Young Musicians Programme in another impressive concert supported by Music Futures

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Young Musicians Programme
Presented by Music Futures

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 13 September, 3 pm

This concert, a showcase for a large number of the students who have participated in Victoria University’s Young Musicians Programme was the second in the space of six weeks.

It was facilitated by Music Futures. After the Friends of the NZSO wound up, Valerie Rhodes was approached by an orchestra member with the suggestion of an organisation to support young musicians. That led to the formation of Music Futures in 2011 and their first concert in August 2012.

This year Music Futures offered to fund a concert for the Young Musicians Programme at St. Andrew’s on 13 September, giving access to a venue they wouldn’t otherwise have used. In addition to those promoted by Music Futures the YMP continues to put on a programme of public concerts throughout the year.

Although we had been led to believe that the YMP was not as warmly supported by the university as it might have been, Dr Robert Legg assures us that YMP is viewed as critically important by the university and by NZSM, and that significant resources, in terms of staff time, are devoted to the programme.

Contributions from a wide range of NZSM staff, including Legg (who had hosted Sunday’s concert), Rodger Fox, Dave Lisik, Inbal Megiddo, Michael Norris, Debbie Rawson, and centrally the New Zealand String Quartet, make YMP possible. NZSM director Euan Murdoch is also very interested in the YMP, having founded one of its predecessor organisations, the Victoria Academy fifteen years ago; he was
present at the concert.

The tutors involved at this concert were Simeon Broom, Margaret Guldborg, Reuben Chin and Debbie Rawson, Jonny Avery, Linden Loader, Ludwig Treviranus and Rachel Church.

Some of these players I’d heard in a concert at the School of Music on Queen’s Birthday weekend; others at the Music Futures concert on 26 July.

I had begun this review intending to avoid naming individuals, but that proved impossible; the challenge then was to find some rationale for mentioning some and not others. I have not really succeeded as the reasons for mentioning certain ones, especially where they appeared more than once, have been so varied. To those omitted, my apologies: all are equally praiseworthy.

The first group, two violins and piano, had played at the June concert the same pieces by Godard as they played here, now the Godard Trio (Tony Xie, Peter Gjelsten and Keiran Lewellen). In my review of 1 June I noted that Benjamin Godard was a gifted French composer who lived a short life in the late 19th century, famous for the lovely Berceuse from his 1888 opera, Jocelyn. The two movements played from his Six Duettini supported his reputation as a charming melodist, and again they captured the flowing rhythm and gentle melodies.

Next was an ensemble of five violins and two cellos, some of whom reappeared in different formations later. Their interesting choice was two of Lilburn’s four Canzonas which have recently emerged to become among his most genuinely popular pieces, especially the first. However, these performances, including the very brief No 2, helped confirm the charm of the whole set. Though one or two players looked no more than seven or eight, the support of the septet did the music proud. Eliana Dunford, lead violinist, reappeared later in the Rachmaninov; Nick Majic played again in the Saint-Saëns and the two Lewellen boys had other appearances too.

Two saxophones represented the woodwind department (though there’s not much wood in saxophones). First a March by Prokofiev, which created a rather lazy atmosphere, though there was nothing lazy about the performance; it was followed by ‘Lazy Coconut Tree’, a calypso tune which exhibited rather more energy than the Prokofiev. Both Annabel Sik and Stella Lu were surprisingly comfortable in their performances.

A sextet of guitars produced a coherent performance of a tune by Michael Jackson, ‘Billie Jean’, revealing a wide range of abilities, some doing little more than tapping the body of the instrument. That’s not fair: under Jonny Avery, all contributed to the attractive ensemble.

Linden Loader led a vocal sextet through one of Rossini’s Soirées musicales, ‘La Pesca’.  Not much to do with fishing, it’s a nocturnal love duet sung on the sea shore, and the duet for soprano and mezzo was happily transformed for a group of attractive young voices.

Then, straddling the interval, came five pianists, all tutored by Ludwig Treviranus. Brendan Looi played a sweet little Intermezzo by a small-time Australian composer Robert Adam Horne, who came to New Zealand later; he wrote in a Victorian salon style: charming. Patrick Grice, who’d played cello in the Lilburn pieces, played a Sarabande by another obscure composer, this time one born in New Zealand: Hugo Vernon Anson. If that made little impression, Grice gave a fine performance later in the Saint-Saëns piano trio. Stella Lu had earlier played the saxophone; here she made an accomplished job of the third movement of Beethoven’s Sonata, Op 10 No 1.

The next two were the brothers Xie – Perry and Tony, both very young: Perry, thoughtfully in the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata in C; it’s sometimes called the Sonata Semplice, because it’s easy for beginners (but hard for professionals). Tony had played piano in the Godard pieces and here he played a Chinese piece, part of The Dance of the Watergrass, gentle, impressionist music.

Finally there were three piano trios. The Glinka Trio, comprising three small boys (one, Perry Xie again) on violins and piano (Zhe-Ning Chin), playing Russian pieces, evidently all by Glinka. I’m not sure whether this was exactly the same group that had played some Glinka pieces in the June concert. Each group had spoken briefly about their music, some hesitantly, some with clarity and confidence: the violinist Brayden Lewellen was the latter kind.

The group named Melodius Thunk had played last June: then the opening of Smetana’s piano trio; now, tutored by Simeon Broom, Rachmaninov’s first Trio Élégiaque. Listening to each player in turn – Nick Kovacev, Bethany Angus and Eliana Dunford – I was impressed by their polished and accomplished performances, individually and in ensemble, demonstrating real grasp of the style and musical content.

Rachel Church, who’d tutored the Glinka Trio, also looked after the final group, the Saint-Saëns Trio. They were Patrick Grice, Milo Benn and Nick Majic. This too had been in the June programme and I was impressed then. I was even more impressed hearing it again, and wondered why, though now familiar from the earlier playing, I hadn’t been thoroughly acquainted with this accomplished, compelling work before, a work that deserves to be in the standard piano trio repertoire (perhaps it is in other countries). I’d have thought that it would, from its publication in 1892, have been confirmed as a major chamber music work of the late 19th century, certainly of the French school. The trouble would have been the long-lasting disparagement of Saint-Saëns as a great composer, due to his refraining from falling in behind the ‘progressive’ movements of his later years.

So there can be very interesting, incidental and peripheral discoveries flowing from the choice of music by students whose teachers often plough fields that are not in fashion in the wider world of classical music. That was just one of the reasons for enjoying this enterprising concert.

 

 

 

Memorable, glamorous, musically interesting evening with Renée Fleming and the NZSO

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Renée Fleming: A Gala Evening
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Judd

Ravel: La Valse
Shéhérazade: ‘Asie’; ‘La flute enchantée’; ‘L’indifférent’
           Pavane pour une infante défunte
Canteloube: Songs of the Auvergne: ‘Bailèro’; ‘Malurous qu’o uno fenno’
Gounod: Jewel Song, from Faust
Richard Strauss: Waltz sequence no.1 from Der Rosenkavalier
           ‘Morgen!’ Op.27, no.4; ‘Zueignung’ Op.10, no.1
Tosti: ‘Aprile’
Puccini: ‘O mio babbino caro’, from Gianni Schicchi

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 12 September 2015, 7.30pm

What a generous singer is Renée Fleming, performing so many items for us!  Yet she seemed as relaxed at the end as she was at the beginning, and in just as good voice. Although much of what she sang could be termed popular classical, it was all fine music.  It was good to see James Judd on the podium again, controlling the considerable forces.

Poised almost above the percussion, it was easy for me to look out on the Michael Fowler Centre gratifyingly almost full, and also to see the very large orchestra used for the first and many of the other items.  It was not an ideal position for reviewing, being parallel with the front of the platform, and therefore not receiving the full import of Fleming’s wonderful soprano voice.  However, thanks to others’ kindness, I was able to change at the interval to a rather better seat on the other side.

La Valse, as the excellent notes in the lavish programme explained, changed its character from when Ravel began its composition before the outbreak of World War I to what it became when he returned, a changed man, after service in the French Army throughout the hostilities.  I had not heard this considerable orchestral piece live for a very long time.  It contains some amazing effects – even though brass and percussion dominated where I was sitting.  In the case of the latter, that included seeing the tambourine player making a dash from one side of the back of the stage to the other, just in time to play that instrument towards the end of the work.  Typical of much French music was the use of the harp – in Saturday’s concert, two harps, used to magnificent effect.

Renée Fleming made her appearance wearing a beautiful gown with train and a cape – she looked stunning – to sing Shéhérazade.  This exotic work was not only demanding for her to sing, but demanding for the orchestra too.  Both emerged triumphant.  Sultry, brilliant, memorable are all appropriate descriptions of the performance. The soprano’s glorious opening low notes on the first words, ‘Asie, Asie, Asie’ (Asia) set the scene wonderfully, and she modulated her tone to great expressive effect. Fleming employed a certain amount of gesture – never overdone. The only detraction from the performance was that the lighting level was too low to enable one to read the full words and English translations of Tristan Klingsor’s fine poems the printed in the programme!   Intervention from Fleming over the interval (and from me, via an usher, too!) meant this situation changed for the second half.

The different mood of the second song allowed Renée Fleming’s voice to shine even more.  Here, Bridget Douglas’s flute playing was simply dazzling.  It was noticeable that after this song cycle and elsewhere in the concert Fleming was quick to applaud and bow to the orchestra – and in one of her little chats via microphone she commended the orchestra on its quality and flexibility, and remarked how proud we must be of it (applause).  She also commented that she liked singing in the MFC.

After the short third song in this evocative and dramatic cycle, came the interval.  Afterwards, the orchestra returned to play Ravel’s well-known Pavane.  According to the programme notes, Ravel disliked it being played slowly, like funeral music, saying ‘It was the princess who dies, not the pavane!’
Mellifluous horns against pizzicato strings was just one of the magical effects the smaller orchestra produced.

Again, outstanding flute playing featured.  However, I was moved to note ‘I prefer my music unpolluted by coughs’.  Nevertheless, the audience was mostly very attentive.

When the strings (muted) changed to bowing, a wonderful lush sound emerged, embellished by the harps.  The piece was like a scintillating example of French jewellery, although perhaps it was a little slow, bearing in mind Ravel’s remark.

Fleming returned, in a different gown, in pastel shades with a stole.  She spoke briefly about both the Canteloube and the Gounod items.  The former was notable for a lovely cor anglais solo, giving the music that rustic feel, and also for more flute from Bridget Douglas.  Of course the most popular song is ‘Bailèro’, and it received a well-justified rapturous reception from the orchestra and James Judd as well as from the audience.  Throughout her items, Fleming seemed relaxed, and to be enjoying herself.  The production of her attractive silvery tone appears effortless.

Gounod’s ‘Jewel Song’ is not an easy sing.  Fleming brought so much variety to this well-loved aria.  She had us bewitched, just as Marguerite was.  She turned to each side, and even to the orchestra when singing, so no-one could feel left out, and admired the rings she was wearing, in order to act out the aria’s words.

Her later enquiry to the audience discovered that there were many singers in the audience; they would have learned much. Renée Fleming employs portamento in her operatic arias, but it is never overdone or ugly; it embellishes and beautifies what she is singing.

I find the waltzes from Der Rosenkavalier somewhat hackneyed – thanks to Radio New Zealand Concert!  But through Strauss’s use of interesting harmonic intervals and marvellous instrumentation, plus the brilliant playing of the orchestra, I was seduced.  The five horns and three bassoons played faultlessly, and the great violin solo from Vesa-Matti Leppänen was a delight; James Judd almost danced to the music, and seemed delighted too.

Our soloist emerged again – in a third gown, of turquoise blue (later she told us it was the first time she had worn three gowns in one concert!)  She told us that she regarded herself as primarily a Strauss and Mozart singer; she made entertaining and humorous remarks too.

On to my favourites in the entire enticing programme: two of Richard Strauss’s most well-known songs.  These enchanting lieder are most often heard with piano; to hear them with orchestra was a real treat.  In Morgen! the introduction featured inspiring solo violin, with pizzicato violas, cellos, basses and harp. When the violins entered, their bowing produced a delicious pianissimo.  The singing was so
beautiful, yet simple and unaffected.

Fleming sings the words and music; she does not display herself and her skills.  Her use of the words is
extraordinarily intelligent and musical. Who could not be moved? Similarly with Zueignung.  It is a wonderfully uplifting and even jubilant song; quite sublime.  Yet people coughed even during these wondrous songs.

The name Tosti (Francesco Paolo) is associated with Dame Nellie Melba, and with rather sentimental Victorian parlour songs, written during the composer’s long residence in England.  But this song in Italian had charm, and a delicious orchestral accompaniment.  Next was ‘Top of the Pops’, Puccini’s soaring aria titled in the programme’s translation ‘Oh, dear daddy’.  Again, our superb singer took it simply, but beautifully, with well-judged portamenti. Her velvety tone did not prevent drama where appropriate.  Fleming must have sung this many times, but it sounded fresh, and it had the orchestra in splendid form, as throughout the concert, the latter receiving applause from Renée Fleming.

Not limiting herself to this ending to die for, Renée Fleming gave three encores: ‘Summertime’ from
Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was first.  For this she changed the character of her voice; it became appropriately brassy.  Then came the audience participation – singing the chorus to her ‘I could have danced all night’ from My Fair Lady.  As a brilliant stroke to prevent the curtain calls and standing ovations from going on for hours, she finished with a much less familiar item: Marietta’s aria ‘Glück das mir verblieb’ from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt.  Again, Fleming’s singing was deceptively simple-sounding, yet heartfelt and masterful, with wonderful dynamics.  The aria’s orchestration was splendid.

Negative points: the price of the programme was high, and there were too few sellers, resulting in long queues, which people had to abandon when the concert was about to begin.  These points meant that
many people did not have a programme.  A single sheet printed with the composers and titles of the works is common in European countries, and would have been helpful on this occasion.

All who attended were privileged to hear one of today’s great singers in top form, who had us eating out of her hand, while singing a generous and varied programme, with an orchestra in brilliant form, and a very experienced and enthusiastic conductor, who is an old friend of the orchestra, and of the audience.  A night to remember for a long time.  Thank you, all!

 

 

 

Talent aplenty at Wellington Aria Contest but poor publicity denies finalists deserved audience

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Aria Contest Final, 2015
(Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 6 September 2015, 7pm

By 7.50pm on Sunday there were 5 people seated in the audience; by 7.10pm when the singing began there were about 30.  Of these, most appeared to be other contestants in the earlier stages, teachers, family members, and Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society officials.

Where is the publicity?  The previous Sunday there were well over 300 people attending a concert in Waikanae by Tākiri Ensemble, comprising Anna Leese, Bianca Andrew, Andrew Glover and Robert Tucker.  These people have all participated in competitions in their time – and look where they are now!  Today’s participants may be the stars of tomorrow, and none of them need feel ashamed of the standard of their singing.  The music-loving public enjoys hearing young singers, but needs to know when and where they are!

The more people who know about the event, the more people will come, and their admission charges will pay for the advertising.  There are plenty of vehicles for getting the word out: Upbeat! on Radio NZ Concert, Arts Wellington email newsletter, ‘Regional News’ supplement in the suburban newspapers – not to mention the ‘Coming Events’ pages of Middle-C web-site (where it had been listed).

The adjudicator at this year’s senior vocal competitions was Amanda Atlas, formerly Amanda Winfield, who studied at Victoria University with Emily Mair, and after some years overseas now lives in Christchurch, but works from time to time with Opera Australia.  The aria competition had 22 entries, and eight finalists were called. The performers were all of a high standard, making the adjudicator’s task difficult.

Mark Dorrell and Catherine Norton accompanied, in highly competent fashion; it was a pity that their names were not printed in the programme.  The piano lid was on the short stick, appropriate for accompanying young singers.  Both accompanists achieved delicate pianissimos as well as bold sounds when required.  The compère was again Georgia Jamieson Emms.  She has an actor’s flair for this role, summarising the plots of the operas in brief but witty vein.

The concert was in two halves, with the competitors singing, in the same order, an aria in each half.  I have noted each performer’s two offerings together in this review.

A couple of the performers, Olivia Sheat and Katherine McIndoe, had sung in last year’s contest.  Both had been in the award line-up then.  There were several singers this time whom I considered unlucky not to receive an award.

First up was Eliza Boom, who sang first ‘Si mi chiamano Mimi’ from Puccini’s La bohème, and later ‘Eccomi in lieta vesta’ from I Capuleti e Montecchi by Bellini.  These arias showed off her considerable range and her clear yet warm-toned voice.  It was produced well, and her enunciation, some of the best, and expressive variation of timbre were noteworthy.  She has a powerful voice, but good control.

Imogen Thirlwall was next; she is quite an experienced singer now, with operas and oratorios under her belt.  Her aria ‘The Trees on the Mountains’ from Susannah by Carlisle Floyd, composed 1953-1954.  The soprano produced a lovely resonance in her voice – using the resonators of the face rather than large-mouthed grimaces (not that any of these singers did that).  Her breathing was rather noisy at times.  High notes were mostly well managed, but there were hints of strain and forcing.  She gave expressive effect to the words along, with achieving the style of American opera well.

It was perhaps unfortunate that her second choice was rather similar in style, being ‘Glück das mir verblieb’ from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt.  The composer was not in America at this stage; he wrote it before he had to flee the Nazis.  While it was innovative, the inclusion of something from an earlier period would have better demonstrated her versatility.  She exhibited excellent control, yet also passion, and some spoken words were clear and given meaning.

Chelsea Dolman was the third soprano, and she sang ‘Come scoglio’ from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte and André Previn’s opera A Streetcar named Desire, (1995), based on the famous Tennessee Williams play.  A dramatically sung recitative and aria, the Mozart demonstrated a voice of even tone throughout its range, with trills and runs managed very proficiently.

The Previn piece was premiered by Renée Fleming in 1998.  She is to visit this country in a week.  Another dramatic soprano (like Eliza Boom), Dolman put over the drama of the piece well.

Jamie Henare, the only male in the contest (it was the same ratio last year) is the possessor of a very fine bass voice; his splendid, full low notes are to die for.  He is young, and his voice will develop for years yet.  He gave us ‘Mi ravviso’ from La Sonnambula by Bellini, then later ‘Il lacerato spirito’, from Simon Boccanegra by Verdi.  Both suited his voice and revealed his range.  In the first he conveyed the character’s nostalgia for his youthful past very well.  In both he used the words – not just communicating them, but making them contribute to the total effect.  Their sonority conveyed the drama.

Ella Smith sang ‘Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen’ from Weber’s Der Freischütz.   Her later aria was ‘Il faut partir’ from La Fille du Regiment by Donizetti.  She had an easy style and a good, resonant voice, with pleasing tone when focused, but there were spots of insecure intonation.  Top notes were powerful and strong, and seemingly effortless.  Some miming and movement added to the projection of her arias.

Madison Nonoa was a name I did not know, and she was the only coloratura in the Final. Her first aria was the very florid ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ from Giulio Cesare by Handel, and her second the lovely ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.  She managed the very florid first aria with all its trills and runs with phenomenal skill.  As well as being very demanding, this aria was very fast, and it was notable that her tone was even throughout the considerable range, in fact this improved as time went on.  She was confident, but though the characterisation was good, communication with the audience was less so.

In the second, her manner and voice were appropriate for Pamina.  Just a few times there was some loss of control, but mostly her voice was very focused, and she was able to broaden her tone beautifully.

Olivia Sheat gave us two lovely arias: ‘Donde lieta’ from La bohème and ‘Song to the Moon’ from Dvořák’s Rusalka.  I found her performance thrilling, and full of feeling, employing excellent vocal technique.  The second aria is such a particularly beautiful one, and it was radiantly sung in the difficult Czech language.  Despite this, the enunciation was superb; it was the only aria in the contest not in Italian, English, German or French (there was only one of the latter).

Those magical opening chords from the piano sounded stunning, and Olivia had the power to fulfil expectations.

The last contestant was Katherine McIndoe, who sang ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ from Alcina by Handel, followed later by ‘Embroidery Aria’ from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten.  Strong and secure with good vocal tone, Katherine nevertheless had a few unsure notes in the first aria, and I found her
breathing a little too apparent.  The Britten aria came over very dramatically; it was a fine portrayal of Ellen Orford.

The Patricia Hurley Opera Tours award for the best rendition of a song/aria in Italian went to Madison Nonoa, the Robin Dumbell Memorial Cup for the young aria entrant with the most potential to Jamie Henare, the Rokfire Cup for the most outstanding competitor (in the whole competition, not just the final) went to Imogen Thirlwall.

The runner-up to the Dame Malvina Major Foundation aria was Chelsea Dolman, and the winner (and of the Rosina Buckman Memorial Cup) was Katherine McIndoe.  Congratulations to all the winners, and to The Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society for encouraging young singers and putting on a splendid evening of singing.

 

Going for it at St.Andrew’s – Te Kōkī Trio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Te Kōkī Trio

Music by BEETHOVEN, CLARA SCHUMANN and RAVEL

Martin Riseley (violin)
Inbal Megiddo (‘cello)
Jian Liu (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace,

Sunday, 6th September

This was a mighty concert experience – here were three musicians bent upon drawing all that they could out of the music and of themselves, resulting in performances of great excitement and intensity. The thrills and spills that inevitably came with such an approach simply added to the visceral nature of the experience, so that, at the end, we all felt we’d seen and heard something alive and real.

In making these opening remarks I’ve no wish to draw any comparisons with any other concerts I’d recently been to, all of which had their own particular qualities and delights. It’s just that, right from the opening measures of the Beethoven Trio with which the Te Kōkī Trio began their concert we were engaged, cheek-by-jowl, with the intensity of it all, right from that first, forceful opening chord. And while Jian Liu’s piano playing was spectacular in its adroitness and velocity, my ear was caught in particular by the detail of the varied dynamic observations and interactions between the players, all patently “listening” to one another, delighting in the observance of the first-movement repeat, and plunging us into a development featuring both dynamic irruptions and lovely harmonic explorations, beautiful colours glowing through the sounds.

The slow movement’s opening brought to mind a number of like themes from the composer’s piano sonatas, a beautifully languid contrasting episode begun by the ‘cello and joined by the violin working its continued magic before the piano took over the reins once more – a subsequent minor-key variation became very orchestral in these players’ hands, after which the piano returned with a more decorative recap of the opening, before a lovely pizzicato-quiet chordal ending. These players then truly relished the scherzo’s high spirits, with its skipping rhythms and strong accents, the performance generating incredible momentum in places (almost a precursor of the Op.135 String Quartet’s near-manic scherzo), tempered by occasional “drone” effects, and a brief, but attractively lyrical “swaying” trio.

That Haydnesque leaping piano figure at the beginning of the finale set the tone for what was to follow – energy, great good humour and lots of surprises (even a suggesting of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody at a couple of points!). The development section involved even more skin and hair flying in places, tempered by more sostenuto string passages – just for a bit of a breather! As for the surprise modulation towards the end – one can imagine the contemporary astonishment this would have caused (“Fit for the madhouse!” exclaimed Carl Maria Von Weber, at one of Beethoven’s similar symphonic divergences), this was tossed off with such easeful nonchalance, that it was the return to the home key which brought forth from us the grins and knowing winks – with the players’ hands and fingers flying over keyboards and fingerboards alike, the music roared to its joyous conclusion.

Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio seemed at the outset very much modelled upon her husband Robert’s manner, the work’s opening theme sombre and tense in true “Schumannesque” style. But thereafter it was Mendelssohn I kept on being reminded of throughout the opening movement, albeit with rather more adventurous modulations – the performers responded to the assured string-writing with strength and focus, the ‘cello often taking the lead, and the piano part never over-dominant (as one might have thought would be the case, from a composer regarded as one of the finest pianists in Europe). A wistful, piquant Scherzo followed, the rhythm rather like a dotted-note waltz with a Scotch snap, somewhat “teashop” in manner – I liked the group’s way with the Trio’s hesitant angularities, and how the string lines were floated so gracefully overhead.

Again, the finale’s sombre, somewhat anxious opening melody recalled Robert, the cello playing counterpointing the violin’s and piano’s presentation of the theme, before the piano picked up the tonal weight of the music and launched into a fugal passage, most convincingly “grown” from what had come before – the players really dug into the textures, before the piano again took the lead, returning to the opening, catching once again the music’s sobriety, but allowing a second subject some Mendelssonian grace and charm. These musicians also knew how to generate physical excitement, throughout a coda which gathered together and built up a mood of defiant certainty and even triumph at the end – a most attractive work, as presented here.

Rarely has one composer so openly acknowledged another’s influence on a specific work as Ravel did of Saint-Saens regarding his Piano Trio. The younger composer greatly admired his older compatriot’s resourceful use of the differing qualities of each individual instrument, and strove to emulate his example. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok and Prokofiev, all of whom found the Piano Trio medium posed too many difficulties, Ravel was determined to tackle its challenges. He planned the work well in advance, and at one stage told a friend that he had “finished the Trio, except for its themes”! – which meant that he had worked out the piece’s architecture and structure before focusing on the actual content.

Right from the beginning there could be no doubt as to the identity of the composer – such a distinctive sound-world, however in thrall the latter might have been to anybody else’s example!  Jian Liu’s magical playing of the “Basque” theme straightaway evoked Ravel’s characteristic other-worldliness, the strings in octaves adding strands of atmosphere to the ambience while keeping the textures tightly-focused. Even the tumble-down agitations had a light, feathery quality, as did the beautifully floated second subject, begun by the violin and limpidly accompanied by the other instruments – so lullaby-like, ethereal and tender. The players brought out the music’s ritualistic beauty, a dream-like ceremony, underlined by magical arpeggiations from the piano – gestures of transformation by wonderment! And, the movement’s end was pure enchantment, with sostenuto strings singing over softly chiming piano notes – the music here almost bewitching itself.

A playful, piquant scherzo movement alternated between surging impulses and more-or-less even-keeled trajectories throughout, the title Pantoum, somewhat obliquely referring to a type of Malayan poetry used by Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire, rendered by Ravel in terms of musical structure (too hard to grasp for a bear of little brain such as I!) But the sounds! – by turns colourful flecks and scraps of phrases, and then exuberantly sweeping dance-steps in 3/4 time, followed a wonderful central section where firstly the piano, then the strings fitted themselves into the same rhythmic pattern with a graceful 4/2 chorale-like melody.  What freedom! – what colour!  – and what abandonment in the performance!

And what a contrast with the following Passacaille, Jian Liu’s  deep-throated piano-only opening building gradually to a rich and ritualistic outpouring of dignified emotion from all three instrumentalists, before the two string-players were left to take the music back to the depths from whence it came, handing the sombre lines back to the piano for a kind of return-to-the-source conclusion.

This having been buried deeply the finale straightaway found its antithesis in light and air, a wonderful kaleidoscope of impressions at the beginning, filled with those characteristic Ravelian impulses of colours and distinctive ambiences. From these beginnings the musicians drove the sounds unerringly through episodes of confluence and contrast – in places, tremendous attack from both Martin Riseley and Inbal Megiddo, along with great and forthright playing from Jian Liu. We thrilled, for instance, to those ringing mid-movement declamations from the keyboard, and were nonchalantly disarmed by the most beautifully murmured string trills, their dovetailing building up once again to some tumultuous tumblings of energy and well-being that carried us along in a Rimbaud-like “savage parade”.

At the end we were overwhelmed by a sense of these three musicians having risked all to bring about the music’s fruition, and triumphed – a great experience!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fine choral concert spanning the centuries from The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Sweet Sixteen’
The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart, with Richard Apperley (organ)

Schütz: Jauchzet den Herrn, SWV36
G. Gabrieli: Jubilate Deo
Benevoli: Confitebor
Strauss: Der Abend
Fasch: Kyrie
Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music
Mendelssohn: Hora est

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Saturday, 5 September 2015, 7.30pm

The first half that comprised perhaps normal Tudor Consort fare, the second half plunged into the nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries.

The title of the concert derived from the fact that most of the pieces performed were written for sixteen voices; some in two or four choirs, some for sixteen separate voices.  A few of the works were sung by 20 or 21 voices, as was the opening work, sung antiphonally, with 7 or 8 singers performing from the organ gallery, with the remainder at the front of the sanctuary.  The others were sung by 16 or 17 voices.

The Heinrich Schütz extract from his Psalms of David was a most joyful work, a setting of Psalm 100: Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth, and it was given full rein by the choir.

It was followed in like mood by Jubilate Deo written by Schütz’s teacher, Giovanni Gabrieli.  Again the
choir was in full voice, with joyful music-making using words from Psalm 100 and other Biblical passages.  The choir made good use of the acoustic of the church, with gorgeous tone, especially from the women, and a strong rhythmic pulse, despite the multiple interweaving parts.  Like the previous item, it was with organ – the Cathedral’s own organ.

Sitting well back in the Cathedral, on the raised seating, is my usual spot, because I like to see the choir, but also I find it good acoustically.  However, it sometimes proved a disadvantage to the hearing all of Michael Stewart’s spoken introductions, and sometimes the organ was too loud for the singers because of my proximity to it.

The third item was by an composer unknown to most of us; Oratio Benevoli (spelt by Wikipedia and Grove as Orazio Benevolo or Benevoli), who lived from 1605 to 1672, and was a Franco-Italian composer of large scaled polychoral sacred choral works.  His style was called the ‘colossal’ style, because of his use of many choirs together.

His setting was of Psalm 110, for four four-part choirs.  This was a big sing – both as separate choirs and as one entity, the singers faced many demands.  There were frequent solos.  The work opened with a cantor singing a capella; after his words, the organ joined the singers.  The individual voices varied in their ability to project the words and music; the massed sections were the most effective.  There is no doubt that this was pretty difficult, virtuosic music, with complex ornamenting melismas.  Towards the end, women’s voices sang together a series of harmonic suspensions that were electrifying; and the further concerted sections were exciting.

Now for something completely different.  After the interval, the first piece was ‘Der Abend’ from Zwei Gesänge by Richard Strauss.  The Tudor Consort singing Strauss!?  A poem by Schiller was the text, about evening, love and rest. The unaccompanied choral song opened with two voices singing an octave apart.  As the programme note stated, the music did indeed sound orchestral – it was written between Also sprach Zarathustra and Don Quixote, extremely colourful tone poems.

At times the tonality was hard to pin down – parts entered in seemingly different keys from what preceded or accompanied them.  Such was the complexity the words were hard to identify.  The different timbres of the voices did not always serve the words or the music well.  Nor did the melismatic treatment of the words assist in making them out.  On the whole, the men’s voices blended better than did the women’s.  The ending set the words (translated) ‘Ascending in the sky with quiet steps / comes the fragrant night; / sweet love follows. / Rest and love! / Phoebus, the loving one, rests.’  The music here was appropriately dreamy and lovely.

Carl Fasch (1736 – 1800) was, Michael Stewart told us, influenced by Benevoli, and in turn influenced Felix Mendelssohn, whom we were to hear later.  Fasch’s ‘Kyrie’ from his Missa a 16 voci was written for the Berlin Singakademie, which he founded in 1791.  It was the first mixed voice choir in Germany, consisting of amateur singers.

That did not mean it was an easy sing, despite being the first work he presented to his choir.  It was sung with organ (though originally with instrumental accompaniment).  Near the beginning I wondered if it was the organ or the choir that was slightly out of tune; it had to be the latter.  After the more dramatic music we had already heard this piece sounded rather stodgy.

Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, written for 16 different soloists in honour of Sir Henry Wood’s fiftieth anniversary as a conductor, is as sublime as is the blank verse of William Shakespeare, which it sets.  The wonderful speech by Lorenzo to Jessica in Act V Scene i of The Merchant of Venice has its own music, but Vaughan Williams does not obscure this.  The opening words ‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!’ is evoked in the calm, flowing music.  The timbres of the organ do not enhance the vocal lines as does the original orchestral setting.

Shakespeare’s reference to the stars (‘There’s not the smallest orb…like an angel sings’) recalls the belief in the music of the spheres, which the composer echoes. Towards the end, where Shakespeare has a kind of new start to the verse: ‘Music! Hark!…’, Vaughan Williams appropriately reiterates the music of the opening lines.  The ending ‘Becomes the touches of sweet harmony.’ Is sublime, and was beautifully rendered.

When singing as a choir, the Consort was very fine, but the solos were very variable in quality.  The words could have been clearer, but again, my proximity to the organ may have been a factor.

To end, we heard Hora est by Mendelssohn.  The piece was inspired by Fasch’s work, with organ ‘ad libitum’.  The tuning seemed a little suspect at the opening.  The first section, ‘Hora est…’, was an antiphon for male voices only, then the women join for the response ‘Ecce apparebit…’.  This was difficult music, and the result was not the best I have heard from The Tudor Consort.  However, the brightness of the women’s response to the darkness of the antiphon certainly created a jubilant effect.

It may have been the diversity of the programme’s composers and styles of music, but the concert was out of a drawer further down the cabinet than is the case with The Tudor Consort’s usual performances.  The audience was rather smaller than we have come to expect for the Consort; there were competing classical music events.

Although the printed programme had its usual excellent notes and meticulous full translations, it was undated, and nowhere acknowledged the huge contribution of Richard Apperley at the organ.

It was an innovative and interesting idea to present a variety of works for 16 voices. In the event, I did not feel that all the items came off equally well, but it was an enjoyable and instructive concert nevertheless.

Breaking the concert mould, with fateful results – Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents :
FATE

RODRIGO – Concierto Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra
SHOSTAKOVICH – Piano Concerto No.2 in F Major Op. 102
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No.4 in F Minor Op. 36

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Andrey Lebedev (guitar)
Michael Houstoun (piano)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday September 5th 2015

Breaking the mould, as Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington have done repeatedly and successfully over the last few seasons, this concert presented no less than TWO concertos, and for different instruments! The orchestra could have gone the whole hog and asked Michael Houstoun to play the Tchaikovsky Second Piano Concerto after the interval (the one with the concerto-like parts for violin and ‘cello) – but the name of the concert would have then had to be altered, from “Fate” to something like “Concertomania”, or something.

Wisely, no such deviation was allowed, and so we were given the next Tchaikovsky Symphony in the composer’s numbered series, one whose theme was responsible for the concert’s “fateful” title. And, after the success the orchestra had achieved thus far with the first three of these works (I can testify to the excellence of the performances of No.1 (“WInter Daydreams”) and No.3 (“Polish”) – to my chagrin I missed that of the “Little Russian” – it was necessary that “the big three” (as Marc Taddei referred to them) needed to be tackled, and put across with the same kind of verve, brilliance and sensitivity as we’d already heard.

But the concert introduced a new and somewhat geographically removed element, a work which has nothing whatever to do with Russia – Spanish composer Joachim Rodrigo’s world-famous “Concierto de Aranjuez”. Wonderful though the music is, it was a slightly unnerving choice, followed immediately as it was by works associated with that part of Europe as far removed from the Iberian peninsula as it’s possible to get.

All was explained by a brief note in the programme leaflet available at the concert’s beginning – the presence of Rodrigo’s “Orange Juice” Concerto (as it was amusingly referred to by none other than Marc Taddei, speaking as part of a “between-the-items” presentation by Radio New Zealand Concert’s Clarissa Dunn) was part of a promotion by the Orchestra presenting winners of the Gisborne International Music Festival. This competition has certainly done its work in promoting the careers of many musicians well-known to New Zealand audiences, and others who have established themselves in musical careers overseas.

The 2013 winner of the Gisborne Competition was Australian guitarist Andrey Lebedev. I’m not sure whether he performed this concerto at Gisborne as one of his winning performances – but the work has certainly become the defining piece for any guitarist wanting to break into the “big time” world-wide. There are other concertos for the instrument – but none so popular and instantly recognizable. And yes, the ‘big tune ” of the slow movement has been made a hit in its own right, arranged for all different kinds of solo and ensemble combinations (the spoken presentation made reference to a well-known film “Brassed Off” in which the music was played by a solo cornet with a brass band accompaniment).

In a purely conventional context, players of the cor anglais everywhere have a lot to thank Rodrigo for, along with Dvorak in the “New Word” Symphony, of course – it’s a real gift of an orchestral solo, and was beautifully played, here – Marc Taddei got the player up for some well-earned applause at the concerto’s end. Rodrigo’s is actually a remarkable piece of composing – the concerto’s popularity has highlighted the luscious Hollywood-like tunes, but I think at the expense of some inventive treatments of the theme and parts of the theme, culminating in a very beautiful epilogue – a rhapsodic exchange between orchestra and soloist before the music just drifts into the ether – and straightaway, the march-like theme of the final movement begins, with again, inventive and endlessly beguiling treatments of the theme and harmonic variations of it, lots of piquancies and evocative guitar-like figurations from the orchestra.

The solo guitar was given a degree of amplification – expecting an acoustic guitar to make any great impact next to an orchestra in a concert hall like the Michael Fowler Centre is unrealistic, so it’s accepted that the instrument will, in some circumstances have some “help”. It must be a very hard thing to judge technically,and especially when one has to take into account the difference the presence of an audience makes. To my ears, it was here slightly overdone – it put the instrument slightly “out of scale” with the orchestra, and also into a different kind of acoustic regime – and it also made it difficult for the soloist to play really quietly in places, most notably in the “sotto voce” endings.

But I got used to the sound-picture, as one’s ears do with almost anything. One certainly didn’t miss any detail (including what sounded like a false entry – quickly corrected – from the guitarist during the slow movement!), and even within that slightly amplified sound-world there was a lot of light and shade in his playing, which was what I enjoyed. In some of the exchanges between guitar and the wind instruments, it was obvious that the guitar was in its own electro-acoustic world – but the difference was more realistic, for some reason, with the solo ‘cello in its lovely solo. Having said all of this, Andre Lebedev I thought brought out everything that was in the music for our absolute delight. I thought his playing really relished the piquancy of Rodrigo’s harmonies, and served notice to us that there’s a lot more to this music than the “big tune”, however important that is in getting people interested in the work in the first place – it’s really only the beginning!

The orchestra was a sensitive accompanying body – the playing, from both single instruments and from different sections nicely echoed the “guitar-style” manner of the work, much the same as most Spanish music for orchestra (and for solo piano) does. By contrast, in the work which followed, the orchestra found itself much more of an active protagonist, far more feisty and combatative in its interactions with the soloist. This was, of course, Michael Houstoun, playing his fourth Russian concerto in the concert series, and seemingly relishing every note. His brief on this occasion was the second of Shostakovich’s two piano concertos. Here, the transition from Rodrigo to Shostakovich wasn’t quite the schizophrenic experience it might have seemed on paper, because each work was in its way, merry, witty, festive and romantic.

Shostakovich wrote the concerto for his son Maxim as a nineteenth birthday present (the sort of things composers do “for” their children, one supposes!). One of Shotakovich’s first biographers, commenting on the music’s high spirits and sense of well-being, wrote “it was as though the composer’s youth had returned to him”, which puts the work’s dedication to Maxim in its appropriate context, far removed from the existentialist anguish of the symphonies, such as the recently completed Tenth. It’s no accident that the makers of the 2000 version of the Disney film Fantasia chose the first movement of this concerto to tell the animated story of the steadfast tin soldier, who goes into battle to defend a ballerina’s honour against the attentions of a malevolent jack-in-the-box, and after various heart-stopping adventures is able to return to reclaim his place beside her in the toy nursery.

We didn’t need the Disney film to “fill out” the scenarios, as the performance had all the energy, humour, theatricality and sentiment one could ask for. The orchestral winds which opened the concerto were spot-on with their perkiness, which Michael Houstoun’s piano lost no time in taking up. And though the Shostakovich fingerprints were soon in evidence – motoric energies and rising tides of harmonic ambience – it was all in the cause of generating high spirits and well-being, enormous washes of orchestral tone giving way to a cadenza from the soloist which picked up the energies again and whirled the movement to its exciting conclusion.

But it was then that the music would have REALLY raised the eyebrows of people familiar with the “usual” Shostakovich – we heard begin one of the most tender, lyrical and romantic pieces of writing for piano and orchestra imaginable. “It was like – well, like Chopin!” I heard one person say. And it was indeed, with bits of Rachmaninov thrown into the mix – in fact, one sequence sounded SO like the latter’s Second Piano Concerto, it was almost disorienting!  (I nearly said “disconcerting”, but thought better of it……). And then, out of these romantic ambiences came a chirpy-voiced piano figure, which returned us to the bright-eyed character of the first movement, summoning all the exuberance that was waiting in the wings onto the stage! This was the movement whose performance set everybody talking at the interval – I kept on hearing comments like “breathtaking!” “exciting!” “hair-raising!” and other expressions to that effect. It was all of those things, but especially the 7/8 sections where the missing “beat” tightened the music’s momentum and gave it a kind of headlong, unstoppable quality, firstly for orchestra and then the piano – it  was “Russian Dance” material with a twist, one that made it even more exciting and exhilarating.

So then, the “grim business” of the evening swung into play, with Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Marc Taddei said, when introducing the work, that he had asked the orchestra to play the “Fate” theme as broadly and darkly as he could get it to go, and the orchestra brasses certainly delivered the goods, right from the start – first the horns, then the heavy brass underneath snarling down the scale, and finally, gleaming at the top, the trumpets – and it all sounded fantastic! In short, the brass players did an incredible job, providing tremendous weight and brilliance. I must admit, any “live” performance of the opening of this symphony I hear puts me on edge, ever since my experience of hearing in concert, over forty years ago, Antal Dorati conduct the then NZBC Symphony in this work. At the rehearsal on the morning of the concert (so I was told by a friend who was there) Dorati walked out on the orchestra after telling the brass players they were incompetent – and so that evening the brasses were out to prove him wrong, which they did, a cracked note or two notwithstanding……..but the experience, though very exciting, was also, for those in the “know”, too razor-edged to be comfortable!

Well, Dorati would, I think, have been pleased with the Orchestra Wellington brass players – they did as good a job with this work as did the NZSO players the week previously with the Bruckner Eighth Symphony. The first movement of the Tchaikovsky seems to me to be one of the composer’s most demanding works, because it carries so much tension over such wide spans of music – and even the more lyrical bits sound as though they’re stepping gingerly upon coiled springs, which could go off at any moment. It all requires tremendous reserves of physical and emotional stamina to do the music proper justice – in fact the only other thing Tchaikovsky had written up to that point that was remotely as wild and full-blooded as this symphony’s opening movement was the tone-poem “Francesca da Rimini”, the previous year (1876). The players did the music and its composer proud – if the most tremendous moments seemed the preserve of the brass and timpani, the strings and winds also played their part. At the movement’s conclusion there was a sense of things being wrung out and exhausted, of having to pick things up once again from all over, and gradually rebuild and refurbish the spirit once more.

The two middle movements certainly did that – firstly by way of a typically Russian folk-song-like slow movement, and then a very exciting pizzicato-strings dance interspersed with droll interludes for wind and brass – all part of the “refurbishment of the spirit” whose devastation by fate had been presented to us by the opening movement. Again, the orchestra played marvellously (especially in the pizzicato-ostinato movement), and only a few bars of imprecise ensemble during the slow movement, caused by a late entry from one of the players, disturbed the brilliance and sheen of the playing (the sort of mishap that probably didn’t happen at the rehearsal!). As for the finale it was overwhelming in its impact, no more so than when the “Fate” theme returned unexpectedly, announced by no less then three sets of hand-cymbals (a spectacular sight!). From this “stroke of fate” Taddei and the orchestra gradually and patiently built up the “return to life” impulses, banishing all caution and plunging into frenzied expressions of excitement with great panache – “taking pleasure in the joy of others”, as the composer succinctly put it.

Onward to the remaining two symphonies – and, amid the on-going delights of this series with Michael Houstoun and Tchaikovsky, one wonders what Marc Taddei and his orchestra have got up their sleeves for 2016?

 

 

 

 

Audience delights in evocative, danceable music from the age of Shakespeare from Robert Oliver’s consort of viols

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Palliser Viols (Lisa Beech, Sophia Acheson, Jane Brown, Andrea Oliver, Robert Oliver)

Antony Holborne: Patiencia (Pavan), The Honie-suckle (Almain), The Fairie Rounde (Coranto)
John Ward: Fantasy à 5
Orlando Gibbons: In Nomine à 4
William Byrd: Fantasy à 4
Tobias Hume: Captain Humes Pavan, Souldiers Galiard
John Jenkins: Fantasy à 5 no.1
William Brade: Paduana, Canzon, Galliard

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 September 2015, 12.15pm

The name Palliser Viols had not meant anything to me, but it turned out to be a group led by that master of early music, Robert Oliver.

The brief but excellent programme notes confirmed that all the composers were English, and that the reason why William Brade’s music was published in Hamburg was because he spent his career in Denmark and Germany.  Nevertheless, a certain sameness in the music doubtless derives from the composers all being English, flourishing in the days of Queen Elizabeth I, some into the next decades.

This group of players is highly competent, and there was none of the out-of-tune playing one sometimes hears from groups playing these instruments.  One way of overcoming this fault is, of course, to tune the strings frequently, since being made of gut, they go out of tune much more readily than do modern steel strings, and this was done.

To modern ears the music seems very genteel, with neither very loud or very quiet sounds.  However, this certainly does not mean that there is no light and shade – there is plenty, but it is more subtle than modern instruments tend to be. There were charming sounds, immediately evocative of Elizbethan times, people, costumes, and especially dance.  This music should be danced to, or heard over a meal and conversation.

In this concert we heard two treble viols, two tenor and a bass, all six-stringed.  There was a mixture of dances, beginning with a slow Pavan, then to a more lively, danceable Almain followed by an even jollier Coranto, all by Antony Holborne (c.1545-1602).

The next three pieces were instrumental, rather than dances.  John Ward (1590-1638) wrote a rather wistful, even sad Fantasy, that was played very expressively.  The varied harmony and the movement in the bass line gave it character.  The Gibbons piece featured counterpoint and was a plaintive piece with much use of the minor mode, whereas Byrd’s was rather more straightforward, though very pleasing to the ear.

The two Hume pieces were for solo bass viol.  The first, though a Pavan, incorporated fast passages for the player, which decorated the basically slow dance melody.  The second was a much faster dance, putting considerable demands on the player, who had to negotiate the six strings at speed.  This involves pushing the instrument forward when the lowest string is to be played; otherwise the knee might be bowed rather than the string.  There were delightful variations on the melody, and plenty of chords demanding multiple-stopping of the strings, in addition to fast finger-work.

The entire ensemble played the remaining bracket.  (Why do audiences insist on applauding almost every piece, however short, instead of waiting until the end of each of the brackets clearly shown in the printed programme?)  The Jenkins Fantasy involved much interplay of instruments, whereas the first Brade piece was much more smooth and chordal, though with decoration later.

The final Canzon and Galliard were both happy pieces, quite quick.  The Galliard in particular was asking to be danced to.

All the performers were thoroughly able, and created a programme much appreciated by the audience.

 

Delightful Takiri Vocal Ensemble heralds a new era for the song recital?

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Takiri Ensemble
Anna Leese (soprano), Bianca Andrew (mezzo-soprano), Andrew Glover (tenor), Robert Tucker (baritone)
Kirsten Simpson (piano)

Songs and ensembles by Schubert, Schumann, David Hamilton, Ross Harris, Anthony Ritchie, Britten and Vaughan Williams

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 30 August 2:30 pm

The Takiri Ensemble is a novelty for New Zealand: a vocal quartet that aims to be a permanent presence in this country. It challenges the long-held and flimsily sustained belief that there’s no audience for the song recital; another similar, ill-supported notion is that there’s little appetite for piano recitals. Each prejudice has probably been based on cases that have not been representative or well-conceived, flawed through poor programming, or uninteresting-looking performers.

I should, however, note another straw in the wind: an enterprising song recital inspired by pianist Catherine Norton on 10 June (see the review at that date).

This example looks like winning through the presence of at least the two well-known female singers, and a programme that has a decent proportion of genuinely popular, well-known material. Soprano Anna Leese has become one of the best-known young singers to have established an international reputation; Bianca Andrew, now at the Guildhall in London, has attracted a big following in New Zealand through her vivid persona. Andrew Glover has not been so visible in New Zealand since going to study overseas where he has had substantial professional engagements: Opera North, Garsington Opera, Opera Holland Park and English Touring Opera. Robert Tucker studied with Andrew at the Opera Centre in Perth, and has been singing professionally overseas for some years, including Schaunard in La bohème and Guglielmo in Così fan tutte (which he sang recently, alongside Bianca as Dorabella, with Wanderlust Opera in Wellington).

Pianist Kirsten Simpson is an artist-teacher in accompaniment at the school of music, Victoria University. During her extensive time overseas she has accompanied at the Solti Te Kanawa Accademia di Bel Canto in Italy.

The programme began with what I imagine is still the best known of Lieder: Schubert. All very familiar to me from my teens, though how familiar they are to today’s teenagers, I wonder. I was lucky to have had two music-loving German masters at college who used Lieder, mainly Schubert (also my first hearing of Schumann’s ‘Die Grenadiere’), and German folk-songs to embed the language, and at university, the wonderful Oxford Book of German Verse, very much my Bible, was annotated with details of musical settings.

So it will be obvious that the quartet did not confine itself to music composed or arranged for all four singers; in fact, all of the Schubert songs were sung in turn by individual singers. Because these are generally more familiar, I suspect that the ensemble will be wise to include a reasonable number of such well-loved songs as ‘loss-leaders’ for the more meaty or less easily digested music.

The second group of songs was totally unfamiliar to me: Schumann’s late cycle entitled Spanische
Liebeslieder (Op 138) might have been composed specifically for this ensemble. The piano alone plays a Prelude at the beginning and an Intermezzo in the middle, signalling the significance of the piano as scene or mood painter; it was always rewarding to listen to Kirsten Simpson’s thoughtful and colourful support for the voices.

Each of the eight songs is set for one or two voices and the last, ‘Dunkler Lichtglanz’, for the quartet, and the performances follow the pattern of voices adopted in the famous Graham Johnson Complete Schumann songs, on Hyperion for the bi-centenary in 2010.

Anna sang the first song, Schubert’s ‘Die Forelle’; it was a wonderful exhibition of her fluidity, her easy command of varied articulations and colours and the fisherman theme reappeared with ‘Fischerwiese’, marked with a joyous quality over sparkling accompaniment.

Robert Tucker used dynamic subtleties, especially a hardly audible pianissimo, in ‘An Sylvia’ which used to be popular as sung to Shakespeare’s original lyric from Two Gentlemen from Verona. Then there was firm metal in the voice, and in his later ‘Schwanengesang’ (not the song cycle), pregnant silences, depicting the approach of death.

Andrew Glover’s first song was the heart-felt ‘An die Musik’, with a caressing tone and an almost religious pianissimo, supported by discreet face and hand gestures. Then in ‘Nacht und Träume’, he held long high head notes, beautiful breath control. But in the Schumann cycle, in ‘O wie lieblich ist das Mädchen’ there was a little tightness in his high register.

Bianca Andrew took over, with the powerfully emotional ‘Die junge Nonne’, which she sang with impressively rich imagination; she knows how to use her head and arms to illuminate the music and dramatise the sense of the words.

Though not all the Schumann songs are equal in melodic charm and emotional integrity, this cycle, Spanische Liebeslieder, deserves outings as a whole. Though the notes naturally drew attention to Spanish character, there was little to my ears; both verses and music sounded thoroughly absorbed into a German sensibility. So they stood in the mainstream of the Lied. The two women sang the duet ‘Bedeckt mich mit Blumen’ with special delight, their voices and intent in harmony.

The men too had their duet, ‘Blaue Augen hat das Mädchen’, and their voices showed a delightful unanimity of style and sense.

After the interval came a few New Zealand songs: David Hamilton’s arrangements for these singers of his choral pieces, Three Anzac Settings.  Utterly unpretentious little works, quite different one from the other, handling sharply contrasting aspects of the war, including one, ‘Before Battle’, which dealt with the experience of conscientious objectors, in an idiom refreshingly free of any striving for ugliness or horror. There was a childlike tone in its rhythms, beautifully caught by singers and pianist, very remote from the sanctimonious character found in much music that deals with the tragedy of war.

The third, ‘In Flanders Fields’, was more subdued, in which men’s voices predominated.

Ross Harris composed three songs for Wellington soprano Lesley Graham in appreciation of her role in Harris’s two operas of the 1980s, Waituhi and Tanz der Schwäne. Bianca sang these charming vignettes set to poems by Bub Bridger; short little stories, gently declamatory; ‘Gossip’ had the air of wistful memories.

Two songs by Anthony Ritchie: the more I hear of his music, the more I feel it reflects clearly the happy return to compositional sanity, honesty and musical communicability after the perversities of the late 20th century. ‘He Moemoea’ is a polished, mature little song; ‘Ataturk Memorial’, to me, was somewhat unconvincing, a little prosaic, yet it seemed to work as a song.

Andrew Glover sang two songs by Britten: ‘Let the Florid Music Praise’ and ‘Oliver Cromwell’, the first with an uncanny hint of his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, the second a witty little piece, quite
splendidly done.  Anna Leese sang Britten’s ‘O Waly Waly’, with an arresting edginess and clarity.

Three Vaughan Williams songs brought the programme to an end. Anna and Bianca joined in singing ‘It was a Lover and His Lass’, weaving among the notes joyfully; the two men in ‘Fear no more the Heat of the Sun’, produced tones of touching solemnity, calm, elegiac; and the quartet sang ‘Linden Lea’, a cappella, perfectly fitting.

The quartet had sung already in Kaitaia, Wanaka and Motueka; they go on to Whanganui, Rotorua and Whakatane, but sing nowhere else in Wellington – What A Shame!

Do the other concert promoters still fear that singers will keep their audiences at home? This concert, with its audience of over 300, should persuade them otherwise.

P.S.
My colleague Rosemary Collier, who was also at the concert, has just commented about the excellent diction, which is so important in the singing of Lieder and other ‘art song’ – that they are ‘a marriage of poetry and music’.  (10am, Tuesday 1 September). I totally agree with her.

 

 

Aural (and visual) feast from Stroma at the Wellington City Gallery

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma, Wellington’s contemporary music ensemble, presents
INTERIORS

Music by Alison Isadora, Michael Norris, Jeroen Speak and Jack Body

Stroma
Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington City Gallery,
Civic Square, Wellington

Sunday 30th August, 2015

Contemporary music ensemble Stroma performed at the Wellington City Gallery, in a space flanked on three sides by images created by photographer Fiona Pardington, whose exhibition “A Beautiful Hesitation”, brought an additional resonant and interactive context to the “sounded out” work of the composers. As the images suspended objects in time for us to register our thoughts and feelings about them, so too did the music seek to impinge its sound-impulses upon our sensibilities and memories – each a process of entrapment, display, re-evaluation and judgement, fascinatingly juxtaposed.

Stroma’s artistic director Michael Norris might well have been making reference to the visual exhibition as much as to his own work in the concert, when he wrote in his programme note regarding music and human memory,  and how it depends on “both the long-and short-term storage and recall of “aural echoes” of past events which might have occurred in the recent ….or distant past….”.  It’s a view of the process that accords with Fiona Pardington’s idea of photography’s power “to suspend time and interrogate our memories”.

On the programme was a world premiere – Jeroen Speak’s Eratosthene’s Sieve, written last year (2014) while the composer was the Creative New Zealand/Jack C.Richards Composer-in-Residence at Te Koko New ZEaland School of Music – and two other relatively recent works, Alison Isadora’s 2014 Point of Departure, and Michael Norris’s 2012 Time Dance. The fourth work was written by Jack Body, his 1987 piece called Interiors, which, as can be seen, gave its name to the concert.

Alison Isadora’s Point of Departure eponymously deserved its poll position in the concert, the music creating an “exotic” feeling of scene-setting for the listener’s delight and pleasure, with a string quartet’s distinctive timbres augmented by gong strokes and muffled drum-beats. The composer included lines from a work “Falling” by a Dutch Poet, Remco Campert, which I found singularly evocative:

In memory’s long fall
I seek the essential moment.
Above becomes beneath
and the earth comes swinging up.

She also pinpointed in her notes the “ferris wheel” idea, which, in the music is expressed as a feeling of ascending and then falling back, with throbbing pulsations underlining the sustained tones. So we got the occasional frisson of impulsive energy amid sostenuto likes, quite Debussy-like in effect, hence the slightly Oriental atmospheres generated, and an accompanying philosophic feeling that things are constantly in a kind of change, but return to their origins and begin, perhaps differently, all over again.

Amid the layerings and the explorations of these worlds in between, Alison Isadora’s disclosure of the circumstance of a colleague’s accidental death and how it coloured the piece’s second half added a whole new strata of response to the sounds for us, and deepening the ritualistic sense of it all – the percussive effects (snare-like drum beats and wood-block sounds were stinging, disruptive phrase-end punctuations which played their part in what the composer called the process of moving from anger to acceptance.

Michael Norris’s Time Dance, which followed evoked a markedly different kind of response from me, intrigued as I was by the prospect of the composer’s “deconstruction” of one of my favorite pieces of Baroque music, JS Bach’s Second Orchestral Suite (the one featuring the solo flute). The transformation was indeed a radical one – we were duly warned in the programme note as to the “subliminal” nature of our experience of the original piece’s essence!

This was a condensed concert version for piano quartet, presumably taken from Norris’s score for a 40-minute film “Time Dance”, a collaboration between the composer, choreographer/filmmaker Daniel Belton, and Good Company Arts. So we had four movements from the Suite, beginning with the Sarabande, followed by the Polonaise, Menuet and finally the Bandinerie. The Sarabande featured delicate piano figurations at the beginning, which strings turned into obstinate, enlivening the textures with pizzicati, the music resembling a mechanical device performing idiosyncratically, in places reverting to a “teashop” manner, with gestures resembling quasi-Viennese swooning.

Sustained arpeggiated notes from the piano began the Polonaise, the strings eagerly overlapping their figurations, the piano beautifully colouring each phrase’s flourish – the music’s phrases looped around, strung along, echoed and drew out, going into the stratospheric regions, giving us a sense of something suspended for all time. A contrasting response to this was provided by the Menuetto, the music busy, burrowing and motoric in the bass beneath sustained upper harmonies, the piano kaleidoscopically changing its chord-colours, and the phrases ending with upward-thrusting exclamations. The ‘cello kept the main rhythm going, but even its strength waned at the end as the music drooped and lay still.

The solo violin roused everybody in time for the Bandinerie with a cadenza-like sequence, everybody else joining in the ambient fun, the piano’s phrases and the strings’ tremolandi passages giving us a “lift” with their emphatic phrase-endings, and leading our sensibilities into and out of the thickets with their wonderfully unpredictable harmonic changes, everybody playing at their instruments’ extremities – as unpredictably, the music broke off into “other realms”, with harmonics and tremolandi from the strings, and curtain-opening-and-closing arpeggios from the piano. Bach may have been there subliminally, but I was too caught up in the here-and-now of it all to notice him!

Jereon Speak’s work Eratosthene’s Sieve was the evening’s world premiere, performed by an assorted ensemble of strings, flute, harp, accordion and percussion. The composer’s starting-point was the Greek philosopher Eratosthene’s “Sieve”, a device by which any prime number could be easily recognized, the music representing an attempt by its composer to similarly “sieve” his musical creations and constructions, and in the process discovering hitherto uncovered presences within this existing material.

Such a splendid array of instruments! – and how tellingly it all began, with breath (no tones) given by the accordion as a “gift of life” to the rest of the ensemble, whose initial pointillistic touches gradually became more animated with each succeeding wave of sound, the marimba, harp and vibraphone resonating magically. The music seemed to me to resemble an organic process at work (and, of course, maths, like music, is digitally, or step-wise organic), the coalescings seeking cues from their shared ambiences, and thus generating a definite sense of mutual expressiveness which informed each gesture.

Some Archimedian excitement then irrupted between ‘cello and percussion, stimulating what seemed like random, isolated responses from other instruments at first, all generating great excitement. The flute seemed to have a role of peacemaker towards the end of this sequence, as the energies dissipated, and a kind of “melting-down” of tones and their timbres, a “draining away” of energies, with the harp’s sustaining notes lengthening the shadows. Only the occasional flute scampering remained towards the end as a final act of impulse, the accordion’s breath evoking a dried leaf blowing across desolate desert sands at the piece’s end.

I was interested in the significance of the title Interiors given by Jack Body to his piece – he made many transcriptions of pieces of music from exotic places such as different regions of China, wanting in particular to capture some of the music from ethnic minority groups. These were undertakings that involved the making of “in situ” field recordings, and devising various instrumental “backdrops” to these recordings, to enhance the listener’s appreciation of the original music’s “interior”.  The work we heard tonight involved three separate recordings of ethnic performances, two instrumental and one vocal. The largest instrumental group of the evening was on hand to contribute various augmentations of these sounds.

First was that of a long-ge, a Sichuan version of a Jew’s harp, the recorded instrument’s easy, loping rhythm reinforced by clarinet and flute and joined by violin and ‘cello, with the piano adding its own excitement to the mix. Then, in contrast with the dance rhythms, the pianist “activated” the piano’s interior, the percussionist “bowed” the vibraphone and various scintillations held time and its passing in abeyance, leaving long exhalations of melody to drift lazily away. A lovely contrast to this was afforded by a recording of three women from Guizhou singing a forthright melody, the instrumentalists supporting and colouring their singing lines with lovely, long-held notes, and continuing to play over the spoken exchanges between the singers recorded on the tape in between verses.

Something of this “anecdotal” re-enactment technique also coloured the final recording, that of an ensemble, no less, of lusheng, the instrument a six-pipe bamboo mouth-organ common in the south of China, and throughout South-East Asian in various forms. A plastic westernized version of one of these was used by one of the ensemble, as the other instrumentalists supplied various counterpoints to the mouth-organ ensemble, and occasional hand-clapping, adding to the festive character of the piece – and we in the audience enjoyed (and joined in with) a delicious and spontaneous-sounding bout of giggling on the tape after the music finished! What a concert!

Cathedrals and landscapes – delight and awe with the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
CATHEDRAL OF SOUND
Sibelius and Bruckner

SIBELIUS – Violin Concerto in D Minor  Op.47
BRUCKNER – Symphony No.8 in C Minor (original version)

Baiba Skride (violin)
Simone Young AM (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 28th August, 2015

Sibelius and Bruckner on the same programme? – bracing cocktails of icy spring water, followed by restorative draughts of schnapps, or, perhaps, aromatic coffee? (that is, to say, their musical equivalents!)……..an intriguing prospect, one that didn’t arise the last time Simone Young was in New Zealand to conduct Bruckner with the NZSO. Paired with his mighty Fifth Symphony on that occasion was the music of Mozart, Bruckner’s fellow-countryman. The choice of the two composers seemed impeccable, logical and simple.

This time the works were Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Bruckner’s even more imposing Eighth Symphony – and what was more, Simone Young was to present the original version of the Bruckner, the first time it had been given in this country. Interestingly enough, each of the two works, for all their inherent differences, had birthing difficulties, both undergoing extensive revisions at the hands of their respective composers, though under vastly different circumstances.

Sibelius’s original work was performed, none too successfully, and then withdrawn by the composer, who altered the work greatly, in particular simplifying the difficulties of the solo part. A year later, the work was freshly performed, and was received with enthusiasm, this revised score being the one which is used by performers to this day. (Incidentally, the original version – fascinating to listen to – has been recorded on the BIS label.)

In Bruckner’s case, the composer’s agony began even before his new work was performed – after finishing the symphony in 1887 he was downcast at the response to the score from the same conductor, Hermann Levi, who had achieved such a success with the composer’s Seventh Symphony. Declaring in a note to the composer that he found the music “impossible”, Levi suggested “a reworking” of the piece, and Bruckner, ever willing to comply, spent until 1890 revising the work, which, however, had to wait a further two years before its first performance in Vienna, in 1892.

If never the popular success that was its predecessor, the Eighth Symphony in its revised form is today frequently performed, though a handful of conductors (Young is one of them) have insisted on championing the original version. The differences are too numerous to discuss in a review of this size, though there are instantly noticeable features which demarcate the two editions – the ending of the first movement (blazing in the original, but deathly hushed in the revised version), the trio section of the scherzo (no harps in the original version, and with whole sections of the music recomposed in the revision), and the slow movement’s great climax (six cymbal crashes in the original version, reduced to a single stroke in the revision) – and so on.

Asked in interview why she preferred Bruckner’s original versions of his symphonies (she has recorded them all with her Hamburg Orchestra, to great acclaim), Young talked about these first attempts as “honest visions of a complex and very introverted man, whose first versions of the works were monumental structures, which some musicians of the time felt were impossible to cope with.” She also recounted the response of present-day players in different places to these original works, their enthusiasm and excitement regarding the challenges of being pushed out to extremes, particularly in this symphony, taking the opportunity to praise the NZSO’s work in rehearsal in these respects as well.

So we were set to witness great things, not the least when violinist Baiba Skride stepped out onto the platform to play the Sibelius with Simone Young, in front of the NZSO. I had heard the violinist a few years before, playing Tchaikovsky with the orchestra, and remembered a distinctive “way” she had with the concerto on that occasion – and so it was, in a different manner, with the Sibelius. She began the work in a rapt, inward way, her tone incredibly sweet and magically ‘floated”, her line with little of the nervous intensities or throbbing anxieties that we usually hear – instead, this seemed to be the voice of a soul communing with nature. A brief double-stopping intonation “edge” apart, her playing was free and pure, the touch as light as air, and the orchestral support (a lovely viola solo) properly restrained, dark and richly detailed.

Throughout the movement soloist and orchestra “played off” one another most engagingly, from moments of supporting songful utterances, to exhilarating hide-and-seek impulses, the violin dancing like a wood-sprite through the orchestral tree-trunks, laughter sounding amid the occasional baleful snarlings from darker places. The slow movement beautifully poeticized these soundscapes at the outset, except I found the horns became too insistent in places, the conductor’s bringing-out of the “middle textures” too much of a good thing, submerging the soloist’s heartfelt lines and overbalancing the textures. Still, the violinist was able to recapture the serenity of the music over the final pages, which were beautifully sounded.

More appropriate was conductor Young’s bringing out of those same middle voices in the polonaise-like finale, including the timpani, whose crisply-articulated figures added to the music’s exuberance – the soloist also really “dug in” here, giving the music a kind of “dancing on an ice-floe” character, while the orchestra’s nature-sounds literally buzzed and rumbled all about her – I loved the muted horns’ feisty “buzzings”, in particular! And what great blazing-up of orchestral weight there was mid-movement! – as if all nature was joining in the dance! I particularly enjoyed Baiba Skride’s crystalline upward runs, the final note of each ascending impulse “pinged” with such exuberance and joy!

While Skride didn’t perhaps “command” her instrument with the absolute totality of a Janine Jansen (whom we had heard earlier in the year), I thought her performance no less committed to the music and as fully attuned to its particular character in a pleasingly individual way. The music and playing certainly cleared our musical sinuses in preparation for the copious draughts of symphonic argument that were to follow, courtesy of Anton Bruckner and his greatest symphony.

Having lived for some time with Simone Young’s Hamburg recording of this piece in its original form, I knew something of what to expect from her – she had spoken in her interview of a previous era of Bruckner interpretations featuring “heavier, more laden performances”, and how she had worked to energize and lighten those textures in her own readings. Such was the case here – with every phrase, one sensed the music moving in a purposeful, far-sighted, and clearly-focused manner, intently set upon goals which would take the time they needed to be achieved, and no more. One noticed throughout the first movement the perfectly-graded dynamics, the ebb and flow of impulse and the sense of some vast scheme unfolding as it should.

And what a splendid sound the orchestra made! If Simone Young was right, then the NZSO’s recent excursions into Wagner’s music with the recently-departed Music Director Pietari Inkinen were here paying off most satisfyingly. Though not producing quite as “rounded” a sound-fabric as one might hear on recordings from Vienna or Berlin or Amsterdam from the great resident orchestras in those places, the players seemed to be committing every fibre of their being to delivering what their conductor wanted – a warm, rich, but always transparent sound, through which plethora of tones all the instruments could “speak”. In any performance of any Bruckner symphony the brass need to be out-and-out heroes – and so it was here, with two full rows of players (including a group playing those beautiful instruments we know as “Wagner-tubas”) making sounds which brought all the magnificence of Bruckner’s scoring to glorious life for our wide-eared and open-mouthed pleasure.

So it was that the first movement mightily ran its course, Young never making overmuch of any great upheaval, nor lingering too fulsomely upon any contrastingly lyrical sequence, but keeping the underlying pulse of the giant organism throbbing (despite dropping her baton at one point in the excitement!) – in this way, the sudden outburst at the movement’s end (which Bruckner later excised, and over which circumstance the otherwise excellent programme note was misleading) seemed like a naturally-expressed on-going expression of defiance, a “serving of intent” for what was to follow. Of course, straight away, this was the scherzo, perhaps Bruckner’s mightiest among other titanic utterances, a true “gods at play” display of divine exuberance. This was the movement which “led me into” the work in my student days, and which never fails to stir the blood most satisfying.

Bruckner later thought better of some of his bolder harmonic shifts in his rewriting, and of the exuberant extent of his hammering ostinati patterns, some of which he cut from the scherzo’s main body. But he also reworked most of the trio section (I heretically confess to a sneaking preference for the harps the composer added to the later version of this sequence – first loves are not easily let go! – though I appreciate that the use of those celestial tones at this point detracts from their heart-easing impact upon the slow movement’s yearnings….) which here represented a kind of unveiling of a statue of great beauty, its impact far-reaching and profoundly moving in an austere, even visionary way, amid the madness of the cosmic dance. Afterwards, what joy and abandonment there was, when the dance returned, with brass and timpani hurling their tones back and forth among the mountaintops.

But this was mere play compared with what followed – the symphony’s slow movement, the composer’s most heartfelt utterance to date in his creative career, more so, even, than his lament at Richard Wagner’s passing in the slow movement of the Seventh Symphony. Bruckner’s original conception has his own sensibilities on the rack in places, aspiring, hesitating, crying out, falling back and beseeching, before finally risking all and bringing his very being’s fibre into prominence in the grandest possible way (underlined by six mighty cymbal crashes!). Though his revision of the movement is tidier and less discursive, its spontaneously-wrought essence isn’t by comparison nearly as flavorsome, its relatively cumulative course more abstract than truly heartfelt – though, undoubtedly (as with all great music) there’s a “take from it what you will” dynamic very much for the picking of any listener.

Here, with Simone Young and the intrepid band, the music’s course unfolded as organically as any set of common impulses harnessed to a purpose – I was lost in admiration of the brass’s playing, and absolutely in thrall to the composer’s juxtaposing of the horns with the Wagner tubas, having it laid out before my eyes, so to speak – and with the rest of the orchestra as eager participants in the ritual of sound, creating the “cathedral” alluded to in the concert’s publicity. From Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s occasional solo violin strands, through individual and ensembles wind utterances, richly-wrought string passages and noble brass chorales to tumultuous tutti passages with everybody playing their hearts out, the performance made its way to the music’s summit, before basking in the afterglow of the journey’s achievement, during which a trio of horns (and later the Wagner tubas) exchanged long-breathed phrases by way of bringing forth one of the most sublime codas known to symphonic music of any era – such a privilege to be able to sit in the hall with those musicians during that special moment in time and listen to this music being realized so beautifully.

However, this wasn’t an “unfinished” symphony – and the finale burst in, carrying all before it, the timpani sounding off like gunshots in response to the opening brass fanfares. In many ways this is the most demanding movement of the symphony as it’s so discursive and wide-ranging – heroic, romantic, pastoral, anguished, tender, ruminative, in fact every mood jostling for a place in the scheme of things. Simone Young gave the different strands enough leeway to be able to express their concerns while keeping the music’s momentum firmly set upon the symphony’s great concluding peroration, asking for and receiving full-blooded responses from the players right through to the work’s final shouts of homecoming and fulfillment. At the end the audience’s reception accorded conductor and orchestra whole-hearted and richly-deserved acclaim and appreciation.

The NZSO is repeatedly proving itself as an orchestra which delivers what’s required for such big occasions – and now that Young has left Hamburg to pursue a freelance conducting career, we wish her continued success, while hoping that she includes this country as a regular port of call, particularly as there are several more Bruckner Symphonies whose first editions await their premieres in this particular part of the world. She and the NZSO would on Friday evening have certainly put a girdle around the earth along which the composer’s shade, from his resting-place in Austria, would have danced in joy.