismatic con-man with a variety of versatile criminal talents than culminated in an unintended climax on the Bremerhaven docks: an insurance swindle goes wrong with an explosion that kills about eighty people.

Tovey introduced his piece entertainingly, useful for those who had not bought a programme. I’m not sure that the music was much more enlivened by accounts of the opera’s subject, as it stood on its own feet as an obviously dramatic sequence, opening with bold and colourful statements. It revealed a facility in handling narrative and situational elements through the use of a wide variety of tuned percussion, as well as tam-tams and hand bells and the usual range of drums, occasional solos and episodes from orchestral sections that were attractive or arresting in their own right. A couple of times, Tovey stepped off the podium to play a honky-tonk piano to his left, a sort of bluesy lament and later evoking a dreamy quality, no doubt reflecting the opera’s depiction of the flawed character’s insight into his own weaknesses. Among the many evocative phases in the score are touches of big-band jazz and motifs and harmonies that hint at the influence of John Adams. A particularly vivid moment is the depiction of a train gathering speed.

Piano Concerto No 2 by Lindberg
Lindberg’s second piano concerto was written with the character of its soloist (Yefim Bronfman, who has played with the NZSO), with the New York Philharmonic, very much in mind. In the words of the programme note, it was a response to Bronfman’s “muscular performances of Bartok and Prokofiev”. The sound and energy of those two composers were certainly audible in the music, but at the beginning, also Ravel (though not, as the programme note suggested, Debussy); Lindberg himself has mentioned Ravel’s Concerto for the left hand as inspiring the music. Inevitably, one can also be persuaded of the influence of other 20th century composers, even Rachmaninov in the last movement, perhaps Szymanowski too.

A throbbing motif imposes itself early on, but soon the piano attempts to impose itself. For much of the time, it failed, not because De Pledge lacked the ability to bring the right amount of energy and incisiveness to the performance, but because a great deal of the time, Lindberg cannot resist imposing a massive accompaniment that smothers the piano. I came to feel that this was perhaps more the result of a failure to impose restraint on and require greater discretion and subtlety from the orchestra; it was after all, a larger than normal orchestra with extra brass instruments and pains were needed to find whatever chamber-music-like qualities existed in the scoring.

The piano had its moments nevertheless, such as the start of the second movement, and between what one felt were obligatory hair-raising, bravura passages, there was sufficient evidence of the presence of a real instinct for the great piano concerto tradition as it has evolved in the past century. There was a passage of attractively warm playing from cellos; horns contributed with finesse, and there was no question that the score lay well within the orchestra’s interpretive abilities.

Christopher Blake’s second symphony
Finally, the second half, was Christopher Blake’s second symphony, entitled Voices, based in sometimes quite literal ways on Eliot’s The Waste Land. A daunting task, one might think, to find musical intimations or coherence in that still-disturbing poem, laden with abstruse classical and modern literary and musical references. Blake doesn’t employ the titles Eliot gave to the five cantos of the poem, but focuses on the people who populate each part.

Here, in contrast to the music in the first half however, was a piece that employs as large an orchestra with wonderful discretion, only rarely allowing full tuttis to emphasise aspects. Blake’s notes draw attention to the way his symphony has cross references between the movements and, though reassuring us that the music does stand alone, without reference to the poem itself, that “it is amplified and harnesses other worlds of meaning when viewed through the lens of Eliot’s poem”. So I look forward to the performance being released by the NZSO and Radio New Zealand Concert, accompanied by a gloss with annotations to help the listener elucidate more of the music’s secrets and its connections to the poem.

Its character was announced right at the start with a prolonged, unison horn evocation, followed by a startling attack from wood blocks; then mysterious string murmurings. It’s in the first part that Eliot quotes four lines of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, “Frisch weht der Wind…”, with electrifying musical impact, and the music is there. The second part, ‘Albert and Lil’, (A Game of Chess in Eliot), is coloured with gently sleazy blues sounds, involving various instruments, including an alto saxophone, played seductively.

Perhaps the fifth section was the most intriguing and enigmatic, starting with a shocking attack from tuned percussion, and soon one of the few passages for the full orchestra with propulsive, racing strings, with its references to things not in the actual poem, but in Eliot’s notes, like the journey to Emmaus and Shackleton, a fine oboe solo, and a great variety of brilliant, cleanly-used, individual instruments, raising in one’s mind more questions than answers, especially in one’s effort to recall the poem.

Each section bears its own tone and significance, as does the poem itself, and I remained, quite simply, thoroughly engaged by the sound world that was created as well as by an admiration for the composer’s evident intention to employ the orchestra to display so well the strengths of its soloists and of each section. A very nice way for a chief executive to compliment his employees for their skill and dedication, not simply in his own composition but for the huge contribution that the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra makes in the protection, against the sort of decaying and decadent cultural forces described by Eliot in 1922, of some civilized standards in this country.