Tag: chamber music

Diverting woodwinds a delight from first to last at St Andrew’s

Posted on by admin

New Zealand Music for Woodwind

Natalie Hunt (b. 1985)  Winter (Winter is dedicated to Debbie Rawson and the saxophone students of the New Zealand School of Music)
               Reuben Chin (alto saxophone) and Ben Hoadley (piano)
Philip Brownlee (b. 1971)  Stolen Time
Kamala Bain (recorder) and Ben Hoadley (dulcian)
Kenneth Young (b. 1955)  Elegy for Saxophone Quartet
               Saxcess: Debbie Rawson (soprano saxophone), Reuben Chin (alto saxophone), Simon Brew (tenor saxophone), Graham Hanify (baritone saxophone)
Gillian Whitehead (b. 1941)  Venetian Mornings
The Donizetti Trio: Luca Manghi (flute), Ben Hoadley (bassoon), David Kelly (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 14 May 2014, 12:15 pm

This was a concert I headed to with simply no idea of what to expect. It proved to be a delight from first to last. All the works explored the less frequently heard registers and timbres of the various instruments involved, and all evoked moods of reflection and introspection that are not often associated with music for instruments like the saxophone family. It has always baffled me why “classical” composers should have so seldom used the delicious possibilities that these lovely instruments offer, and likewise the matchless grace and individuality of the cor anglais. But that’s another story; there were no cor anglais works here.

Natalie Hunt’s brief Winter piece saw the alto sax floating above the piano with lyrical, almost modal melodic lines that rose and fell in pitch and intensity like the in- and out-breaths of sudden fright followed by relief. Reuben Chin’s playing was beautifully tailored to the moods of the music, and Ben Hoadley’s accompaniment perfectly balanced to the solo line.

Stolen Time was given its first performance at this concert. “Philip Brownlee is a composer and sound artist based in Wellington. His musical interests include forming connections between recorded sound and instrumental performance, and between composed and improvised musics.” (Programme Notes). It was interesting to hear a modern work for two medieval instruments, particularly the lesser known dulcian. This is a Renaissance woodwind instrument with double reed and folded conical bore, more often called ‘curtal’ in English.

The predecessor of the modern bassoon, it flourished between 1550 and 1700, though it was probably invented earlier.  The piece unfolded as a delicate counterpoint between the two solo voices, opening with a spare unison melody that evoked, for me, images of Fiordland bush in the dead of night. There we can indeed steal time from our over-busy urban lives, and listen to the enquiring bird calls that cut into the matchless silence of the rainforest.  The recorder floated on top with light, trilling, fluid lines, over intermittent calls from a Kiwi exploring a few notes outside its normal range, and the occasional honk of a bittern. All closed into the night time silence with another spare, fading unison line…… I was left hoping that we will hear more of Philip Brownlee’s wind writing in future.

Kenneth Young provided some notes for the next work in the programme: “My Elegy for Saxophone Quartet was written especially for my good friends and colleagues of long-standing, Debbie Rawson and Graham Hanify. The melancholy and elegiac nature of saxophones, in general, had always been something I wanted to investigate and base a work on, so when Debbie asked me to pen a work for Saxcess this was very much on my mind as a concept. The real impetus came in 2010 when our family suffered the passing of a much-loved and valued member. It was a truly sad time and that sadness would seem to have found its way into this piece.”

The work opened with a melody from the soprano sax, where Debbie Rawson’s exquisite dulcet tone set the contemplative mood for the whole piece. This developed as a series of conversations between solo melodic lines for the various instruments, and solos accompanied by the rich warmth of the ensemble harmonies. Sadly we heard only a brief snatch from the solo baritone, whose rich warm timbre merits a whole solo work in its own right. The performance was marked by most sensitive playing, beautiful phrasing and the artistry of superb dynamic control. It closed with a final soprano line that faded into breathless silence……..

“Venetian Mornings”, writes Gillian Whitehead, “is dedicated to my dear friend Jack Body as a celebration of this 70th birthday. We first met while visiting Venice independently in the 1960’s. One night we went to hear Peter Maxwell Davies’s new work Vesalii Icones performed by Davies’s group the Pierrot Players. It was a very humid evening; we could hear continuous distant rumblings of thunder as we went into the concert hall and eventually a huge storm broke. We went onto emergency lighting during the piece. Jack introduced himself after the piece. When we left the hall, we discovered Venice had been cut off from the world, a tornado had come out of the sea, overturned a ferry and destroyed a camping ground. A number of people were killed – 12, maybe – but if it had been earlier or later, many more would have died. After that concert Jack and I would meet for breakfast each morning, and have been friends ever since.”  (Programme notes).

The work opened with a very beautiful baritone solo which passed to a pianissimo flute line as one imagined the city barely emerging from the morning mists of the lagoon. It became briefly more lively, but again retreated into soporific silence. The second episode was marked by more animated repetitive rhythms and see-sawing harmonies from the Trio, with melodic writing that was full of beautiful exchanges between the instruments. But the mists finally triumphed as the ending retreated into a fading pianissimo. I’m not sure this work would have been particularly meaningful without the programme notes; but with that background provided, the music vividly recalled all those long-forgotten memories of one’s OE in Venice years ago, when it really was mist over the awakening lagoon and not the stench of thick smog.

This event offered a wonderful opportunity to hear some very special Kiwi work, and I can do no better than to quote my colleague Lindis Taylor, who remarked: “I thought it was a lovely, adventurous little concert, particularly the Whitehead.” (though he would like to add that he found each of the pieces thoroughly diverting in totally disparate ways).

 

 

Remembering David – a Farquhar tribute from the NZSM

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REMEMBERING DAVID
A concert of music by David Farquhar (1928-2007)

Presentation curated by Jack Body
Music performed by staff of
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Jenny Wollerman (soprano) / Martin Riseley (violin)
Jane Curry (guitar) / Jian Liu (piano)

Works:
Sonatina for piano (1950) / Three PIeces for Violin and Piano (1967)
Eleven Pieces from Black, White and Coloured for piano (1999-2002)
Swan Songs for voice and guitar (1983)
Six Movements from Ring Round the Moon for violin and piano (1953 arr. 1992)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Kelburn

Thursday 8th May

This extremely timely concert was organized by Jack Body as a tribute to one of his former teaching and composing colleagues, David Farquhar, on the seventh anniversary of the latter’s death.

Born in Cambridge in 1928, David Farquhar was one of a group of fledgling composers which included Larry Pruden, Edwin Carr, Dorothea Franchi and Robert Burch who studied composition with Douglas Lilburn at the renowned Cambridge Summer Music School during the late 1940s. Afterwards, on completing his degree in Wellington at Victoria University, Farquhar then took himself to England, joining Burch, Carr and Pruden for two years of further composition studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London under the tutelage of Benjamin Frankel.

Returning to New Zealand in 1953, Farquhar joined Professor Frederick Page’s Music Department at Victoria University, managing to balance teaching duties with composition, and producing at least one landmark piece of home-grown music along the way – the Dance Suite for small orchestra, “RIng Round the Moon” written to accompany a stage production by the New Zealand Players. Another work which achieved something of a public profile, albeit briefly, was the 1962 opera “A Unicorn For Christmas”, performed for Queen Elizabeth during a 1963 Royal Visit.

Of course, “Ring Round the Moon” in its various guises has captured people’s affections like none other of Farquhar’s works – I think partly because it doesn’t have any of the slight austerity that seems to me, rightly or wrongly, to be hung about the neck of much of the composer’s output. Even so, there’s so much more of Farquhar’s music which ought to be better-known, some of which we were able to hear performed in this concert.

Other pieces – the most shamefully-neglected of which I think is the First Symphony – await their turn in the scheme of things. Farquhar wasn’t a self-promoter of his music, unlike his contemporary, Ted Carr, though the music of both has entered that realm of curious neglect which composers Ross Harris and Jack Body touched upon in a radio interview prior to the Farquhar concert.

There’s grown up a kind of “lost generation” of New Zealand music, being the work of composers who came immediately after Douglas Lilburn, a list including, of course, David Farquhar, and (as Jack Body pointed out) that of HIS teacher, Ronald Tremain.  Yes, one or two works by these people did “cut through” the Sleeping-Beauty-like thicket and get themselves established – besides “Ring Round the Moon” one thinks of Larry Pruden’s “Harbour Nocturne” as a kind of “Kiwi classic”. And one remembers both Farquhar’s Third Symphony and Pruden’s String Trio being performed in Wellington, well, relatively recently.

But apart from these good deeds shining out like candlelight in a naughty world, the gloom that’s here overtaken the compositional output of people such as the aforementioned Ted Carr and Ronald Tremain, as well as that of Robert Burch and Dorothea Franchi, not to mention slightly later figures like John Rimmer and Kit Powell, has been pretty London-foggish. Another figure whom I’d include is Christchurch’s John Ritchie, whose music seems to get little more than parochial attention, when there are pieces by him which should be well established in our regular concert programs.

Perhaps, as Ross Harris seemed to me to suggest, this process of neglect has a kind of inevitability – like T.S. Eliot’s cat, “The Rum Tum Tugger”, who ” will do what he do do, and there’s no doing anything about it!” In which case, the same process obviously creates in time a kind of need to fill the void, which in turn propagates concerts like the present one – thanks, of course, here, to that “nurseryman extraordinaire”, Jack Body.

As well, there’s a current crop of performers who are ready, willing and certainly able to assist with whatever rehabilitation process is mooted, as was demonstrated to us in the Adam Concert Room on this occasion. After Jack Body’s welcoming speech, the concert proper began with a Sonatina for piano, dating from 1950, written by Farquhar after he’d left New Zealand to take up studies in the UK at Cambridge University. A note in the program told us the the work was published only in 2009 by Waiteata Music Press!

In this three-movement work, pianist Jian Liu revelled in the first part’s explorations of keyboard timbres – at first, brief phrases created a somewhat restless feeling, though the colourings held the angularities together. Then the music gravitated towards the lower piano registers, less agitated in effect, but deeper and slower, almost leviathan-like – not menacing, but sombre and sonorous, with upward irruptions of impulse keeping a kind of spatial awareness of things alive. These bright, glint-like sequences led to a quiet, enigmatic coda.

The second movement, marked Andante, I found almost ritual-like in its step-wise aspect, with an accompanying flourish, the latter following the melody as a train follows a bride’s dress – counterpointing voices played hide-and-seek, the pursuers then throwing their victims in the air to sparkle and scintillate before coming to earth and taking up the stepwise gait again, the flourish somehow detaching itself and leaving us with a piquant impression. The finale’s running, angular figurations were brilliantly activated by Liu, whose energies exuberantly realized the toccata-like middle section, and, after a breath-holding pause, signalled the end with a grand flourish.

I scribbled lots of notes during the next item, the 1967 Three Pieces for Violin and Piano – however, the marking for the first movement, “Improvisando”, says it all, really. I was reminded here of my own youthful, awkwardly shy attempts to engage girls I fancied in conversation, by the piano’s fitful, broken fanfare-like figurations, to which the violin responded with edgy, distant held notes, frequently with harmonics and occasionally punctuating its iciness with impatient, dismissive gestures.

I’m not sure whether the second movement’s “Pizzicato” represented a kind of thawing-out of relations, but the pianist’s plucking of the strings in the piano’s body and activating the lowest ones with a timpanist’s stick seemed to accord more readily with the violinist’s pizzicato notes at first, the increased engagement continuing with the violinist’s fly-buzzing sonorities enjoying the pianist’s strumming of the instrument’s strings. The final piece, “Risoluto” had fanfares (violin) and strumming harps (piano) each player demonstrating a kind of determination suggested by the music’s title, the pianist at one point knocking on the instrument’s body with his knuckles, and the violinist amplifying the fanfare figures before skittishly delivering an abrupt payoff.

Then came the first of two exerpted brackets from a piano solo collection called “Black, White and Coloured” – a typical Farquhar-ish exploration of the different characteristics of music written using either white or black piano keys and their treble/bass/inverted combinations. The first “bracket” was dominated by song, realizations of Negro Spirituals and of songs by Gershwin amongst the items. While finding the idea interesting, I thought some of the pieces too skeletal and bloodless compared with the originals, especially the Negro Spirituals – had I not known the pieces’ origins, I wouldn’t have missed those bluesy intensities put across by various great singers I could recall in my memory, and perhaps given the composer more credit for his relative austerities.

Similarly in the second set I thought the idea worked better the more obscure the music – so while I thought the opening “Silver-grey moonlight” too simplistic in its treatment of Clair de lune, the famous folk-melody, some of the others worked well, though there seemed a reluctance on the composer’s part to do very much with the basic thematic material. I thought the most successful realizations in the second set were “Chorale Prelude” and “Clouds”, in particular, the latter, which brought from Farquhar’s sensitivity to detail some timeless, floating ambiences of beauty and nostalgia.

More successful – in fact, spell-binding in effect – was the song-cycle “Swan Songs”, a 1983 work for voice and guitar, performed here by soprano Jenny Wollerman and guitarist Jane Curry. Framing the cycle at its beginning, middle and end were quotations from Orlando Gibbons’ well-known madrigal “The Silver Swan”, hand-in-glove with traditional song, and texts from Carmina Burana as well as by the composer. On the face of things, a kind of hotchpotch, but in performance, a magical evocation of worlds within worlds, bringing together instances of creative impulses leapfrogging over centuries to make heartfelt connections, one I found delightful, piquant and extremely moving.

With sonorous and evocative guitar-playing from Jane Curry setting the scene, Orlando Gibbons’ evocation of beauty brought forth spoken exclamation at first from the singer, and then, briefly, melody. Together with limpid guitar notes  the singer continued through through a section of the traditional “Swan swam”, evoking stillness and grave beauty. The third section, “Anxieties and Hopes” used the composer’s own text, a setting urgent and anxious, with darting impulses and broken figurations, guitar and voice overlapping, breaking off for a sequence of soaring, impassioned beauty before returning to the previous agitated state of things.

Gibbons’ music returned as a kind of “quiet centre” of things, before the work took a somewhat bizarre turn, quoting the “roasted swan” text from Carmina Burana (also famously used by Carl Orff in you-know-which-work!) – a droll lament for the sweetness of times past, affectingly sung and played by Jenny Wollerman and Jane Curry. After a brief reprise of the singer’s call to the swan, over a guitar ostinato, Gibbons’ music made its concluding appearance, the singer arching the voice over a lovely guitar solo with the words “Farewell, joy……” – brief, and ambient, and beautiful.

Before the programme’s final music item, composer Ross Harris contributed a brief but moving reminiscence of David Farquhar, constructing an engaging picture of a colleague with a number of distinctive traits – a concise and ordered thinker and creative spirit, responsive to challenges, (fiercely competitive especially when playing tennis, which was a great love – in fact the end of tennis for Farquhar seemed to symbolize the end of life…..). Ross Harris talked about a composing legacy of finely crafted music, describing its composer as “ultimately modest”.

The evening’s final, appropriately-chosen item (how COULD it have been left out?) was the violin-and-piano transcription of “Ring Round the Moon”, an arrangement made by the composer for the concertmaster of the NZSO, Isador Saslav, in 1992. I remember, a goodly number of  years ago, introducing myself to David Farquhar as an “admirer” of the work, and the composer graciously acknowledging the gesture by way of seizing his then wife Raydia D’Elsa around the waist and dancing a few steps with her in front of me, explaining that they would dance their way through the music he composed at the time to “try it out”. I’m sure the composer would, had he been present, have relished the playing of violinist Martin Riesley and pianist Jian Liu, despite his well-documented frustration at what he considered the piece’s disproportionate popularity.

Somehow, the immediacy of the violin-and-piano textures brought this memory of our meeting back to me more readily than did any of the orchestral versions of the dances – everything came across as more flavoursome than I ever before remembered, the violin’s piquant re-echoings of the linking motif at the conclusions of some of the pieces, the crunchy harmonies of the Galop, the bar-room atmosphere of the Tango, complete with exhausted-on-their-feet couples, the contrariwise harmonies in the Trio of the Polka, and the alterations between instruments in the Two-Step, complete with the link-motif’s lovely “falling-down-the-slope” effect. To finish, the Finale was encored, the music in this performance as angular, chunky, exuberant and wonderful as ever.

For those people who’ve read to this point, my humble apologies for the lengthy review! – but I hope you’ll conclude from all of this that Jack Body’s and the musicians’ efforts on behalf of David Farquhar’s music were eminently worthwhile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

MFC proves fine venue for superb string quartet plus clarinet concert

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chamber Music New Zealand

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman, violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello), James Campbell, clarinet

Weber: Clarinet Quintet in B flat, Op. 34
Brahms: String Quartet no.3 in B flat, Op. 67
Tabea Squire: ‘Jet lag’ for string quartet
Mozart: Quintet in A for clarinet and strings, K. 581

Michael Fowler Centre

Tuesday, 6 May 2014, 7:30 pm

The gorgeous opening of the Weber quintet told the audience that we were in for a treat of mellifluous tonalities and contrasting sonorities.  Here was a wonderful programme of music by clarinet-loving composers.

Any concerns I had about chamber music in the Michael Fowler Centre were quickly dissipated.  Admittedly, I was seated only seven rows from the front; a colleague seated elsewhere did not find the acoustic as satisfactory.  The use of a lower platform in front of the stage assisted considerably in projecting the sound.  Upstairs and the extreme sides of the downstairs were closed off, concentrating the good-sized audience in the remaining areas, providing a more intimate ‘chamber’ than would otherwise be the case.  However, others told me that they, like me, find the seats too low, the arm-rests too high and hard, and the low backs to the seats frustrating to the wish to stretch one’s legs out in front.

The sparkling allegro that followed the slow opening of the Weber work had each instrument showing what it could do, but especially the athletic clarinet of James Campbell.  Weber certainly demonstrates the range of the instrument.  The normally utterly reliable New Zealand String Quartet lapsed a little in intonation early on but this was most unusual.

The second movement, Fantasia: adagio, revealed the subtlety of tone that Campbell could obtain from his instrument; his pianissimo playing was quite remarkable.  I don’t believe I have ever heard such quiet, yet warm tones from the clarinet.

The Menuetto that followed was by turns gracious and lively, and gave plenty of opportunity for the clarinet to shine in a variety of delightful melodies, supported by rich harmonies from the strings.  Rapid passage work from the clarinet was replete with excitement.

The final movement, Rondo: allegro gave Campbell the chance for virtuosic display as he traversed the wide range of his instrument. In an interview on radio earlier in the week he had described the Weber work as being operatic.  It is music he has played with the New Zealand String Quartet off and on over quite a long period.  It was a thoroughly masterful and enjoyable performance.

Brahms followed: not the clarinet quintet described in the notes I had been sent by email (they were the notes for concerts in some other centres; Weber was not included either), but his third string quartet.  It was introduced by Gillian Ansell, who remarked on how unusual it was for them to play two succeeding works in the same key, and told us that this had been Brahms’s own favourite of his chamber works.

The superb balance between the instruments was very apparent in the first movement, especially.  This had not been so much the case in the Weber, which was more like a mini-concerto for clarinet and strings much of the time.  Yet the Brahms was full of melody.  After the vivace came the sombre yet calm andante, at first featuring opulent harmonies underpinning a felicitous violin solo, and later a sublime ending.

There followed a third movement agitato (allegretto non troppo) and trio, that began with strong, warm-toned viola playing.  There were many musical ideas; the trio was lyrical and slightly bittersweet.  The poco allegretto con variazioni finale was based on a folksy theme.  The variations’ intricacies made a wonderful tapestry of delicate threads interweaving.  Their inventive qualities ran through a gamut of moods.

A surprise short item before the Mozart quintet brought us a piece commissioned by the New Zealand String Quartet that might have been topical for the visiting clarinettist: Jet lag by talented young violinist and composer Tabea Squire.  It began quite percussively, and moved through passages using much pizzicato and harmonics.  Much of the writing seemed dislocated – as you would feel when jetlagged.   The effect was quite amusing, and showed considerable skill and confidence.

Now to the pièce de resistance.  In introducing the Mozart, James Campbell said it was one of the greatest works for clarinet.  He told us that Stadler, for whom it was written, liked playing in the lower register, and was not an egotist like Baermann, for whom Weber wrote his work.  The programme note informed us that Weber was the cousin of Constanza, Mozart’s wife, and that he was inspired by this work.

The phrasing of the opening theme on the strings was varied in the repetition of the passage; an enchanting feature.  The wonderful melody that follows, first on violin and then on clarinet, creates a tug at the heart-strings.  The harmonies from the other instruments are equally delicious.  There is something intensely satisfying about this music.  Campbell’s control of timbre and dynamics is most impressive, and produces a thoroughly musical result.  Here is a musician who gets to the core of the music.  His playing reveals wonderful nuances, not only of his technique, but more importantly of the character of the composers’ writing.

The calm beauty of the apparently simple Larghetto second movement is nevertheless quite overwhelming.  Words, after all, cannot describe music adequately.  The long phrases are akin to perfection.  The muted violins acted as a foil for the beautifully controlled clarinet.  The strings were played with a minimum of vibrato; they sounded just right for the mood as well as for the period.  Despite the sotto voce nature of the movement, it was full of character.

The Menuetto introduced a livelier element, though it was still a gracious eighteenth century dance.  The allegretto con variazioni finale was sprightly, and classically proportioned, but certainly not formulaic.  Lovely legato passages continued until the clarinet jumped in with some gymnastic jollifications.  Again, all was controlled and exquisitely phrased.  The clarinet was never shrill, and blended supremely well with the other instruments.  The joyous ending completed a concert that was a fulfilling musical highlight.

 

Lower Hutt Little Theatre gets new Steinway, but several much cheaper improvements still needed

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

A new Steinway for Lower Hutt

Welcome reception and concert for the new piano at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre

Sunday 4 May, 2014

On Sunday friends of the piano were invited to see and hear the new Steinway that had been bought for the Lower Hutt Little Theatre. Replacing the earlier Steinway which had been used in the Little Theatre since the 1950s, it had arrived and been run-in.

Ten years ago at the urging of players, teachers and audiences the Hutt City Council set about building up a fund for the purchase of a new piano, and a charitable trust was set up in parallel to encourage individual contributions. Committee members of Chamber Music Hutt Valley have been vigorous and prominent in promoting the whole exercise.

Among other contributions were a large number of small donations from individuals and small businesses; and particular value was placed on a ‘Kids for Keys’ piano playing initiative, organised by local music teachers. And individual keys were up for purchase: there are still some for sale.

Concerts by the Hutt Valley Orchestra, Chamber Music Hutt Valley and the newly established Chopin Club also yielded funds for the piano.

While the old model D piano continued to serve pretty well, and most professional pianists tended to be discreetly charitable about its sound and the problems of producing top-class performances, there was little dispute about the need for a new instrument.

The target has nearly been reached through the $60,000 raised by donations to the Trust and most of the balance from the City Council with the proceeds of the sale of the old piano, to meet the $170,000 cost of the new piano.

However, the Trust still needs $7000 to meet its commitment.

After a formal welcome with speeches from Mayor Ray Wallace and the Chair of the Trust, Joy Baird, a varied programme was presented. Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano, four hands, began the concert, with Diedre Irons and Richard Mapp at the keyboard. It was an excellent demonstration of the piano’s dynamic and tonal range, and sensitivity. A virtually unknown piece by Alfred Hill followed: his early Miniature Trio for violin, cello and piano, the violin and piano parts taken by pupils at Hutt Valley High School, Hayden Nickel and Nicholas Kovacev.

Two students of piano teacher and composer Susan Beresford, Thomas Minot and Hannah Louis, played three of her compositions plus a remarkably ebullient piece, Carnival, by Thomas. Pianist Ludwig Treviranus who was a high school student in the Hutt Valley, studied music with Rae de Lisle at Auckland University and took his doctorate at Florida State University, has been a loyal friend of music in both Upper and Lower Hutt. He and his jazz group played a set of jazz pieces as well as the Alla Turca movement from Mozart’s Sonata in A major.

Finally, Diedre Irons showed the piano’s responsiveness to Chopin’s ‘Heroic’ Polonaise (Op 53).

So far, so good.

But in spite of the upgrade of the auditorium and back-stage a year or so ago, and now the new piano, the ambience of the foyer remains bleak and unwelcoming, even though a café has been created and doors now give access to the Library. There are no comfortable seats for the audience before, during the interval and after a concert.

There is no décor of any kind, not even places on which posters about forthcoming concerts could be fixed. The walls could well be used to illustrate aspects of musical activities in the valley since the Little Theatre was built, making use of archival photographs which I’m sure could be unearthed.  And racks could be provided for brochures and flyers advertising future concerts and cultural activities in the Hutt Valley, and in the wider Wellington region.

Given an attractive venue, music lovers will come from far and wide for good concerts: I am just one case, living in Tawa and having been a regular at concerts in both Lower and Upper Hutt for many years. Though one hesitates to make a point that might strike a parochial note, city officials could well take a look at the most attractive environment that has been created and maintained in the Arts and Entertainment Centre in Upper Hutt.

Incidentally, I gather the city council is contemplating acoustic enhancement. In the light of the several much easier and cheaper enhancements that still cry out for attention, the professional services of acoustic engineers would be just a little ridiculous. No auditorium is perfect, and one of the first tasks that a performer new to a hall undertakes is to listen to the acoustic and to ensure that he or she obtains the most rewarding sounds. As it stands, I can see (or hear) no justification for such needless extravagance.

 

Piano trios in sparkling performances by Waikato-based ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Chamber Soloists (Katherine Austin – piano, Amalia Hall – violin, James Tennant – cello)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Piano Trio in D minor, H 327 (Martinů)
Corybas and Aegean (Psathas)
Piano Trio in F minor, Op 65 (Dvořák) 

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 27 April, 3 pm

I was surprised to discover how long it seems to be since I heard either Katherine Austin or James Tennant in concert. In fact, a search of Middle C back to October 2008 throws up neither name. However, we’ve reviewed three or four recitals involving Amalia Hall.

Most of my experience of Austin and Tennant in earlier years has been in the chamber music series in Wellington or Lower Hutt and at the Chamber Music Festival in Nelson, though I don’t think they have performed there in the last two or three festivals, at least.

So this recital was a pleasure; additionally spiced by Katherine Austin’s ebullient remarks about the music.

I have come to enjoy Martinů’s music over the years and so I found myself feeling much more receptive to this piano trio than I think some of the audience was.

His music is idiosyncratic and I can envisage performances that fail to grasp his spirit. Here however, the trio did not try to make too much of the opening passages: there was a discreet reticence in their approach, though the insistent rhythm, in the shape of motifs of two quavers and a crotchet and the opposite, and the energy that is always present was there, but waiting in the wings, as it were.

Though the melodic ideas are not as strong as in some of Martinů’s music, by the end of the first movement – less than five minutes, it had planted itself very satisfactorily in my head. The second movement starts secretively, on violin and piano though the cello later to enjoy some lovely duetting with the violin. The players didn’t allow the drifting mood of the Adagio to lose its way, though it did seem to take its time to find the exit. The finale found the more characteristic Martinů voice, with its typical ostinato-like motifs and motoric rhythms.

But I await a performance of Martinů’s Nonet from an enterprising ensemble; not to mention one of our orchestras programming one of his six symphonies.

A colleague has observed that the acoustic in St Andrew’s has become a little harder for chamber music since the refurbishment; I’m not sure, as each of the instruments spoke clearly and were always well balanced, even though the piano’s lid was on the long stick and the writing could have tempted the pianist to a more dominant role. (My colleague, Rosemary Collier, told me later that it was probably a rug under the piano that had tempered its sound).

The trio had commissioned Corybas from John Psathas, and he had been inspired to add a short additional piece called Aegean, as an envoi (in the sense of a concluding strophe to, usually, an Elizabethan poem; Psathas called it a postlude).

The pair of pieces had been premiered in Crete in 2011; Corybas had several interlinked references, but was based on a Macedonian dance in complex rhythm; Aegean was in part inspired by the view of the Aegean from his parents’ house high above the sea on the coast of below Mount Olympus.  But Katherine told us that they had decided to play in first, and that seemed very fitting. A complex pattern seemed to lie beneath it but that did not create a barrier for the listener. Its impact was of calm though not, for me, of a seascape. There were long-drawn lines for violin and cello over a busier piano part, and it proved a happy prelude for Corybas.

Strangely, there seemed to be a real affinity between it and the Martinů trio.

The piano opened Corybas with a deliberate exposition of the rhythm, as a serialist might do with a tone-row. But this was no serial or any other kind of avant-garde composition. Though the rhythm was complex, there were quite long passages with a strong and insistent beat; the piece sounded very danceable, at least for someone born in Greece.  I enjoyed the way the energy slowly dissipated as the end approached, though without any loss of spirit. Teasingly, it just got slower and more engaging. The trio has played it a number of times, and their familiarity and affinity added hugely to its acceptance and enjoyment.

Finally, Dvořák’s piano trio: No 3, but the first to make a real mark. Though the programme note linked its character with the recent death of the composer’s mother, there was little, for my ears, that suggested sadness, let alone grief. In a minor key, to be sure, but written with such maturity and confidence (after all he’d written his sixth symphony by this time, 1883; he was 42) that it is the melodic richness, life-affirming vigour and its compositional skill that animates it and gives it stature.

The first movement is the most important, almost a quarter hour and a tour de force given to sudden dynamic changes, a variety of tone and metre and dealing fluently with its fertile thematic material. These players took every chance to exploit all these opportunities, producing a mood of profound contentment. I noted earlier the happy balance maintained between the three instruments; here, perhaps more than before, I was conscious of more than just a feeling of restraint with the cello part, but a view of it as secondary; it may have been where I was sitting, on the left side. Nevertheless, when I turned my attention to the cello, Tennant’s playing was always deeply expressive. And that quality became particularly evident in the slow movement which opens, elegiacally indeed, with a lovely cello melody.

But before that, the scherzo-like second movement, Allegretto grazioso, arrested the ear through the teasing rhythm that seemed to suggest various time signatures, broken by a trio section of quite different and more pensive character.

Both the third and fourth movements, each of round ten minutes, seem to maintain the level of melodic inspiration, as the cello’s melody at the beginning of the Poco adagio is followed by a mirroring melody on the violin that was comparably engaging. And the last movement returned to the serious energy of the first movement where the Katherine Austin’s extrovert piano often led the way in dramatizing the abrupt tempo changes, the accelerandos, the little emphatic outbursts that held the attention even when one, secretly, felt that the composer was prolonging the end somewhat unduly.

So this was a splendid concert, giving a fine exposure to one of Dvořák’s chamber music masterpieces as well as rewarding and successful works of the past half century.

 

“Body Beautiful” excites, awe-inspires, and charms as a life’s occupation is celebrated.

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki – New Zealand School of Music presents:
BODY BEAUTIFUL – a tribute to Jack Body in his 70th year

Saetas  (string quartet and accordion)
A House in Bali  (narrator, accordion, string quartet and gamelan gong keybar)
Yunnan Sketches  (string quartet, guitar, tape)
Songs My Grandmother Sang  (voices, piano, string quartet)

New Zealand String Quartet
Ross Harris (accordion) / Richard Greager (baritone) / Margaret Medlyn (soprano)
Christopher Hill (guitar) / Jack Body (narrator)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University of Wellington

Monday 14th April, 2014

Jack Body celebrates his 70th birthday this year – and he’s determined to make the most of this particular anniversary, helped by warmth, acclaim and gratitude from the many people he’s come into contact with over the years as a teacher, composer, author, publisher and general advocate for the music of this country in both a Pacific and world-wide context.

This particular concert, appropriately titled “Body Beautiful” took place in Victoria University of Wellington’s Adam Concert Room under the auspices of the New Zealand School of Music. The music for three-quarters of the concert presented aspects of the composer’s fruitful relationship with the New Zealand String Quartet, before finishing, just as heartwarmingly, but in a completely different sound-world, with Body’s Songs My Grandmother Sang.

Preferring to talk with his audience rather than supply written program notes for each of the items, Body was in his usual excellent form as a communicator, giving us a real sense of process and context as well as a description of each of the “end product” in relation to the music we heard.

First up in the program was Saetas, which was a NZSQ commission dating from 2002. Body explained that he had at the time been exploring a genre of music associated with religious feasts held during Holy Week in Spain, semi-improvised, highly ornamented songs derived from the flamenco tradition. These songs, sometimes unaccompanied, sometimes using a strong drum-beat as a kind of pulse, were often associated with a quejío, or lament, a kind of cry sung as a phrase during the course of a single breath.

Body accentuated the “lament” aspect of these songs in his transcriptions in different ways. In both the first and last pieces a kind of “quejío” was exclaimed by the musicians at the beginning. But also, in the opening song Body took aspects of pieces by both Tchaikovsky and Hugo Wolf cast in a similar expressive vein and worked certain of these figurations and gestures into the music’s fabric. Fragments of both the “Pathetique” Symphony’s finale and a song from Hugo Wolf’s “Spanish Songbook” gave a strangely familiar, dreamlike flavour to the scope of the sounds, throwing their familiar contexts open to the wider world of human angst and suffering.

To my ears the music in the first piece in general seemed to take on a kind of Russian sound in places, moments featuring sweet, open-air harmonies, a sound I associate particularly with Borodin in some of his chamber music. But this could be mere fancy on my part as could also be a reminiscence I heard earlier in the piece of one of Wagner’s rising phrases associated with the flooding of the Rhine waters from “Gotterdammerung”.

The other three pieces saw ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten relinquish his normal instrument for the accordion, a change which accentuated the biting rhythmic accents of the next of the Saetas, a piece with string see-sawings and squeeze-box crunchings, the viola playing a Moorish tune in the middle of it all. The following piece had stuttering and stammering strings set against long-breathed cluster chords from the accordion. The viola played a chant suggesting something ancient, the violins echoing the notes and gradually tapering off as the viola continued, the accordion keeping in ambient touch with things.

Again the instrumentalists gave voice to the music’s feelings at the beginning of the final piece, reinforcing the anguish with foot-stampings, though varying the dynamics so as to make things antiphonal-sounding. As the strings clustered their tones around a driving, beating rhythm, the accordion played a kind of melodic counterpoint, adding to the ever-increasing texturings of the sounds – biting accents, fierce glisssandi and running scales all drove the music onwards as the players’ stamping feet beat out the pulsations to incredibly exciting effect!

Next on the program, A House in Bali combined several strands of diverse activity. First there was Jack Body himself reading exerpts from writings by Colin McPhee, the Canadian composer turned ethnomusicologist, based on his experiences in Bali during the 1930s, and describing vignettes of Balinesque village life. Incidentally, the actual house McPhee lived in was subsequently inhabited, for a short time, by the pianist Lili Kraus, before she was incarcerated for a time during the war by the Japanese.

But the piece’s chief musical feature was its “jointly-composed” aspect, Body responsible for writing the quartet and accordion contributions and the Gamelan composer and orchestra leader Wayan Gde Yudane writing the pre-recorded Balinese gamelan orchestra music. Strings and accordion (the latter played here by Body’s fellow-composer, Ross Harris) took their cues from the gamelan sounds, allowing the speaker intervals of sufficient ambient space for his words to be heard by the audience.

Body had said in an earlier interview that the rehearsals of this piece for this performance had been hair-raising, because the gamelan group in Bali seemed to him to have set much faster tempi than when it was played here previously by the New Zealand ensemble. Parts of the opening did sound rather like a kind of Balinese hoe-down, though the music’s breathless pace let up sufficiently for the mood to allow some lovely exchanges between the two quite different worlds of sounds, strings and accordion on one hand and the gamelan group on the other.

I thought the gamelan sounds extraordinary – a magic and resonant world! The scenes described by McPhee’s words were distinctive – firstly a cricket duel, with the creatures suitably prepared for the fray, like a kind of ritual battle with music. Another evocation was Nyepi, the yearly day of silence (I enjoyed the words “demons pass by, thinking the village deserted”), the seeming emptiness underpinned by lonely, isolated strands of “snake-charmer” melody from the instruments. More animated was a vignette described by McPhee of pigeons with bells tied to their legs flying around in tintinabulating flocks – the gradual diminuendo of sounds as the birds disappeared was extremely effective.

China was the focus for the next work on the program, a piece which was commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 2007, called Yunnan Sketches. The first was Bouyi, a duet setting, using a tape Body had made of two women singing, one which the composer described as “initially discordant” but whose harmonic rigours were softened by the instrumental accompaniments. I found the results hauntingly beautiful. The other two reworkings, “Bai” and “Lahu”, were each very different – the first rhythmic and syncopated, a solo viola mixing pizzicato with arco, creating a sequence that Stravinsky would have appreciated for its angularity. Finally, “Lahu” featured Christopher Hill’s guitar, interestingly, but not altogether successfully, I thought, as the instrument almost completely lacked the plangency one associates normally with oriental stringed instruments – this sounded too much to my ears like a tourist in a foreign land who’d wandered off the beaten track….

As if further evidence of Body’s versatility as a composer was needed, the concert concluded with a sometimes piquant, sometimes droll-humoured item, made up of three of the set of Songs My Grandmother Sang, performed here by Richard Greager, Margaret Medlyn and pianist Jian Liu (with audience participation in the final song “All Through the Night” encouraged by the composer!).

The composer took the songs from an album which he recalled was a favorite songbook of his grandmother’s at the family home in Te Aroha. He spoke briefly about his youthful distaste for sentimentality and his efforts to avoid it at all costs in his own music – though he then admitted, rather like Noel Coward once remarking on “the potency of cheap music”, that he’d since discovered “something about it”. He added, a little ruefully, that, though his father didn’t really care for his arrangements of the songs, he had an uncle who did like them very much.

Tenor Richard Greager led off with “Two Little Girls in Blue”, a song whose words brought forth wry grins at the convolutions of the age-old “eternal triangle” situation – one here with a bit of a difference – “and one little girl in blue, lad / who won your father’s heart / became your mother, I married the other / but now we have drifted apart….”. Rather like Benjamin Britten’s piano accompaniments for his folk-song settings, these began by supporting the tune, but then seemed to do their best to try and destabilize it – at a previous concert at which I heard these songs performed, the pianist on that occasion, Bruce Greenfield, affectionately described the accompaniments as “quite mad”!

Having enjoyed Richard Greager we were now treated to the rich, balladic tones of Margaret Medlyn, singing Body’s setting of “Genevieve” – a wonderful “open” accompaniment took flight along with the singer’s excitingly vertiginous vocal line and the help of the string quartet, which joined in with the music throughout the last verse, the tones at the end oscillating upwards and disappearing.

With the third song came the audience’s chance to make its presence really felt – a grand, chordal accompaniment supported both singers and the quartet players, while, after each introductory couplet massed voices were raised on high with the words “All through the night”. The instrumental building blocks of sound supported the melodic line beautifully, and it was left to pianist Jian Liu to play a brief, rapt chordal postlude, which he did, before reverting to a clipped “that’s it, folks!” manner for the final chord.

Very great acclamation for the composer at the concert’s end, from fellow-performers and audience alike. There’s evidently an Auckland concert coming up (30th April) at the University, featuring different repertoire to what we heard tonight. One can only wish Jack Body all the best for this concert and for further fulfilments of exploration, engagement and completion by the year’s end.  To you, Jack, every possible satisfaction and a richly-wrought sense of fulfillment on the occasion of your 70th birthday and the completion of a remarkable year.

 

 

A rare conjuction of string octets, Enescu, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, from the Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Waikanae Music Society

Shostakovich: Two pieces for String Octet, Op.11
Enescu: String Octet in C, Op. 7
Mendelssohn: Octet in E flat, Op.20

The Amici Ensemble (Donald Armstrong, Kristina Zelinska, Rebecca Struthers, Malavika Gopal violins; Andrew Thomson, Lyndsay Mountfort violas; Andrew Joyce, Sophie Williams cellos

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 13 April 2014, 2.30pm

An interesting programme performed by fine musicians is always an attraction – even on a gorgeously sunny, warm day in spring.  That’s what I wrote as the introduction to a September 2012 review of this ensemble.  This time, despite 24deg. last Sunday in Waikanae, it was chilly and damp.  On that 2012 occasion, they played Enescu; this time it was a much more extended work by that composer; Donald Armstrong said this was a New Zealand premiere, as far as he had been able to discover.   It is a rare event to hear octets; even a luxury.

Assembling this number of players is quite problematic, and all praise to Donald Armstrong for giving us three such works.  The concert was not only well attended, with probably over 400 patrons, it was also a very attentive audience.

I had just been told before sitting down, about the possibility of a siren going off, summoning the Volunteer Fire Brigade (I had never heard it at the numerous concerts I have been to at the venue).  As Donald Armstrong began to speak into the microphone, that is exactly what happened!   The locals knew, but he didn’t, that a second sounding would follow; his second attempt had to be aborted.
However, if it had to go off, it was perfectly timed, before a note had been played.

Among Armstrong’s prefatory remarks was one about the lightness of texture of these octets, there being no parts for double bass.  The ensemble was seated as two quartets, i.e. violas were seated separately, between cellists and violinists; the violinists changed positions for each item.

The remarkable thing about this concert was that each composition was written before the respective composers had reached their twentieth birthdays; Mendelssohn was only 16 when he wrote his wonderful Octet.  As the heading to the programme notes had it “The works in today’s concert were all written by great composers when they were very young.  They are vibrant, energetic works that demonstrate the emerging genius of their creators.”

The first Shostakovich piece was a Prelude, written in memory of a friend, a young poet. It began crisply, yet the playing was sonorous.  There was a chorale-like opening, but immediately the music became dissonant, (it was written in 1924, before Stalin and his strictures on all forms of artistic endeavour) then sad, even gloomy.  Solo passages for violist Andrew Thomson were followed by a pizzicato dirge, and then by an animated section.  Poignant slow suspensions intensified the mood.

The Scherzo, in contrast, was not only fast, but also furious at the beginning, and then became soulful, especially in a cello melody.  There were spiky, strong rhythms, and the ending was briskly energetic. The work certainly demonstrated the composer’s early talent and skill, and indeed those of the players as well.

George Enescu was a Romanian composer, but lived most of his life in Paris, where he was a virtuoso violinist and teacher (Yehudi Menuhin was a pupil) and composer. His quite lengthy and grand quartet in four movements was taxing for the players.

At the beginning of the first movement, parts were quite often in unison between two or more instruments.  Gorgeous melodies and striking harmonies fell easily on the ear, as did the quiet pizzicato while a viola solo was played. Then came the second movement, with some strident, declamatory passages.   The third movement was played with mutes, giving a sombre, yet smooth and peaceful effect to the chords.  Violin melodies were played over slow, interrupted chords on the lower instruments. Intensity and utter accuracy typified the playing of this movement .  There was much pizzicato, beautifully done, and many unexpected elements.  It was a commanding performance that held the audience’s attention.

The final movement, ‘Mouvement de valse bien rythmée’ ranged over tonalities and octaves.  Though marked ‘waltz’ it would not have been easy to dance to!  A strong cello and viola melody stood out.  Only in this movement did I begin to think that Enescu was somewhat long-winded – and then it ended.

The extraordinary Mendelssohn work was written one hundred years before the  Shostakovich Prelude.  In my book, the former is one of the top ten, if not the top six, works of chamber music. The sublime musical ideas start from the dramatic opening, a rising phrase that builds in dynamics as it rises in pitches.  A mood of youthful exuberance pervades the writing, for the most part pervading the Amici playing too.  Nevertheless, quiet passages were rendered beautifully.  Breadth, elegance and soaring melodies are abundant in this glorious music.

The second movement opens with the violas, then a cello is added, succeeded by an ethereal melody.  The second theme is equally lovely.  Armstrong’s phrasing and timbre were a delight in his extended solo. Rich and ever-changing sonorities characterised the movement.   The Scherzo (allegro leggierissimo) was indeed light and fantastic, presaging the composer’s later ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ music.

This was followed by the dynamism of the fugal final movement. Such complexity from a 16-year-old! The reiteration of Handel’s music to the words ‘And he shall reign for ever and ever’ in the Hallelujah chorus (Messiah) had been pointed out by Donald Armstrong. There it was, passing from instrument to instrument, the theme in the busy finale.

Sustained applause greeted the end of the work.  I felt privileged to have heard such an outstanding performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet, and to have heard for the first time the two preceding works. This was a demanding programme for the players, who deserved every plaudit they received.  If I had one reservation, it was that sometimes the cellos were rather dominating.  But there was little to detract from the marvellous achievement that this concert represented.

 

Exhilarating and musicianly recital by senior NZSM students

Posted on by admin

St. Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series

Duo Cecilia – Lucy Gijsbers (cello), Andrew Atkins (piano)

Camille Saint-Saëns: Sonata for cello and piano in C minor (1st movement)
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996): Sonata for cello and piano No. 2, Op. 68 (movements 1 and 2)
Claude Debussy:  L’Isle Joyeuse for solo piano
Astor Piazzolla: Le Grand Tango for cello and piano

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 April, 12:15 pm

Duo Cecilia plunged into the opening Saint-Saëns sonata of this concert with a riveting fortissimo
attacca that immediately had everyone sitting up in their seats. This impassioned Latin fire blazed through the initial section with unrelenting fervour, then was beautifully contrasted by the following calmer piano episode, where the melodic writing for the lower cello register saw Lucy Gijsbers’ rich, sweet tone sing through with wonderful artistry. The two musicians clearly shared a common vision for
the movmeent and its many moods, and mostly moved as one. But in the most energetic fortissimo sections, even Gijsbers’ impressive power could not speak through the volume that Atkins produced from a concert grand piano open on full stick. This was a balance problem that continued to recur from time to time throughout the programme, particularly in fortissimo passages.

A careful preliminary sound check in the St. Andrew’s space could have taken care of this, and should not have been overlooked. These younger musicians will have to perform in all manner of spaces throughout their careers, and it is an important issue to come to grips with right from the start.

Weinberg was a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish origin. From 1939 he lived in the Soviet Union and Russia and lost most of his family in the Holocaust.

Andrew Atkins explained that the composer was interned in a concentration camp until he was released after Stalin’s death, and that this was the first New Zealand performance of Sonata no.2. The movements played, while not specifically programmatic, were full of the moods and idioms that one associates with a life of loss, repression and persecution.  The soulful, poetic opening, with its unsettled tonalities, moved into more anguished dissonance as the movement progressed, but eventually resolved into fading resignation ……….

The second movement opened with a beautifully shaped cello melody voicing the pathetic despair of a soul without hope, yet one still able somehow to discern a faint glimmer of light on the horizon. The following repetitive pizzicato phrase sounded like a finger tapping helplessly on the door to freedom, but it was taken up by the more passionate and demanding voice of the dissonant piano that eventually passed it back to resolve in a few final fading pizzicati. The writing was extraordinarily evocative throughout, and was given a highly moving and sensitive interpretation by Duo Cecilia. I hope they will in due course be able to perform the work as a whole, and perhaps also give voice to more of this composer’s work.

Andrew Atkins explained that the next piece came from one of the happiest periods in Debussy’s life, and that L’Isle Joyeuse was written on the honeymoon of his second marriage. It opens with scurrying handfuls of notes that sweep across the keyboard like glittering reflections over rippling waters. There is a lovely melodic line traced through all the shimmering texture, but unfortunately Atkins opted for a tempo that simply swallowed this up, playing at a speed well ahead of the French or French Canadian recordings I’ve heard. But the contrasting gentle interludes fared better and conveyed a deep contentment. The vigorous, animated conclusion rounded out a reading that was, overall, very well executed.

The Piazzolla work, though named Le Grand Tango, has to my ear only a rather cerebral connection with the familiar idioms of the dance floor. The opening bustle of notes from both instruments does lead into a more melodic piano section, and more recognisable tango dance rhythms are discernible through the handfuls of pianist’s notes. But then a gentler more melodic central section captures an almost soulful mood of intimate courtship which was beautifully expressed by the duo. Finally a sudden shift takes us into sharply angular dance rhythms and dissonant tonalities which they attacked with suitable vigour, racing headlong into the frankly noisy closing section where rampant lust is clearly let loose!

It was an exhilarating finish to a most accomplished and musicianly recital from two very competent players. It is a pity it was so poorly attended, though the sudden descent of Wellington’s long Indian Summer into miserable drizzle and low cloud could well have had a lot to do with that.

 

Sparkling playing of Bach for flute and organ at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Bach for Lunch’

Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 846 (Book One)
Sonata E, BWV 1035 for flute and basso continuo
Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 881 (Book Two)
From Suite in B minor BWV 1067 for flute and strings
Douglas Mews (organ), Penelope Evison (baroque flute)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 April 2014, 12.15pm

A third player in the recital was the fine acoustic of St. Andrew’s Church, allowing all the nuances of sound from the instruments to be clearly heard, even the quietest ones.

The programme opened with organ only, playing perhaps the most familiar of Bach’s Preludes from The Well-Tempered Clavier (or Keyboard, in this translation), which unfortunately I missed, due to parking problems. However, I heard the fugue, delightfully played on a lovely high flute registration.  This being baroque music, the small baroque organ was used, pulled forward and towards the centre of the platform – it was good to see it being played.

Douglas Mews introduced the next item by saying that the pitch of the time of the sonata’s composition was fully a tone lower than that used today, and this was the pitch of Penelope Evison’s instrument.  Fortunately for him, the music copy he was using was printed in that pitch, i.e. D major, and not in the modern E major.

He used a registration that contrasted sufficiently with the tone of the baroque flute, without overpowering it.  Very much a continuo part, it provided few flights of fancy for the organ.  In the second movement, allegro, Mews employed plenty of lift in his part, making for a charming and lively performance from both players.  The third movement was a sleepy siciliano; the final one, allegro assai, featured tricky rhythms – the players were not always totally together.

The next Prelude and Fugue from the organ I am particularly fond of, and I enjoyed hearing them on the organ.  There was good contrast between the legato passages and those with more lift.  A brighter registration was used for the fugue.

The Suite was entire, apart from the opening Ouverture, which was absent.  Like all the Suites, this is a lovely work.  Its opening Rondeau was crisp and lively; the second dance (Sarabande) contrasts well, being slow.  The two Bourrées are quick and sparkling, though as played here, they were perhaps a little too fast to dance.  Contrast came again, with the stately Polonaise.  The Menuet is also slow, but features beautiful melodies, while the final Badinerie is utterly delightful.

Despite only two instruments being used, sometimes only one, the concert revealed something of Bach’s great variety, and certainly much of the vast experience and expertise of these two musicians.

 

One-man Slovak cello ensemble featuring voice and rhythm at NZSM

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music: Jozef Lupták – improvisatory cellist

Bach: excerpts from Cello Suites nos 1 and 3
Improvisatory performances on Ernest Bloch’s Jewish Prayer, Threnos by John Tavener and O crux, meditation for solo cello by Vladimir Godár

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music, Kelburn campus

Friday 21 March, 7 pm

Cellist Jozef Lupták came to New Zealand primarily, I suppose, to play Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra; I see he also gave concerts at Rangiora, Dunedin, Rotorua. He was also enticed to visit the New Zealand School of Music to give a masterclass on Thursday and a short recital on Friday 21 March.

His recital started and ended with excerpts from Bach’s cello suites: first, no 3 in C and last, no 1 in G. He played with eyes shut, seeming to be transported as he launched into the Prelude, the cross-string passages driven with a hypnotic energy, with a sort of intensity in which he seemed to seek distinctness in every passage, sometimes at some cost to unity of feeling. Then he jumped to the Sarabande (not the Courante, as the programme had it. Luptak did speak before playing, but I did not hear or missed hearing what he might have said about the movements), dealing with it in an almost painful, exploratory way that meant the stretching and compressing of phrases, quite losing any hint of the movement’s dance origin. But  that was replaced by a transcendental spirit that would have been complete if the light in the Adam Concert Room had been more dim (and there was no reason for it to be so well lit as the player had very little recourse to his score or the audience to the programme notes).

The third movement, consequently, was the pair of Bourrées, which are found only in suites 3 and 4. Here was the return to the real world, though Luptak’s playing introduced a kind of waywardness, again giving individuality to every phrase, which somehow dramatized the shift to the minor key in Bourrrée II. Finally, the Gigue: heavy, emphatic double stopping really caught the spirit of the peasant dance in its earthiness.

Then came his three improvisations. They consisted of the subject piece either at the start or embedded some way in, which was then subjected to the kind of variation treatment that neither Bach, Brahms or Rachmaninov might have recognized. Their only similarity to their predecessors, whether fantasies,  ariations, cadenzas or occasionally improvisations, came through spectacular bravura and showy ornamentation.

Being unfamiliar with any of the three pieces, I felt a bit ill-equipped to follow their treatment in these highly individual improvisatory explorations, as the tunes had not been sufficiently embedded in my head to allow much grasp of the way they were being transformed.

But that reference was to some extent supplied but the voicings with which Luptak accompanied his playing, consisting of a sort of humming of the tunes in question, with the mouth slightly open; simultaneously, the player added a vocal rhythmic accompaniment of clicks and sibilant sounds.

All three pieces had clear and intense religious relevance. Though I found closest kinship, musically, to the pieces by Bloch (a characteristic Jewish Prayer) and Tavener (the moving Threnos, deriving from the composer’s long obsession with the Greek Orthodox liturgy); the third piece was by a fellow Slovak musician, Vladimir Godár, O, crux (‘O Cross …’), obviously inspired by the Catholic Latin liturgy.  All evolved as pregnant, deeply felt inspirations.

The music was diatonic enough, but exhibited, at first, through a series of heavy bow strokes, a violence and anguish that was powerful; later that was set aside by a lighter passage in a dotted, dancing rhythm; the improvisation led off with his rhythmic bouncing the wood of his bow on the strings, that suddenly became more frenetic.

And Lupták allowed his last tongue clickings, in the Godar piece, to lead into the Prelude of Bach’s Suite No 1. Its playing seemed to have been deeply infected by the anguish of what had gone before; and there was little change of tone in the following Sarabande in which all its latent variety and expressiveness was exploited; but the final Gigue, with its gaiety, brought a feeling of peace and satisfaction.

Lupták played two encores: a short improvisation called Six Months and then the brief opening passage of the Bourrée which presumably was from Suite No 4 (not, as he announced, from Suite No 6 which as a pair of Gavottes in that position).

(I have not been able to check what I thought were changes in the Bach movements that I’ve noted above; if any audience member cares to comment, I’d be grateful).

This was an unorthodox recital, only and hour and ten minutes long, but put together with a single-minded ingenuity and imagination and played with high energy and intensity of feeling.