Tag: chamber music

Valedictions from the Tokyo Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

The Toyko Quartet – Farewell Tour

MOZART – String Quartet “Hoffmeister” K.499: BARTOK – String Quartet No.6

BRAHMS – String Quartet No.1 Op.51 No.1

Tokyo String Quartet

Town Hall, Wellington

Saturday 15th June 2013

Going to hear practically any concert is a kind of privilege for the listener – especially when one thinks about the “coming together” of the different things that contribute to a live performance. The “here-and-now” of it all has its own kind of spontaneously-charged electricity. Somehow, it doesn’t feel quite the same when listening to the same music played on a recording, and not even when the performers are the same as one has heard ‘”live”.

Having said this, there are concerts and concerts – and certain occasions do have a greater sense of “charge” than others, generated either in anticipation, or during the course of the performance, by the listener. One such occasion, on both counts, was the recent appearance in Wellington by the esteemed Tokyo Quartet, nearing the end of this, their “farewell” tour.

The group is disbanding after a 43-year-long career, one which has seen a number of changes of personnel, leaving one surviving original member to stay the course, violist Kazuhide Isomura. A second member of the group, violinist Kikuei Ikeda, joined the quartet just four years after their inauguration, which made him the next best thing an honorary foundation member – the other two quartet members, leader Martin Beaver and ‘cellist Clive Greensmith, joined the group in 2002 and 1999, respectively.

Despite the changes in personnel over the years, the group has maintained the highest standards of quartet-playing, winning critical acclaim for both their concertizing and their recordings, the latest (and, unfortunately, the last) of which features works by Dvorak and Smetana. Among previous recordings are integral sets of the Beethoven, Brahms and Bartok Quartets, along with single discs featuring a wide range of repertoire.

Here, tonight, it was Mozart, Bartok and Brahms whose music carried the Quartet’s valedictory sounds to us – I confess I would have preferred hearing some of their Beethoven to the Brahms – but that feeling wasn’t shared by people I spoke with after the concert. And it was interesting to experience the latter’s music in particular played by a group whose sounds were among the most refined and focused of any quartet’s I’d previously heard – interesting, because even with such advocacy I still found the Brahms quartet hard going, in particular the first two movements.

But ah! – the Mozart! The group’s playing reminded me a little of an account give by Artur Rubinstein of his hearing Sviatoslav Richter “live” for the first time: “It wasn’t anything special or out of the ordinary (recalled Rubinstein)……then at some point I noticed my eyes growing moist, and tears began rolling down my cheeks”. That wasn’t exactly what happened to me, but the effect of the Quartet’s playing took a similar course – a little way into the first movement I realized that I had actually lost myself in the music.  I felt I had been drawn in by the composer’s “world in a grain of sand” way with what sounded like the simplest of means having the utmost effect.

This was the “Hoffmeister’ Quartet K.499, given its name in honour of the work’s publisher, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, a friend of the composer’s and a fellow Freemason. Hoffmeister wrote in an advertisement regarding the work that it was “composed with an ingenuity…..that one not infrequently finds wanting in other compositions”. That “ingenuity” expressed itself in graceful ease throughout the first movement, the players here able to turn the music’s phrases in such a way that sweetness and energy worked hand-in-glove, with nothing forced or contrived. Everything had such focus, such purposeful strength, including the quietest, most delicate moments, so that the music’s argument seemed like a living, pulsating discourse.

I liked the delicate whisper of the development’s beginning and the surges of energy that followed, the players again with unfailing elegance delineating the ebb and flow of things – the movement’s “false” ending was delightfully brought off, giving its proper conclusion a kind of augmented satisfaction. The minuet provided a richly-uphostered tonal contrast, throwing into amusing relief the canonical chicken-like “cheepings” of the trio: while the slow movement demonstrated the group’s skill at sustaining long-breathed cantabile lines, with the solo violin “taking off” like a skylark towards the end.

As for the finale, the players again demonstrated their ability to delicately touch in detail at high speed, the music anticipating at some points the young Beethoven’s similarly questioning figures in the finale of his first Op.18 quartet. I loved the cellist’s delicious playing of his elevator-like runs, his elfin energies very much of a piece with what the other players were doing. In fact, so evanescent was the players’ articulation in places that the effect was almost impressionistic, though the lines and trajectories never lost their focus – Mozart was always Mozart!

It was with Bartok’s music that the original Tokyo Quartet made its mark internationally, and this performance of the Sixth Quartet reaffirmed the group’s position as among the foremost interpreters of these works. Even if I hadn’t know about this previous association, I could have assumed, from its Mozart-playing, that the Quartet would have similar affinities with Bartok’s charged sensibilities and the resulting range of expression in this particular work.

What an extraordinary work this last quartet is! – Bartok’s idea of presenting a theme at the very outset and a variant of the same at the beginning of each subsequent movement gives the work an amazing multi-faceted quality. The theme and its variations knit the structure together, but conversely provide a springboard for explorations of staggering variety across the movements. In a sense it was an entirely appropriate work for the quartet to play by way of a “leave-taking” – and the players’ extraordinary poise and controlled energy brought out the composer’s sharply-focused distillation of both his sorrow and resignation in the face of the difficulties that beset his final years.

After the interval, it was Brahms, the group giving us the first of the composer’s three String Quartets. I was hoping that, in light of the lucid, sweet-toned textures conjured up in many places by the Tokyo Quartet throughout the first half, that this would be the group that would “convert” me to these works. Alas, I continued to struggle with what I thought were the composer’s over-wrought textures, especially throughout the first two movements. There were times I felt “hectored” by the unremitting onslaught of the figurations, and frustrated at the composer’s own muddying of his own thematic lines. The fault is obviously mine – as with the Austrian Emperor who was famously supposed to have told Mozart that there were “too many notes” in his new opera “Il Seraglio”. People I spoke with at the concert’s end were enchanted with the music and the quartet’s playing of it.

Amidst the opaqueness of the Brahmsian textures I did discern certain lovelinesses – the opening of the slow movement, for example, conjured up in my mind fairy-tale scenes from the German forests, that is, before the first violin’s line, to my ears, began to over-fill the textures. I did enjoy the third movement’s romantic sense of disquiet, the music’s movement, underpinned by repeated notes from the ‘cello, engendering a feeling of unease, perhaps even of flight – the players brought out all the music’s drawing-room grace and elegance, and the Trio’s waltz had a folkish air of simplicity, with attractive, ear-catching pizzicati at certain points, making the return to the opening’s unease all the more telling.

The finale started with a searing unison, the Quartet then digging splendidly into the music’s forward-driving mood, occasionally bringing the opening unison’s figuration into the argument, but leavening the seriousness of it all with some lyrical song-bird harmonizing. The “turn for home” brought out even more trenchant energies and a forceful, unequivocal conclusion. Nevertheless, I was so pleased that the players felt sufficiently moved by the audience’s reception to offer a movement from a Haydn quartet as an encore – a Minuet from one of the “Apponyi” quartets (I think Op.74 No.1) – being, as the quartet leader Martin Beaver put it, “a return to where it all began” in string-quartet terms.

It seemed to me that here was quintessential quartet-playing – the music by turns called for great rhythmic character and energetic attack, followed by relaxed yet sharply-pointed detailing as the moods changed between main dance and trio, with an infinite variety of tones appropriate for each flicker of mood. As far as we in the audience were concerned, no better “goodbye” could have been spoken – a true privilege for the listener, indeed.

 

 

 

NZSM students stringing things together

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Post-graduate String Students of the New Zealand School of Music

Music by Mozart, Beethoven and Bach

Blythe Press, Jun He, Arna Morton (violins), Xialing Zheng (cello), Matt Oswin (piano), Nicole Ting (piano),

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

Yet more impressive playing from students.  First up was Blythe Press, who has been playing with the NZSO as a contract player.  He played the allegro from Mozart’s Violin Concerto in D, K.218, from memory.  This glorious music was played perhaps a little too judiciously – the odd rubato, apart from that before the cadenza, might have been good.

However, the full, bright sound and fast tempo (compared with some recorded performances), added to the obvious skill of the player, made for a great performance.  The long cadenza was very demanding, but quite lovely.  Matt Oswin accompanied on the piano with skill and empathy.

Another violinist and another Mozart work.  Jun He played the composer’s Sonata in B flat, K. 454.  She spoke to the audience about the work and something about the style of bow, but I could not hear most of what was said.  It was a pity that the available microphone was not used.  It was good to hear Mozart’s balance between piano and violin, compared with the rather disconcerting  piano (no pun intended) substituting for the orchestra in the previous item – unavoidable, of course.

Jun He was also accompanied by Matt Oswin.  Together, they made a fine job of the largo-allegro first movement of the sonata.  It was interesting to hear the different timbre and tone Jun He produced from her instrument compared with those of Blythe Press.  It was not a matter of superior or inferior – just less bright and full in her case.

The Cello Sonata in A, Op.69 of Beethoven was performed by Xialing Zheng, accompanied by Nicole Ting on the piano.  They got the portentous feeling of the opening of the allegro ma non troppo movement just right.  The playing was strong, and both instrumentalists produced fine tone.  The pianist played very well, with a great range of expression.  But numerous lapses of  intonation on the part of the cellist were unfortunate; for this reason, her performance did not ‘take off’ for me.

Finally came Arna Morton, who is leader of the Wellington Youth Orchestra, to play the Adagio in G minor, BWV 1001 of J.S. Bach.  This unaccompanied piece was given a very fine performance, and was followed by Mozart: allegro aperto (the latter word means ‘free’) from his Violin Concerto in A, K.219, with Matt Oswin.  Arna used the music score for this performance, but, aside from a few unwanted squeaks, on the whole made a splendid performance of the work, with a variety of tone and dynamics.

Arna proved to be another strong player, and gave a fast realisation of Mozart’s superb music.  She played a shorter cadenza than did Blythe Press, but it was absolutely delicious.  It involved a good deal of double-stopping, and a magical passage where the opening melody of the movement was played on harmonics.  A beautiful tone was maintained throughout.  This musician was the only one to look as if she was enjoying herself.

It was a pity to have biographies in the printed programme for only two of the performers; it would have been interesting to read a little about the others.

Once again, we had the treat of hearing talented young musicians who have benefited from excellent teaching and training.

 

Their own sounds: Viola students from the NZSM

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Viola Students of the New Zealand School of Music

Music by Bloch, Hindemith, Flackton, Brahms, Stamitz, and Walton

Vincent Hardaker, Megan Ward, Felicity Baker (cello), Alexa Thomson, Alice McIvor with Stephen Clothier, Rafaella Garlick-Grice (pianists)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 5 June 2013

The presence of Gillian Ansell, violist in the New Zealand String Quartet, as a teacher of viola at the School of Music appears to be producing excellent results, in the numbers of skilled violists who are her students, emerging there.

Even so, there is definitely a difference between the performers and in the sounds they make; no carbon copies here.  The variety thus produced provided some of the interest in this lunchtime concert.

Ernest Bloch’s ‘Rhapsodie’ from his Suite Hébraïque commences with a Jewish pentatonic march-like melody, and continues in similar vein.  A beautiful and interesting work, it needed to be more mellow than this player made it.  The tone was sometimes harsh, and the piano part rather over-pedalled at times.  However, there was great attention to the dynamics on the part of both performers.

Hardaker followed in an unaccompanied work by another viola player: the first two movements from Viola Sonata, Op.25 no.1 by Paul Hindemith.  The programme note seemed to have been dashed off in haste; the remark ‘The first two movements of this sonata run together’ intrigued me, but in fact they were played one after the other, without a pause.

Megan Ward played something entirely unusual and charming: William Flackton’s Sonata VI for viola and bass, with Felicity Baker, cello.  I had never heard of the composer, but it seems he flourished in the mid- to late-eighteenth century.  The ‘galant’ style of the period was one of ‘simplicity, homophony and immediacy of appeal’ according to the programme notes.  The three short movements gave us playing that was rhythmically strong, a consistently pleasant, rather gentle tone, and ornamentation that was beautifully managed.  The cello part was subtle and very musical in effect.  The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians article on Flackton, by well-known music editor Watkins Shaw, speaks of his ‘considerable individuality and expressive power’; and ‘his refined and elegant taste’.

Brahms’s Viola Sonata in F minor (Op.120 no.1, from 1894) was perhaps the best-known work on the programme.  Alice McIvor’s sound is rich and mellow, with plenty of volume when required.  Some slight intonation inaccuracies in the first movement could not spoil a fine performance.  Stephen Clothier, a composition student, was a splendid partner at the piano.  His playing was expressive, and he gave the piano part its full value.  There was just a shade of over-pedalling at some points, but the performers did very well.

The second of the two movements played, andante un poco adagio, was very attractively performed, with many nuances, the phrasing bringing out the lyricism and a certain nostalgic, even wistful character to the music.

With Carl Stamitz’s Viola Concerto no.1 in D, Op.1, we moved to a solo work in which the pianist had the unenviable task of trying to be an orchestra.  The first movement was played, without cadenza, but had Alexa Thomson extended nevertheless.  Violas vary in size, and it appeared to me that hers was smaller than those we had seen already.  However, she made a big sound on it.  There was plenty of work for her to do – the movement was taken at considerable speed, and as well, there were double-stopping, octaves, string crossings (playing across several strings in rapid succession in one phrase or figure) to contend with.  These were all accomplished with skill and precision.  The orchestral part had not a lot to do; it was really just supporting the violist’s part harmonically.

Alexa Thomson also played the last work on the programme: the first movement (andante) from William Walton’s Viola Concerto.  Again, there was much double-stopping.  Slight intonation lapses in this and the previous work were not significant in light of the accomplishment of most of the playing.  This was a lively, invigorating and highly competent performance of a difficult work, and as the programme note said ‘showcasing the viola’s warm, rich tone’.

As a whole, the concert exhibited the skills of the viola students, as well as introducing a marvellous range of important works written for the instrument.

I was pleased to see that not all the students wore black clothes for performing.  I can see no need for students, who are not professional musicians, to attire themselves entirely in black, as they often do, especially not for daytime performances.  Let’s have some visual, as well as aural, colour.


Saxophones for all seasons from the NZSM

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Saxophone Orchestra and Ensembles of the New Zealand School of Music

Music by Hindemith, Berlioz, Dvořák, Lacour, Gumbley and Matitia

David McGregor (E flat clarinet), NZSM Saxophone Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Young

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

The puzzle of this concert was that it was advertised, and titled on the programme cover, as ‘Original and transcribed works from Vivaldi to today’, yet the earliest composer featured was Berlioz!  However, I’m not sure that I would have enjoyed Vivaldi on saxophones, so am not mourning the lack.

The items were introduced by Deborah Rawson, Head of Woodwind at the School, in brief, interesting and lively fashion – a model of how this sort of thing should be done.

Reuben Chin and Sam Jones opened the programme with Konzertstück for two alto saxophones, composed by Hindemith in 1933.  This, we were told, was one of the first pieces of chamber music to be written specifically for saxophone.  There was no doubt about the ability (and agility) of these two players.  The lively opening movement was followed by a slow movement with a beautiful, lilting ending. The final movement was jerky, even jokey.  Great contrasts of dynamics and timbres made for an exciting performance.

The next two items were arrangements of works by great composers; the first, Chant Sacré by Berlioz, was apparently the first orchestral work to include saxophone, and the composer’s own arrangement of it for saxophones has been lost.  This arrangement was by French saxophonist Jean-Marie Londeix.  It struck me as having a rather thick sound.  Although the instruments ranged in pitch from sopranino (played on the clarinet) to bass, there seemed to be little variety of timbre.  Some effects, especially from the bass, sounded quite weird – not that that is a reflection on the player, well-known musician Graham Hanify.

The arrangement (by British composer Claire Tomsett) of Slavonic Dance no.8 by Dvořák worked much better, I thought.  It was faster, with more variety, and more staccato playing, exploring the instruments’ potential and exploiting their flexibility and bright sound.

Méditation by French jazz, pop and classical composer Guy Lacour, who died only two weeks ago, had a grand opening statement.  Winsome passages followed, the whole work being beautifully played and very euphonious.

British jazz musician Chris Gumbley’s E Type Jig for Saxophone Orchestra, composed in 2011, besides being a lovely play on words was bright and breezy, featuring excellent solos in jazz style.  All the varied rhythms were perfectly observed as the solos went round the ensemble, although I noticed nothing particularly automotive about them.

The final work was The Devil’s Rag, by Jean Matitia, a Frenchman originating in Tunisia; the name used here is apparently a pseudonym for Christian Lauba, a composer who writes difficult and esoteric serious music, we were told.  This was a sparkling, fast and furious rag.  All the players were playing virtually constantly.  Not easy to play, it ended an enjoyable concert on a lively, happy note.  All the players exhibited élan and expertise, and the concert was a superb demonstration of the work of the woodwind course at the New Zealand School of Music.

 

 

The Goldbergs with strings attached…

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:

THE NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET – Goldberg Variations

J.S.BACH (arr. W.Cowdery) – Goldberg Variations BWV 988

New Zealand String Quartet

Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilmann (violins) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

St.Mark’s Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 22nd May, 2013

I wouldn’t dream of going so far as to say that I NEVER, EVER want to hear the Goldberg Variations played on a keyboard instrument again – but all the while the New Zealand String Quartet was performing this work in an arrangement made by Bach scholar (and harpsichordist!) William Cowdery, I was transported, wafted into a world of enchantment from which all keys, jacks, hammers and pedals – anything remotely percussive – had been removed.

Or so it seemed, at the time, to me. The next day, I played my Glenn Gould recording of the work, performed, of course, on a piano, and was, to some extent, reconverted. But it’s a measure of the durability and flexibility of Bach’s music that, when presented on instruments of completely different sound-character, it seems to envelop timbre, texture and tone, and make the instrument (or instruments) seem utterly and indisputably appropriate to the occasion.

I had heard the NZSQ play this work before, in Upper Hutt, and remembered at that time being both intrigued and impressed – though on that occasion the impact of it all was, I think, diluted by having another work on the program, Elgar’s Piano Quintet. Here, in the softer, more homely and intimate setting of St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, the “String-Goldbergs” filled both time and space with sounds which, even more than the last time round, seemed to fuse both craft and content into a symbiosis of beauty and feeling.

What the string quartet version seemed to me to allow was a contrapuntal partnership of equals which the solo keyboard versions I’ve heard don’t emulate in the same way – having both the strength and individuality of a single player to a voice makes for a more dynamic kind of interaction of parts than a single player at a keyboard can provide. With two, sometimes three, and occasionally all four players committed wholly to the notes, to matters of technique, timbre, intellectual overview and emotional expression, the music’s amplitude is enriched to what I felt was a compelling degree.

As expected, the players of the New Zealand String Quartet were wholly taken up with and set aglow by the bringing together of these different elements, and reinterpreting the music’s world. Even an injured Helene Pohl was able to contribute a characteristically heartfelt first-violin line as required, astonishingly redistributing the fingerings of her parts to avoid using a recently-damaged little finger. The process made not one whit of difference to her usual vibrancy and focus – a mere handful of notes not quite in tune still resonated with that intensely musical quality particularly her own.

Here are a few thoughts regarding some of the individual variations and their place in the whole – from the outset, the group adopted a “whiter”, more austere tone than I’ve previously heard from them, effective as an opening statement of intent, a “surface” that suggested both order and contained expressive potential. From the dignity of this opening Sarabande, we were energized by the polonaise rhythm of the first variation, its running lines reminiscent of the Third Brandenburg Concerto’s finale – the repeat featured some delicious variations of tone, the lines having an engaging “stand-alone” quality, more so than with the keyboard version, though still as integrated.

As mentioned above, not all the variations used all four players, a textural device which, as happens with both piano and harpsichord, gives the music contrasting densities – so the Canon of the third variation, with its two-violin interaction and ‘cello bass line created spaces which, in the succeeding Passepied, the extra player joyously filled, excitingly amplifying the sound-picture.

Sometimes an individual player stole the show, as did Doug Beilmann with the “schwung” of his figuration’s rhythms in the Gigue of No.7 – at other times it was the interaction between the musicians which gave real pleasure, as when Gillian Ansell’s viola cheekily finished off Rolf Gjesten’s ‘cello phrases at the line-ends of the following Variation (No.9). Then, in the following Canon everybody had a part to play in the music’s strolling grandeur, the players (I fancied) smiling with the pleasure of it all.

The trio of variations that concluded the work’s first part were worlds in themselves, the playing bringing out by turns the music’s propensities towards delight and sorrow. No.13’s Sarabande had a kind of “heavenly length” quality, combining serenity with a mellifluous character, the occasional  “catch” in the instruments’ throats on certain strings adding to the intensities. The Toccata was a clever-witted philosopher between two poets, his élan further honing the melancholy of No.15’s Canon, its wistful, questioning phrases played with wonderful poise by the ensemble, in readiness for what was still to come.

I so relished the players’ presentation of the “Grand Overture” which began the second part of the work – all very celebratory, and “orchestral” in style, though never generalized as such, but always with “point” and plenty of variation. (Incidentally, from this point on my notes began to voluminously grow!). Again there was conveyed throughout the work’s second part a kind of “joy of interaction” among the players, the two-part  No.17 Toccata (arranged among three instruments, here) brimful of lines eagerly looking to interact with their counterparts. The following Canon represented a kind of fruition of this with Rolf Gjelsten’s ‘cello dancing in counterpoint with two singing violins – and if the succeeding No.19 charmed us with pizzicato-voiced dance-impulses, the following Toccata stimulated our impulsive leanings with the players’ exciting alternations of pizzicato and whirling bowed triplets!

So much more to describe! – but one must resist most of the remaining blandishments and concentrate instead on the great Adagio of the 25th Variation – the violin’s anguished leading line like a bird hovering above the ocean of the lower instruments’ sombre counterpoints. Here, the violin’s bird brought to us something of the feeling of the “immensity of human sorrow” while holding fast to the skein stretched across vast distances to the lower instruments’ quiet, oceanic certainty – a kind of depiction, I thought, of both the solitariness and surety of spiritual faith, on the composer’s part.

Several other rich and vibrant variations later came the celebrated Quodlibet (a Latin term for “whatever” or “what pleases”), the last . This featured Bach’s droll synthesis of two German folk-songs (how wonderful to contemplate those woods “Cabbages and turnips have driven me away” in this context!), the players enjoying the music’s mix of friendly rivalry and adroit partnership. And, quite suddenly, it seemed, at the end, there it was – with the return of the opening Aria, it felt to us as though the music was coming home once again, having undergone its own solar orbit and experienced many world-turnings, both interactive and solitary. Now, the players’ tones seemed more in accord than counterpointed, more fulfilled than striving, more fused than disparate. Here, we in the audience were being given the well-wrought strains of sounds approximating to a divine order, a ray of serenity from chaos. We held onto those strains as best we could, but in the end we had to let them go.

Much acclaim and very great honour to the New Zealand String Quartet players! – through their sensibilities and skills we were able to coexist, for a short time, with a kind of transcendental awareness of things, by way of music whose being somehow seemed to accord with our own existence.

Delights and disappointments from the Poinsett Trio

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Music Trust

Mozart: Trio in C, K.548 (allegro; andante cantabile; allegro)

Brahms: Trio in C minor, Op.101 (allegro energico; presto non assai; andante grazioso; allegro)

Fauré: Piano Trio in D minor, Op.120 (allegro ma non troppo; andantino; finale: allegro vivo)

Paul Schoenfield: Café Music (allegro; andante moderato; presto)

Poinsett Trio (David Cross, piano; Deirdre Hutton, violin; Christopher Hutton, cello)

Ilott Theatre

Sunday, 19 May 2013

(Reviewer’s note: It is now known that Deirdre Hutton’s violin had, before the concert on Sunday 19 May at the Ilott Theatre, developed quite a long seam opening.  This led to major problems with sound production.  The matter could not be fixed prior to the concert.

Apparently they tried to get hold of an Auckland violin maker prior to the concert, who was visiting Wellington, but didn’t succeed, as she had already left.  She’s now repaired the instrument. – R.C.  25th May)

It is always good to welcome back Wellington musicians studying or working overseas.  This is the case with cellist Christopher Hutton.

However, overall I found this concert disappointing, given the very high standard always demonstrated in the Wellington Chamber Music Trust series.  At the beginning of the Mozart sonata the violin was a little off pitch; this recurred at various times throughout the concert.  The beautiful piano part was for the most part beautifully played with commendable delicacy of touch, but it rather over-awed the strings.  Yes, the piano had the principal part in Mozart’s early chamber works, but this was not an early work.  Maybe it was the dry acoustic, but I found the violin tone harsh; the cello I could not hear much from through most of the work.  I liked the instrument’s sound when I could hear it.

In the Brahms trio, the balance was more equitable between the piano and the strings.  It opened with a typical Brahms melody, after a lively introduction.  Better tone and intonation emerged from the violin.

The second movement was unusual for the use of mutes throughout by the strings – even when pizzicato was being played.  The movement was fast, soft, and had a gentle, rollicking character, due to the rhythm, and the muted pizzicato.

The lovely opening string duet of the slow third movement was echoed in the piano solo that followed; this was the pattern throughout the movement. This back and forth character gave interest and clarity to the writing and the performance.  Again, there was some harshness of tone from the violin.  The most extended of the piano solos had rather the features of a salon piece for piano.

The finale was agitated, bur mellifluous melodies were passed from the strings to the piano and back again.  However, there were too many flaws in this performance to allow the music to carry me away, although the ensemble was more cohesive in this work.

The Fauré trio was heard in last year’s Sunday afternoon series, just over one year ago, with a trio of young New Zealanders studying overseas.  Its character demands subtlety, and the Poinsetts demonstrated it, and some élan showed through, despite occasional waywardness of the violin’s intonation.

The charming song-like opening melody of the andantino was most pleasing.  However, the pianist did not vary his dynamics as much as did the string players.  An impassioned duet for cello and violin was very pleasing.  Ensemble and tone were improved.

The fast finale found once again that tuning was not always on the spot.  The movement featured a lively and ingratiating piano part.  As the programme note said, ‘the music is restrained, finely crafted, and entirely charming.’

Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music was exactly that, and didn’t ‘grab’ me as a component of a chamber music concert, being full of jazz rhythmic clichés, though written as recently as 1986; for example, the second movement’s off-beat ‘swing’ (in the traditional slow middle movement of chamber trios, despite the programme notes saying ‘traditional slow-fast-slow’).  The final presto was a dizzy, discordant dance taken at a cracking pace, and was a bit more adventurous.  It was rhythmically lively, but that rhythm did not contain much variety.

The violinist played the jazz style very well, as did the pianist.  All in all, this was a skilled performance – even if somewhat lightweight, nevertheless skill was required in its playing.

As an encore, the trio played the first movement of Dvořák’s ‘Dumky’ Trio, which was a component of the other programme they were presenting in their 13 concerts around New Zealand.  The delightful work was given a crisp introduction and a good rendering of the jolly, fast main theme that alternates with elements from the introduction.  There was plenty of emphasis on important notes, and a build up to each entry of the theme, making it a truly dance-like performance to end the concert.

 

Fair, fresh winds from home

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

NZ Music for Woodwind

Music by Edwin Carr, Dylan Lardelli, Alex Taylor, Gareth Farr, Ken Wilson, Anthony Young.

Ben Hoadley (bassoon), Madeline Sakofsky (oboe and cor anglais), Emma Sayers (piano), Duo Solaris: Debbie Rawson and Donald Nicholls (clarinets)
New Zealand Clarinet Quartet: David McGregor (E flat clarinet), Hayden Sinclair (B flat clarinet), Nick Walshe (A clarinet), Debbie Rawson (bass clarinet)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

A concert featuring two world premières is not a common event in New Zealand.  However, this was the case on Wednesday.

The concert began, though, with a work from 1977, of Edwin Carr.  It was titled Two Mansfield Poems, and the two beautiful poems by Katherine Mansfield were included with the printed programme: ‘Sanary’ (1916) and ‘Sleeping Together’ (1908).  The first piece echoed the sunny day of the first poem.  The latter was a recollection of children sleeping in the same bed, whispering to each other.

Carr’s settings for cor anglais and piano were quite lovely.  How seldom one hears the cor anglais apart from in an orchestra! The cor anglais proved to be an apt instrument to reflect the sultry sun described in the second poem; the music was wonderfully pensive, while the playing had a gorgeous timbre.  Some of the music was dance-like, and the whole represented a great gift of delightful writing for cor anglais players.

A world première of One Body, a shortish piece by Dylan Lardelli failed to move me.  It was written for clarinet quartet.  It seemed to me suitable for accompanying a video or film about music of the spheres, or something spooky on the galaxies; or for a modern dance performance, my companion suggested.  It was all sound effects, including puffing notelessly through the instruments.  I could not find any music in it.  Given the title, I wondered if it was meant to portray the workings of the human body.

The second world premiere was of loose knots for bassoon, by Alex Taylor, a young Auckland composer.  It was certainly extending for Ben Hoadley; it was good to hear this instrument, too, in a solo capacity.  Some lovely tones emerged in a piece that incorporated microtones, and flutter tongue technique.  The piece was in three movements, and was rhythmically lively.  Hoadley commissioned it (with funding from Creative New Zealand, who also funded the  Lardelli and the Farr works) to play at a world double-reed convention he is to attend in California next month.

Gareth Farr’s Five Little Monologues was written in 2006 for the players we heard here.  The first opened with quiet ripples that moved from fast to very shrill.  Number two was an angular piece with shrieking all over the place, mainly staccato.  It was an effective little piece, and incorporated fleet-footed melodies, and became jokey at the end.

The third piece was legato with trills, while the fourth featured staccato playing again, like little sprites running all over the place, with another humorous ending.  The final piece had the instruments running quickly everywhere, high-pitched phrases alternating with low ones.  This was very accomplished writing with plenty of interest.  The work employed very musical language and phrasing.  Another quirky ending completed the set.

Ken Wilson’s Duo for two clarinets from 2002 was jolly and laughing.  The playing was preceded by some words from Debbie Rawson about Ken and his music, in which she said he was known as ‘Fingers’ Wilson.  Certainly this piece required dexterity.  It was vigorous, sprightly and jaunty; thoroughly enjoyable.  I hope Debbie Rawson will fulfil her promise to play more of Ken Wilson’s music.

Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano of Anthony Young, was written in 2011, and like the Ken Wilson piece, was a Wellington première.  The piece was inspired by baroque sonata form – four movements: slow, fast, slow, fast.  After a pensive opening, the intertwining of the parts was grateful on the ear.  The second movement had lots going on for all three instruments, Emma Sayers at times conducting with her head for entries.

The third movement featured ponderous piano and bassoon, the oboe’s melody thoughtful, even questing, with the bassoon following in like vein.  The final movement began fast, especially for the piano.  There were contemplative moments for all instruments; in fact the work explored the instruments’ capabilities, and provided plenty of variety.  A hearty ending section with a sudden full-stop completed this well-crafted work.

The whole concert was notable for extremely fine playing throughout; although the concert was overly long for a lunchtime one, it was very rewarding to hear such a range of accomplished wind music from our own country’s composers.

Worlds of difference from the NZ Trio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

NZ TRIO – Old World : New World

ERICH KORNGOLD – Piano Trio Op.1 /  CLAIRE COWAN – Subtle Dances

BRIGHT SHENG – 4 Movements for Piano Trio

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – PIano Trio No.2 in E Minor Op.67

NZ Trio – Justine Cormack (violin) / Ashley Brown (‘cello) / Sarah Watkins (piano)

Town Hall, Wellington

Wednesday 15th May, 2013

It took me a while to “settle in” to the Town Hall’s more-than-ample sound-spaces for this concert – the NZ Trio had daringly opted to begin with Korngold’s Op.1 Piano Trio, music that called for plenty of rich, vibrant and well-uphostered sounds from the ensemble. Despite the vigour with which the players began the piece, I thought that the amplitude of the acoustic seemed at first to dwarf the players’ tones. As well, certain musical detailings sounded as though closer proximities were needed in order to make their effect (Justine Cormack’s thrummings just before the opening’s repeat here became little more than a physical gesture), so that I felt something of the music’s flavour and variety wasn’t getting through. In fact, the dialogues involving violin and ‘cello at first resembled the exchanges between a couple of faded beauties reminiscing about old times – a feeling which I thought simply wouldn’t have been in accord with a youthful composer’s freshly-wrought impulses.

However, once my ears had become used to this particular sound-world (“gotten on the wavelength”, would have been my generation’s chic expression for the phenomenon) I was better able to appreciate what the NZ Trio was doing, and enjoy the explorations of contrasts which throughout the first movement swing wholeheartedly between impassioned exchange and wistful stillness. By the end, I thought the players had caught the essence of things, summed up by what came to us as almost an ecstasy of sustained arco and pizzicato sounds over the final measures .

A lively, mischievous and angular Scherzo with its sultry Trio followed, compounding my amazement at its thirteen year-old composer’s prodigious creativities. It made me think of conductor Water Damrosch’s celebrated response regarding a youthful work of Aaron Copland’s, a remark (made straight after a performance of the work to its audience) that stated its composer would eventually be “capable of committing murder”. Naturally, Copland didn’t follow up the suggestion, and (as far as I’m aware) neither did Korngold undertake any such venture.

The slow movement’s opening ‘cello solo, lovingly played by Ashley Brown, brought out the music’s reiterating “dying fall”, with exciting, surging “road-music” contrasts in places. The same idea was present in the finale as well, ballade-like in its opening presentation, though under siege from certain angularities. The Trio’s big-boned forward drive swept the music’s changes along, the players alive to all of the music’s possibilities, engaging our sensibilities and giving us no doubt as to why its composer would have been regarded as such a “wunderkind” at the time.

In the light of Korngold’s youthful efforts, it was interesting to read New Zealand composer Claire Cowan’s thoughts regarding the composition of her work for Piano Trio, Subtle Dances. I liked her connection between her “intuitive” approach to composition and the relationship between composer, performers and audiences, and their respective places in the music’s “space”. I wondered, after reading these words, to what extent the work of a gifted thirteen year-old Viennese composer might have, however subconsciously, been similarly guided by intuition.

Claire Cowan characterized the first part of her work as “a rhythmical and passionate interlocking of playful lines”, but included a warning of the danger or risk element in such undertakings as well. The music awakened like a simple organism’s first, exploratory pulsings, with firstly the ‘cello and then violin exchanging pizzicato notes, and the piano adding a voice. The string-players tapped their soundboxes, gradually evolving an off-beat rhythm, decorated by piano figurations. When the violin joined the piano one got a sense of the composer’s “passionate interlocking” – as angst-filled as something bluesy, without being the blues…something ethnic, with a pronounced and engaging rhythmic trajectory.

It all stopped abruptly and gave way to the second movement’s be slow and lie low. A deep and wide world of inner feeling gradually settled on everything as the slow-motion dance spread its soft, shimmering silences around and about, the stillness tingling with magical harmonies. The change to the following movement was as marked as the previous transition, Sarah Watkins’ piano resounding splendidly like gamelan, and her companions supporting the piano with richly-wrought string lines, tremolandi and ostinati creating both vast open spaces and insistently claustrophobic textures at one and the same time, fitting Claire Cowan’s title for the movement, nerve lines. What a gift for sonorities this composer has!

Wisely, the Trio gave us some breathing-space in the form of an interval before serving us up with some more strongly-flavoured though differently-inspired evocations – these were the four movements of Chinese composer Bright Sheng’s Piano Trio. The composer wanted to re-explore a work for piano solo that he wrote in 1988, called My Song, reworking the musical material, and developing further his idea of bringing aspects of eastern and western art-music together. The first movement gave us birdsong, the strings’ notes gliding across spacious, airy textures. The instruments played “concurrently” rather than together, with winsome glissandi, capturing an early-morning ambience – a truly other-worldly effect, supported by the pianist reaching into the piano and softly plucking strings.

Then came a vigorous dance-like song, Sarah Watkins’ piano excitably fetching up tones from out of the instruments’ depths, and the strings with glissandi and portamenti again having an airborne quality, over surges of rhythmic energy. A beautiful shimmer of resonance sounded like an echo at the piece’s end. In contrast, the biting, driving rhythms of the “savage dance” dug into the earth, recalling similar tones of Bartok’s from his strings, percussion and celesta music. The final Nostalgia created sounds which unlocked memories of things long ago or far away, and encouraged a longing for those things to come again. The piano and strings played delicately-counterpointed lines whose resonances were allowed to drift evocatively into the imagination’s distances – beautiful!

And finally, to Shostakovich, and to a work written by the composer in memory of a close friend, who had died during 1944. Shostakovich’s particular creative intensities seemed to find the fullest expression in chamber music, and this Trio was no exception. It seemed to me that, in the first movement, there was a kind of bringing-together, the ‘cello representing something exotic, more other-worldly, and violin and piano bringing aspects of a contrapuntal framework to the exercise. Ashley Brown’s ‘cello-playing again demonstrated remarkable sensitivity, with stratospheric figurations involving haunting harmonics – it seemed as though the sounds were being “offered up” by the composer, as some kind of pre-arranged sacrificial ritual, enacted through that most severe of all forms, a fugue.

The Scherzo was a characteristically vigorous piece, both exuberant and frenzied, with rushing, upwardly-rollling figures and heavy-footed, angular stampings, the whole suggesting that there’s sometimes a fine line between enjoyment and obsessiveness. Justine Cormack’s violin lead the way with gutsy, unflinching gestures that kept energies and intensities on the boil. Afterwards, the largo’s monumental opening piano chords took us to the composer’s wellside of grief, the strings at one in their concerted lament – the dance-like opening of the finale, and its progression into and through harrowing realms merely underlined the desperation of things for Shostakovich, and the extent of his own grim resignation in the face of it all. The NZ Trio gave its all, or so it seemed – after such ordeals, the final quiet string and piano arpeggios and chords in an exhausted E major came less as relief and more as affirmation of something indestructible to be grasped against all odds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stroma’s second Mirror of Time – a “Rogues’ Gallery” of Music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – THE MIRROR OF TIME – 2

Music by: Michael Norris, Jean-Féry Rebel, Thomas Adès,  Anthonello de Caserta, Heinrich Biber,

Louis Andriessen, Carlo Gesualdo, Philip Brownlee, Josquin des Prez, Arvo Pärt,

Thomas Preston, Erik Satie, Matteo da Perugia, Mieko Shiomi, Anon (14th C.)

(all arrangements by Michael Norris)

Stroma: Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Rebecca Struthers (violins) / Andrew Thomson (viola) / Rowan Prior (‘cello)

Kamala Bain (recorder(s) / Rowena Simpson (soprano)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Artistic Director: Michael Norris

St.Mary of the Angels, Wellington

Friday 26th April, 2013

With some surprise I read in the Stroma program booklet that this was in fact the SECOND “Mirror of Time” Concert presented by the Ensemble, following on from an occasion in 2012 – had I recently awakened from a kind of “Rip Van Winkel” sleep, or something? I had been to and reviewed a couple of Stroma concerts that year, but I couldn’t remember a “Mirror of Time” title, or a similar theme, even thought the expression dégustations rang a bell. Furthermore, if the first of these explorations of short but visionary, ground-breaking compositions from the Middle Ages to the present day had been as entertainingly assembled and characterfully performed as this present one, then I had indeed missed something special, while in my “sleepwalking” mode.

Having the beautiful and old-worldly church of St.Mary of the Angels available for music performance is invariably a kind of “added value” for performers and audiences alike – and so it proved on this occasion. From out of the ambience of this most atmospheric venue came the first notes of this concert’s music, the quartet of performers antiphonally placed for maximum effect, playing a twelfth-century plainchant theme “O igneous Spiritus”, written by Hildegarde of Bingen, and arranged here by Michael Norris.

Each player gave us his or her own particular variation of the plainchant tune, the effect being an awakening a kind of “music of the spheres” fancy, or, in Hildegarde’s own, if differently-contexted words, sounds “on the breath of God”. The playing, too, had a kind of other-worldly quality, heightened by drawn-out harmonics and occasionally tempered by exotic, vocal-like slides between the notes. I liked Michael Norris’ likening of the effect to “stained-glass” encapsulations of past echoes, preserved for all time. As the musicians finished playing, each one came up to the platform in front of the audience – a nice, ritualistic touch.

From then it was delight following upon delight, really, though one was never sure exactly what shape or form the delight would be presented in (which are the most exciting kinds of delights – as everybody knows!). Having properly gotten an ecclesiastical version of Michael Flanders’ famous “pitch of the hall” (from his and Donald Swann’s show “At the Drop of a Hat”), the musicians (strings joined by a recorder – well, two recorders, more of which in a moment) then proceeded to “let ‘er rip” with a shocking discord made up of a tone cluster, written two hundred years ahead of the likes of Henry Cowell and Penderecki. This came from the pen of French Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel, whose dates (1666-1747) make him a near-contemporary of JS Bach, though the former’s innovative experiments with rhythm and harmony put some of his music light-years apart.

As Michael Norris pointed out in the program, this and many of the pieces in the evening’s concert were arrangements of originals, rather than being “authentic” realizations, the intention being to emphasize for listeners the music’s more innovative content. Rebel’s work “Le Cahos” comes from his ballet “Les Élemens”, the full score of which has been lost in any case, leaving a “performing edition” put together by the composer for amateur use at home – so tonight’s performance was perfectly in scale with the composer’s intentions. Strings were partnered by a recorder, firstly a sopranino, whose piercing tones could be heard through the discordant opening, and then a treble instrument taken up as the music increasingly featured solo lines – it was all a bit like a rather more elemental manifestation of Vivaldi.

Leaping forward in time to the music of Thomas Adès from such radical expression suddenly didn’t feel so big a deal in this context, though in other ways Adès’ work “Lethe” made a marked contrast to Jean-Féry Rebel’s chaotic seismic irruptions. Here, Rowan Prior’s beautiful solo cello suggested the Lethe River, interwoven with eerie harmonics from the other strings, the effect not unlike a slowly revolving kinetic sculpture, or else movements from an age-old windmill out of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”. Such antiquities used by a contemporary composer helped bridge the gap to the music of one of the concert’s earliest featured composers, Anthonello de Caserta, a 14th century song “Dame d’onour en qui” featuring the soprano voice of Rowena Simpson. De Caserta’s rhythmic configurations were a delight and a tease for the ear in this sparkling performance.

Heinrich Biber’s music is better-known, of course, and we enjoyed his “Mars”, an exerpt from Battalia à 10, with the ‘cello using a sheet of paper inserted between the strings for a “snare” effect. A different kind of unorthodox instrument use was employed by the Dutch contemporary composer Louis Andriessen in his “Ende”, requiring the player to use two recorders simultaneously, Kamala Bain rising spectacularly to the occasion, tossing the pitches between instruments and giving us an exciting acccelerando at the end.

The work of another contemporary composer, Wellington-based Philip Brownlee, followed that of Carlo Gesualdo, the latter’s music employing chromatic shifts to wonderfully haunting effect, in the madrigal “Io puri respiro in cosi gran dolor”, some sequences having an almost Gothic feel to them. Rowena Simpson’s bell-like voice both enriched and wrestled with the parallel string lines throughout, voice and instruments then “finding” one another at the end of the piece’s dying fall. Not Gesualdo, however, but Giovanni Gabrieli provided the Kiwi composer with his starting-point for “Canzona per sonare: Degraded Echoes” (a world premiere), the opening tones “summoned” as it seemed from faraway places, a sombre medieval sound made of long-held lines from strings and recorder, the lines and harmonies vying with the actual timbres, giving we listeners the opportunity to think spatially, or else indulge our preoccupations. An agitated middle section, aleatoric in effect, underlined rhythmic and pitching gestures, encompassed by piercing tones from the recorder, and took us at the end to edges of known territories, where wonderment begins.

Josquin Des Prez’s brief but beautiful “Agnus Dei” from his “Missa l’homme arm super voces musicales” threw some light upon Arvo Pärt’s following Da Pacem Domine, the latter inspired by medieval plainchant, and saturating our sensibilities with its wonderful drawn-out timelessness of utterance. And to draw us briefly from these and following enchantments came a brief soupcon from the little-known 16th-century English composer Thomas Preston, an organ piece with a strangely bitonal bass-line, strings and recorder simultaneously following separate harmonic pathways, and creating lines whose relationship sounded oddly and ear-catchingly ambivalent.

Ambivalence of various sorts certainly hovers about many of the works created by the uniquely fascinating Erik Satie. We heard an arrangement of the Prelude to his incidental music to a play “Le Fils des Étoiles”, one whose use of an offstage soprano voice and muted strings underlined the general exotic mysticism of the music and its context. Throughout I kept on thinking of Shakespeare’s “Tempest” – soundscapes of air and water created from those disembodied tones were added to Satie’s preoccupation with harmonies based on the interval of a fourth. All of it made for ambiences “rich and strange”, and had a utterly captivating aspect.

The rest brought us back to solid earth with plenty of sheerly visceral fun, Italian composer Matteo da Peruglia’s fifteenth-century 3-part canon given the “treatment”with two more parts added and the original tempo given a turbocharged “take two”, and an arrangement of the anonymous 14th-century song “Cuncti Simus Concanentes”, an energetic homage to the Virgin Mary with bells and hand-clapping thrown into the festive mix. This was after the string-players had picked up and rearranged their music on the stands from which they had been ignominiously blown by a hand-held hair-dryer, Kamala Bain employing a different kind of wind instrument to disruptive effect in Japanese composer Mieko Shiomi’s “Wind Music”. Of course, had it been Stockhausen’s music, helicopters might have arrived, and there would have been an awful din – so we were grateful that the turbulence created here, though annoying for the musicians trying to make sense of their written parts, was more-or-less containable.

All in all, a terrific assemblage of inventiveness on the part of artistic director Michael Norris, and of performance skills from the members of Stroma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homage to Britten from the Aroha Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

AROHA STRING QUARTET

with CATHERINE McKAY (piano)

BEETHOVEN – String Quartet in B-flat Op.18 No.6

BRITTEN – String Quartet No.3 Op.94

SCHUMANN – Piano Quintet in E-flat Op.44

Aroha Quartet: – Haihong Liu, Blythe Press (violins), Zhongxian Jin (viola), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

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

Sunday 21st April, 2013

For some reason I hadn’t really registered before this concert just how big a space at St.Andrew’s Church a small ensemble has to fill with sound, both behind the musicians and above them. It seemed to my ears when the Aroha Quartet began their Beethoven which opened the concert that everything was set back, as opposed to “being in one’s face”, and that the instrumental timbres were more than usually “terraced’. Once my ears got used to this, I enjoyed the extra spaciousness of it all, even if some of the solo lines sounded a bit removed, and some of the ambiences in the more rapid concerted passages were as rushing winds, having a slightly disembodied effect.

Probably the reason my ears were receiving these sounds in this way was that I had been listening to some chamber-music recordings that morning which had been given the “full-blooded” treatment, the instruments closely recorded, and with what sounded like plenty of reverberation – all a little too much, in my opinion, as if the ensemble (the Amadeus Quartet, recorded by Decca) had swelled into chamber-orchestra proportions in certain places.

Once my listening-palette had been re-aligned, I was able to appreciate the lean, lithe and joyously physical energies of the performance of the Beethoven work. These players always generate plenty of  élan in such music, and this quartet’s first movement positively bristled in places. Though intonation wasn’t absolutely perfect, the spirit of the composer leapt at us from the notes. In the second movement I loved the different voicing from first and second violins, the first silvery, the other golden-toned, both displaying heart-warming teamwork. What beautifully-tailored dynamics throughout the hushed central part of the movement – those awed, withdrawn tones! – and what light-as-feather playing throughout the lead back to the opening’s reprise!

I enjoyed the players’ joie de vivre in the scherzo, the syncopations encouraging wonderful stresses and parallel energies. The trio carried the momentums onwards, with the violin skipping among the notes out at a great rate and galvanizing the ensemble’s return to the mainstream. The finale’s introduction, “La malinconia” brought down upon the sound-world a properly sobering and despondent air before swinging into an elegant round-dance, the quartet rounding off the music’s curves with relish. We got the merest foretaste of the “Muss es Sein” of Op.135 with an exploratory interlude, before the players adroitly steered the lines back to the rounds, slowing things romantically and wistfully, before exploding with exuberance and drive over the last few bars – great stuff!

How often does one get to enjoy a Britten String Quartet live? – and if not this year, will there ever be more chances? We’re in debt to the Quartet for not only playing the work at all (à la Dr.Johnson and his “dog on its hind legs” analogy) but for giving it such a cracking performance. Here, it was nicely prepared before a note was played, with ‘cellist Robert Ibell telling us about, among other things, the links between the work and the composer’s opera “Death in Venice”. The work, cast in five movements, opened with a sequence called “Duets” reflecting the writing in pairs of instruments throughout, often haunting, ambient-toned writing creating plenty of “atmosphere” through resonating, overlapping tones, and undulating lines.

The second “Ostinato” movement had a more abrupt, machine-like character, derived from definite, energetic movements – at one point an evocative “road music” sequence forwarded the argument through unfamiliar territories, until skittering cross-rhythms from the violins contrived to bring things to a stuttering stop. Then, the succeeding movement “Solo” featured a gently-singing violin counterpointed delicately by the other instruments. Beautiful soaring lines suggested in places the violin itself in ecstasy, underpinned by atmospheric pizzicato and glissandi from the other instruments, giving a haunting kind of Aeolian Harp effect. After this, what a contrast with the earthy, vigorous “Burlesque”! – its angular effect was readily captured and confidently delivered by the players, the music in places reminiscent of the more quirky parts of the ballet “The Prince of the Pagodas”.

Britten concluded the work with a Recitative and Passacaglia, the instruments in the introductory measures quoting themes from “Death in Venice”. We heard spare, stepwise pizzicati and oscillating violin lines leading to an eloquent ‘cello solo, and thence to strangely compelling twilight-world explorations culminating in the instrumental unison “I love you” cry of the opera’s central character Aschenbach. The players then took us strongly and surely on the passacaglia’s journey, during which the ensemble seemed to me to glow increasingly with lyrical fire, as the music developed thematic material from the Recitative over a ground bass. I felt we were being presented with a world of creative sensibility which here seemed to gradually drain away with the sounds, as if it was all part of the natural order of things.

Still more treasure came with the performance of Schumann’s well-known Piano Quintet after the interval, for which the Quartet was joined by pianist Catherine McKay. I had previously heard her perform both a concerto and some chamber music with other ensembles, finding her always a positive and responsive player. Here, I wondered whether the piano was too recessed in relation to the quartet, whose members seemed “bunched together” right in front – irrespective of the sound quality, the visual effect was of a supporting instrument rather than an equal player, the latter needing to be the case in this work.

Pianos can certainly be awkward things to set among ensembles, and the situation varies from venue to venue – I would have thought a slightly more antiphonal arrangement feasible, either with the piano to the left and turned slightly backward, which would have instigated a kind of half-circle that the quartet-members could have completed, or with the quartet slightly “parted’ in the middle and the piano brought slightly forward, and “into the loop”. Further forward on the St.Andrew’s platform, such an arrangement would have been possible.

Either layout would, I think, have better integrated the sound, and possibly the performance. My ears occasionally imagined a kind of “delayed” interaction between piano and strings in some of the exchanges – this was especially noticeable in both middle movements in places. During the second movement’s central agitations, when the gothic mystery and drama of the ambience is suddenly hurled to one side, and the piano takes the lead with a number of accented entries to which the strings respond, I wanted more incisiveness from the piano, and more “schwung” in the cross-talk between the players. The same went for the roller-coaster flourishes in the third movement (Mendelssohn could have written the piano part in places!) – they were excitingly played as such, but I wanted more piano, more presence and bite given to the syncopations!

With more even balances, the performance would have, I though, really taken wing, as there were so many felicities in any case – though the first movement was more tightly-conceived in general than my excessive romantic sensibilities usually crave, I thought the players still gave plenty of heartfelt voice to the composer’s uniquely poetic outpourings. There was sensitive duetting between violin and ‘cello and some lovely, yielding, liquid tones from the piano, contrasting nicely with those swirling undercurrents of the more agitated sections. And the slow movement’s somewhat sinister footfalls made both the lyrical yearnings and the irruptions of the middle section all the more telling.

Both muscularity and delicacy were made ours to relish throughout the finale, the strings digging into the part-writing with gusto, and the piano incapable of giving us a mechanical or unfeeling phrase – in fact, such were the mid-movement excitements generated that a fire-engine turned up in the street outside to see what was going on! I especially liked how the ensemble’s full-blooded playing made the composer’s rather engagingly gauche way of reintroducing the opening theme of the Quintet work so well at the end. Despite my few reservations regarding the balances, full credit to the musicians for giving us an experience which for me underlined what live music-making is all about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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