Tag: chamber music

A memorable concert from the Aroha Quartet: exciting Ligeti and a Beethoven masterpiece

Posted on by Steven Sedley

‘Metamorphoses’
Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Konstanze Artmann – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello)

Mozart: String Quartet No. 17 in B flat K 548 ‘Hunt’
Ligeti: String Quartet No. 1 ‘Metamorphoses Nocturnes’
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 13 in B flat Op. 130

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Tuesday 7 May 2019, 7:30 pm

With concerts by two string quartets, the New Zealand String Quartet and the Aroha Quartet within two days, the Brodsky quartet on the 20th and the Kiwa quartet on the 26th of May seems like a festival of string quartets. With so much music, it is the works that challenge that makes these concerts memorable.

The Aroha Quartet played Mozart and Beethoven, beautiful but familiar music, but it was György Ligeti’s First Quartet that stood out and made one think. The piece was written in 1953/54. Ligeti was 30 years old. He had survived the war in which he served in a Jewish labour service unit, while both his brother and father died in concentration camps. In the years after the war he studied with renowned teachers at the Budapest Music Academy, Kadosa, Veress, and in particular, Kodaly. He was making a name for himself as a composer of choral pieces and settings of folk songs. His early works were often an extension of the musical language of Bartók. But some of his pieces could not be played under the Communist regime of Hungary: too difficult, too cerebral. His First String Quartet was not performed until he fled Hungary in 1956 and settled in Vienna. He called the piece Metamorphoses; it is a transfiguration, the changes of a four note theme, G, A, G sharp, A sharp over a chromatic bass played by the cello into a series of variations like distinct segments. These segments include vigorous rhythmic sections, peasant dances with heavy stomping of boots, passages that recall Bartók’s night music, gentle, melodic, surreal There are huge dynamic contrasts, barbaric dance themes, humour, sarcasm, buzzing mosquito passages. At the end the piece returns to the four notes it started with. It is an exciting work and we should be grateful to the Aroha Quartet for introducing it to us.

Beethoven’s Quartet No. 13 in B flat is a colossal piece in six movements. It encompasses a whole world of emotions, from the noble opening Adagio followed by an energetic contrasting section, then to the simple children’s playground theme of the rollicking Presto in which voices taunt each other, there is humour, there is the courtly dance of the Andante, the jolly rhythm of the Alla danza tedesca, and ultimately the quartet culminates in the haunting Cavatina that brought tears to Beethoven’s and probably many listeners’ eyes, which is finally resolved in a light-hearted Finale. The great architecture of this work is assembled from simple, at times naïve parts. The Aroha Quartet played it with passion, with beautiful tone and meticulous clear phrasing.

The concert opened with Mozart’s ‘Hunt’ Quartet, one of the half dozen he dedicated to Haydn. Although it shares the key with the Beethoven work, it comes from a different world. Written in 1784, it reflects the last years of the ancien régime, a perceived stability in which all was orderly. It is a beautiful work and The Aroha Quartet captured its spirit.

This was a memorable concert and the Aroha Quartet are one of the great musical assets of our city.

 

 

New Zealand String Quartet produce joyousness and profundity for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music
New Zealand String Quartet

Beethoven: String Quartet in A Op. 18 No 5
Jack Body: Bai sanxian (2009)
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 10 in A flat  
Brahms: String Quartet in A minor Op. 51

St. Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 5 May, 3 pm

A concert by the NZ String Quartet is always an event to look forward to. This is the quartet’s 32nd season, and over the years they have gained an international reputation. In this concert they covered a broad period of the musical development of the string quartet.

In 1798 Beethoven was a budding piano virtuoso, who had moved to Vienna and was gradually making a name for himself as a composer. He lived in the shadow Haydn. Like Haydn, he published his first set of quartets, Op. 18, as a set of a half dozen. No. 5, in A major, is playful, with a touch of humour and Haydn-like surprises, a graceful dance movement and an extended set of variations that explore the potential of a simple theme. This piece received an energetic sparkling reading, but for this listener at least, some of the charm, the light touch was missing.

Jack Body’s Bai sanxian was something entirely different. The music of Asian cultures is a recurring theme of Jack Body’s work. He deliberately and provocatively stepped outside the main stream of Western music. This short piece comes from a collection of transcriptions and arrangements of music from some of the Chinese minority nationalities of Yunnan province in South-West China. The string quartet imitates the Chinese traditional instruments, the first violin and cello plucking their instruments while the second violin and the viola carry the melodic line. The music challenges the listener to explore unfamiliar musical traditions, to listen carefully and perhaps ask questions about the universal nature of music.

Shostakovich is a controversial composer. William Walton described him as the ‘greatest composer of the 20th century’, while Pierre Boulez dismissed him as ‘the second or even third pressing of Mahler’. There is certainly a special Shostakovich sound and a Shostakovich perception of what music is about. He is the Holy Fool, who witnesses all the terrible as well as all the joyous things around him. The overall character of the 10th String Quartet is dark, in some places sinister and fearful. It opens with a four note motive played by the solo violin, then the other instruments join in one at a time. An unanswered question hangs over the movement. This is followed by a furious second movement played fortissimo. At one moment the viola and plays on the bridge of her instrument to create the effect of a sinister Mephistophelean laughter. The Adagio is a mournful passacaglia that gradually turns darker. The final movement breaks away from the mournful character of the earlier movements and is jaunty and carefree at the beginning, but then returns to the melancholic air of the whole piece. Life was tough in Shostakovich’s Russia, but he implies that there is light amidst the gloom, life must carry on.

The final work in the programme was Brahms’s Second String Quartet, Op. 51, No. 2. Beethoven’s colossal final quartets weighed heavily on Brahms. How could one write a string quartet that could follow up these works. He had a number of attempts at writing a string quartet and destroyed all of these, until at the age of 40 he published, after numerous revisions, two works with which he was satisfied. Brahms worked in the idiom he inherited and used the language of German folk music, but he deconstructed these haunting themes, broke them up, turned them into deep, meaningful conversations between the four instruments. There is light and joyousness in the second movement and grace in the third, Minuetto, but Brahms never abandons himself to a rollicking good time. In the last movement he revisits the Hungarian czardas that provided many happy themes for his music, but notwithstanding all the jollity, the music is subdued. This was a profound performance.

It was a very satisfying afternoon of music, enjoyed by a large and knowledgeable audience. The quartet’s many years of playing together was reflected in their seamless, smooth playing. May they keep this up for many more years and enrich Wellington’s musical life.

 

Brass septet produces haunting and enjoyable chamber music at the MFC

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Septura Brass Septet: An American in Paris
(Chamber Music New Zealand)

Ravel: Ma mére l’Oye (Mother Goose)
Debussy: Preludes
Gershwin: Three Piano Preludes; Songbook; An American in Paris

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday 30 April, 7:30 pm, 2019

Three trumpets, three trombones, one a bass trombone, and a tuba is not the usual combination for a chamber music concert, but seven principal brass players of London Symphony orchestras got together to demonstrate that brass is capable of producing chamber music. Horns, such an integral part of the brass section of an orchestra, were missing. They might have added a mellower sound to the ensemble, but obviously this was not what these players had in mind. Simon Cox and Matthew Knight, the two artistic directors of the group arranged the music for them. Their guiding principle was that the music should sound as if it was originally written for brass.

The audience was challenged to leave their preconceived ideas of what the music should sound like at the door and listen with fresh ears. The pieces in this programme are well known and familiar, but played by a brass ensemble they all sounded new.

Ravel and Gershwin knew each other and held each other in high esteem; they were both influenced by Debussy. It was this relationship that was the theme that held these works together.

The Mother Goose Suite, arranged from the piano duet rather than the orchestral version sounded colourful. It had a depth that cannot be attained on the piano. The special effects were enhanced by the innovate use of mutes. The beautiful rich sound of the brass was specially effective in the chorale sounding last movement, The Fairy Garden.

The Debussy Preludes for solo piano are lovely miniatures and played by the brass they attained a different, richer sound. The rich brass chords, the underlying bass of the trombones and tuba underscored the well-known melody of the Girl with the flaxen hair played on the trumpet. The trombones produced the humorous sound effects appropriate for the Minstrels. The Sunken Cathedral had beautiful bell like sounds produced with layer upon layer of brass sound. This was a different Debussy.

The second half of the programme was devoted to the music of Gershwin, arrangement of the Three Piano Preludes, short little pieces from the Songbook and the major work, An  American in Paris. Gershwin created a colourful world of his own which encapsulated the jazz age, the frivolity of the 1920s, and these pieces sounded particularly appropriate for a brass ensemble. It was an era after the First World War in which people believed that life was short, people had to make the most of it, live it up, seek happiness in gaiety, but underlying it all there was a touch of melancholy. This was captured by the joyful yet sensitive performance.

Britain has a great tradition of brass music, but this concert was a world away from the usual sound of brass bands. This group had a flexibility that tested the limits of the players’ ability and together they produced a sonority seldom heard. They shed new light on familiar music; one came away from the concert with the haunting sound of beautiful brass playing. It was a concert with a difference, but very enjoyable.

 

Youthful and visionary Schubert from Helene Pohl and Jian Liu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

Helene Pohl (violin) and Jian Liu (piano)

SCHUBERT – Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Minor D.408
Fantasie in C Major for Violin and Piano D.934

Adam Concert Room,
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 29 March 2019

Within a fortnight of the NZ String Quartet’s inspirational presentation at the NZ School of Music’s Adam Concert Room of two major works from the string quartet repertoire, we were, at another lunchtime concert, able to enjoy for a second time, on this occasion, the artistry of one of the Quartet’s players – the group’s leader, Helene Pohl, performing in tandem with the much-acclaimed Jian Liu, who’s currently the Head of Piano Studies at the School. Of course, the NZSQ has been the quartet-in-residence at the School of Music in Wellington since 1991 – so we’ve lately been relishing the fruits of some of the performing talents among the School’s remarkable line-up of current tutors.

The programme chosen by this concert’s performers captured something I thought both rare and vital – consisting of two works for violin and piano by Franz Schubert (1797-1828), it managed to highlight aspects of the best of both the youthful and mature composer’s efforts, beginning with a Sonata in G Minor D.408, which, along with two other works, was written between March 1816 and August 1817. The three weren’t published until 1836, eight years after the composer’s death, and were styled as “Sonatinas”, despite Schubert’s autograph scores referring to them as “Sonatas”.

They’re works which have been largely regarded as “apprentice” efforts by posterity, as the diminutive “Sonatina” title implies, coming down to us with judgements such as “(they) breathe an intimate atmosphere, requiring no virtuoso bravura from their performers”, and “these are violin sonatas of the older, Mozartian type, with the violin playing a subordinate role to that of the pianoforte”. However, in Pohl’s and Liu’s hands, the G Minor work came across as rather more interesting than either of those descriptions might have suggested.

Nothing like an angular unison to grab the attention at the start! – the piano made something poetic from the utterance, the violin then continuing the line, the music’s mood almost naively changing to one of cheerful insouciance, Pohl’s violin somewhat garrulously “running” with the piano’s strolling gait before Liu deliciously “leaned” into a more march-like sequence, inspiring a wayfarer’s song-like response from the violin.

A minor-key lament by the violin began the central development, but the mood seemed delightfully ambivalent as major, then minor sequences unceremoniously pushed one another out of the way throughout, the invention here sharply-etched and tautly-woven by both players. What gave the discourse increased strength and gravitas was the decision by the musicians to play all the repeats, with the resulting amalgam of absorbing reinforcement and variation that such a course enables – even at this stage of proceedings I thought it considerably enhanced the work’s potential for depth of feeling and detailing, and especially when delivered with such committed focus as here.

A sweet, beguiling melody on the violin, gorgeous in effect, opened the slow movement, the piano answering with a chirpier phrase, which was then reinforced by deeper, viola-like tones from the stringed instrument, husky and characterful. I loved the touches of “misterioso” in the development, freely modulating, and here being “breathed” so enthrallingly by the duo. With the repeat came the recapitulation’s “second’ return, here brought sweetly to mind by the players like an old friend or fond memory.

Despite the players’ advocacy the Menuetto did seem “lighter” in content, though the lovely, flowing Trio subject made for a heart-warming contrast to the somewhat rumbustious opening – certainly the repeats helped give the music greater substance, however illusionary! The finale brought a touch of flowing minor-key melody before vigorously “majoring” – Pohl and Liu “went with” the music’s changeable character so sharply and directly, veering from the Schubertian to the Mozartean in a trice, and back again (Schubert’s homage to the “tried and true”, perhaps….)

The development was a brief call-to-arms, more for show than with any “action” in mind, and the recapitulation brought the silveriest of tones from Pohl’s violin – so enchanting! Again the repeats seemed to bolster the music’s confidence in itself, so that we were freshly amazed by Schubert’s invention rather than inclined to relegate the music to “also-ran” status. Helped by Pohl’s and Liu’s intensities the music on this occasion was made to punch well above its normal weight, for our excitement and satisfaction.

Having plunged with her pianist straight into the earlier work at the concert’s beginning, Pohl then “introduced” the second half’ for us. Fascinatingly, she talked about the Sonata we’d just heard in relation to the great Fantasie in C Major (about to be played), reflecting for us on the “change” in Schubert’s music over the duration between the two, and offering some thoughts on these differences.

I thought her mentioning, firstly, the influence of Beethoven’s music, and then the effects of Schubert’s worsening health at this time, made for telling ideas to ponder – I hadn’t considered as strongly her third “factor’ which she outlined just as convincingly – the rise in instrumental virtuosity at this time, led by the example of  violinist Nicolo Paganini, said to be in league with the forces of darkness(!).

Schubert wrote the Fantasie, his last work for violin and piano, in December 1827, for one Josef Slavik, whom the composer described at some stage as ‘a second Paganini” and accordingly produced a work bristling with virtuoso difficulties, as much, it ought to be said, for the pianist as for the violinist. After the work’s premiere, in Vienna in January 1828, a critic reported that the work did not widely please as was hoped: – “The Fantasie occupied rather too much of the time a Viennese is prepared to devote to the pleasures of the mind. The hall emptied gradually, and the writer confesses that he too is unable to say anything about the conclusion of this piece.”

Nowadays, the Fantasie is regarded as a masterwork, bold in its conception, brilliant in its execution and heartfelt in its emotional content. What obviously confused the Viennese was the work’s length and its out-of-the-ordinary structure – it’s basically a bringing-together of contrasted episodes around a Schubert song with a number of variations – the song is Schubert’s popular setting of Friedrich Rückert’s Sei mir gegrüsst! (‘I greet you!’). Violinist and pianist played a measure of the song for us, after which Pohl briefly outlined for us the structure of the complete work – and then we were off!

The piano began, with tremolandi that gurgled and bubbled as an oscillating sea of sensations, above which the solo violin soared sweetly and surely, the piano momentarily dancing before resuming its tremulous inclinations. A brief but intense violin cadenza-like flourish (not as clean as the player might have wished, on this occasion, but the poise never faltered), and Pohl and Liu began a delightfully-inflected Hungarian-like dance sequence in canonic form, the music varying its delivery after  several measures, becoming trenchant in places and releasing surges of exhilarating”heart-in-mouth” energy – the momentary strains placed on each player by what seemed like fiendishly insistent figurations merely added to the excitement and tension of the performance, the return of the dance bringing momentary relief before the music’s elemental surgings again took charge, great lurches of emphasis engendered by the writing and met with full-blooded involvement from both instruments. Gradually the piano led the way towards the music’s elevated central sequences, a brief and resonant pause leading to the opening strains of the song Sei mir gegrüsst! 

First piano and then violin gave their voices entirely to song, Liu investing his two augmented sections of the melody with tremendous, almost orchestral, weight and emphasis, contrasting with the violin’s sweetness when it returned each time. A first variation was polonaise-like in rhythm, engagingly chunky, and almost rough-hewn, rather than suave and well-tempered, while a second produced cascading piano notes and string pizzicati, both instruments varying their figurations with impromptu-like flourishes, the violin reverting to arco for each measure’s concluding phrase!

A third variation seemed even more hair-raising, the violinist rushing excitingly through her vertiginous fingerwork, and the pianist’s fingers maniacally dancing atop the instrument’s keys. Pohl and Liu seemed to play all the music’s repeats in this work as well, further intensifying and enriching the range and potential delights of the territories, and creating an ethos of magnificent, give-it-all-you’ve-got playing! Variation Four seemed then to turn the music on its heels and point it back towards the way it had begun, firstly the piano and then the violin arching the music gently but surely away from the song’s A-flat major and back towards the opening C Major.

This time the piano tremolandi colluded with the violin’s ever-intensifying, unwardly-pushing lines towards what I’ve always thought of as an orgasmic release-point, a massively-affirming dance of life, carrying the music’s continually-burgeoning energies towards a near nirvana of fulfilment with the ecstatic return of Sei mir gegrüsst! (again, exquisitely silvery violin tones joining in with the piano’s pearl-like purity). It could have been left there by the composer – but having “bought into” the realm of virtuoso excitement, the music, almost instinctively, seemed to unleash the “coiled spring” of pent-up virtuosity allied to musical brilliance, a concluding cataclysm of joyous-sounding energies completing the triumph! What a work and what a performance!

Janacek and Beethoven String Quartets from the amazing NZSQ at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

The New Zealand String Quartet
JANÁČEK– String Quartet No. 1
BEETHOVEN – String Quartet No.16 Op.135
NATALIE HUNT – Data Entry Groove (2014)

New Zealand String Quartet –

Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins)
Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Adam Concert Room,
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Victoria University of Wellington
Friday, 15 March 2019

(Reviewer’s note: I’ve deliberately left off publishing this review until now to allow a week or so’s worth of air and space to blow into and around things concerned with the horrific events that took place in Christchurch on the same day of the concert. It’s a small gesture set against happenings in a vast and unpredictable world, but I’d nevertheless like to dedicate these words to those whose lives were so tragically ended by what took place in those Christchurch mosques that day, and to all those people who responded, both immediately and over the days that followed, to the needs of fellow-New Zealanders of all persuasions with kindness and understanding that helped restore some hope and faith in a future whose bright dream had been suddenly darkened……)

Monday 25th March 2019

It all seemed too good to be true – here we were at a FREE CONCERT at the Adam Concert Room up at the University, about to be enthralled by the country’s most prestigious string quartet in two major works from the genre’s repertoire, one from the nineteenth and the other from the twentieth century, plus an additional piece from someone who’s proving to be a most interesting member of a stimulating “new  wave” of young New Zealand composers – as close to a “something for everybody” scenario as one could perhaps get at an hour-long concert by a single group!

Beginning the concert was the first of two string quartets by Moravian composer Leoš Janáček, one bearing the sub-title “Kreutzer Sonata”. In a letter, written by the composer to a much younger married woman, Kamilla Stösslová, whom Janáček regarded as his “muse”, writing her over 700 letters, he revealed his music’s purpose: “What I had in mind was the suffering of a woman, beaten and tortured to death, about whom the Russian author Tolstoy writes in his Kreutzer Sonata”. Of course, Tolstoy (who ironically didn’t much care for music!) used the title of one of Beethoven’s most famous chamber works to intensify his story’s emotional “charge”, that of a woman in a loveless marriage caught up in the passions of the music when playing the work with a handsome violinist, and as a result being beaten to death by her jealous husband.

Violist Gillian Ansell nicely anatomised the music’s terrain beforehand, introducing musical examples played by the group that resembled incredibly burgeoning slices of raw emotion. It was obvious straightway how the group possessed the temperament, confidence and technical skill to be able to enter wholly into this tortured world, one marked by the composer’s penchant for extremes of both expression and technical address, and with the players aware of how such music worked best via a suitably no-holds-barred approach.

Here the ensemble infused these extremities and razor-sharp contrasts with the utmost concentration, making it all sound as if each member was “living” the frenzied outbursts and tortured trajectories of the music’s narrative – as one commentator’s description succinctly puts it, expressed in writing that’s “less melody than compelling, emotionally-charged talking”. Like Mussorgsky before him in Russia, so Janáček wished to catch the realism of his countrymen’s speech patterns in his writing with all their angularities and astringencies, and, in this context heightened by extremes of feeling.

The second movement’s sharp contrasts between the dancelike motifs and the searing coruscations of emotion here simply conflagrated the textures, having a simultaneous “stunning” and “drawing-in” effect on the listener, the playing remarkable in its candid impact. By contrast, the third movement began with a melancholic duet-like passage from first violin and ‘cello (a quotation from Beethoven’s work, used to highlight the “illicit” rapport between the two players in the story), nastily punctuated on a number of occasions with scintillating shards of sound, here all remarkably coherent in an overall expressive sense while disturbing in their own realm of impulsiveness. Still, the performers had, one sensed at all times, a “grip” on the overall design that allowed the stridencies free rein to shock and unnerve without straying from the whole.

A brooding calm hovered over the finale’s opening, the lyricism heart-rending and bleak-sounding (shades of Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony)! until the viola began pulling the violins along agitated stretches of territory, the music building and sharpening its tensions as an incredibly intense dotted rhythm sequence piled “Pelion upon Ossa” in its anger, fright and menace – the “moment of murder” then suddenly seemed to dissolve the music’s substance, leaving little more than crumpled, exhausted shadows – so very enigmatic! – and here, so heart-stopping in its searing execution by these intrepid players…….

I’d always regarded Beethoven’s last quartet as a kind of roller-coaster-ride as well, actually, but of a different kind to what we had just heard, alternating the visceral with the playful and enigmatic, as opposed to Janacek’s relentless assault. Here were Olympian forces at play, with whatever moments of stress and angst suggested (in the work’s finale) defused as systematically as they’d been developed, like the inevitable movements of cosmic bodies through the heavens, leaving we earthbound listeners gaping in bemused astonishment!

‘Cellist Rolf Gjelsten here emulated Gillian Ansell’s penetrative introductory remarks regarding the Janacek, entertaining us greatly with his theories regarding Beethoven’s famous “question-and-answer” passages at the finale’s beginning, and provoking amusing responses from the other quartet members. Thus enlightened and emboldened, we began our listening, with the lower strings right at the start posing a question or remark answered by a pithy, increasingly insistent exclamation from the violins – “Pardon?” – or perhaps “You’re joking!” Straightaway, this fusing of the portentous and the commonplace – the fabulous with the ordinary – set the tone for the rest of the work. Not a note was wasted, the effect an amazing sense of freedom in simplicity.

By contrast, the scherzo had us on the edges of our seats, the players alternating jovial muscularities with spectral mutterings, punctuating the proceedings with off-centre sforzandi, and grim-humoured rebeginnings, building up to the notorious “madcap trio”, three whirling dervishes trying to catch the lone violin mid-flight – a fearful symmetry gone berserk! The occasional “wildness” of intonation to my ears sounded appropriate – what would a perfect, “squeaky-clean” rendition of this music do except reduce the untamed, out-of-control exhilaration of the whole, anyway?

Gorgeously rich and deep-toned at the slow movement’s beginning, the melody was “sung from within” at first, before being lifted aloft for us by the first violin – we then were left to “reimagine” its contourings, prompted, it seemed, by the harmonies alone, as if the music had almost lost its way in the dark, as if bereaved. Rapturously, the music then reinvented itself, the ensemble heart-warmingly playing into and out of one another’s figurations, leading to the first violin’s “taking wing”, supported by upward arpeggios from the others, allowing the long-breathed statements to drift naturally into a grateful communion of silence at the end.

Came the enigma of the finale’s opening, with cello and viola “asking the question”, leaving the violins to muse over a response to begin with, then burst impassionedly forth as if hanging by a thread waiting for assistance or illumination – a terse three-note response to the opening three-note question, the well-known “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?) phrase which the composer inscribed in the score.

How exhilarating, then, that sudden onrush of joyful energy accompanying the reply, again inscribed by Beethoven in the score – “Es muss sein!” (It must be!) – the release of tension here brought out most tellingly an inevitability, a mark of greatness to do with force of personality, with depth of acceptance and with single-mindedness of purpose! Beethoven’s intoning of a Rasumovsky Quartet-like second melody then threw the vistas open, including the world at large in this paean of acceptance of life! How vigorously the players gave themselves over to this energetic release – and how terrifyingly they then mirrored its sudden reversion to a nightmare of doubt and anxiety with the return of the “Muss es Sein” motif! – the violins sounded particularly “spooked” at the reappearance of “the question”!

Almost defiantly, the allegro reasserted itself, pulling all the music’s strands out of their state of transfiguration and thrusting forth once again. Part of the rehabilitation of surety came with the “Rasumovsky-like” tune, its open-hearted aspect here seeming to include all of us in a kind of anthem-like circle of strength and resolve. Throughout, the musicians remained strong and steadfast, bring forth playing whose confidence uplifted our spirits further, culminating in the enchanting pizzicati that led to the final, emphatic gesture of belief in simply being. Fantastic!

Though I would have happily regarded what we’d experienced as “cup runneth over” stuff, I couldn’t begrudge a young composer’s music the chance of a hearing – and so it was that we heard Natalie Hunt’s 2014 work “Data Entry Groove”, a delicious piece of music-theatre depicting the workings and interactions of computers and operators. A jazzy, nicely off-beat set of opening trajectories involved various cyber-rhythms (Rolf Gjelsten and his ‘cello) and personalised responses to the machine-like routines from the other three players, involving sliding notes and inventive textures and timbres, including a “time for a break” section (violinist Monique Lapins did what looked to my untutored eyes to be some Pilates!)…..returning to their work-routines the players busied themselves with various engagingly off-beat energies, all of which led to a surprise ending of droll and insouciant finality. Definitely a work to enjoy in the “seeing” and “hearing” rather than in the “describing”!

 

Karori’s “Colours of Futuna” plays host to string quartet classics from the Orion Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

COLOURS OF FUTUNA Concert Series presents:
The Orion Quartet

Joseph HAYDN – String Quartet Op.33 No.2 in E-flat Major “The Joke”
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART – String Quartet KV.465 No.6 in C major “Dissonance”

Orion Quartet: Anne Loeser, Rebecca Struthers (violins)
Sophia Acheson (viola) / Jane Young (‘cello)

Futuna Chapel,
Friend St., Karori, Wellington

Sunday, 24th March, 2019

Futuna Chapel was the venue for a sweet hour of marvellous music and music-making on the previous Sunday afternoon – here was the Orion Quartet, one whose work I hadn’t yet encountered “live”, presenting two of the classical repertoire’s “cornerstone” chamber works, in itself something of an irresistible prospect for any music-lover. With players from both the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington, informed by an interest in historical period practice performance, the group seemed an ideal advocate for this music.

Putting my listener’s cards on the table first up, my ears had to take time to “adjust” to the near vibrato-less tones of the players, an aspect of “historically-informed” practice I’ve always struggled with to some extent. I found, some years ago, when the “new wave” of practitioners of this kind of playing flooded the scene with what seemed at the time almost like “born again” zealousness, the sound of their playing alienating – pinched and drained of colour, and liable (to my ears) to a horrid “note-burgeoning” habit (which sometimes put me in mind of the “Doppler effect”, except that the fire-engines never seemed to go away!) – surely, I thought, it didn’t originally sound this nasty? What are they trying to achieve?

Here, despite the occasional almost-astringent effect in this or that phrase, it was nearly all relative sweetness and light – for me, historically credible in terms of the playing’s overall ingratiating quality. It’s risky, intonation-wise (vibrato-laden playing can cover a multitude of off-the-note sins!), and there was an occasional edge to the music’s line in exposed passages – but the purity and clarity of the sounds in general soon won my ears over, and “centred” my responses to what was actually being achieved, here. I’m bound to say, also, that the work of “period instrument” groups these days seems to me somewhat less purist and “evangelical” – and it’s definitely having a general effect on overall attitudes towards appropriate styles being adopted for different eras of music, be the instruments ever so “authentic” or modern!

What WAS I saying before? – ah, yes! – the Orion Quartet! The group most happily began the concert with one of Josef Haydn’s “Russian” quartets (the name originating from the composer’s dedication of the Op.33 set to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia), being the second of  the set, known as “The Joke”, largely due to the composer’s “toying” with the ending of the last movement, inserting unexpected pauses, repeating sequences in a disjointed way, and finishing the work with an obviously “unfinished” phrase! The players entered into the wry humour of all of this with obvious relish, bringing us “on board” with the whimsy of it all.

Before this we had already been “swung on board” by the quartet’s playing of the opening movement, a droll, loping tempo which seemed to me to take us right to the music’s essential earthiness and the players’ engagement with the same.  The development section “played” with the material, giving rise to all kinds of fancies and whimsies, the performance “going” with the various impulses and leading back to the opening with plenty of “grunt”, before allowing the music the first of its surprises, an almost sotto voce conclusion which simply “happens”, almost without warning. The Scherzo, a heavy-footed Austrian dance, alternated a pesante manner with a more sophisticated chromatic figuration – again the tempo seemed perfect for the music’s required “kick-room”, everything unhurried in a quintessential rural way. And how deliciously impish was the good-natured “lampooning” of the village fiddler in the Trio, the almost ungainly slidings between the notes capturing the original “star-turn” efforts of the player to the full!

A beautifully-voiced duet between viola and ‘cello opened the Largo, the mood reminiscent of the Austrian National Anthem at the beginning, though some smartish second subject accents soon put paid to that mood! Later the violin most sensitively decorated a heartfelt duetting sequence between second violin and viola, which produced a rapt effect, after which a lovely series of two-chord phrases brought the movement to an end.

Gaily buoyant, by turns tip-toe and full-blooded in effect, the finale danced its way along, its energies seemingly inexhaustible, with the brunt of the busy passagework falling on the leader, Anne Loeser, whose poise and control never faltered. Haydn then decided he would “play” with his audience, introducing pauses, solemn chords and cadences, before finally asking the players to deliver the movement’s opening phrase yet again! – and then break off – all excellently and amusingly delivered.

So we proceeded to the Mozart Quartet, as intriguingly “nicknamed” as was its companion – in a spoken introduction to the work, Anne Loeser told us that even Haydn was astonished at the dissonances which sound throughout the work’s opening, but qualified his remarks with the statement, “Well, if Mozart wrote it he must have meant it!”. And the work’s opening is, indeed, extraordinary-sounding, the sounds seeming to wander, looking for a tonal centre, rising and falling chromatically in places, before finally alighting on C Major and  dancing into the sunlight!

The players treated their lines with extraordinary subtlety and lightnes in places, the strands sounding at times like the sighings of a breeze, while elsewhere the figurations were properly, tightly “worked” into that characteristically “flowing like oil” Mozartean ethos of charm and candour. Occasionally I found the largely vibrato-less sounds put the players’ intonations to the test, but at the same time imparted the music-making with a clarity amid the chapel’s ambient resonances, all the while giving me a sense of the tones being “wrought from the air” and performed for our pleasure………

An andante cantabile slow movement began with rich harmonisations from the three lighter instruments solidly reinforced by the ‘cello – I was struck throughout by the way the composer’s writing here gave an impression of more than four voices, with closely-knit figurations and strongly-wrought rhythmic buildups having an almost orchestral quality in places. The players brought out these intensities by “digging in” splendidly and making the most of the sforzando-like contrasts. Despite the somewhat “bald” quality of the tones in places I loved the intensity of involvement generated by the performance.

The Menuetto’s rapid tempo kept the dancers in a whirl of activity, alternating between rigorous steps and vertiginous “turns” marked by chromatic swerves in the music. By contrast, the Trio’s music sounded almost “frightened”, as if in “flight” from some pursuing shade or demon, real or imagined – here furtive and shadowy,  there exclaiming in almost palpable fright, the feeling relieved only by the Menuetto’s return, as rigorous and purposeful as before.

As for the finale, it started off chirpily enough, though the darkly-bowed unisons that occasionally rend the textures gave the impression of a darker spirit in concealment. There was brilliant work in places from leader Anne Loeser, her rapid figurations splendidly thrown off, with only the occasional exposed “held” note having a slight rawness. The ensemble dug into the vigorous passages with gusto, while bringing out the occasionally “sighing” line most affectingly. Parts of this same allegro molto were propelled into more diffuse regions, the players relishing the hesitancies and angularities which varied the  rhythms of the journey, before bringing the music “home” with energetic gestures, and many a nicely touched-in detail, before “pouncing” on the concluding phrase with glee, cheekily-placed “final” note and all.

Very great honour to the musicians for such insightful, involved performances of these two “classics”, the pleasure enhanced by the Futuna Chapel’s distinctive features of light and sound ambience, each medium contributing to our musical experience in a satisfying way.

Brahms’ String Quintets on Naxos – graceful, beautifully-lit readings by the NZSQ with Maria Lambros (viola)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet, with Maria Lambros (viola), presents
BRAHMS – String Quintets – No.1 in F Major, Op.88 / No/2 in G Major, Op.111

Helene Pohl (leader) / Monique Lapins (violin) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
(with Maria Lambros – viola)

Naxos CD 8.573455

Playing and getting to know this disc recorded in Canada as long ago as 2016 has been, for me, a salutary experience on a couple of counts – firstly it’s been a recrimination of sorts, one that’s asked me in no uncertain tones of disapproval, why I hadn’t sought out and explored this venture by one of our most renowned and treasured musical ensembles before now! A different kind of reproof concerns the actual music, which I didn’t know nearly as well as I ought to have, other facets of the world being too much with me, to the detriment of my appreciation of the works on the present CD.

Continuing in this vein and juicily “flavouring” my present litany of self-deprecation with the admission that I’ve never really “got” Brahms’ chamber music that’s minus a piano would bring shock and horror into the argument as well as coals of condemnation down upon my head from dyed-in-the-wool Brahmsians, with whom I’ve skirmished before! So, it’s with surprise and delight that I’ve here started to listen to these works afresh, and seemingly begun to appreciate what their composer was doing, thanks to the luminously persuasive way of the players of the New Zealand String Quartet and their collaborator, Maria Lambros, with this music!

For whatever reason, the recording presents the Second (in G Major, Op.111) of the composer’s two String Quintets first up on the disc. Brahms originally thought this would be his last major chamber work, but then met clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld the following year (1891), and no less than four more chamber pieces came from his pen, inspired by the playing of a musician Brahms called “the nightingale of the orchestra”. Nevertheless, the Quintet displays a similar autumnal feeling in places to the clarinet works that followed, in between the invigorating bursts of energy – in fact the music’s vigorous opening immediately brought to my mind the Elgar of the Second Symphony, the trajectories having a similar “striding” aspect, and the exultations displaying more than a hint of the determined and ripely forthright about them, a “not to be thwarted” feel in the way the music unfolds. Somewhat Elgarian, too, is the way the music adroitly and seamlessly reveals its composer’s more lyrical inclinations as a kind of “inner core” – and the NZSQ players’ (including the second violist’s) beautifully-judged way with realising each of these contrasting moods and their symbiotic relationship is one of the things which gave me such pleasure throughout this opening movement’s journey.

With the following Adagio, we are enveloped in a gentle melancholy, whose potential for sorrow is softened by the music’s blood-pulsing flow and, in places, exquisite gentleness – there are outbursts of more heart-on-sleeve emotion in places, but always the music ultimately “takes care” of the listener’s concerns, the occasional shivers of loneliness placed in a wider context of stoic resignation, leaving us moved but not bereft. How gently and richly the playing takes us along this path, the viola leading the way, slightly “rushing” the slide upwards in the music’s second phrase (but giving it more “room” in its final appearance towards the movement’s end), and otherwise enabling us to fully enjoy the music’s songful outpourings. And the sequences when the night’s stars are gently revealed to us are exquisitely voiced by the ensemble, making the brief moments of agitation all the more telling.

The third movement’s Un poco Allegretto takes us closer to the world of the later Clarinet/ Viola Sonatas, an ardently proclaimed, though expansively phrased expression of controlled feeling, beautifully channelled along a ¾ rhythmic pathway, the textures voiced exquisitely in their ebb and flow of intensity, both in the minor-key opening and the contrasting major-key “trio” sequence, the lines in the latter having a Dvorakian “outdoor” quality in places. The finale depicts Brahms at his most engaging, with, again, the players’ penchant for keeping the lines airy and luminous giving the music so much variety and nuance, and to my ears entirely un-yoking the composer from any debilitating “keeper of the sacred flame” mantle wrought by his reactionary supporters – instead, this is playing which allows Brahms to be Brahms!

The ensemble also does well with the full-on opening of the earlier Quintet (F major, Op.88), keeping those lines sharply-focused and pliant (the influence of “period-practice” in the playing, perhaps?), the textures all the better-sounding for the players’ subtleties. Again, the music sounds freshly-minted, in places glowing with new-found delight (am I confusing my response with that of the players, here?), and skipping lightly over the bedrock of the pedal-points, both the solo viola and first violin giving the “Viennese Waltz” suggestion plenty of “juice” and relishing the ambivalence of the cross-rhythmed accompaniments. I liked the especially plaintive touch of the first violin’s high-flying phrase at the movement’s end, creating a brief “timeless” space before the throwaway ending.

Though this work has, on paper, only three movements, the complexities of the middle movement’s structure give a sense of a slow movement and a scherzo combined, the composer turning to a couple of baroque-like keyboard pieces from his earlier years, a sarabande, and a gavotte, as his source-material. Marked Grave ed appassionato at the outset, the music has a sighing aspect which the players here seem to “breathe” easily and naturally, allowing each change of texture, colour and dynamic to unfold and run together like a narrative. The charm of the contrasting Allegretto vivace is nicely caught, its almost insouciant character the perfect foil for the return of the movement’s opening, the “heartfelt” quality intensified – but the composer then, Beethoven-like, confounds our expectations with a presto variant of the Allegretto, followed by an even more richly-laden revisiting of the movement’s opening music. Once more, these players give the music the gravitas it needs with a beguiling lightness of touch and a rapt concentration over the last few bars which has one catching and holding one’s breath.

Two chords begin a finale of engaging fugal fun, the instruments playing games of chase, the rapid figurations momentarily exhausting themselves and alternating with chromatically-shifting triplets, everything freely modulating and exploratory. At a later point I thought I detected a brief moment of over-eagerness in one of the lines of the fugal figures’ incessant gyrations – but it somehow adds to the visceral excitement, culminating in the music suddenly shifting to a fleet-footed 9/8 rhythm, and converting the chase into a spirited dance. And I could also have imagined relishing a touch more rhetorical emphasis from the ensemble at the coda’s end, a stronger sense of homecoming – but in return for this I might have had to forego those treasurable moments during which this performance’s “incredible lightness of being” seemingly for the first time truly opened my ears to this glorious music.

 

Chamber Music Hutt Valley to submit a winding-up motion at the 2019 AGM

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music in Hutt Valley at risk

Friday 15 March 2019

The agenda of Chamber Music Hutt Valley’s AGM on Wednesday 27 March includes a motion that would wind up the society and bring its history of forty years of chamber music concerts in Lower Hutt to an end.

The motion reads:

“That the Executive is given the authority by this AGM to make CMHV inactive after the end of the 2019 season: the decision being based on a lack of committee members available to achieve the objects of the Society as described in rule 3.1. In order to confirm a 2020 season this decision is to be made before the end of June 2019.”

That seems to imply that unless an adequate committee is elected the society will go out of business.

The committee explains that while it has been successful in organising chamber music concerts in the Hutt Valley for many years, through the work of a dedicated group of committee members, it has become increasingly difficult to replace retiring committee members. This, despite pleas to audience members at concerts, in newsletters and through general net-working, urging music lovers to come forward.

They believe that the number of committee members will drop to four at the end of this year, which is simply not enough to run the society.

Furthermore, the background note reports that there are few new audience members, in spite of the continued support of current society members and flexi-card holders, and that continued operations will have to rely increasingly on obtaining external grants, a task that puts additional demands on the committee.

Middle C is alarmed at this prospect, and we urge readers, particularly those in the Hutt Valley, to lend whatever support they can to the society, by attending the meeting, by offering their services to the committee, by making donations, and by attending concerts in increasing numbers this year.

Middle C attempts to cover concerts in all parts of Greater Wellington, and we see, specifically in the field of chamber music in Wellington, a very rich resource, with regular concert series from Waikanae and Paekakariki, through Upper and Lower Hutt to various series of chamber music concerts in Wellington City itself. The loss of the Hutt Valley’s chamber music organisation would leave a very regrettable hole in the region’s musical scene. After all, Hutt City with a population of around 100,000, and Upper Hutt’s 44,000, that is about 35% of Greater Wellington’s population.

The AGM will be held at the rooms of the Hutt Valley Art Society on the corner of Myrtle and Huia Streets, Lower Hutt, on Wednesday 27 March at 7:30 pm.   

Wilma and Friends win all hearts at Wellington Chamber Music’s first 2019 concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents
WILMA AND FRIENDS – The Opening Concert of 2019

Wilma Smith (violin) / Anna Pokorny (‘cello) / Ian Munro (piano)

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN – 10 Variations on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu” Op121a
Ian MUNRO – Piano Trio “Tales from Old Russia” (2008)
Gareth FARR – Mondo Rondo, for Piano Trio (1997)
Jean FRANCAIX – Piano Trio in D Major (1986)

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

Sunday 10th March 2019

Beginning the year with the musical equivalent of a hiss and a roar is always a good sign for what might follow – and Wellington Chamber Music organisers can feel well-pleased with their opening offering for 2019, regarding both repertoire and the performances. In fact I sat there throughout this concert imagining, for some reason, how much “better” it all possibly might be were one in London, Berlin or New York listening to a similar kind of programme at some prestigious venue or other, and then finding myself again and again beguiled by some felicitous individual turn of phrase or arresting surge of augmented tones from these players which totally disarmed any thoughts of wanting to be anywhere else! What better feeling to take away from a concert experience?

“Wilma and Friends”, a performing concept devised by violinist Wilma Smith, features the now Melbourne-based former New Zealand String Quartet leader and concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in a yearly series of chamber music concerts with different colleagues, performed throughout Australia and New Zealand The idea’s in its eighth year, now, and shows no sign of letting up, if the present concert’s ready excitement, focus, variety and colour are any true measures of continued life and success  – for me, the programming had a tantalising “something for everybody” flavour, covering a wide range of eras and a stimulating variety of places of origin.

Wilma’s partners in this latest venture represented what seemed like a well-nigh irresistible pair, with their combination of youth and experience – ‘cellist Anna Pokorny from Western Australia, a graduate of the Australian National Academy of Music and the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland; and Australian pianist Ian Munro, a composer, writer and music educator, with numerous international awards as a performer to his credit, most notably a second prize at the 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition.

Whatever conventional wisdom suggests regarding outcomes of performances by musicians who join together for “limited tenure” periods, we listeners seemed on this occasion to reap all the benefits of the arrangement’s inherent spontaneity, newly-wrought discovery and sense of adventure in the music-making, with no apparent disadvantages or limitations. I’m not sure how many concerts the trio gave before this Wellington appearance, but they appeared to have already and handsomely “played themselves in” regarding a unanimity of purpose, of feeling and on-the-spot impulse to a most delightful degree.

First up was the exotically-named “Kakadu” Variations for Piano Trio by Ludwig van Beethoven, a work I had never before encountered in concert, and scarcely knew via recordings – I was, I admit, predisposed in the work’s favour through the title, intrigued by the quotation “Ich bin der Schneider, Kakadu”, and attracted by the prospect of another Diabelli-like transformation of a simple theme by the composer. Of course it didn’t turn out exactly like the latter, but I was nevertheless fascinated by the music’s sombre opening, Beethoven obviously taking a lot of trouble with his mood-setting and the musicians registering the elaborations of the mood with great sensitivity.

Then the cheeky march rhythm presenting  composer Wenzel Müller’s led the way to the other variations, all of which, as played here, by turns beguiled and tweaked the ear most pleasantly. Among others, I particularly enjoyed the “dialogue” variation between violin and ‘cello with its sweet playing, and the succeeding “running” variation, leading to the minor-key gravitas of the ninth episode, the piano phrases answered beautifully by the harmonising strings; and I also responded to the playfulness of the succeeding variation, with its working of a canon-like tune into the skipping rhythms and working up quite a head of steam! – most entertaining stuff!

Ian Munro’s credentials as a composer were cemented in 2003 by his winning First Prize for his Piano Concerto “Dreams” in the Queen Elisabeth International Composers’ Competition in Brussels that year. Here, we were treated to a performance of his 2008 Piano Trio “Tales from Old Russia”, a work that had been premiered in New Zealand as a result of a commission from Christchurch concert organiser Christopher Marshall, and reflected Munro’s interest in folk- and fairy-tale as part of a wider desire to write music for children. Each movement of the work is inspired by a particular tale, the first that of the Cinderella-like Vassilisa, a story complete with cruel stepmother and spiteful stepsisters. The second, titled “The Snow Maiden” is more quintessentially “Russian”, though the third, “Death and the Soldier” also has counterparts in other cultures.

Beautiful, eerie, crystalline sounds began the work, with the “Beautiful Vassilisa” in the story seemingly brought straightaway to the fore, and then set against the starkly contrasting sounds of the witch Baba Yaga. The writing exploited the strings’ ability to evoke dark, sinister ambiences contrasting those with purer, freer sounds. In other places the sounds startled with their intensely physical bite and pounding ostinato-like rhythms, reminiscent in places of Shostakovich’s writing. Both piano and strings forced the pace towards a climax and a becalming, returning us to the eeriness of a diametrically-opposed sound-world of breathtaking beauty, the atmospheres stark and awe-struck.

A second movement, which I assumed was an evocation of the Snow Maiden, began with dialogues between violin and ‘cello, the violin’s harmonics readily evoking ice-clear scintillation and cool beauty, with the piano conjuring up the play of light upon the Maiden’s person – perhaps the ‘cello’s darker, more sobering sound suggested the Maiden’s eventual fate as the fire melted her into the form of a cloud, the transformation accompanied by receding piano chords.

Munro’s timbral inventiveness as a composer made the third movement “Death and the Soldier” even more of an adventure, the music accompanied in places by various skeletal “knockings” wrought by fingers and knuckles tapping and knocking the wood on the instruments, the story’s central conflict between the soldier and the ghostly spirits building up to a wonderfully macabre free-for-all, everybody playing full out! The march morphed into a swirling dance before the footsteps portentously return, throwing the dancers out of step and enforcing an abrupt, spectacularly sudden conclusion!

High-jinks of a vastly different kind were in evidence straight after the interval, with a welcome performance of the Piano Trio version (which I’d never before heard) of Gareth Farr’s String Quartet “Mondo Rondo”. Here, a restlessly playful spirit was at large, quixotically throughout the first movement, a recurring motif doing its job in driving us almost to distraction, the sequences all being part of the music’s persona as a garrulous but nevertheless highly entertaining guest. A second movement employed pizzicato and finger-tapping techniques to emulate the sound of the m’bira (African thumb piano), generating an intriguingly minimalist-like discourse broken by the music suddenly “crying out” and “jazzing up” in a no-holds-barred way, before subsiding into a cantabile violin solo over the pizzicato-fingertapping movement beginnings.

The third movement kick-started with high-energy gesturings, over which exotic-sounding lines were floated, these being soon “compressed”, shortened, what you will – their tensile energies thereby heightened and “sprung”. Of a sudden the violin introduced a sinuously “sliding” theme, sounding for all the world as thought the player made it up on the spot! The performance treated the themes with exhilarating “pliancy” amid the driving  rhythmic energies, bringing things up to an exhilarating full-throttled burst before the music’s quixotic and enigmatic withdrawal. All-in-all, full marks to the Piano Trio version!

I’ve loved Jean Francaix’s music ever since hearing my first recording, the Melos Ensemble playing two of the composer’s Divertissiments, one for winds, the other for Bassoon and String Quartet, on a famous HMV LP of the late 1960s featuring a triumvirate (Ravel, Poulenc and Francaix) of French composers’ music. The composer’s been criticised in some quarters for what some people consider a certain vapidity in his writing, but I love its unfailingly droll humour, and its refusal to take itself too seriously in most instances. The Piano Trio was a late work, written in 1986 when the composer was 74 years old, but it possesses the youthful energy of a creative mind in its prime, right from the very opening – a restless, exploratory 5/4 rhythm  keeping a light touch amid all the energies! The playing was superb in its amalgam of strength, delicacy and wit.

A charming, insouciant waltz danced its way throughout the ensemble, the music even-handedly sharing its charms with each of the instruments – a beautiful Trio allowed the strings to soar above angular piano figurations, generating a wonderful “singing in the rain” aspect in the music. As for the Andante, its delicately romantic, bitter-sweet modulations seemed directly derived from nostalgically-charged memories, both full-blown and diaphanously delicate! – such a gorgeously-woven web of fine feeling from these players!

The finale seemed to me straightaway to proclaim a sense of life and living – pizzicato exchanges were joined by the piano’s driving energies, the strings going from pizz. to arco almost, it seemed, at will. Francaix seemed to be able to characterise the minutae of living with sounds of variety and colour simply by opening his heart to his surroundings, finding what he needed within the arc of a few physical gestures and driven by a lively imagination. A few seconds of magical string harmonics and a peremptory gesture of finality – and the sounds were deftly released to forevermore resonate in the silences. We loved every note of it, and said so via our applause, thrilled to be able to express appreciation for such stellar performances

 

 

Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson; the second installment, of Monday and Tuesday reviews

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Part II of Middle C’s coverage of the Festival

From Monday 4 Feb to Tuesday 5, evening

Mozart on the organ, by Douglas Mews

Mozart: Suite in C, K 399
Variations on ‘Ah vous dirai-je Maman’, K 265
Eine kleine Gigue in G K 574
Andante in F, K 616
Fantasy and Fugue in C, K 394
Rondo alla Turka, from sonata, K 331

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Monday 4 February, 10 am

Perhaps the decision to celebrate the restoration of the organ in the Nelson School of Music took a slightly eccentric course, by programming some pieces by Mozart. For while Mozart is known to have enjoyed playing, especially improvising on, organs wherever he encountered them, he wrote scarcely anything specifically for the organ.

The Andante in F, K 616, written a short time before he died, is the only music that he wrote for the organ and that was for a mechanical organ or ‘musical clock’. All the other pieces that Mews played were arrangements that were felt to have some connection or relationship with the sort of music that might have suited the organ.

Douglas Mews began by speaking interestingly about his approach to Mozart and his tenuous relationship with the organ.

The Suite in C was one of the few Mozart pieces, this one for keyboard, that was modelled on the Baroque suite; it’s referred to as ‘in the style of Handel’ in some references. It consists of three movements: Overture, Allemande and Courante and there is evidence that he would have added further movements of the kind that were common in the baroque suite, such as Bach used for the orchestral, cello and violin suites:  Sarabande, Minuet, Gigue, and perhaps a Passepied, Bourée, Badinerie or Réjouissance.

But then Mews said that for time reasons, he would play only the Overture of the Suite. The overture was not very long and it did seem curious that he refrained from playing the other two movements which together are only a little longer.  He used strongly contrasted registrations for the Overture, and I was particularly struck by the timbre of one of the lower register stops which was unusually dense: I’d call it nasal; in fact, the sounds seemed almost too varied. Nevertheless, it was clear that Mozart had absorbed the style and spirit of the composers of two generations before him. It could certainly have passed for Handel, if not Bach… with a perfectly good fugue that took over after a couple of minutes.

Ah, vous dirai-je Maman
Mews chose fairly light registrations for Mozart’s familiar theme and variations on what we know as ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’. Each variation has a distinct character and there was plenty of bravura that didn’t sound quite as convincing on the organ as on the piano (my first encounter with it was aged about 16, at a recital by the (very) late Richard Farrell in the Wellington Town Hall). As long as I don’t hear it every day, it remains an engaging work, even on the organ.

Mews introduced Eine kleine Gigue with a story that I didn’t entirely catch, about a small girl and a visitor’s book in the Thomas Kirche in Leipzig. So I looked at Wikipedia and found this:

“Kleine Gigue in G major, K 574, is a composition for solo piano by  Mozart during his stay in Leipzig. It is dated 16 May 1789, the day before he left Leipzig. It was directly written into the notebook of Leipzig court organist Karl Immanuel Engel. It is often cited as a tribute by Mozart to J S Bach, although many scholars have likened it to Handel’s Gigue from the Suite No. 8 in F minor, HWV 433. In fact, the subject of the gigue bears a marked similarity to the subject of J S Bach’s B minor fugue, no 24 from Book 1 of Das wohltemperierte Klavier.”

The sounds of the organ’s action were audible during the Gigue and, having become alerted to it, I could hear the sounds later; not a troublesome matter in the least.

The Andante in F, the genuine mechanical organ piece, sounded like what was intended – basically a toy, and there’s a letter to his wife Constanza saying how its composition bored him. Even if Mozart knew it hardly did him credit the rest of us probably enjoyed its few harmless minutes, especially as Mews played it, in a lively, unserious way.

The Fantasia and Fugue was also written for the piano but Mews’s note suggests that it might best reflect Mozart’s style of organ improvisation. Widely spaced rising arpeggios on sharply contrasted stops in the Fantasy, with deliberate, emphatic playing that I felt probably did sound better on the organ than the piano. Though if it was in the nature of an improvisation, it sounded rather too studied. The Fugue clearly demonstrated Mozart’s wide-ranging genius, in a serious and well thought-out work inspired by Bach, and Mews’s imaginative registrations kept one alert through its monochrome, unchanging key.

Alla Turca
Finally, perhaps very tenuously, he chose the Alla Turca from the Sonata in A, K 331; a send-up of a send-up perhaps, Mews simply played it, I suspect, so that he’d be able to employ a wide and surprising range of stops, and on that level it was a fun ending to the recital.

 

Wilma and Friends

Wilma Smith – violin, Anna Pokorny – cello, Ian Munro – piano

Gareth Farr: Mondo Rondo
Ian Munro: Tales from Old Russia
Françaix: Trio for violin, cello and piano

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Monday 4 February, 2 pm

An hour-long recital from Wilma Smith and her two friends took place in the afternoon. Wilma was the founding leader of the New Zealand String Quartet, though she later became concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and then of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has never lost contact with New Zealand and her former colleagues. Her two friends here were Australians: Anna Pokorny is a versatile young cellist who has won awards in several important competitions, played in leading Australian orchestras and with various chamber ensembles. Pianist Ian Munro has enjoyed a long and distinguished career. His compositions have been played by eminent ensembles such as the Eggner Trio and the Brentano Quartet, as well as the Goldner Quartet with Munro himself as soloist.

And here was the trio’s playing of Munro’s Tales from Old Russia, inspired by some of the tales collected by Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasiev. The composer’s notes mention three but there may have been more: Fair Vassilisa, The Snow Maiden and Death and the Soldier. The Snow Maiden was the first, with fluttering imagery, interrupted by noisy galloping before a return to quietness. Death and the Soldier involved tapping the lowered lid of the keyboard, and ended in a waltz-like rhythm.

Though I found the first two pieces rather longer than seemed useful, I felt by the end that they created a kind of dramatic coherence.

Mondo Rondo
Gareth Farr’s Mondo Rondo which has become one of the more familiar pieces by New Zealand composers opened the recital. This too involved the pianist in what are called ‘extended piano techniques’ in the second movement, evocatively called Mumbo Jumbo (the last movement is Mambo Rambo). Though one might be excused for thinking that Farr’s often quizzical titles reflect music that is less than serious, the reality is generally very different, and I suspect that his aim is to induce an expectation of drollerie or comedy in order to induce unlettered audiences to expect to be amused; they generally are, but not in the way they expected. There are indeed a lot of unusual techniques, but in comparison with some music that finds it useful to use instruments in unorthodox ways, Farr’s piece creates a feeling of sense, with music that has come from the imagination rather than from some concept or experimental intention.

Françaix piano trio
The last piece returned us to the European heartland, though now truly in music whose aim was to amuse as well as to stimulate a musical response. The mere fact that it’s in four movements suggests that Françaix didn’t intend that his music was to be heard as light or trivial; rather that it was legitimate for music to amuse as well as to call for some degree of listener attention. The programme note remarks that while his music seems simple, in reality it is full of unexpected chromaticism and interesting details. My first awareness of Françaix was with his arrangement of Boccherini’s music for the ballet, Scuolo di ballo, an often played suite on 2YC, the predecessor of RNZ Concert many years ago.

And this performance met those expectations very well.

 

Bach by Candlelight

Oboe sonata in G minor, BWV 1030b
Violin Partita No 1 n B minor, BWV 1002
Arias from Cantatas 21 ‘Seufzer Tränen’, 84 ‘Ich esse mit Freuden’, 187, ‘Gott versorget’, 202 (Wedding Cantata)
Sarabande from the 5th cello suite (BWV
Brandenburg Concerto no 3 in G minor, BWV 1048

The New Zealand String Quartet, Thomas Hutchinson – oboe, Anthony Marwood, Nikki Chooi and Wilma Smith – violins; Ori Kam – viola and Kyril Zlotnikov – cello, from the Jerusalem Quartet; Anna Pokony – cello, Douglas Mews – harpsichord, Joan Perarnau Garriga – double bass

Nelson Cathedral

Monday 4 February, 7:30 pm

Central to the festival has always been a concert in the Cathedral entitled Bach by Candlelight. Though the School of Music is back in business, the Cathedral concert could not be forsaken. Like all the other evening concerts, the Cathedral was sold out, with customers squeezed into every crevice, and all the traditional shortcomings were suffered and enjoyed: mainly, the lack of cool air, obviously not a matter that the designers and builders of this neo-Gothic edifice, used to English climatic pleasures, could be expected to contemplate. The usual safety warning was delivered in a singularly irreverent and amusing manner by Festival director Bob Bickerton.

The tradition is to employ as many as possible of the musicians currently in town. That included the New Zealand String Quartet, violist and cellist from the Jerusalem Quartet, Wilma Smith and her cellist friend Anna Pokorny, Douglas Mews and bass player Joan Perarnau Garriga, brilliant violinists Anthony Marwood and Nikki Chooi, oboist Thomas Hutchinson and soprano Anna Fraser. It’s also normal to play a range of solo pieces, small chamber music pieces, some vocal items, usually from the 200-odd cantatas, and one larger work, such as a Brandenburg Concerto or an orchestral suite.

Oboe sonata
The young oboist Thomas Hutchinson and harpsichordist Douglas Mews opened with a sonata with a solo part that’s not specified: it’s thought to be an earlier version of the first flute sonata, BWV 1030, and while it might also be for flute, the oboe is a possibility; so it’s given the BWV number 1030b. Hutchinson’s oboe here sounded a world away from the sound he created for the Dorati pieces that he played on Saturday evening. Discreet and detached in articulation, and cast mainly in the oboe’s high register, his playing was admirably supported by the harpsichord (the lid of which featured a gorgeous painting of the island at the end of the Boulder Bank). This was a most elegant performance, fluent and often impressing with Hutchinson’s long sustained breaths that were often demanded.

Violin Partita No 1
The second solo violin partita is more often played on account of the great Sarabande with which it ends; so it was good to hear Anthony Marwood play this one which is characterised by the varied repeat of each of the four ‘dance’ movements, which amount to a faster and more varied account of the movement. It means the partita has, in effect, nine ‘movements’; the ‘Double’ of the Courante was particularly brilliant. It would have been useful if I’d had the score with me as I’m not very familiar with it. Marwood’s playing was spectacular as well as having the flavour of the baroque style as might have been delivered by one of the brilliant violinists of Bach’s time.

Cantatas
Then came a couple of arias from the church cantatas: No 187, ‘Gott versorget’ and No 21, Seufzer, Tränen’.  An Australian soprano took the vocal parts. Though the initial impression of the first aria was of a large and voluminous voice, it soon struck me that those qualities, in her upper register, were somewhat unvaried, markedly distinct from the character of the lower voice, and it scarcely reflected the humility that seems expressed in the words. However, the accompaniment by oboe, cello and harpsichord was admirable. The oboe again offered the essential support in the long lines of the aria from No 21.

A break in the vocal pieces came with Rolf Gjelsten’s modest playing of the Sarabande from the 5th solo cello suite: slow, careful and unostentatious.

Anna Fraser returned to sing the aria ‘Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot’, again with oboe, Chooi’s violin, cello and harpsichord. The large, bright character of Fraser’s voice was more appropriate here, with the aria’s brisk tempo and the repetition of the word ‘Freude’, in joyous triple time.

The vocal line of the Wedding Cantata was supported by a larger body of instrumentalists, including two violins and Joan Perarnau Garriga on the double bass as well as oboe, viola, cello and harpsichord. While the vocal line can support a certain amount of unrestrained joy, here a quality of unrestraint was on full throttle, with very little variety of timbre and none of dynamics.

Gjelsten’s cello had much to do, contributing sensitively to the music’s character.

Brandenburg Concerto No 3
The last item was, as usual, an orchestral work – the third Brandenburg Concerto, which is scored for three each of violins, violas and cellos, necessarily drawing players from both string quartets (Monique Lapins switching to viola), Wilma Smith and her cellist friend Anna Pokorny. For me this was the most satisfying and delightful music in the concert; its performance was simply splendid, full of energy and optimism that was vigorously expressed.

 

Nikki Chooi – violin

Paganini: Caprices no 17 and 21
Joan Tower: String Force
Bach: Chaconne from solo violin partita no 2 in G minor (BWV 1004)
Eugene Ysaÿe: Ballade Op 27 no 3

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Tuesday 5 February 2 pm

It was nice to get a couple of Paganini’s 24 caprices, without the usually compulsory No 24, though it would have been even nicer if Chooi had given us three or four of them, for they deserve to be better known. However, Chooi’s playing of these two did a good job in presenting Paganini as something more than an extraordinary violinist.

No 17 is brilliant, varied and witty, and of course it exploits all the tricks that the composer as well as this violinist commanded, though I felt that Chooi didn’t find all the subtleties and refinement that is also there. To hear a second one was useful in allowing those who’ve never heard them all to be aware of the range of Paganini’s imagination and musical taste; each is brilliant in an entirely different way.

American composer Joan Tower’s String Force seemed to be an exercise in contrasting violin techniques, comparable to but entirely different from Paganini’s aim. Flutterings, then lengthy glissandi seemingly on two strings, hair-raising bowing and harmonic effects, but I wondered, in a scribbled note whether there was much musical substance to be discovered.

That need was completely fulfilled in the playing of the great Chaconne from Bach’s second violin partita. Here, Chooi’s performance was profoundly thoughtful, scrupulously studied and paced; a performance has to demonstrate the ultimate spiritual character of the music and one of my notes had a question-mark after that remark, but it was immediately followed by my admiring the long sequence of arpeggiated lines, and the flawless (without the score), passionate way he made his way through the gloriously protracted final pages.

Most of the great instrumental practitioners of the 19th century were also quite good composers, and the Spaniard Ysaÿe passed that test. I’ve heard the Ballade from his Op 27 before, played at Sty Andrew’s on The Terrace some years ago, though I can’t recall by whom. And one wonders what the other pieces in Op 27 are like, and for that matter, the preceding 26 opus numbers. The histrionics are very conspicuous, but there’s music inside them, with a healthy emotional content, and the melodic ideas retain the listener’s attention. Chooi presented it with musical honesty as well as very conspicuous technical accomplishment.

 

Slavic Rhapsody

Dvořák: Slavonic Dances in E minor, Op 46/2 and in D, Op 46/6  (Dénes Várjon and Izabella Simon – pianos)
Louise Webster: The Shape of your Words  (Wilma Smith and Helene Pohl – – violins)
Bartók: Violin Sonata no 2 in C, Sz 76.BB 85  (Monique Lapins – violin and Dénes Várjon – piano)
Dvořák: Piano Quintet No 2 in A, Op 81  (Helene Pohl and Moniqe Lapins – violins, Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – cello, Dénes Várjon – piano)

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Tuesday 5 February, 7:30 pm

Slavic in the sense that the majority of the pieces were by Dvořák, but Bartók might have preferred a more geographical rather than ethnic definition. But certainly, the Czech composer’s music was by far the best known.

Two Slavonic Dances
As I remarked about the limited selection of Paganini Caprices, three or four of the Slavonic Dances, including a couple of less known ones would have been interesting. The delight about these however was that they were played in their original piano duet version by Dénes Várjon and his wife Izabella Simon. Four hands on a keybopard can sometimes sound very dense, but when the two are perfectly synchronised, clearly been playing together for a long time and take pains with the clarity of the various lines, the result is revelatory: No 2 was delightfully sentimental and dreamy with touches that are usually obscure in the orchestral version. No 6 in the Op 46 set is in a sort of slow triple time, though nothing like a waltz or mazurka; it was simply charming.

‘The Shape of Your Words’
The piece by Louise Webster, featured another duet: this time the violins of Wilma Smith and Helene Pohl; a curious duet beginning with falling semi-tones, soon revealing itself as a carefully dissonant piece, gently barbaric in flavour, yet somewhat hypnotic. The composer’s note simply remarked that ‘it arose in the context of recent events in which courageous individuals have spoken out about injustice of many kinds’. But one was left to guess whether she had in mind, political, artistic, social issues or issues affecting the treatment of women or ethnic minorities… However, the music’s character did indeed present a tone, an intelligence and seriousness of intent that invited one to pay attention.  The programme gave no information about Louise Webster; however, she was present and came up to take a bow at its end.

I later consulted SOUNZ’s very useful and interesting article about her and am rather shame-faced at not having come across her, and her dual citizenship, as it were, as doctor and musician, or at least to have registered her as a significant figure in New Zealand music.

Then came Bartók’s Sonata for violin and piano which was the subject of the discussion on Saturday afternoon which had involved the performers, Monique Lapins and Dénes Várjon. That introduction had given me a little familiarity with an otherwise unknown (to me) work. The first of the two movements opened with delicate glissandi, creating a sensitive, Debussyian feeling that slowly became more dense, soon shedding much suggestion of French music of the time – immediate post-WW1. The second movement becomes more dissonant, with hard-plucking pizzicato and heavy bowing, with dense chords demanded from both instruments. This was more or less my first hearing of Lapins playing such music; she appeared a formidable violinist, not shy of crunching down-bowing or of playing that could be described as masculine, handling the irregular rhythms with conviction; and her facial expressions and body language offered a vivid commentary on the music. I was reminded, in this second movement, of the sounds of Bartók’s sonata for two pianos and percussion, which came of course rather later.

Piano Quintet Op 81
Finally, the piece that most of the audience had probably been waiting for: Dvořák’s second piano quintet, in A. (Not so long ago I looked for the first piano quintet, to find that it’s a very early work, rarely played). First, one was struck by the sharp clothing adopted here by the five players, black with silvery detailing. Though the arrange of players on stage lend prominence to the strings, Várjon’s playing quickly commanded attention; but so did the playing by the strings, very possibly driven by the pianist’s energy and commitment. Each member of the quartet came to one’s attention with striking solo episodes, and the entire performance was all that the happy audience members could have hoped for. I will quote one of the thoughts that I scribbled towards the end: that even if Várjon was not the main driving force, his musical personality had the effect of releasing a remarkable level of passion and abandon in the others.