Tag: baroque music

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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stroma’s third “Mirror of Time” – thoroughly engaging fun

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – THE MIRROR OF TIME 3

Stroma
Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Rebecca Struthers (violins)
Andrew Thomson (viola), Rowan Prior (‘cello)
Rowena Simpson (soprano), Kamala Bain (recorders/percussion)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Michael Norris (artistic director/visuals/programme)

Sacred Heart Basilica, Hill St., Wellington

Thursday 26th June, 2014

As I listened to this highly diverting and thoroughly engaging assemblage of music old and new, expertly put together by Stroma’s artistic director Michael Norris and stunningly performed by the ensemble and its conductor, Hamish McKeich, I was struck repeatedly by the profoundly unoriginal, but nevertheless compelling thought that this presentation was great fun!

Perhaps that observation might appear trite to some people, unworthy of inclusion in a “serious review”. But given that music of all kinds is performed for people to enjoy rather than endure, I imagined that for a good many concert-goers who regularly attend symphony, choral and chamber concerts, the thought of any encounters with “serious” music written after 1950, would straightaway come into the “endure” category. The idea of attending a contemporary music concert would be as remote for some as going to a lecture on, say, ancient Etruscan circumcision practices.

For a goodly number of years I’ve been going to exciting and innovative contemporary music concerts presented by both Stroma and Auckland’s 175 East, as a critic treading a fine line between being an enthusiast for new music and a representative of the general music-listening public. It’s certainly true that some of the works played by these groups are challenging and cutting-edge – but it’s good to keep in mind that so Beethoven’s music was to many music-lovers in the early 1800s!

For me part of the process of dealing with this music’s unfamiliarity was to accept it totally as a “new” experience, rather than try and unduly analyze or anatomize it – again and again I told myself that “these sounds are to be enjoyed”, and I reacted to them as wholeheartedly as I could on that basis. But to a greater extent than ever before, I think, during Stroma’s latest “The Mirror of Time” presentation, I found myself actually connecting with the music-performance as I would that of any of my favorite music – on a visceral, emotional and (I flatter myself!) intellectual level of response.

True, I didn’t go so far as race down to the library the following day and get a book out on the ancient Etruscans! But Stroma’s organization of the concert and wholehearted, skillful playing of these pieces of music, ancient and modern, convinced me, once and for all, that contemporary music can engage, excite, inspire, soothe, stimulate and satisfy as profoundly as can any music from any era. Of course, this was something I knew in theory, but was here enjoying as a practical, real-time, flesh-and-blood phenomenon. Exhilarating!

From the concert’s very beginning, we in the audience were made to feel as though we were part of the performance, encircled as we were by a quartet of string-players, each one positioned in a corner of the church’s nave. Stroma director Michael Norris put it well by remarking in the program note how “the spatialized position of the quartet gently sets in motion the resonance of the church”.

The “timelessness” of the sounds created by the musicians well reflected the music’s origins – a 1400BC Hurrian hymn to Nikkal, wife of the Moon God, a melody preserved for 3,500 years on clay tablets found in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit. Various attempts to “render” the melody, written in cuneiform, or “wedged script”, have been made by scholars, with one by Marcelle Duchense-Guillemin used here by Michael Norris, who reworked the tune for strings which play entirely in harmonics and in the form of a “prolation canon” – ie, one in which the individual voice-parts use variations of speeds and synchronizations. The result was totally mesmerizing.

Most of the subsequent pieces in the concert demonstrated different ways of presenting canonic treatment of music, the following Agnus Dei by Josquin des Prez being a particularly closely-worked example, with a delay of only one beat between the top two lines and a “crab-canon” (the same line, with one played BACKWARDS against the other!) taken by the two lower voices – wot larks! It must have helped that each of the higher voices was taken by a “pair”, but nevertheless it must have seemed for the performers like high-wire acrobatic work, at times! Soprano and recorder were interestingly paired, the singer (Rowena Simpson) bright- and shining-voiced, the recorder (played by Kamala Bain) mellow and dusky, but the timbres still coming through, the blendings with the strings in places exquisite.

Simon Eastwood’s work I had encountered previously at a 2008 NZSO/SOUNZ Readings Workshop, on that occasion a piece called Aurum, which I liked a lot. Here the composer’s starting-point was a quotation from Plato’s Republic, words describing a kind of journeying of souls to a point where universal structures of the cosmos are perceived as spheres and axes of light – the Spindle of Necessity is the thread-gatherer which collects and plays out these lines, enabling the revolutions of all the spheres and their orbits.

Ethereal, almost mystical in effect, the words were mirrored by the sounds of this work, the tones “analogizing” to and fro, up and down, stretching, bending binding, and loosening, growing in intensity and rising in pitch before falling away to almost nothing – subsequent irruptions, clusters, tensions, even a claustrophobic scream! – were all gathered in by the spindle, at the end a single note around which the sounds were safely bound. It was a case of new music that in some ways to my ears sounded strangely old.

14th-Century composer Johannes Ciconia provided some diversions from these play-for-keeps austerities with some lively, dance-like four-part (one part added by Michael Norris!) canonic interweaving, involving both pizzicato and arc strings accompanying voice and recorder in a song Le ray au soleyl, the words a kind of long-term medieval weather-forecast. The work’s exuberance in performance contrasted with the inner world evoked by Mary Binney’s work Enfance, which followed, a setting of haiku-like verses by Rimbaud dealing with past happiness and present disillusionment – spare music, whose silences serve to underline the focus of each note played and sung, a remarkable demonstration of “less is more”.

Another Agnus Dei, this time from Pierre De La Rue, who here demonstrated an almost Tom Lehrer-like mathematical exactitude in his setting of part of his L’homme arme Mass, by way of producing a richly-canopied, ritual-like processional. It was something whose textured framework provided a telling foil for Rachael Morgan’s Interiors II, which followed. Written for string quartet, these were sounds whose very fibres proclaimed their intent, from the opening solo violin’s initial single note through harmonics, octaves with gorgeously “bent” unisons and curdled timbres, the opening’s silvery tones wonderfully besmirched by later guttural, claustrophobic utterances, dying away as light and life were consumed.

The excitement continued with sixteenth-century composer Cipriano de Rore’s Calami sonum ferentes (The pipes that sound), a convoluted but hauntingly beautiful setting – one that might have temporarily unnerved soprano Rowena Simpson, who pitched her opening notes too high, and had to begin again! The music made an excellent match for the highly expressive manner of the author, the Roman poet Catullus – the poet’s weeping at the start was depicted graphically by the obsessive chromatic figures, as both voice and recorder in thirds and fourths firstly sounded the lament of loss, then at “Musa quae nemus incolis”, ravishingly invoked the Muse through whom the former’s grief could be expressed.

A different kind of Muse was summonsed by the recorder-playing of Kamala Bain during Maki Ishii’s anarchic Black Intention, a work that featured the gradual undermining of a Japanese folk-tune played on a single recorder by the introduction of a second recorder played by the same player, immediately striking a discordant note – like a disputation! As the second recorder attempted to “muscle in” on the first, player Kamala Bain firstly vocalized agitatedly while still playing, then suddenly roared at the top of her voice, and bared her teeth as she picked up a stick and furiously and resoundingly struck a nearby tam-tam!  We were thunderstruck – almost literally!

What better release after such demonstrations of frustration than to ride into battle and indulge in some sabre-rattling? Which is what the musicians did under the auspices of Heinrich Biber, with Die Schlacht (The Battle) from “Battalia”, a 17th Century equivalent to the 1812 Overture, strings angrily snapping and biting at the air. How different a scenario to that of Jack Body’s Bai whose sounds alternatively suggested playful “Make love, not war” energies, Andrew Thomson’s viola imitating a traditional Chinese “dragon-head” lute-sound in its characteristic ‘sliding” melodic aspect, supported by pizzicato violins and ‘cello.

And by way of refuting the “music should be heard and not seen” idea, the fourteenth-century French composer Baude Cordier provided us, by way of the musicians’ performance and a projected image of the manuscript – exquisitely “drawn” – with an example of “eye music”. This was a chanson whose words Tout par compas suy composes (With a compass I am composed) describe the notated layout of the music as well as its circular canonic motion – a refined and cultured game of chase, with the voice closely pursued by the recorder.

Chris Watson’s piece sundry good was a celebration of the musical device called the “ornament”, a kind of dissertation with gestural examples, instruments talking with one another in a playfully stylized way – in exchanges that varied both tempi and timbre, and which coalesced and deconstructed just as quickly – a middle sequence sounded to my ears like a kind of descent, from which tendrils began to push their way upwards and intertwine, before seeming to “take fright” with individual scamperings, patternings, and thrummings. It was as if the “ornaments” of the title were looking for love, but finding the dating sites a bit rough for comfort. As with Flanders and Swann’s famous Misalliance from their “At the Drop of a Hat” revue, I sadly feared a tragic end to the story (only to the heart, of course!) – the hushed tremolandi which concluded the piece suggested as much – a kind of ambient wilderness (or “what-you-will”) at the end.

Afterwards, it was all on deck for Carmina Burana with which to finish – the ensemble hove to with a lusty rendition, complete with handclapping, percussion and vocalizations, of a song from that famous manuscript, Tempus Transit Gelidum (The time of ice is passing), with the piccolo recorder “jigging” the rhythm, and giving a kind of medieval “hoe-down” feeling to the music. Verses and choruses enjoyed plenty of dynamic variation, and the strings’ harmonics most engagingly sang some of the accompanying lines, for all the world sounding like little piping wind instruments.

Yes, a good deal of “critical babble”, I know – but it all delighted me so much – I couldn’t have imagined a more enjoyable evening of music-listening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Festival Singers under Berkahn explore baroque byways, a romantic Stabat Mater and a modern, jazz cantata

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Festival Singers conducted by Jonathan Berkahn

A Rising Tide – Easter Music, by Buxtehude, Bach, Lachner, Rheinberger, Ireland and Jonathan Berkahn

St Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Sunday 6 April, 2:30 pm

The concert was advertised as performing two works: a Stabat Mater by minor German composer, Josef Rheinberger, contemporary of Brahms and Bruch, and The Third Day by the conductor.

The works that accompanied the Stabat Mater in the first half were of a similar kind: organ and vocal pieces by Buxtehude, Bach, Lachner, and religious songs by John Ireland and Berkahn.

Lachner’s name probably rings faint bells as Franz was one of a Bavarian musical family, contemporary with Schubert and Schumann. This Introduction and Fugue for organ sounded as if he was a pupil of J S Bach, rather than a composer 30 years Beethoven’s junior.  Its virtue was a bold and plain opening, using the 16 foot stops, that switched abruptly to light flutes on the choir manual. The fugue subject was of the most elementary character which might well have served as an exercise for a beginning composition student to explore the mysteries of fugue, but it was followed by a more imposing sequence of cadences that announced its conclusion.

A setting by Berkahn of a religious poem by Wordsworth contemporary James Montgomery followed; in an attractive bass voice, Jamie Henare handled the hymnal melody graciously; though the accompaniment (by the composer) was at a somewhat primitive sounding electronic keyboard.

I’m familiar with some of Rheinberger’s organ music and a few choral pieces but was unaware of a Stabat Mater. I’m afraid this exposure seemed to reaffirm the judgment of history; it recalled nothing of Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Pergolesi or Haydn, and certainly nothing of his 19th century colleagues like Rossini, Dvořák or Verdi (it is one of his Four Sacred Pieces). (I recall this choir singing Rossini’s version in 2009; in my review then, I thought the choir displayed a closer sympathy with the Catholic than the Protestant style of religious music).

This was sung in English, to a translation different from that in our programme leaflets. The translation did serve to remind the audience of the Church’s strange obsession with the most ghoulish details of the Christ story; though it was never formally a part of the Catholic liturgy, the Stabat Mater maintained its prominent place in the pattern of worship from the time of the poem’s composition in the 13th century, through its numerous musical settings down the ages.

So if verbal clarity might not have been a major concern in the choir’s rehearsal, other matters had careful attention: ensemble, intonation and style. Here, more than elsewhere, the small numbers of male singers was rather conspicuous in some lack of confidence. Nevertheless, there were several interesting features that the choir navigated well; one was a fugal section which lent the work greater variety and a certain dramatic impact.

Two organ pieces followed. Rafaella Garlick-Grice played Buxtehude’s ‘Ach Gott und Herr’ using stops with discretion, though I wondered whether her tremolo passages were appropriate. Then Berkahn played Bach’s ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’, here making good use of the organ’s range, its striking contrasts between the Great and Choir manuals, the music, probably dating from Bach’s early years at Arnstadt, rather showing up, in contrast, the relatively limited inventiveness of Lachner and even of Buxtehude.

With Rafaella again at the organ the choir sang a setting by Ireland of ‘Greater love hath no man’, using solo voices from the choir, charming if a bit taxing in the higher register.

There was a ten minute pause as amplification equipment was set up for the accompaniment to The Third Day, which was introduced with an engaging Irish interlude led by flutist/guitarist Bernard Wells.

The Third Day, the text presumably compiled by the composer, deals with happenings before and on Easter Sunday, including Christ’s descent from the Cross and the reflections by Judas and Thomas on the implications of their actions.

Berkahn conducted from the keyboard, in this instance the keyboard of the accordion suspended from his shoulders (he pointed out that before the rise of the dubious profession of the full-time celebrity maestro, music was directed from the keyboard; sometimes it was by the principal violinist or concert master).

The other members of the jazz ensemble were guitarist Andrew James, bass guitarist Adam Meers and pianist Ruth James.

The music is in a delightful post-religious-rock-opera style, that no longer (I imagine) sounds blasphemous in the ears of believers; it uses the choir, soloists and the band in an easy, varied manner, and at a couple of points bass Jamie Henare made the most engaging entries. In the final exultatory section, in triple time, the world was put to rights with the cry ‘Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!’

The concert might have seemed very disparate in style and musical character, but the effect of this very contemporary, and singularly attractive cantata was to lighten the spirits of the audience, and to give perspective to the more sombre music of the first half, perhaps to enhance it in the memory.

 

Sparkling playing of Bach for flute and organ at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Bach for Lunch’

Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 846 (Book One)
Sonata E, BWV 1035 for flute and basso continuo
Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 881 (Book Two)
From Suite in B minor BWV 1067 for flute and strings
Douglas Mews (organ), Penelope Evison (baroque flute)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 April 2014, 12.15pm

A third player in the recital was the fine acoustic of St. Andrew’s Church, allowing all the nuances of sound from the instruments to be clearly heard, even the quietest ones.

The programme opened with organ only, playing perhaps the most familiar of Bach’s Preludes from The Well-Tempered Clavier (or Keyboard, in this translation), which unfortunately I missed, due to parking problems. However, I heard the fugue, delightfully played on a lovely high flute registration.  This being baroque music, the small baroque organ was used, pulled forward and towards the centre of the platform – it was good to see it being played.

Douglas Mews introduced the next item by saying that the pitch of the time of the sonata’s composition was fully a tone lower than that used today, and this was the pitch of Penelope Evison’s instrument.  Fortunately for him, the music copy he was using was printed in that pitch, i.e. D major, and not in the modern E major.

He used a registration that contrasted sufficiently with the tone of the baroque flute, without overpowering it.  Very much a continuo part, it provided few flights of fancy for the organ.  In the second movement, allegro, Mews employed plenty of lift in his part, making for a charming and lively performance from both players.  The third movement was a sleepy siciliano; the final one, allegro assai, featured tricky rhythms – the players were not always totally together.

The next Prelude and Fugue from the organ I am particularly fond of, and I enjoyed hearing them on the organ.  There was good contrast between the legato passages and those with more lift.  A brighter registration was used for the fugue.

The Suite was entire, apart from the opening Ouverture, which was absent.  Like all the Suites, this is a lovely work.  Its opening Rondeau was crisp and lively; the second dance (Sarabande) contrasts well, being slow.  The two Bourrées are quick and sparkling, though as played here, they were perhaps a little too fast to dance.  Contrast came again, with the stately Polonaise.  The Menuet is also slow, but features beautiful melodies, while the final Badinerie is utterly delightful.

Despite only two instruments being used, sometimes only one, the concert revealed something of Bach’s great variety, and certainly much of the vast experience and expertise of these two musicians.

 

Concert of rare 17th century instruments at New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Te Koki

Sympathetic Strings

Music by Tobias Hume, Simon Ives, Geroge Loosemore, John Jenkins, Charles Colman, Thomas Ford, Christopher Simpson

Sarah Mead (lyra viols), Robert Oliver (bass viol), Kamala Bain (recorder), Erin Helyard (chamber organ and harpsichord)

Adam Concert Room

Wednesday, 18 March 2014, 8.15pm

Consisting entirely of English music from the seventeenth century, the concert brought unfamiliar sounds and compositions to light.  Sarah Mead is a visiting professor from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, while the other performers are well-known in Wellington for their advocacy and performance of early music.

Despite a programme note about the lyra viol and a brief explanation from Sarah Mead, I was left confused about this instrument, in view of the descriptions in the printed programme of which instruments were playing which pieces.

Perhaps it was assumed that the audience was made up of the cognoscenti, but I observed that this was not entirely the case.  The printed programme, both in the programme note and in the title of the concert, gave the impression that much of the music to be played would be on instruments with sympathetic strings; that was not the case.  There was no specific note about the lyra viol without these additional seven strings.

A brief conversation with Robert Oliver after the performance helped to clear some of the confusion: the lyra viol is not solely an instrument having sympathetic strings.  However, I observed Robert Oliver playing the same instrument in every piece, despite the designations “2 lyra viols”, “lyra viol, bass viol” after various pieces.

At home I resorted to Grove, where I learned that the lyra viol ‘differed little from the standard bass viol’. Elsewhere, ‘…nothing more than a bass viol of small dimensions with some quite minor peculiarities of adjustment.’  The lyra with sympathetic strings is dismissed: ‘There were some attempts to use sympathetic strings but with no lasting influence.’

A major difference from the music for most other instruments is that traditionally, tablature was used to indicate where the fingers should be placed to obtain the notes in a piece of music written for lyra viol, rather than conventional music notation being used. With movable gut frets, a great variety of tunings can be achieved – by this means as well as by use of the tuning pegs; thus tablature was found to be a means of coping not only with the number of strings (6), but also with variant tunings.  Several different tunings were utilised in the concert.

The instruments could be both bowed and plucked, including plucking with the left hand.  The bow hold was with the palm upwards, rather than the hand bearing down on the strings as is the case with the violin family (although some double bass players use the older method).  I noticed that Sarah Mead held the bow nearer to the frog (or nut) than did Robert Oliver.

The programme commenced with four pieces by Tobias Hume (c.1569-1645).  I found the sound of the instrument played by Sarah Mead rather grunty; she was playing the lower part.  The last of the short pieces was a song; Robert Oliver sang as well as playing.  This piece had a modest continuo part from the chamber organ.

Simon Ives (1600-1662) was the next composer; we heard his Almaine for solo lyra viol, and this time we had the lyra viol with sympathetic strings, and its interesting-looking scroll.
It featured plucking with the left hand as well as bowing; it was fascinating to watch Sarah Mead’s playing.  This instrument emitted more tone than the previous instrument, despite this one having a smaller body.

George Loosemore (?-1682) was represented by two dances: Pavan and Country Dance. The tenor recorder made a quite lovely sound in these, while the subdued harpsichord continuo nevertheless contributed splendidly.

John Jenkins (1592-1678) contributed an Ayre for solo lyra viol, followed by a Pavan Coranto for recorder and viols.  There was plenty of character in these dances, especially from the recorder;  Kamala Bain’s playing was beautifully phrased.

Another short solo for the lyra viol was a Coranto by Charles Colman (1605-1664).  In these solos we heard the higher pitched sounds of the instruments, and were able to observe more of the playing techniques in use.

Between several of the brackets, Erin Helyard played delightful little interludes on the harpsichord, improvised upon the music about to be played.  The ‘Sette’ for the music of Thomas Ford (d. 1648) was described as ‘Bandora Sette’, but this was not explained.
Once again, Grove came to my rescue later, concerning this instrument (also known as pandora).  ‘The Bagpipes’ was quite an intricate piece, but the next two pieces were troubled by some wonky intonation.  I found Ford’s writing lacking in inspiration; what was my surprise on consulting Grove to find the author of the article agreeing with me that some of his works were rather dull!

Christopher Simpson (c.1605-1669) was represented by three dances: Pavan, Allemande and Saraband, played by all four instruments.  The last was lively, featuring admirable phrasing.

John Jenkins returned with firstly, a solo Almain, ‘The Wagge’.  This was pretty demanding to play, and came off very well, as did the last piece, ‘Ecco Coranto’, for all the instruments.  It was bright and animated, with pleasing contrasts.  Again, the recorder playing was brilliant, whereas I often found the lyra viol tone harsh.

Altogether, however, this was an interesting and varied introduction to unfamiliar stringed instruments.

As a footnote: I enjoyed on the radio earlier the same day a concert from NZSM recorded in May 2012, featuring Erin Helyard (in one piece), but particularly Dutch visitor Bart van Oort, on fortepiano.  His playing was quite wonderful, with graded dynamics, beautiful phrasing and use of rubato another example of the commitment of NZSM to early music.

 

 

 

Bach Collegium Japan leaves audience wanting much more after Bach Lutheran masses

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach Collegium Japan, soloists from the choir, directed by Masaaki Suzuki

Johann Sebastian Bach:
Sinfonia from Cantata Am abend aber desselbigen Sabbats BWV 42
Lutheran Mass in A, BWV 234
Lutheran Mass in G minor, BWV 235

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 6 March 2014, 7.30pm

The magical performance by the Bach Collegium Japan under its inspiring Director, Masaaki Suzuki, left one wanting more.  Indeed, the Festival programme led us to believe we would get more, listing the duration as “2hrs 20mins (no interval)” despite an Interval being listed just above that.  However, it was not to be.  The concert lasted one hour and 40 minutes, including an interval.

Compared with the previous evening’s St. John Passion, this was unfamiliar music.  An extraordinary fact about the Lutheran Masses is that most of the music was adapted from the composer’s cantata movements, where the words would have been in German.  To reconstruct them with words with different syllables and emphases must have been quite a task.

Before the choral works, we were treated to the Sinfonia from the Cantata BWV 42.  This was lively, cheerful music, made more so by the sound of the period instruments (and bows) employed: initially, strings and chamber organ, later joined by oboes and a bassoon.  There were no flutes in this piece.  After it, conductor Suzuki invited applause especially for the wonderful woodwind playing.

Suzuki told us in his lunchtime talk on Wednesday that original instruments restrict the player to the appropriate style for the music of their period.  He suggested that the beauty of the movements selected by Bach was probably the reason for their reuse in the Lutheran Masses.

All nineteenth and twentieth century composers were influenced by Bach, he said.  In Suzuki’s eyes, Bach’s compositions were a work of God.  He found Bach his home, whereas conducting Stravinsky and Mahler (as he does) were like going on a picnic.

The choir entered; only 18 singers, comprising four sopranos, two female altos and two counter-tenors, five tenors and five basses.  For the Lutheran Mass BWV 234, there were no oboes, but two transverse wooden flutes, played standing.

With the opening Kyrie, one was immediately struck by the choir’s clarity, attack, and distinct consonants.  The following Gloria was a delightfully bright movement, the tenor solo at ‘Adoramus te, glorificamus te’ featuring a gorgeous tenor solo from Gerd Türk, in which even tone throughout the range was notable.

The four soloists were all non-Japanese: the soprano was Joanne Lunn (English), the counter-tenor, Clint van der Linde (South African), tenor Gerd Türk (German), and bass Peter Koolj, (Dutch).

A bass aria followed: ‘Domine Deus, Rex cœlestis’.  The bass’s voice had great richness, yet everything was enunciated and delivered clearly.  The accompanying violin solo from orchestra leader Ryo Terekado was beautifully phrased, and delivered with warm tone, yet the playing was incisive.

It was next the soprano’s turn, with the two flutes, in ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’.  Here was more incisive performance, yet Joanne Lunn made the performance dramatic, including not being able to resist some hand gestures.  The singer used little vibrato, but employed ornaments, which reminds me of a lovely story told by Maasaki Suzuki at his lunchtime talk.  He said that when he went to Belgium to study organ, after first learning the instrument in Japan, he began with the famous Ton Koopman.
Koopman encouraged his pupils to create ornaments in profusion, in baroque music.  Following study with him, Suzuki had lessons from another well-known Dutch organist, Piet Kee.  The latter decried all the ornaments, and told Suzuki to get rid of them!

The flutes were quite delicious in the ‘Qui tollis’, and a large section of the orchestration was for them, with violas and second violins.  The effect, and the playing, was of sublime loveliness.

Joyous, reassuring music followed in the counter-tenor’s solo ‘Quoniam tu solus sanctus’.  Graceful long lines and superb quiet singing made this movement perhaps the most beautiful of all.

It was followed by the chorus singing the final movement ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’.  Here, the flutes did not sound out very well in the Michael Fowler Centre acoustic when all the choir and orchestra were holding forth – but when you could hear them, they were exquisite.

We were in for an unprogrammed treat after the Interval: a movement from a Bach cantata (sung in German), for counter-tenor, with two violins, cello, and chamber organ (played by the maestro himself, whereas in the other works it was played by Masato Suzuki – the maestro’s son?).  The spare sound, in contrast to what we had heard before, was delightful – enhanced by the gut strings (though the difference these make is less noticeable from the cellos).

The singer’s expressive voice, varied dynamics, and greater level of communication with the audience than that of some of the other soloists, made for a fine performance, much appreciated by the large (but not full) audience.

The choir and remaining orchestra came on for the Lutheran Mass in G minor. The Lutheran Masses set only the Kyrie and Gloria, not the full Mass, but the sections of the Gloria set differed between the two Masses. The opening Kyrie of this second one featured the oboes again.  Their sound had bite, yet was mellifluous.  The flowing, interweaving lines were wonderful to hear.

The Gloria chorus was marked by quite detached notes, unlike the Gloria in the previous Mass.  Throughout both works, the pronunciation of words by the choir was uniform and precise, with excellent Latin syllables – no ‘tay’ for ‘te’ or ‘dayo’ for ‘Deo’.  The choir delivered a strong tenor line on the words ‘Laudamus te, benedicimus te’.

The bass aria ‘Gratias agimus’ (the latter pronounced with a hard g) accompanied by violins and a continuo consisting of organ, two cellos, bassoon and double bass, was outstanding, and was followed by the counter-tenor singing ‘Domine fili unigenite Jesu Christe’.  This was very florid setting, with wonderful soaring notes, and somewhat pastoral in its effect.

No soprano solo this time; the last solo was from the tenor, whose warm and expressive voice, clear consonants and effective suspensions were accompanied by an incisive solo oboe.

The final chorus, ‘Cum Sancto Spiritu’ gave parts of the choir the chance to shine, especially a good bass lead part-way through, followed by strong sopranos.  This was a triumphant sound, with strength from both singers and instrumentalists, especially the cellos and double bass, whose parts echoed the opening of the previous mass.

The soloists’ inconspicuous moving from choir to the front of the platform and back again was a feature that meant little disruption to the music or to the visual presentation.  The choir stood throughout their performances.

The precision, accuracy, balance, tone and musicality of the ensemble made a lasting impression on everyone I spoke to; this was an outstanding contribution to the Arts Festival, and an uplifting experience for all who were present.

 

Baroque guitarist Hopkinson Smith reveals a little known era of Spanish music in exquisite recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Hopkinson Smith playing a five-course baroque Spanish guitar

Music by Gaspar Sanz, Francisco Guerau, Antonio de Santa Cruz

Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, Wellington

Monday 24 February, 6:30 pm

This was Hopkinson Smith’s second performance in Wellington; the previous day he had played at Pataka, the museum and cultural centre in Porirua. I gather there was a full house, and a highly appreciative one.

His rather memorable name has been around for many decades: I confess to thinking he was English (he was born in New York, was educated at Harvard, and long resident in Switzerland) and so there were several surprises and even more delights to be found at this recital by a refined, quietly witty, unpretentious American who seems to command every kind of plucked string instrument (apart from the harp): his extraordinary discography on the Internet is worth a look.

Though he opened the recital without making any comments  about the music or the instrument he was playing,  he did speak at the end of the first bracket of three pieces by Gaspar Sanz  (1640-1710, from Aragon), thus a contemporary of such composers as Lully, Buxtehude, Stradella, Charpentier and Biber.  In terms of Spanish history, the 17th century had seen the decline of its military and political greatness, having squandered the superficial wealth that gold from the Americas had brought them.  But great empires in decline often continue to produce art of lasting quality.

These ‘Three Spanish themes’ which came from a collection published in Zaragossa in 1674, Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española, suggested a refinement of taste, somehow in contradiction to the grandeur and pomposity still exhibited by the Spanish court and the nobility. There was little chordal writing or employment of rich harmonies; rather, a hesitant quality in the Pavanas with variations, colouring by lots of runs, subtle decoration and rhythm changes. Folias displayed a sort of flamenco character, with strumming across the finger-board.

Before playing the next group, entitled ‘Europe in Miniature’, Smith spoke about his guitar, a replica of a 17th century Spanish guitar with five courses (that is, pairs of strings tuned to the same pitch or at the octave); he noted that his instrument was tuned according to Sanz’s directions, with the two lowest courses tuned an octave higher so that no bass notes could be produced. The result is ethereal, transparent and, in the artist’s own words, the instrument was ‘liberated from the bass, thus the tonality has a unique poetic aura which in its best moments creates a magic of its own’.

It is perhaps more attuned to a venue rather smaller than the church; the space somewhat reduced the feeling of the refined character of this small instrument as well as making Smith’s words hard to hear. But a smaller venue would have meant turning many away.  While the guitar might have been minimally amplified, his voice was not.

There were six pieces in the bracket ‘Europe in miniature’. The first impression was of a certain lack of variety, particularly of key, though they may have been closely related keys; until the final piece, Tarantela which shifted dramatically with much more vigorous strumming, occasional hitting the body of the guitar, creating a very lively musical fabric. The earlier pieces were drawn from various parts of Spain and Europe in general, though always infused with a character that seemed essentially Spanish; varied in rhythm, duple to triple back and forth, lively dotted rhythms that were sometimes difficult to distinguish from quaver triplets. The delicacy and refined taste of the music steadily made itself familiar to me as the concert proceeded.

The two pieces by Francisco Guerau (1649 – 1717/1722, from Majorca) came from a famous publication of 20 years later (Poema harmonico, 1694). The Passacalles del primer tono, one of some 30 passacalles in the volume, proved a longish work, perhaps the most substantial and characteristic in the programme . There was a subtlety of invention and expression, a variety of rhythms and tempi, of unobtrusive counterpoint where, in its central part, its melodic evolution became increasingly intriguing and difficult to follow and appreciate. Towards the end, a meandering, fluid character emerged, in a more marked triple time, that was neither a minuet, a sarabande nor any kind of German Ländler.  Smith’s own notes described Guerau’s music as ‘some of the most sophisticated  writing for the guitar from the entire baroque era’.  Further exploration will be rewarding.

His Canarios (from the Canary Islands), less elaborate but more sparkling and delightful, involved a lot of strumming  that suggested the flamenco style of Andalusia.
The first half ended with a Jácaras, a lively dance by Antonio de Santa Cruz who seems to be a more obscure figure, comparable with Guerau in style, and dated around 1700.

The second half was devoted to five pieces by Sanz: a flowing Preludio based around scales and arpeggios. Then a Marizápalos which emerged as the source of the slow movement from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, a lovely set of variations.  A jig followed, and then another Passacalles, this time ‘del segundo tono’: bold strumming  and more dense clusters of chords, creating a more ‘modern’ impression than many of the other pieces.

Finally Sanz’s Canarios which proved to be the source of the last movement of Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre; as expected, it was delightfully lively and attractive.

The entire recital, exquisitely and brilliantly executed by Hopkinson Smith,  opened a window for me to a period of music that I was fairly unfamilar with. From a period that is contemporary with the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution in England, of Purcell and Blow, Jeremiah Clarke and Eccles; or Louis XIV’s France of Lully, Charpentier, Campra and Couperin, it evokes a society of perhaps greater refinement and sophistication, though it is pertinent to recall that this was also the era in Spain of the emergence of the baroque Zarzuela, the early form of comic opera that re-emerged strongly in the 19th century.