Tag: cello

Stroma breathes life into its collection of “Sonic Portraits”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – Sonic Portraits

Works by : Simon Eastwood/Alistair Fraser, Liza Lim, Ashley Fure, Salina Fisher,
                    Rebecca Saunders, Toru Takemitsu

SIMON EASTWOOD/ALISTAIR FRASER – “Pepe” from Te Aitanga Pepeke (2019)
LIZA LIM – An Ocean Beyond Earth (2016)
ASHLEY FURE – Soma (2012)
SALINA FISHER – Kingfisher (2018)
REBECCA SAUNDERS – Ire (2018)
TORU TAKEMITSU – Water Ways (1977)

(All performances except that of the Takemitsu work were NZ premieres)

Alistair Fraser (putorino)
Séverine Ballon (solo ‘cello)

STROMA – Bridget Douglas (piccolo, flute(s), Thomas Guldborg/Lenny Sakovsky (percussion), Anna van der Zee, Kristina Zerlinska, Megan Molina, Rebecca Struthers, Andrew Thomson (violins), Emma Barron, Andrew Thomson (violas), Ken Ichinose (‘cello), Patrick Barry (clarinet(s), Gabriela Glapska, Amber Rainey (pianos),  Alexander Gunchencko (double-bass), Michelle Velvin, Madeleine Crump (harps)

New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Shed 11
Customhouse Quay,  Wellington

Thursday, 19th September, 2019

I came across an interesting article on the American composer Virgil Thomson when exploring the idea of “Portraits” in music. Inspired by novelist Gertrude Stein in Paris during the mid-1920s, who had made a series of free-association “literary portraits” written in a single sitting, Thomson thought he would try the same technique in music composition – his subject would “sit”, and Thomson would compose, on the spot – the subject was allowed to do anything except talk, so that the “psychic transference” (the composer’s words) of the process wouldn’t be otherwise impeded. Picasso was one of those sceptical about the idea, but posed for Thomson, anyway, and received, for his pains, a hyper-energetic bitonal piano “etude” which Thomson called “Bugles and Birds”. To many of the subjects their pieces came across more as how the composer was feeling about them at the time, than what they felt about themselves.

“Portraits” abound in music composition, with perhaps the most well-known musical “gallery” of personalities being that contained in Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations. But away from the direct “visual art” process connotations pursued by Thomson, the “musical portraits” idea has been put to multifarious use, from well-known large-scale instances such as Mussorgsky’s “Pictures from an Exhibition” and Schumann’s “Carnaval” for solo piano, to stand-alone works like Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” or miniatures like Edvard Grieg’s “Niels W.Gade” from his Op. 57 ”Lyric Pieces”, or Elgar’s “Rosemary” 1915 (for piano or orchestra).

Stroma’s “Sonic Portraits” collection further enlarged the concept of musical depiction in  no uncertain terms.  with a collection of evocations of all kinds, mythological, other-worldly, psychosomatic, avian, emotional and locational. The venue chosen by the ensemble, the NZ Portrait Gallery at Shed 11, was itself a challenge for listeners like myself who arrived just in time for the concert and had to sit some way off down a narrow-ish, unraked space, feeling a wee bit divorced from the sound-sources through having little or no sight-lines, and then having to watch one’s back in close proximity to the art hung on perilously imminent walls when one got up to talk with someone or to go! Happily, the vivid and arresting quality of both music and its presentation by these players compensated amply for any such privations, even if I was disconcerted to see Séverine Ballon, the guest ‘cellist, carrying off the platform at her solo item’s conclusion a violin in addition to her ‘cello, which combination I had no earthly (!) idea she was using!

Beginning with the mythological, we heard “Pepe”, a piece from a collection called Te Aitanga Pepeke (the insect world), currently being developed by composer Simon Eastwood in conjunction with ngā taonga pūoro artist Alistair Fraser. This piece evolved out of a transcription by Fraser of a work by Eastwood, the two then reworking the music to bring forth an interactive and intimate dialogue between the ensemble (violin, viola, ‘celli, bass flute and percussion) and the expressive pūtorino. The instrument is unique in that it functions both as a trumpet (the kokiri o te tane /male voice) and as a flute (the waiata o te hine / female voice) and is reckoned to be the home of Hine Raukatauri, the Mäori goddess of flute music. Here, it was Alistair Fraser’s gloriously trumpet-like pūtorino who played Hine’s amorous swain, Pepe, the voice by turns vigorous and insinuating, moving in accord with the ambient earth-sounds of the ensemble.

Having felt the earth’s breath on our cheeks we were then transported by the alchemy of suggestiveness to one of the planet Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, via Australian composer Liza Lim’s work for solo ‘cello,  An Ocean Beyond Earth. Lim’s imagination was obviously fired by recent “news from space” regarding the presence of a body of water akin to an ocean on Saturn’s sixth-largest moon, Enceladus, according to data collected during NASA’s Cassini exploratory mission to the world of one of our solar system’s most iconic members. The same data has suggested that Enceladus has an environment which could support the existence of life as we know it.

Prefacing her work with evocative excerpts from poetry by the 13th-Century poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, and a quotation from Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves”, Lim’s music, brought into being by cellist Séverine Ballon’s exquisitely sensitive “voicings” at the outset, developed a kind of intermittent dialogue between wind-borne sounds of the air, and grittier, rather more corporately substantial gesturings. Some of the flourishings brought to mind Bach ‘cello suite utterances, framing whole sequences of spatial infinities, juxtapositionings that helped “define” each sound’s antithesis, in places having an almost “electrical” quality of current and intensity, thus throwing into bold relief a parallel sense of objects wrought in a cauldron of ancient natural creation. Other sound-relationships deemed to denote meetings and then minglings of states, effortful “seconds” suddenly scrambled wildly and frenetically, for example, as if “spooked” by their own forwardness – perhaps Virginia Woolf’s quoted cry to the heavens of “Consume me” sparked the irruption; or was it the thought of a limitless “sound of no shore”? The music’s concluding darkness merely opened its cloak and enveloped us in an enigmatic response.

I found listening to the next work – Ashley Fure’s Soma –  something of an unsettling experience, as its “specific psychological referent” was the composer’s own grandmother, who had (perhaps still has) advanced Parkinson’s Disease – the thought that we were anatomising the aberrant condition of an actual human being resulted in my finding it difficult to maintain an uninvolved focus of response, the sounds for me occasionally conveying all too piteously the “plight” of the individual subject and the helplessness of her state being “showcased” – the composer may well have intended such engagement to occur as part of the listening experience, of course.

The degree of “inner turmoil” conveyed by the ensemble here, something “locked in”, but occasionally trying to escape or express something, was all too palpable, with both physical and mental processes respectively conveyed – a rumbling, pulsating percussive presence seemed to express the former in terms of heartbeat, breath and bloodflow, while what seemed like infinite manifestations of both gestural and ambient “disturbance” were engendered by what the composer called “aberrations in placement, pressure, angle, force and speed” of instrumental activity,  and resulting in “fragile and chaotic” soundscapes. While these impulses voicelessly cried out, the percussion rumbled throughout like a kind of tinnitus, disconcertingly looming and then receding, before a final gentle but sharpish blow mercifully suspended the process!

Rather more delightful disengagement was then offered by Salina Fisher’s work Kingfisher, written in response to a poem by Robert McFarlane as part of a larger work The Lost Words, and performed by the New York-based ensemble Amalgama in 2018. Beginning with a not altogether unexpected “splash” and a series of propulsive flurries, the ensuing birdsong figurations were leavened most adroitly by delicate ambient touches, the whole having a delicacy and grace which accorded with the poet’s “neat and still” description of the bird, one which conflagrated as it flashed downwards into the water, and into a different kind of ambience, the piano’s liquid grace flooding into the air-blown vistas and completing the music’s ritual.

Though unspoken, words featured prominently in this  “Portraits” presentation, via the many stimulating and evocative texts and commentaries associated with these pieces. Rebecca Sanders’ Ire was no exception, her accompanying note including a quote from Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher whose paradoxical train of thought here delightfully derailed my every attempt to get through the passage unscathed! Sanders spoke of the “sonic potential” of a trill, hinting at the paradox of the concealment of musical activity beneath a “surface of silence”. Ire is one of three works for strings which Sanders has written to explore this quality – she spoke of exploring “two diametrically opposed guises of the trill” in her work, this seeming to take the form of anatomising both fast and slow trill-like figurations. 

A quiet, almost subversive beginning to the music presented a silence “stirred and shaken” by the instrumental activity, deepening with heavy percussion and double-bass rumblings and groanings. Séverine Ballon’s solo cello trilled in varied and exploratory ways under the fingers of the player, to which the ensemble added weight in the guise of unexplained energies from a void. The “Ire” of the piece’s title accumulated all too readily and nastily, reaching points of frenzy almost as a process of repeated expiation, the whole punctuated by rumbling and roaring percussion (I was too far back to see much of the players’ actual gesturings which would have enhanced a sense of the physical ebb and flow of the outbursts) – uncannily, at the point where I felt we had “had enough” the sounds seemed to abruptly transmorgrify as if by telepathetic means – string harmonies tipped, swayed and groaned softly as if great doors were being swung open to expose the futility of anger – all seemed suddenly like “thistledown on the wind”……

Written well over a quarter-century before any of the above pieces was the work that concluded the programme, Tōru Takemitsu’s 1977 work Water Ways. Inspired by a visit to the gardens of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, the composer was at first reportedly unmoved by the regularity and symmetry of the world-famous vistas until he noticed that a woman visitor had disturbed the water surfaces on one of the ponds – “Only then the music came”, the composer enigmatically remarked!

But what music! – from the very first notes a saturated soundscape, with a piano that simply couldn’t help sounding so Debussy-like with every utterance, vibraphones that exuded pure liquid outpourings, and two harps whose limpid tones helped bind together a flowing and interactive ensemble. These sources were coloured by strings and clarinet whose lines represented fluidity of contrasting textures and tones at their most focused and vibrant, whether a spectacularly cascading waterfall-like gesture from the piano or a long-breathed distillation of stillness and purity of flow from the clarinet. Whether breathtakingly still or gently and raptly moving to a larger rhythmic pull, the players generated a spellbinding amalgam of depths and shallows whose patternings coalesced into a long-breathed three-note life-dance, from which ritual the music bade us farewell, the clarinet uttering the last mysterious, distant word.

A significant proportion of my enjoyment of this concert was registering the pleasure expressed by others sitting around and about me, and, most happily, discussing each of the items with a fellow audience-member next to me – herself a musician, and similarly struck by the range and depth of intensities generated by the players and their conductor, Hamish McKeich, from the evening’s programme. That a concert made up almost entirely of New Zealand premieres of contemporary music could so obviously satisfy and enthral its audience spoke volumes regarding the skill of the performers and the receptivity of their listeners – definitely a feather in Stroma’s cap regarding its avowed mission statement of bringing to audiences new music from both home and abroad.

 

 

 

Visiting Russian cellist inspires a fine, short-lived piano trio and an interesting recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Levansa Trio (Andrew Beer – violin, Lev Sivkov – cello, Sarah Watkins – piano)

Debussy: Sonata for violin and piano (1917)
Grieg: Andante con moto for piano trio
Myaskovsky: Cello sonata No 2 in A minor, Op 81
Beethoven: Piano Trio in B flat, Op 97; ’Archduke’

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 18 August 2019, 2:30 pm

It might be unusual to give a common name to a group of three musicians who are clearly going to have only a few weeks together because one of its members lives in another country. The owner of the first three letters of the name ‘Levansa’ is the Russian cellist whose residence looks peripatetic at the present time, though his appointment in 2017 as principal cello of the Zurich opera orchestra suggests that he is currently a Swiss resident.

For a group that has only been together for a week or so, the first impression was of remarkable homogeneity, with all three playing with restraint, collectively creating refined and balanced performances.

Grieg’s Andante for piano trio
The first opportunity to hear the cellist was in the single movement of a piano trio by Grieg that was never finished. Here one could admire his rhythmic sensitivity and flawless intonation; simply, his most sophisticated playing.

Though the programme note characterised the Andante as sombre and solemn, that wasn’t the prevailing mood: the sturdy two-quaver piano motif supplied a firm, confident foundation, and its general character struck me as calm and contented, with no suggestion of discomfort with traditional musical forms. Grieg also wrote a cello sonata, a string quartet and three violin sonatas that are by no means contemptible. One of my earliest live experiences of Grieg was hearing his third violin sonata at a (then) NZ Chamber Music Federation concert in Taumarunui where I spent a three-week ‘section’ at the High School as a secondary teacher trainee in the late 1950s. (A cultural-geographic feature that suggests more wide-spread musical activity than one might find in small towns today).

Debussy: violin sonata
But the first piece was Debussy’s last composition – his violin sonata written in 1917 a few months before his death. His reversion to classical forms in his last years was accompanied by his adoption of a style that paid more attention to the traditions of the music of two centuries before, as his planned six sonatas were intended as homage to the music of Couperin and Rameau and their contemporaries.

And so I enjoyed the deliberateness and confidence with which violinist Beer and pianist Watkins brought to the sonata, with a good deal of attention to the richness and polish of the violin’s lower register. There is little in the names of either the second or third movements, Intermède: fantastique et léger and Très animé, to reflect the terrible suffering of the French in the First World War and the deaths of many of Debussy’s friends. Nor did their playing depart from ‘lightness’ and ‘animation’.

Myaskovsky’s second cello sonata was substituted for the advertised sonata by Duparc. All I really knew of the composer was his proclivity for symphonies – he wrote 27 of them as well as concertos, string quartets and much else – and his survival with little harassment by the Soviet cultural commissars.

As usual, there’s an interesting, reasonably comprehensive article about him in Wikipedia. I find it hard to desist from miscellaneous asides: Wikipedia writes that Russian conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov described Myaskovsky as ‘the founder of Soviet symphonism, the creator of the Soviet school of composition, the composer whose work has become the bridge between Russian classics and Soviet music … Myaskovsky entered the history of music as a great toiler like Haydn, Mozart and Schubert … He invented his own style, his own intonations and manner while enriching and developing the glorious tradition of Russian music’.

The sonata sounds mainstream in the sense of Russian composers born before 1900, who adjusted to Soviet demands and in his case led a reasonably undisturbed life as teacher at the Moscow Conservatorium. It’s eclectic in that it’s not easy to spot marked influences from either his Russian or other contemporaries, though I might venture Glazunov, Arensky or Scriabin. He was a close friend of Prokofiev, though their music has little in common.

I enjoyed the melodiousness of the piece and the warmth and expressiveness of both musicians’ playing. It’s far from being a showcase for either instrument and gains high marks accordingly. I was a little intrigued to notice that Sivkov took the mute off at the beginning of the second movement – a swaying, triple-time Andante cantabile – theoretically more lyrical and calm than the first movement; but the difference was not very marked. The third movement remained in a charming lyrical vein, now merely quicker and more animated with a good deal of pizzicato and staccato. As the end approached it seemed to gather speed, though that was rather more imagined than real.  Though not a piece that would have been much admired in avant-garde circles in the West in 1948, its plain musical qualities, its easy lyricism, can now be enjoyed without undue embarrassment. Certainly by me.

The ‘Archduke’ Trio
Finally, the piece that would have been the major attraction, though I was a little surprised that it had not drawn a bigger audience. Here was a further example of the balance and harmoniousness of the three players. Though the piano was always very audible Sarah Watkins clearly feels comfortable with the way the Fazioli projects its opulent, genteel sounds into the big space.  (Afterwards I was speaking to a friend about the piano and we tried to recall the north Italian town where the Fazioli factory is: my copy of the charming book by T E Cathcart, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank [in Paris], solved it: Sacile, about 120 km north of Venice).

I found myself noticing how much prominence was given to each instrument through each movement. The piano leads the way through the early parts of the first movement, but it was interesting to hear, as if I hadn’t been paying attention in a dozen earlier hearings, what a lot of routine passagework is given to the piano. This was surely just the effect of such a warmly delightful performance of one of the greatest masterpieces, not just in the chamber music sphere, but in the whole range of classical music. Not a moment passes that does not enchant and transport one to a sort of musical wonderland. Almost any sort of performance will move you in that direction, but one as enrapturing as this discovers delights and musical miracles at every turn. Especially delightful is the arrangement of the movements, where we await the sublime Andante cantabile till after the Scherzo, where its arrival after nearly half an hour seems like a deliciously delayed gift; and the seamless gliding into the finale was like the fulfilment of a long-delayed promise.

This was a remarkable concert, that ended with a beautiful performance of this greatest of all piano trios, all the more so considering that this little ensemble was a mere temporary association of three gifted musicians.

Illuminating, even sublime perfection in solo recital by cellist Lev Sivkov

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime Concerts at St Andrew’s

Lev Sivkov – solo cello (who played Barber’s cello concerto with Orchestra Wellington on Saturday 3 August)

Khachaturian: Sonata-Fantasia (1974)
Piatti: Caprice No 5 in A flat
Bach: Suite No 2 in D minor for solo cello. BWV 1008
Dutilleux: Three Strophes on the name of Sacher (1976)

St Andrews on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 7 August, 12:15 pm

Sadly, it is rare that major soloists with our professional orchestras are taken in hand by enterprising entrepreneurs and offered recitals around the country. Lev Sivkov is clearly in the hands of an enterprising manager in New Zealand who is making excellent use of him.

Having heard him last Friday with Orchestra Wellington playing Barber’s cello concerto, I was delighted to be handed a flyer about this recital in St Andrew’s lunchtime concert series.  It’s a time to note that these concerts are both free for the audience (though most drop a ‘koha’ in the box) and without a fee for the performer; the vital contributions of church and Marjan Waartenberg also go unrewarded.

The programme was changed from that advertised, to take account of the need to retune the cello’s two lower strings by a semitone for the Dutilleux piece. No rearrangement could have affected the pleasure flowing from the four pieces, three of which were unknown to virtually everyone.

His playing of Barber’s cello concerto prepared me for the distinction of his playing here, which was extraordinary in every respect: intonation more than perfect, an expressiveness that succeeded in being utterly satisfying and tasteful; asked to rank his playing on a scale to 1 to 10, I would suggest 11.

The Barber was certainly a taxing work though strangely not quite a masterpiece. This was a far better opportunity to watch and listen up close to music that was again just short of being undisputed classics, apart from the two movements from a Bach suite.

Khachaturian is not thought of as a chamber music composer, but this Sonata-Fantasia from late in his life, aged 70, showed that perhaps there’s a lot of other orchestral, chamber and other music that we are being deprived of.

It had real character, with sequences of chords and individual notes that were not commonplace and on second hearing would very likely take root in the mind as interesting melodies; even without a second hearing, the piece was coherent and arresting and commanded the audience’s rapt attention.

A Piatti Caprice
Then a piece by a once familiar cello virtuoso and composer, whose simpler pieces could be tackled by an average student such as your reviewer. This Caprice was not to be underestimated; the words ‘musical substance’ came to mind, its shape and melodic sense were conspicuous, and there were decorative elements, feathery flourishes that were far from mere pyrotechnics, though they would challenge all but a highly accomplished player.

Bach Suite No 2
Sivkov then came to Bach’s second solo cello suite, playing the Prelude and Allemande. It was a wonderfully elegant and thoughtful performance, the Prelude never for a moment merely a tricky exercise, became an illuminating, naturally-breathed, musically absorbing movement. I’ve never been so conscious of the break in the middle that resumed in a spirit that had suddenly become ethereal and other-worldly. He played the Allemande as if it was being created on the spot, with easy spontaneity and delight; never a hint of a result of long and thoughtful practice.

The Dutilleux piece, which as a reckless Francophile I’d never heard though I have made myself familiar with most of his music, reveals his characteristically complex and elusive writing. It was one of the pieces that Rostropovich asked twelve composers to write in honour of the 70th birthday of Paul Sacher, the famous and deeply inspiring Swiss music patron, using the letters of his name as the theme: Eb, A, C, B, E, D. The most famous work commissioned by Sacher was Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, and Dutilleux used a quote from it in the Three Strophes.

It seemed to present a multitude of technical devices that could easily be mistaken merely for showy avant-gardish cleverness. Technically, it sounded impossible, with endless multi-stringed harmonics that created fairylike effects, left hand pizzicato, requiring supernatural dexterity, all delivered in such perfection that one could imagine the composer being astonished that he’d written something that could be handled with such sublime delicacy and understanding, sounding as even he might have hardly conceived it.

It attracted a quite large and noisily appreciative audience. This concert is likely to go down as one of the most memorable in St Andrew’s year-long series; in fact, in all the scores of concerts in Wellington this year.

 

Warming our hearts in mid-winter – Cantoris directed by Thomas Nikora

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Cantoris Choir presents:
A MID-WINTER’S NIGHT
Music by Eric Whitacre, Morgan Andrew-King, Samuel Berkahn, Thomas Nikora, Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven and Josef Haydn

ERIC WHITACRE – Sleep / The Seal Lullaby / Lux Aurumque
MORGAN-ANDREW KING – River of Song
SAMUEL BERKAHN – With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled
ROBERT SCHUMANN – The Two Grenadiers
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Song of the Flea
JOSEF HAYDN – Cello Concerto in C Major (Ist Mvt.)
THOMAS NIKORA – Mass in E Minor

Barbara Paterson (soprano)
Morgan-Andrew King (baritone)
Samuel Berkahn (‘cello)
Liam Furey (piano)
Diana Muggleston (violin)
Thomas Nikora (piano and conductor)
Cantoris Choir

St.Mark’s Chapel, St. Mark’s Church School,
Wellington

Saturday 27th July 2019

This was the kind of programme whose content and presentation couldn’t have done a better job of warming the cockles of both audience hearts and sensibilities, having already drawn our attention via the concert’s title to the evening’s delightful and characteristic seasonal ambiences. Choral items naturally enough made up the lion’s share of the presentations, but by way of contrast and variety we heard two songs for baritone with piano, and a piano-accompanied movement from a Haydn ‘Cello Concerto . Amazingly, too, we were given, during the course of the concert, no less than three (presumably world) premieres of works all written by composer/performers associated with Cantoris Choir, two of the singers and the choir’s conductor. It was all in line with an overall warmth of utterance that suggested “living music”, as if we were at something like a Bach family get-together, with various members coming forward as both creators and performers.

The  work of American composer Eric Whitacre has figured prominently of late in choral concerts worldwide, his range of compositions catering for professional and amateur groups alike. Here we had three of his works, each of  which illustrated both the music’s attractive craftsmanship and ready accessibility as regards performers and audiences. I should have liked to have heard Whitacre’s original setting of Robert Frost’s words from his poem “Stopping by Woods of a Snowy Evening” for his “Sleep” (the composer was denied publishing rights for his work by the poet’s estate, and new words for the setting had to be substituted!), but the alternative text seemed just as evocative for Whitacre’s purposes – the final word “sleep” (shared by the original Frost poem) made a haunting conclusion to a finely-crafted, sonorous performance by the choir.

I recently encountered Morgan-Andrew King on the operatic stage in the NZSM production at the Hannah Playhouse of Puccini’s one-acter Gianni Schicchi (playing the part of one of the avaricious relatives awaiting the death of a would-be benefactor), so was, naturally enough, intrigued to find that he composed as well as performed – his work  River of Song was inspired, he told us in a spoken introduction by the Waikato River, the writing cleverly evoking the movement of water, the piece’s wordless opening  conjuring up a multitude of impulses, currents and streamlets whose lines coalesced in rich harmonic surges that expanded warmly at climaxes, everything truly suggesting that the composer “knew” the music’s subject well.

Another Eric Whitacre piece The Seal Lullaby readily “sounded” its name, the story of the piece’s genesis and history adding to its piquancy – a most affecting lullaby, with a beautiful piano accompaniment. The piece’s wordless sequences took on a “living instrumental” quality, enhanced by the choir’s gorgeously-voiced tunings – lovely stuff!  As a comparison, Lux Aurumque, the piece that followed, by the same composer, had a far more “international” quality, a “sheen” whose quality impressed for different reasons to the Seal Lullaby. At the piece’s end the choir managed some exquisite harmonisings set against held notes.

Samuel Berkahn brought a breath of bracing air to the proceedings with his assertion that his music would, after Eric Whitacre’s, “wake everybody up!”. His piece, beginning with a catchy “waltz-trot” kind of rhythm, was named with words of Wordsworth’s, and set melodic lines to angular piano accompaniments, the voices teetering on the edges of fugues throughout their exchanges, Berkahn hinting tongue-in-cheek at his recent interest in Renaissance madrigals and baroque polyphony, and keeping us “primed” as to their encoded presences.

After the interval, we were treated to two songs, each of whose subject-matter was steeped in the early Romantic era, and given suitably full-blooded treatment via the sonorous baritone voice of Morgan-Andrew King, firstly with Schumann’s ballade-like setting of Heine’s verses “Die beiden Grenadiere”, telling the story of two French soldiers making their way home from the Napoleonic Wars, only to learn that their beloved Emperor had been imprisoned. Schumann effectively contrasts the over-the-top patriotism of the French soldier, complete with the “Marseilles” quotation, with the sombre, utterly downcast piano postlude, superbly “voiced” by Thomas Nikora. King’s beautiful and sonorous voice I thought captured the “heroic” aspect of the song to perfection, though still leaving room for future explorations of the conflicted and contrasting range of emotion from each of the men. However, in Beethoven’s setting of Goethe’s “Song of the Flea”, the singer’s characterisations ignited more readily, working hand-in-glove with Thomas Nikora’s impish, volatile rendering of the piano part, and instantly engaging our interest and delight – marvellous!

Samuel Berkahn returned to the platform, this time with his ‘cello, to perform for us the opening movement of Haydn’s sunny C-major ‘Cello Concerto. With Thomas Nikora leading the way, bringing the opening orchestral “tutti” excitingly to life on the piano, the ‘cellist took up the challenge right from his opening phrase, superbly “sprung” at first, then full-throated and song-like in the second subject group, the solo lines speaking, bubbling and glowing. Intonation was sometimes a bit hit-and-miss in the instrument’s higher registers, but the overall line of the performance remained, thanks to the player’s energy and “recovery instinct” keeping the musical fabric taut and even, and maintaining a sense of enjoyment and buoyancy.

Which brought us to the third premiere of the evening’s concert, Thomas Nikora’s Mass in E minor, a work which the composer told us was inspired by his performing with Cantoris another Mass, that by Schubert, in G Major (D.167), and which Nikora had promised himself he would complete for his fourth year as Cantoris’s music director (time flies!). He mentioned also the Latin Mass’s flexibility and versatility as a text for musical settings, allowing him so many creative possibilities and options. Along with the SATB choir, the composer scored the work for solo soprano, violin, cello and piano.

Beginning with the Kyrie, the composer’s promise that there will be “plenty of fugal stuff” was immediately suggested with the voices’ opening contrapuntal entries, giving way to the solo soprano (the angelic-voiced Barbara Paterson) without a break at the Christe eleison with soaring lyrical lines. The return of the Kyrie was announced by the tenors with clipped, fugal figures, the texture thereby considerably enlivened with staccato chatterings, urgent and insistent, but softened by lyrical utterances from Samuel Berkahn’s cello.

Without a break, the Gloria burst in, the sopranos doing some lovely stratospheric work, and the pianist, Liam Furey, moulding beautiful bell-like chords to accompany “Et in terra pax hominibus”, the section somewhat surprisingly finishing with an “Amen”, allowing the Laudamus te to start afresh – again very fugal, and leading to a fanfare-like “Glorificamus te” with contrapuntal lines encircling the music. Violinist Diana Muggleston sweetly added her instrument’s voice to that of the cello to prepare for the soprano’s contribution to Gratias agimus tibi, an angel’s pure and fervent exclamation of thanks. I did feel here that the music had too many “stop-starts”, and that the whole could have been given a stronger sense of  “through-line” via the occasional ear-catching transition, imagining, for instance, that the morphing into waltz-time at the Domine Deus from the Gratias would have a stunning effect!

A true-and-steady solo voice (that of Ruth Sharman’s) from the choir introduced each line of Qui tollis peccata mundi, the effect moving and empathetic – as was Barbara Paterson’s delivery of Quoniam, being joined as sweetly by the choir’s sopranos after the solo utterances. And, while not as toe-tappingly infectious as Rossini’s “Cum sancto spiritum” fugue from the latter’s Petite Messe sollenelle, Nikora’s setting of the same passage had plenty of spirit, with wreaths of garlanded “Amens” honouring the deity’s glory, and violin and ‘cello lines most satisfyingly adding their voices to the tumult.

The Credo opened urgently, “running” in a fugal sense, and serious and sombre in tone,  the instruments keeping the fugal spin going underneath the voices’ “Et in unum Dominum”, then movingly ritualise the central “Et incarnatus est” with chorale-like accompaniments to the voices’ focused fervour, the soprano further lyricising the line “Crucifixus estiam pro nobis” (He was crucified for us), until the instruments cranked up the running accompaniments to Et resurrexit with exciting, stamping staccato figures. Then, true to intent, the music “grew” a giant fugal structure from Et in spiritus sanctus, all voices woven into the fabric in fine style – a strong, sudden major-key “Amen” brought to an end this impressive musical declamation of faith.

But not the Mass as such, of course – whose next sequence turned convention on its head with a Sanctus set in what sounded like the rhythmic trajectory of a Habanera! It made for a treasurable  “Now that I have your attention” moment, flecked with grins of delight from all sides, especially at the sultry piano glissandi and the exotic touch of the tambourine, giving the words a kind of extra potency in their delivery.  The Benedictus took a rather more circumspect rhythmic character, more of a “floating” aspect generated by “humming” sequences from the choir and a wordless melody from the soprano flowering into something that had the feeling of a heartfelt “personal” faith. The return of the “Hosanna” re-established the feeling of ritual, wordless voice-resonatings and instrumental accompanyings reinforcing the message of glory.

Agnus Dei gave us lovely, floating lines, creating a kind of living, gently-walking mosaic of sounds, snow-capped by a heartfelt “Dona nobis pacem” from Barbara Paterson – which brought us to the fugal (as opposed to “frugal”) Amen, not unlike Handel’s “Messiah” Amen, the tenors’ vigorous vocalisings particularly engaging! – as well as this “focusedly fugal” aspect, the writing included expansive lyrical lines as well, voices and instruments relishing their vigorous and full-throated exchanges right to the work’s conclusion. An enthusiastic reception, partly for the Mass itself and its composer, and partly for the performers’ delivery of the whole concert, carried the evening through in a satisfyingly warm-hearted manner – such pleasure to be had from an evening’s music-making!

 

Baching at the Moon – ‘Cellist Raeul Pierard at St.Peter’s on-Willis, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

J.S.BACH – Six Suites for solo ‘Cello
Raeul Pierard (‘cello)

St.Peter’s on-Willis, Wellington

Friday 23rd November 2018

Long and involved stories or series of tales have always attracted me – I’m a sucker for sagas, an enthusiast for epics, a connoisseur of chronicles. In music there’s nothing I like better to involve myself with than something that covers a wide span of time, incident and characterisation. I’m a completist who’s in seventh heaven when about to embark upon things like Bach’s “forty-eight”, Haydn’s “Salomon Symphonies”, Liszt’s “Transcendental Etudes” or Albeniz’s “Iberia”. I could go on, but don’t want to run the risk of getting side-tracked and losing my bearings……

Still, I mention these things because it seems to me that people are presently being encouraged in artistic matters to do the opposite to what I’ve just described – to skip in-and-out of encounters and experiences rather than cast themselves into the heart of things, body and soul, and especially so in music. One has only to tune into Radio New Zealand’s Concert Programme in its present form to experience the increased fragmentation of musical presentation that’s being served up as a kind of “standard” – lately, more often than not we get ”movements” rather than whole works and a preponderance of shorter pieces which suggests an inclination to merely “entertain” on the part of the powers that be, rather than to invite listeners to push back boundaries and undergo any kind of in-depth exploration.

I could go on about this trend as well, so that readers would soon give up on the prospect of my ever getting to the business in hand, that of reviewing a performance of all of JS Bach’s six Suites for solo ‘Cello – but what’s interesting in the framework of what I’ve just been talking about is the reaction of a number of people to my having gone to the performance of these works – things like “Oooh, that’s a LOT of solo ‘cello!” and “Didn’t it all start to sound like the same, after a while?”……..to be fair, there were many comments of the “wish I’d been there” variety, as well…..

As far as the player, Raeul Pierard, was concerned there was obviously no problem, having been inspired by one of his teachers to make a point of regularly performing the complete cycle. Accordingly, Pierard had entitled his concert “Baching at the Moon”, equating the regularity of his performances of these works with the lunar cycle, thus calling each of them a “full-moon event”. It wouldn’t be inappropriate to link the two occurrences as different manifestations of life-forces, bringing together cosmic and human patterns of behaviour as a way of contextualising a significant kind of co-existence, Bach’s music speaking for humanity in tandem with celestial processes.

So, to the concert, given in the remarkably beautiful interior of the Church of St.Peter’s-on-Willis:  a number of things came to my mind as I registered work following work, movement following movement and phrase following phrase – first and foremost was the sheer intensity of the experience, by way of both the music’s amazing variety and depth. I had listened with the utmost interest to Raeul Pierard’s spoken introduction to his playing of these works, taking to heart several points he made which for me further “opened up” both the music’s structural and emotional content, one of them being that his feeling was that the music was “autobiographical”, especially when considering that Bach’s life had ample potential for both joy and sorrow, having two wives, one of whom died; and twenty children, ten of whom did not survive him. Of the six Suites, two of them are set in minor keys and result in “darker” sounds than the other four, while the works numbered as fourth and sixth in the authorised “edition” of the composer’s works are more angular and exploratory of expression than their major-key fellows.

Not that it’s possible to “date” any of the works, Bach’s own autograph manuscript of them being lost, the most ostensibly reliable copy being that made by Anna Magdalena Bach, the composer’s second wife, with no details as to the origin of the works regarding time or place. The other three extant eighteenth-century copies are just as unhelpful, with further confusion arising from their differences, resulting in none of them being regarded as “the” authentic version. Instead, the ‘cellist wanting to play these works has a choice of over a hundred different “editions” offering different solutions to the discrepancies. It would have been interesting to have asked the cellist regarding “editions” and whether he had any particular “models” for his own playing style and/or interpretation (so many great names, from Casals onwards….) – however, I found myself at the end wanting to bring away the “sound” of the music in my head unadulterated by such detail, and so never got to actually talk with him…..

There being a smallish audience (the concert clashed with a sell-out performance of the Beethoven “Choral” Symphony from the NZSO that same evening!) Pierard invited all of us to sit up closer to him, freely talking to us at various places during the recital, but requesting that we restrain from applauding until the conclusion of each of the “halves” of the presentation – we actually got in first at the end of the First Suite and applauded, but no real harm was done! I could understand what he meant, though, and especially in the case of the minor-key works and those in the concert’s second half, where the act of listening seemed in itself a sufficient response to such sounds and the applause a superfluous, almost trite act juxtaposed with these evocations of something ineffably precious and timeless.

The First Suite’s opening allowed us to appreciate the St.Peter’s acoustic to the full, the instrument’s tones rich and focused, and “answered” by the surroundings in an enriching rather than confusing or blurring manner by an ambient glow. The Prelude unfolded under Pierard’s fingers with the utmost simplicity and natural-sounding freedom, followed by an Allemande which seemed to almost extend the opening with added whimsy and divergency, the repeat further deepening the explorations. These being “Suites” the movements were, of course, all dances of various kinds and nationalities (whose characteristics Pierard outlined for us), the following Courante rhythmically engaging from the very opening note, the trajectories impish and impulsive! Then came a Sarabande, a slow dance of (according to the ‘cellist) Turkish origin, one often given considerable gravitas by Bach in his various works, Pierard here bringing out the music’s meditative quality, the sounds having moments of deep wonderment. There’s usually a marked contrast with the following Minuet, though less so, here, the ‘cellist enabling the music’s “more than usual” circumspection of feeling, more poetic of motion than physical of impulse – as was the contrasting minor-key Trio section of the dance. A change came with the Gigue (English – “jig”), which was far more precipitate and impulsive in phrasing and overall movement.

From the very opening, the Prelude of the Second Suite seemed to suggest tragedy, with the three opening notes defining the mood and the following figurations exploring it. Pierard’s tone spoke volumes of eloquence throughout, especially in the piece’s second half where the intensity built to great depths of feeling before suddenly retreating, allowing the emotions some space to realign, the feelings as intense, though incredibly “inward” at the piece’s end. The Allemande brought a different kind of energy to what sounded like a purposeful journey, the Courante even more so with its vigorous phrases and its forthright display passages. Again, the Sarabande was played “con amore”, allowing the measures time and space to indelibly fix their phrases on the listeners’ sensibilities. This time the Menuet broke the spell, with purposeful, energetic playing at the onset on the part of Pierard helping to make really “something” of the shift to the major for the second Menuet. The Gigue was more angular and serious, using a drone in places to both “ground” the music and delineate the intensities with great characterisation, especially over the last few bars before the final ascent flung the music out into the cosmos with a defiant gesture.

After the grittiness of the Second Suite the Third came as a kind of bucolic relief, the drone-notes this time creating an earthy, pesante effect during the Prelude, while the figurations were made by Pierard into something organic and even theatrical at the end, involving elongated cadences and lots of trills! – in other words, quite an adventure. The Allemande here sounded almost like a rock-climbing exercise, delighting in scaling heights and plumbing the depths, Pierard conveying both the music’s vertiginous whimsy and its exhilaration. The Courante, too, was energetic and playful, the music featuring lots of antiphonal jumping about and “call and response”, with the second part even wilder and more varied in dynamics. This time the Sarabande was declamatory and theatrical, its repeat bringing more thoughtfulness and a touch more ambience, the lines drawn throughout with the utmost nobility.

A Bouree made a nice change from a Menuet, the trajectory a bit freer and more spontaneous, less prone to seriousness. The contrasting minor-key section had a kind of absent-minded melancholy, wistful and attractive. The Gigue had one of my favourite “moments” in all of these works, an almost grinding drone voice creating a tense moment before the music nonchalantly skipped away and upwards, illustrating the composer’s sharp sense of humour and mastery of mood, the sequence here strongly played and wryly characterised.

Raeul Pierard compared the Fourth of these Suites to Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” – something embodying both comedy and seriousness, light and darkness. To begin with we heard the Prelude’s gorgeously leonine tones, the music curiously “mirroring” the First Suite’s Prelude by a series of descending gestures anchored by the final note of each of the phrases. Breaking up the pattern were “flurries” of impulses at the music’s halfway point and again at the end. The Allemande brought playing that brought out the music’s inclination to swing and soar, in contrast to the somewhat volatile Courante, with its “scampering” figure that launched each phrase. But it was the Sarabande which, if anything, brought the “What You Will” feeling to mind – beginning with a long-breathed three-note harmonised declamation that dominated the first part, the movement’s second half then further darkened and intensified the discourse with increased “weight” from the harmonisations, relieved only by a wistful ascent right at the end. Quixotically, the Bouree played with our sensibilities with a four-note flourish instigating each of the dance’s phrases, both ascending and descending, then switching to a portentous, tongue-in-cheek Trio section. In the Gigue we got an almost outlandish “rolling-ball” juggernaut from out of whose path our sensibilities nimbly leapt as we listened, Pierard adroitly bringing out both the claustrophobic and exhilarating alternate characters of the music!

For the Fifth Suite (in the key of C Minor), the ‘cellist needed to retune his instrument, not because of intonation problems, but because Bach used a different kind of tuning for this work, the A string lowered to the note G (a practice termed scordatura). This was to enable certain chords to be played which, on a normally-tuned instrument, would be too awkward to manage. Straightaway this deepened the work’s general sonority, then further so by the composer’s use of harmonies weighted with lower notes – very impressive and imposing-sounding! In this case the Prelude was followed by a fugue, played here with amazing steadiness, implaccable in aspect, but with a lot of variation in dynamics and tone, Pierard’s bowing having a flexibility and variety that brought to my mind qualities associated with the voice of a great singer or actor.

The Allemande was also declamatory in style, but considerably more expansive in manner, after the Prelude, almost like an “inward” version of the music’s outer journey thus far. And the Courante seemed far more severe of mien than those we’d heard already this evening, with lots of dark-browed mutterings, closely-harmonised phrasings darkening the textures. The Sarabande had a different kind of austerity, the music single-voiced and alone in the wilderness, Pierard seeming very much at one with its dark, plaintive quality. After this almost confessional outpouring the Gavotte seemed almost reluctant to dance, the measures awkward and hesitant, with the accompanying Trio almost reptilian-sounding in its slithery, ground-grabbing aspect – one almost breathed a sigh of relief at the dance’s return! Even the concluding Gigue’s exuberance was muted, a kind of expiation of energy rather than a joyous outpouring, with almost uncomfortably intense moments – terrific playing from the ‘cellist here, alive to all of these possibilities!

Of course, what was retuned had to be “detuned” (untuned?), which the ‘cellist then did before tackling the final Suite of the six, in D Major. As might have been expected, the music’s mood was markedly different, with horn fanfares beginning the Prelude in a festive, out-of-doors fashion, and the SOUND of the music brighter and more open, with the player’s hands working higher up on the fretboard than in the other works – properly exhilarating, high-wire stuff! Bach wrote this work for a five-stringed cello, with an E string tuned a fifth above the A string – no wonder the music sounded brighter and more open! As well Bach provided the player with ample opportunity for display over the Prelude’s concluding measures, with sixteenth-notes flying everywhere! The Allemande was declamatory and long-breathed, Pierard making the sounds a pleasure to experience with his command of legato, everything very “viola-sounding” with its higher tessitura. After this the Courante sounded almost “normal”, with its high-energy racing moments, contrasting markedly once again with its companion, a Sarabande, whose opening section gave the ‘cellist a brief moment of uncharacteristically strained intonation, one which Pierard was “waiting for” the second, sweeter-toned time round! The higher-pitched lines gave the music a different kind of intensity which here seemed somewhat removed from the world of the first three Suites. The familiar Gavotte was played with the “scooped” chordings that imparted a colourful, almost “orchestral” character to the music, splendidly setting off the “fairground hurdy-gurdy”quality of the Trio, Pierard subtly softening the phrasing of the dance when the Gavotte proper returned. Finally, the Gigue seemed to return us to the fairground, with earthy energies abounding in the cellist’s ”caution-thrown-to-the-winds” manner, the music’s characterful rhythmic trajectories given their head in a performance that brought out the writing’s buoyancy and daring, leaving us properly exhilarated at the end – bravo!

We thought it was the end, but Raeul Pierard wanted to play us something completely different to us as a kind of “encore”, a piece composed by an ex-pupil of his who was at the concert, one Elise Brinkeman, who had written a piece called “Sad Song”. This was a long-breathed, resonating piece made up of chords of different colours and intensities, sounds which initially reminded me of great tolling bells via a long-limbed swaying rhythm that briefly allowed a melodic line to make an appearance before being overwhelmed by the return of the resonating chords. The figurations intensified, creating an anguished climax-point wholly saturated by the bell-sounds, before dying away and ceasing, more abruptly than I for one was expecting – perhaps part of the piece’s considerable impact was, however subconsciously, reinforced by this relatively rapid plunge into a silence. Though having little ostensibly in common with Bach’s work, the piece certainly had an epic quality which perhaps suited the reflectiveness inevitably generated by the former, and equated with a certain timelessness often attributed to the older composer. It made for an unexpected but powerful postscript, having a “quality” of its own,  and was thus an inspired choice with which to end a remarkable concert.

A lunchtime concert for the exploratory and spirited on violin and cello

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Rupa Maitra (violin) and Margaret Guldborg (cello)

Pieces by Halvorsen, Bréval and Ravel

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 24 October, 12:15 pm

Duos between the piano and many other instruments are numerous, but between pairs of other instruments, without a keyboard, rare; though string quartets and less often string trios and quintets seem to be popular and work well.

This was an opportunity to put it to the test.

Halvorsen’s Passacaglia based on a theme from Handel’s harpsichord suite in G minor is not completely obscure. The tune lends itself to variations and Halvorsen made it into something of a virtuoso showpiece, though it’s rather more than that; and though this performance didn’t exploit its bravura character, it was played with imagination. While Handel’s fingerprints were evident in the character of the melody, the late 19th century, a Paganini/Sarasate spirit guides these variations. In some ways it was not a propitious opening piece as it drew attention to a contrast in tone, even in control of articulation, between the two instruments; the cello tone was rather more polished and mellow than the violin’s where the high register tended to be thin.

The Duo by Jean-Baptiste Bréval, cellist, and a close contemporary of Mozart, was found in a collection of Airs varies for violin and cello and produced a curious sound that probably reflected the very different musical climates between Italy/German lands and France. The variation character was not as conspicuous, wide-ranging as might be found in German music of the period; the composer called for a lot of harmonics as well as very high normal fingering on the cello, and Guldborg handled them comfortably. As might be expected from a cellist-composer, that instrument tended to be more conspicuous.

The major work in the recital was Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello of 1922. I think most listeners, blindfold, would find it hard to identify the composer, other than through a process of elimination, and even then ‘Ravel’ might be deleted. Nor is identification easier because of its connection with Debussy’s death four years before.

Each of the four movements is emotionally and stylistically distinct.  The first movement, Allegro, calls for curious kinds of duetting, counterpointing, handling the two instruments, sometimes in happy accord, sometimes as if in different universes; lots of demanding playing high on the fingerboards of both instruments.

The second movement, Très vif, rhythmically a different creature from the Allegro, insistent, short motifs, but then a long, almost elegiac, passage from the violin, its pedigree still very obscure. In many ways it struck me as singularly avant-garde, not inconceivable in the immediate post-war years, post dodecaphonic, Schoenbergian era, yet essentially tonal.

The only quasi peaceful episode is the ‘Lent’ third movement. It’s thoughtful but even here there is nothing of a more familiar character that might shackle it to Ravel. Margaret Guldborg had spoken briefly about it, hinting at its possible kinship with Shostakovich (and the 2nd movement with Stravinsky), but neither helped. There were tortured, abrasive elements; and there were moments that I thought listeners with more open-minded ears than mine might have rated as melodic; and there were passages of dialogue between the two instruments that were arresting, though not in a language in which I am fluent.

The cello opened the last movement, Vif, actually, ‘Vif avec entrain’, (lively with enthusiasm), gruffly, in the cello’s low register, as was Maitra’s violin, which also revealed an adventurous spirit. I also enjoyed what I felt as a characteristically Ravellian, comedic element, notably in the rhythmic games played: in the way the two challenged each other. It is some years since I heard it played live, and again I was persuaded by its considerable musical value, though its beauties are probably not to be enjoyed without effort.

In this, the contrast in timbres and colour between the two instruments, to a certain disadvantage in the other two pieces, became a positive element in a piece that demanded attention to every detail. So it proved a lunchtime concert that challenged a little, as well as opening one’s mind to unfamiliar but worthwhile repertoire.

 

Monumental NZSO concert of Russian masterpieces with cellist Johannes Moser

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian with Johannes Moser – cello

Borodin: Overture: Prince Igor
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No 1 in E flat
Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, selections from the ballet

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 13 October, 7:30 pm

Plus a review of Johannes Moser’s solo cello recital
Bach: Cello Suites Nos 1 in G, 4 in E flat and 3 in C
St Andrew’s on The Terrace
Sunday 14 October, 3 pm 

The NZSO concert Saturday 13 October

This Russian programme might have been expected to be a winner, but it wasn’t, in terms of audience size.

However, in terms of musical quality and sheer excitement, it was a tremendous success. It’s a surprise to me that Shostakovich’s 1st cello concerto didn’t fill every seat; does that suggest that our musical horizons are getting narrower every year? For it’s a truly stupendous work, and we heard one of today’s most brilliant cellists sitting at the front of the stage.

Secondly, does a crowd smaller than is expected suggest that the general run of classical music lovers doesn’t hear properly some of the greatest ballet music ever written; that there’s a huge gulf in taste and intellectual curiosity between ballet groupies and Beethoven groupies?

Even the opening overture should be better known and more sought after than evidently it is.

Borodin’s Prince Igor Overture
My first encounter with it, on the radio many years ago, was associated with the then popular story that Borodin had not written the overture down, but that Glazunov had heard him play it on the piano, and with his phenomenal memory, went home and scored it completely. Roughly true but both Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov left written accounts. Rimsky wrote: “…Glazunov and I settled the matter as follows between us: he was to fill in all the gaps in Act III and write down from memory the Overture played so often by the composer…”

Glazunov’s own account is this:
“The overture was composed by me roughly according to Borodin’s plan. I took the themes from the corresponding numbers of the opera and was fortunate enough to find the canonic ending of the second subject among the composer’s sketches. I slightly altered the fanfares for the overture … The bass progression in the middle I found noted down on a scrap of paper, and the combination of the two themes (Igor’s aria and a phrase from the trio) was also discovered among the composer’s papers. A few bars at the very end were composed by me.”  

These quotes are from the splendid Wikipedia article on the opera which is fascinating, evidently authoritative and very much worth reading.

Productions are rare in the west, and I was lucky enough to catch it conducted by Mark Ermler in the Olympiahalle in Munich in 1989. A film from the Metropolitan Opera was screened here a couple of years ago.

Borodin’s great historical opera may be heavy-going for some, but it’s got a lot of hit tunes and the Overture contains some of them. It opens calmly, remotely, but in a couple of minutes conductor Peter Oundjian had successfully anticipated the opera’s epic grandeur with fierce brass heroics on top of general orchestral energy. What a splendid introduction to the later direction of Russian music, parallel with Tchaikovsky and Rimsky, but on through Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Medtner, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Schnittke, Weinberg (?)…

Shostakovich Cello Concerto – Johannes Moser
This was Johannes Moser’s second visit to New Zealand. In 2016 he played Lalo’s cello concerto, impressing, but it’s not a work on which super-star reputations are often built. However, he could not have made a more astonishing impact than in his performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. It was written in 1959 a few years after Stalin’s death, for Rostropovich who famously committed it to memory in four days, and played it with the Leningrad Philharmonic under Mravinsky the same year.

Even more memorably (for us), Rostropovich played it with the NZSO under Maxim Shostakovich in one of the orchestra’s most famous events, in the 1988 International Arts Festival in Wellington (an era when we had truly great international festivals). I will never forget sitting side-on in the MFC gallery, hearing and watching that monumental performance.

Now this weekend’s performance was on a par, from a cellist who had likewise utterly absorbed the work. He played with a ferocity that was chilling, often producing a sort of vibration (different from vibrato) that created all the emotional power that a full orchestra might have supplied; for the work is scored only for strings orchestra and modest pairs of woodwinds (though they are not merely decorative in their contributions), timpani, celeste… and one horn (Samuel Jacobs) whose role was pivotal, somehow providing all the chilling, suspenseful, intense atmosphere that made more elaborate orchestration superfluous.

The cello dominates the first movement, but there are fleeting, less troubled, almost lyrical and rhapsodic passages in the second movement, plenty of scope to hear the orchestra’s dramatic strength under Oundjian’s highly expressive leadership. The four movements are played without break, so the extended and often magically beautiful cadenza which slowly takes shape at the end of the second actually comprises the third movement.

The last movement returns to the troubled spirit of the first, involves the cello in impressive passages combining bowing while plucking strings with the left hand. The work ends with repeated assertions of both the composer’s self-awareness and the emotional value of the signature DSCH (his name abbreviated in German musical notation) as an enigmatic motif. Just in case we were to forget who the composer was: but neither this performance, nor the work itself will ever make that likely.

A charming encore by John Williams was something of an antidote, perhaps a bit long considering the environment.

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet 
The second half was taken with a memorable performance of about half of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet music – about an hour. The programme book did not attempt to list the numbers included: most were familiar from the three orchestral suites that Prokofiev himself put together, but there were certain episodes not so familiar. Again, perhaps there was a bit much; without the important accompaniment of the staged ballet, the music itself, even in all its variety, dramatic strength, visual evocativeness and its ability to conjure one’s recollections of the ballet itself, doesn’t quite hold a concert audience as does a Mahler or Bruckner symphony of similar length.

Nevertheless, this was a performance that should have reinforced the belief that we have here an orchestra of real international distinction, able to capture a huge range of musical colours and narrative characteristics. A score like Prokofiev’s, though not demanding all the peripheral instrumental forces that some Strauss or Mahler scores do, make prolonged demands on everything from heroic virtuosity to chamber music subtlety and refinement with equal conviction.

So at its end, apart from delight at having lived through the previous two and a quarter hours, I remained all the more disturbed that an obviously remarkable concert had not pulled a full house.

 

Solo recital by Johannes Moser
St Andrew’s on The Terrace
Sunday 15 October, 3 pm

The added attraction of a solo recital by the soloist was advertised for the following afternoon. It’s a practice that the orchestra should adopt routinely with its soloists who could often serve to attract people to kinds of music – chamber music or song – that might normally be outside their main interests.

At St Andrew’s on Sunday, 3 pm, Moser played three Bach solo cello suites: No 1 in G, No 4 in E flat and No 3 in C. The church was near full. And the three performances were of spell-binding, compelling strength. We have come a great distance from the days when it was proper to play these and other baroque music as if in a straight-jacket, as if baroque instruments and their players didn’t allow rhythmic, dynamic expressive variety. These performances were hugely fluent and expressive with episodes in the preludes and the sarabandes, for example, that were emotional, pensive and full of humanity, and where clusters of notes and double-stopping turned them into impressive ensemble works rather than just one person on one cello.

And on the other hand we heard lively dances in which Moser’s suggestion that the suites could be heard as if describing the phases of a social gathering, from introductory, exploratory preludes through somewhat formal, conversational allemandes to more relaxed, letting-hair-down courantes, gigues or bourrées (in nos 3 and 4), was an interesting way of envisaging developments.

It was indeed a most rewarding hour-an-a-half, both for the audience, and I hope for the orchestra management which should be inspired to expand on this example.

In earlier years, such concerts were organised routinely – just one example, I recall recitals by Julius Katchen in the St James Theatre; but they were frequent.

But I see nothing to indicate such recitals in the 2019 programmes. Surely some of the soloists featured would be delighted to offer small-scale recitals – mezzos Susan Graham and Anna Larsson; soprano Lauren Snouffer; pianists Joyce Yang, Denis Kozhukhin, Steven Osborne, Louis Lortie; violinists Carolin Widmann, Jennifer Koh; trumpeter Håken Hardenberger, the orchestra’s own horn-player Samuel Jacobs … or the quartets of singers in the Choral Symphony and Messiah???

 

NZSM cellists under Inbal Megiddo play cello favourites, some rare, some in disguise, all skilled and entertaining

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Cellos, led by Inbal Megiddo

Music by Mozart, Grűzmacher, Bach, Vivaldi, Brubeck, Gershwin, Joplin

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 3 October 2018, 12:15 pm

lnbal Megiddo is the head of Cello Studies at the New Zealand School of Music.  Along with her today were seven cello students, all highly competent on the instrument.  Their varied programme was heard by a sizeable audience.

The programme commenced with a very fine arrangement of Mozart’s Overture to his opera The Magic Flute, by Douglas Moore, an American composer who died in 1969. The tone of the four cellists who played this was not always well-blended.   The names of the players (five females including Megiddo, and three males) were given in the printed programme, but they were not identified individually for each piece played.

Verbal explanations were given rather too fast for everything to be clearly heard.  Megiddo explained the origins of two of the cellos – the first was given by the family of the late Wellington luthier and cellist, Ian Lyons.  The origin of the other I could not hear.  Two of the group played these instruments in Friedrich Grutzmacher’s Duo for two cellos, Op.22 no.2. Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Grützmacher was a noted German cellist in the second half of the 19th century.  This was most attractive music, very well played. The upper part was quite lovely, with an interesting lower part accompanying.  The two players swapped places from time to time, i.e alternating between upper and lower part throughout the performance so that both got a chance to be the soloist.  There were gymnastics for both parts.

Next we turned to J S  Bach; Prelude and Fugue from Suite no.5 in C minor.  It was arranged by Laszlo Varga, (1924-2014), a Hungarian-born American cellist.  The effect of the Prelude arrangement was quite romantic.  In the Fugue, the separate entries of the instruments revealed the differing timbres of each individual instrument.

A fast version of the three movements of  ‘Winter’ from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (RV 297, Op.4 no.8) followed, in an arrangement by James Barralet, a British cellist.  Inbal Megiddo played the solo parts in the first two movements; the largo was beautifully rendered.  A student performed the solo in the third movement (allegro) in fine style.  It was exquisitely played, and the performers’ ensemble was splendid.

Elegy was quite different from David Brubeck’s other compositions (assuming this is the famed jazz composer Dave Brubeck) such as the well-known Take Five.  It lived up to its title superbly. Again, Megiddo played the solo rather mournful but beautiful melody.  The music fell away to pianissimo at the end. The players had a lovely blend here.The Gershwin standard ‘Summertime’ from Porgy and Bess kept us in the United States; it was short and sweet, but effective, with Megiddo again playing solo.

Finally, in jazz-land again, we heard The Entertainer, a 1902 classic piano rag written by Scott Joplin (1868-1917).  Again the players revealed their expertise.  Although intonation was no always perfect, the playing was full of contrast, including in an excellent pizzicato passage. A cellist in the audience told me that most of this programme had been performed at this year’s Cellophonia, for cellists; ‘a week of music making and expert coaching from international musicians’ held in late August, at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington.

 

 

 

Some great hits from NZSO’s popular classics concert; a win by a big margin

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich with Andrew Joyce (cello)

Schubert: Symphony No 8 in B minor ‘Unfinished’ 
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme
Gillian whitehead: Turanga-nui (premiere)
Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 September, 7:30 pm

I don’t know what sort of audiences have been showing up at the other ten performances of this concert between Invercargill and Kerikeri, but the thin population in the MFC was a bit of a surprise. There was certainly competition from the rugby on Saturday evening; but there was probably also a more insidious factor: no glamorous overseas soloist; no internationally recognised conductor.

Other inhibitors: a deterrent for the serious musical aficionado was the presence of music likely to be enjoyed by the masses; and at the other extreme, for those with only superficial interest there wasn’t much they might have encountered in film or TV.

The Unfinished
But it was a good try. Schubert symphonies are not much played, compared with Beethoven, Brahms or Mahler; and they should be (a Schubert series from Orchestra Wellington is worth thinking about). McKeich moved elegantly and sensitively through the Eighth, the pianissimi rather exquisite, the interrupting fortissimo interjections a bit too emphatic, but with absorbing attention to its unique spirit. But the end of the first movement arrived too soon; I’m sure Schubert called for a repeat of the exposition.

The second movement hung together very well, with a chance to admire the composer’s orchestral subtleties, especially the winds that now included trombones, with Beethoven’s innovation in his Fifth Symphony 15 years earlier. In all, this was a beautifully evoked account.

The Rococo Variations had a troubled birth, having been subjected to arrogant revision by Tchaikovsky’s professorial colleague at the Moscow Conservatorium, cellist Fitzenhagen.  I didn’t see the relevance of the programme note’s remarks about an arrangement for piano and cello for that was not publicly performed. Furthermore, the notes left it to be assumed that the orchestra used Fitzenhagen’s controversial revised version which has been more played, since its seven sections were named. Andrew Joyce confirmed to me that it was Tchaikovsky’s original, eight-variation version. Among many minor changes, including the deletion of one variation, the main alteration was the Andante sostenuto which Fitzenhagen had moved from its affecting penultimate place to become the third variation in his version.

In fact, reading accounts of its composition and Tchaikovsky’s strenuous objection to the quite major alterations in Fitzenhagen’s unauthorised interference, it is surprising that it took so long for Tchaikovsky’s own version to be first performed, in Moscow in 1941.

The Rococo Variations were inspired by Tchaikovsky’s love of Mozart, and scoring is more limited than the normal scale in the 1870s: just pairs of winds; no trumpets or trombones, no timpani. While the orchestra played with discretion, even distinction, the aural focus was predominantly on cellist Andrew Joyce, who has to be recognised as a cellist of international standing, such was his splendid bravura as well as the extraordinary beauty of tone that he produced. There were moments of dazzling virtuosity, often climbing to the top of the fingerboard, using thumb position and perfect, false harmonics.

The beauty of the orchestral parts were a fine match with the cellist’s playing, and there were no balance problems. It’s fashionable to denigrate the piece as a concerto-manqué, but Tchaikovsky composed exactly what wanted, a homage to Mozart (who never wrote either concerto or sonata for cello), and you can think of it as a half-breed if you like, but it stands convincingly just as Tchaikovsky composed it and I was utterly delighted by the performance.

Joyce’s encore was a tune from the British Sea Songs of the Last night of the Proms. Wasn’t sure I heard correctly: Tom Bowling?

Gillian Whitehead Turanga-nui 
After the interval came Gillian Whitehead’s Turanga-nui which, though the fact was ignored in the programme note, is the third of a ‘Landfall’ commissions by the NZSO that marks Cook’s 1769 arrival (we’re a little previous, obviously, for the 250th anniversary) at Poverty Bay (Turanga-nui-a-kiwa), though oddly, the programme note didn’t mention that. This piece dwelt initially on the arrival half a millennium earlier of another group of strangers.

Much contemporary orchestral music employs a good deal of percussion and this certainly used percussion, but it was never gratuitous, integrated sensitively with conventional stringed and wind instruments. To some extent it was a depiction of landfall, of encounter that turned ugly between human beings with almost no common context, and conflict. Timpani and ethereal strings set the scene but were followed by shrill wind-led agitation; bird-song, flutterings, the dance of the wind. It often astonishes me that the sounds arising in the composer’s head can be translated into actual orchestral sounds, at all. But the feeling created here was of that magic occurring, and that the offerings from marimba and xylophone, trombones and tuba, discreet Maori instruments, flutes and strings, and a particularly evocative bassoon solo, existed just as precisely on paper as in they had in Whitehead’s mind.

The music and its instrumentation quite enchanted me, and I think it enchanted the audience generally. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many a sceptic in the audience didn’t came away with a much greater respect for and pleasure in contemporary New Zealand music than they might have had earlier.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 
The Debussy; it’s the centenary of his death this year, so he’s being played plenty around the world. In fact, a couple of weeks ago a surprisingly effective version of the Le Faune for flute and piano was played by Diedre Irons and Rebecca Steele at a lunchtime concert, and the day after the present concert, NZSO principal flutist, Bridget Douglas, played his famous little solo flute piece, Syrinx at a Wellington Chamber Music concert. This was a good performance, with much careful and evocative playing by woodwinds and harps. It doesn’t play itself by any means, and there were moments when some of Debussy’s still elusive, mythologizing creation slightly missed its potential.

But the last work, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet symphonic poem, to use the appropriate descriptive term, was a splendid, emotion-laden, orchestrally exciting performance. Curiously, even though there was a full complement of winds, the strings were fewer than is typical in late 19th century orchestral music; it made no perceptible difference. There are things about its orchestration, its near-dissonant harmonies, its structure, not to mention its powerfully emotional, musical inspiration that anticipates the future directions of music as did Debussy’s Faun (only 15 years later). And the tragic passion of its last pages, declining to the subtlest gestures from oboes, clarinets and bassoons, proved a wonderful climax and catharsis.

The programme’s construction might have been a bit unusual, but it worked very well in the end and certainly deserved a much bigger crowd.

Interesting and rewarding St Andrew’s recital from students of stringed instruments

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s Lunchtime concert
String students of the New Zealand School of Music

Music by Beethoven, Shostakovich, Gareth Farr and Wang Xhihao

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 22 August, 12:15 pm

This was one of the usual series of concerts at this time of the year by students of Victoria University’s School of Music (I counted eleven players).

Beethoven came first. Cellist Rebecca Warnes, with the school’s piano tutor Catherine Norton. played the first movement of Beethoven’s third cello sonata, in A major, Op 69. It was a model performance, beginning somewhat quietly, intonation was accurate, with carefully etched tone. It demonstrated Rebecca’s understanding of its emotional character and a style that showed appreciation of the taste of its period.

Violinist Leo Liu, again with Norton at the piano, played Beethoven’s Spring Sonata (Op 24). It’s not an easy piece with which to deal in expressive terms; even though suggestive of Spring (not Beethoven’s name for it) it doesn’t flow easily and Liu’s bowing technique needs perhaps a bit more finesse and emotional colouring, though his intonation was very good.

It’s always interesting to meet players prepared to tackle Shostakovich’s quartets, other than the ubiquitous No 8. The third movement of No 9 in E flat lasts only about four minutes (the first four of the five movements are all of about the same length) but it was enough to hear the way the players (Hayden Nickey, Ellen Murfitt. Zephyr Wills and Emily Paterson) engaged with its enigmatic, somewhat disturbed mood. It gave the composer much trouble: he burned his first attempt and started afresh a couple of years later, in 1964. It was an interesting challenge, intellectually, which the four players met very well.

Then came Gareth Farr’s Te Tai-o-Rehua (The Tasman Sea, a co-commission by Chamber Music New Zealand and the Goldner Quartet), again for string quartet (Claudia Tarrant Matthews, Grace Stainthorpe, Grant Baker and Olivia Wilding). It began low with the violin on the G string, inviting the others to join in turn, very soon becoming markedly compulsive (and, I think, compelling, with its irregular, throbbing note on the viola), dwelling on an insistent Maori-flavoured motif, though that is a risky assertion. It is a demanding work, a task that was undertaken conspicuously by perhaps the most experienced players. It took only a short time for the music to take on a vivid and meaningful character: it certainly had something to say, and the players found ways to express it with considerable confidence. It’s about five years old; Farr’s music just gets ever more interesting and impressive. At about 10 minutes, it was the centre-piece of the concert.

However, it was followed by a ‘Fantasy’ by Wang Xhihao, played by Nick Majic (vioin) and Liam Furey (piano). Though he used the microphone to introduce the piece, Majic’s voice didn’t carry. (I have discovered nothing about Xhihao). The opening did not suggest a particularly radical character, though a genuine musical imagination was evident, with distinct melodic integrity that didn’t strive for any special originality. My scribbled notes suggested a feeling of rather relief that the composer was not subjecting me to the task of unravelling unduly complex and difficult music, such as composition students produced 20 or 30 years ago. A second section was a little brisker, perhaps a bit agitated, but still essentially tonal in character.

So this was an agreeable concert that allowed a number of students to demonstrate talents at various levels of maturity, through music of genuine interest.