Tag: chamber music

NZSM Classical Guitar students square up to a challenging recital

Posted on by admin

New Zealand School of Music presents:
NZSM Classical Guitar Students

Lunchtime Concert Series
Old St.Paul’s, Wellington.

 Tuesday September 23rd, 2014

This brief concert was a welcome opportunity to hear again the talents of the NZSM Classical Guitar students under the tutelage of director Dr. Jane Curry. The full ensemble consisted of fifteen players, of whom four were guest members from the School’s pre-tertiary programme. The recital comprised a wide variety of works that spanned the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan lute music, the Baroque, and the 19th and 20th centuries.

The initial work, for full ensemble, was Three Distractions by Richard Charlton (b.1955). The first two short numbers involved lots of complex, irregular and syncopated rhythms, while the third was  marked by angular atonal writing with many percussive effects. It was a challenging piece, where the complexities were well handled and the integration of the large ensemble was excellent.

Then followed two duo numbers, firstly The Flatt Pavan and Galliard by John Johnson (1550-1594) who was one of the fathers of the “Golden Age” of English lute music. The characteristic graceful Elizabethan writing was well balanced by George Wills and Jake Church, with musical phrasing and good dynamic variation. The following Jongo for Two Guitars (1989) by Brazilian composer Paulo Bellinati was a total contrast where rhythmic complexities and clever percussive effects were also very effectively realized.

The bracket was completed by a duo version of Manuel da Falla’s unmistakable Spanish Dance which was given a very competent reading, though the quietest dynamics tended to disappear in the church’s acoustic, and some slightly untidy passagework popped up occasionally between the two players.

The next bracket comprised works for guitar quartet, with players Royden Smith, Dylan Solomon, Amber Madriaga and Christopher Beernink. The first work was Toccata by Leo Brouwer (b.1939), a Cuban player-composer who often combines “traditional forms with energetic, rhythmic flare resembling Cuban folk and street music. Brower’s compositional style is unique, consisting of a multitude of different sounds, techniques and cultures.” (programme notes). The Toccata was certainly busy with all of these, yet it somehow failed to grasp me in an integrated experience  that engaged the ear and led one on a musical journey. Its technical challenges were certainly met head on by the quartet, but some essential dimension seemed to have eluded the composer’s pen.

The next work was a transcription for guitar quartet of the opening sinfonia from Bach’s Cantata BWV 29 Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir. Bach himself wrote three versions of this movement – the first for solo violin (in BVW 1006), then the cantata sinfonia scored for orchestra, and finally a transcription for solo lute (BVW 1006a). I have not heard this last, but I felt that this guitar version was simply not able to do justice to the wonderful contrapuntal writing. Its very life blood derives from the gutsy, incisive attack and timbre offered by bow, reed or trumpet, and the guitar can simply not produce this.

There may well be merit in pedagogic versions that test the technical capacities of players (which were very adequately demonstrated here), but it does not sit comfortably in a concert programme. However, this particular recital was serving as an assessed element of the university course, so the parameters are somewhat different.

Spin by Andrew York (b.1958) was next on the programme. It was a work that challenged the players with tricky rhythms shifting between 7/8, 3/4 and 4/4, and with complex busy writing, all of which they handled with technical aplomb. I felt however that the intricacies of Spin would have been given greater shape and meaning by a wider dynamic range and more thoughtful phrasing.

The final work in the programme was Folguedo by Afro-Brazilian guitarist/composer Celso Machado (b.1953). Scored for guitar orchestra, it was billed as “a gem of a piece [in] the canon of large guitar ensemble repertoire”. It proved to be just that: the first of the two movements was immediately attractive, featuring a guitar solo introduction which then blossomed into ensemble writing that was presented with pleasing balance and dynamics. The second movement involved a considerable complexity of rhythms, textures, interweaving lines and harmonies, which were all handled pretty competently. Once again I felt that the challenge of the technical demands tended to be uppermost in the performers’ minds, whereas a greater exploration of the dynamic possibilities would have considerably enriched the music.

But having said that, the work was presented with a verve and enthusiasm that was shared by all the ensembles heard in this recital, a feature which has marked all the concerts I have heard from this tertiary programme. The Old St. Paul’s venue offered a very suitable acoustic and ambience which further enhanced the privilege Wellington audiences enjoy from hearing the fruits of this excellent NZSM endeavour.

 

 

 

Eggner Trio and Amihai Grosz win all hearts

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Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
EGGNER TRIO WITH AMIHAI GROSZ (viola)

Mozart Piano Quartet No 2 in E flat K493
Schumann Piano Trio No 3 in G minor Opus 110
Anthony Ritchie Oppositions
Dvořák Piano Quartet No 2 in E flat Opus 87

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Sunday 14 September 2014

The Eggner sibling trio of Georg (violin), Florian (cello) and Christoph (piano) presented this programme with viola player, Amihai Grosz, Principal Viola of the Berlin Philharmonic and a founding member of the Jerusalem String Quartet.

I had not heard the Eggner group before, but from the very opening lines of the Mozart it was obvious why they are firmly established in the forefront of chamber ensembles today. Viola associate Amihai Grosz melded seamlessly into the mix, and shared obviously in the pleasure they clearly enjoy in making music together.

The phrasing, tone and sensitivity of the melodic conversation that unfolds in the opening Allegro of the Mozart revealed a profound musicianship and impeccable polish that continued to mark the whole work, and indeed the entire programme.  The three movements of the Mozart score give wide scope to display the artistry of the tenderest melody making, for bold tempestuous interplay between competing instruments, for whimsical or thoughtful moods by turn, and the players made the most of every opportunity that this masterpiece offers.

Schumann’s Piano Trio no.3 is a rather turbulent work, where melodic motifs are often brief and frequently interrupted as they are exchanged or developed. The first movement is indeed marked “bewegt” (turbulent) and all three instruments are given the opportunity to participate fully in the dramatic, restless writing. The  tranquil second movement was a wonderful contrast that showcased some glorious melodic playing, before the vigour and strength of the two final movements, where the players explored every turn of the rich colour and variation. One could not fail to sense a level of mutual understanding that has had the chance to blossom in this trio group over many years of family music making.

Anthony Ritchie’s Oppositions was composed in 2005 for the NZ Piano Quartet. The composer’s programme notes explain that “It is in one movement, and is based around the idea of opposing forces, whether they be literal or imaginative. In musical terms, the piano is frequently pitted against the strings………..”. There is a lot of violent, strident, percussive writing, contrasted sometimes with more lyrical episodes, but the work is marked throughout by restless, abrasive tonalities that further heighten the tension and conflict between the various instrumental idioms. There is an outpouring of anger and violence that is clearly intended, and the players threw themselves into it with total commitment.

One felt both mentally and musically assaulted by the clash of the “Oppositions”, but for me the vivid descriptive qualities of the “music” became, frankly, overwhelming. While it was a very effective foil between two highly romantic items, I was relieved when the work ended, ungrateful as that may be of Richie’s acknowledged skills as a composer.

The Dvorak Piano Quartet no.2 is a heroic work in this genre, which the programme notes aptly described: “The work displays a melodic invention, rhythmic vitality and instrumental colour typical of the nationalist Dvorak at his peak……….”  The quartet threw themselves into the music with tremendous vigour and polish, displaying a huge dynamic range across the widely contrasting episodes which stretch from the most wistful delicacy to the almost symphonic proportions of the finale.

It was a riveting delivery that brought huge accolades from the audience, who were treated to an encore of the slow movement from Brahms’ E Minor Piano 4tet. The long opening cello melody was quite breathtaking, and made me wish for an opportunity to hear Florian Eggner in a sonata recital setting, where every note of his masterful playing would be heard. There had been times during the concert when, from our seats, it had been difficult to discern the cellist clearly, even though he had clearly been playing his heart out. It will be good when the Town Hall is again available for chamber music concerts, as such situations might well be taken care of there.

 

Nikau Trio celebrates Spring with enchanting, vivacious music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Haydn: Trio no.1, Hob. XV:17, for flute, cello and piano
Enescu: Cantabile and Presto, for flute and piano
Martinů: Trio for flute, cello and piano

Nikau Trio (Karen Batten, flute; Rachel Thomson, piano; Margaret Guldborg, cello)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 3 September 2014, 12.15pm

The opening trio fitted the mood of the day, and enhanced it.  Haydn’s good humour was just right for another windless, sunny day (following over a week of such delightful spring weather), and it was harmoniously reflected in what we heard from these three fine musicians.  They played this joyous music with alacrity and commitment.  The flute particularly, evokes spring and the bursting of new life.  The work was charmingly and sensitively played.

Romanian composer George Enescu (1881-1955) (misspelt as Enesco on the printed programme) wrote his work in Paris, in 1904, we were told by Karen Batten.  The Cantabile had quite a sultry feel; it began low in the flute’s range.  It was a graceful movement, with beautiful passages for both instruments.  When the presto commenced, immediately the playing was more dynamic and forceful, yet still graceful.  It proved to be a delightful work.

Rachel Thomson talked about the fun and good humour in the work by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů – i.e. in similar vein to Haydn’s.  Gaiety bounded from the first notes.  Each part seemed independent, yet in their coming together they made up to more than the sum of their parts.  The first movement had lots of that – running movement.

The tranquil adagio was the opposite – great stillness to begin, but gradually working up to a fierce climax, before subsiding to a gentler mood.  It was full of piquant harmonies and juxtapositions of the diverse timbres of the three instruments.

The third movement opened with only the slow flute, followed by a sprightly, bouncy allegretto with jaunty themes.  A grand theme at one point failed to quell the high spirits.  Then a wistful, slower section had Margaret Guldborg’s cello sounding solemn, even plaintive, with the mute in use.  Exuberance returned, and the music dashed away to a spirited conclusion with many notes, especially for the pianist, whose complex part seemed at times to prefigure minimalism in its repetitions.

This was a wonderful programme of music that was unfamiliar to me, played by a trio exhibiting great elan, musicianship, technique and enjoyment. Bravo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Passion and circumspection from the wonderful Faust Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
FAUST QUARTET

(Simone Roggen, Annina Woehrle, vioiins
Ada Meinich, viola / Birgit Böhme, ‘cello)

JOHN PSATHAS – Abhisheka

LEOŠ JANÁČEK  – String Quartet no.2 “Intimate Letters”

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN  – String Quartet in A Minor Op.132

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Tuesday, 2nd September, 2014

Named after German literature’s archetypal questing figure, the Swiss-based Faust Quartet currently on tour in New Zealand, gave us an appropriately far-reaching programme for their Chamber Music Hutt Valley Concert at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre. Led since 2012 by New Zealander Simone Roggen, the group also has German, Norwegian and Swiss members, its cosmopolitan “face” also reflecting the range and origins of the music presented on this occasion.

As with the group’s previous Wellington concert (reviewed by Rosemary Collier for Middle C), the programme featured two “classics” of the quartet repertoire with a contemporary piece. New Zealander John Psathas’ work Abhisheka began the concert, the focused intensities of the work nicely sharpening our sensibilities and preparing us for what was to follow. Moravian composer Leoš Janáĉek wrote two String Quartets, the second of which, subtitled “Intimate Letters”, was nothing short of a sharply-focused outpouring of almost pure emotion relating to the composer’s love affair with a much younger married woman. The evening was “rounded off” by Beethoven’s renowned Op.132 String Quartet in A Minor, itself a work of great intensity, containing the well-known “Holy Song of thanksgiving from a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode” as its slow movement – no rest, it seemed, for either players or listeners!

John Psathas’s single-movement work 1996 work Abhisheka has become something of a classic quartet repertoire piece in this country, one whose qualities seem somehow freshly-minted with each performance one hears. Its exotic, meditative sound-world suggests a kind of ritual, as befits its name, derived from a Sanskrit word for “anoint”. The work’s themes have a definitive Eastern flavour, underscored by occasional pitch-bending on certain notes in the solo lines. There’s drama, too, in the way that some chords (such as at the work’s very opening) seem to come into being from a void of silence, a kind of metaphor for the birth of consciousness, or of awareness of a special state of being,  the “anointing” perhaps associated with the conferring of a state of grace upon the individual’s soul.

Whatever the case, Psathas has, with this work, contrived a unique sound-world, whose utterances draw us deeply into what seem at first like normal divisions of music and silence. However, with each note-clustered crescendo we’re taken further and more strongly into a kind of timeless state of being, where every gesture and its accompanying impulse and associated resonant effect seem to adopt a Wagnerian “time and space are one” quality, freed from movement towards and away from certain points, and having instead a ‘”centre of all things” fullness. The Faust Quartet’s concentrated, transcendent playing enabled us to give ourselves entirely over to the world into which the music had so readily transported us.

In retrospect the intense focus of Psathas’s work had the effect of activating and priming our sensibilities in “controlled conditions” by way of preparation for the scorching blasts of Leos Janáĉek’s fierily passionate String Quartet “Intimate Letters”. This was the second of two quartets written by the Moravian composer, both towards the end of his compositional life. They were inspired directly by his unrequited passion for a younger, already married woman, Kamilla Stösslová, the first quartet, subtitled “Kreutzer Sonata”, appearing in 1923, and the second written in 1928, the year of the composer’s death. Though Kamilla was the inspiration for both quartets, it’s in the second work that Janáĉek explicitly and directly expresses his feelings for her – incidentally, the subtitle “Intimate Letters” was given the work by its composer.

What a work, and what a performance! The players delivered this jagged, volatile, highly emotional, and in places seemingly unstable music at what seemed “full stretch”, employing the widest possible dynamic range and the greatest possible diversity of tones, timbres and colours. I’m sure I sat open-mouthed for much of the time, marveling at the gutsiness of it all, at the group’s readiness to meet the music at its expressive extremes, conveying without hesitation or reserve the unbridled, part-exhilarating, part-disturbing force of the composer’s hot-house bestowment. On this cheek-by-jowl showing, Janáĉek’s music puts even the Cesar Franck Piano Quintet in the shade as regards erotic suggestiveness.

Janáĉek’s penchant for extremes of  showed its hand right at the work’s beginning, with full-blooded declamations followed by whispered pianissimi, after which introduction followed sequences of such tangible physicality paralleled with moments of breathtaking tenderness – the playing of the violist Ada Meinich, in particular, seemed to suddenly underline the incongruity of concert-dress for such abandoned and unconfined utterances. The second movement’s romantic, rhapsodic-like beginning gave our sensibilities some respite, Janáĉek getting his players to bend, stretch, twist, coil and unwind the same melodic fragment  through countless treatments, before too long galvanizing the rhapsodic feeling with some savage, biting accents and manic presto-like scamperings.

Whatever the music did the players were there, pouring out sounds from their instruments that one couldn’t imagine wrought with greater intensity of physical and emotional commitment. The wild, winsome third movement, with its forceful dotted rhythmic trajectory, and the equally fraught finale both were put across to us with what seemed like anarchic force, to the point in the finale where one felt the music was expressing something near to emotional disintegration. Those episodes of vicious tremolandi during the work’s last few minutes sounded so raw, so animal-like, as if all human reason had been lost, and only primordial impulse remained – even more frightening was to encounter these savage gestures in tandem with moments of folkish gaiety and lyrical tenderness!

We certainly needed an interval after these outpourings, and especially in view of the music that was to take up the concert’s second half – Beethoven’s mighty Op.132 A Minor Quartet, known as the “Heiliger Dankgesang” Quartet by dint of its remarkable slow movement. Perhaps it was partly my expectation in the wake of the Faust’s remarkable performance of the Janáĉek work that I felt, increasingly so in retrospect, some disappointment in the players’ delivery of this very part of the work. It could also have been that the group’s concentration had been unsettled by the unfortunate circumstance of Simone Roggen’s instrument breaking a string at the beginning of the movement’s first dance episode, and that the music’s organic flow had been fatally checked – but however it was, the succeeding variants of the opening molto adagio seemed to me not to build in intensity and radiance as I would have expected – falling short of that “life infused with divinity” description, commented on by the program note.

I wondered, too, whether the experience for all of us of hearing the Janáĉek work earlier in the evening put extra onus on the performance of the Beethoven to “atone” in a way for the Moravian composer’s emotional excesses – here were the very different outpourings of two powerful creative spirits responding to tribulations of contrasting kinds. What Janáĉek’s music was depicting was its composer’s wrestling with the unrequited nature of his love for a younger woman – hence the music’s desperate, in places almost deranged aspect. Beethoven’s music had a corresponding kind of power, but of fierce determination and intense triumph over tragedy, and the intensity stemmed from both determination and triumph. I thought the quartet’s playing of Beethoven’s molto adagio sequences needed more of that fierce, intense sense of “being there” thru determination and tragedy, in a sense completing a process that Janáĉek, for all his greatness as a composer, wasn’t by dint of circumstance able to do.

The interesting thing was that the remaining three of the Beethoven work’s movements were given by the quartet one of the finest performances I’ve ever heard, nowhere more so than with the last movement. I’ve waited for many years to hear a reading of the latter that matched in feeling that of the old pre-war recording made by the Busch Quartet, to the extent that this present one did. Here, the players caught the “strut” of the music at the beginning, the theatricality (gothic-gestured in places) of the mad, melodramatic recitative-like section, and the darkness and unease of the subsequent allegro appassionato, the playing superbly conveying its swaying, vertiginous rhythm and haunted thematic material, as the music traverses the “dark wood” of human experience with all its enigmatic and expressionist gestures of dogged progression and determined resolve to “get through”.

How wonderfully the players caught that frisson of energy and thrust at the movement’s end, the accelerando both thrilling and hair-raising, for fear of where it might end, but bringing the music at last out into the sunlight, where there’s relief and circumspection rather than joy and celebration – the end is certain and emphatic without being aggrandized in any way – here it was what Sir Edward Elgar would have called a triumph for “the man of stern reality”, as he described the conclusion of his “Falstaff”. But for the curious want of real thrust and intensity in places in the slow movement, as well as occasional edginess of intonation on single notes in passage work, I would want to call this performance of Op.132 a truly great one. It was certainly, in the context of the whole concert, a memorable listening experience.

Faust Quartet with a different view of Schubert and a perplexing study of mythological horses

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Music Trust

Schubert: String quartet no.12 in C minor, D.703 ‘Quartettsatz’
Helena Winkelman: Quadriga for string quartet (2011)
Schubert: String quartet in D minor, D.810 ‘Death and the Maiden’

Faust Quartet (Simone Roggen and Annina Woehrle, violins; Ada Meinich, viola; Birgit Böhme, cello)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 31 August 2014, 3.00pm

Yet another European ensemble (the other was the Dalecarlia Quartet in July) with a New Zealand member – Simone Roggen, the first violinist.  This group, too, had a change of membership from that originally advertised.  There were several striking things about this ensemble; their handsome appearance on stage, their intense concentration and the performers’ remarkable techniques among them.

Another striking thing was the extremely pianissimo entry to the first item on the programme.  The playing was delicate and subtle, with an astonishing range of dynamics.  Thoroughly musical sounds conveyed the bitter-sweet nature of Schubert’s sublime music.  Was the range of dynamics too extreme?  It was certainly more so than in other performances I have heard of this wonderful single-movement quartet, yet the playing revealed the Romantic nature of the work to the fullest degree possible.  It was beautifully balanced and blended, making for a blissful experience.

Helena Winkelman (spelt with only one ‘n’ by Wikipedia; Helen Winkelmann is a New Zealand judge who was prominently in the news recently) was born in 1974.  Like the players she is Swiss, and well known to the Faust Quartet (yes, Roggen’s origins are Swiss too, and she now lives in Switzerland).  Roggen gave a spoken introduction to the work, and musical examples from the various movements were played, to illustrate the points being made.  These employed a variety of string techniques.

The narrative of the work dealt with horses: the first movement was named ‘Kelpie’, a Celtic water-demon which in this case was a horse.  The second, a scherzo, was entitled ‘Alwakr and Alsvidr; two horses who pulled the sun-chariot in Norse mythology.  The third employed seven fragments from the poet Osip Mandelstam’s Voronezh notebooks.  While the opening line of the first fragment as printed in translation in the programme speaks of ‘leading a storm cloud by the bridle’, the subject matter is nature, flight and escape rather than horses.  The final movement is titled for an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir, Odin’s horse of Norse myth.

This horse has the power of flight, and epitomises the last of the four elements, air.  The first movement employs one voice, though not purely unison playing, and symbolises the water in which Kelpie lives; the two horses (and two voices) of the second movement represent fire, being captives of Sol, the sun-god.  The third movement speaks of the earth (the third element).

The opening movement incorporated numerous extended techniques for the players; watery sounds could certainly be heard.  The scherzo was very angular in musical character, and obviously difficult to play.  I found the sharp contrast with Schubert’s music not easy on the ear at times.

Despite my admiration for the skill of the performers, I did not find the composition at this stage stimulating. In this movement there were very intense, insistent sonorities, which worked up to furious interplay, which died away towards the end.  The horses fought each other, but they seemed to come to a mutual understanding and respect.

The Mandelstam movement featured exceptional playing, and employed a great variety of rhythms and complexity; the young women exhibited astonishing energy and skill.  Here, there was high-pitched interplay and excitement, but much was harsh and discordant.

The final movement began with angry turbulence. The horse was wilful and did not succumb happily to discipline – whereas these players do!  There were extended passages of double-stopping, making for thick textures. In this movement, passages incorporating vocalisation from the players gave a pleasing change of sonority before they returned to the gut-wrenching (in both senses of the term) timbres.

I have to say I found some of the timbres and sounds excruciating in the very lively acoustic of St. Andrew’s, especially in the final movement, and I was not the only one to feel this way.  The work was challenging for the players – and for the audience, but not a challenge I enjoyed rising to.  At times I envied those in the audience who found it possible to fall asleep.  Others had more positive attitudes to what they had heard, I discovered during the interval.

Schubert’s wonderful ‘Death and the Maiden’ quartet is familiar, yet there is always something new to find in it, especially in the hands of the Faust Quartet.  I have these two Schubert works on the same LP (yes, I still play them).  Again, that great dynamic range these performers have was something new.  The little subtleties in their treatment of the rhythms and figurations were delightful to hear, as was their beauty of tone.  Nothing was skirted around – it was all there, in glorious technicolor.

The opening allegro was somewhat faster than is usually heard, but the melody was treated with gorgeous tone and expression.  The Faust finesse ensured that Schubert’s profundity was all there.

The andante con moto second movement contains the well-known Schubert song of the quartet’s title; the melody and exquisite harmony pull at the heart-strings.  Is there anything more sad in music than this?  The solo lines were deliciously played, principally, but not only, by Simone Roggen.  The tragic mood was sustained throughout the movement’s variations on the theme.  The seductive beauty of this movement is beyond compare, in my opinion, not least the cry of despair that ends it.

The Scherzo (allegro molto) is boisterous but unsettling at the beginning, then it becomes wistful and perhaps regretful, ending emphatically.  The playing of the Faust’s members conveyed all of this very directly.  Their technical expertise was such that they as individuals never got in the way of the music, and their cohesion and unanimity were astonishing.

The presto finale was almost feverish, rushing whence?  The music was ethereal and mysterious then frightening by turns, and the false endings added to the effect.  What enormous facility these players have!  We can only thank Chamber Music New Zealand and Chamber Music Wellington for enabling us to hear fine ensembles like this.  This was a stand-out performance in a year of excellent music-making.

 

Chamber Music New Zealand hosts exciting concert by pianos and percussion

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music New Zealand: “Rhythm and Resonance”

Mozart’s Sonata for two pianos, K 448; Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin (arr. Guldborg); Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion; Lutoslawski: Variations on a Theme by Paganini (arr. Ptaszynska)

Diedre Irons and Michael Endres – pianos; Thomas Guldborg and Lenny Sakovsky – percussion

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday 26 August, 7:30 pm

This step outside the usual range of string-dominant chamber music attracted a big house in the Michael Fowler Centre; the welcome by CEO Euan Murdoch also suggested that a larger number of younger people had been drawn by this programme, with its less familiar instrumental context, yet of major works.

And he drew attention to the use of an overhead camera that projected a bird’s eye view of the array of instruments – mainly the percussion – on the stage.

But the concert began with the only sonata that Mozart wrote for two pianos (the only other piece for two pianos is a Fugue in C minor, K 426). It’s a magnificent richly melodic masterpiece that responded whole-heartedly to treatment by four hands on two Steinways – the thought of any possible advantage from fortepianos never entered my head. The performance exploited the sonic possibilities of two instruments without producing sounds that were too dense or cluttered.

The two instruments were lined up side by side rather than facing each other with their bodies curling intimately together; so the primo player (in this case Diedre Irons) was visually dominant. The two have not dissimilar approaches to performance, devoted to playing of clarity and vigour as well as a scrupulous treatment of the varying dynamics. Even more impressive was their subtle rhythmic elasticity which, from the very percussive nature of the piano, poses a considerable challenge for two players: mere ensemble is hard enough.

In brief, this was music of genius played by two pianists who were virtually flawless in ensemble and musical spirit, and their performance entranced me from start to finish. There are so many beguiling phases, among the most charming the exquisite trill-opened motifs near the beginning of the Andante which were crystal clear yet imbued with magic.

The performance of Ravel’s Tombeau might have surprised an audience unprepared for the arrangement of the stage, pianos removed, leaving it dominated by three marimbas to be played by the two NZSO percussionists. From the start I found myself quite accepting of the altered quality of the music: much as I love the piano original, I am particularly partial to the marimba. Yet I wondered whether there might have been some monotony in the sound after a while. But that was at least partly avoided as Sakofsky moved, at the beginning of the Forlane, from the marimba at right angles to the audience, to one facing the audience, that produced a somewhat brighter, keen-edged tone. The spirit of Ravel survived excellently, since the eight mallets flourished by the players seemed to encompass all the notes in the piano score.

After the interval there were further re-arrangements: marimbas moved to the rear and xylophones, along with tam tam, side and bass drums, timpani and cymbals filled the stage. Oddly, this was one of the first truly ‘modern’ pieces of classical music I came to know through the small but curious collection that my girl-friend (later my wife) brought to our joint LP collection when we were about 21. It’s one of those works that seems to sound just as shocking and barbaric now as it did then (and that performance, an Argo recording paired with Contrasts for piano, violin and clarinet, still surprises me by its violent sounds and extreme dynamic contrasts).

What we heard on Tuesday was rather more well-mannered and less fierce. In addition, the big acoustic of the MFC subdues the harshness and acerbity of extreme sounds, and it was no doubt the more civilised sound that the four players produced that allowed the audience to enjoy this classic of modernity as they evidently did, judging from the applause. I think it loses little with less hard-edged sound and brutalism and that was the way it came off the stage; though it would have been too much to ask that such music be flawless in togetherness and finesse.

Incidentally, instead of being on the medium level stage as earlier chamber music concerts, including the Houstoun Beethoven concerts, had been, these performances which involved more instruments were at the usual high level of the stage which makes visibility difficult for the front dozen rows – hence the usefulness of the view from above, projected on the screen.

The last item had not been on the advertised programme or otherwise conspicuously announced: Lutoslawski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini. It is shorter than other famous treatments of this piece (Paganini’s 24th violin Caprice), though there are about twelve variations (the programme note did not disclose and that was my slightly uncertain count).  Lutoslawski wrote it in the early years of the war in German-occupied Warsaw, when he and Panufnik lived by playing piano duets in cabarets (for a revelatory account of that, read Panufnik’s autobiography Composing Myself). It was about the only one of Lutoslawski’s pieces to survive the horrendous German onslaught on Warsaw to put down the famous Warsaw uprising, as the Soviet army sat on the other side of the Vistula and did nothing to support the Polish resistance.

What we heard was an arrangement of the two-piano original commissioned by the Danish Safri Duo, made not by the composer, but by Polish Chicago composer Marta Ptaszynska. Compared with that original, I have to confess to finding the percussion additions a little superfluous. The original, which contains echoes of the Rachmaninov version, is sufficiently percussive and the addition of percussion instruments seemed to reduce the unique impact of the two pianos which, in good hands has all the brilliance, excitement and visceral scariness that is needed to bring a concert like this to a thrilling, hire-wire climax.

To hear and see what I mean, look at You Tube for a recent performance by Anastasia and Liubov Gromoglasova in Moscow. However, that is a small matter alongside the otherwise brilliant exhibition of skill and musicality that these four splendid musicians demonstrated in all four works. I had the very clear impression of a delighted audience leaving the MFC at the end.

 

 

Forbidden Voices liberated in NZSM conference on music and musicians banned by Nazis

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music: Recovering Forbidden Voices:
 Responding to the Suppression of Music in World War Two

Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday)
Schreker: Sonata for violin and piano in F major
Zemlinsky: Serenade in A major
Korngold: Violin Sonata in G major, Op 6

Duo Richter-Carrigan (Goetz Richter – violin and Jeanell Carrigan – piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 23 August, 8:15 pm

This evening’s concert was session number 11 in the weekend’s conference of talks, concerts and panel discussions dealing with the suppression of music and other arts during the second world war, primarily through the Nazi suppression of what they considered ‘Entartete Kunst’ – ‘Degenerate Art’. It’s been a mixture of music and the spoken word, the latter examining aspects of the hideous impact of Nazism on art and artists wherever the regime gained control. Jews were by no means the only artists, musicians, writers to suffer, and music by Shostakovich and Messiaen have been heard in the concerts.

To this point there had been a performance of Hans Krasa’s children’s opera Brundibar (reviewed by us), concerts of chamber music by Schulhoff, Weinberg, Ullmann, Gidon Klein, Schoenberg and Shostakovich, as well as contemporary composers whose lives were deeply affected by fascism and communism; lectures and discussions about the repression of Jews and other minorities, and musicians in exile like Martinu; a celebration of the work of conductor/composer Georg Tintner, who sought refuge in New Zealand from WW2, but was largely ignored. He began to make musical headway only after going to Australia in 1954.

One of the ironical effects of the Nazi treatment that made so much art, music and literature disappear, was the West’s pursuit of the avant-garde in many of those fields since the end of World War 2, resulting in those composers remaining ignored for several decades, only now being revived, as here.

For Middle C the conference has presented a bit of a problem as various things have prevented each of us from paying the kind of attention that we should have liked, and which it deserved.

This lecture-recital began with a brief talk by the violinist Goetz Richter expanding on the theme music and the aesthetic of revenge – the revenge being that of Hitler against the bourgeois society that had rejected him as a creative artist (according to Richter). Unfortunately I was not sitting close enough to hear it well and Richter delivered it at a pace that was not well adapted to a thesis that was dense with complex propositions and argument.

Goetz Richter is a violinist, trained at the Hochschule für Musik, Munich. with a PhD in philosophy from Sydney University, a past associate concertmaster in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, now an
associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Jeanell Carrigan is senior lecturer in ensemble studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, having obtained her musical education in universities in Queensland, Sydney, Wollongong and studies in Europe with various piano pedagogues including Alfons Kontarsky and Karl Engel.

The duo has been playing together for 30 years.

The programme included works by three German or Austrian Jewish composers born with 25 years at the end of the 19th century. Each was written when the composer was young: the Schreker aged 20, the Zemlinsky at 24 and the Korngold at the age of 15. It was the Korngold piece that was the longest and most ambitious, and may have proved the most challenging in execution.

The three movements of Schreker’s piece are: Allegro Moderato, Andante con Moto, Presto. While his sonata bore the marked influence of Brahms, and sounded the most conventional of the three, given the time of its composition, after major chamber music by Debussy for example, Korngold’s sonata of only 14 years later was much more complex technically. Though, unlike the music that Schoenberg was writing by then, it was melodically still accessible; however, it does not sound as imposing or perhaps as promising as does Strauss’s violin sonata of ten years earlier.

Schreker’s second movement was quietly meditative, breathing calmly with a performance that was warm and burnished, yet quietly adventurous harmonies peep through. There may well have been hints of the later Schreker of the operas such as Der ferner Klang, Die Gezeichneten, Der Schatzgräber – which I’ve just missed during visits to Germany over the past decade as they have been unearthed, given interesting productions and been widely acclaimed.

The Zemlinsky piece of 1895 was a Serenade (or suite) in five fairly short movements: Massig; Langsam, mit grossem ausdruck; Sehr schnell und leicht; Massiges Walzertempo; Schnell. It was a charming piece, distinctly lighter inspirit than a sonata, its rhythms and melodies more striking and engaging than some of Zemlinsky’s music of more serious intent. The main theme of the first movement was quite joyful, while the second, that I’d noted, in the absence of movement names in the programme, as a Largo, was lit by its variety of twists in melody and rhythm and quixotic mood changes, ending with a passage of heavy piano chords. The fourth movement, a waltz, risked becoming schmaltzy had it not been so well crafted, so inventive and playful – tossing the waltz rhythms back and forth between the two instruments. The last movement called the Schumann of the early piano pieces to mind.

Then the astonishing Korngold sonata. One of the characteristics that caught my ear was the melodic tendency of spirit-lifting upward grasps such as Scriabin performs, and from then on I tended to feel the presence of the Russians like Rachmaninov and Medtner. A long work, it presented the players with daunting technical challenges with mighty fistfuls of notes at the piano and passages of both dazzling virtuosity and quiet beauty from the violin – in the third movement especially. Though later in the Adagio it slipped into a commonplace, late romantic character.

The four movements are: (1) Ben moderato, ma con passion; (2) Scherzo: Allegro molto (con fuoco) and Trio – Moderato cantabile; (3) Adagio: Mit tiefer Empfindung; (4) Finale: Allegretto quasi andante (con grazia).

The last movement impressed me however as more rigorous in shape and structure, with quite striking melody: the piano soon announced a fugue which evolved interestingly between the two instruments. Perhaps as a result of the discipline imposed by the fugue, and the commanding and illuminating performance by Richter and Carrigan, it came to seem the most imaginative and substantial music in the whole sonata.

So this was one of those recitals that the timid or unadventurous would avoid, but which revealed three composers and three works by those composers that were revelatory and most important of all, thoroughly engaging and enjoyable at the hands of two musicians of the top rank. It served to show how little we know of the Australian music scene that such splendid players, who have been playing as a duo for three decades, were unknown to me and, I imagine, to almost all the audience (which was sadly small).

 

Inspiring concert by young students of Donald Armstrong

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime concert at Old Saint Paul’s

Andrew Kelly – Brahms: Violin Sonata No 3 – First movement
Claudia Tarrant-Matthews – Elgar: Violin Sonata, Op 82 – First movement
Melanie Pinkney – Bruch: Violin Concerto No 1 – First movement.  François Schubert: The Bee
The Elegiac Trio (Andrew Kelly, Josiah Pinkney – cello, Claudia Tarrant-Matthews – piano) – Rachmaninov: Trio élégiaque No 1, in G minor
Catherine McKay was the accompanying pianist for the three violinists.

Old Saint Paul’s church

Tuesday 29 July, 12:15 pm

This concert, in the regular Tuesday lunchtime series in the former Pro-cathedral, was the last appearance of The Elegiac Trio before they took part in the final stage of the Schools Chamber Music Contest, held this year in Christchurch on the coming Saturday. It proved a remarkable exhibition of young talent by the three members of the Trio as well as the 12-year-old violinist Melanie Pinkney. All three violinists are tutored by NZSO associate concert-master Donald Armstrong.

Andrew Kelly established at once what could easily be felt as the prevailing quality in the violin playing: a warm and even tone that provided the foundation for playing that was rich in dynamic subtleties; in which the central section of the Brahms sonata was so magically hushed, demonstrating the composer’s essentially romantic and emotional character, though cast within broadly classical shapes. It prepared the audience thoroughly for his role in Rachmaninov’s elegiac trio at the end of the concert.

Claudia Matthews, 16, is a little younger than Andrew, but showed greater confidence, though their playing was invested with very similar degree of painstaking care and finesse in handling the bow. Elgar’s sonata is not nearly as familiar to most people as Brahms’s three sonatas: perhaps it does not have the same immediate melodic charm and memorable character; it’s one of those works whose beauties are slower to become embedded in the mind. Claudia’s confidence, firmness and accuracy matched her ease in navigating Elgar’s particular way with the notes, bending them secretly, creating an air of remoteness and gentle drifting, speaking of a maturity that seemed well beyond her years.

Melanie Pinkney is only 12, and I imagine I was not alone in feeling that her musical gift was in the class of the musical prodigy. The Bruch concerto in G minor is a truly grown-up masterpiece; it opens with Catherine McKay’s piano, capturing the orchestra’s character hypnotically, drawing the audience mysteriously towards the memorable first theme by the violin.

Melanie planted her notes with mature assurance, giving no suggestion that it presented any difficulties, since it all lay so comfortably under her fingers. She dealt with every musical colouring and decoration as if she was improvising, yet also with beguiling musical feeling that held you spellbound.

The fine Bruch structure was followed by a little Schubert piece that I haven’t heard for many years. Yes, it IS by Franz Schubert, but he goes under the French version, François – and that’s because it’s a fellow born in 1808 in Dresden, not Vienna, and died in 1878 and though he lived more than twice as long as the eponymous Viennese musician, he didn’t gain immortality. Though The Bee, from his Bagatelles, Op 13 (No 9), named in French, L’Abeille, published in the 1850s, survives.

In any case, it offered another display of a wonderfully fluid bowing arm that produced perfect tone.

After all this precocious virtuosity, one might be surprised at nothing, and that was the case with Rachmaninov’ first piano trio – he wrote two, both called Trio Élégiaque. This first is in G minor while the second in D minor, which is much longer, was inspired by the death of Tchaikovsky.

The tremolo opening of the piece seemed to emerge mysteriously from the dim timber recesses of the church, as the arrival of each instrument each seemed in turn to pick up the same emotion and tonal character of the previous one. They seemed to have paid scrupulous attention to each other’s sound; as the violin took up the theme from the cello it seemed simply to be an extension upward of the latter’s sound, not a different instrument.

Admittedly, this is a gorgeous acoustic for chamber music, but the raw material needs to be there for it to flourish. These musicians seemed not only to have worked together to integrate their sound but also to have judged successfully how their playing needed to be adapted to the space.

Much credit is due to the teacher of the violinists, Donald Armstrong, who oversaw the concert as a whole, but also to Andrew Joyce who coaches cellist Josiah Pinkney and Claudia Tarrant-Matthews’s piano teachers.

 

Echt-quartet experiences from the Doric String Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
The Doric String Quartet

HAYDN – String Quartet Op.76 No.6 in E-flat
BRETT DEAN – Eclipse
SCHUBERT – String Quartet No.15 in G D.887

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 25th July, 2014

I didn’t get to see and hear the Doric String Quartet on their first New Zealand visit in 2010, but on the strength of what I heard at their recent Wellington concert I’ll be keeping an eye on their schedules and things from now on. Whatever coincidences of conditions were brought to play, they were of an order which left me in a kind of trance for days after the Quartet’s concert, with scraps of the music they presented continually sounding in my head and refusing to leave me alone.

What these players seemed to me to be able to do was generate a kind of “the ordinary and the fabulous” music-making world, to which we in the audience were all invited. From the first few phrases of the Haydn (in that gorgeous E-flat Major key) our sensibilities were taken “somewhere else” by a combination of the warmth and piquancy of the writing and what I can describe only as a kind of focused sensitivity on the part of the Quartet’s players.

It was a feeling quite at odds with the cavernous spaces of the Michael Fowler Centre, a venue which was never designed for chamber music, but which nevertheless yielded on this occasion to the blandishments of the sounds brought into being by the musicians. But in a strange and alchemic way, those vistas had a part to play in the process of creating the fabulous – the quartet’s penchant for hushed tones throughout seemed to throw down a kind of gauntlet to our listening environment, as if to say “Can these spaces unlock our secrets? – or will our tones be scattered as wildflower petals in the wilderness, lost just as if we never in the first place made these sounds?”

Well, the musicians needn’t have worried – thanks to that aforementioned “focused sensitivity” everything the players did with the music registered, from the softest whisperings to the fullest, richest declamations. But I think the combination of larger-than-usual listening-distances and the quartet’s fondness for finely-wrought, inward-sounding tones resulted in a kind of focused, concentrated interplay between music, musicians and listeners that worked a potent spell throughout the concert.

Haydn’s theme-and-variations opening movement of his Op.76 No.6 quartet beguiled us right from its opening, every phrase and contrasting impulse carrying with it both spontaneity and logic. The second, hymn-like movement seemed almost like a 3/4 version of the famous Emperor Quartet’s slow movement. I liked the “breathless with wonderment” aspect of the playing, with not a note or phrase sounding mechanical or contrived – a momentary shift into minor mode at one point called forth pauses charged with expectation, before a communion-like resolution provided the only possible response.

Deftly-wrought syncopations throughout the minuet’s opening gave way to the trio’s pealing bell-like scales, sounded by the players with great delight among the combinations, by turns droll and festive in character. Then, the finale’s almost ritualistic minuet-like aspect at the beginning occasionally released an energized, scampering figure which enlivened the textures and gave a wider context to the movement’s apparent severity – the quartet dug into some wonderful modulations and danced its way through some tricky canonic interchanges, the sequences communicating to us a great deal of creative satisfaction – as the poet Hopkins wrote about his early-morning sighting of a falcon’s flight – “the achieve of: the mastery of the thing!”

Brett Dean’s work Eclipse took us to realms as far-removed from Haydn’s finely-abstracted creations as could be imagined. This work for string quartet, in a single movement but with three distinct sections, was written by the Australian composer in response to the 2001 Tampa crisis, the name referring to a Norwegian vessel whose captain’s actions saved the lives of hundreds of Indonesian refugees on board a boat which got into difficulties while heading for Australia. Though Dean in a programme note describes the work as “first and foremost a piece of chamber music”, his initial impetus to create the work would for most listeners surely seem an inextricable part of the process of listening to and understanding the end result.  I think it was Sibelius who once said “music reflects life” – and as a political statement Dean’s work is no less musically impactful – in a completely different way – than was Finlandia.

The composer described his work as “brooding, troubled and at times aggressive”, his music describing a situation in which people found themselves “riding the cusp between life and death….and entering the realm of sheer existence”. It’s certainly a tour de force of virtuosic quartet-playing, employing techniques and effects which were exploratory to an extreme degree and positively orchestral in their impact. The work’s three sections, played without a break, described in turn the sounds and ambient contexts one might have associated with a ship drifting out at sea, the naked power and terrifying effects of an oceanic storm, and finally the ensuing calm associated with feelings of both relief and uncertainty on the part of the ship’s passengers regarding their fate.

Each section made a different kind of impact, one which tended to go beyond the composer’s actual programme and draw on deeper, more archetypal feelings concerning aspects of the “human condition”.  Thus the quartet’s opening evocations seemed to me to suggest the reality of vast spaces through which we humans carry out our small business – at the outset things were only a notch or two up from inaudibility, though things gradually built up by a kind of “growing from seed” process. It became a slow coalescence of dry, spectral impulses with variegated timbral and gestural features, such as tremolandi, and afterwards pizzicati, the spontaneous, even chaotic assemblage subsiding into order as the music proceeded.

The “storm” sequence was nightmarish to say the least – extremities of textures and dynamics, between which were “roller-coaster rides” of the utmost physicality, the players extracting from their instruments sounds that readily conveyed terror, helplessness and despair by dint of their menace and vehemence. At its climax brutal punctuations vied with awful silences which were then whipped into a frenzy by vicious tremolandi passages, whose intensities gradually dissipated, leading the way to an ambience of shattered fragments, of exhausted spirits, tremulous voices, and glimmerings of hope, a solo cello’s wraith-like traceries attempting to imbue the besieged human spirit with the will to recover and continue.

In some respects Dean’s work resembled that which concluded the concert, Schubert’s equally searing G Major Quartet D.887. Both pieces inhabited realms of physical and psychological duress, presented in each case with unequivocal visceral impact, though Schubert’s work had no programme as such, rather, abstracting its dramatic qualities via sonata form. But what power there was in those abstractions – what candour! – what tragedy!

The Doric’s way with this music was to bring out a kind of rapt inwardness to the quieter, more lyrical sections, playing with the utmost concentration and refinement of tone. This approach had the effect of making us listen all the more intently to the music-making in that vast space – having captured our sensibilities thus, the music’s more vigorous moments came across with all the more impact and character. Though not as “gutsy” as the trenchant attack adopted by some groups I’d heard in the music’s more harrowing sections, the Doric’s keen focus and intensity put across the music just as strongly and tellingly, made all the more journey-like by the observance of the first movement repeat.

Equally as memorable was the stark beauty of the ‘cello-led lament which began the second movement, the players paring all warmth from their tones so as to sharpen the intensities of contrast with the trenchant second subject – here, at once tightly-focused and vastly-flung, the ambience a-tingle with anguish and grey-hued with sorrow. But then the quartet made certain we felt the touches of warmth on our faces which came with the major-key statements of the opening towards the movement’s end, Schubert characteristically putting on a brave face through the music’s tears.

The spookily elfin scherzo kept its sotto voce mode for as long as it could, the playing hinting at something diabolical darting between the shadows, with occasional szforzandi causing a scalp-prickling effect. Set against these urgencies, the long-breathed waltz-likeTrio seemed like a kind of distant dream of dancing phantoms, the shades, perhaps, of happier memories. But even more startling was the finale’s frenetic pace, its flight more psychological than physical, the notes falling over themselves in places trying to “escape” the claustrophobic crowding of those syncopations, and the brutality of the occasional szforzandi. I’ve never heard this music take on such a sinister “ride to the abyss” aspect, its energies transformed into compulsive shudderings, everything haunted with a ghostly pallor, like a rider set on galloping towards a grim and unremitting destiny.

One could conclude from the above, quite rightly, that the concert was for me a throughly engaging and richly-wrought experience – sterling testimony to the skill and musicality of an exceptional quartet of players.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engaging lunchtime concert by woodwind students

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Woodwind students of the New Zealand School of Music

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 23 July, 12:15 pm

Five students under head of winds Deborah Rawson at the school of music gave a delightful recital on a cold day which saw a slightly smaller audience than usual at St Andrew’s.

As usual the standard of the performances was remarkable, resulting in several revelations of unfamiliar music. The first was a movement from Saint-Saëns’s clarinet sonata, one of his last pieces, written in the year of his death. Hannah Sellars played its second movement, Allegro animato, not without slight blemishes but with interesting variety of tone and an easy fluency in the runs and other decorative elements.

A second clarinettist was Patrick Richardson, rather more confident both in his presentation and his execution; he played two pieces, the first a successful arrangement of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin, and then the Allegro from Stamitz’s 2nd clarinet concerto (while the programme had J (for Johann) Stamitz as composer, Richardson said correctly that it was by Carl, Johann’s son; Johann wrote only one clarinet concerto). The Debussy was limpid and fluid, every note entranced by the girl’s beguiling hair, the piano part only slightly diminished in its importance; the concerto movement by the son of the genius of the Mannheim school which so influenced Mozart, was a happy experience, chosen no doubt to exemplify the stylistic contrast between the classical clarinet and the late romantic. The clarity of tone, the player’s firm confidence carried him through the decorative phrases and cadenzas, with striking support by pianist Rafaela Garlick-Grice.

Harim Oh was a third clarinettist; he chose a piece that represented a very different challenge: the first movement, Lento, poco rubato, from the solo clarinet sonata by avant-garde Soviet composer Edison Denisov, born in 1929 and died in 1996. Littered with tricky pitches, micro-tones, note bending and smudged trills, this was a fine performance of a famously seminal piece, defying Soviet orthodoxy.

Two other instruments featured: Annabel Lovatt’s oboe and Peter Lamb’s bassoon. Annabel’s presentation was slightly hindered by nervousness compounded by a non-functioning microphone; however I did hear her say that the CPE Bach piece for solo oboe was originally for flute – no doubt for his patron the flute-playing Prussian king Frederick. One of the really significant revelations of recent decades has been the discovery of Bach’s oldest son’s genius, replacing the earlier view of him as a merely talented odd-ball. This piece made its way through an Adagio with an intriguing, twisting melody, short varied pauses and odd tempo changes; then the Allegro, a show-piece that was just as inventive and entertaining, punctuated by unexpected pauses, which Annabel played with considerable accomplishment. It may well have been more difficult on the oboe than on the flute.

Peter Lamb played a short suite for bassoon and piano by Alexander Tansman, who came alive for me when I visited the city museum in Lodz some years ago to find it largely dominated by Arthur Rubinstein and Tansman, both born there – Tansman 1897–1986. Since then, Tansman’s music seems to have emerged interestingly. This suite explored the instrument’s great and highly contrasted range in sunny melodies that engaged the piano (always played so splendidly by Garlick-Grice) in a real partnership. There seemed to be four movements, varied in a neo-classical manner. Not only does his music avoid modernist tendencies (in Paris in the 1920s, he declined an invitation to associate with Les Six) and certainly the serialists, but there is little to suggest any kinship with his compatriot Szymanowski, 15 years his senior. So this was an engaging, and interesting work that the two played with affection and commitment. It’s time for more serious exploration (by RNZ Concert?) of Tansman’s impressive oeuvre.

Comments later confirmed my impression of a particularly engaging concert.