Tag: chamber music

Revolutionary Beethoven from the NZSQ

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET

BEETHOVEN – “Revolution” – The Middle Quartets

String Quartets Op.59 No.3 in C Major “Razumovsky”

Op.74 in E-flat “Harp” / Op.95 in F Minor “Serioso”

New Zealand String Quartet :  Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman (violins)

Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Genesis Energy Theatre, Classical Expressions, Upper Hutt

Monday, 11th June 2012

This was the second in a two-concert presentation by the New Zealand String Quartet of what are popularly thought of as Beethoven’s “middle period” string quartets. The first concert had featured the opening two of the set of three “Razumovsky” Quartets Op.59, which the group had taken to various venues around the country – as they had done earlier in the year with the Op.18 “Early” Quartets. This time round we got the third “Razumovsky”, followed by Op.74 “the Harp”, and Op.95, the “Serioso” quartets – riches indeed!

The printed program for the concert didn’t on this occasion carry the NZSQ’s own defining subtitle “Revolution” for their “middle quartets” traversal, which was surprising – the name certainly suited aspects of each of the works we heard, and especially so throughout these rigorously-conceived, and utterly absorbing readings. True to form, the NZSQ seemed to leave none of Beethoven’s compositional stones unturned throughout its search for the essence of this music’s greatness.

Of course, this isn’t the first time the quartet has played these works, though it’s been over ten years since their previous Beethoven “project” in which they played the whole cycle – they recorded just two of the “Razumovsky” Quartets shortly afterwards, but unfortunately there have been no more. Perhaps this current undertaking, again featuring all of the Beethovens, will inspire a further round of recordings (at the very least Op.130, please, with both of its finales!) – one would imagine concertgoers in the wake of these performances up and down the land wanting to relive the excitements and pleasures of such vital and inspired music-making!

So, my task in the course of this review is to try and come to grips with just what is it that made this quartet’s playing for me so distinctive and compelling in these works. By what alchemic means could these players, over the space of three very different Beethoven quartets, so readily take themselves and their listeners into what seemed like the pulsing heart of both the music and its composer?

In the first place, nothing got in the way of those sounds for us – at the outset, the clarity and corresponding lack of resonance in the theatre might have disconcerted at first, but then increasingly delighted one’s sensibilities as the music proceeded.. And the stage’s empty, though evocatively-lit spaces reminded one of photographs of 1950s and 60s Bayreuth productions by Wieland Wagner – creating a similarly timeless and open backdrop against which music and performance could speak their own truths without distraction.

The opening sounds of the “Harp” Quartet Op.74 provided another clue – the hymn-like harmonies were voiced by the players with attractively grainy tones, drawing attention to the separate voices as much as to to their blended sound. Here, and throughout the slow movement, the melodic lines had a “throaty” quality, the players’ sounds never bland or expressing beauty for its own sakes’, but always characterful. I liked how, in the second movement, the melodic lines were “sung’ by everyone in a democratic spirit, the differently-voiced impulses, as before, both blending and maintaining their individuality.

Beethoven’s well-known dictum of the idea counting more than its execution often came into play, with the players spiralling their whirling individual and concerted lines in the first movement with tremendous verve, their articulation appropriately vertiginous, more dangerous- than clean-sounding in two or three places.

Then again in the scherzo, the chunkiness of the players’ rhythm contrasted tellingly with the furious pace in the trio sections, the effect properly exhilarating, and giving the music a driven, possessed quality. By contrast, the final variation movement brought from the players both good-humoured interactions (jog-trot and cantering sequences) and solo singing (some duskily attractive viola tones), and a growing physical excitement which overflowed from the bubbling textures and raced the music to a nicely abrupt ending.

Op. 95 in F Minor, the “Serioso” followed, a work regarded by its composer as “one for connoisseurs…..never to be performed in public”. Though Beethoven presumably meant what he said at the time, modern listeners can readily enjoy the composer’s “experiment” as a precursor of the quartets that were to follow – still, the work remains a tough nut to crack in performance, packing a great deal into a condensed framework.

The NZSQ engaged with the work’s terse, energetic opening on a thrillingly visceral level, without ever suggesting mere virtuosic display – pin-point concerted attack, great explosions of energised tones, trenchant growlings from the lower instruments – all served to throw into relief the discourse’s somewhat anxious and unsettled lyrical episodes. Just as focused, here, and satisfyingly contrasted, was the group’s playing of the slow movement, with its spacious, exploratory fugal episodes, and solemn ‘cello-led processionals to and from sequences of great beauty.

All was peremptorily cast aside by the scherzo’s impatient calls for attention, the composer allowing no let-up of intensity, and the players complying with interest. And my notes record as well the group’s wonderfully organic lurching into the somewhat stricken waltz-theme of the finale, and the feel of those bows biting into the strings throughout those storm-beset scrubbings which erupted from the music’s textures.

Of course, Beethoven trumps all of these things with an almost maniacally-conceived coda, whose on-the-face-of-things incongruity has exercised many a critical mind and pen over the years, and which had here a properly quixotic effect on many listeners. I wondered whether the composer was, consciously or otherwise, simply following the dictum of life being a tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect – whatever the case, the NZSQ presented the music’s volte-face with all the gusto and energy that it required.

After a welcome luftpause we all awaited the third of the Op.59 Razumovsky Quartets, with those wonderfully unresolved chordings at the beginning, which the group here recreated as a kind of frozen sound-world of unfulfilled impulses – the stillness made the sudden spark of momentum all the more telling, again, like tragedy turned to comedy, or stasis suddenly galvanised as pure energy, underlined by the players’ full-bodied but sharp-edged responses to the music.

The sheer exuberance of the Allegro Vivace of this movement fully vindicated another aspect of the Quartet’s performances which I’ve appreciated so much over the years, the physical choreography of having three of the quartet players standing while playing (except, of course, the ‘cellist, though he rarely sits perfectly still, having to cover a good deal of physical instrumental “ground”). Being able to express the music with one’s whole body (in a sense, “making the Word Flesh”, so to speak) must have some effect upon the sound that body produces. And, for me, the visual effect is that the music is choreographed in an abstracted but still meaningful and relevant way, almost another form of reading music, if you like (perhaps that’s why, being a non-scorereader, I like it so much).

Lovely pizzicato notes from the ‘cello began the slow movement, helping project the sombre mood, one which the composer so engagingly drew back to allow the sunlight in for those few measures of major-key relief. And though the ‘cello took us by the hand and gently returned us to those darker realms once again, the memory of the sunlight kept returning, one which the solo violin stretched towards so eloquently – and oh! – those encircling pizzicato notes from the ‘cello, which kept the music on its orbit, despite the occasional irruption, so soft and inwardly resonant!

An “old-fashioned” Minuet charmed us with its grace and elegance, though the players then seemed to relish all the more the Trio’s angular fanfares with their off-the-beat accents. With the dance ended, the ‘cello took the lead in the direction of what appeared at first to be a twilight zone, but whose unsmiling mask couldn’t hold in check for more than a few measures such a joyous eruption of energy and movement as to sweep away all previous darkness and trouble.

It was a finale in which we heard “laughter holding both his sides” as a manifestation of creative heroism, the players lining up with the composer in pushing themselves to the edges of abandonment with the proverbial skin-and-hair flying, and we in the audience right on the edges of our seats. And that was, finally, the pudding’s proof – that we were all bundled up and transported by the same energy-source as were these musicians into realms of delight and awareness of the importance of certain things.

So – something special and memorable, here, its essence worth trying to convey in words, however much this writer is conscious of falling short of doing. But as much as I can imagine any composer’s spirit being caught in performance, this was a concert of music-making which, in its potent mix of skilful execution and vivid characterisation, for me did just that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martin Rummel, cello and Stephen de Pledge, piano in highly successful programme for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Beethoven: Cello Sonata in C, Op 102 No 1; Schnittke: Sonata No 1 for cello and piano; Stravinsky: Suite Italienne; Shostakovich: Cello Sonata in D minor, Op 40

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall

Sunday 10 June 3pm

It sounded as if De Pledge and Rummel had decided to keep the best till last – the best rehearsed, that is. The second, third and fourth items were excellent.

Beethoven’s C major sonata is unusually short (about 15 minutes) and has an unusual shape; the cello opens alone, presenting a sad, descending motif that, as the piano joined, became a sharing of intimacies between the two; it had real charm. But as that passage drew to a close and the much more forthright Allegro vivace took over, there was an uncomfortable disconnect between cello and piano, the latter seeming unaware of the imbalance that resulted from its impact. Often the two instruments echo each other, at other times the two are almost at odds and care has to be taken to assure a unity of feeling, rather than what I felt to be the piano tending to assert its primacy.

Perhaps the lid should be down, but in the later pieces where the balance was perfectly measured, De Pledge showed that he could get quiet and sympathetic sounds with the lid on the long stick.

Added to that was an occasional smudge or missed note in the piano.

The second movement, particularly the final section, another Allegro vivace, was affected in the same way, with the piano dominating, making too much, for example, of the sudden fortissimo chords that recur. Though, in a spirit of fairness, I wondered whether the cellist should be sharing the blame, I concluded eventually that the cello was following the composer’s intentions scrupulously.

Having gone on at undue length about the first quarter hour, I must now exclaim about the excellence of the rest of the afternoon. I have not been completely won over to Schnittke’s poly-stylistic vein, but the first cello sonata suggests the styles of different eras in a coherent, integral way. Again, the cello makes its entry alone, somewhat anguished, which the piano soon picks up. The two instruments seemed in warm accord, hearing each other with complete understanding; I enjoyed the rhapsodic cello passage with discreet punctuations by the piano.

The stark dynamic contrasts between cello and piano in the second, Presto, movement were splendidly pronounced; the piano often had a more commanding role here, too, but the sense of a carefully prepared approach was always evident. So it was with the cello’s upward, singing line in the concluding Largo and the piano’s exquisite pianissimo phrases. In their hands, the last movement was a most interesting, engaging experience.

Martin Rummel entertained the audience with some piquant anecdotes about Stravinsky, making comparisons with between the written language employed by him and Prokofiev; I forget the pretext, but the matter was interesting, even amusing: Prokofiev abbreviated to the point of eliminating all vowels while Stravinsky’s language was always meticulous.

The Stravinsky suite, drawn from his ballet Pulcinella, could have been originally written for these players and indeed, one could feel that the music of Pergolesi’s contemporaries which was then thought to be by the latter, was Stravinsky’s natural idiom. Here again, balance between the two instruments was admirable, and they conveyed in a fluent, warm manner, the dancing spirit that imbued most of the pieces, even through the unruly rhythms of the Tarantella. Stravinsky was never a composer to follow tradition slavishly and in the Minuet the players stretched normal expectations in a way that was both cavalier and sentimental.

Shostakovich’s cello sonata, from the early 1930s, is one of his best known chamber works, well-furnished with melody as well as with its constantly interesting developments and the opportunities that Rummel and De Pledge grasped to make the most of the great variety of articulation and expressive devices that Shostakovich provides. The vivid and lively scherzo-style second movement came off particularly well, enriched by the combination of a traditional framework in an idiom that could not have existed before the advent of Stravinsky and Prokofiev. It rather overshadowed the following Largo. In the finale, both instruments had their moments of supremacy but the running was pretty evenly balanced, with marcato cello passages giving way to careering scales in the piano.

So ended a splendid programme in which the only 19th century piece emerged as rather less successful and memorable than the three works from the 20th century.

 

 

 

Megan Ward launches 2012 Hutt lunchtime series with Bach on viola

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Megan Ward – viola, B Mus honours student at New Zealand School of Music

Bach’s Cello Suite No 5 in C minor, transcribed for viola

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 6 June, 12.15pm

The long-standing series of lunchtime concerts at Lower Hutt has started; they run through till the end of October.

Bach instructed players of his fifth cello suite to tune the A string down a whole tone, to G, so the score shows notes that would be played on the A string a tone higher than they actually sound. The viola is tuned exactly an octave higher than the cello, so A is also the viola’s highest string.

The suite normally lasts about 25 minutes, but Megan Ward used the balance of the three-quarters of an hour to talk about the work and to pause after each movement to comment on the next. Thus there was clapping after each movement, which would have been conventional at the time of composition. That convention matched Megan’s approach to the playing which she explained was to follow aspects of baroque practice, though not slavishly. I don’t think she played on gut strings, but she did draw attention to the baroque bow, its convex shape, which produces different sounds at its heel and toe from those at the middle.

And she reminded us that all movements but the opening Praeludium had their origins in dances, but that most had moved some distance from being suitable for dancing.

Megan also drew attention to her use of ornamentation, an essential element in baroque performance. The effect, evident from the beginning of the Praeludium, was of playing that was more fluctuating, more suggesting the unevenness of human breath, in tone and dynamics; these characteristics also led the player to greater freedom of tempo, responding to the shapes of phrases as well as the hints implicit in her ornamentation.

She invited us to hear the next movement, Allemande, as song rather than dance, and the combination of a very slow pace (I’d guess around crotchet = 40 rather than the more common 55 or 60) and fluctuating rhythms left that in no doubt. It was also an opportunity to notice the generous acoustic qualities of this high-gabled church that enhanced the sustained lyrical quality of the movement.  Her ornaments sounded as if written down by Bach himself.

The Courante ran a bit faster than I expected, and Megan’s baroque interpretation meant a certain irregularity, even jerkiness, of rhythm, but there was no loss of beauty in her tone and clean articulation.

Many movements of the cello suites have attracted film makers over the years; the Sarabande gained some fame among connoisseurs when it was used on the sound-track of Ingmar Berman’s last film, Saraband. Megan approached it scrupulously, slowly, exploring its melancholy character, in a tempo that was almost too unvarying; she used no ornamentation, but she varied her dynamics artfully.

The two Gavottes offered a lively contrast, in the first, perhaps over-emphasing the first beat in the bar and passing up some of the phrasing details. The second Gavotte involved much fast fingerwork, very accomplished, but lacked the last degree of clarity.

It was a bit like her speech which was inclined to be too fast and not always clear.

Introducing the final movement, Gigue, she set our minds at rest by saying she was not striving for authenticity above all, but just to have a good time, and that was clear from the tumbling, fun-loving variety that avoided monotony.

She filled the last few minutes with an equally accomplished performance of the Sarabande from the second suite.

Not only does Megan Ward show impressive talent as a violist, but she has also a talent for talking intelligently and interestingly about things.

 

Flute, oboe and cello give delightful lunchtime recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach: Sonata in G major, BWV 1039
Beethoven: Variations on ‘La ci darem la mano’
Ginastera: Duo for flute and oboe
Haydn: Trio no.3 in G major

Nikau Trio (Karen Batten, flute; Madeline Sakofsky, oboe; Margaret Guldborg, cello)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 6 June 2012, 12.15pm

Another day of atrocious weather in Wellington, nevertheless the audience was of a reasonable size at this delightful concert.

Despite using modern instruments, the trio managed to make an almost baroque sound in the Bach sonata – quite gorgeous. The slow-fast-slow-fast movements all had their appeal, particularly the third, adagio e piano, which had a pastoral quality. The players were notable for their absolute accuracy and very good cohesion.

Beethoven made an arrangement of Mozart’s well-known aria from his opera Don Giovanni that might have amazed the original composer, with its inventive variety.  Though Beethoven’s original combination of instruments was not what we heard, it has been performed by numbers of different combinations of three instruments.

The theme was stated in a lovely pianissimo, followed by the dance-like first variation with its dotted rhythm.  The second variation featured flowing cello quavers as accompaniment to the other two players, in mellifluous harmony.

The variations were successively fast and slow; in all, the writing for the instruments was delightfully interwoven.  One in a minor key developed the theme in interesting harmonic ways.  Then there was a variation in syncopated time.  The ingeniousness of Beethoven’s ways of varying the theme was astonishing.  Some sounded quite modern, with stresses on passing notes, and humorous treatments, such as in the last variation, with its mock-serious ending.

This trio’s spot-on ensemble was notable again in the Ginastera work in three movements: Sonata, Pastorale (serene but with a plaintive quality), and Fuga (a dance-like movement; sprightly, with a jokey ending).  A leading Latin American composer, Ginastera died as recently as 1983.  He incorporated folk melodies in his neo-classical music such as here.

Haydn’s trio was originally written for two flutes and cello, but lost nothing in its arrangement for this combination.  One of Haydn’s ‘London’ trios, this was thoroughly charming in what Karen Batten described as ‘a sunny key’.  The Spiritoso first movement was indeed spirited, but also lilting and tuneful.  The Andante that followed was more serious; the players were in beautiful accord.  The Allegro finale was cheerful, exploiting the instruments brilliantly, revealing the range and variety of timbre of each instrument.

The entire recital was one of wholly engaging and enlivening music.

 

STROMA – Percussion/Action in small but compelling doses

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STROMA – Soundbytes III

Works by Beat Furrer, Manuela Meier, Andrew Ford and Toru Takemitsu

Lenny Sakofsky / Jeremy Fitzsimmons / Bruce McKinnon (percussion)

Adam Auditorium, City Gallery, Wellington

Saturday 2nd June 2012

Stroma’s 2012 concert formats are taking in both larger, standardized happenings called “Headliners”, which feature well-known performers and works by established composers, and briefer, concentrated concerts of less than an hour’s duration called “Soundbytes” – the group’s publicity referred to these events as “aural degustations”, a term which had me reaching for my dictionary, illiterate peasant that I am, to be summarily enlightened – and yes, these in this “Soundbyte” under consideration, were tasty sound-snacks indeed!

New to me, though open since 2009 (where has this reviewer been, of late?) was the venue, a space called the “Adam Auditorium” located on the ground floor of the Wellington City Gallery. I loved being in the space, and thought the acoustic and ambience served the music-making well, marrying sound and sight with pleasing directness. Because of the pronounced auditorium “rake” almost everybody in the audience could clearly see what the players were doing to conjure up their panoply of sounds, giving the concert something of a specific gestural, or even choreographic, element.

Being a determined advocate for the audio-only listening experience, I’m surprised to find myself stressing this aspect of the presentation, though the relative novelty (when compared to one’s normal concert-going experiences) of encountering percussion ensembles means that one is more than usually interested in what is actually happening on the concert platform. Our three percussionists on this occasion didn’t disappoint, with plenty of variety of sound and movement served up for our delight by way of whirling us through four very distinctive musical experiences in an all-too-brief concert.

Actually, I thought the brevity of this “Soundbyte” experience had the positive effect of leaving us with appetites sharpened for more, which the “degustation” definition certainly implies. I confess to not really coming to grips with the first of the items, however, finding Beat Furrer’s sound-world a mystery, one which gently repulsed any kind of construct or attitude I strove to place around the sounds I heard along the way (I was pleased to read in the program afterwards of the composer’s “predilection for refinement and restraint”, qualities I found in the music almost to a fault!).

Not that I was overly worried about indulging myself in enjoyment of the sounds, but afterwards wondered how I could convey something of the experience of Beat Furrer’s Music for Mallets in words – it felt as if a patient, gradually unfolding soundscape grew from the first few minutes of the work, with sudden impulses of tone precursors of more frequent irruptions of energy which enlivened the textures somewhat, even if the music’s pulsing spent a lot of the work “underground”. A freer, more volatile episode followed, rapid glissandi and other figurations, staking out the land, though the sense of something restrained, evanescent and mysterious remained, embedded in the music’s character, and making a lasting impression.

By contrast, Stroma administrator Manuela Meier’s 2012 work Cada bristled with movement and impulse, throughout, the antiphonal exchanges between the two percussionists a delight to the senses. Again, the seating configuration allowing us to really “get involved” with the players’ physical gesturing and form a relationship between different sounds’ cause and effect. The composer treated us to a plethora of timbres and colours and what seemed to our “insectified” ears like a stunning range of dynamics, from the whisperings of wood against a smooth metal edge to the harsh complaints of friction-making textured metal surfaces worked upon by the same hard sticks. It all had the feeling of some kind of inner reality, akin to the flowing of blood, impulsings of a nervous system or an intelligence network processing sensory responses. This was the piece’s first-ever performance in public.

Andrew Ford’s Composition in blue, grey and pink for solo percussionist gave Lenny Sakofsky a chance to demonstrate his considerable performance skills. Taken from a larger work for flute and percussion and arranged as a stand-alone movement, it places the performer at a kind of drum-kit arrangement as if in control of the flight-deck of an enormous flying machine. Content-wise, the piece is extremely theatrical in its soliloquy-like structure, completely in accordance with a certain improvisatory air (intended by the composer, who leaves certain decisions to the player, such as the choice of drumsticks, and the dynamics throughout).

The opening episode is almost like a jumble of thoughts, as if emotion is trying to sort out an order of saying or a coherent overall shape – so we get fast and chatty sequences, but within a fragmented discourse. Slow and sinister follows, a different view of the material, or else a change in its ambient surroundings, contrasting with a sequence of brittle scintillations, whose short, questioning coda concludes with a final flourish. Both sounds and the player’s choreography of performance were totally absorbing, with never a void moment.

One doesn’t have to be a camp follower of percussion concerts to encounter the music of Toru Takemitsu, as this same work, Rain Tree, was heard during a concert given by the NZSO Soloists in March of this year (the same concert which featured Shchedrin’s entertaining, reworked and re-orchestrated take on Bizet’s Carmen). On that occasion I remember the music being somewhat marred by excessively-projected lighting of each instrumentalist – the systematic spotlighting was meant to synchronize with the music, but for me it was all too visually “loud”, and thus proved a fatal distraction. Significantly, Takemitsu himself is on record as having supervised a performance of his work with similar lighting, but then commenting afterwards that he found the effect “too distracting”.

Here, most thankfully, there were no such lighting manipulations, the musical impulses allowed to speak for themselves throughout the piece. Again, the characteristics of the auditorium enabled us to connect directly with the three players and their instrumental gesturings – Takemitsu’s title for the piece, Rain Tree refers to a tree described in a novel by Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe The Ingenious Rain Tree, one which, because of the thickness of its foliage “stores” water from rain and continues to water the ground long after the rain itself has ceased. The work reflects this process, the raindrops depicted by use of the crotales (antique cymbals) build up towards a cascade, with the marimbas alternating the whole while, and the vibraphone providing a kind of underlying foundation. Some of these were gorgeous sounds, both when isolated (the crotales) and when interactive – the marimbas woody and solidly ambient, the vibraphone all air and water.

The evening’s music and its performance, along with the venue and its warmly attractive ambience, all came together beautifully to make this Stroma concert yet another one to remember with great pleasure.

 

 

 

Sayers and Mapp, varied and delightful piano duets at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Emma Sayers and Richard Mapp (piano duet)

Music by Thomas Tomkins, Mozart, Schubert. Ravel, Kenneth Young, Barber and Poulenc

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 20 May, 2.30pm

A concert of piano duets (four hands on one piano) is likely to raise discussion about the propriety of arrangements and the voicing of opinions about the merits of an orchestral arrangement of a piece for piano four hands (or two hands, for that matter).

As it happens, most of the music at this concert was originally written for four hands though two were later orchestrated for a ballet.

The opening piece was a small surprise from the Stuart period when the keyboard – harpsichord, clavichord, virginals, etc – was being used increasingly as a solo instrument, most notably exemplified in Fitzwilliam’s ‘virginal book’ published in the 19th century.

According to the programme note, Thomas Tomkins’s piece, A Fancy, ‘for two to play’, is probably the first surviving piece for two players at one keyboard. It started quietly giving the impression that the composer was really thinking of only one player, but soon its various layers emerged to justify its treatment by more than one player.

Mozart wrote several sonatas and other pieces for two pianists on either one or two keyboards. This, in F major, K 497, was not one of the best known, and in spite of Emma Sayer’s promoting it as echoing the spirit of the operas that he was writing at the time – The Marriage of Figaro and The Impresario – it isn’t really furnished with the memorable and characterful tunes that made them famous.

They played the opening Adagio cautiously, and there was even a feeling of holding back as the Allegro got under way. The air of hesitancy derived more from the music than the players; in spite of the outwardly lively tunes, and it struck me that Mozart was compensating for a slightly lower level of inspiration by adorning it with decoration and unexpected modulations.

The same feeling lingered in the Andante second movement: interesting rather than beguiling, yet we heard a performance that was well rehearsed, with attractive dynamic and tempo changes. The finale offered more lively music, the two players sporting with each other, exploiting chances to surprise, offering nothing that was routine, and ultimately leaving no room for doubt that the composer was Mozart in his masterly maturity.

Schubert’s Allegro in A minor, thought to be the first movement of a never completed sonata, was entitled by the publisher, Lebensstürme – ‘life’s storms’. It is no 947 in the Deutsch catalogue, which is immediately after the much better known, three Klavierstücke. It deserves to be as well known for it has real strength and dramatic shape as well as having a perfectly enchanting middle section. Stormy is the way it opened but the storm soon passed; it was interesting melodically as well as developing in ways that were typical of Schubert. There’s an underlying swaying rhythm that characterises a beguiling melody before the music returns to the arresting minor key, fanfare-like motif with which it opened.

Though there were charms of rhythm and lyricism that I felt were not totally realised, this performance was persuasive enough to make me pursue the piece further. If you Google ‘Lebensstürme’ and ‘Schubert’ you will find several You-Tube video clips of performances. One which captivated me was by the Georgian twins, Ani and Nia Salkhanishvili at the San Marino Piano Competition.

Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye was written for girls, obviously highly talented, for it’s not particularly easy.  The question whether the original duet version or the orchestral version is to be preferred exercises many people; for my part, I’m seduced by both as soon one or the other starts. This duo approached it fastidiously, the wit and charm discreetly obscured, to be smiled at by others than those who respond only to the gross and obvious in humour. They played it as one, approaching the rise and fall of dynamics exquisitely and making much of the playful turns in treble passages in ‘Hop o’ my thumb’. The suite ended with the droll sleight of hand found in the last phrase of ‘The fairy garden’.

Kenneth Young’s Variations on a Prayer is based on an original chorale-like tune, according to the programme note, which went on to explain that it “explored the nature of prayer, which can take many different forms in pursuit of a universal goal”. It is the sort of comment that seems more likely to come from a composer than a writer of programme notes, but the notes later speak of Young in the third person, linking his musical character with Dutilleux and Takemitsu. In any case, Young’s music finds its way successfully between the rigours of the complex avant-garde and the indulgently melodic and sentimental, and the performance situated it without apology in the company of the early 20th century pieces in the programme.

The recital ended with another two pieces I hadn’t come across before: Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs and Poulenc’s Sonata for Piano Duet (of 1918, and so very early).

The three pieces taken from Souvenirs, a suite of six movements, Op 28 of 1951, were Schottische, Pas de deux and Hesitation-Tango. Though originally written for piano four hands, Barber also arranged it for solo piano, for two pianos and then he orchestrated it for a ballet which was first performed in 1955.  The Schottische has a jazzy quality in quick 3/8 rhythm; then a slow Pas de deux that exemplified the nostalgic aspect of these Souvenirs, and the Hesitation-Tango, (a take, I suppose, on the once-popular Hesitation Waltz that I recall from college dancing classes), slightly reminiscent of Prokofiev with wisps of a big tune that proved evanescent, and leading us into the here and now.

The Poulenc sonata would, one might think, be performed along with the sonatas he wrote for wind instruments near the end of his life, but this one, written at 19, was contemporaneous with the well-known Mouvements perpetuels . well before his ballet, Les Biches, which put him on the map in 1924. One could hear why it’s not so well known, though it’s not inconsequential, and the duo found its varied character, the dense chords in dotted rhythms of the Prélude, the improvisatory interlude called Rustique, and the speedy, staccato Final that was perhaps going nowhere, but gave the impression of generating much energy in doing so.

This enchanting recital made me realise how much pleasure is to be found in the piano duet repertoire. Mapp and Sayers have been playing together for a few years and their performances deserve to be more frequent and widely enjoyed.

 

Bartók’s Duos on folk music from two violists, Donald Maurice and Claudine Bigelow

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bartók: Excerpts from 44 Duos; field recordings made 1906-1915

Claudine Bigelow and Donald Maurice (violas)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 16 May 2012, 12.15pm

Despite the atrocious weather in Wellington the audience was of a reasonable size at what was a lecture-recital rather than a concert – but none the worse for that.

Donald Maurice is well known locally as a violist, and as one of the performers and the promoter of Alfred Hill’s string quartets recordings.

Caroline Bigelow came here from the Brigham Young University School of Music on a Fulbright scholarship, to work with Donald Maurice.  In a recent radio interview I heard, she paid tribute to Donald Maurice, whom she had met some years ago at an International Viola Congress.

Both performers gave quite lengthy spoken introductions to Bartók and the Duos, which were written for two violins. They are recording the duos for CD; the recording, like the concert, will feature the composer’s field recordings made from 1906 to 1915, upon which these 1931 compositions are based.  It will be the first recording of them for two violas, and is being produced in collaboration with the Bartók Archive in Budapest.

It was a pity that Maurice and Bigelow (particularly the latter) did not use the microphone, since dropping the voice at the end of sentences and phrases made them inaudible at times – and I was seated near the front of the church.

Each of the 11 selections from the 44 was introduced, the translation read, and then in the relevant cases (which was most of them) the original field recording, transcribed from wax cylinders to CD, was played through the church’s speaker system, then Bartók’s duo based on that recording played.

This made for an interesting programme.  The simple melodies used different tonalities from those we now consider standard major and minor.  The first piece, ‘Midsummer Night Song’, was played with warm and rich tone, the beautiful harmonies created by Bartók and altered rhythms from the original folk song combining to create a colourful picture.

The ‘Cradle Song’ that followed was humorous, and the bi-tonality (B flat against E, Donald Maurice explained) employed by the composer appropriate to the modal original, making for a very effective piece.

In ‘Burlesque’, Bartók altered the timing from a simple one in the original to a dotted rhythm.  ‘Fairy Tale’ was an example of more complex rhythms, but such as are common in Eastern European folk music.

‘Bride’s Farewell’ far from being a joyous song, sounded mournful, especially with the unison notes and intervals of a second that the composer chose.  It was full of strong colours, compared with the earlier songs.  Like ‘Burlesque’ and the Dance that followed it, this piece was from Ruthenia.  Maurice explained that it was very difficult to get a translation of the Ruthenian language; it seems not to have survived.  Nor has the name ‘Ruthenia’, in my atlas! [Ruthenia was the small eastern-most province of Czechoslovakia as it existed between the two world wars; it had a mixed population of Hungarians, Romanians, Ukrainians and a significant Jewish population; the region was predominantly Ukrainian. Till 1919 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; it is now the Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine, and bordered by Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. The language referred to is most likely to be Ukrainian. L.T.]

The ‘Ruthenian Dance’ used a different minor scale from the one we know today, and employed an 8/8 rhythmic pattern of 3+2+3, very evident in the accompanying part; the melody line sounded typically folksy, however.

The song ‘Sorrow’, the performers found, differed in a recording by the composer himself from what he had written in his score, as well as from the folk original he recorded. It was a plaintive piece, with woeful humour in the last line about the wench from the inn: ‘How much of my money it has cost, all in vain!’  A man sang this in the original; most of the recordings were by girls or women.

Maurice explained that in the Hungarian language, emphasis tends to be on the first syllable of words (and I recall this from a Hungarian woman I once worked with), and this informs the musical rhythms.

‘Bagpipes’ was an original melody from the composer.  Donald Maurice’s part was the drone and Bigelow’s the chanter with the melody.  It was lively and jolly, and a very good evocation of the bagpipes.  We were told that after this was written, Bartók went to Scotland, and showed much interest in the instrument.

‘Prelude and Canon’, purporting to be about two peonies blooming but ready to fade, was allegedly about two spinsters.  However, the piece (and the original) speeded up towards the end, indicating perhaps that the fact that ‘No-one will pluck them’ was no bad thing!  Here, Bartók was true to the original, but the colours of his harmonies were dark, even in the more animated section.

Another Bartók original was the ‘Pizzicato’.  The entire piece was plucked.  It was beautifully executed and a joyful little number.  Donald Maurice explained that the short duos were written by the composer for students, but he said that the last ones in the set would require very advanced students to play them, that is, this one and the next, of those we heard.

Number 44, ‘Transylvanian Dance’ was last in the set and the last performed.  It derived from the region where the composer grew up.  Again, an unusual scale (to us) was employed.  Maurice said that its exotic sound might have been because it derived from the music of migrants from India, long ago. It made for a complex and interesting piece in Bartók’s transcription.

The well-planned and played programme was fascinating, marred only by the lack of projection of the voices, particularly that of Caroline Bigelow.

The forthcoming recording will be of considerable interest.

 

Interesting assortment of arrangements for viola ensembles from the New Zealand School of Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Viva Viola – the next generation (from the New Zealand School of Music)

Viola: Annji Chong, Vince Hardaker, John Roxburgh, Alix Schultze, Alexa Thomson, Aiden Verity, Megan Ward

High Noon Quartet (in Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D, K 285): Michael McEwen – flute, Jun He – violin, Andrew Filmer – viola, Charles Davenport – cello

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 May, 12.15pm

Viola students at the New Zealand School of Music have formed this group which has given several concerts in Wellington as well as at the International Viola Conference in Sydney.

The programme listed seven players who took part but not identified in each of the trios, quartets, quintets and the final sextet; plus one, Andrew Filmer, who played in the Mozart. Their programme was, of necessity, rather odd-ball, for not a lot of music has been written for groups of violas. Thus it consisted, apart from the first piece, entirely of arrangements of music originally written for different instruments.

The first was played as written: one of Mozart’s flute quartets, which of course included only one viola. The result was probably the most generally popular piece on the programme, and it was indeed delightfully played. It was the only piece whose players were listed individually. Michael McEwen played a particularly stylish and confident flute and the three string players matched him in the feeling of gaiety that Mozart wrote into his D major quartet. The whole performance was charming, with just a few minor smudges in the last movement.

Then followed a short suite of early baroque pieces, by one Johann Groh, arranged by Australian composer Paul Groh (no note about the strange coincidence). The composer died at the beginning of the terrible Thirty Years War. Five violas performed the four small pieces that were quite characterful if unexciting; perhaps the harmonies employed in the arrangement made me suspect tuning flaws.

Dido’s Lament, ‘When I am laid in earth’ from Dido and Aeneas could have been more effective if played a bit slower to linger a little on the despair. But the piece was played very well.

An arrangement for four violas of a fugue from an organ work by Domenico Scarlatti was a thoroughly engaging piece, in which the fugue was cleverly visited by another unrelated theme that increased very significantly the complexity and pleasure derived therefrom. Bach himself might have been impressed by it, and by its playing.

A Viola Terzett (three violas) by an Israeli composer, Boaz Avni, was brought forward in the programme next: a well-honed performance of a perfectly competent piece that didn’t leave an especially deep impression.

Another minor piece arranged for viola trio by a much greater composer followed: one of Tchaikovsky’s piano pieces, Aveu passione (variously: passionné, passioné, passioni). It began on the lower strings but soon moved, rather effectively up the A string. I do not know the piano original and so cannot tell whether this might have been a good rendering of it.

The first viola led quite strongly an anonymous Galliard arranged for five violas by one Sancho Engano, but otherwise the piece seemed rather pedestrian.

And the concert finished with a curious musical skit, Bartosky, described as ‘tongue-in-cheek’,  by Julien Heichelbech, starting with the opening phrase of Bartok’s unfinished viola concerto into which were injected a couple of familiar tunes including the waltz from The Sleeping Beauty. A performance by less skilled players on You-Tube is furnished with a sudden scream in the middle which was funny and struck me as the main point of the music which in truth had little other purpose. I wonder why The Next Generation decided against it.

Though most of the music was not hugely entertaining, the playing by the various configurations of violas was in itself admirable and very agreeable (I have an especial affection for the sound of the viola), and confirmed the excellent musical level achieved by these (I assume) students.

 

 

New Zealand String Quartet continues Beethoven cycle with magnificent pair from Op 59

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘Beethoven Revolution’: The second phase of a complete cycle of the string quartets

Op 59 Nos 2 & 1 (of the Razumovsky Quartets)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 3 May, 7.30pm

The programme listed the pieces to be played in this first of two concerts devoted to the ‘middle’ period of the quartets, from the three Razumovsky quartets, the ‘Harp’ (Op 74) and Op 95, showing the two at this concert as Op 59 Nos 1 and 2 in that order. Gillian Ansell spoke at the beginning and evidently told us that they would be played in reverse order, but the sound system (or my sound system?) was not good enough for me to hear that.

(By the way, though the common English spelling is ‘Rasumovsky’, the name in Russian is spelled with a ‘z’ in the first syllable – Разумовский; it’s transliterated in German with ‘s’ since ‘s’ is pronounced ‘z’ when between two vowels. Thus, since he was not a German, it should be represented in English by the equivalent letter – ‘z’).

I had not looked at the programme and when, in the second half, I opened it to check on the markings of the movements that I realised that the programme had the two quartets in the wrong order.

It made excellent sense, for the E minor quartet (No 2) is more powerful, sombre and dramatic than No 1, and thus made an arresting start. And incidentally, I noticed that my old set of LPs by the Gabrieli String Quartet also arranges them 2, 1 and 3.

The first two movements of No 2 in E minor are the longest of any of the Razumovsky set, and their placing at the concert’s start made a resolute and arresting opening to the concert

But the players did not allow those moments of particular force to dominate, and for the most part there was an airy, open feeling in the music, varied with the most tender pianissimo that grew entrancingly in slow crescendi.

The second movement, Molto adagio, with the added injunction to play it ‘con molto di sentimento’, is a remarkable piece of music which sounds prescient of the quartets of 15 years later, so unusual in its otherworldliness even though it breaks into the tonic major key, from the E minor of the quartet as a whole. The performance, particularly Helene Pohl’s high-soaring violin, was deeply affecting; and one cannot help but think of the interest Beethoven is said to have taken in Kant’s early Theory of the Heavens written half a century before.

The third movement was captured by it spirit as a haunting, disembodied dance, with important contributions by Gillian Ansell’s viola soon echoed in an uncanny stillness from Doug Beilman’s violin. The entire movement reflected a masterly distillation of feeling.

The F major quartet is not of the transcendental character of the preceding one. F major, which is heard by Beethoven, and others as a sanguine and human scale key, is the key of two other major works of the middle period: the Pastoral Symphony and the Op 54 piano sonata,. Yet it still sets a new benchmark; in contrast to the Op 18 set each of which lasts less than half an hour, both these are around 40 minutes in length and speak in a different language, that is spacious, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes soul-searching, routinely profound.

Here it was Rolf Gjelsten’s cello that made the first statement over a staccato accompaniment with a tremolo quality. Startling phantom chords lead to a rather grand melody, all making plain the distance the composer has come in just a few years.

The Scherzo – or scherzando in this case – second movement was wittily handled with a droll tune in a mocking dance rhythm, each instrument taking its turn in a staccato passage, then a very contrasted second subject that soon emerges as a surprising fit with what has gone before.

The slow movement was played for all its poignant, elegiac feeling, each instrument making the most of every individual phrase, emotional but never cloying. That runs straight into the finale – Allegro which is famously built on a Russian folk tune, a gesture to Count Razumovsky.  Though the music follows sonata form, the strength of the tune which has the feel of a rhetorical ending, repeated many times, seems to me like a study in ‘coda-as-substantive movement’, a series of admittedly quite elaborate and fugally-rich perorations that resume after a moment’s pause. The quartet might well have exhausted Beethoven’s disposition ever to write a rhetorical coda again.

The quartet is at present at the very top of their game – well, they’ve been there for quite a while – and I look forward to the next concert, containing the third of the Op 59 as well as Opus 74 and 95, which, oddly, will not be performed in Wellington – but at Upper Hutt on 11 June  and Waikanae on 17 June.

Especially, the profound insight, the maturity and the ability to illuminate the infinite variety of Beethoven’s invention that the players have displayed so far makes the performances of the late quartets in September a more than ordinarily exciting prospect.

 

 

Diverting wind trio in delightful programme at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Rameau: Gavotte et Doubles
Françaix: Divertissement
Beethoven: Variations on a theme ‘La ci darem la mano’ from Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Schulhoff: Three movements from Divertissement for oboe, clarinet and bassoon

Wild Reeds: Calvin Scott (oboe), Mary Scott clarinet), Alex Chan (bassoon)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 2 May 2012, 12.15pm

The playing of the ‘Wild Reeds’ was wonderfully uplifting right from the start of their programme.  It may have been a wild wind with rain outside, but this ensemble, far from being wild, was precise and euphonious.

The Rameau work was delightful in its several contrasting movements that contained solos, with mainly harmony on the other instruments.  The pieces were an arrangement of a Rameau keyboard work.

The printed programme had excellent notes on the works, and on the history of this combination of instruments.  The Trio des anches de Paris was evidently formed in 1927 by a bassoonist; he and his colleagues believed that the flute and horn did not blend well with reed instruments. It was good, too, to have the dates of composition of the works.

The Françaix piece featured tricky timing in places, especially in the second movement, but these players were always together; their expertise as performers was not in question at any point.

This was quite unconventional and quirky music, reminding me of the writing for woodwind of Françaix’s fellow-countryman and near contemporary, Poulenc, not to mention the slightly earlier Ravel and Satie.

The third movement, Élégie, of this four-movement work was not as peaceful as one might expect a work having this title to be. The Scherzo could have been depicting birds having a squabble, at the start.  Then they make up, yet there was still the odd disagreement before they went their separate ways and did their own thing, stopping just to say a spiky ‘good-bye’.

Beethoven’s Variations reveal masterly treatment of this great melody from Mozart.  The first variation gave the solo writing to the oboe, the second to the bassoon – who would have imagined that this instrument could be so rapidly talkative?

The third was slow and harmonic, while the fourth provided rapid passages for all three instruments at first, followed by some that were mainly for oboe.  The fifth was a contrast, being in a minor key, while the sixth had the clarinet leading the variation.  Variation seven had the lower tones on the clarinet playing along with the bassoon, which had solo sections, while rapid passages were played by the clarinet.  Finally, we had a slow, languid ending restating the theme.

The last item on the programme consisted of three movements (Charleston, Florida and Rondino) from the Schulhoff Divertissement.  The lively Charleston had the instruments sometimes almost seeming to be at one another’s throats!  Florida was a more lyrical piece, with a surprise ending, and Rondino was fast – a sort of perpetuum mobile, with a few stopping places along the way, and a sudden ending.

This programme seemed slightly short, but the players obliged with an encore: a trio that follows a soprano solo in J.S. Bach’s Cantata no.68.  The original instrumentation was violin, oboe and bassoon. The instrumentation of Wild Reeds sounded quite spiky, but very effective.

The delight the audience obviously had in this highly skilled group’s performance demands that St. Andrew’s must schedule them again.  Its programme selection was interesting, and the combination of instruments refreshing; the players were expert musicians indeed.