Tag: chamber music

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!

 

SPACE JUMP – An exhilarating listening leap from NZTrio into firmament-like territories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FAZIL SAY – Space Jump for Piano Trio (2013)
REENA ESMAIL – Piano Trio (2019)
KEITH MOSS – Field Notes in Autumn (2026 – NZ Trio commisssion)
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No 2 in F Major

NZTrio  (He taonga wairere)
Amalia Hall (violin), Matthias Balzat (cello), Somi Kim (piano)
Wellington Central Library – Te Matapihi te Ao Nui
Sunday 23rd August, 2026

Composers over the course of time have often demonstrated a fondness, and, indeed, a facility, for writing descriptive music representing people, animals, objects or events. As early as the Renaissance, there was a penchant for imitating the sounds and movements of wildlife, with voices mimicking birds and animals, as well as human activity involving both warfare and daily life in large cities. Throughout the Baroque and Classical periods composers such as Vivaldi, Biber, Haydn and Couperin enthusiastically wrote music to tell stories or imitate different sound-worlds in nature and in human society. The Romantic period which followed saw the rise of “programme music” and sparked both debate and conflict between the conservative and progressive elements, each advancing the respective merits of “absolute” and “descriptive” music right into the twentieth century, where modernist techniques further advanced and diversified the music that described all kinds of life-forms and mechanised objects, blurring the absolute/descriptive classifications of music.

With this potted history in mind, it was interesting to encounter in this concert a number of  works by contemporary composers that had been inspired by both modernist and traditional trends and conceived from different physical, national and cultural standpoints, and representing a kind of global interest in and acceptance of regional perspectives of the individual pieces and their respective preoccupations. And binding the whole exploratory process of performing and experiencing these different works was one central to the essences of the instrumental medium – Robert Schumann’s iconic Second Piano Trio of 1847, one representing a kind of apex of joyous expression and fulfilment, and to which each of the preceding works in the concert had aspired in their own ways.

The NZTrio boldly began these intriguing presentations with a remarkably tactile work “Space Jump” written by the Turkish composer/pianist Fazil Say, the result of the composer’s fascination with the daredevil exploits of Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian extreme sports pioneer famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space after being lifted by a helium balloon to a height of almost 40 km, before free-falling for most of his descent, and breaking the sound barrier in the process! Fazil Say was among the 8 million viewers who watched the Jump on You Tube, his music depicting every aspect of the jump including the safe landing on earth. (Baumgartner, incidentally, was killed last year in a paragliding accident in Italy – he was 56 years old.)

The music was nothing if not vertiginous in places, though the life-threatening nature of the exercise was, for much of the music’s length masked by the situation’s “suspended unrealities” as the adventurer seemed almost to “float” for a lot of the downward journey in relative solitude and loneliness. However, in places towards the end the hazardous nature of the undertaking became more and more apparent in the music, leaving behind the initial violin ostinati (which had been borne along by the ‘cello’s counterpointing figures and the ambient piano chordings) and plunging into a sudden jazzy piano irruption of energies  –  the driving trajectories of the stuntman’s “fall”!  Violin and piano ”hewed” at syncopations attempting to turn the trajectories different ways, the instrumental swirlings and impassioned tones conveying the out-and-out physicalities of the free-faller holding his course steady. Then, a sudden cessation of trenchant movement was ”filled in” by more settled and lyrical figures, with occasional scintillating “swirls” augmented by piano glistenings, and a couple of strange, discordant harmonies which sounded and then drifted into silence. Whew! – exhausting stuff!

Then came a work by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, her 2019 Piano Trio, sounds which thankfully kept its trajectories a good deal closer to terra firma, though covering vast distances of a different kind. Here, the composer’s music took us to a world of vibrant fusion between Eastern and Western composition, in which European tonal and harmonic systems could interact with her own heritage’s rather more ancient North Indian (Hindustani) traditions. Esmail had studied as a student at the Juilliard and Yale Schools of Music, but then won a scholarship through a Fulbright/Nehru grant to enable her to undertake explorations of Hindustani (north Indian) classical music.

As a student pianist she had become enamoured of the piano trio tradition begun by Josef Haydn and further advanced by figures such as Mendelssohn, Shostakovich and Ravel, the latter having a particular influence upon her penchant for colour and texture in her own music. Thus her own 2019 Piano Trio reflects such early Western music influences as well as drawing from the storehouse of musical tradition found in the complex patterns and pitches organised around the ancient patterns and constructions known as raga, or raags found in traditional Hindustani music.

Straightaway, in the Trio’s opening movement, a shimmering, repeated-note pattern appeared, led by the piano and echoed by the violin and ‘cello, echoing the spirit of Ravel in the evocative piano figurations,  the strings later quoting an ancient Monsoon season raag Megh, violin and ‘cello harmonising the melodic lines, then decorating the piano’s reiteration of the melody,  and building the melody’s intensities in canonic fashion. The second movement opened with the strings repeating single-note and slow-trilled gestures against a beautiful choral-like piano melody, violin and ‘cello exchanging dialogue-like phrases, evocatively “bending” the occasional note in sitar-like fashion, as the piano gently and softly voiced a shimmering accompaniment, incorporating a raag Des (the latter word meaning “country” or “land”). For the listener this sounded like a retold or shared reminiscence or description of a particular place, one whose reiterations brought forth a surge of intensity, a deeply-felt sequence of expressive emotion.

The third, Scherzo-movement was all nervous intensity, the strings’s rapidly-exchanged tremolandi passages dancing to an ostinato  piano accompaniment, then building in excitement, with spectacular piano glissandi shooting across the soundscapes like meteorities, before the trio returns to the opening dance, repeating those electrifying piano glissandi to scintillating effect before the energies died down, brought to a droll conclusion by a single piano note!

Beseeching piano chords and lament-like cries from the strings began the finale, the music seeming to be ensnared in its own trance-like evocations, tremolando strings and rhapsodic arpeggiations from the piano leading to a heartfelt, song-like section with a filigree piano accompaniment – beautiful and almost tragic-sounding! The music became almost Rachmaninov-like, with passionate piano chordings and full-voiced string unisons reaching a point where some great thought, emotion or realisation was uncovered or confronted and squared up to – the mood was savoured and elevated to a point of great release and resolution, so that all that were left were haunting piano chords and ever-diminishing string harmonics, fading away to silence. At the end, the departing tones remained an indelible, lingering memory…….

In the wake of such high-impact presentations, South African-born, Wellington-based Keith Moss’s Field Notes in Autumn provided some welcome relief! – we were charmed to find the composer was actually present, and spoke briefly about his work, a piece which was derived from an earlier work for flugelhorn and piano, one presumably written almost exactly a year previously, if the title was to be taken literally!

A fresh, open piano sound began the work, establishing a “New World” kind of ambience, with the ensuing violin solo (repeated by the ‘cello) richly-wrought and nostalgic. The music’s ongoing, almost supercharged nostalgic quality put me in mind of those English pastoral works by Vaughan Williams and Butterworth in feeling, with, as the composer put it, “explorations of place, people and memory”. I sat listening and thinking how gratifying such music would be for performers, giving back such beauties to their efforts, and enjoying, as here, the appreciative audience response both during and at the end of the piece.

In concluding this delightfully singular foray into piano-trio possibilities this gifted ensemble gave us what surely counted as a cornerstone of the repertoire – Robert Schumann’s Second Piano Trio in F Major, for once a work by this composer whose opening would have kept the listener guessing as to its provenance for a few more bars longer than usual, as so much of his output almost immediately does! Here, in contrast to his G Minor Trio whose opening straightway proclaimed its “time of gloomy moods”, was, in the NZTrio’s hands music of joyous and energetic vigour right from the outset, inspired as Schumann was by his love for Clara, and the feelings her devotion to him awakened. It was actually the tenth anniversary of the couple’s secret engagement, which accounts for the music’s frequent allusions to Clara – the first two movements of the work here quoted the song “in the depths of my heart I keep a radiant image of you” from Schumann’s own song-cycle Liederkreis, and the third movement contains a quote from another song-cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, a work influenced by  Schumann’s courtship of Clara at the time.

A sinuous melody shared between the strings began the second movement, which coursed between this and various impulse-driven episodes – soulful recitative-like exchanges given all the room needed for the players to fill out the phrase-turns, and wistful minor-key asides which surprise with impulsive, spontaneous-sounding irruptions that just as suddenly fall back to treasurable moments of exquisite dovetailing of detail – memorable music-making! The third movement was a piquant waltz, violin and piano in canon with the melody, with the cello a dark-browed accompanist, the three players elaborating their lines in the graceful Trio, then returning to the dance, and nudging the harmonies into and out of the major key during the coda.

Nowhere is Schumann more beguiling in this work than in the finale – energetic, whimsical and good-humoured, the music and its performance readily teased and delighted us, building towards the end to what seemed like a near-euphoric state of elation, enabling us all to share in the effervescent-sounding exclamations of pleasure in the playing.  Small wonder that Clara Schumann’s verdict on the work – “(it) delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end” resonated in our responses at the concert’s conclusion!

 

New Zealand String Quartet bring to us music with “the beauty of loneliness, pain, strength and freedom”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet – Storytellers

Music by Henry Purcell, Anthony Ritchie, Fanny Mendelssohn, Salina Fisher and Benjamin Britten

Prefab Hall, Jessie St., Mt.Cook, Wellington

Wednesday 12th August

Review by Leila Lois, for “Middle C”

We are seated in the glowing wooden wood panelled warehouse structure of Prefab Hall, ensconced down a laneway in Wellington’s Mt.Cook, a full audience for the New Zealand’s String Quartet’s second chapter of their Storytellers tour. The night promises to showcase both classical masterworks and contemporary commissions, each piece to guide and delight through sonic narrative.

The night is introduced by an address from Martin Smith on cello, who reminds us of the fateful words of the classical poster-boy of the series, Benjamin Britten: . He wrote, “It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness, of pain: of strength and freedom.” A perfect epigraph to an evening of music with such a breadth of emotional registers and composition styles.

First up is Chacony in G minor Z.730 by Henry Purcell, (c. 1680) (arranged by Britten in 1947). The piece, as the quartet accentuates, encapsulates the seventeenth century Baroque style of Purcell, with the expressive reimagining of Purcell. The Chacony is a glittering celebration of admiration of one composer for another, alive with playfulness and colour. The repetition and transformation and vibrant way the quartet plays really delights the ears and embraces us with warmth. It is, as Smith tells us, the 50 year anniversary of Britten’s death, and as such a marvellous moment to hear the piece. Various amusing asides are given relating to Britten and his unyielding genius, himself professing that he was “an arrogant and impatient listener” to other masters’ work. These are welcome and uplifting, and remind us of the strength of obsession and devotion in classical music.

The second piece for the evening is New Zealand composer, Anthony Ritchie’s String Quartet No.3, ‘In Time’ Op. 221 (2023). The programme notes describe the work as “a meditation on the passing of time” and exploring “the temporal nature of our existence”. It certainly feels like a journey through the two movements, Perpetual Motion and Last Dance, which have a giddying tarrantism to them, and demonstrate the toil of the quartet’s artistry, as the bow of Peter Clark’s violin loses quite a few strings by the end. It’s mesmerising and rather frenetic, in contrast to the rest of the programme, a necessary tonal shift perhaps.

Next, a too rarely celebrated work by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, forever in her time behind her renowned composer brother’s shadow.

The String Quartet in E flat major, H.277 (1834) is a perfect antidote to the tempo of the previous piece, with a lyrical slow build and an ephemeral scherzo, building into a vivacious finale. It is so refreshing to see these historical female composers at last getting their dues in contemporary bills.

Interval, and then a rare treat from young Kiwi composer, Salina Fisher, who wrote the piece Heal during the internationally fateful year of 2020, when the world was reeling from the shock of COVID-19 lockdowns. It is a hugely tender piece, really resonating in the body through the yearning of the cello and overlapping notes. A gorgeous experience to hear this live in Fisher’s hometown, Wellington.

The final piece for the evening was  Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No. 2, in C major, Op. 36 (1945) which was written as part of the 250th anniversary commemorations of Henry Purcell’s death. The piece truly  reflects Britten’s deep admiration for the composer he adored, and the quartet perform this to a breathtaking degree.

The work was composed after Britten returned from Germany, where he accompanied Yehudi Menuhin in concerts for survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and it bears the mark of deep emotional intensity. The quartet held audiences in rapture with this final piece.

A wonderful meditation on peace and healing (Britten having been famously a pacifist and conscientious objector). This lyrical programme, with some excellent storytelling by the quartet members themselves is surely a highlight of the New Zealand chamber music calendar for this year, an extraordinary tour of timely works, played with nothing but devotion.

 

Beethoven in Kelburn resounding in St. Michael’s beautiful church

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Koru Trio
Rachel Thomson (piano), Anne Loeser (violin) Sally Isaac (‘cello)

BEETHOVEN – Romance No. 2  in F Major Op.50 (arrangement for violin and piano (published; Simrock)
BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio No. 6 in B-flat Major Op. 97 “Archduke”

St.Michael’s Church, St.Michael’s Crescent, Kelburn, Wellington
Saturday 8th August, 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

A chance to revisit the ineffable beauties of the ambience and atmosphere of St. Michael’s Church in Kelburn, a place I’d actually discovered for myself earlier this year as a venue for music-making,  came with the announcement of a concert to be presented by the Koru Trio.

I was somewhat taken aback when I “looked up” the Middle C website to ascertain just when it was I’d last heard this ensemble play, and found the occasion was no less than six years ago at a St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert! – https://middle-c.org/2020/07/koru-trio-giving-the-st-andrewss-audience-its-kohas-worth-and-more/ – what was more, it reviewed performances whose excellences should have been set in stone in my memory, so effusive were the terms with which I’d expressed my pleasure at the playing’s qualities!

As the performers in practically all the concerts I attend obviously bring so much more in terms of skill, involvement and understanding of the music that I do as a mere listener, it’s only fair that I confess on occasions such as these to my failings of proper and lasting “connection” with the music I hear, and especially so when the -performances deserve to be better remembered!

Having gotten that sin of omission “off my chest” as it were, I felt I could revisit with a clear conscience my feelings regarding the efforts of tonight’s performers  It wasn’t a long and involved concert, the fewer-than-usual items arguably allowing our responses ample space for appreciating the content more deeply and thoughtfully, a kind of “quality set against quantity” dynamic which I thought worked to the experience’s advantage.

Tonight’s composer was Ludwig van Beethoven, presented in a more than usually mellow mood with his serenely melodic Op.50 Romance in F Major, here in an arrangement for violin and piano  (published by Simrock) as opposed to the composer’s original version for soloist and orchestra. Both instruments sounded to my ears beautifully voiced in relation to one another – Anne Loeser’s violin sounded rich in her lower registers and silvery at the top, while her partnership with pianist Rachel Thomson was straightaway marked with a sense of “give and take”, the piano’s liquid tones readily finding the points of exchange with the violin in bringing out the veracity of the music’s “Romance” title.  And the performance didn’t hesitate to venture briefly into the music’s darker side as well, though the nuances from both players seemed in agreement in their gradual return to the opening’s serenity, allowing  the ‘whimsy’ that was enjoyed by both in the  concluding  exchanges to surrender to the music’s dying fall with acceptance and grace aplenty.

One of Beethoven’s most famed compositions, the “Archduke” Piano Trio, completed by the composer in 1811 has the somewhat sad distinction of being the last keyboard work Beethoven played in public, due to his ever-increasing deafness which by then was seriously undermining his ability as a performer. Contemporaries such as Louis Spohr and Ignaz Mosecheles have left accounts of their illustrious contemporary’s pitiable state as a pianist by this stage, throwing into greater relief the increasing transcendence of his creative efforts as time went on.

The work got its name from its dedication to one of Beethoven’s most constant supporters and patrons among the aristocracy, the Archduke Rudolf of Austria, who was an amateur pianist and a sometimes pupil of the composer – among the other most famous compositions Beethoven dedicated to Rudolf are the “Emperor” Piano Concerto, the “Hammerklavier” Piano Sonata and the ”Missa Solemnis – it could be said that we have a lot to thank His Imperial and Royal Highness for!

With ‘cellist Sally Isaac having joined the ensemble on the platform, we were ready, the piano obviously chafing at the bit to begin, the strings in waiting, and the audience expectant – what more could be required of a performance to excite with its prospects? Rachel Thomson’s confident and assertive opening invitation drew both her colleagues and her audience into the composer’s world of self-assured statement and ready reply – there was straightaway a kind of eagerness to explore in the exchanges an atmosphere of going places as opposed to any thoughts of self-satisfaction and contentment with a status quo – if it sounded to me just a trifle rushed at first, it conveyed a youthful vigour, which the opening’s repeat was then content to pull back and allow a touch of almost Olympian grandeur, the intent duly expressed and the means and expectations confident.

The development unravelled the opening theme, the players here savouring the individual phrases from the whole, the strings having bowed their different impulses with the piano’s encouragement, then turned to pizzicato phrases, firstly in dialogue and then intertwining their lines and dancing with the piano’s equally playful responses. The return of the reconstituted theme gave the cello a chance to sing before the piano led the ensemble daintily through a dancing world, the strings following canonically behind up to the cello’s thematic variation that always sounds to me so much like the opening of one of the Rasumovsky Quartets (No.7) – even if NOT in that work’s key of F major! Here it all sounded so joyous, with a magnificently-voiced return of the great opening theme, before the players grandly and decorously delivered the final chords.

The scherzo delighted with its “question-and-answer” opening, the players’ enjoyment of the exchanges palpable, as Sally Isaac’s ‘cello teased a concerted response from Anne Loeser’s violin, whose instrument then repaid the gesture in kind, and with Rachel Thomson’a piano delivering a “wait-for-me” catch-up repetition of the melody, bolstered  by string pizzicato and augmented by an extension of the opening phrase which the players drew out and varied in turns with ease and fluency. After this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed opening, how mysterious and “inner world-like” seemed the Trio’s first utterances, the instruments “musing” among themselves in chromatic, canonic-like meanderings whose sequences then occasionally thrust their tones upwards from the miasmal mists with “Eureka-like” exclamations from all of the players together worthy of Archimedes of antique legend!!
These diverting irruptions completed, we were returned to the Scherzo’s sprightly dance as before. A brief revisitation of the chromatic musing sequences at the end produced no further “Eurekas” but a vigorously conclusive instrumental  “Amen!”.

The heart of the work – and this performance – was the slow movement, whose every note seemed like a meditative commentary regarding human existence and its potentialities, which state of things Beethoven saw and felt despite his infirmities, and was able to realise in his music, increasingly so as time passed. Begun by the piano a hymn-like melody arched gracefully  forwards and upwards as the strings joined in, echoing both “sections” of the melody introduced by the piano. Then followed the most exquisite set of variations in various guises and combinations, the composer’s invention seeming to take wing, whether meditative or playful, solemn or skitterish, every sequence calling to mind a mood or character whose source springs from the same life-force, and casting a spell over the music-making.

It was one which a sudden, abrupt interruption swept away in what seemed like the twinkle of a cosmic eye, an impulse that straightaway set all existence dancing with nary a backward glance, an effervescent gushing of energies in which we found ourselves caught up and relishing! The jauntily-paced rhythms developed real schwung in places with fanfare-like flourishes tossed between the instruments, before a reprise of the dancing tune restored some order, exuding as much charm and  gaiety as before – when just as whimsically, a mischievous will-o’-the-wisp spirit set our sensibilities on a madcap, near-vertiginous dance which left us tingling with feelings of joy and good humour. What a delightful experience! – an intoxicating combination of music, venue and presentation, special and treasurable!

 

 

 

 

Classics and commemoratives from the splendid Aroha Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents the Aroha String Quartet

The Aroha Quartet: Eli Vincent (viola), Konstanze Artmann (violin), Haihong Liu (leader), Robert Ibell (‘cello)  – photo, Wellington Chamber Music

HAYDN – String Quartet Op. 64 No,6
BARBER – String Quartet Op.11
ROSS CAREY – Toccatina (Elegy – 2010)
BEETHOVEN – String Quartet No. 10 “Harp” Op.74

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday 2nd August

This was a beautiful and revelatory concert from the Aroha String Quartet,as near to a “something for everybody” presentation as one might reasonably wish for!

First of all, there was a String Quartet by Josef Haydn, as delightfully self-explanatory and satisfying as any work from the string quartet repertoire could be to as wide a range of tastes as might be imagined. Following this we heard a work by American composer Samuel Barber, his single most well-known piece of music, popularly known as Barber’s Adagio for Strings, but here brought to us in its original context as part of a three-movement string quartet.

After the interval the focus was shifted to some “closer to home” music, not as indigenous in origin as might have been possible, but whose human interest connection resonated sufficiently for us to register its proximity and relevance to our part of the world.   This was music by Lower-Hutt-born Ross Carey, written in 2010 to commemorate the death of Ruby Hunter (1955-2010), the indigenous Australian singer-songwriter, Carey having been inspired by what he considered as “the profound personal struggles and triumphs of the dedicatee”, one of Australia’s “Stolen Generation” who was taken from her birth family and placed in foster care from the age of eight. She became the first indigenous Australian woman to record and release a solo rock album. Carey in his  work Toccatina – Elegy wanted to reflect something of that eventful journey.

A different and no less eventful kind of life-journey was that of the composer of the concert’s concluding work, Ludwig van Beethoven, whose String Quartet No.10 in E-flat Major, Op.74.has long become identified with its nickname, “The Harp” (given not by the composer, incidentally, but by a publisher!), and earning the sobriquet through its opening movement’s passages of plucked arpeggiated notes .Beethoven dedicated this work to the Archduke Rudolf, one of his most loyal supporters in Vienna. Written against the background of battles in and all around Vienna between the Austrian and French armies, the quartet was able to be premiered towards the end of 1809 after the French had left!

So to the music and its performance – and, to begin, we heard the last of Haydn’s six Quartets Op, 64, in E-flat , a group dedicated to Johann Tost, a virtuoso violinist of the composer’s acquaintance. What a glorious E-flat opening of the work we enjoyed! – with the refulgent warmth of the tones spreading through the ambient spaces of St.Andrew’s, a combination of elegance and playfulness with the sonorous opening set against those filigree impulses of playfulness. The development was treated as a kind of “fantasia” on the opening, before the second violinist presided over a kind of “triologue” between the other three players, a delightful sequence of conversational exchanges, each with a personable kind of opinionated quality, and seeming to come to concerted agreement before returning to the opening – the revisitations added enrichments and feelings of increased satisfaction to the exchanges in their sense of a shared, and obviously relished experience. The slow movement had its own surprise in store – after a serenely lullabic, beautifully “arching-over” melodic opening, the  music\.s central section abruptly changes, depicting what the programme note calls a ”tantrum” from the first violinist (terrific playing from Haihong Liu, here!) – one wonders how “personal” an utterance this episode depicted, as the composer’s marriage was reputedly not a happy one! On the other hand, its volatility could be nothing more than an instance of “gypsy-like” character Haydn had frequent recourse to in his music.

I adored the Menuet’s performance – here, lively and somewhat pesante in character, with the aristocracy depicted as “kicking up its heels” in places, stepping outside the traditionally “courtly” nature of such interactions. The Trio is a gentler “landler” which employs occasional glissandi figurations – a mannerism deemed too “vulgar” by nineteenth-century editors, “smoothing out” the scoops in the lines, but here restored, giving the music an engaging folkish character! And what a joy was the finale! – real “Keystone Cops” stuff which a later composer given also to such headlong dashings, Dmitri Shostakovich, would have relished all the more had he been a violinist!  The whirling, almost vertiginous figurations enacted a stop/start manner whose theatricality added to the pleasures of the entertainment, complete with teasing tempo variants towards the end, and capped off with a furious presto finish that had us on the edges of our seats for the final flourish.

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings has long been the American equivalent of Elgar’s “Nimrod”, taken from the latter’s “Enigma Variations”, music whose strands in both cases readily conjure up a sense of shared emotion involving either commemoration or loss on the part of a whole nation and in many cases across boundaries. Both pieces are parts of larger works, in Barber’s case a string quartet Op.11 from 1936, one whose second movement Adagio the composer quickly made into an arrangement for string orchestra, one which has virtually gone around the world, leaving the remainder of the hapless parent work languishing in the wings of largely unheralded appreciation!

Now was our chance to hear the actual “source” from which the work was drawn. It was the first time I had heard the string quartet version of the work, and, in fact, my first experience of the complete quartet! Barber was content with completing three movements, the familiar Adagio here flanked by an opening  “molto allegro e appassionato” movement, and a concluding “molto allegro (come prima)” sequence, He began work on the piece in 1935 while living in Austria with his partner, Gian Carlo Menotti, intending to have the work finished for performance by the Curtis Quartet – however, the finale gave Barber a good deal of trouble, and after the first, delayed, performance of the work, Berber rewrote the movement several times, eventually settling for a kind of reprise of the beginning movement, music of spiky textures featuring colourful contrasts of mood, much shorter than the two movements preceeding it.

The first movement  opened intensely and passionately – music that seemed in a hurry to take us somewhere. A dramatic pause introduced a more lyrical second theme, refreshingly open and song-like, until the tempo was impulsively switched back to the opening urgencies, though retreating again for a gorgeous violin solo, prompting the ensemble to take up the lyrical lines, the cello enjoying a moment of rapturous expression as well – the players then remembered their allegiances to the opening urgencies once again, but couldn’t resist the nostalgic beauties of the more lyrical sequences, which they returned to most affectingly – the music seemed to want to have its cake and eat it too, reminding the players of the music’s need for further fervent gesturings before enigmatically concluding the movement with a few abruptly dismissive shrugs.

The Adagio which followed needed no detailed description, except that its long lines of expression engulfed our  sensibilities in a timeless world, seemingly endless “stretches of sound” which created their own breathing-patterns and impulses, out of normal time, and reminiscent of something like an ancient chant drawing inexhaustible energies from some kind of life-force, and prompting those listening to attune their own biorhythms accordingly – the viola in the ensemble held what seemed like a central note, while the surrounding instruments both stratospherically and metamorphically harmonised to mesmerising effect.  in the midst of the silences that followed, the heartfelt epilogue brought violin and viola together to sound the opening theme’s concluding voice – a superb, deeply affecting performance!

Was a finale necessary after such an utterance? I think so – some kind of “closure” was actually welcomed after the rawness of the Adagio’s conclusion, and the sense of continuation from the first movement brought us back to a world from which we had escaped, and perhaps needed to be re-reminded of, however enriched by the revelations of the Adagio’s other-worldliness. The famous stand-alone Adagio wasn’t at all diminished by its quartet companions, but its impact was sharpened and  made more  multi-dimensional in its original context.

The interval’s breathing-space prepared us for something different, a work whose composer was present in the audience! This was New Zealand-born Ross Carey’s work Toccatina (Elegy), though its subject was more Trans-Tasman than home-grown, and was written while Carey was in Australia. The composer talked with us briefly about the work’s subject-matter before we got down to grips with the actual music – here in three sections, the first an energetically restless “perpetuum mobile” with the lower strings providing rock-steady “hocket” accompaniment to the violins’ soaring and swooping overhead lines, the first violin at first taking the lead with some heart-stopping stratospheric lines, but increasingly joined by the second violin, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in counterpoint!  In the second section the ‘cello took the lead with a poignant-sounding repeatedly descending figure (lovely voicings from the ‘cello!), supported by a tapestried networking of triplet-like lines from the other instruments, handing over to the violin in places, with the figurations from both instruments seeming to dance to their own music in places….before we knew what was happening the first movement’s ostinato-like movement had crept back, this time with more resolve in the music’s sights, the rhythms giving way gradually to what became increasingly self-affirming statements of quiet fruition at the end – in its way, profound and moving.

And so we reached the concert’s last item – I remember the distinctive first-movement concluding “motif” of Beethoven’s “Harp” string quartet being used as the theme of a televised programme series about famous works of art, long before I started getting to know the quartets properly. Having been television-less now for nigh-on forty years, the aural spaces that were created in my life by such a blessed liberation left room for music of all kinds, and inevitably brought those remarkable works swimming into my ken – so that the reappearance of the aforementioned motif, with its genesis long since identified, continued to give special pleasure!

So it was, naturally, that the Aroha’s voyage through this quartet’s opening, truly venturesome movement enabled me to enjoy that sense of returning from afar all over again, though of course the intermittent journeyings between the aural milestones were as rewarding in their own way, and especially in this intensely committed performance – the opening poco adagio took us into a world of wonderment with those occasional sforzandi chordings reminding us not to tarry overmuch amid incidental beauties, but to keep our intents and purposes on the journey! With the allegro came those delicately-placed pizzicati notes which earned the quartet the sobriquet of “Harp”, along with amazing will-o-the-wisp figurations whose vertiginous quality (here, brilliantly executed) whirled through our sensibilities up to the moment of my “great works of art” revisitation passage, forever fresh and nostalgic at one and the same time! The work’s middle section varied between amazingly “busy’ variants of  the movement’s first allegro subject, and rapid-fire pizzicato exchanges, taking us on a whirlwind kind of ride to the recapitulation, in which all the movement’s elements returned in “same-but-different” guises, and an extended kind of “coda” which managed to integrate those same elements in a spirited confrontation-like summation AND re-echo my “motif” of  cherished memory!

The programme note mentioned the second movement’s ”tender love aria” description, which the performance straightaway brought out, possibly a reflection of an “amour” of the composer’s, though one which perhaps didn’t work as planned due to the near-despair of the minor key mood that suddenly clouded the music, and the almost palpable “hesitancy” which takes over the exchanges! The violin determinedly took the initiative, supported by the cello, before the mood darkened once again (and with the violin dropping into a register that resembled a viola or even a ’cello while its violin partner took the higher ground! Again the instruments mused between hope and despair, though one sensed as much a feeling of resignation in the softly-whispered concluding chords.

What a startling difference wrought by the vigorously-propelled Scherzo, here! Bitingly-precise ensembled attack depicted a fierce kind of exultation, the playing part exhilarating, part fearsome in its physicality, quite overwhelming in its impact, its four-note repetitive phrase modelled on the opening of the Fifth Symphony, premiered just a few months before. The “Trio” sections didn’t let up, but whirled like dervishes around and about chant-like figures, ostensibly used by the composer as counterpoint exercises for his pupils. The scherzo’s “third-time round” was then delivered in increasingly whispered tones, coming to an unresolved halt, and allowing the first strains of the finale to sound from the exhausted silences – an engagingly repeated three-note Allegretto theme!

The first of the variations on this theme, a dancing, canonic celebration of gaiety providing further welcome relief from the scherzo’s punishingly relentless drive. was led by the ‘cello, as was the following graceful triplet variation. Then came a contrasting running variant of the theme, followed variously by a slower, wistful sequence, a sprightlier violin-led dance, and a chugging ’cello triplet accompaniment a cross-rhythmed song – this grew in intensity and pace until it changed to an allegro stretto with all the instruments excitingly in unison, and racing towards the work’s end, finishing, somewhat disconcertingly, on two soft chords!

What a finish, and what a performance, as evidenced by warm appreciation from all parts of the auditorium!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music of celebration and of mourning, from the Aroha String Quartet International Music Academy

Posted on by Peter Mechen

AROHA STRING QUARTET – International Music Academy Tutors Concert

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) – Tango Ballet (1956) – arrangement for string quartet by Jose Bragato
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) – Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings (1945)
– arrangement for 7 solo strings by Rudolf Leopold (1996)

Members of the Aroha String Quartet International Music Academy Tutors –
Haihong Liu, Donald Armstrong (violins) / Eli Vincent, Konstanze Artmann (violas)
Robert Ibell, David Chickering (‘cellos) / Oleksandr Gunchenko (double-bass)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington – Lunchtime Concert
Wednesday, 15th July, 2026

The Aroha String Quartet’s International Music Academy meets every year in Wellington for six days of intensive music-making, involving workshops, coaching and rehearsals, an event organised and run by the Quartet members themselves and the Academy Administrator Cathie McCallum. This year close to forty non-professional string players from around New Zealand and Australia were brought together for workshops, coaching and rehearsals, which result in various concerts involving the players and the guest tutors, and featuring works for both chamber and orchestral forces.

One of these concerts, featuring firstly the Aroha Quartet players themselves, and then in partnership with several of the Academy’s tutor-musicians brought a large lunchtime-concert audience to St.Andrews’ for what promised to be a special event – we were given repertoire out of the usual “run” of things for a string quartet – a “Tango Ballet” by the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla (written originally for his own ensemble, the  “Octeto Buenos Aires” in 1955 – a string quartet version of this work was made by Jose Bragato, the composer’s regular “collaborator”), and then followed by a work from Richard Strauss written in 1945, originally for seven players but then recast as the “Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings” version we normally hear (this performance was of a 1996 reconstruction of the “original” by Rudolf Leopold).

Consequently, it was very much a concert of two halves, beginning with the Piazzolla work which delighted on all fronts from the outset –  Piazzolla’s “Tango Ballet” sought to “expand” the traditional associations of the dance into various adaptations of mood and situation, using a narrative not dissimilar in technique to George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris”, namely, a series of impressions of city life (in Piazzolla’s music’s case, Buenos Aires, of course!).  The work’s introduction features the solo violin vertically effervescing with energy, the accompanying strings at first taciturn in response, but then rolling into a swinging rhythm, the impulses sufficiently and enticingly “held back” by way of suggesting greater excitements to come…..the following “The Street” gets the rhythms walking with ever-growing excitement, the upper strings dancing over the cello’s ever-jaunty strides and eventually rushing up and down in a ferment of exhilaration, which then unexpectedly quivers to a halt, as if transfixed by a sight, a feeling, a happening – what could it be?…

The score bears the title “Encounter”, suggesting a meeting, bringing bewilderment, perhaps bashfulness, or beguilement, an awkwardly romantic moment (Eli Vincent’s viola here contributes a wonderfully-played and smokily suggestive moment of discombobulation towards the end) – when suddenly the music breaks into the mood with “Cabaret” , with the rhythms bouncing all around and about, the energies having an almost animalistic “impulse without thought”, but which then drain disconcertingly to a near-silence. It’s the work’s most profound moment, and one which the composer’s favoured instrument, the bandoneon is almost certainly suggested in this movement’s introspectiveness, as befits its title of “Solitude”. The music drifts downwards, the lower strings’ despairing tones icily accompanied by violin tremolandi, the latter then taking up a heart-wrenching melody, very harmonically “free’ and played with heartfelt focus by Haihong Liu.

And so, life goes on, as the music returns to the mood of the opening, heralding the concluding “galop” with lots of fanfare-like gesturings, and bringing the work to a close with a few flavoursome “tough” harmonies leaping off the bowstrings and into the excited resonances of the conclusion.

One couldn’t have asked for a more contrasted ambience than from the work by Richard Strauss which followed – this was a piece given here by seven string players which the composer had first sketched out in response to a commission from the famous Swiss conductor Paul Sacher in 1944. The conductor had wanted a work for string orchestra, so the sketch was amplified to a work for 23 solo strings, and given the name “Metamorphosen” by the composer, inspired by the writings of Johann Wolfgand von Goethe whose ideas had expressed, over a century beforehand a metamorphosis of living things through constant transformation and renewal.

By this time the ageing German composer had become sickened by the war’s gradual destruction of so many hallowed locations throughout Germany and Austria which he had held sacred as representative of Germany’s art and culture. He was to write in his diary, after finishing “Metamorphosen” in May 1945,  “The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve-year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany’s 2,000 years of cultural evolution met its doom” . Though the despair Strauss felt at the loss of so many cherished symbols of his country’s art and culture was palpable, his choice of a title for the piece seemed, however subconsciously (and at that time remotely), a gesture akin to planting a Goethe-like seed of renewal in the face of such destruction.

In fact Strauss’s fellow-composer Gustav Mahler had similarly expressed in his own music many years before something of the same dark despair in the concluding pages of the latter’s Sixth Symphony – and, of course, both composers were to emerge from their separate “dark nights of the soul” and go on to compose subsequent works of searing beauty, Mahler with his “Das Lied von der Erde” and his Ninth Symphony, and Strauss with his equally glorious “Four Last Songs”.

The themes Strauss crafted for “Metamorphosen” are partly his own and partly those of his idol Beethoven, directly evoking memories of the latter’s “Funeral March” from the “Eroica” Symphony. In this performance of the composer’s original septet version (reconstructed by Rudolf Leopold in 1996) the themes inevitably stand out more clearly than in the full, 23-instrument version, though the ambiences are inevitably different, and in some ways more intense for listeners, who are perhaps encouraged to “move more closely” to a smaller group, rather than settle back and revel in the lusher, fuller sound of the bigger ensemble.

I had not heard this “chamber version” before, and, not unexpectedly, found it revelatory, in as much as that “moving closer” sensation brought upon by greater intimacy with the sounds, enabled the music to “strike home” even  more tellingly (ironic though it might seem when one thinks of the sonic impact of a large group of strings!), Of course there have been many great recorded performances of the work in its “full strings” version – and I also recall a superb performance from as distant a time as 2010 from the NZSO strings with Pietari Inkinen here in Wellington, all but the ‘cellos standing, and everybody playing their hearts out!

With the Aroha Quartet players and three others whose names are indelibly associated with the NZSO, Donald Armstrong (violin), David Chickering (‘cello) and Oleksandr Gunchenko (double bass), there was no question regarding the brilliance, fluency and commitment of the playing of these musicians in this work, which was thrilling! What I came to realise, shortly after the work began, was the extent to which this music quickly overflowed its expressive parameters as I listened, transcending its composer’s original intention of commemorating the destruction of a culture at a specific time and in a specific place, and prompting – no, in fact, URGING me to bring to mind the world’s present-day happenings of destruction and desecration of whole peoples and their cultures by forces whose originators and proponents one might well accuse in turn of “bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture” and as our own era’s “greatest criminals”! Strauss himself might have been obsessed with his own personalised despairings via this work, but his brilliant stroke of introducing motifs from the music of one of the world’s most oft-acknowledged sympathisers towards and spokespersons for mankind in general, here completely and utterly transcended any boundaries of time, place and circumstance relating to the original 1945 work.

Certain concerts take it upon themselves to be enshrined in the memory, especially those whose performances are enabled by the players to speak with an eloquence that transcends the ordinary –  sometimes even to the point where the music-making reminds us, however uncomfortably, that we live in a world in which “Humankind cannot bear very much reality”…….this concert took me into the sobering, on-going  realities of those words and the resultant sufferings of people, then and now, and everywhere…..

 

Elouan Quartet and Bridget Douglas – stellar performance and partnership

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music  2026 presents:

ELOUAN QUARTET with BRIDGET DOUGLAS (flute)

AMY BEACH _Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet
SALINA FISHER – Mata-Au (2021)
ARTHUR FOOTE –  A Night Piece for Flute and String Quartet (1918)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – String Quartet in B-flat major Op. 18 No. 6
ALBERTO GINASTERA – Impresiones de la Puna for Flute and Strings (1934)

Elouan Quartet: Jessica Oddie (leader), Anna Van Der Zee (violin), Alexander MacFarlane (viola), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 12th July, 2026

I’d not heard the Elouan String Quartet play together before (and they were formed in 2024, so goodness knows where I had been!) However, I was familiar with three of the quartet members in different performing contexts, violinists Jessica Oddie, and Anna van der Zee, and ‘cellist Ken Ichinose, all of whom I’d thought were exceptional in what I’d heard them play. And though the name of the violist, Alexander MacFarlane, was new to me, his presence in such august company couldn’t, I reasoned, help but be self-recommending even before I heard a note of his playing! Furthermore, the concert was graced by the presence of Bridget Douglas, principal flutist with the NZSO, and a much-loved favourite of Wellington audiences. Adding to the mix was a programme whose composer-names were in most cases more familiar to me that was their actual music, so on various counts I felt the concert promised to be something of a treat.

Of course, the “something old/something new” kind of presentation invariably works well with audiences, though the “something old” can by dint of sheer force of personality make just as much of an impact upon audience sensibilities in a well-wrought performance as a newly-encountered work. Having said that I’m aware that the music of this afternoon’s first composer hasn’t exactly been entirely neglected of late in the city’s concert and recital programmes. American-born Amy Cheney Beach achieved fame both as a performer and a composer during her lifetime (1867-1944) – she was the first American woman to have a full-scale symphony (her 1896 “Gaelic” Symphony)  performed (by the Boston Symphony Orchesra) and published – and she was also the soloist at the 1900 premiere of her own Piano Concerto, with the same orchestra. Altogether she composed more than 300 works, including chamber music, choral works, songs both with orchestra and piano, and solo piano pieces.

After her death Beach’s music suffered a decline for several decades, but interest in her creative achievements has gradually renewed, as has recognition of her pioneering efforts on behalf of both American music and women composers. A comment by one of her contemporaries after the first performance of her “Gaelic” Symphony suggested the ambivalence women composers had and would continue for a while to face on the part of the “establishment”, with fellow American composer George Chadwick congratulating Beach on her efforts, by way of  welcoming her (the only woman) into membership of the New England composer-group, known as the “Boston Six”, proclaiming her as  “one of the boys”.

Wellington has recently head this same “Gaelic” Symphony given by our City Orchestra – see review at https://middle-c.org/2026/06/a-world-encircling-winter-solstice-concert-compendium-from-the-wellington-city-orchestra/ : and another memorable concert in the region took place at Waikanae in 2023, featuring the New Zealand String Quartet of that time, playing Beach’s 1907 Piano Quintet, and joined by pianist Diedre Irons giving what seemed like an “in the manner born” performance of the piano part – here’s another review at https://middle-c.org/2023/10/the-new-zealand-string-quartet-discusses-emperors-dictators-and-husbands-at-waikanae/

Another chamber piece by Amy Beach was featured in today’s concert, “Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet”  a work from 1916 and one of three presented today featuring a partnership between solo flute and string quartet. Here, the music demonstrated Amy Beach’s desire to reflect a kind of  “American” quality in her music, something very much an “issue” in Beach’s lifetime, and which led to discussion and argument which at times became acrimonious. This was the question regarding exactly what was “American” in music – was it from native American Indian sources, Afro-American cultures or from “the great majority” of American peoples who were neither American Indian nor Afro-American, but had vastly different cultural heritages brought from various other parts of the world?  The discussion had originally been sparked by none other than Antonin Dvorak, at that time resident in the United States during his directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvorak famously stated that proper “American” music should embrace the diversities of the country’s multicultural elements, such as with what the composer called “indigenous” folk tunes, and sought to present a kind of “demonstration” of this influence in his well-known  “New World” Symphony.

Of course, this review has nothing like the space needed to convey the various arguments and counter-arguments in full, but they brought to the fore issues of class, race and ethnicity in ways that still resonate today – see further commentaries in the following article – https://classical-scene.com/2025/05/24/a-tale-of-two-cities/  Amy Beach was theoretically on the side of the “great majority” influences, the various heritages brought to the United States by the new settlers – in her own compositions she chose to highlight her own Anglo-Celtic folk-tunes, and particularly in her “Gaelic” Symphony. It’s ironic that the principal theme of this work, derived from one of Beach’s own songs, is one with the title “An Indian Lullaby”, though the melody is entirely Beach’s own.

The strings alone began the work, the theme, wistful and melancholy, the lines having an almost silken contrapuntal aspect with their intermingling, before allowing the flute to enter with elaborations that decoratively “clothe” the original theme, the players again observing the minor-to-major key change towards the end which the theme had incorporated. The next variation has an insoucient tripping trajectory into which the strings invite the flute to join, having tested the contrapuntal waters and found them agreeable – though the ensuing waltz promised a darker, more sinister kind of experience, chromatic harmonic shifts adding to the music’s effable, ineffable mystery, and making a gorgeously seductive sound under  these players’ fingers…..the fourth variation seems like a shadowy kind of entr’acte, as mysterious in its culmination as its entrance. Then followed a gorgeously passionate outpouring of tones from the ‘cello introducing the fifth variation, taken over by the flute, long-breathed and languorous, before the theme was generously shared by the instruments in turn, a true confluence of ensembled sound-personalities!. A gloriously rhapsodic flute solo later, the ‘cello began an impish fugue, which proceeded with ingenious distractions, such as a classic watchmaker’s “winding down” to the fugue’s strains  – a quick, scampering reprise of the same by the cellist and violist brought everybody back to a rerise of the work’s opening, and whose final notes I can still imagine somewhere continuing to echo….

Salina Fisher’s String Trio Mata-Au followed (the name of the Clutha River in Te Reo. meaning “to meet again”). I can’t do better than quote the composer’s own note in the programme, describing just what I heard….”The water dances and swirls as it connects places and people – It flows and gushes with forward momentum and anticipation…” I heard what I imagined to be a bubbling spring-like infusion of liquid energy, with strongly-projected harmonic colours, often in “seconds” intervals, and volatile in rhythmic character, the instruments taking single-line “turns” before moving inexorably into transcendent realms, the sounds lifted upwards, with the solo cello having the last word. I wish Douglas Lilburn could have heard this work, as it seemed to me to explore those rhythmic realms, both spontaneously gestural and longer-term trajectorial that he spoke about composers here “finding” as a genuine “language” of our own……

A near-contemporary of Amy Beach (and a fellow-member of the aforementioned “Boston Six”) was Arthur Foote (1853-1937) born in Salem, Massachusetts. He had a couple of “firsts” to add distinction to his career as a composer, teacher and organist – he was the first prominent American-born composer to be entirely trained in the U.S. and the first to receive an American university’s Masters degree in music. In his day he was a well-known figure in music circles – like Amy Beach he had orchestral works premiered by the Boston Symphony, in his case suites, serenades and a cello concerto, There was also chamber music, choral works and numerous piano pieces, with one critic characterising  Foote’s output as belonging to “the cult of restrained in art”, and citing his “A Night Piece for Flute and String Quartet” as representative of a creative culture running parallel to more “unrestrained” expressions of creativity.

This piece attained popularity in a later version for flute and string orchestra, but here we heard the original and more introspective chamber version. Beginning wistfully and romantically, the music is often likened to Faure’s – nothing is excessive, with passionate moments for the solo flute in constant balance with more subdued passages, in the manner of a rhapsodic fantasy-piece. All of the instruments were here allowed to speak with characteristic voices, and “realise” the composer’s beautifully-crafted evocations.

“Anchoring” this enterprising concert was a presentation by the Elouan players of the last of Beethoven’s Op.18 Quartets, No, 6 in B-flat Major, my favourite from the set. Beginning with an irresistibly “bouncy” Allegro con brio, the players packed the trajectories with momentums that picked us up by our ears and took us places, replete with phrasings which questioned as well as answered, and relied as much on contrast as flowing discourse. The development section was an absorbing, slightly “off the path” series of ear-catching modulations whose exchanges delighted us with their “made up on the spot” character, with dialogues that never faltered, and at the end, double-duetted their way to a recapitulation that chose a “same but different” homeward path, as sharp-etched here in places as it was convivial. The slow movement, part heartfelt song-like, part-processional at the beginning, took us through a series of exquisitely-voiced major/minor key sequences which kept us guessing in places as to what the music would do next!

As for the whirlwind Scherzo, we were deliciously bewitched, and bothered, if not entirely bewildered by the composer’s utter delight in syncopation (“an explosion of rhythmic eccentricity” was how one commentator described it)  and which the players  threw off without seemingly turning a hair, all to our pleasurable delight! Not only this but the Trio was despatched in similarly split-second fashion, the whole giving us surgings of near-breathless exhilaration. Came the famously “ghostly” introduction to the  finale, with its Haydnesque opening bars and its gradual agglomerations of “La Malinconia”, here darkly, ambiently and (as the composer wished) delicately coloured by the players as the music seemed to take us still further into those seemingly malignant, almost Shakespearean realms – before Beethoven suddenly whipped off the mask of dread and brought to the fore a charming 3/8 Allegretto (quasi Allegro!) dance!  We were in due course returned, suddenly, to the opening, which again inclined towards darker regions, but alternated between this and the dance, and afterwards returned to a slower, more dreamy statement of the dance theme, before Jessica Oddie’s violin led the “up-and-at’-em” charge of a few barnstorming bars towards the finish! What a journey!

We then reconnected with Bridget Douglas for the concert’s final item, Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera’s  Impresiones de la Puna for Flute and Strings (1934). Reckoned to be Latin America’s foremost composer after the death of Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos in 1959,  Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) began his composing career as a nationalist, using folk and popular elements in his music. One of his earliest compositions was “Impressions of the Puna” (the name refers to the bleak rocky wasteland high in the northern Andes, the heart of the old Inca empire). In three movements, the first, Quena, refers to the cane flute, an instrument developed by Inca civilisation and used for solo improvisation and song accompaniments – here, the performance brought out the music’s “solitary player” aspect, a melancholy song with harmonic support from the strings. Hardly less melancholy, though with livelier trajectories, was the second piece, Canción (song), not surprisingly referring to lost love, the music comparatively restrained and lyrical at first, before gathering momentum towards the end with a steady, dotted string-rhythm. The third and final Danza refreshed our sensibilities with something different – strongly pulsating pizzicato rhythms accompanying a flute-and-violin dialogue, interrupted by recitative-like utterances from flute and strings before returning to the dance, and concluding with concerted flourishes from all the instruments together. A minor work, perhaps, but great fun to play and to listen to, and allowing us the pleasure of returning to our homes afterwards with smiles and warm hearts.

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!”

Music that unfurls the Colours of Karori’s splendid Futuna Chapel

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

“Something old, something new…”  – the Elementi Trio at Futuna Chapel, July 2026Monica Verburg, Nicholas Hancox and Pepe Becker

ELEMENTI TRIO –
Monica Verburg – flute, alto flute
Nicholas Hancox – viola
Pepe Becker – soprano, thumb piano (mbira)

Futuna Chapel, Karori, Wellington
Sunday, 5th July 2026

Sitting in Futuna Chapel, in Karori, on a recent Sunday afternoon, listening to a concert of music given by a trio of extremely talented performers (flutist, violist and soprano vocalist), I found myself thinking at various stages of the concert about the sheer beauty of the sounds being brought forth by these musicians. I’m sure that, given the singular beauty of the venue’s overall atmosphere, ambience and amalgam of design and colour, I was allowing those qualities to infuse the music’s impact beyond the realms of a simple auditory response and into a kind of totality of experience that transcended “normal” listening. Be that as it may, the effect of these different factors conspired to produce a level of enjoyment of this concert’s music-making that has stayed with me right up to this moment.

Interestingly, the very first item of the concert seemed to me as much a “test run” by the performers, almost a “getting the pitch of the hall” kind of run-through with an audience present for the musicians to be able to sound out things like the balances between the instruments and the voice, and the degree to which the sounds “come back” from the peopled ambient spaces. I did find this first item (Thomas Morley’s madrigal “Arise, get up, my dear” a trifle chaotic in its full-blooded amalgam of sounds – and yet the music is actually about incidental chaos, being Morley’s musical description of the hustle and bustle of a new bride’s wedding day. More spacious and wide-ranging was Pepe Becker’s singing of Hildegarde of Bingen’s “O Euchari” which followed, the singer enabling her voice to “ring down the ages” from Hildegard’s time, with Nicholas Hancox’s viola steadily recreating the age-old drone accompaniment. A third item completed an opening “triumvirate” of the concert’s range and scope, featuring a home-grown work, Pepe Becker’s own setting of a sixteenth-century poem “T’amo mia vita” (I love you, my life) by Giovanni Battista Guarini, originally written for three voices and mbira “thumb piano” but here recast by Becker for soprano, viola and mbira – the latter is an African instrument and was played here by Becker herself, its sound creating a kind of timeless, tonally transcendent “voice”. The words of the poem have a universality which here seemed to fit the composer’s revised setting as much as it must have her all-vocal original!

We heard three more of Pepe Becker’s by turns playful, declamatory and darkly visionary pieces placed separately throughout the concert, the delightful “Two Tui” a work for flute premiered by Bridget Douglas in 2010, and essayed here most viscerally by Monica Verburg, the music based on two separate calls associated with different places in Wellington, and brought together as a kind of dialogue, with a petulant dismissive squawk of one bird at the other’s expense at the end! Becker’s more expansive, almost ritualistic piece, “Scorpio II – From the far point of the Rising Sun” featured her soprano voice enacting a kind of ritual exchange with the solo flute. Long, sonorous lines alternating with stately roulade-like flourishes before the dialogues become intricate and earnest (though no words were provided – I presumed the singer’s phrases were in Latin), the lines occasionally mirroring one another before concluding the piece with some brief mirror-image shared phrasings. Most suggestive for me was her darkly resonant tribute to Sagittarius, a setting of William Blake’s “The Tyger” a work Becker dedicated to her father, along with her “many Sagittarius friends” – something of a “Do not go gentle into that good night” work of darkness and angst, the sombre tone set by Nicholas Hancox’s opening viola chord, though the trio fetched up more incisive and trenchant tones for the poem’s “fearful symmetries” (it was a work composed for this concert, in fact!).

Bringing her own creative talents to this cornucopian assemblage was flutist Monica Verburg, who contributed no less than two recently-completed pieces for premiering at this concert, the first one a heartwarming and environmentally topical work titled “To the Hills” (Ki ngā puke), being inspired by a recent campaign of conservation of Otago’s Dunstan Mountains. Verburg drew our attention to the piece’s influences, a certain “Celtic flavour” in accord with early European settlement of this area, and which the trio of musicians made much of in performance throughout the piece’s three sections, The other recent work of Verburg’s was  “In the Slipstream” a delight for the ear in its interplay between two instruments, flute and viola (the flutist often swapping between flute and alto flute in her performances, which variation, to my shame, I seem to have neglected to draw any attention to in my notes – mea culpa!) Here, the two instrumental  lines  imitated, shadowed and mimicked one another constantly, with (I thought) occasionally bluesy inflections spicing the sounds ever so slightly, as the music, by turns teased and blended its two strands before drifting into a pensive ending.

Monica Verburg was as well responsible in full or in part for four other items, two of them original works and two arrangements, the first original work “Turn Your Eyes”, originally composed in 2024 for soprano and alto recorder, and then rewritten for soprano, flute and viola – the words were based on the text from Proverbs 4:25 “Let your eyes look straight ahead….” Though the combination of tones made it impossible for me to decipher any of the actual text, the sounds in tandem, though brief, were themselves glorious! We then heard a song “Ocean Breeze” (aha! – in my notes is a mention of the ALTO flute!) – here, Pepe Becker’s soprano and Monica Verburg’s instrument were wistful companions at the song’s opening, one whose melody readily caught the ear in balladic fashion! The two arrangements made by Verburg were for larger-scale forces as one might have expected in her grand setting of Giovanni Gabrieli’s “Jubilate Deo” with its splendidly ceremonial trappings, not to mention the fulsomeness of the text – “Shout joyfully to God, all of the earth!” – what attention-grabbing gesturings (suggesting, of course, antiphonal voices) and declamatory utterances, complete with brief, wistful occasional minor-key harmonic turns, just for variety! Great stuff!

Before I mention in conclusion the concert’s final item (Verburg’s second “arrangement”) I need to recap with still more “gems” which came up in passing  – one was non-vocal, Jack Body’s “Aeolian Harp”, here most evocatively realised by Nicholas Hancox’s viola, capturing the piece’s extraordinary and irresistible frisson of intensities gleaned from nature’s random impulses. Then there were three medieval “pop” numbers from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the earliest of which was Guillaume de Machaut’s “Douce Dame Jolie”  (Sweet. Lovely lady)  – performed here with the viola as the drone instrument and the flute as a companion for the voice – what an uncanny sense of time and place, here, with music making its way to us centuries later! Of the two other later works, one (“Quel fronte signorille” (That noble brow) by Guillaume Dufay) had a similar “courtly love” sentiment no less resonant and focused than de Machaut’s, while the other (a motet “Quam pulchra es” by John Dunstable) was by contrast an unashamedly erotic setting of words from the Biblical “Song of Songs”, its performance here suggesting a parallel musical “enchantment by beauty”.

By the time we reached the programme’s final item everything seemed suffused with a spirit of complete capitulation towards the music and its making, one suitably enhanced by Monica Verburg’s inspired arrangement of this concluding music. Flute and viola began the “thistledown on the wind” introduction, the former extempore and the latter holding a firm foundation line. The scene having been set, the voice then entered with the famous melody “Hine e Hine”, one written famously by Princess Te Rangi Pai (the stage-name of Fanny Rose Poata – b.1868 d.1916), composed in or around 1907. It felt like a kind of “homecoming”, one returning to something deeper than the present, and with enveloping tendrils of belonging, easier to “feel” than to explain. But in tandem with the glories of the venue in which we had enjoyed these sounds it “rounded off” for me (and for others I spoke to at the time) a most agreeable afternoon’s music-listening!

Papaioea Piano Trio offers exotic out-of-town flavourings for St.Andrew’s lunchtime fare

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Papaioea Trio – Elizabeth Patchett (violin), Guy Donaldson (piano), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – Piano Trio No.45 in E-flat Major Hob.XV;29
PYOTR  TCHAIKOVSKY (arr. Alexander Goedicke) Six pieces from “The Seasons” Op.37a
ELENA KATZ-CHERNIN – Calliope Dreaming (2009)

The Papaioea Trio
Elizabeth Patchett (violin), Robert Ibell (‘cello), Guy Donaldson (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday Ist July 2026

For those Wellingtonians and others who may not know, the name Papaioea refers to a particular location in the city of Palmerston North – in fact I grew up there being told that it was a Maori name for the city’s once-beautiful but now sadly-besmirched Square, situated right in the centre of things. Translated, the name was popularly rendered as  “How beautiful it is”, and I was given to understand at first that it was the name for a clearing in the original bush which had covered the area. Later, my understanding of the situation’s history had evolved to relocating the name Papaioea as a description of a lagoon-like lake in the Hokowhitu area of the city, a long way from the actual Square, and that same name bringing with it colourful and even sightly macabre associations with warlike activities of the local Rangitane people. Whatever the actuality of the case – and who can resist a good story?! – the name itself obviously resounded sufficiently in its own right to be considered an appropriate title for a trio of Palmerston North-associated musicians, who have thereupon proudly called themselves “The Papaioea Trio”.

Hearing that this ensemble was Wellington-bound I eagerly took myself to St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace on the appointed day for what promised to be yet another from a series of remarkable lunchtime concerts whose quality has reaped musical riches and fostered agreeable companionship for countless people. And given that the venue is regularly used by local music groups for their own prestigious concert series (often involving fully professional musicians), there’s obviously no diminution in the quality of the sonics enjoyed by these lunchtime performers.

Of the three musicians who made up the Trio, I’d most frequently heard ‘cellist Robert Ibell as a member variously of the NZSO and of the Aroha String Quartet. While I had encountered Guy Donaldson as a collaborative pianist on several occasions I’d had as much experience of him as a conductor while I played for a few precious and enjoyable  seasons some years ago in the Manawatu Sinfonia. And, as well, I can recall hearing violinist Elizabeth Patchett on a number of occasions as a member of the vibrant Nevine String Quartet. Buoyed by such previous encounters I was greatly looking forward to the group’s coming together, and to the delights of the proposed programme.

While Haydn was perhaps an obvious choice in this repertoire I’d long since been converted to the inexhaustible pleasures given by the composer’s inventiveness in this music, every moment warmly relished by the Trio in this performance – though commentators tend to emphasise the dominance of the piano in these works, there was plenty of stimulating interaction in evidence today, as witness the violin and ‘cello counterpoints to the piano’s lines, often in Svengali-like hide-and-seek guises colouring the mood in the first movement’s development. After this one couldn’t help feeling the recapitulation had an almost Beechamesque amalgam of “regret and safisfaction” evident in the playing, with those determinedly characterful variants in the themes – but the subsequent Beethoven-like plunge into “other realms” leading to the coda was especially evocative and delightful.

The Andante opened for us a different harmonic world, almost Schumannesque in its whimsy – again the players deftly fashioned whole orbits out of simple gesturings, sudden dynamic contrasts, marvellously deep pedal points  and, after a couple of “expect the unexpected” modulations, fresh-as-daisies returnings to the sunshine, with the trajectories of the finale’s entry whirling our spirits aloft, with stimulating touches of trenchant phrasing vying with delicacies of impish delight! A minor-key development sequence again pre-echoed Haydn’s pupil Beethoven with great gusto, all three instruments  bending their backs to the task as the music vaulted all around and over the vistas, the composer seemingly enjoying the improvisatory-like helter-skelter before returning us to recognisable harmonic territories via a coda whose exhilarating upward rush lifted our spirits skyward at the end.

Having enjoyed various of Tchaikovsky’s pieces for solo piano, written for each separate month of the year, I was intrigued to learn of the existence of a version of the work arranged for Piano Trio by a later Russian composer, Alexander Goedicke (born, incidentally AFTER Tchaikovsky had written his original solo pieces!) – I found myself wondering while listening to these beautiful arrangements why it was that Tchaikovsky hadn’t used the Piano Trio format himself for this absolutely charming music as presented here – I soon discovered that the composer actually had a strong early dislike for the trio combination, telling his patroness, Nadezhda Von Meck, that it had “no tonal blend” as the instruments were “incompatible”; and yet when his friend Nikolai Rubinstein died the following year in 1881 his tribute to his late friend was a spectacularly-wrought Piano Trio! (As well, of course, he had already tried his hand at the combination with the celebrated “piano trio” section of his Second Piano Concerto, written the year before! – curiouser and curiouser!)

Still. all of this seemed beside the point at the time of listening – the Papaioea Trio presented six of Goedicke’s arrangements, publishing for our edification a translation of the poetic epigraphs that had accompanied the original solo piano versions. The opening April Snowdrop was a bitter-sweet waltz earnestly expressing a longing for the spring, while the June Barcarolle, a well-known melody, brought out the string players’ different characteristics, with Elizabeth Pachett’s violin’s phrasings precise and contained, compared with Robert Ibell’s ‘cello’s, more flowing and expansive gestures, and with pianist Guy Donaldson the fulcrum around which the different personalities interacted, making for ear-catching results! The October Autumn song was a more melancholy affair, violin and ‘cello by turns quietly expressive and eloquent, while the pianist made every note resonate with purpose in a beautiful solo reprise, echoed by the strings in both imitation and descant, and in a way which compelled us to await every turn of phrase with warm expectation.

The November Troika, a favourite recital item of pianist Sergei Rachmaninov’s, gave us the piece’s heart-warming melody at the start, at first simply, then flowing more expansively and descriptively, followed by a central section brimful with mischief and gaiety, and combining song and dance as the fun and laughter faded into the distance. The December Christmas sequence was a suave waltz, more Viennese drawing-room than Russian, though with moments of longing, almost aching rubato in between the Tempo I dance sequences. For the final February Carnival, all the festive stops were pulled out for the opening with not a moment’s gaiety wasted! – a rather more quixotic middle section could have depicted some kind of party game, one which spilled back over and into the return of the opening music – at the end, after a brief moment of reflection, of inwardness, the Carnival itself delivered the final “Come on!” gesture.  I remember wondering at that point how I would feel about going back to the solo piano version for a listen after such an enjoyable ensembled musical experience!

The programme’s final item was new to me ,and probably to most other people in the hall – its composer, Elena Katz-Chernin  was Uzbekistan-born (1957) and Moscow-educated, but, when still a teenager emigrated to Australia, continuing her musical studies at the Sydney Conservatorium. After her graduation, she moved to Germany for further study before returning to Australia in 1994, since then pursuing an active and successful composing career.  Her 2009 piece presented today, Calliope Dreaming, was written as part of a D2H (dedicated to Haydn) festival marking the latter’s death bicentenary – she was one of eighteen composers worldwide commissioned to write a work for the festival, and which was accordingly premiered that same year in Eisenstadt, Austria, by the Haydn Esterhazy Trio.

The concert’s informative programme notes told us some of the story – Katz-Chernin was inspired by a biographical detail concerning Haydn’s own reported wish that the slow movement of his own Symphony No. 44 (“Trauer”) be played at his funeral, though she was compelled by the symphony’s overall beauty to draw from other parts of the work as well when composing her own tribute. And, in a kind of Haydnesque way, she conceived the idea of giving the piece more of an “upbeat” than a mournful flavour, by writing the music as if it were to be played by a Calliope, a keyboard instrument constructed to activate the sounds of steam whistles! (truly, how more Haydnesque could you get?) – the fact that Calliope was also one of the Nine Muses in Greek mythology, whose credentials included  being “the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence, and the mother of Orpheus” to boot seemed naturally to somewhat mitigate the “circus” aspect of the actual instrument and give the “Haydn connection” irrefutable status.

After we in situ listeners-to-be had digested these delightfully incontrovertible vagaries of detail (admittedly with a few added afterthoughts!), the Trio plunged into “Calliope Dreaming”, Katz-Chernin’s wondrous caprice-fantasy upon themes by a composer given himself to such occasional flights of fancy! – the “dreaming” aspect of the title was given ample notice by what the composer called “calmer moments” amid the more “edgy rhythmic material”, though, as  Katz-Chernin herself acknowledged, the end result of her own fantasisings seemed “more in line with the finale of the symphony”. Which was fair enough, as it was HER piece, really, and not actually Haydn’s!

The end result was invigorating, the sleeve note suggesting for listeners an experience similar to that of “a rapidly-moving steam train”, with moments of calm, but also with singing lines in places soaring over the motoric rhythms. I confess that, as an out-and-out train-buff, the “ride” was for me something of an escapist joy! – though of course every listener would have had their own story to tell, after the “exhilarating downhill ride” of the concluding sequence of “Calliope Dreaming” had brought us all home!

Perhaps a local composer – from anywhere along the way! – might enlist the services of these engaging musicians to be the flagbearers of a work celebrating our own present “Capital Connection” rail-link between Papaioea  (Palmerston North) and  Pōneke (Wellington). It would be by way of strengthening and properly institutionalising what has been a somewhat haphazard recent history of a much-loved and -needed connection for people – one  showing the way between the two cities!  Having already set “Calliope Dreaming” in motion, the Papaioea Trio has demonstrated it can truly go places!