Tag: baroque music

The Bach Project splendidly under way on the St Paul’s Cathedral organ

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Project at Saint Paul’s

Michael Stewart and Richard Apperley (organists)

Programme No 6 – played by Richard Apperley

Organ chorale: ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross’, BWV 622
Concerto in D minor, BWV 596
Sonata III in D minor, BWV 527
Partita diverse sopra il corale ‘Sei gegrusset, Jesu gütig’ BWV 768

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Tuesday 31 March 12:45 pm (330th anniversary of J S Bach’s birth)

Middle C’s neglect so far of this momentous project, the performance of all, yes all, of Bach’s compositions for the organ is regrettable: caused by absences from Wellington, conflicting obligations. In my case, the Nelson Chamber Music Festival, Napier’s production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, escapes to sun on the Horowhenua coast, and the past fortnight in Auckland and the far North.

Most of the musical fraternity know something of Bach’s huge output of music for the organ, though I imagine it’s rather confined, as is mine, to the ‘pure’ organ pieces – the preludes, toccatas, fantasias, passacaglias and fugues bearing BWV numbers in the 500s. But the scores of pieces based on chorales and other vocal music are perhaps too varied and numerous for the non-specialist to focus on.

My first reaction to the project was, ‘is it really possible, to play all the organ works in a series of 28 ¾ hour recitals’? If you look at the BWV catalogue (for example in Wikipedia) the organ works number from BWV 525 to 771, and there are later additions to the catalogue of organ pieces listed as Neumeister Chorales, BWV 1090 to 1121, which are also programmed throughout the series. That’s about 270 pieces. But if Stewart and Apperley play an average of ten or so each time, they make it.

This recital was a bit special as it was on Bach’s birthday.

The programme notes are written in a personal manner, a certain amount of musical learning, but a good deal of comment on the way the organist, here Richard Apperley, feels about the music and why it was chosen for the birthday.

The first piece was an organ chorale on a Lutheran Passion Hymn, for Lent (which is now), included in Bach’s Orgelbüchlein – Little Organ Book – composed during Bach’s years at Weimar (1708 – 1717). The notes quote Charles-Marie Widor’s judgement of it as ‘The finest piece of instrumental music written’, and Apperley adds that it’s one of the few chorale preludes to which he finds it possible to resist adding ornamentation. Indeed, as he played it, Bach’s own ornaments are elaborate enough, particularly given its chromatic character and richness of the counterpoint and fugal writing. Though generally it was an interesting illustration of the tastes of the period.

The general mood is lamenting, calm and heartfelt; and the tasteful registrations chosen allowed it to be heard clearly in the big space.

The Concerto in D minor is a transcription of one of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico set, Op 3 No 11, which was for two violins. The Vivaldi is in three movements while Bach divides the first movement in two, separating its fugal section, so making it a four-movement work (Bach marks them: I. Ohne Bezeichnung (without indication), Grave; II. Fuga; III. Largo; IV. Finale). Though, before reading the notes, I had thought the fugal passage was, indeed, simply part of the opening Allegro.

The Vivaldi is a splendid work, but as the notes remark, Bach’s account is even more exciting. This had the effect both of demonstrating Bach’s genius as well as that of the commonly under-estimated Vivaldi who was after all responsible for the basic music and its shapes.

There were many delightful elements in the work, the varied registrations, the tempo contrasts, the beautiful Siciliano middle (third) movement, and the racing Finale of great virtuosity.

Richard Apperley wrote that the Sonata III, also in D minor, was his favourite of the six sonatas in the set; sometimes referred to as Trio Sonatas, they require the right and left hands to play distinct melodic lines on separate manuals, as if a violin and cello, while the feet play the basso continuo part on pedals, calling for considerable skill. The Trio Sonatas for organ seem to have been composed in Bach’s first years in Leipzig, from 1723; an early biographer stated that Bach wrote them as practice for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann.

Apperley gave clarity to the sonata’s distinct parts, displaying his own mastery of its challenges which encouraged the listener to hear them again in order to grasp better the sense of the counterpoint and strongly contrasted lines.

Finally the Chorale Partita, ‘Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig’, which was perhaps written very early, at Arnstadt where Bach worked between 1703 and 1706, that is, aged 17 to 21. It would explain the feeling I had as it was played, that its variation form – eleven of them – somewhat disguised an unsophisticated, apprentice composer. It was very listenable music, but the short, not organically connected variations sustained the attention only through their vivid contrasts, of mood, of registration, of tempo and all the multitude of devices available to a gifted young composer and a skilled player.

It is natural, of course, that in presenting the entire oeuvre of any composer, the masterpieces must take their place along with juvenilia and music that lacks strong character or inspiration. However, this does not detract from the importance of this brave adventure on which these two musicians have embarked.

 

St.Matthew Passion rich and dramatic from Wellington’s Bach Choir

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents:
JS BACH – ST.MATTHEW PASSION BWV 244

Richard Greager (Evangelist) / Simon Christie (Jesus)
Nicola Holt (soprano) / Maaike Christie-Beekman (alto)
Lachlan Craig (tenor) / David Morriss (bass)

Wellington Young Voices (Christine Argyle, director)
Douglas Mews (continuo)

Bach Choir of Wellington
Chiesa Ensemble (Rebecca Struthers, leader)

Peter Walls (conductor)

Metropolitean Cathedral of the Sacred Heart
Hill Street, Wellington

Sunday, 29th March 2015

When looking through various articles in search of a thought-provoking quote with which to begin this review, I found a number which set me upon my ear! – or perhaps that should be my eye! – of course I had to choose only one, for fear of being accused of using other people’s words to write most of the review for me! After some soul-searching, my choice was a statement from the 89 year-old Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher György Kurtág:

“Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops praying. And how can I get closer if I look at him from the outside? I do not believe in the Gospels in a literal fashion, but a Bach fugue has the Crucifixion in it — as the nails are being driven in. In music, I am always looking for the hammering in of the nails.”

The performance of JS Bach’s St.Matthew Passion at which we were present on Sunday afternoon at the Metropolitean Cathedral of the Sacred Heart seemed to me such an act on a communal scale, presenting a work of art that simply invites humanity to believe in itself and partake in its capacity to act as human beings might do when showing love and compassion for one another.

That same belief in an essential humanity informed not only the music we heard but its performance. In terms of intent, commitment and insight it was one that, in Kurtág’s words, “never stopped praying”, mirroring the actual music and presenting it in human terms through singing, playing and conducting. At every point I felt the musicians were fully taken up with the composer’s inspiration and belief, and the music’s intellectual and emotional power.

Probably the reason that what I’ve written so far sounds more like an article of humanist faith than a music review is that the work, one of the mightiest that has come out of Western civilization, made such an overwhelming effect through its performance on this occasion. György Kurtág’s comment regarding the crucifixion having “the hammering in of the nails” could have been applied in metaphorical terms to other Gospel account imagery in a hundred such places throughout the narrative, in this deeply-committed rendering.

Before the performance began, conductor Peter Walls talked about the work and some of its detailing along similar lines – he pointed out some of Bach’s particular placements of instrumentation and how they reflected the content and mood of the words. Though Bach was often criticized for what some people considered over-dramatisation of the text (“Opera in church!” one distinguished lady was heard to declare disapprovingly at the end of one of the Passion performances), he actually broke with a trend that favoured sentimental verse settings of the Gospel stories, by restoring the actual Biblical texts, sung in recitative by a tenor as the Evangelist, and by other soloists as the main characters  in the story, with the choruses representing the crowd.

Walls drew our attention to the special character given to recitatives performed by the singer representing Jesus, – how Bach underlined the idea of the character’s divinity with string-accompaniment, except for the latter’s final outburst – “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, signifying a kind of divine abandonment. The conductor also drew our attention to Bach’s frequent use of chorales which in effect represent the congregation. Their melodies would have been familiar to Bach’s congregants, who would probably have joined with the choir in singing them – the most often-recurring chorale (sung five times throughout the work, with different words and slightly varied harmonisations each time) uses a melody actually adapted from a popular song of renaissance times, an organic, if somewhat whimsical connection between great art and everyday life!

The work’s very opening made here a deeply-felt and richly-sounded impression, with both chorus and instrumentalists divided into two groups alternating with descriptions of the scene where Jesus is carrying his cross, over the top of which sounded voices belonging to a children’s choir (Wellington Young Voices) intoning the words of a gentle chorale, “O Lamb of God”. The choirs were secure and full-throated, while in support the instrumentalists enabled an enticing accompanying texture, a sea of buoyancy on which the voices sailed safely and soundly.

As the Evangelist Richard Greager brought to bear on his recitatives all of his dramatic skill at making the words leap from the page of score and take on all the elements of the drama. I was worried after listening to the opening lines that the voice might not be steady enough for the more sustained notes, but as the work proceeded and things warmed up, I found myself increasingly relishing Greager’s vivid and varied story-telling with each phrase of the text. Among the most telling moments was the Evangelist’s recounting of Judas’ appearance with the priests to betray and capture Jesus, a moment which brought forth impassioned, ringing vocalizations!  – another great sequence was Greager’s expressive retelling of the story of Peter’s denial of Christ, bringing out the disciple’s horror and shame when he realized what he had done.

Central to the drama was, of course, the character of Jesus Christ, whose words were sung by bass Simon Christie – at first I found his tone gruff and a touch abrasive around the edges, qualities which he gradually relinquished with each of his subsequent utterances. His voice’s dark quality certainly suited the story’s subject-matter, and he was able to “pull rank” with some authority, such as when he delivered Jesus’s rebuke to the apostles for their objections to Mary Magdalene washing and anointing his feet.  He also paced and inflected Christ’s  “trinket alle daraus” (Drink from this, all of you)  beautifully and sensitively, and, of course, he had the expressive power to do justice to moments like “Mein Vater”, Jesus’s supplication to His Father to spare him the oncoming agony of his prophesied death.

The other singers of course delivered all the non-Biblical recitatives and associated arias which Bach interpolated into the narrative. Written by a poet known as Picander, these meditations comment introspectively on the meaning of the Gospel events, inviting the listener to become emotionally involved with the drama, personalizing key moments in the work and giving it incredible depth of feeling. First of the quartet to appear was the alto, Maaike Christie-Beekman, who brought her richly-wrought but finely-gradated tones to both recitative “Du lieber Heiland du” (My Master and my Lord) and to the aria “Buß und Reu” (Penance and remorse), each beautifully accompanied by the flutes, with solo ‘cello enriching the aria, the instrumental figurations vividly illustrating the “Tropfen meiner Zähren” (teardrops) of the text. Throughout the whole of the work, Christie-Beekman’s voice and way with the text took me to the heart of whatever she sang, such as with the heart-rending “Ach Golgotha, unselges Golgotha!” (Ah! – Golgotha, unholy Golgotha), the oboe-playing heartfelt and stricken, and with the recitative followed by a most touching aria (“Sehet, Jesus hat die hand….ausgespannt”) (See, Jesus has stretched out his hand) with poignant chorus interjections.

Though soprano Nicola Holt was less vocally consistent, occasionally singing a tad sharp under pressure, her line nevertheless had a purity and steadiness in most places, which gave the text an almost instrumental strength, as in her opening “Blute nurd, du liebes Herz” (Bleed now, loving Heart), words chillingly and pitilessly addressed to the mother of Judas the traitor, who nurtured at her breast one who became “a serpent”. Then, immediately following Jesus’ invitation “trinket alle daraus”, came a difficult, cruelly high entry to the recitative “Wiewohl mien Herz” (Although my heart) for the soprano, which she managed with great credit, supported ably by an oboe and lower strings, though in the aria which followed “Ich will dir mein Herz schenken”  (I will give my heart to you) came one of the few passages in the work which to my ears needed more judicious balancing, where the oboes were too insistent in places for the singer’s lines to be clearly heard.

A highlight of the performance was the duet with chorus for soprano and alto “So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen” – the two soloists lyrical and sorrowful, their voices set against the anger of the chorus’s cries, the latter representing the fury of the apostles trying to resist Jesus’s capture, the choir spot-on with their entries under Peter Walls’ direction, and with the help of irruptive figurations from the bass instruments working up to and achieving a positively seismic outpouring at the climax of the chorus “Sind Blitze, sind Donner in Wolken verschwunden?” (Have lightning and thunder vanished in the clouds?) – a stirring effect!

Tenor Lachlan Craig was given his first opportunity at the point of the story where Jesus and his apostles go to the garden at Gethsemane to pray – firstly a kind of “word-melodrama”, shared by the soloist and the choir, “O Schmerz!” (O sorrow!), and then an aria whose words are also shared by the tenor and the choir, “Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen” (I shall keep watch with Jesus). This was a very bright voice with an intense, almost “pinched” tone, not unlike fellow new Zealander Simon O’Neill’s voice-quality, accurate and intense. At one or two places in the aria the solo voice was put under strain, the awkwardness of some of the writing indicating that Bach was thinking in instrumental, rather than vocal terms when writing much of this music. However, Craig made a good fist of the extremely demanding recitative “Mein Jesus schweigt zu falschen Lugen stille” (My Jesus is silent in the face of lies) and the following aria “Geduld!” (Patience!) after the first of the confrontations between Jesus and the High Priest The tenor had to work to phrase his lines at the brisk tempo set by the conductor for the aria, straining some of the highest notes in the process, but on the whole keeping his pitch steady.

Last of the singers was the bass David Morriss, whose well-rounded tones throughout his range and sense of theatrical variation of emphasis and tone-colour added a dimension of interest to everything he sang. He began with the recitative “Der Heiland fällt vor seinem Vater nieder” (The Saviour falls down before his Father), whose sinister, slithery string accompaniments well reflected the bitterness and rancor of the imagery chosen by the poet – and continued with the aria “Gerne will ich mich bequemen” (Gladly will I bring myself ), which the singer began softly, subtly varying his delivery of the repetitions of the word “gerne” and making something grow from out of the beginning’s darkness of despair, so that the words countering Christ’s suffering and death become gentle, even sensual – “his mouth, which flows with milk and honey” – words that the singer delivered with the utmost relish.

Later, in the wake of Judas’s despair and suicide, came the bass aria “Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder!” (Give me back my Jesus) the singer’s tones soaring as the line rose, beautifully supported by the solo violin. And as Jesus was forced to carry his cross, helped by a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, whom the soldiers dragged from the crowd to assist, Bach’s bitter-sweet music consoled us, the bass recitative “Ja, freulich” (Yes, truly), accompanied by the beautifully pastoral sound of flutes, reminded us that life is a cross we must bear sooner or later; while the aria “Komm, süßes Kreuz” implored Christ to help us with carrying our own burdens of suffering – organ, bass viol and cello all supported the singer nobly, Morriss for his part handling the long vocal lines with great poise and dignity.

With the singers at every step of the way was the sterling support given by both chorus and orchestra, each group often divided, and with individual singers and players at certain points contributing vocal and instrumental solos. From the outer, the chorus’s response to Peter Walls’ direction was whole-hearted, detailed, varied and hugely satisfying. Nowhere was the concentration and focus more evident than with the grave and beautiful “Wenn ich einmal solo scheiden” (When I one day must depart from here), sung by the choir just before the upheaval accompanying Jesus’ death, the voices pointing the contrast with the ensuing chaos most dramatically with the sharply etched emphasis upon the words “Kraft denier Angst undo Pein” (By the strength of your agony and pain”). And when the full-blooded impact of the earthquake had ceased (the orchestra doing a splendidly visceral job with it all), the choir held us in thrall with its beautifully awed response “Wahrlich, dieser ist Gottes Sohn gewesen” (Truly this was the Son of God).

As one would expect from these players, and from people such as Douglas Mews and Robert Oliver providing superb continuo support, the instrumental playing throughout from the Chiesa Ensemble was a joy to experience, thanks in no small part to Rebecca Struthers’ leadership and inspirational solo playing, with, as one example, lovely violin obbligato support (what one commentator called “virtuosic pathos”) for the contralto in “Erbarme dich, Mein Gott” (Have mercy, My God). All of it was held together with such strength, patience and aplomb by the direction of Peter Walls, whose conducting seemed to me to combine the clarity and precision of recent scholarship concerning early music performance with sufficient weight, gravity and breadth of utterance sometimes given short measure by some of these so-called “authentic” realizations of such music. It made for an extraordinarily satisfying and enriching musical experience – one suspects for both the audience and the musicians, in this case – and an occasion I think the Bach Choir can justly regard as a triumph.

 

 

Brief and benign “Spanish Disquisition” on St.Andrews’ Chamber Organ

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series:
Spanish organ music from the Renaissance to the Baroque
Ephraim Wilson (organ)

Cabezón: ‘Dic Nobis Maria
Victoria: ‘Sancta Maria succurre miseris’
De Aguilera de Heredia: Tiento Lleno based on ‘Salve Regina’
Bruna: Tiento del segundo tono … Sobre la Letania de la Virgen
Cabanilles: Tiento Lleno

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

 Wednesday, 18 March 2015, 12.15pm

Although relatively short, and not well attended, the organ recital was interesting, in that it introduced an organist new to most of us, was played entirely on the small baroque organ, and consisted almost entirely of Spanish organ music, which I am sure was new to everyone in the audience.

Pedals were not part of the design of Spanish organs (or indeed many others) at the period covered by the programme: Renaissance to Baroque. So we had a total of one pedal note in the entire programme; that in the last piece, by Cabanilles.

After explanatory remarks about the programme, Wilson played the short ‘Dic nobis Maria’ by Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566). His articulation of ornamentation was very fine, but at the beginning the tempo was rather uneven.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) was the most famous of the composers featured. As Wilson’s programme note stated, his complex style of writing created emotional intensity, not a common feature (to modern ears, anyway) of earlier music. Here a little more separation of repeated notes would have been desirable, especially in the melody lines.

The remaining pieces were in the form of ‘Tiento Lleno’, which Wilson described as a Spanish musical form analogous to the fantasia in other traditions, but also having elements of the toccata. The first one, based on the Salve Regina, was more complex than the previous pieces, and was played with a fuller registration. It was by Sebastián de Aguilera de Heredia (1561-1627); the music was very well articulated.

Pablo Bruna (1611-1679) was another new name. The full title of the piece by him is ‘Tiento del seguno tono por Ge Sol Re Ut Sobre la Letani de la Virgen’. Having swotted this up a little, I hazard that ‘Ge’ is the low bass G, which in the system of hexachords (the basis of the sol-fa system of John Curwen in the early nineteenth century) was the lowest note recognised in writing music down – thus the word ‘gamut’, the ut being the bottom note in any scale (now called doh in English-speaking countries).

My Spanish dictionary gives ‘sobre’ as ‘in addition to’ and ‘por’ as ‘from’, so I hazard a guess that the piece’s title might be Tiento on the second tone from A [the second note from G], to E, to B, to A, in addition to the Litany of the Virgin’.

Bruna’s melody at the beginning of the piece, and which recurred throughout was, however, rather akin to Arne’s ‘God Save the King’ (Arne was born nearly one hundred years after Bruna’s birth). The changes in registration, and thus dynamics, employed between the various sections increased the interest of this piece.

Despite the programme note for the final Spanish work stating that the Tiento Lleno “Like the previous tiento (this piece) is intended to be played on full register throughout…”, I think this must have applied to the previous work, Aguilera de Heredia’s Tiento Lleno, since there were many changes of registration in the Bruna piece.

Cabanilles’s was a true baroque composition, and contained drama and excitement. It featured quite a lot of staccato, but again, there was not enough separation of repeated notes.Wilson added a short Bach chorale prelude, but it was not one with which I was familiar. It, too, was played without pedals.

The little organ has quite an incisive, even loud tone, especially on full organ. However, though it was interesting to hear the Spanish works, and on the whole they were well performed; perhaps a little more variety of programming might have made for greater appeal.

Opera Boutique with a boisterous Pergolesi double bill

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Pergolesi: Livietta e Tracollo and La Serva Padrona

Boutique Opera, Directed by Alison Hodge, with Musical Director, piano accordion and keyboard, Jonathan Berkahn.  Performers: Barbara Graham, Roger Wilson, Charles Wilson, Stacey O’Brien, Alix Schultze and Salina Fisher (violins)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 28 February 2015, 7.30pm

Boutique Opera has not performed for a number of years; it was pleasing to see them back, with light-hearted material as last time – though Edward German’s Tom Jones was very different from the current offering.

Giovanni Pergolesi had a short life: 1710-36.  He wrote a number of operas, some more successful than others.  Both the works performed in this programme were written as Intermezzi, the light-hearted works performed as interludes in more serious operas by the same composer. Obviously the opera-goers in Italy at this period had the appetite for quite a long evening out, since each of the Intermezzi was approximately three-quarters of an hour long.

The first of the two has an alternative title, La contadina astuta, and was an intermezzo for Pergolesi’s opera Adriano in Siria.  The piece was new to me, whereas I have heard the second offering before, and it is relatively well known.

Jonathan Berkahn played the piano accordion for the overture and throughout Livietta e Tracollo as the ‘orchestra’.  It seemed an odd choice of instrument, and it is not one of which I am a fan, but one had to admire his multiple skills.

The operas were sung in English.  Barbara Graham (soprano) took the female lead roles in both, and she was in fine voice.  Her foil in the first was Charles Wilson, who began as Tracollo in disguise as a woman.  His father, Roger Wilson, and Stacey O’Brien both had non-singing roles – but they contributed substantially to the drama, especially the latter, as Fulvia, a friend of Livietta.  Roger Wilson was designated as a servant to Tracollo, but his old crone did not appear capable of much activity!

I found that I had written about Charles Wilson in Tom Jones (2011), the following, which with adaptation of the character’s name, fitted exactly this time around too: ‘Charles Wilson made the most of his role as Tracollo, his acting exactly fitting for a farce, and raising many a smile.  Vocally, too, he was more than adequate, characterising his voice appropriately.’  However, he did have difficulty in that numbers of notes were set too low for his voice.  But his presentation of his role in the drama was realised with great feeling, appropriately overplaying the melodrama of the story of Livietta’s and Tracollo’s tortured relationship.  All ends well, however.

The disguise of Livietta as a French boy was very apt for Barbara Graham, who has won awards for French song; she got an opportunity to exercise that language.  Just as Charles is the son of a very experienced singer and singing teacher, so Barbara is the daughter of Lesley Graham, similarly qualified.  She sang and acted with great assurance; her voice was a delight to hear.

It was a pleasure to hear the two violins and pseudo-harpsichord accompanying the second opera, which was a much livelier work than the previous one – though that, too, had its moments.  Nevertheless, it must be said that Jonathan Berkahn performed wonders of tone and dynamics in the first opera.

A remarkable feature was the clarity of Roger Wilson’s words in La Serva Padrona, which had not always been the case with the characters in the previous piece.  His singing was strong and the voice was produced with full tone and great expressiveness; his acting, too, was convincing and full of amusing detail.

Director Alison Hodge can be pleased with her efforts in both works. There was plenty of amusing stage business in both operas. Costumes for Livietta e Tracollo would pass as eighteenth century, whereas those for La Serva Padrona were 1930s-1940s.

Simple props were adequate and appropriate.

Barbara Graham made a luscious maid on the make.  Hers was quite a demanding role. Her acting was lively and funny, while her singing in the many florid passages was lovely.  Her demeanour was perfect for the part of the devious servant.

Pergolesi’s music was full of energy and wit, and provided a fine vehicle for Graham’s talents as an actor as well as a singer. Instrumental parts underlined the solos deliciously, especially in Roger Wilson’s (Umberto’s) soliloquy in which he contemplates whether or not to marry his maid Serpina (her aim all along).  His low notes were meaty and meaningful.  The mock serious music was fully realised by the soloists, and Pergolesi must have had fun writing the charming final scene between master and maid.

The bright and humorous music and story, and the quality of the singing and acting created a most entertaining evening for the rather small audience – no doubt the entertainment coinciding with the NZSO and Freddy Kempf at the Michael Fowler Centre deprived Boutique Opera of potential audience members.

The season continues on Sunday 1 March at St. Andrew’s on The Terrace at 2pm, on Sunday 8 March at Expressions in Upper Hutt at 2pm, and on Sunday, 22 March at 2pm at Te Manawa Gallery Palmerston North.

 

Days Bay Opera in great success with early opera, La Calisto

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Opera in a Days Bay Garden presents:
Cavalli: La Calisto

Conductor/Keyboards – Howard Moody
Director – Sara Brodie
Producer – Rhona Fraser
Opera in a Day’s Bay Garden Orchestra

Cast: Jove, King of the Gods – Robert Tucker
Mercury, his Messenger – Fletcher Mills
Calisto, A Nymph in Diana’s band – Carleen Ebbs
Endymion, a love-struck Shepherd – Stephen Diaz
Diana, adored Cult-Leader – Maaike Christie-Beekman
Linfea, one of Diana’s Maidens – Imogen Thirlwall
Satirino, a Satyr – Jess Segal
Pan, desperately seeking Diana – Linden Loader
Sylvano, one of Pan’s People – Simon Christie
Juno, Queen of the Gods  – Rhona Fraser
Juno’s Furies – Katherine McIndoe / Rose Blake
Satyr Dancers – Christopher Watts / Jack Newton

Canna House, Day’s Bay, Wellington

Wednesday 11 February, 2015, 6:30 pm

Review modified and edited by Lindis Taylor from Peter Mechen’s notes for his on-air review for Upbeat!)

In Days Bay Opera’s growing record of enterprising opera productions, this one was perhaps the most adventurous yet; it was certainly the earliest. La Calisto was first performed in Venice in 1651 – the composer was Francesco Cavalli and the libretto was written by Cavalli’s most frequent collaborator, Giovanni Faustini. For the story of Calisto he had woven together two myths – the story of the nymph Calisto and her seduction by Jupiter, and of the shepherd Endymion and his love for the goddess Diana.

Francesco Cavalli was born in Lombardi in 1602, which places him between Monteverdi, whose extant operas appeared between 1607 (Orfeo) and the early 1640s (Ritorno d’Ulisse and Poppea), and the more-or-less-known names that appeared later in the 17th century, like Cesti, Steffani (who was featured in a Composer of the Week programme last year, the hero of Cecilia Bartoli’s Mission CD), Stradella, Alessandro Scarlatti (strange that the French opera composers Lully, Charpentier, Campra, get ignored in this context), and later, Vivaldi, Porpora and many others including of course, Handel, an Italian opera composer par excellence.

Cavalli wrote forty-one operas as well as a lot of other music – church music for performance at St Mark’s in Venice, where he was organist and choirmaster until his death in 1676 at the age of 73.

A surprising number of his operas have been staged in the past half century, including Australia. This seems to be the first in New Zealand.

La Calisto wasn’t one of Cavalli’s great successes; a revival at Glyndebourne in 1970 put it on the map. Accepting the conventions of the time, the opera has proved popular: the story is by turns erotic and savage, silly and profound, the music is catchy, and the action is swiftly-moving and filled with interest.

That was certainly the case at Days Bay – the action never flagged, but was kept nicely spinning, the story of a bunch of gods behaving badly – in fact, behaving like the human beings they’re supposed to be setting an example to. The director Sara Brodie achieved a balance between music, drama and setting – no one thing dominated, which was extraordinarily satisfying.  Entertainment rather than profundity was the main concern of conductor and director, though there was a level at which serious issues were well handled; the emphasis was on communication with the audience.

Given the open air performance, diction was generally clear. Characters were sharply-drawn and entirely convincing, and an ear for wit and a lightness of touch enhanced the buoyancy and energy of it all. There were no stage designs or sets – the house, the decks and the environment served excellently – but the costumes were amusing and suggestive.

There was very fine singing from local singers and the instrumental playing – a mix of violins, cello, double-bass, harpsichord, organ with two recorders, dulcian (an early bassoon) and a theorbo, under the lively and sensitive direction of English conductor and early music specialist Howard Moody who had been a colleague of Rhona Fraser’s in England – produced textures that were coloured with a keen sense of the period.

Duets and ensembles were as important as solo moments so that no one singer dominated, least of all the lead role, Calisto. Nevertheless, from her first entrance, Carleen Ebbs as Calisto made a richly sonorous impression, producing tones that illuminated the words’ intention – for example she contrasted nicely her chaste rejection of Jove’s initial advances, with her besotted acceptance of the bogus Diana as her lover (Jove in drag and singing falsetto). Ebbs is a voice to listen out for.

Another to impress was the Jove of Robert Tucker, whom I’d seen previously as Noye in the Festival’s production of Noye’s Fludde. His rich voice was matched by wholehearted acting as Jove, the characterization thrown into bold relief by his portrayal of Diana, sung in a falsetto voice, but with irruptions of male testosterone fuelling both the excitement and the tensions of possible discovery by Calisto of the deception.

As the lovesick Endymion, counter-tenor Stephen Diaz was magnetic, with a deportment allied to a voice which occasionally generated a kind of unearthly angelic quality. The object of his desires, Maaike Christie-Beekman’s Diana beautifully and convincingly maintained the balance between public disinterest while privately besotted with her handsome shepherd, her diction allowing the words their full expression.

Imogen Thirlwell always commands attention on stage as a fine actress, and her voice has such lift and energy, galvanizing any role she takes on. Here Linfea’s thoughts ran the full gamut of the lovesick maiden’s thoughts and feelings in a totally convincing fashion. And Rhona Fraser as Juno was just wonderful – properly imperious, implacable and vengeful – a force to be reckoned with (as a hapless young male audience member found out to his embarrassment, though he didn’t entirely panic at being suddenly thrust into the limelight!).

Simon Christie and Linden Loader gave characteristically solid performances as Sylvano and Pan respectively, as did Fletcher Mills as Mercury, Jove’s occasionally libidinous sidekick!

But it was the teamwork which impressed as much as anything, the ensembles, the co-operative dovetailing of tones, the delight in gaging exactly what and how much was needed in any given situation.

 

Wellington Chamber Orchestra – a wonderful concert and a promising conducting debut

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

BEETHOVEN – Overture “The Creatures of Prometheus”
BRUCH – Kol Nidrei with Andrew Joyce (‘cello)
VIVALDI – Concerto for 2 ‘cellos
with Ken Ichinose and Andrew Joyce (‘cellos)
MENDELSSOHN – Symphony No.3 in A Minor “Scottish”

Wellington Chamber Orchestra
conducted by Andrew Joyce

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

Sunday, 7th December, 2014

This was a programme whose contents promised delight at every turn – although one listener’s favorite can be another’s aversion, there are surely pieces which have such a wide range of appeal, that even the most hardened, narrowed-down listener would find it difficult to resist their blandishments. Such was this happy assemblage – in fact I haven’t been able to find a single person who attended and DIDN’T say “What a programme!”.

Having scored with the raw materials, the Wellington Chamber Orchestra furthered its cause by engaging none other than Andrew Joyce, principal ‘cellist of the NZSO, to conduct. As this was (so he afterwards told me) Joyce’s actual public debut as a conductor, the prospect of hearing him direct the orchestra was one fuelled entirely by expectation built upon people’s awareness of his stature as a soloist, chamber player and NZSO section principal.

While orchestral players (or pianists, not to mention singers) do not necessarily great conductors make, most notable exponents of the baton have had some experience “in the ranks” as it were. As well, the “born not made” adage is trotted out fairly regularly whenever the conductor’s art comes under scrutiny of discussion. Because of the conductor’s persuasive function, there certainly has to be some kind of force of personality, however expressed, intertwined with the musical skills, one which carries (sometimes recalcitrant) orchestral players along, and achieves the necessary unanimity.

By the end of the concert’s first half, I was wanting to hail Andrew Joyce as a “natural” in the job, based on the results of the splendid orchestral playing and the focused, characterful interpretations. Because amateur orchestras play together far less often than do professional ones, there’s a Janus-faced frisson of excitement and tension surrounding every public performance – on the one side, the thrill of bringing wonderful music to life, and on the other, the precariousness of technically keeping “on the rails” both individually and as part of the ensemble.

Throughout much of this concert these excitements and tensions brought out the musicians’ best. At the very beginning we enjoyed the conductor’s  sharply-etched focus, a snappy, attention-grabbing opening to the Beethoven “Prometheus” Overture, followed by a lovely, warm cantabile from the winds, the tones and textures beautifully filled out by the strings and the horns golden-sounding. The allegro which followed used nicely-pointed rhythms rather than just speed to get the music’s character across, with everything given a real sense of shape and form. Again, the winds distinguished themselves in the perky second subject, the whole orchestra gathering up the various threads and driving the music through the composer’s varied treatment of his material with real élan.

Having impressed with his conducting, Joyce then turned to his ‘cello for the next item, Max Bruch’s adorable Kol Nidrei, whose full title includes the description Adagio on 2 Hebrew Melodies for ‘Cello and Orchestra with Harp. As ‘cellists normally sit directly facing the audience, I wondered how the performance would fare, as Joyce would ostensibly be directing the orchestra as well as delivering the not inconsiderable solo part, all with his back to most of the players! From where I was sitting I couldn’t see the concertmaster giving any “cues” to the band, as often happens in these circumstances. Still, whatever alchemic means was used to direct the musicians’ playing certainly worked, as, a touch of dodgy wind-tuning apart, the orchestra was able to deliver a well-nigh impeccable accompaniment to Joyce’s performance of this beautiful work, throughout.

It was touching to read in the programme notes of Joyce’s grandfather’s association with this piece, the latter a keen amateur ‘cellist himself, whose desire to take up music as a career was thwarted by the onset of World War II and his conscripted service as a soldier. At his grandfather’s funeral, sixteen years ago, Joyce played this piece in his memory, a circumstance that would naturally give any subsequent performance by him a special significance. Thus it was with the playing, here, though there was no excessive heart-on-sleeve emotion wrung from the music – everything seemed to flow naturally and inevitably, and with a real sense of ensemble (I need to mention the lovely harp-playing), the exchanges between the solo instrument and the orchestral strings drawing the threads of melody beautifully together.

In the past the orchestra’s enjoyed partnerships with an impressive array of soloists, and this concert was no exception – one of Joyce’s colleagues from the NZSO cello section, Ken Ichinose, joined his section-leader to play a Double-‘Cello Concerto by Antonio Vivaldi. As Ken Ichinose’s pedigree as a player includes experience with both the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and the renowned Academy of St.Martin-in-the-Fields, it was luxury-casting with a vengeance for this music! What gave even more pleasure was Vivaldi’s writing for a “trio” of ‘cellists at various parts of the work, giving a third player almost as much of the spotlight as the “soloists” – the WCO’s principal ‘cellist Ian Lyons held his own throughout in fine style.

But what energies this music has! – Vivaldi’s motoric impulses gave every member of the ensemble a fine old workout in the outer movements’ tutti sections – the Largo movement by comparison was almost lullabic in its effect, augmented by a harp towards the end. As one would expect in this company, the exchanges between the two soloists were spectacular in places, with the third ‘cello an impressive back-up when needed, which was often. The work’s concluding tutti threw sparks in all directions, creating plenty of edge-of-seat excitement amongst the audience, which burst out as applause at the end most enthusiastically.

Our vistas were thrown open even further after the interval by Mendelssohn’s evocative “Scottish” Symphony – its “teething troubles” (it took Mendelsson ten years, on-and-off, to complete this work – though numbered as the Third, it was the last of his five full-scale symphonies to be completed) belie what seems like its ready fluency and energy of utterance – only the somewhat “tacked-on” coda to the final movement suggests that its composer might have had certain difficulties “placing” his material in a convincing and organic manner. Certainly the composer’s “Italian” Symphony (No.4) is a tauter, more obviously “focused” work, though the “Scottish” has its own expansive and treasurably unique epic character.

Conductor and players seemed to relish the symphony’s first movement with playing by turns freshly-wrought, finely-crafted and vigorous (and, to my surprise and pleasure, even giving us the repeat!) Those distinctive, plangent wind-tones at the symphony’s beginning sang with such flavour, getting a real “out-of-doors” feeling to the sounds; and the tricky opening of the allegro was negotiated without undue mishap by strings and winds alike, the later “martial” moments splendidly ringing out. With the repeat, one felt there was more confidence among the strings as they launched into the allegro once again, though every section – winds, brass, timpani – hove to with focused, on-the-spot playing.

For instance, the cellos did well with their beautiful development-recapitulation-transition melody, singing their descant-like line over the top as if their lives depended on the outcome. When it came to the storms of the coda, the strings, though sounding undernourished of tone, launched into things with everything they had, wind and brass shouting out their support and pushing the music on as energetically as they dared. As for the winding down of the coda, the winds did a lovely job bringing us quietly and surely to those final pizzicato chords, concluding what I thought was a sterling orchestral effort from all concerned.

Alas, the tricky scherzo took its toll – the opening solos, though fluently-phrased, had difficulty keeping up with the pace set by the conductor, and the strings came adrift with some of their entries. For a while the music’s pulse was confused until the winds, with their “Midsummer Night’s Dream”-like figurations managed to pull everything back together with the conductor’s guidance – the horns also did well with their distant calls at the end. A happier impression was made with the slow movement, the strings enjoying the lusciousness of the opening, and their “tune to die for” (rather like an extended version of the famous melody in “The Hebrides” Overture) – the playing was beautifully nuanced, throughout. The dark-browed interludes made a powerful impression each time, with climaxes wonderfully capped by the brasses.

But oh! – that tune! – Though not particularly suited to “symphonic” treatment, it must still be one of the world’s great ones. As well, I learned for the first time that when the cellos’ repeat it, they’re supported by a single horn, with the others harmonizing in places. Gorgeous, as here! And the clarinets in thirds (again there are parallels with the “Hebrides” work) held up well at the end, as did the rest of the winds.

The finale’s dotted rhythms were always going to be hard to keep buoyant, and so it proved, though the very opening produced a terrific snap! Brass and wind produced a great effect with their two-note snarls, though those rhythms tended to lumber rather than dance, throughout, as well as come adrift at times. Better was the coming-together of the two-note motifs of various kinds, both repeated-note and octave-leap calls, dying away to allow the clarinet and bassoon to mellifluously return us to the symphony’s opening mood, in preparation for the aforementioned coda.

One of the horn-players had told me he was looking forward to this moment in the work – and it certainly proved a real blast for the brass, here! Though blipping a little with their calls, they certainly let ‘er rip to great effect, joined by the winds and then by the strings – a grand apotheosis, which the performance certainly made the most of, to everybody’s delight.  So, a fine way for an orchestra to finish a year, and a wonderful public debut for Andrew Joyce as a conductor – we would welcome any opportunities to see and hear him do more, though we definitely don’t want to lose him as a ‘cellist!

Bach Choir’s Stephen Rowley bows out in style

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents:
CANTATAS AND CAROLS

JS BACH – Cantata No.140 “Wachet auf, ruft die Stimme”
– Cantata No.191 “Gloria in excelsis Deo”
Traditional Carols for choir and audience

Nicola Holt (soprano)
Adrian Lowe (tenor)
Simon Christie (baritone)
The Bach Choir of Wellington
The Chiesa Ensemble (Rebecca Struthers – leader)
Douglas Mews (organ)
Stephen Rowley (conductor)

St.Joseph’s Church, Mt.Victoria, Wellington

Saturday 6th December 2014

This concert marked the conclusion of conductor Stephen Rowley’s tenure as music director of the Bach Choir of Wellington, a position he took over from Nigel Williams in 2008. A glance at the repertoire performed by the choir during this time attests to the rich variety of music experienced by the group under Rowley’s expert direction. Appropriately, his final collaboration with the choir featured the music of Bach, as well as appropriately involving the audience via a selection of well-known carols.

I had not been in the venue, St.Joseph’s Church in Mt.Victoria, since the old church was demolished in 2003 and the completely new building constructed. I must confess that the updated result feels to my antediluvian sensibilities less like a church than a concert hall, and, in fact  the acoustic amply justifies its use as such. Being a last-minute arrival at the concert I had to be content with seats that were so far to one side of the centre that I thought the performing balances would seem somewhat awry – but I was instead charmed by the clarity and warmth of the sound from my ostensibly unfavourable position.

Centrally-placed and to the back of the altar-area was the choir, with the soloists in the front row, immediately behind the orchestra, the Chiesa Ensemble (a period-performance ensemble made up of a group of NZSO players), and with the organist over to one side at the console, the conductor standing midships in front of the audience.Though the soloists and instrumentalists weren’t facing me, their tones were given sufficient ambient warmth to carry throughout the venue.

Cantata 140 began the concert, a gorgeous work, though one with the initial misfortune to have been written for the 27th Sunday after Trinity, a liturgical date which occurs only when Easter is more than usually early. Fortunately, present-day performances of these works rely far less on prompting by actual dates, even if the occasional co-incidence brings extra festivity and feeling for the occasion.

Some extraordinarily difficult part-writing in the opening “Wachet auf” for chorus in places tested but didn’t defeat the choir, and the instrumental support was glorious. The following tenor recitative, “Er kommt, er kommt, der Brautigam kommt” brought out both clarion tones and sweetly-turned lines in other places from the soloist, Adrian Lowe, after which Nicola Holt and Simon Christie undertook their aria duet “Wenn kommst du, mein Heil?” to my ears taking a few measures to get the “pitch’ of the lines, before settling down with some lovely “floated” notes.

Then came the famous “Zion hört die Wächter singen” with its much-loved melody dancing in tandem with the chorale-like step-wise utterances of the tenor soloist, the juxtaposition of the two making for a fine edge of contrasted separation which kept the contact-points open. This was a lovely, buoyant performance, giving the lie to the famous conductor Sir Thomas Beecham’s amusing but gratuitous remark about the dreariness of Bach’s “Protestant counterpoint”.

From here on the performance really fired, with the deeply-felt bass recitative “So geh herein zu mir” galvanized by another duet from Nicola Holt and Simon Christie “Mein Freund ist mein”, during which the pair really sparkled, aided and abetted by lovely oboe playing and strong continuo support from Eleanor Carter’s cello, with Douglas Mews, as always, a tower of strength at the organ. Stephen Rowley’s direction produced a full-throated response from the choir throughout the final chorale “Gloria sei dir gesungen”.

A warm sense of audience involvement was established through interspersing a performance-bracket of carols with some traditional favorites. We all enjoyed ourselves no end, being entertained in between times by the choir’s performances of Terence Maskell’s arrangements of various medieval carols. The men introduced Alleluya, a new work is come on hand in great style and with terrific verve, contrasting this with a gentler treatment of In dulci jubilee. A trio of women’s voices nicely projected There is a flower over wordless accompaniments, with well-controlled variants (some nervous “alleluias” notwithstanding), and finishing with the original threesome over gentle wordless harmonies once again.

Though these weren’t the Maori words I taught my school choirs back in the days of yore, I nevertheless enjoyed the colour-tones of the Maori-English sounds in Silent Night. I loved the choral writing for A spotless rose, all wind-blown and out-of-doors, giving the choir plenty of vertiginous lines to hold onto, though the descents into quiet concluding cadences obviously brought some relief. Everybody sounded more at home with Tomorrow shall be my dancing day, the women energetic and true, and the men’s off-beat entries nicely managed. I didn’t know the concluding Wexford Carol but it was a joy to hear the piece open up and knit together, the writing allowing men and women a varied and satisfying interaction of dynamics and colours.

Cantata 191 was one I didn’t know – or so I thought! – how wonderful, therefore, to be presented with the opening of the B Minor Mass’s “Gloria” right at the outset! This, the only cantata that uses Latin, is based on an even earlier work written by JSB in 1733, one which, in true Baroque fashion, he used in his B Minor Mass fifteen years later – but three years earlier he had put together this cantata for a Christmas Day service in Leipzig from much the same music. What a guy!

As with the opening of other “festive” works by Bach – the Christmas Oratorio, and the Magnificat come immediately to mind – this music instantly galvanizes the spirit, the thrill of those opening brass calls punctuated by timpani giving one goosebumps (especially when, as here, the pleasure was an unexpected one!). And the choir held its own up splendidly in the midst of these festive sounds, all of the voices matching the instrumentalists in exuberance at the beginning, and the women doing well with their lines at “bonae voluntatis”, the different sections handling the ensuing contrapuntal lines with aplomb.

The work’s second part is a shortened setting of the beautiful duet “Domine Deus” from the same “Gloria”, here, using a different text – this was an enchanting sequence, beautiful flute-playing at the beginning, and soprano and tenor completely at ease together, filling out their lines with winsome grace, and intertwining their voices most beguilingly, as did the flutes with and around the string accompaniments.

The choir’s vigorous attack at the finale’s beginning “Sicut erat in principio” was echoed by brass and timpani, the performers relishing both words and musical phrases, keeping the momentum buoyant and the tones festive and bright. The voices kept their trajectories on task throughout the demanding “et nun et semper” sections – Bach’s writing is characteristically challenging, and at times the ensemble lost its poise for a measure or three, though never for too long, strings, flutes, oboes and brass made bright, pungent tonal combinations, underpinned by the timpani, the music joyously driving to a heartwarming conclusion.

A presentation to Stephen Rowley from the Choir itself followed immediately after the concert – the occasion made for a happy and successful conclusion to what seems to have been an interesting and colourful era in the Bach Choir’s history.

 

Tudor Consort with marvellous music: Motets by Bach and settings of the texts by others

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

“Singet dem Herrn”: The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart

Music by J S Bach, Sven-David Sandström, William Byrd, Hugo Distler

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Saturday, 29 November 2014, 7.30pm

The programme revolved around three of Bach’s motets: Singet dem Herrn, Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden, and the incomparable Jesu, meine Freude.  The other works were settings of the same or related texts by other composers, some with a conscious nod to Bach.

One notable characteristic of the superb Tudor Consort is the involvement of the singers in what they are presenting.  This is shown by accuracy, attention to detail, fine vocal production, variation of expression through word stress and dynamics, and clarity of words.  The singers’ faces reflect this involvement; singers in some choirs look as though mentally they are somewhere else.  This must be the only choir with more men than women members (13 to12).

The opening motet by Bach, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (‘Sing to the Lord a new song’, not ‘Sing to the Lord no new song’, as the German title as printed had it) was lively, the performance emphasising the sprightly rhythm.  The well-balanced choir gave punch to the joyful nature of the words, from Psalm 149.

For the Bach items Michael Stewart played the continuo on a small (or box) positive pipe organ, which many in the audience, including me, could hear but not see.  This in no way dominated, but provided the continuo basis such as the composer would have employed. The intricacy of Bach’s counterpoint was all there, but was never an end in itself.

The choir’s tone was very fine, and enhanced by the venue.  There was interesting dynamic variation, and only one aberration that I heard.  However, it was disappointing to see so many of the choir, especially the men, stuck in their scores.  Even though there may not have been the same need to watch the conductor, since he was limited by his playing in the conducting gestures he could give, looking up enhances a choir’s communication with its audience.

As a contrast to the bright mood of the motet’s opening Psalm, the following Chorale sung by half the choir, ‘Wie sich ein Vater erbarmet’ (As a father is merciful) was beautifully peaceful and smooth.  Choir 2’s aria was a plea to God for his care, interspersed with the Chorale. Finally, all sang words from Psalm 150.

After the motet, Michael Stewart addressed some remarks to the audience concerning the work, and the work to follow, by contemporary Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström.  It was based on words from Psalm 117: Lobet den Herrn alle Heiden (Praise the Lord, all nations).  The brief programme
note informed us that the composer ‘wrote his own set of six motets using the same texts as J S Bach.  Indeed, much of his choral music since the 1990s has been written “in the footsteps of Bach”’.

His unaccompanied work proved to be complex, with many cross-rhythms. However, it was very much choral music, with effective use of the words, and giving plenty of opportunity for the choir to exhibit its splendid tone colours.  As the interlocking interjections sped up, words were no longer distinguishable.  A passage of smooth harmony, followed, a passage of great beauty, its multiple parts shifting the harmony in unexpected ways to wonderful effect.  The concluding ‘Alleluia’ began sounding really angelic, but became quite impassioned.

The Bach version of the same motet saw the choir regroup, and Michael Stewart return to the organ.  Again the complexity of the writing did not obscure the beauty of the music nor of the words, which were delivered in impeccable German.

Praise our Lord all ye Gentiles by William Byrd brought forth a lovely sound from the choir, featuring the altos and the men only.  This 6-part motet was unaccompanied, and notable for much decoration of the words, and long melismatic passages.  The Renaissance idiom and style was a refreshing change from the complexities of the Baroque.

Hugo Distler’s Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (again put in the negative in the heading!) was not written to the same words as the opening Bach work, despite the opening lines; in this case the words are from Psalm 98.   Distler, too, was a follower of Bach and the Baroque style.  Like the Byrd piece, this was sung unaccompanied.

The work opened with a strong sound from the men.  Despite being neo-baroque, there were harmonies that would have astonished Bach – some were stark and angular.  However, the cadences were almost uniformly delicious, and the work was of considerable rhythmic variety.  As with the Sandström work, this was unfamiliar music that was well worth hearing.

To end the programme, the Tudor Consort performed Bach’s lengthy motet Jesu, Meine Freude.  Its eleven movements alternate quotations from Romans, chapter 8, with chorales meditating upon the Biblical words, written by Johann Frank in 1650.  To my mind this is one of the most beautiful and most satisfying choral works.  It is wonderfully varied in its expression of words, and of faith.  It is one of the supreme works of Bach, performed all too seldom – but making such an occasion as this to be all the
more treasured.

The choir, accompanied on the organ, sang the opening chorale with commitment and expressiveness.  The following chorus, the first of the quotations from Romans, was sung with subtlety and great attention to expression and varying the dynamics.  The chorale commenting on the Biblical passage provides a feast of word-painting, with its talk of storms, of Satan, and particularly of thunder and lightning.

The next passage from Romans was sung by trebles only, the writing being utterly delicate.  Despite a few wonky notes, the effect was pleasing indeed.  Its chorale speaks of defiance to death and the strength of God.  Its positive mood was rendered by the harmony, sequences and cadences.

The passage about being of the spirit rather than the flesh began with men only, and was full of complex counterpoint.  The florid passages were certainly not easy to sing, and a few notes came out flat.  After the next chorale, the following chorus’s opening (‘However, if Christ is in you…’) is tranquil and peaceful, but gives way to counterpoint of great complexity for all parts, only for all to come together for a glorious ending.

The chorale ‘Gute Nacht’ is utterly magical, moving from simple soprano and alto parts to contrasting ornate parts for the men.  The treble parts come into their own complexity briefly, before the chorale melody weaves between all parts.  A spirit of contemplation is paramount in this movement.

A jubilant chorus celebrating the resurrection of Christ and of believers leads to the final chorale, which restates the motet’s opening chorale melody and harmony for its contemplation that ends with Jesu, meine Freude (‘Jesus, my joy’).  Strongly sung, this revealed again excellent balance and mellifluous tone.

The audience enthusiasm proved, if proof were necessary, that all had enjoyed an evening of rewarding and uplifting music-making.  I felt honoured to have heard this marvellous music.  It was a musical and spiritual treat.

 

 

Fine Israel in Egypt from Tudor Consort in challenging acoustic

Posted on by admin

Handel’s Israel in Egypt

The Tudor Consort with The Chiesa Ensemble (comprising 25 members of the NZSO, with Douglas Mews  harpsichord), directed by Michael Stewart

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Saturday 6 September 2014

Israel in Egypt sets out to recount the Old Testament story of Israel’s final period in Egypt under a Pharaoh that withdrew all previous privileges and inflicted on the Israelites a physical bondage of the harshest kind. Handel set an entirely biblical libretto which dramatically depicts the Ten Plagues that Israel’s God visited on the Egyptians, the captives’ escape towards the Red Sea, the Egyptian pursuit with murderous intent, and the parting of the waters to provide safe passage for the Israelites. Unlike many other oratorios of the period, the chorus is here the central protagonist , with recitatives and arias sung by choristers, rather than by separate vocal soloists.

The opening orchestral prelude was beautifully balanced and sympathetic as were the first recitative and chorus, all of which set the brooding  background of Israel’s grief  and despair at their hopeless situation under the new Pharaoh. Michael Stewart judged the reverberant acoustic of St. Paul’s perfectly and used broad tempi that allowed the fugal entries and lines of both orchestra and chorus to be cleanly heard, and the story clearly heard.

As the narrative unfolds,  Handel uses the libretto to paint a succession of dramatic contrasts, offsetting the sombre elements of the tale against the more violent visitations  of  the plagues. Chorus and orchestra gave a wonderfully vigorous depiction of episodes such as the clouds of locusts, hailstorms mingled with fire, Jehovah’s ruthless elimination of  the Egyptian firstborn and the final fate of Israel’s pursuers as the waters of the Red Sea engulfed them.

Interspersed were evocative contrasts like the “thick darkness over the land, even darkness which might be felt”, and the lighthearted pastoral pipes and shepherds’ voices of  slaves released. Handel’s masterful orchestration and choral writing was given its fullest value by both singers and orchestra, with the impeccable technical and musical skill that one has come to expect from the Tudor Consort and NZSO players.

Yet I felt a deep sense of frustration with the performance because much of that talent and musicianship was, in the final analysis, defeated by the reverberant acoustic of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  The broad tempo sections worked well, but the high speed intricacies and fugal lines of the fast tempi became an overwhelming blur of sound, where there was no chance of verbal clarity. For me, the magic
of Handel’s oratorios is his stunning realization of the story – where he lifts an already absorbing literary drama onto quite another plane with his astonishing musical paintbrush. The music is created specifically to tell the story, and if that story cannot be heard, the point of the work is lost.

It saddened me that the obvious talent and commitment of the musicians could not be properly appreciated in the enormous space. Given the size of the audience, I suspect they might have fitted into Old St. Paul’s, where I think there would have been a greater chance of acoustic success.

Unfortunately I was not able to stay for Part Two of the work, but the format is very similar to Part One, and I doubt my impressions would have been very different.

 

Baroque Voices – resplendent 20th birthday offerings

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BAROQUE VOICES – 20th Birthday Concert
Music from 20 years of performance

Baroque Voices
Pepe Becker (director)
Douglas Mews (harpsichord, organ, piano)
Robert Oliver (bass viol)
Daniel Becker (guitar, percussion)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Saturday, 28th June 2014

Wellington’s Baroque Voices celebrated twenty years of music-making with a concert on the last Saturday of June given in the same inaugural venue, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, in Hill St., Wellington – a splendid place for music-making by vocal ensembles.

It was a truly epic and resplendent affair – perhaps a trifle overlong for listeners and performers alike, though the presentation certainly succeeded in bringing to the fore a sense of the variety and depth of repertoire the ensemble has tackled since its inception. Music Director Pepe Becker, in the programme accompanying Saturday’s concert, outlined something of BV’s history, in the process setting down something of the extent of the ensemble’s range and sympathies regarding performance.

In those twenty years the group’s personnel has markedly changed, the only original BV members remaining being Peter Dyne and Pepe herself. But though singers have come and gone, the performance standards have been maintained, judging by the invariably enthusiastic reviews the group has received. I’ve been going to their concerts for at least ten of those years, and have always been delighted with both the repertoire and its presentation.

On this occasion I actually thought that the ensemble warmed increasingly to its task as the evening progressed, becoming more relaxed and better-focused, though I did get the feeling that the group had worked harder on some of the pieces than on others. Given the range of repertoire covered in the concert this wasn’t really surprising – in fact it was amazing that the group maintained the levels of accuracy and energy that they did, especially towards the end. We would, I think, have been more than satisfied with about four-fifths of the items – especially given that a few of the choices seemed to me a tad insubstantial compared with some others.

But any more comment along these lines would sound curmudgeonly – faced with such generosity of performing spirit one feels far more inclined to celebrate what was done with the group’s usual skill, refinement and panache – which was, in fact, most of the programme (all of the bits I would have wanted to keep!). These alone were in themselves worlds of delight and wonderment, and their performances worthy exemplars of the ensemble’s quality.

The concert’s very beginning in a sense paid homage to the venue, which repaid the gesture with appropriate resonance and ambient warmth – the singers came in from the church’s congregational entrance behind the audience, Pepe Becker leading the way and singing, purely and rapturously, Hildegarde of Bingen’s haunting plainchant O Euchari, with the other singers humming in the style of an accompanying hurdy-gurdy. It all made for a William Blake-like “augury of innocence”, of wonderment such as one might experience as a child at a rare and mystical ritual – a moment of magic!

Baroque Voices followed this with another special moment – a performance of the very first item sang by the ensemble at that inaugural 1994 concert. This was Monteverdi’s madrigal Ch’ami la vita mia (That you are the love of my life), from the First Book of Madrigals, for five voices – a sonorous, flexible performance with moments of pure quicksilver. Of course Monteverdi’s music subsequently became a major focus for the group, presently exploring the entire series of Madrigals, and having already performed, most brilliantly, the resplendent 1610 Vespers in 2010 (can it really be four years ago?). Two other Monteverdi madrigals were presented in the concert’s second half, contrasting the composer’s later (Second Practice) style, accompanied by continuo instruments, with his earlier practice, using voices only.

Another particularly fruitful undertaking for the group has been the commissioning and premiering of no less than thirty-five new works (to date!) by local composers. A number of these drew their initial inspiration from existing works, or from texts set by composers already in BV’s repertoire. We were “treated” to four instances of this during the evening, all of which the group had previously performed, two from Jack Body, one from Mark Smythe, and one from Ross Harris, as well as more “stand-alone” works by Carol Shortis and Pepe Becker herself.

Jack Body’s Nowell in the Lithuanian manner followed a lovely, properly austere three-part performance of the anonymous 15th Century English carol Nowell, sing we – Body’s work, from 1995, was a setting for four voices, with the interval of a second dominating the music, making for a resonant and repetitive antiphonal exchange of excitable impulses tossed back and forth in a kind of minimalist-folksy way, sounding fun to perform, as it certainly was to hear.

More resplendent and declamatory was the same composer’s Jibrail (the Islamic word for Gabriel), here performed immediately after its Latin equivalent “Veni Creator Spiritus” – we heard the Latin chant sung antiphonally by two groups, most of whose members then re-formed in a semi-circle as a gong ritualistically sounded (played by Daniel Becker), the singers chanting the word Jibrail, and capping the growing vocal intensities by picking up and activating hand-held gongs, as if the tintinabulations were spreading through the world like wildfire.

This wasn’t exactly conventional vocal or choral music, but was a demonstration of how a creative imagination can at times defy convention and produce something that really works by its own unique lights – rather like Beethoven introducing voices to symphonic structures, which no-one had ever dared do before him. It’s also a matter of having the versatility to employ non-conventional means for expressive or creative purposes, which composers like Jack Body have demonstrated on many occasions.

A different kind of creative inspiration produced a work by composer Mark Smythe (Pepe Becker’s brother, incidentally), from music originally written for rock band.This was a setting of an anonymous Latin text A solis ortus cardine (From the far point of the rising sun) which Voices first sang as per Nikolaus Apel’s fifteenth-century Kodex (collection), in which version the lines had a gorgeous “floating” quality, the effect being of several plainchant strands beautifully interwoven.

Mark Smythe’s setting followed, employing an electric guitar as a kind of ground bass (the premiere of this work in 2005 used voices only, the guitar being a more recent addition, played here by Daniel Becker), and assigning to the vocal parts the “rock” song’s main melody supported by harmonies from the guitar parts. The result was rhythmically catchy, and harmonically attractive, having what I think of as a kind of oldish, modal flavour in places, with ear-catching modulations. I also enjoyed the purity and sense of freedom and space evoked by those stratospheric vocal lines drawn by Pepe Becker and Jane McKinlay.

A composer whose music has always intrigued and delighted me is Carol Shortis, who’s written a number of commissioned works for BV. Each of her works has seemed to me to inhabit its own world, with nothing generalized or taken for granted; as with the work presented in this concert, five settings of Japanese “death-poems” called Jisei, which Baroque Voices premiered in 2010. Typically succinct and intensely focused “final thoughts”, the poetry required similarly precise, sharp-edged sound-impulses which would “inhabit” the words, and vice-versa – and Carol Shortis’s music seemed to speak, sigh, sing and breathe with the verses to a remarkable extent.

Except that I thought the second Jisei, Senseki’s “At last I am leaving” could have been sparer of tone, more distilled in its realization (evoking more sparingly the “rainless skies” and the “cool moon”), I thought the performances evocative and finely-drawn. I enjoyed especially the third setting, Gesshu Soko’s “Inhale, exhale”, with its wonderful oscillations, and soaring lines describing the flight of arrows through the void. And the wordless realizations of the concluding Jisei, the letter “O”, were appropriately remote and self-contained, a final exhalation of breath closing the symbol’s circle.

Ross Harris contributed a work via a Baroque Voices’ commission in 2009, a setting of the anonymously-composed hymn Ave Maris Stella  (Hail, Star of the Sea). The ensemble again “prepared” the audience by performing a mixture of the plainchant verses with parts of another setting by Guillaume Dufay, a wonderfully tingling, ambience-stroking activation. Ross Harris’s work was itself described by Pepe Becker as “sumptuous”, doubtless as a result of her having previously performed the work – its premiere, in 2009.

I enjoyed the music’s oceanic evocations, sounds patterned like recurring waves, the voices interlocked, and the lines clustered – but then I thrilled to the growing intensities of sounds at the words “Qui pro nobis natus tulit esse tuus” (Who, born for us, endured to be thine), and a corresponding rapt, haunting withdrawal of tones and colour at “Ut videntes Jesum semper collaetemur” (That, seeing Jesus, we may forever rejoice together). And both the joyous affirmation of “Summo Christo decus Spiritui Sancto” (Honour to Christ the Highest, and to the Holy Spirit) and the deep, sonorous closing pages were intensely moving.

I ought to mention Pepe Becker’s own work, the Kyrie from her Mass of the False Relation, a title which had me intrigued until I read about the particular compositional device employed by the composer – the substitution of a sharpened or flattened note, a “false relation” of the original, sometimes in juxtaposition with the actual original, the harmonic tensions and clashes making for highly expressive results – colourful and piquant in places, tense and edgy in others, the listener waiting the whole time for lines and harmonies to resolve. I liked the “hollow cluster” effect of the “masquerading relatives” towards the piece’s end, during the final “Kyrie”.

I’ve unashamedly concentrated on the New Zealand composers and their works written for Baroque Voices, in this review – the concert contained a number of other delights which time and patience preclude a mention. But I mustn’t forget to pay tribute to the continuo musicians, Douglas Mews, who moved adroitly between harpsichord, piano and organ, as the items required, and Robert Oliver, whose bass viol playing was, as always, a delight. These two players have especially supported Baroque Voices down the years, almost to the point where any concert by the group wouldn’t seem quite the same without them.

To my mind, this concert reaffirmed both Baroque Voices’ and director Pepe Becker’s status as national treasures. These are musicians whose efforts help us find and nurture expression for whomever and whatever we are, occasionally, as here, holding our efforts up against the rest of the world’s by way of reaffirming both our identity and our individuality. May Baroque Voices continue to do the same on our behalf with distinction for at least the next twenty years!

 Click on this link to comment and discuss the review on Reddit!