Tag: cello

50th Anniversary tribute to Benjamin Britten (and his heroes)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Twelfth “Comfy Concert” at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”
(Benefit for Arohanui Strings)

Chamber “Pot-Pourri” Ensemble
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) / Helene Pohl (violin)
Sophia Acheson (viola) / Robert Orr (oboe)

JS BACH – Suite No. 2 in D MInor, for solo ‘cello
Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

BENJAMIN BRITTEN – Phantasy Quartet for Oboe and Strings
Robert Orr (oboe) / Helene Pohl (violin)
Sophie Acheson (‘viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART –   Quartet for Oboe and Strings in F Major
KV 370 –  Robert Orr (oboe) / Helene Pohl (violin)
Sophia Acheson (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Roseneath, Point Jerningham, Wellington

Saturday, 26th September, 2026

Somehow I had missed out on hearing the previous “The Long Hall” concert in Roseneath, one that had featured a new string quartet ensemble – the “Amada Quartet”, who, on all accounts had played a wonderful programme that  included a composition for String Quartet (“One vision” 2026 – world premiere) by one of the group’s members, violinist Lorna Zhang.  The ensemble also performed an excerpt from Schubert’s monumental C Major String Quintet with cellist Rolf Gjelsten, as well as, for good measure, a complete Mendelssohn string quartet (No.6 in F Minor Op. Posth.80).  So, I was determined to not let this latest concert pass me by, and especially as the “Pot-Pourri Ensemble” was incorporating the services of none less than oboist Robert Orr and violist Sophia Acheson for the occasion, and featuring the music of Benjamin Britten in this, his anniversary year, a fleeting fifty years since his death!

This concert was also part of an ongoing “benefit series” for the Arohanui Strings, whose patron is, of course Helene Pohl – the Arohanui’s representative who warmly welcomed us to the concert made a point of telling us that the Trust had enlarged its tuition options to include woodwind, and including, of course, the oboe, giving an extra kind of “hands-on” relevance to today’s repertoire, which included Britten’s youthful “Phantasy” Oboe Quartet.

Written when he was nineteen and still a student at the Royal College of Music in London, the work’s first appearance was marked by a 1933 BBC broadcast, and played by its dedicatee, oboist Leon Goossens. The interest generated enabled the Quartet to be taken the following year by Goossens to an international contemporary music festival in Florence, where its reception established Britten’s reputation as “an important new voice” both at home and abroad.

In this concert at The Long Hall the work was appropriately framed by music from two other composers whose music had already exerted a profound influence upon Britten, and which would continue throughout his creative life. One was JS Bach whose own Suites for solo ‘cello were a direct inspiration for Britten’s similarly constructed works, for the instrument, all composed for the Russian ‘cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten was also a noted interpreter of Bach’s music as a conductor, having directed and recorded performances of works such as the Brandenburg Concertos, and the St,John Passion.

The other major influence was Mozart, whom Britten considered to be the greatest of all composers, and whose music he performed both as a conductor and a pianist – his own music was steeped in Mozart’s own methodology, keeping the latter’s scores on his own piano, and frequently referring to them for inspiration. His most well-known definition of what he considered the older composer’s genius was his remark that “Mozart showed how to be “new” without destroying what came before” – which accounted for his love for the Mozart operas, especially in the light of the music of a third “genius” revered by Britten, that of Henry Purcell. But it was the elegance and mastery of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet that here bore out Britten’s admiration, and which we were to hear in his own youthful Quartet featuring the same instrument.

Beginning the concert with Bach was cellist Rolf Gjelsten, reminding us in his introduction that the Second Suite was in the “Requiem” key of D Minor, which had given rise to the suggestion that the work as a whole was conceived as a “tombeau” (a musical composition commemorating a person’s death, taken from the French word for “tomb” or “tombstone”) one that paid homage to the composer’s first wife, Maria Barbara, who had unexpectedly died in July of 1720 after thirteen years of the couple’s marriage. A further, for us an unexpectedly “other-worldly” touch then came with the cellist’s disclosure that his beautiful instrument had actually been made in 1705, and therefore predated the music he was about to play!

A sombre and dignified Prelude opened the work, the three-note opening phrase a kind of springboard for the movement’s slow dance, delivered here with incredibly-varied nuance and spontaneity of expression within the framework of the piece’s subdued trajectories, reaching a kind of spaciously-conceived series of triple-stopped chords, each one a deeply-measured breath suggesting a calmness of sorts, relating to a state somewhere between grief and acceptance. The Allemande (from a French word, meaning “German”,)  was next, a livelier, more discursive piece filled with what seemed like entirely unpredictable detours and diversions, and with double-stopped “left hanging” harmonics that teased the ear awaiting resolution – the piece’s “second half” seemed even more exploratory than the first, which added to the fun of listening! Here in the playing was energy, poise, circumspection and abandonment, and all for our pleasure!

As if the Allemande was just a warm-up, the following Courante was even livelier in its fleet-fingeredness in places, and contrasting with the irruptions of emphasis that occasionally “pinned” the line to the greater whole, with a by-product of the irruptions the occasional “rogue” tones flying off the bow strings in sync with the piece’s delight in a certain abandonment! What a difference with the Sarabande, the movement in this work most frequently giving rise to the idea that Bach composed it in his late, beloved Maria Barbara’s memory  – it seemed, at the outset, to express the inexpressible, with whatever emotion being mooted held here in a gentle but firm grip of patience, the playing making reference to sorrow that had been lived with, borne, and accepted.

Thank goodness for the relief of Minuets, one often feels! – this one here kicks up its heels with a modicum of relief, though it’s well-grounded with those triple-stopped chords frequently inviting a more insistent and deliberate accent, making every subsequent note of the line a kind of “reaction”, nothing taken for granted. And how winsome and circumspect the Menuet II sounds in tandem, freer in expression and with a definite “looking on the bright side” kind of air, only to surrender with a shrug to the more assertive twin’s return!  And for anybody who thinks Bach’s music lacks wit, the Gigue would have been a mordant treat! – the droll opening, under Rolf Gjelsten’s fingers, had an initial kind of amiably-suggestive girth which then threw off its weight as it indulged in part-mischievous, part assertive running passages, often with a drone-string-accompaniment which reflected in places an amusing dual-purpose expression, especially in the dance’s second half.

We were thus well-grounded for the Britten work which followed, and which brought violist Sophia Acheson and oboist Robert Orr to the platform to join with our two regular Pot-Pourri Ensemble members, Rolf Gjelsten and violinist Helene Pohl. Robert Orr helpfully set the scene for us, describing, and then with his colleagues’ help, demonstrating a number of what he called “signposts” in the work whose registering could, he suggested, enhance our enjoyment of the piece!  The very opening, a march seemingly approaching from a great distance, begun by the ‘cello, and gradually swinging into full view (hearing?!) was capped by a lyrical oboe melody whose repetitions made us almost want to get up and stroll about with the music! This led to the players’ lines effervescing and excitedly running in all directions, strings arco and and pizzicato, and oboe staccato and enthusiastically playing fanfare-like calls as the strings s gurgled in resonating accord!

There have been numerous instances of composer-genius manifesting itself at an early age – and this work seemed astonishingly confident in its organic, non-formulaic use of its material. One’s ear was constantly led on by Britten’s adventurous detailing recognisably part of a whole but used in adventurous-  sounding ways – the work’s middle sections presented us with an almost Mahlerian variety of treatment of thematic material, much of the mood pastoral in an “outdoor” sense, but subjected to spontaneous mood-changes which could disturb and ruffle the sensibilities. Robert Orr’s plangent oboe tones led me in places later in the piece to think of woodland glades of the kind that abounded in Greek mythology – and I wondered whether the young Britten had already discovered these tales of antiquity long before he thought of writing his better-known Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, for solo oboe. In particular I thought of the story of Pan and Syrinx, and the god’s pursuit of the nymph, only to lose her to the water nymphs who transformed her into a thicket of marsh reeds.  In his later work Britten’s solo oboe depiction bore the title “Pan, who played upon the reed pipe which was Syrinx, his beloved”. Listening to it again afterwards led me to wonder whether its lamenting, long-breathed lines could be said to show a certain kinship with the younger composer’s earlier treatment of the instrument’s gentler, more reflective moments…..

After this we had the inestimable pleasure of listening to a work which surely played an inspirational part in Britten’s writing of his own youthful masterpiece – Mozart’s similarly-scored Oboe Quartet, which Robert Orr characterised as a piece that would have at the time pushed the instrument’s capabilities to the limit. He cited as an example the passage in the finale where the composer simultaneously employed two time signatures – 4/4 for the oboe and 6/8 for the strings! Simply the thought of it sounded precariously daring, as did the players’ brief demonstration!

Mozart wrote this work in Munich, while visiting the city to supervise the production of his first “opera seria”, Idomeneo, somehow finding the time to reacquaint with the virtuoso oboist, Friedrich Ramm, whom he’d previously met in Mannheim in 1777, as well as to write him a concerto! With this new work Ramm was able to display his considerable skills and showcase the “improvements” made to the instrument of the day. From the beginning, the sprightly articulation allied to the “give-and-take” between the instruments gave all of us considerable pleasure,  In places the phrasing,  slightly more insistent than on a much loved recording I’ve owned for years, had the effect of sharpening my reactions to all the more engaging effect! With music one knows well the slightest divergencies from those much-listened-to recorded performances often renews and refurbishes the shapes and nuances of the sounds so remarkably (and more often than not, pleasurably!).

Strings alone began the second movement, the oboe adding its plaintive, long-breathed tones to the fourth bar, the lingering notes making for a somewhat melancholy mood at the outset, and enabling the music to float freely and expressively before gathering in the lines once again – a remarkable sensation. Just as magical was the oboe’s recitative-like solo which similarly made the aural spaces its own without severing the music’s actual flow, one still sensing the other players tacit connection with those same lines……

All the more delightful, then, was the spirited activation of the finale, whose joie de vivre was realised by. firstly, the oboe-led opening, and then the gregarious strings, into which company the former couldn’t help but rejoin! The infectious “schwung” of the trajectories here gave the impression of whole bodies, rather then merely arms, fingers, lungs and breath, all helping to make the music! An exciting moment was the “polyrhythmic/polymetric” sequence , during which the oboe “danced” through the strings’ 6/8  passages in a sprightly 4/4,  reconnecting in time for the much-heralded ascent to a top note, one that, most divertingly, seemed here more “imagined” than taken before the player was nonchalantly riding the recapitulated wave of the main theme once again! (Despite all of this, I feel sure the dedicatee Friedrich Ramm was spared a score  that was decorated with coloured inks and (humorously?) insulting remarks of the composer’s making, as did the hapless horn-player Joseph Leutgeb have to put up with when performing HIS concertos! – perhaps it WAS all in good fun!) Here, the humour was rather more subtly applied, with Robert Orr giving his last three notes of the work (marked forte in the score) a deliciously gentle tone  of voice.  It seemed to sum up the afternoon’s delightful and affectionate  music-making in a nutshell, like worlds seen in grains of sand, and a composer with a handful of simple notes expounding a truth that touches the heart.

The Dolfin-Lin Duo – positively tingling with spontaneous re-discovery!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Dolfin-Lin Duo – Balazs Dolfin (‘cello) / Tony Chen Lin (piano)

ZOLTÁN KODÁLY  –  Magyar Rondo (Hungarian Rondo) (1917)
ANTON WEBERN  –  Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano (1914)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH  –  Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord in D Major  BWV 1028
GAO PING  –  Sonata No. 2 for ‘Cello and Piano “Departure” (2001)
BÉLA BARTÓK – Rhapsody No. 1 for ‘Cello and Piano (1928-9)
NATHANAEL DEJONG – Abandoned Voices (2021)
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Sonata No.1 for ‘Cello and Piano in E Minor Op.38

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday,, 30th August 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

This partnership of ‘cello and piano made a profound impression with the Duo’s strongly-projected, in places “larger-than-life” realisations of the works chosen, with those I’d heard before (the Bartok and Brahms pieces) giving a remarkably singular impression to my ears of hearing the music for the first time! I’d heard Tony Chen Lin’s playing on several occasions previously as well as on recordings, and found myself often remarking upon his boldly-characterised view of both detailings and overall trajectorial and colouristic character, playing which unhesitatingly “addresses” more than merely “coaxes out” the music’s manifold moods. On this occasion, of course, his partner was Hungarian cellist Balazs Dolfin ( their Duo was formed in Italy in 2021) whose similarly arresting and whole-hearted approach to his instrument and its sound-world in general seemed to me to fit like a glove with the pianist’s aforementioned qualities  – so that the music-making throughout the concert positively tingled with spontaneously-generated re-discovery!

First up was Zoltan Kodaly’s Magyar Rondo, written in 1917, and drawn from incidental music the composer had written for a play by Zsigmond Móricz called Pacsirtaszó (Lark’s Song), a folk-style drama but  with “social realism” themes – this version for ‘cello and piano brought out the piece’s soulful folk-character at the outset, before breaking into a dance variation, angular and quixotic! A deeper, more baritonal tone came with the next, slower variation, the piano contrasting the cello’s sombre voice with full, assertive treatment accorded the melody’s refrain, though the music returned to more intimate realms for a wistful, harmonics-like cello passage, almost ghostly in effect! A far more helter-skelter mood overtook the next variation’s minor-key mood-change, the music abandoning itself to a burst of high-spirited display before the cello took us suddenly along a pizzicato-strewn pathway, the piano playing bagpipelike figurations as the dance swirled and swayed up and down – but how wistful and redolent were the dream-like moments of remembrance, compared with the wildness of the duo’s concluding high-spiurited flourishes!

Nothing further from the opening could have been devised than what we next experienced, Anton Webern’s ‘Cello Sonata, a work written in 1914, and intended as a present for his father, who loved the ‘cello! For whatever reason the composer broke off working on the piece and decided he would give his father the “Three Little Pieces for ‘Cello and Piano” Op.11 instead, abandoning the Sonata, which wasn’t rediscovered until 1965, twenty years after t3he composer’s death. Though roughly contemporaneous with the Kodaly piece we heard  at the concert’s beginning, the Sonata seemed to inhabit an entirely different creative sphere,  Though not twelve-tone music. Webern’s Sonata features fractured phrases and angularly-pointed rhythms whose contrasts are often explosive and even disturbing, with “sehr bewegt” (very animated) suddenly giving way to (“zart bewegt”) gently animated, before reverting without warning to the original marking for the piece’s final gesturings.

Not inappropriately, the players then took up, after a moments’s pause, the programme’s next item Johann Sebastian Bach’s  Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord in D Minor, with the first-movement Adagio in our minds seeming almost to “sort out” the still-resonating strains of the Webern piece, almost as if giving credence to Webern’s teacher Schoenberg’s dictum that “there are no dissonances in music, just more remote consonances…”. I thought the playing so very exquisitely dovetailed, bringing out as much the character as well as the beauty of the lines’ interactions during the following Allegro. The soulfulness of the minor-key Siciliano rhythm throughout the Andante brought out the expressiveness, the depth of feeling, the grief inherent in this music that awaited release in a finale that danced like thistledown in the wind, joyously freed from earthly constraint as the composer evoked the prospect of life’s fulfilment in expectation of heavenly reward.

Sixth-generation Chinese composer Gao Ping’s music is well-known to New Zealand audiences due to his significant working associations with various educational institutions in this country, such as Christchurch’s University of Canterbury and Te Koki New Zealand School of Music in Wellington. He’s developed long-term relationships with local musicians such as Michael Houstoun  and  the New Zealand String Quartet – the fifteen year-old association with Houstoun has resulted in a recent recording “Outside the Window” of Gao Ping;s music, released on the Rattle label. By way of acknowledging a New Zealand influence upon his own music he is currently planning an opera set in this country, one whose setting (Central Otago) will draw from storytelling traditions present in classic stories from both Chinese and Western cultures. This has been, he has said

Gao Ping’s Cello Sonata No. 2 was written on 2001 – its title, “Departure” was taken from the subject of a Chinese poet of the “Song Dynasty” one writing in times parallel to western medieval times (10TH-13TH century), the Song Dynbasty poet Su Dongpo. The poet relates the work’s title to the cyclical meaning of the Chinese  word shi meaning “departure” which incorporates both an end and a beginning, an idea elaborated upon by Geo Ping’s music which ends the piece with the notes of its beginning. Its sounds also give voice to the composer’s inclination to blend Western and Chinese music, reminding the listener in places of the inclinations of Janacek, Kodaly and Bartok in their similar “seedings” of various pieces with folk-inspired impulses and gestures.

There are five sections to the work  which play continuously, and whose flow emphasise that same “end is my beginning” concept. The cello underlines traditional colours and timbres of traditional Chisese instruments such as the Guqin and Erhu, as well as having recourse to vocal inflections of traditional speech-styles, stemming from an era of personal expression and introspective inclinations. The ‘cello emphasised these associations at the beginning, now and then “bending’ the notes, and employing freely ranging dynamic levels, with eerie, other-worldly harmonics that invited the piano’s first entry. A sustained note slowly developed more elaborate configurations which grew to  allowing ever-increasing freedom of expression – the instrumental sounds could be described as reaching for speech inflections, suggesting the full human range of tones, timbres, colours and dynamics.  Whole episodes then gave themselves over to contrasting depictions of emotion and purpose, often alarmingly confrontational, then reverting to introspective moods, the tones becoming increasingly disembodied as a sense of overriding timelessness crept into the sound-worlds and gradually silenced the remaining impulses and counter-impulses in spell-binding fashion!

An interval of discussion made the time pass quickly before we were off again with the dauntless duo, this time a folk-flavoured work by Bartok, the Rhapsody No.1, originally composed for violin and piano but arranged by the composer for ‘cello and piano – here, ‘cellist and pianist gave a remarkable display, giving full measure to both the physical and lyrical aspects of the Rhapsody, tearing into the well-known contrasted pairing of the traditional Lassú (slow) and Friss  (fast) sections of the Hungarian verbunkos (recruiting) dance with tremendous physicality, precision and plaintive lyricism, the soft-playing as arresting as the excitement generated by the more brilliant sections.

An entirely new name to me was New Zealand composer Nathanael Dejong (b.1988) whose work reflects his training as both a pianist and violinist as well as composition, but directly focuses on his interest as a parent in childhood development relating to teaching and learning in an age he considers overshadowed  by electronic media devices –  the “Abandoned Voices” title reflected this dominance of digital media at the expense of human interaction. Consequently the work we heard presented sombre exchanges between the instruments, deep, serious and heartfelt utterances punctuated by long silences and wide dynamic ranges, both piano and cello employing delicate, winsome sets of gestures representing a plethora of sounds to make sense of, both of their own volition and in responsive contexts to one another – the cello playing unworldly harmonics and the pianist reaching into the body of the piano to dampen notes and chordings. It all makes for a variety of impulse and intent awaiting definition and associated meaning, the “small voices, waiting to be heard” presence embodied in newly-emergent human form.

Though there was nothing “small voiced” about Johannes Brahms, the young composer’s rabid perfectionist nature resulted in his destroying many youthful compositions before allowing his innermost creative thoughts to remain, an inclination which for some years dogged his compositional efforts – indeed, some scholars suggest that probably only one-third of Brahms’s entire compositional input has survived. The earliest “official” works were for solo piano and song collections, the young composer’s meetings with the violinist Joseph Joachim and Robert and Clara Schumann gained him invaluable advice, example and confidence, though he maintained his rigorous self-critical attitudes to his work throughout his compositional career. His two ‘cello sonatas interestingly “reverse” their composer’s expected compositional trajectories, with the earlier First (played today) very much connected to the past, the deep-throated melody that opens the work frequently “changing places” with the piano, so that the harmonic structure of the work is richly varied in texture and tone. The “fusing” of the two leads strengthened the discourse between the two voices, both performers here scarcely holding back in terms of full-blooded expressiveness – I simply loved it!

For whatever reason, Brahms removed an Adagio movement originally composed, leaving the “Allegretto quasi Menuetto”  to fend for itself as a foil to the outer movements, a charming theme, sharing the opening section with a sinuous second theme, also in a minor key – the trio was even more suggestive in intent, with both instruments tying the melodic strands closely together, before returning to the opening dance. The finale  plunged into a whirling dervish-like opening, (commentators cite Bachian influences here relating to “the Art of the Fugue” at the beginning, which took on a more playful aspect in places, and with Brahms broadening the trajectories into momentary illusions of adventurous impulse (shades of the D Minor Piano Concerto’s great “questing” theme at one point!) and disarmingly charming dance-like manoeuverings, all swept away by the return of the opening “whirling” figures, concluding with a furious, cataclysmic stretto leaving us all deliciously dishevelled by the music’s wonderfully conclusive sound and fury!

 

Deliciously unfamiliar/eminently listenable music from little-known French composer Michel Corrette

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MICHEL CORRETTE (1707-1795) France
LES DELICES DE LA SOLITUDE – Sonatas Op. 20 Nos.1-6

Michelle Kesler –  ‘Cello I Sonatas 2, 4 & 6  / Cello II
Miranda Wilson – ‘Cello I Sonatas 1, 3 & 5  / Cello II

MSR Classics MS 1832

Recorded November 2024 in the Recital Hall at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

“In the spirit of friendship between ‘cellists, we hope listeners will enjoy this lively conversation between instruments” writes ‘cellist Miranda Wilson in her notes accompanying a delightful recording that has come my way, of music by a composer whose name I did not know, one Michel Corrette, born in Rouen, France in 1707. In this case, it’s amusing to associate the ready camaraderie between the two musicians featured on this recording with a work whose six sonatas have the collective subtitle  Les délices de la solitude (The Delights of Solitude) – however, although it would seem that Corrette’s set of six sonatas were originally for solo ‘cello plus basso continuo, they’re here assigned to two ‘cellos, whose demonstrably equal share of the lines makes for great satisfaction, as much obviously in performing as in our listening!

Cellists Michelle Kesler and Miranda Wilson are the players on this recording, made in November 2024 at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah – at the time both were Professors of ‘Cello at their respective teaching places, Kesler at the aforementioned Brigham Young University, and Wilson in the neighbouring state of Idaho at the eponymously-named State University in Moscow, Idaho. We’re given detailed guidance as to which player is “Cello I” in each of the sonatas, Kesler conveniently taking the “lead” in Sonatas 2, 4, and 6, and Wilson in the other three. The presentation nicely completes the collaborative nature of the whole by presenting the works in numerical order.

My first listening impression (Sonata No. 1 in F Major) was of a slightly more spacious acoustic for the two instruments that I thought I was going to fully enjoy, but, as with any concert or recording one encounters, one’s ears can take a little while to, in Michael Flanders’ immortal words on his and Donald Swann’s “At the Drop of A Hat” live recording, “get the pitch of the hall” – and by the first movement’s end the sounds had found and “inhabited” their places for me with music which had by this time amiably teased, cajoled and enlivened my spirits!

Miranda Wilson entertainingly draws attention to Corrette’s music corresponding with the rise of the ‘cello as a solo instrument at the expense of the viola da gamba in popularity at this time, one taken advantage of by, firstly, the publication of these sonatas at around 1739, and the composer’s 1741 treatise Theoretical and Practical Method for Learning the ‘Cello to Perfection in a Short Time. Something of the ferment of the controversy is excitingly suggested by a pamphlet circulated in 1740 by a French lawyer and amateur viola da gamba player Hubert Le Blanc, one which bore the contentious title Defence of the Bass Viol against the Enterprises of the Violin and the Pretensions of the ‘Cello! – wot larks! Le Blanc’s somewhat intemperate rationale regarding his instrument’s superiority has since seen its consignment to the realm of the specialist, by no means obliterated, but put in its place by history!

Here, we are invited to indulge in the composer’s obvious enthusiasm for the then still new-fangled instrument (Corrette’s aforementioned treatise was the first French publication of “a theoretical and practical method” for aspiring cellists) – and the sonatas as recorded here feature a kind of “coming together” of solitudinous delights, with each ‘cellist by turns blending their instruments’ solo lines with their partners’ roles as contrapuntal voices, the modes somewhat antithetical in these pairings but, in situ, delightful.

Sonata No. 1 straightaway dances into a Fuga, marked Allegro, the counterpoints unselfconsciously switching from first to second voice in non-hierarchical exchange, its composer obviously allowing his originally-wrought basso continuo a satisfyingly comparable response to the soloist here, and also in the Affetuoso Aria that followed – and the Allegro finale makes for as “companionable” a solitude as could be imagined!

The D Minor Sonata No. 2 begins with a more driving Allegro, with lots of “fizz” to some of the exchanges, and the ensuing Affetuoso, with its contrasting Arias I and II underlining a poignant operatic-like interaction, not unexpectedly calling for some resolution – a CPE Bach-like Allegro staccato did the trick, those brusque, attention-grabbing initial notes making for a splendid “what’s all this, then!” kind of denoument!

I loved the easy, loping stride of the C Major No 3’s Allemande – a kind of relaxed “bustle” of an Allegro, and then with both this and the equally bucolic concluding Fuga da capella third movement enclosing an unexpectedly concentrated middle-movement Sarabande. More concentrated intensities came with both players’ deep-diving into the following E-flat Major Fourth Sonata’s opening Adagio, one that conveyed a more-than-usual sense of solitude on the music’s part. This dramatically tipped over and into a Corrente, an exhilarating running-sequence leaving one breathless but energised enough to take on board the music’s almost hymn-like Aria which followed – little did we realise we were being primed for a “call-to-arms” with the succeeding “Brut de chasse” here rousing and enthralling our sensibilities with sounds and sensations of an army on the march!

Further excitement came with the galvanic Presto Prelude to the Fifth Sonata in G Major, in which one imagined our two cellists enjoying an “Anything you can do” exchange, with hair and resin flying! The following Allemande, though more leisurely an Allegro took us on a reasonably aerobic stroll, a mood which was at once echoed and calmed by a graceful Sarabande – here, a winsome and exploratory partnership that brought peace to one’s soul. As well for such respite, with the sharply-etched Presto finale that followed mischievously breaking the mood, snapping playfully at dancers’ heels.

Glorious and celebratory were the Handelian flourishes which opened the final sonata of the set, the 6th in a joyous D Major. Here, strangely, it seems the MSR Classics booklet prints the incorrect names and tempi for the movements – the opening Preludio has a grand, ritualistic character which should be Allegro Moderato, not Presto. And this suits the solemn, ceremonial gait of the second movement Aria, not Allemande – Allegro as listed here. Finally, the players skip merrily into a concluding Gigue (not in the least bit like a Sarabande!). It all made for a bit pf a puzzle on a first listen, but one well worth solving, and which Michel Corrette himself might possibly have regarded with amusement rather than annoyance  – after all, among his prodigious output were no less than twenty-five “Concerti Comiques”, pieces for vocal and instrumental ensembles which were often “fun” settings of popular tunes and well-known opera themes, and written largely to be used as “entractes” during performances of comic theatre.

This was revelatory stuff for me – listening to the disc right through was like being taken on some kind of “tour” of a specific time and place in European musical history – though he lived in the same era as his fellow countrymen Rameau, Leclair, Boismortier and Mondonville, and at the same time as Handel, CPE Bach, Gluck and Pergolesi,  Corrette’s music survives comparison with these more famous figures due to its craftsmanship and its composer’s penchant for capturing elements of different styles and blending them in singular ways. The voices of his influences are in places unmistakable but he manages to make the results of their synthesis his own. The only comment I wanted to make of a questioning nature concerned repeats in the various movements, so many of which seemed to finish before I wanted them to! –  and moments such as those made me wonder what the scores of these works indicated were the options for the players who perform this music. I would be interested to find out more regarding this subject. For the rest, to the composer and performers, simply “Bravo! C’est magnifique!”

Virtuosi – Orchestra Wellington’s celebration of the capital’s individual and interactive instrumental brilliance

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VIRTUOSI – Orchestra Wellington

ELGAR – Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra Op.47
ELGAR – Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra in E Minor Op.85
BARTÓK – Concerto for Orchestra Sz116

New Zealand String Quartet : Peter Clark, Martin Riseley (guest player), violins;
Gillian Ansell, viola; Martin Smith, ‘cello
Inbal Megiddo, ‘cello
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei, conductor

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 27th June 2026

This concert was replete with memories of formative music-listening experiences which have sung and danced throughout my musical life for almost fifty years – so the reader must forgive what seems like a self-indulgent bias regarding these works, and especially in the wake of such committed, heart-warming performances!

Originally a borrowed word from the Italian virtuoso (referring to both “virtue” and “skill”) the term “virtuosi” has “taken flight” in common usage, and is regularly used to denote skill and proficiency of the highest order in practically any human activity, and not just the performing arts. Here, it’s less fulsomely and more appositely applied to both individual and group distinction in musical performance, happily and resoundingly borne out by tonight’s stellar presentations.

One could go further and suggest that the term applied as readily to the creative and technical skills of each of the two “similar-but-different” composers whose music featured in tonight’s concert – on the face of things the “Englishness” of Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and the Hungarian “folkishness” of Béla Bartók (1881-1945) would seem to have little in common, even if their lifetimes partly coincided. Unlike his younger native contemporaries Holst and Vaughan Williams, Elgar showed little interest in ethnomusicology, whereas Bartók eagerly immersed himself in the folk-music of his native soil, both in his studies of comparative musical folklore in Hungary and his fusion of these elements with his own personal style of expression. Both composers were “countrymen” in their inclinations towards the “great outdoors” but it would seem the Malvern Hills near Worcester, beloved of Elgar, were probably somewhat removed in spirit from the isolated Carpathian Mountains of Hungary which Bartók explored, finding his most “authentic” Magyar folk music amongst those isolated communities.

Where Elgar and Bartók meet, I feel, is in the uniqueness and strength of each composer’s distinctive musical “character” – most of Elgar’s work has that instantly recognisable combination of nobility and introspectiveness which looks simultaneously outwards and inwards, in the manner of an artist at once confident and insecure, forthright and nostalgic, expressing a dichotomy that would reach its peak in the composer’s  ‘Cello Concerto played this evening. By contrast, Bartók’s music is characterised by asymmetrical themes and rhythms, modal scales, drones, and energetic folk-dance trajectories – as with Elgar, there are opposites at work, the “classical” structures expressed by “folk” music, the tonalities that contain dissonances, and the polarities of emotion which frequent the musical journey.

Coincidentally,  both Elgar pieces in tonight’s programme, though far-removed from one another in time,  began with similarly vigorous and trenchant opening  minor-key chords. First up was the composer’s earlier “Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra”, its opening straightaway proclaiming an almost Baroque-like splendour and severity of utterance, one that meant business right from the outset! How appropriate, then, that kicking off the evening’s “virtuosi” scenario in this music were members of the New Zealand String Quartet, taking the concertante role of the music’s solo quartet of strings. This ensemble has steadfastly continued  its activities with various guest players, following the departure early in 2025 of two of its long-time members – happily, one of the vacancies has been filled by recently-appointed  ‘cellist Martin Smith, while the second violinist role for this concert featured a distinguished guest, Martin Riseley, a member of the celebrated Te Koki Trio. Violinist Peter Clark did the honours as leader this evening, while, happily, the mainstay of the ensemble, violist Gillian Ansell continued as the rock-like fulcrum around which the group’s comings and goings have been deftly managed over the past two years.

Both the quartet and the accompanying Orchestra Wellington strings under conductor Marc Taddei brought off the  resonantly muscular opening of the work with great elan, leading into tantalising interchanges, baroque style, between solo strings and the ripieno (larger ensemble), with pre-echoes of the themes given ear-catching contrasts of emphasis and colour. Then came the famous “Welsh tune” (the composer reported as hearing this sung by a distant voice while on holiday in Wales) played here firstly by Gillian Ansell’s viola – so tenderly and heart-stoppingly – before being given the full-blooded ensemble treatment.

This sense of wonderment continued right up to the beginning of the Allegro (at Fig.7 in my Novello score), with a quietly-stated, flowing version of the theme first heard hinted at by the solo quartet just after the opening flourish – here, begun as simply and as straightforwardly as the first few steps of a momentous journey. This took us most excitingly to the work’s resplendent major-key all-together central statement of the opening theme, marked with Elgar’s favourite “Nobilmente” direction, and given plenty of ceremonial swagger, and vigorous energy.

After a tremulous reappearance of the “Welsh tune”  Marc Taddei took the players into what Elgar famously described as “a devil of a fugue”, one whose initial composure seemed to suddenly take fright halfway through its course and “spook” its own trajectories – fantastic playing, here, from the band, with hair, gut and resin given no quarter!  The eventual recapitulation of the Allegro led this time to a full-throated version of the “Welsh tune”, with solo strings and ripieno tossing parts of the reprised themes back and forth, before the coda bound up all the players in a compulsive concerted dash towards a resounding final pizzicato chord – great excitement!

The 1919 ‘Cello Concerto which followed inhabited a different world, the older Elgar having to lay bare his feelings regarding the ravages of the Great War (1914-18), while at the same time tormented with growing self-doubts as a composer as his music was gradually and increasingly regarded by critics as “old-fashioned”. As a consequence, the concerto took a long time to establish itself in the repertoire, especially after a disastrous premiere helped put paid to any of Elgar’s own hopes for the work as giving an impression of being “good and alive”. It turned out to be the last major work he created – a direct and honest statement of feelings regarding his place in a world forever changed, both in a public and private sense.

‘Cellist Inbal Megiddo had the measure of the work’s sombre mood right from the outset, her tones and phrasings circumspectly coloured, enough to convey the emotion without excess throughout the movement, though the orchestral tones in the first tutti were lovely, as was the soloist’s rhapsodic response. She allowed herself  greater warmth in the major key exchanges that followed, and rose to match the intensities of the orchestra’s subsequent climax, though falling away as quickly back into introspection for the pizzicato chords that heralded her accompanied recitative – here her ‘cello even cajoled the orchestra in places before initiating the scampering scherzo with its wry “catch me if you can” exchanges exhibiting a droll kind of mischief. With her all the way was Marc Taddei’s suitably reactive echoing of the solo instruments’s quixotic moods in the myriad orchestral detailings, earnest and intense in the opening movement and playful in the second (the slightly untidy final chord at the latter’s conclusion of little consequence….)

The third movement seemed at first almost reverential – here, from Megiddo and her fellow-participants, it was a superbly-controlled outpouring of nostalgic beauty, capturing both the music’s audible rapture and its central stillness – so much so, that I was surprised by the performers’ “bookending” this exquisite movement rather than letting its open-ended conclusion drift into ineffable space at the end and “give rise” to the finale as a matter of course – there’s no “attacca” instruction in the score, but we could have done without all the “next movement” rustling and re-adjusting (my only misgiving regarding the performance!)

The finale’s “swing” soon restored all through-lines, real or imagined, with this performance’s rumbustious girth, playful “hide-and-seek” routines and wry interchanges between the soloist and the groups putting  me in mind in places of the composer’s “Falstaff” to a never-before extent – particularly so in the almost tavern-like scene of inebriated jollity when the soloist joins the orchestral cellos for a mock-serious choral-like unison sequence, brief, but good-humoured! All the more heart-rending, then, was the “drifting -away” of this mood, as the composer emulated his Shakespearean alter ego, lamenting the passing of the “good times” with upward-thrusting phrases that descended, weeping unashamedly, on both ‘cello and strings….

A brief episode re-evoked a distant memory of the Adagio’s loveliness, before the soloist seized the mettle and, after the work’s heartbreak accepted the inevitable with a stirring and courageous gesture of grim acceptance! A sterling performance!

A different world awaited us after the interval, with Bela Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, written by the composer in 1943 in the United States at the invitation of the renowned conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitsky. Bartok was seriously ill by this time, and in exile from his homeland due to the Nazi threat throughout Europe, so the commission came as a much needed boost to his waning creative energies – he was able to write several other works  as well as the Concerto (its title referring to the “concerto grosso” aspect of the music, similar to Elgar’s work, but much larger in scale and across the whole orchestral spectrum.)

My introduction to this work was through Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati, who was actually a pupil of Bartók’s in Budapest, and who recorded the Concerto several times, besides coming to New Zealand in 1973 and conducting the work with the NZSO in Wellington (for me an unforgettable concert experience!). Still, in line with my memory of Orchestra Wellington’s outstanding Shostakovich series from last year I was eager to hear what Marc Taddei would inspire his players to achieve with Bartók’s masterpiece – and I wasn’t disappointed. Again, as with the Elgar works of the first half, the most compelling quality of the music-making was the bringing out of the character of the work’s sound-world right from the beginning – the mysterious opening proclaimed kinship to the composer’s characteristic “night” pieces, the lower strings enunciating a series of fourths in response to which the upper strings and winds sounded similarly atmospheric undulating figures. Throughout the first movement these leaping fourths and their immediate inversions played an important thematic role, both in exciting fugal sequences for strings and stirring brass passages, as did gentler moments like the oboe’s lullabic mid-movement figure which echoed throughout the more lyrical sections. Everything was given the space it needed to proclaim its significance to the moment as well as to the whole.

The Concerto’s two Allegretto movements are the best-known to audiences and most readily remembered. Both were spectacularly presented here, the second being the famous Giuoco delle coppie (Game of Couples) with its sequence of folk-oriented melodies for pairs of instruments, each playing in finely-wrought parallel with its partner at different intervals; and the fourth a somewhat notorious Intermezzo interotto, whose fame rests on Bartok’s “lampooning” of a theme of Dmitri Shostakovich’s in his wartime “Leningrad” Symphony, a simple marching tune drawing forth cackling trills from woodwinds and vulgar sliding raspberries from the brass (on this occasion, from the trombones, easily the most gloriously blatant and visceral spoofings I’ve ever heard in concert or on record!), before being sent packing, with little more than a whimper!

The work’s two remaining movements were no less spell-binding – and I was simply and truly blown away by the orchestral response Taddei got from his players in the central palindromic Elegia, right from the ”night-music” ambiences of the opening (in which we seemed lifted up through the darkness and into extra-terrestrial regions), and through a coruscating series of searing cries from a string section playing well above its weight  and reinforced by full-blooded wind-descents  and biting brass chords with timpani – incredibly intense string-playing along with extraordinary timbral ambiences (and with lovely work from the violas at one point). But the intensities summoned up by the string-playing here in particular brought back to me something of what Dorati got from his NZSO players all those years ago – as then, with an extraordinary amalgam of incisiveness and eloquence!

After all of this, the finale represented something of a release, with plenty of ebullience from all the players, Taddei creating a veritable ferment of excitement  from all sections, the winds also enjoying their fugato-like passage before introducing a new theme which went like wildfire through the rest of the orchestra – such an infectious mood of exhilaration with the brass and timpani capping it off splendidly! The tongue-in-cheek string fugato got a querulous response from the winds, who took the argument into subaqueous regions, until what sounded like an orchestral dishwasher on rinse-cycle was suddenly thrown open and everything and everybody tumbled out, picked themselves up and skedaddled towards something of a well-deserved grandstand finish – a younger audience would have perhaps leapt to its feet after such a comprehensive orchestral display, but the ovation was still suitably warm-hearted and appreciative. I had a feeling that, in the midst of all the excitement Marc Taddei might have forgotten to acknowledge his horn section at the end – or perhaps its members simply missed their cue! Whatever the case, all the musicians were heroes – and my previous cheek-by-jowl memories of hearing this work performed will now have to be updated in the most positive and enduring way!

Gary Wilby – To those who dwell in realms of day…….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REFLECTIONS, MINIATURES, AND SOUNDSCAPES  by Gary Wilby – FUTUNA CHAPEL 2026
Gary Wilby – electric piano
Petrina Wu, Tina Wilby (‘cellos)
Natasha McMillan (violin)
Julie Coulson (narrator)
Futuna Chapel, Friend St., Karori, Wellington
Sunday, 19th April, 2026

Gary Wilby himself regards his sound-creations as “miniatures and intimate”, echoing in a real sense something of poet William Blake’s respect for small things, with the latter’s  words “a world in a grain of sand”, reflecting Wilby’s own reflection of the worth that can be found, as he himself says, “…..sometimes in a small cell….”.

At Futuna Chapel in Karori we were invited to join In Gary’s “looking back” presentation of his own soundscapes and miniatures, often in interactive tandem with well-known works by some of the “greats” in cases when there’s been particular empathies with certain of these pieces – to the point where cross-fertilisation delightfully bubbles over like a babbling fountain. He actually used the music of JS Bach both to introduce and “round off” his concert, playing for us on an electric piano the theme from the “Goldberg Variations” and some impulsive “variants” which any Baroque composer transported to the twenty-first century would have surely recogtnised as viable connective musical tissue!.

Futuna Chapel, of course, needs no introduction to many Wellington concertgoers since its “induction” into the process of becoming a music-performing venue. Its wonderfully-vaulted ceiling acoustic gives the sound a “bloom”, and its striking stained-glass window configurations a visual ambience which together beautifully enhance the atmospheres generated by the efforts of modestly-numbered groups of musicians, both instrumental and vocal. Wilby cherishes a particular connection to the venue as a great and singular honour, in the form of his previous association with sculptor Jim Allen whose work in the chapel brilliantly enhanced the designs of the original architect John Scott.

After the Bachian introduction to the concert we next head a recording made by two string instrument players from Aotearoa New Zealand when visiting another far-off part of the world, the Monastery of Santa Maria in Sobrado dos Monxes. I’m guessing that one of these string players was a ‘cellist, but am unsure whether the other was a violist or violinist, or even another ‘cellist! Whatever the case Gary Wilby’s ensuing “Chant Futuna Connections” composition was given its first hearing in this country via the recording, haunting sounds putting something of a girdle about the earth!

Wilby then played a piece which he had come to associate with the Erebus Air New Zealand disaster, as the first music that came to his mind after hearing news of the tragedy – a teaching colleague from the UK whom he had got to know while at the same school during her time in New Zealand was among those killed in the disaster. The piece played was Chopin’s C Minor Prelude Op.28 No.20 – the lively and energetic variation was intended as a reprise which reflected Wilby’s recollection of somebody replete with an abundance of life and energy.

He then dashed into a kind of medley which he had given the title “Mashup” and which featured pieces with a similarly recurring harmonic pattern  – I didn’t list the pieces whose transmorgrifications  I still recognised, but the exercise seemed as much fun to play as to listen to! The following piece by Darius Milhaud then gave us one of the dances “Sorocaba”, from a Suite of the Saudades do Brazil Op.67 – this was the first of the dances which hearkened back to Latin American dance rhythms, though more wry and nostalgic than I was expecting from the composer.

I did enjoy Richard Rodney Bennett’s “A Week of Birthdays” characterising the famous nursery rhyme describing different “birthday” attributes, stimulating and picturesque little “character-sketches”, one for each day of the week. Footnote: – I remember once checking out my own actual birth week-day and vaguely remembering it might have been Wednesday – oo-er!!  – still, Bennett’s “Wednesday’ piece is not unlike in character and mood a couple of Dmitri Shostakovich’s more “moody” Preludes from the Op. 87 set, so I’m perhaps in good company!  I had not previously heard the Ravel piece, to my shame (and I thought I knew all of the composer’s keyboard works!) – Wilby’s description of this brief piece mentions its “notational ambiguity and surprising dissonance” which seemed to sum up what we heard most enchantingly and disconcertingly.

True to instinct, his next piece was very much a concerted effort on the part of some fellow-musicians – it was named “Compassion Chant” resulting in a spontaneously-composed outpouring of feeling in response to the Island Bay Home of Compassion ‘s Sisterhood making a ‘millenium gift” oi a substantioal lease owed the Home by the adjoining Marae, Taput e Ranga, for the purchase of land some years earlier. The piece was first performed for the ceremonial Millenium handover which took place late in December 1999.

The occasion’s “reimagined” piece featured violinist Natasha McMillan playing a “prelude” to Julie Coulson’s spoken introduction to the work, followed by cellist Petrina Wu, whose instrument sounded the “chant proper”, before being joined in duet by the second  ‘cellist, Tina Wilby – the recitative-like line became animated, even agitated in places, but then returned to a more peaceful and considered tone, imparting an awareness for us of the emotional range and scope of the situation.

Next, Gary Wilby reiterated William Blake’s idea of “a World in a grain of sand” with his “Three Contrasts”, pieces by turns whimsical, wry, deft, off-beat and abrupt, and then followed by a more extended collection of shortish characterisations, one which he had called “Simple Simon”, and based on a series of three descending notes.  Two of the seven  pieces (I think they were the last two) continued to resonate afterwards, each reminding me of Russian music –  the bass resonances of one of the pieces brought Mussorgsky’s more reflective parts of his “Pictures” to mind, while the following piece featured a wayward-sounding Russian song with off-beat accompaniments, like a Tchaikovsky “Troika” gone slightly awry!

Perhaps the most esoteric of the presentations was ‘Water, Voice, Pulse”, three separate sound-bytes brought together on a pre-recorded “take” whose repeated character certainly garnered a mesmeric kind of effect, and with the rhythms gradually slowed down, leaving at the end a kind of “lost in space” effect – the chords resonate as the voice murmurs indistinctly until only single sounds are left, in the original repeated note form, followed by silence.

All that was left was the return of the “Goldberg Variations” theme,  itself having now been “seasoned” or “grounded” by the concert’s multifarious influences one realised upon hearing the results of such exposure that things for the relatively straightforward theme could never be quite the same again, as the player’s musings and impulses demonstrated. Sincere appreciation to Gary Wilby and his candidly-expressed musical revelations, the afternoon’s peregrinations giving us all something to think about, and think about again……..

Still more musical miracles reported and evidenced in Wellington, this time at Roseneath’s The Long Hall!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The creative spirit continues to work wonders in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa – (“Kei te ora tonu te wairua auaha ki Te Whanganui-a-Tara o Aotearoa”)

Peter Gjelsten tackles a Bach Violin Sonata (No. 2 in A Minor BWV 1003) at The Long Hall, Roseneath

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble
A Kaibosh Food Rescue Benefit Concert

ROSS HARRIS – 2 Micro-Trios (2020)
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
NICCOLO PAGANINI – Caprice No. 9 for solo violin
JS BACH – Sonata for solo violin in A Minor BWV 1003
Peter Gjelsten  (violin)
CRAIG UTTING – Four Wellington Dances for violin and cello
Helene Pohl (violin), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – String Quartet in G Major Op.33 No. 5
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins)
Sophia Acheson (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath
Saturday 21st March, 2026

Fresh from attending my first St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace lunchtime concert earlier in the week, I had the good fortune to catch another. not dissimilar kind of musical happening – this one a 2026 “first” for the capital of a series instigated a year ago by violinist Helene Pohl at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”, situated on the Point Jerningham lookout reserve next to Roseneath Primary School. The concerts are designed to alternatively support the Kaibosh Food Rescue charity, and the Arohanui Strings, the Sistema-inspired early intervention music education programme. The Kaibosh charity makes a significant difference to food and energy waste and carbon emissions, enabling thousands of kilos of food to be redistributed to community groups, resulting in renewed efforts by the same musicians over the present in continuing and supporting an eminently worthwhile venture.

Thanks to the inspiration, skills and capacity for hard work of Helene Pohl and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten, the 2025 concert series was a great success. The two musicians, aided by various colleagues, were able to simultaneously commemorate and take advantage of composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s 50th death anniversary, performing a number of the composer’s chamber works in tandem with a wide range of other pieces, including a couple of contemporary works written specifically for these concerts (and therefore both world premieres!) by composers currently both on-and off-shore, Ross Harris and Gao Ping, respectively.

Now, to begin the 2026 series the Long Hall’s opening Kaibosh Food Rescue programme paid appropriate homage to some of the previous year’s delights, including works by “resident” composers (two of whom were present today!), as well as instrumental solos which illustrated the power of a single voice’s communication, and a string quartet by the composer who effectively defined the form and whose efforts provided all kinds of “springboards’ for those others who followed suit.

First up was music representing a kind of timely antidote to Aotearoa New Zealand’s present version of Trumpish madness, two Micro-Trios by Ross Harris, written during the much-discussed lockdown period of 2020 for the Pohl/Gjelsten family members present today. The two works, as if conceived with different personalities in mind, displayed contrasting characters, the first beginning in a restless, slightly anxious 5/4 which developed more forthright impulses befitting a kind of “confused turmoil of being” in response to the isolated circumstances. The second work took a more lyrical approach, with long-linked lines attracting all kinds of impulses which attached themselves to the lines before dropping off the pace and wandering quizzically through unfamiliar vistas (like an ageing process, perhaps – with apologies to the composer!).

Violinist Peter Gjelsten followed up his 2025 performance of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Third Sonata (“Ballade”) for Solo Violin with another work by a virtuoso violinist-composer, perhaps the doyen of them all, Niccolo Paganini – The Ninth of his 24 Caprices for solo violin was given here with plenty of confidence and elan, the opening “hunting calls” resounding their thirds with spirited effect in dynamically-contrasted episodes readily suggesting the shouts of purpose and encouragement from the riders relishing the chase.  The “sport”was given plenty of incident by the violinist’s confident throwing-off a middle-section’s skitterish runs broken by stentorian phrases, suggesting both mishap and success in the pursuit!

Sterner stuff followed these hi-jinks, with Peter Gjelsten giving us JS Bach’s wonderful A Minor Sonata for solo violin, one of three Sonatas for the solo instrument, all of which are often coupled as a performing edition with three Partitas for the same instrument. An all-purpose differentiation between the two titles “Sonata” and “Partita” is that the former is traditionally a four-movement structure which often features linked slow-fast sections  and a fugue, whereas a Partita consists of different types of Renaissance/ Baroque dance movements. True to type this Sonata includes a fugue as the second movement.

First impressions of this work emphasised seriousness over gaiety, the solemn, declamatory opening commanding our attention with the player’s presence of intonation and command of nuance giving his listeners an engaging sense of exploration right to the movement’s final questioning note. The Fugue’s elegance and poise at the outset opens out, Gjelsten finding plenty of room for variations of tone and presenting an astonishing array of different voices – the music’s trajectories buildup and carry us along with wonderful ”heads of steam”, so that the phrases and statements really resonate.

Gjelsten’s control of the Andante’s pulse enabled both melody and rhythm to coexist, often in little more than whisperings, but with an underlying strength of overall purpose. We felt taken to another world by the second half of the movement, with the composer  seeming to allow us a lingering glimpse of his serenity of outlook and purpose of faith – I could imagine a young player in future years delving even further into the music’s timelessness that allow these sounds to linger long after the player ceases. The concluding Allegro is here excitingly launched and teasingly sustained with the antiphonal alternating phrases made here to dance through our sensibilities’ spaces. The rapidly-executed impulses have an exhilarating ring to them, and we’re “teased” with what seems like the approach of a final cadence, but with geyser-like irruptions that suddenly push the boundaries out further – tantalizing playing that keeps us on our toes and  enables us to relish the music all the more.

We had been promised a quick, “straight-through” concert at the beginning, so our kaleidoscopic musical journey  suddenly whirled us homewards via local composer Craig Utting’s engaging “Four Wellington Dances”, for violin and ‘cello (written in 2025 for Helene and Rolf.) The work began with an entirely apposite “Wind Dance”, a nagging 7/8 perpetuo-molto rhythm  by turns driving, teasing and cajoling the notes into sound-impulses whose insistence any Wellingtonians would recognise, and with alternating instruments adding a moaning-sighing figure over the agitations, catching their constant unpredictabilities. Next was the strangely mesmeric “Whale Song”, introduced by spectral “con sordino” violin tones (which set the scene for strangeness) and galvanised further by hauntingly-charged “vocalisings”, firstly in the lower and then upper registers of the ‘cello – an incredible soundscape, tapping into a “natural world” communication, with the instruments conveying a real sense of ambient surroundings and language essentially removed from human interaction.

“Seagulls”, the third dance, has an introduction flecked with further atmospheric touches, such as the ‘cello playing eerie glissandi to the violin’s arpeggiations and rather touching “seafarer’s song”, first played, incidentally, lower than the ‘cello’s accompaniments, though the instruments exchange their roles at certain points – the melody is a real charmer, replete with nostalgia! Finally, the “Habanada” imbues a well-known operatic rhythm with a mischievous spirit during short sequences of dance-tunes and  illicit collaborations with ostensibly unlikely partners such as Saint-Saens’s “The Swan” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Bumble Bee”, with even Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” making a brief appearance before falling down the stairs and (thankfully) coming to its concluding senses!

After all of this, what better finale than to be given a masterwork from a composer whose music paralleled the conditions that produced each of the concert’s preceding works – isolation, compositional mastery, instrumental fluency, and a need for entertainment? All these things come together in the string quartets of Franz Joseph Haydn, whose Op.33 set of six string quartets were written in 1781, and became known as the “Russian” Quartets, due to the dedication to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia. Another nickname given to these works is Gli Scherzi  (The Jokes) referring to the replacement of the older style Minuet with a quicker, more dynamic movement.

Here, then was the fifth of the Quartets from this Op.39 set, a work which itself has been nicknamed with the English sobriquet phrase “How do you do?”, drawing attention to the Quartet’s very beginning, a pianissimo galant cadence which actually returns to conclude the movement with which it started. the opening “How do you do?” cadence is only a prelude to the ensuing Molto Allegro, which seizes hold of the argument and propels it excitingly forwards. The mood lightens for the lyrical second subject, only to unexpectedly plunge into the almost “groaning downwards” chromatic modulation towards the end of the exposition. The volatile development dances, swoops and plunges as the music unfolds, releasing almost operatic surges of energy in places, with the “how do you do” cadence realigning the music’s focus for a recapitulation – we are, by this time, agog at the music’s volatilities, and marvel at how quickly the music races to its concluding cadences without missing a beat!

Our heartstrings are tugged immediately by the slow movement’s intensities, most strenuously propelled forwards with almost unrelenting energy, to which one simply has to surrender and allow oneself to be borne aloft and taken somewhere. What a contrast, therefore, with the impishly impulsive Scherzo, filled with all kinds of hesitancies and impulses!  The Trio brings a steadier, more genteel character, as if wishing to reform such excesses, though to no avail when the opening returns, as quirky and ornery as ever, though with a touch, perhaps, of guilt via its almost evanescent ending!

After this, the finale’s music is almost prim and proper, in what seems like variation form, with the first violin decorating and elaborating on the melodic line in both subsequent variation movements, and then, the viola and cello taking turns to decorate the dance steps for a subsequent movement. Finally, there’s a Presto which scampers to a satisfyingly breathless conclusion!

Such a lot packed into a relatively short time! Nevertheless, we were replete – delighted by the music and the playing, and honoured by the good and prestigious company – a truly memorable occasion!

 

Masterpieces from masterly musicians – A St. Andrew’s lunchtime concert, from Rolf Gjelsten and Nicole Chao

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington  – Lunchtime Concert Series

BEETHOVEN – ‘Cello Sonata No. 3 in A Major Op.69
TCHAIKOVSKY (arr. Fitzenhagen) – Variations on a Rococo Theme Op.33

Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) and Nicole Chao (piano)

Wednesday 18th March 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

“Two masterpieces for the ‘cello-and-piano repertoire, delivered by a pair of musicians regarded as among the country’s top players of their respective instruments” – well, it  sounds like nothing less than a dream prescription for a concert!  Alternatively, the blurb for the occasion could have fixed as easily upon its contrast with present-day scenarios – ranging from world-wide upheavals undermining one’s sense of national and personal security to localised disillusionment and desperation faced with escalating dysfunctional infrastructure and cost-of-living price-hikes – and invited us “to escape from it all into the relative bliss of St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church for a free lunchtime concert of uplifting music”.

However one chooses to view these regular Wednesday lunchtime concert occasions they have given many Wellingtonian classical music-lovers much joy with a stimulating variety of performers and repertoire. In this case we were thoroughly spoilt as regards the concert’s essential ingredients, with cellist Rolf Gjelsten, late of the New Zealand String Quartet, but more recently affiliated with Korimako, a piano/string trio formed with pianist Michael Endres and violinist Helene Pohl, and here joining forces with pianist Nicole Chao, most readily associated with the much-acclaimed Duo Enharmonics together with fellow-pianist Beth Chen.

I had heard Rolf Gjelsten’s solo playing on a couple of occasions, most recently in an absolutely delightful performance of JS Bach’s Third Violincello Suite in C Major at a “Long Hall” Roseneath concert; but I’d not heard Nicole Chao as a solo recitalist since briefly at a 2009 song-recital concert with soprano Nicola Holt, where for an instrumental interlude she gave an atmospheric, by turns finely-detailed and splendidly volatile performance of Chopin’s Fourth Ballade. Though not solo performances this time round, today’s offerings readily demonstrated the technical and interpretative skills of each of the players, brought together beautifully here in St.Andrew’s.

As befitted such a positive partnership, the occasion featured an actual milestone in the repertoire of the solo ‘cello with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ground-breaking Cello Sonata in A Major Op.69. Though this was the third actual sonata of five written for the instrument by Beethoven, this one was the first which gave “equal partnership” status to the ‘cello in a sonata, instead of  (as with the composer’s two Op.5 works, described as “piano sonatas with accompaniment by the ‘cello”) merely providing a supporting role for the keyboard. In fact Beethoven wrote this work for the same cellist, Nikolaus Kraft, who had taken part in the first performance in 1808 of the composer’s Triple Concerto.

At the work’s beginning the ‘cello celebrates its new-found status with its solo announcement of the opening theme, effortlessly floated into being by Rolf Gjelsten  before intensifying the tones with the instrument’s alighting upon a sustained E – to which Nicole Chao’s piano then replies with a lyrical “rounding -off” of the theme and a brief flourish. What follows is an enthralling exchange of ideas which each player acts upon in a sense of both thoughtful contribution and impulsive challenge to the music’s argument – I’ve always loved the music’s ascending runs in this movement, figurations that seem to me to almost “dare” each player (but especially the cellist in the second, higher figuration!) to markedly “sound” and relish these ascents, a kind of “flight of fancy” that’s contrasted with the earthily, no-nonsense agitato plungings into the succeeding episodes by both instruments. The minor-key passage which constitutes the development is delivered with the same focused combination of energy and fancy, breathtaking in its “give-and-take” rapport throughout lyrical and impassioned sequences. And ‘cellist’s and pianist’s instinctive capacity for mutual understanding beautifully bring off the sequence which transforms what sounds like a “third exposition” into the movement’s coda, turning Beethoven’s simplest of phrase-resolutions into a precious kind of homecoming, complete with a “grandstand finish” for the pundits!

The allegro molto Scherzo became something of an “anything you can do” game of syncopated daring, exhilarating to give oneself over to and feel “borne along“ by the players’  sharply-focused trajectories – again, music with contrasting episodes afforded by an obsessively grumbling trio and a po-faced pizzicato coda. No slow movement as such – but an opening sequence of rapt lyrical beauty, wrought by playing that seemed to commune with listeners in mutual enjoyment, before abruptly and mischievously breaking into a precipitous, fleet-fingered (footed?) dance, one which delights as much in contrast of mood as anywhere else in this sonata. So Gjelsten and Chao revelled as much in the music’s “sotto voce” excitement as in the hell-for-leather passages, enabling the energies unleashed by Beethoven to tingle expectantly throughout both exuberant and more circumspect passages – such a COMPLETE performance!

Those of us who had seen the concert’s original listing were expecting the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations to follow, but the printed programme at the church had listed only the Beethoven work – so some people (feeling with every good reason satisfied with what they’d already heard) were getting up to leave when the musicians reappeared for the second item. As well most returned, because the Tchaikovsky work, normally heard in concert played by ‘cello and orchestra, was given simply gorgeous treatment by Gjelsten and Chao, to the point where I found myself preferring the ‘cello-and-piano combination to the original!

I would imagine most cellists are aware of the controversy accompanying this work from its inception, largely due to the activities of its dedicatee, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German cellist and fellow-professor at the Moscow Conservatory, who had given the first performance of the work in 1877. Fitzenhagen had been asked by Tchaikovsky for advice regarding his finished “first-draft” for ‘cello and piano, but the composer wasn’t prepared for the extent to which his dedicatee then “revised” the score with the changes (both in the solo and accompaniment parts) then being incorporated into the published ‘cello-and-orchestra score). Though Tchaikovsky was documented as being furious at Fitzenhagen’s changes, his displeasure never actually translated into action, and the score was published in 1889 in the dedicatee’s version.

Tchaikovsky’s own version of the work wasn’t performed until 1941 in Moscow, but the score of the original had to wait until 1956 to be completely reconstructed, along with the cello-piano arrangement (though even the reconstructed version has been questioned because of the methodology used!). Several recordings have now been made of the original, though the Fitzenhagen version still regularly appears in concert and on record. It wasn’t made clear at today’s concert whether the version used by the musicians was Tchaikovsky/Fitzenhagen, or echt-Tchaikovsky (enquiries to this end are proceeding!).

I grew up with the “Fitzenhagen edition” of the work (used by practically all the  versions on record at the time), as per the recording by Rostropovich with Rozhdestvensky and the Leningrad Philharmonic, and loved it to pieces, though I also heard Janos Starker play the work with the NZSO in the1980s in Palmerston North (also a fabulous concert!). I bought what I believed to be the first-ever recording of Tchaikovksy’s original version of the work, made by cellist Raphael Wallfisch as long ago as 1983, but haven’t played it as much as I have the earlier recording, preferring to my shame the “dark side” territory of Fitzenhagen’s version – it seems to me that the only crime regarding the latter’s rearrangement of the work was that he wasn’t Tchaikovsky!

What we got here from Gjelsten and Chao sounded to my ears pretty well like the version I’d become accustomed to – and the playing gave me such pleasure I hardly stopped for a moment to consider just whose work I was hearing. Undoubtedly the sheer elan and sensitive beauties of the playing here influenced my feelings concerning the matter, but I felt the music in this instrumental format reflected even more deeply the composer’s love for Mozart and the classical style surrounding his work – and the “theme” itself wasn’t an existing rococo or classical melody, but Tchaikovsky’s own.

The work’s two concluding sequences here sounded particularly captivating – the Andante presented a sorrowful minor-key song, with the melodic line augmented by echo-like effects from both instruments, the whole rounded off by piano musings and a wistful ascending ‘cello phrase. It had an intimacy which the piano-and-orchestra version couldn’t replicate. Then, with the Allegro vivo Finale and Coda we got a spirited, exhilarating finish, with the cello’s vigorous utterances made playful by the piano’s counter-melody before both instruments finished the piece with suitably demonstrative gestures. We couldn’t have asked for anything more satisfying from two musicians in absolute accord with one another and with the music!

 

 

 

 

Late-afternoon Bach and Shostakovich – worlds and times apart sounding together….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JS BACH – Suite No. 3 in C Major for Solo Violincello BWV 1009
Rolf Gjelsten  (‘cello)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartets: No 5  in B-flat (1952) / No. 2  in A Major Op. 68 (1944)
The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble:
Helene Pohl, Simeon Broom (violins), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (’cello)

The Long Hall, Roseneath, Wellington
Saturday, 18th November, 2025

“Wuthering Heights” might have been an apter name for Roseneath’s “The Long Hall” on Saturday afternoon, when Wellington’s Point Jerningham resoundingly lived up to its reputation as the windiest spot in the capital during a concert given by the Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble, one in which the wind played at pedal points, drones, and vigorous ostinati as constant accompaniments to the music-making.  The latter, of course, persisted and eventually triumphed, with the players’ all-pervading focus on the music happily relegating such disruptions, however tumultuous, to an incidental, scarcely noticeable in situ degree.

The Ensemble’s quartet personnel has undergone fascinating and fruitful variation over the year, in particular regarding a second violinist, and featuring luminaries such as Monique Lapins, Anna van der Zee and Peter Gjelsten in the position. For this concert the player was Simeon Broom, currently an NZSO member with a number of years’ valuable experience spent in various orchestras overseas. Each of the quartet performances in this concert demonstrated both the group’s flexibility and individual members’ skills at adaptation to fresh combinations, auguring well for continuance of presentation by the ensemble of one of chamber music’s core repertoire resources.

As well they might for the purposes of such an exploration of what is becoming increasingly apparent to me as one of the great cornerstones of musical expression of its time and its relevance for other times – Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets. Though Beethoven’s acclaimed cycle of quartets would seem like an obvious inspiration to any aspiring composer tackling the same genre of works, Shostakovich’s relationship with the form took a different path over time, with the young composer, mindful of his experience with the 1936 “Lady Macbeth affair”,  all too aware of those repressive conditions foisted upon creative artists within his homeland, and thus taking care with his first string quartet venture (1938) to avoid any undue excess. It was six years before he returned to the medium in 1944, confident then of giving an impression of a loyal Russian’s patriotic response to the war effort via his references in the work to Russian folk music, though the ethnic elements in this second quartet included definite references to Jewish “Klezmer” music, perhaps more for aesthetic reasons than political ones. The Third, Fourth and Fifth Quartets were less fortunate, with the composer’s increasingly dysfunctional relationship with Stalin and his cohorts resulting in his regarding the works as “for the drawer” – the Third Quartet (1946) received one performance before being withdrawn), while the other two (the 1949 Fourth and the 1952 Fifth)  languished unperformed until after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Of longer-term interest is Shostakovich’s love of the music of JS Bach – he headed a Soviet delegation in 1950  to attend in Leipzig events marking the bicentennial commemoration of Bach’s death , where he was quoted as saying “For us Bach’s legacy is an embodiment of flaming emotion, soulful humanity and true humanism, which stands in contrast to the dark world of raw evil and contempt for humanity.” Shostakovich knew the Well-Tempered Clavier intimately (he had been playing it from the age of twelve), when he encountered the 26 year-old Tatiana Nikolaeva playing selections from the work at the International Bach Competition which was one of the Leipzig bicentennial events. Her playing (which won her the competition’s first prize) inspired Shostakovich to compose his own set of 24 Preludes and Fugues, and dedicate the set to Nikolaeva, who premiered them in December of 1952 (she subsequently recorded them no less than three times!).

These Op.87 Preludes and Fugues provide a thoroughly refreshing look at musical examples of the art we readily associate with Bach – counterpoint, fugue and texture, a dynamic collection of captivating opportunities for what one commentator has described as “musical ecstasy and reflection”. And, as ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten pointed out in his pre-concert talk today prior to playing for us Bach’s heart-warming ‘Cello Suite No.3 in C Major,  the work’s confidence, ebullience and mastery of form is a representation of the effect on Shostakovich’s own use of counterpoint and fugue in certain of his quartets, especially evident in the 1944 Fifth Quartet which we were to hear immediately after this work.

I’d recently been enjoying former Wellingtonian cellist Miranda Wilson’s “The Well-Tempered ‘Cello” (published 2022, Fairhaven Press) , describing her own saga of getting to know, working on, and eventually performing these ‘Cello Suites – so the section of the book devoted to this Third Suite occasioned some required (re)reading and (re)relishing!  She emphasises the work’s in-built resonances, being in the C-major key, and Rolf Gjelsten seemed to confirm this with his verdict regarding the work’s general affability and out-going nature – music with plenty to say and with the resonances created that supported this kind of character.

Right from that opening “downward plunge” into Bach’s flow of notes I felt a wonderful sense of well-being – the journey at first was mostly scalic, but with some wider steps and a couple of quirky jumps, and a voice which grows in variety of expression, passing through single notes, phrases, lines and episodes, and with an engagingly droll drone-sequence around the note of G, before a few moments of recitative bring us to the end.  The Allemande contrasts with the bright-and-bushy-tailed Prelude in being so gorgeously relaxed in its graceful trajectory, the sudden chain of double-stopped notes in the piece’s first half, a brief frisson of tension that resolves with a nudge of extra warmth. Rolf had told us about the Courante with its “crazy dance” aspect (Miranda Wilson refers to the piece’s “frantic-up-and-down arpeggios”!) – and to my untutored ear it seemed to possess and swap between two kinds of rhythmic trajectories at will, with beat-stresses changing as if playing a kind of game with my sensibilities!

The Sarabande, my attendant author’s “powerfully moving” rhythm, is similarly characterised by my in situ player as having “a unique kind of intensity” – I didn’t know before this concert that it’s a dance form that was banned in the 17th Century as eliciting “too erotic” a response from its participants! I’ve now been dangerously over-sensitised to its allure, and will have to watch myself over that second note in each bar, in future!  I catch myself savouring it during the performance, here, and thinking that it must be a case of “once heard, etc….!”

The Bourees plucked me our of any such fantasy world I might have ventured into. They’re wonderful, “two-sides to the coin” dances, suggesting different physical, psychological or emotional views of the same location, feeling, or situation. Here the difference seemed like a masculine/feminine distinction, a somewhat conventional response, I know, but one which a lifetime of observation has ingrained for good or ill! And I loved the Gigue, here, with its almost lazily loping stride, and especially the bariolage sections (one note repeatedly sounded in the midst of a whirl of others) which have always had a pleasantly astringent “ring”, and which were followed with a reassuring “that’s enough of that” rejoiner!

So, onto the first of the Shostakovich offerings of the afternoon we went, with the wind just as fulsomely attendant as ever! The Fifth String Quartet appropriately back-ended the Bach Suite performance, allowing the former’s compositional proximity to the composer’s own 24 Preludes and Fugues to resonate more readily, the earlier Second String Quartet having a rather different, and more removed kind of genesis. I was intrigued by other references I’d found to this later quartet’s influences, among them the music of one Galina Ustvolskaya, a former pupil of the composer’s and one he apparently harboured deeper feelings for, following the death of his first wife – Shostakovich quotes a four-note motif from Ustvolskaya’s B-flat Clarinet Trio, played by the first violin in the quartet’s first movement coda (the composer’s feelings, incidentally, were never returned, adding to the poignancy of the quote).

In his introduction to the work for us Rolf Gjelsten emphasised the composer’s predicament at having to indefinitely defer some of his music’s performances, such as this Quartet (along with his two previous quartets, one of which did get a “premiere” but was then withdrawn!). Stalin’s death in 1953 meant that this Quartet could at last come in from the cold, along with a number of other important works “awaiting their time”. It was the first of the composer’s Quartets which joined the movements together in a single sweep, and it contained a number of unusually “personal” references – elements which would come to increasingly characterise the quartets still to come.

The work’s striking opening contained a “walking” theme whose determined trajectories were set upon by trenchant figures whose intensities assailed the music until the second violin’s introduction of a more lyrical subject tossed about between the players. Gradually the mood intensified further, with both the walking and lyrical themes returning but under siege, the lines buzzing like fierce insects, out for blood, but then gradually receding as, firstly, the lyrical theme made an impassioned return, and then, from nowhere, came the aforementioned Ustvolskaya quote on the first violin, disappearing after a second, higher, more ethereal statement as the instrument took the music via a single note and accompanied by pizzicati, to the next movement.

Here, the lines portrayed a kind of stillness, a post-rampage desolation, in places a kind of austere beauty, with eerie unisons and soulful phrases clasping the ambiences and holding them fast, until the viola, obeying a lonely impulse stepped forwards with an engaging phrase in hand to begin the dance, a tart little waltz whose good-humoured gesturings gradually turned once more into the furies that beset the opening movement. And just as unexpectedly as in the opening movement, the tumult ceased, and first the violin, and then the viola impassionedly sounded the Ustvolskaya theme once again, punctuated by emphatic pizzicati from the others. As with its first appearance the theme gave little solace, more a sense of something out-of-reach, emphasised by the subsequent “walking away” of the music, the jog-trot of the finale’s opening leading to a bleaker, much reiterated theme which then dissolved into silence.

After giving us such a “living and breathing from within” response to this work’s emotionally searching sound-saga, the players allowed us an interval’s space before launching into the  stunningly contrasted physicality of the opening “Overture” to the composer’s Second String Quartet , written in 1944 – music sounding for the moment relatively free from the constraints of politics or dogmas, its folkishness serving both as Shostakovich’s loyal citizen-response to the “Great Patriotic War”, and in particular his fondness for Jewish klezmer-like idioms in the exuberant opening theme, here suggestive of a folk-celebration.

Though this remained an ensemble performance overall, throughout the work’s second movement I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the charismatic violin-playing of Helene Pohl in her delivery of the piece’s klezmer-like solo, mournfully expressive soliloquies over drone-like accompaniments, and with the occasional notes ambiently “bent” in what one presumes is an authentic style. At one point the ‘cello sounded a brief solo before the violin began a slow waltz, one into which melody the other instruments gradually climbed, their notes rising to agitatedly “connect” with the violin’s before falling away once more – for most of this movement the violin is played as if it has joined with its player at prayer…..

A nocturnal scherzo/waltz followed, swift, ghostly and chromatic, a real danse macabre, alternating between substance and shadow before taking its “do I wake or sleep?” leave.  In its enigmatic wake was left the finale, an astonishing theme-and-variations movement, recitative-like at the beginning between the instruments , settling down to expound and extract every ounce, strand and tone of the folk-tune introduced by the viola, and then refracted through what seemed like all possible combinations, and every single conceivable characteristic one might ascribe to the composer’s experience. All the players here – violinist Simeon Broom, violist Nicholas Hancox and cellist Rolf Gjelsten – brought into play intensities and virtuosities echoing those of Helene Pohl’s brought over from the previous movement, carrying the music through its tumultuous journey to a monumental conclusion.

I managed a few grateful words of breathless appreciation to Rolf Gjelsten at the end – and then, afterwards, the still-insistent winds were good company as I walked home, drawing out the music’s tumultuous resonances from my memory and setting them dancing in the open air, art and nature joining hands in an unexpected post-concert bonus!

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW REVISITED – New Zealand premieres from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

                                                                                                     Shostakovich and Britten

PARTY FAITHFUL

BRITTEN – ‘Cello Symphony Op.68
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No. 3  in E-flat Major Op. 20 “The First of May”*

Lev Sivkov (‘cello)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
*Orpheus Choir of Wellington(Brent Stewart, director)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 26th July 2025

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

What an occasion! – TWO New Zealand premieres, Britten and Shostakovich, in one evening! While perhaps not unique in this country’s concert-giving history, such an event’s “blue-moon” aspect provoked all kinds of responses from the capital’s music fraternity, with the music’s unfamiliarity seeming at once a drawcard with its own kind of excitement and sense of discovery, and something of a risk! – the relatively unknown administered here in what might have seemed to some like over-sized doses! With characteristic adventurousness, Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir of Wellington plunged into the fray, and emerged triumphant on all fronts, the audience’s enthusiastic response at the conclusion of each of the concert’s halves unequivocally and unstintingly great-hearted, more than making up for the marginally thinner attendance compared with the numbers present at the season’s first two concerts.

How was this near-miracle of approbation brought off so heart-warmingly? – several reasons; firstly by the charismatic cellist Lev Sivkov’s “owning” of the somewhat elliptical solo part of Benjamin Britten’s formidable ‘Cello Symphony; secondly, via conductor Marc Taddei’s remarkable mastery of the scores and control of his orchestral and choral forces; and lastly through the astonishing results of the intrepid musicians’ meticulous efforts in regard to each of the works’ completely different demands!  So it was that Marc Taddei would have felt more than justifiably vindicated in his pre-concert enthusiasm regarding the “adventure” of this undertaking.

First up was one of the more enigmatic works by Benjamin Britten, his singularly-titled “Cello Symphony” begging the question regarding the piece’s actual genre, having an instrumental soloist in a work styled as a “symphony”, and bringing together what might normally be regarded as differently-constituted musical narratives. It wasn’t an entirely unknown format, with previous works by various composers entitled “Sinfonia Concertante”, and with composers (like Berlioz in his work for viola and orchestra “Harold in Italy”) having produced “symphonies” with solo instrumental parts.

Such works had in the past produced problems of thwarted expectation on the part of musicians (the most well-known being the legendary violinist Paganini’s dismissal of Berlioz’s aforementioned work, and which the former never played). Britten’s dedicatee was the renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (for whom he had already composed several pieces), and who had probably expected a brilliant instrumental concerto showpiece compared with what he actually received. What Britten was writing proved to be a tribute to the ‘cellist’s musicianship as much as to his technical brilliance, as the work casts the soloist as an equal partner with the orchestra in their exchange and development of the work’s themes and juxtapositions and contrasts.

An enjoyable and intriguing aspect of tonight’s performance was the engagingly demonstrative playing of the cellist, Lev Sivkov, whose gestures had an expressiveness which choreographed the musical line and strengthened the interplay between soloist and orchestra. Though the cello’s opening double-stopped chords were brusque compared to the orchestra’s darkly-conceived lines, they had a pliability that suggested  dialogue more than opposition, even when the soloist’s increasing  energies  brought “spiky” wind chordings and “snappy” brass notes, as subsequent lyrical exchanges between the cello and clarinet and flute phrases more readily suggested, and which the oboe and brass softly continued. Particularly memorable was a touching sequence of interplay between pizzicato strings and cello outpourings, even if the latter’s somewhat anxious two-note phrases against the strings pizzicato began suggesting more darkness than radiance and conflict afoot, brought into increasing prominence by the timpani’s repeated patternings, and the  winds and heavy brasses exchanging chords. But a desire for accord persisted with brass-and-percussion irruptions balanced  by beautifully poignant-sounding wind-harmonies – almost fairy-tale sounds – as if simultaneously-wrought “threads” were constantly trying to “dance around” each other, with the cello playing a kind of “fulcrum” role, keeping determinedly businesslike amid the claustrophobia of heavy percussion irruptions, brass “pedal-notes” and skitterish wind passages. We sensed relief with the soloist’s response to it all – poised pizzicato chordings over resignedly rumbling lower instruments, while the winds played a Mahlerian “dying fall” theme – a soft gong-stroke and a few pizzicato notes later this absorbing movement came to an enigmatic close.

What a marvellously nocturnal scherzo we got next! – the cello  quicksilver,  playful and even furtive, and straightaway alerting the muted brasses! The soloist’s dancings were answered throughout with either gruff single notes or quixotic, melismatic figures haunted by the brasses’ echoings. Constant movement and exchange became  increasingly frantic, halted at the end  by the cello’s animalistic whimperings and a dismissive grunt from the brass – all brilliantly-conceived, and  here superbly-realised! By contrast, the Adagio’s solid, granite-like tones brought a solemn march, the cello’s solemn, step-wise theme replete with massive timpani ramparts and mournful keenings from winds and an evocatively responding horn solo – and what beauties the soloist with supporting horn, strings and gentle percussion gave us here! The rest of the movement returned to the march-like opening, the brass splendidly building the music’s progress towards a grim magnificence while the cello increasingly rhapsodises in defiance, and eventually breaking into a cadenza, one whose progress soloist Lev Sivkov mesmerically “defined” for us with his rapt, seemingly improvised gesturings throughout

Without a break, the music transmorgrified into the finale, the solo trumpet sounding a kind of “liberation” as the cello seemed to walk from the darkness and into the light afforded by the concluding Passacaglia’s six variations. I loved the winds’ dancing  sequences, the cello’s mad scamperings pursued by winds and percussion, and the intensely Mahlerian rhapsodic fervour of the cello’s musings immediately before the great surge of long-awaited optimism given to us by the whole orchestra’s tsunami-like concluding response to the soloist’s heartfelt efforts!

If I’ve dwelt overmuch on the music’s detailings at the expense of its actual delivery,  here, it’s because the performance was a further (and remarkable) step towards my own appreciation of what I found an initially challenging listen! – I hope these reams of self-indulgence have some point for the reader, especially any finding themselves going through the same process of determined discovery!

Shostakovich’s Third Symphony, another work new to me, was a different kind of journey, one no less fascinating, but somewhat less “layered” than the Britten work, though it brought its own set of distinctions to the concert, One of these was its composer’s own remark, now forever associated with the work – “It would be interesting to write a symphony where not a single theme would be repeated”. one that he strove to fulfil with this remarkably vernal, pulsatingly “in-your-face” music.

What made the performance more than worthwhile was the up-front orchestral playing, and the “joyful and triumphant” tones of the evening’s “rent-a-socialist” ensembled voices, the Orpheus Choir. Printing the English words in the programme was tongue-in-cheek enough – a real blessing was being given these indecipherable words as sterling statements unimpeded by on-stage visual translations! – heed was taken of conductor Vasily Petrenko’s words in the programme notes concerning the “banal, amateur” poetry – and the supreme irony of the presentation came with the performance’s full-blooded commitment to the cause (of the music, of course!). Maybe some day we’ll get to hear some of those later Shostakovich symphonies from this orchestra as well! (imagine the subscription numbers generated by the thought of THAT series!)

For now, we had our ears bent in somewhat different directions as Marc Taddei and his seemingly tireless musicians took to Shostakovich’s most irreverent piece of symphonic writing to date. Despite its beautiful opening for two clarinets (superbly delivered) the work soon accelerated into a veritable ferment of action. dissonant passages crowding one another as the trajectories rang the changes from grim martial rhythms to maniacal scamperings, culminating in grotesque “horror-chordings” and continued reckless headlong careerings, whose frenzied momentums were lessened  by a side-drum’s call to attention, a solo clarinet succeeding in quelling the energies of the flight, and bringing an uneasy calm to the soundscape after further horror chordings reacquainted acquainted us with the obstacles still to be surmounted.

From here, we were given a few stress-free moments of relative tranquility from solo violin and eerily spectral winds, the latter gradually shrugging off their ghoulish aspect in search of some much needed pastoral charm, gladly welcomed by the strings, their warmth  persuading other elements that a salvation of sorts might be imminent –everybody dug more deeply, pulling from out of the depths of texture sonorities and impulses which seemed to gradually ignite the whole orchestra! A fresh burst of momentum brought in compulsions of rhythm, particularly Russian in flavour, whose energies pushed the music onto a kind of plateau of heroic expression, underlined by a great percussive onslaught –something momentous was being enacted, leaving us awaiting the arrival of some great endpoint, a kind of magnificence whose presence we sensed but whose entry was still being prepared. Then, with a great cymbal crash, the choir suddenly stood up, electrifying us all!

A brief orchestral introduction and the voices burst out, whole-heartedly, lustily –  oceanic waves of sound punctuated by percussive irruptions, peaking and breaking over the edges and washing over their listeners.  We knew and did not know of what they sang – it mattered less than their fervour and spirit and sense of joy!  And at the conclusion, with the musicians having given their all, we relished their achievement  amidst our shared relief and exhilaration!

Joanna Dann and David Neild – a feast of ‘cello-and-piano presentation at St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St, Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert series
JOANNA DANN (‘cello) & DAVID NEILD piano)

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Fantasiestücke Op.73
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano No. 4 in C Op. 102/1
SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Andante (third mvt.) from Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano Op.19
FRANZ SCHUBERT (arr. David Popper) Du Bist die Ruh (Rückert -1823)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 16th July, 2025

Some blithe spirit must have quietly done the rounds and spread the word  regarding this particular recital, with  St.Andrew’s Church close to being more-than-usually packed by eager lunchtime-concert-goers, as noted by the organiser who welcomed us and introduced the artists – it would have been especially heartening for both cellist Joanna Dann and pianist David Neild upon entering to encounter such a veritable sea of eagerly awaiting faces! The programme was, of course, a drawcard in itself, containing the kind of music which would warm both senses and sensibilities in a direct “simply add water” kind of way – and so it proved, judging by the warmth of the reception the pair’s playing of these works drew from the audience at the end.

Robert Schumann’s Op.73 Fantasiestücke opened the concert – is there another composer whose music always so quickly betrays its creator’s identity? Both performers drew forth lovely, light-and-lyrical tones from their instruments, moving easily between the major and minor modes, and with neither instrument claiming any ascendancy – the cellist almost uncannily “matched” the piano tones whether in lyrical tones or quicker figurations, producing a kind of seamless interplay. This continued throughout the second movement’s “lebhaft – licht” (Lively – light), in which the players achieved an almost fairy-like grace with their interactions, the pianist’s gossamer-like tones mirroring the similarly “will-o-the-wisp” peregrinations of the cellist. I was, however, expecting rather more forthright sounds than we got in the “Rasch und mit feuer” finale, where I began to crave more cello tone expressing Schumann’s more assertive writing, his ardour and muscularity which contrasts with those passages where, once again, the interplay between the voices seemed like a “marriage of minds” – but in other places  I couldn’t help feeling  like a kind of Oliver Twist, asking the cellist for more!

Beethoven, in his five ‘Cello Sonatas of course transformed the previous role of the cello in this genre from being either a solo instrument with extemporised “accompaniment” by one or more players, or an obbligato instrument for a keyboard sonata. His first two Cello Sonatas (Op. 5) were written in 1796, and in fact designated “Two Grand Sonatas for the Harpsichord or Pianoforte with a Violincello obbligato”, but unlike those earlier “obbligato” sonatas, both of the Op.5 works had through-composed cello parts which in places were independent of keyboard figurations. By the time he had reached his two Op.102 Cello Sonatas in 1815, the composer had embarked upon his “late” period of composition, so that these works readily display those characteristics we’ve come to recognise as typical of that time, such as unconventional form, and deeper, more probing expression.

His Fourth Cello Sonata begins with a ‘cello solo, beautifully voiced, gently joined with by the piano, the lines concentrated and sonorous, seemingly “captured from the air” rather than composed, the instruments gently nudging the sounds together, until a sudden vigorous unison breaks the spell! Here the forceful piano somewhat dominated the ‘cello, whose notes one had to strain to hear in all but during the occasional quieter episodes, somewhat negating the composer’s intention of giving the instrument more of a “voice”! What I could hear of the cellist’s playing sounded true in terms of rhythm and intonation, but the piano was so much to the fore, it sometimes couldn’t help giving an impression that the cellist was playing more for herself than for us.

The Adagio brought the ‘cello back to us again, the players each giving us enough to better balance the sound, with the long sombre lines of the opening, and the beautiful exchange between the instruments that followed working really well in relative terms – though I thought there was still scope for the ‘cello to “sing” even more in places. The finale’s beginning with its playful exchanges made a properly whimsical impression, and the ‘cellist bought out some of the darker lines, but the higher, brighter melodic exchanges needed to bubble and sizzle more equally more often! One could hear there was a fine interpretation there, but it was simply a question of coaxing more tone from the ‘cello for the music’s course to sustain its full and glorious effect!

The Rachmaninov ‘Cello Sonata’s  Andante movement in places brought out the best qualities in both players, with the wonderful major/minor key sequences of the piano’s opening paragraph gorgeously realised, as were plenty of subtle gradations enticing our ears further and further into the piece; while the ‘cellist replied in kind with much sensitive articulation of those long melodic lines – though the tone lessened as the line moved up the stave she chose to give her lines a quieter, more reflective sound, even though I could occasionally have done with more “outward push” in some of the phrases – but still, what gloriously vibrant music emerged in places from these players’ efforts (I should have liked to have heard the whole sonata, accustomed as I am to wanting more of such things!)

Instead we got what was surely the highlight of the programme for most people – this was cellist David Popper’s arrangement for ‘cello and piano of one of Franz Schubert’s most beautiful songs  – the composer’s 1823 composition “Du bist die Ruh”. Both the pianist and ‘cellist by turns realised this music to exquisite degrees – a beautiful piano introduction was gorgeously augmented by the ‘cellist’s tones in her opening phrase – has anybody composed anything more heart-rendingly beautiful than this? When it came to the song’s climax, that glorious ascent towards a celestial high note, we were taken by the composer and his two musicians to some kind of Elysium-like place for a moment, not once, but twice – and of course there are as many ways to “sound” that final note as there are musicians! Between them, Joanna Dann and David Neild gave us untold pleasure with such moments – a most satisfying way to end any lunchtime’s music-making!