Tag: chamber music

Waikanae hugely enjoys Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Mozart: String Quartet in C, K.157
Hugo Wolf: Italian Serenade in G
Anthony Ritchie: Clarinet Quintet, Op.124
Brahms: Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Op.115

Amici Ensemble (Donald Armstrong and Cristina Vaszilcsin, violins; Julia Joyce, viola; Rowan Prior, cello, Philip Green, clarinet)

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday, 17 April 2011, 2.30 pm

As always at Waikanae, there was a well-filled hall, and as usual when Donald Armstrong is involved, items were given spoken introductions: by him, to the Mozart and Wolf works, and by clarinettist Philip Green to the two clarinet quintets. This was in addition to excellent programme notes.

Of the Mozart, Armstrong said it was ‘good-natured… [it] has the greatness without the complexity of his later works. This quartet was written when Mozart was aged only 16.

The players were not quite together at the beginning, but soon settled down. The tone was blended best in the slow movement, and the bright and lively presto finale. There was good playing from the cello throughout the attractive piece.

The version of Wolf’s Italian Serenade for string orchestra is perhaps more often played than the quartet original, but the latter is, I think, to be preferred for its clarity, which is particularly important for the unusual harmonies and modulations. At times, they sounded like those to be found in Noël Coward songs. As the programme note said, this is a delicious miniature.

Anthony Ritchie has written a most interesting clarinet quintet, commissioned by Christchurch’s musical philanthropist, Christopher Marshall, in 2006. The music begins very quietly, the bird-song-like clarinet along with the strings playing softly on the bridge (ponticello). There was some very striking writing here, especially for the clarinet.

After the slow opening, the allegro first movement, had some marvellous passages for the viola and the clarinet; it ended abruptly. The slow movement began in unison for second violin, viola and cello – a very telling device. Then it returned to ponticello. The fast finale was agitated, even unsettling. Philip Green’s clarinet playing was superb throughout the work. It was a most effective work, if somewhat dark and mournful in the main.

The major work on the programme was Brahms’s Quintet. Composed in 1891, a few years after the Wolf work but vastly different in character, it has ‘an atmosphere of serenity coloured by warm melodies, as well as a wonderful interplay amongst the five players’, as the programme note stated.

Again, Philip Green’s playing excelled, though sometimes the string sound overwhelmed him. Whether a different seating plan would have helped, I don’t know. Mostly, his playing sparkled with brilliance and sensitive interpretation.

The adagio featured the splendid muted first violin of Donald Armstrong, particularly. Ensemble was excellent otherwise, and pianissimo playing was exemplary from all the performers – helped by some alterations to the ceiling of the small platform.

In the Presto third movement, the viola produced some wonderful pizzicato. There was a magical range of dynamics and well-controlled crescendos and decrescendos. The quintet’s wonderfully mellifluous ending was beautifully handled, with perfect phrasing.

A stamping, applauding audience obviously enjoyed the concert hugely, especially the Brahms. It was a superb programme from a highly skilled group of players.

Tudor Consort – Prophetic excellence at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Settings to music of prophetic writings throughout the ages

Music by Hildegard von Bingen, Orlando de Lassus, William Byrd, Gustav Holst, Alonso Lobo, Michael Praetorius, Alban Berg, Heinrich Schutz

The Tudor Consort, directed by Michael Stewart (Presented by Chamber Music Hutt Valley)

St.James Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 6th April, 2011

What an inspired idea for a concert! – fascinating to collect together a broad chronological range of composers’ responses to prophetic texts to register any commonalities and enjoy the differences. Not surprisingly, these factors were the two most readily prominent features of the concert, namely the power of the texts to elicit a heartfelt response from every composer, and the sharply varied flavour of each individual setting. The result was an evening replete with strongly heartfelt utterances, expressed with a variety of musical styles and modes – in other words, a “best of both worlds” occasion.

The concert couldn’t have begun more appropriately and strikingly than with Erin King’s beautiful singing of music by the twelfth-century composer, poet, visionary and abbess Hildegarde of Bingen. The otherwise excellent program note didn’t directly indicate that the text of the antiphon O pastor animarum was Hildegarde’s own, though it’s very likely part of her renowned “Symphonia armonie celestial revelationum”, her own collection of poetry and music which she assembled and herself enriched throughout her life.

But the work around which most of the concert’s program was constructed was Orlando de Lassus’s Prophetiae Sibyllarum, a visionary outpouring of highly personalized responses to texts that transported his creative sensibilities towards extraordinary flights of fancy. The texts, attributed to various mystic seers, were largely appropriated from antiquity by the early Christian Church, though it’s thought that Lassus himself wrote the words of the Prologue. The various settings were performed by the Consort in groups of two and three, and interspersed throughout the concert, creating interesting juxtapositionings with the work of twentieth-century composers such as Holst and Berg. Although these composers and others featured in the concert used texts from different sources, the shared intensities of both music and performance fused the varieties of eras and styles into what I felt to be a deeply satisfying whole.

Lassus’s settings featured a kind of chromatic restlessness in places, which, allied to marked flexibility of rhythm and pulse, readily created sound-worlds whose mystical realms seemed somewhat removed from ordinary experience, the texts truly sounding as if from remote times and places. I was reminded in places of Italian madrigals and their volatility of utterance, making for unexpected shifts of harmony, colour and rhythm by way of bringing the texts to life. Michael Stewart, director of the Consort, had introduced the composer and the music, characterizing Lassus’s work as “wonderfully weird” – and the group brought out the music’s varied intensities throughout each of the three groups of Prophetiae before the interval, with beautifully-judged gradations of sound and finely-honed intonation. In the Sybilla Europaea’s Virginis aeternum from the first group of Prophetiae after the resumption I thought the bass lines less well integrated with the whole – the rest soared and whispered across a stunningly varied sound-spectrum, the startling modulations and spooky “sotto voce” ambiences of the piece utterly spell-binding. And again, in the following Verax ipse Deus of the Sybilla Tyburtina the men’s voices again sounded to my ears a shade too nasal in effect, compared with the rest of the choir.

Amends were made with the beautifully-turned final group of Lassus’s Prophetiae, the two settings rather more conventional in effect, I thought, apart from occasional modulations which, though unexpected, we had by now come to expect! As a whole, the work was a perfect foil for the rest, William Byrd’s beautiful Ecce Virgo concipiet seeming like balm to our senses, coming as it did in the midst of all of Lassus’s convoluted chromaticisms. Holst’s Nunc Dimittis, too, seemed more “anchored” harmonically, though the overlapping eight-part opening created a frisson of expectation which built unerringly towards a real cathedral-style apotheosis at the final Gloria. And the Spanish composer Alonso Lobo’s Ave Maria had a gloriously rolling-sound kind of perpetual-motion character (the double choir creating something of an inexhaustible voices effect), all beautifully delivered.

In the second half of the concert we were able to enjoy contrasting settings (separated by three hundred years) of the German Advent Carol Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen, by Michael Praetorius and Alban Berg, the latter here eschewing his Second Viennese School associations for a more late-Romantic tonal setting. Praetorius’s essentially simple, straight-to-the-heart treatment of the words admirably set off Berg’s more extended and somewhat tortured, though still achingly beautiful setting. Concluding what I thought was an evening’s glorious singing was the Teutsch Magnificat of

Heinrich Schütz, set for double choir, and featuring at the outset richly-wrought antiphonal exchanges between the two groups. The composer cleverly varied the word-pointing in places, telescoping the word-pointing and creating a kind of word-excitement which bubbled out of and over the edges of the music – “singing for the joy of singing” was the phrase that came to my mind as I Iistened, caught up in the exuberance and beauty of it all – marvellous!

‘NZTrio’ at Paekakariki’s Mulled Wine concerts

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

Piano Trio in F sharp minor, Hob XV:26 (Haydn), Intaglio (Chris Gendall), Grooveboxes from Swing Shift (Kenji Bunch), Piano Trio in A minor, Op 50 (Tchaikovsky)

The New Zealand Trio (‘NZTrio’): Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello, Sarah Watkins – piano

Paekakariki Memorial Hall

Sunday 27 March 2.30pm (and also, in part, at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre, Monday 28 March)

The Mulled Wine concert series at Paekakariki has become an interesting and singular event in the pattern of music in the Greater Wellington region. Some of the concerts are indeed to be found repeated elsewhere in the region; some are not. The NZ Trio’s concert could have been heard again the following evening at Lower Hutt and I took myself there in order to get a different aural experience and to listen again to the pieces new to me. (I happen to live in a suburb roughly equidistant from Paekakariki, Lower Hutt and Wellington city).

I believe that this was the first visit by the NZ Trio at this series. They would have been charmed by the setting, both by the traditional small-town hall and it location by the sea. The dramatic variety of microclimates visited on the south-west corner of the North Island was dramatically played out too.

Just an hour or so after a phenomenal downpour that cause floods in the Porirua basin, here it was pleasant and partly sunny. Kapiti was moored offshore and the sound of the waves on the eroding beach were sometimes synchronised with the rhythms of the music. I’m sure the players would have been impressed at the enterprise and friendliness of the series organizers, led by Mary Gow, not to mention the mulled wine afterwards.

The players were seated about half way along the western wall with their backs to the sea, and so on the same level as the audience, so there were sight-line difficulties of some.

That placing may have contributed to the way the acoustic amplified the players’ sounds; as well as being too loud, it had the effect of somewhat flattening dynamic nuances.

All three musicians are bachelor graduates of the University of Canterbury and they have all done post-graduate study in the United States. The trio has been around since 2002 and it’s pre-eminent in its field here as well as having built up an impressive reputation overseas. Their present schedule shows over 30 concerts here and abroad this year.

They played two ‘classical’ pieces, one of Haydn’s 40-odd trios, and the only one that Tchaikovsky wrote; plus two shorter contemporary pieces.

No one claims to know all of Haydn’s music, and I hadn’t heard this one in F sharp minor (Hoboken catalogue number XV:26) before. It overflows with drama, colour and variety, making up for a certain lack of charm and memorable tunes. My only misgiving was that the players hadn’t quite got the measure of the hall, which probably affected the Haydn more than the other pieces. Nevertheless, Haydn would have enjoyed the robust and determined force of the performance, even in the more soulful slow movement.

Tchaikovsky’s only piano trio more than occupied all the second half. It’s so full of rapturous and voluptuous melody that it’s easy to understand how certain more ascetic listeners and critics might have considered it sentimental or saccharine; perhaps some still do. Not only did the trio exploit all its overflowing romantic qualities to the full, but they invested it with a facsimile of a full orchestral sound.  Sure, the volume control was still set too high, but it was a flawless performance of surpassing brilliance and power, that surely calls for a recording ASAP.

In between, before the interval, came two contemporary pieces, one of New Zealand, the other from the United States.

The first, by Wellington-based Chris Gendall, was called Intaglio – a term familiar to print-makers. A composition of the experimental kind, free of conventional melody, but rich in non-musical techniques and intriguing relationships between the instruments. It was to hear this piece again that I went to Lower Hutt the following evening. Though the theatre is reputed to have a difficult acoustic, it accommodated the trio’s performance more comfortably in the Haydn, and gave me a clear hearing of Chris Gendall’s piece; though I still failed to recognize any relationship between the musical character and the ‘intaglio’ printmaking process. If, as the composer writes, it refers rather to the process of its composition, its use seems a pointless gesture for the listener. However, a second hearing, as so often, offered a sort of recognition experience, even the seeming random, widely spaced piano hits. And I listened to it with some enjoyment.

It was followed by a part of a New York inspired piece called Swing Shift, capturing in relentless rap rhythms that would serve for break dancers, the nocturnal life of a city that never sleeps.I loved its energy and the powerhouse performance by all three players, employing engaging jazz pulse generated by what the notes describe as a DJ’s ‘beat box’ or ‘groove box’, of the nature of which this audience member is blissfully ignorant.

Possibly, the trio is mildly irritated with my pedantry in preferring to spell out their name. I never abbreviate the name of my country (or any other country) in anything I write. I have always been guided by what today might be becoming old-fashioned printers’ style, as is found in printers’ ‘style books’, such as of the former New Zealand Government Printing Office and The New York Times; they are generally very clear:“Don’t abbreviate!”. Acronyms are permissible when universally used, at least by your particular readership, like NZSO for us.Even stronger is my dislike of calling New Zealanders Kiwis and things pertaining to New Zealand, Kiwi. I find it demeaning, and as an editor I have always taken the liberty of eliminating ‘Kiwi’ from others’ copy.

 

Eggner Trio wins all hearts

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Eggner Trio

Chamber Music New Zealand Kaleidoscopes Concert Season 2011

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio in B-flat Op.11 “Gassenhauer”

IAN MUNRO – Tales of Old Russia

ANTONIN DVORAK – Piano Trio No.3 in F Minor Op.65

Georg Eggner (violin) / Florian Eggner (‘cello) / Christoph Eggner (piano)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday, 24th March 2011

CMNZ’s 2011 Season couldn’t have gotten off to a better start with the return of the inspirational Eggner Trio from Vienna, being no less than the third visit by the Trio to New Zealand. Good also to read in the program a message of support from Carolyn and Peter Diessl, the latter in his role as Honorary Consul-General for Austria in this country, and as a major supporter of the arts in New Zealand – a kind of connection-making process that other organizations such as the NZSO could pursue more readily on certain occasions (I’m thinking of the orchestra’s Sibelius Festival last year, when there was not one iota of outside Scandinavian “presence” in this country acknowledged or referred to – by contrast, CMNZ was able to place this concert in a wider cultural context with a simple act of acknowledgement). Even closer to home in a sense was Chief Executive of Chamber Music New Zealand Euan Murdoch’s mid-concert spoken message of support from all associated with the organization to the citizens and chamber music-lovers of Christchurch, in the wake of the recent devastation experienced by that city.

As everybody knows, the trio consists of a group of brothers whose upbringing obviously laid the foundations for developing an enviable musical rapport – right from the first few phrases of the opening work on the program one got a sense of total engagement from the participants with both music and their interaction. On the face of things, communication seemed all to flow towards the violinist, Georg Eggner, with both brothers, ‘cellist Florian (his John Belushi-style spectacles bringing a touch of visual free-wheeling glamour to the music-making) and pianist Christoph, readily making eye-contact with their seemingly more circumspect violinist brother. However, proof of the pudding, as my grandmother used to say, was in the eating – and the trio’s demonstration of individual impulse brought together in a unified flow brilliantly exemplified that particular joy of interactive music-making which can make chamber music so rewarding an experience. Any performing group worth its salt can, of course, do this – but the Eggners were equally adept at drawing its audience into the world of the music. We seemed not merely bystanders, but participants in the ebb and flow of things.

All of this has been said before far more eloquently by others at other times and in other places – but I truly felt that this was music-making that didn’t get much better, anywhere. The Beethoven work which began the program was new to me, but it hummed and crackled with it’s composer’s characteristic fingerprints from the outset – an assertive unison statement at the beginning, a remote-key second-subject, at once hushed and full-bodied, a development section whose ideas shouldered and pushed one another about, and a wonderful “false ending” whose forthright final-chord cadence suddenly and unexpectedly turned upon itself and continued for a few more bars – a sequence delightfully brought off by the players. A beautifully-expressed Adagio (magical sounds from each of the instruments both in turn and together) was balanced by a theme-and-variations finale during which the composer’s “popular song” idea came to the fore in varying combinations, ranging in mood from the lyricism of duetting violin and viola, to the rumbustious stamping dance of all three instruments.

I had heard of Ian Munro as a concert pianist, but not as a composer; and was intrigued to discover the extent of his creative activities in this respect. His Piano Trio Tales of Old Russia suggests a fascination with narrative and drama, besides the exotic element which makes Russian art in general so attractive world-wide. Two of the three tales which particularly inspired Munro’s work are well-known – Vassilisa and the Baba Yaga, and the Snow Maiden, both partly by dint of association with other composers and their music. The third, Death and the Soldier, is an oft-repeated theme in European folk-literature, of the “wise fool” whose native cunning outwits the forces of darkness. Having witnessed the Eggner Trio’s capacities for characterization and narrative throughout the Beethoven work, I wasn’t surprised to find the musicians relishing the opportunities for evoking that sense of “a long time ago far away from here” in each of the tales. In particular, the macabre death-dance of the last story was launched with splendidly-controlled menace and ever-growing unease, reminiscent in places of Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony. The sentimental waltz towards the piece’s conclusion marked the defeat of the devils and a triumph of well-being, the musical laughter of the story’s audience at the end as much from relief as pleasure in entertainment.

The work was a perfect foil for the Dvorak Trio which took up the concert’s second part – if the Eggners had thus far shown they could convey energetic high spirits and humor, the trio proved equally capable of addressing the Czech composer’s passionate outpourings, generating full-blooded responses to the music’s every mood. I thought the group’s fusion of energy and expression utterly compelling throughout, with phrase-ends by turns adroitly tailored to succeeding episodes, or pointing the contrasts for proper musical effect. Just occasionally the violinist reached the highest note of a striving phrase less than cleanly (noticeable against the otherwise technically impeccable playing throughout), though somehow it all added to the expressiveness of the music’s wanting to bring about something worthwhile. After digging into the trenchant moods of the first two movements the Eggners relished the Adagio’s tender moments, though remaining responsive to the osmotic thrustings of swirling energy released by the music in places. The finale returned to the earlier movements’ excitement, a wistful second subject along the way providing some necessary respite before the players brought all the strands together for a noble and rousing finish.

I didn’t catch the name of the film composer who wrote the wildly unbuttoned romp of a piece the Eggners gave us as an encore – it was straight out of a Keystone Cops-type thriller, beginning with a delicious horror-chord, and erupting with high-energy velocities, a brief swooning ‘cello theme allowing us but  a breath or two’s respite before whirling everything back into a vortex of abandonment and sudden oblivion. But it was, though, of a piece with the rest of the concert regarding the group’s all-embracing way with everything that was played, and as such sent us all out into the night simmering with pleasure.

Brahms piano trio and Czech duos at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Breaking free from the Chamber – van der Zee, Mitchell and Mapp

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

Janáček – Sonata for Violin and Piano
Martinů – Sonata No.2 for ‘Cello and Piano
Brahms – Piano Trio No.2 in C Minor

Anna van der Zee (violin) / Paul Mitchell (‘cello) / Richard Mapp (piano)

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 20th March 2011, 3pm

Many of my most memorable musical experiences come from unexpected encounters with either unfamiliar compositions or stunningly good performances. In Wellington, these days, one expects at most concerts certain levels of musical understanding and technical accomplishment, but that still leaves plenty of stratospheric spaces for performances which take the listener to those out-of-the-ordinary heights that can’t help but enlarge and enrich one’s view of existence in general. This was a concert with many such moments.

I don’t wish to give the idea that these musicians normally don’t impress with their playing, though I have to say that in ‘cellist Paul Mitchell’s case I thought his work on this occasion exceeded in overall terms of accomplishment anything I’d previously heard him do. I’d heard Anna van deer Zee’s work previously as a member of the Tasman String Quartet, and remember enjoying her musicality in that context, somewhat removed from the realm of a virtuoso violin sonata, as here. As for Richard Mapp, I’ve always had the highest regard for his piano-playing in different settings, be it collaborative or soloistic – which is not to say that I’m never surprised and delighted by what he’s able to achieve out of the blue, as it were.

But this, I thought, was a special concert, one in which the musicians infused their material with oceans of appropriate character – fiery energy and deep concentration (Janáček and Martinů) and robust strength and romantic warmth (Brahms). And what a stunning opening to the concert it was, with the Janáček Sonata’s fiery, volatile declamations hurled at us by both violinist and pianist, only for the music to revert to the most confessional and intimate utterances without warning – such tenderness sitting alongside blazing statements and searing lines! I thought the playing simply terrific, encompassing both strength and vulnerability, handling the composer’s characteristic sudden switches into contrasting moods with great aplomb. Van deer Zee and Mapp caught the second movement’s folksy lyricism, swapping melodic lines with wonderful dexterity and, in van deer Zee’s case, beautifully true intonation.

The scherzo-like third movement set an invigorating “stomping” character at the opening against a more heartfelt trio section (these players characterized everything so vividly), while the finale’s epic treatment of tragedy cast the instruments almost as protagonists in places – the violin occasionally savaging the piano’s more long-breathed music with brutal interjections, the music in between time creating a mood of desperate and uncertain yearning for peace and harmony, constantly under threat. The players achieved an intense, heartbreaking flow of feeling at one point, but one which the echoing of the movement’s opening quickly dissolved, as if waking us from a dream and returning us to a harsher reality.

Martinů ‘s second “Cello Sonata, written in the United States after the composer had fled the Nazi invasion of Europe, is a kind of “New World” chamber sonata, containing numerous echoes of his Czech heritage. The first movement has a slightly “haunted” quality, folkish lines punctuated by episodes of great agitation, with textures for both instruments richly wrought. Mitchell and Mapp played into each other’s hands throughout quite masterfully, the focus of the ‘cello line matching and mirroring the piano writing to perfection. Together these musicians made something special out of the funeral-like Largo, recreating a whole world of sorrow and disquiet, galvanized by some virtuoso playing from the pianist leading to a most heartfelt and desperate entry from the ‘cellist – fantastic playing, completely “inside’ the music. The finale’s opening, combatative exchanges between string pizzicati with “attitude” and jagged piano writing, never let up, fusing lyricism with rhythmic energies, the players readily capturing a sense of “flight”, of desperate movement towards a kind of freedom in sadness and anger.

After these heart-on-sleeve utterances, the Brahms Piano Trio seemed at first a model of classical decorum – as well, the composer’s writing (strings often in unison) tended in the opening movement to play down the inherent warmth of this instrumental combination, so that we got an athletic, sinewy sound, focused and lean-textured. Occasionally I found the piano a shade overpowering in this movement, and wondered whether the player or the acoustic was to blame. This wasn’t so pronounced in the subsequent movements, the slow movement’s songful variations bringing the players’ tones together in a beautifully balanced outpouring of melody. The Scherzo’s wonderfully delicate, slightly “spooky” opening tones were beautifully realized, the warmer, more relaxed second subject was given plenty of character by the players, rising to something approaching heroic utterance at its climax, and switching to a Mendelssohnian feeling at the return of the opening, much relished by the musicians.

Hugo Wolf once complained of Brahms, “he can’t exult” – a judgement that this music surely and triumphantly denies. The musicians captured the flow of things right from the start, enjoying the occasional chromaticisms and contrasting them with a more chunky and bucolic character in other places. Richard Mapp’s playing I found terrific, establishing the kind of momentum which swept everything before it, his fellow-players matching the excitement right to the music’s joyous conclusion. Altogether, the concert gave us music-making of a high order, reminding us all over again (if needed) of the depth of talent to be found among our local musicians – such wealth, and at the disposal of our pleasure.

A String Quartet with a difference – the NZGQ

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NEW ZEALAND GUITAR QUARTET

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts 2011

ANDREW YORK – Lotus Eaters

PETER WARLOCK (arr.Owen Moriarty) – Capriol Suite

KAISA BEECH – The Storm

GEORGES BIZET (arr. Bill Kanengiser) – Carmen Suite

SCOTT TENNANT – Celtic Fare

JS BACH (arr.James Smith) – Brandenburg Concerto No.6

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (arr.Bill Kanengiser) – Capriccio Espagnol

The New Zealand Guitar Quartet

Jane Curry, Cheryl Grice-Watterson, Owen Moriarty, Christopher Hill

St.Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 16th March 2011

As one can see from the NZGQ’s program, the evening consisted mainly of transcriptions, with a few original compositions. Given that two of these reworkings were of music originally for strings (JS Bach and Warlock) and the other two drew heavily for their original inspiration on music for Spanish guitar, the presentations seemed entirely apposite, and (with one reservation, humbly proffered by this non-guitarist!) were delivered with what seemed plenty of energy, sensitivity and stylistic integrity.

I’ve previously remarked in these pages on the uncanny ability of the guitar to bring its own characterful distinction to music written for other instruments; and the quartet of players certainly brought their skills to the fore, conjuring up and delivering a wide range of colour and dynamics to works whose textures responded well to the presentations. For me the only thing I found problematical (and only in one item, throughout the evening) was the circumstance in the final work, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, of frequent interruptions to the music for re-tuning – these hiatuses seemed to me to damage the atmosphere and sweep of the whole, and I was left thinking how “out-of-tune” the instruments would actually come to sound if left to their own performance devices for the sake of preserving musical continuity. I wondered whether a group of, say, flamenco guitarists delivering a larger-scale work which generated plenty of atmosphere, coloristic excitement and rhythmic impetus would similarly “sectionalize” the music to re-tune. I know that Rimsky wrote what seemed like “natural breaks” into his original score, but they’ve never seemed to me to be like those between symphonic movements, where there’s the usual concert-hall coughing and shuffling – one wants the music to press on, emphasizing the contrasts of the change of colour and impetus, and so on.

Interestingly enough, this was also the only work on the program in which I felt the performance lacked a bit of grunt in places. I found myself wanting to be more “transported” by it all (perhaps those “tuning breaks” were to blame) – I thought there needed to be more “schwung” to the rhythms during the final Fandango Asturiano, and simply a greater sense towards the end of of risk-taking and red-blooded abandonment (perhaps out-of-tune strings might have actually helped at that point!)…

Still, this is to risk nit-picking in the face of my overall enjoyment of an enterprising program! Delights there were aplenty – Andrew York’s attractive Lotus Eaters could have come out of a film similar to “Zorba the Greek” – I thought of the term “Mediterranean Road Music”, with, as Owen Moriarty reminded us in his spoken postscript, a very “LA” perspective. Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite was sheer delight, the opening Basse-Danse exploiting the antiphonal effects of change and exchange among the ensemble, and the jig-like Tordion featuring beautifully “covered” pizzicato tones, everything dying away to a whisper at the end. The players dug into the final Mattachins, with bristling flourishes of (in places) spiky harmonies, leading up to a satisfying “ole!” at the final chord.

A heart-stopping moment came for a young Wellington composer, Kaisa Beech, whose work The Storm was presented by the quartet, a vividly-presented picture of a passing thunderstorm, encompassing both calm and turmoil with telling impact. Another original work, from presumably a more seasoned composer, Scott Tennant (actually dedicated to guitarist Owen Moriarty’s parents) was Celtic Fare, a work which actually grew out of an arrangement the composer made of another composer’s work, and which formed the inspiration for two further original movements. Irish folk-melodies belled and echoed throughout the first piece, to be contrasted with hoe-down energies in the final movement. Pleasant, somewhat eclectic stuff, nicely turned by the ensemble.

In general, I thought the group gave the Carmen transcription a bit more edge than they did the Rimsky-Korsakov. Each section seemed to go with a swing, the opportunities for “layering” the texture with four instruments beautifully realized and nicely detailed in performance. Occasionally I wondered why the arranger chose to set the melody of a piece an octave lower that I would have expected (with the original orchestration in my mind’s ear), making for a less brilliant and clearly-etched effect than with the original. This happened with the Habanera, and the effect was of the tune being sung by a baritone at the outset – the change to a major key brought the melody up to its accustomed level – but it did seem strange at first, as with the Seguidilla, where the melodic lines sometimes got submerged in the surrounding textures – not the performers’ fault, assuredly! Throughout, the group’s rhythmic pointing caught the snap and lift of the music’s movement so beautifully, a slight rhythmic hiccup at the end of the introduction in the Gypsy Dance mattering not a whit, as the growing physicality of the dance caught up performers and listeners alike in ever-growing excitement.

But I couldn’t praise too highly the group’s realization of the sixth of JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti. In true Baroque fashion, the music translated into the new instrumental medium as if fitting a perfectly-tailored glove – and the ensemble’s rendition of the individual lines brought so many deliciously-phrased strands of delight together with impeccable balance and osmotic teamwork.  The best performances of Bach have a certain feel of a living organism simply doing its thing, expressing its existence in its own unique, multifaceted way – and such was the case with the playing of the ensemble throughout the concerto – a performance that gave the very deepest of pleasure. Especially (and surprisingly) good was the slow movement, where the songful lines expressed an even more poignant quality than usual, perhaps through the notes being plucked instead of bowed, and therefore more subject to decay, as with all things to do with this worlds joye…….

The group gave an encore, occasioning a bit of “musical malapropism” on my part, thinking as I did that I’d heard it introduced as “Surrey Overnight” – however,  I found out later that its correct name was “Sarajevo Nights”. I fear my resulting abashment inhibited my critical faculties somewhat regarding this piece, as I can’t seem to remember much about it, except that it had an attractive calypso-like feeling, like a sort of jazzy chaconne. I’ve added my slip of hearing to my own private list of musical howlers……..

Elios Ensemble captivates at St Andrew’s season

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Elios Ensemble (Karen Batten – flute and alto flute, Martin Jaenecke – violin and soprano saxophone, Victoria Jaenecke – viola)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace Season of Concerts

Music by Bartók, Igudesman, Debussy, Reger, Mansurian, Ginastera and Beethoven

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday 15 March, 7.30pm

This was the kind of programme that probably sorts out its own audience, or rather, it would sort them out if there were enough to provide a good statistical sampling.

On the one side are those who are drawn to a concert by names that are familiar, both composers and pieces; and on the other, Stendhal’s ‘Happy Few’, those who are enticed by a mix of the familiar and names that are evocative, half-heard, that arouse curiosity and suggest ambiguity and other-worldliness, as well as having an emotional force. You gauge the latter as much by what you have come to know of the performers as by the composers’ names and titles of the music.

How could you resist a programme that included a delightful early piece of Beethoven, another chance to explore Max Reger whose true nature, I feel, keeps eluding me; some of Bartók’s 44 Duos for Two Violins; and two names that merely rang bells?

Let’s go chronologically. Beethoven’s little six-movement Serenade Op 25 was written for these very instruments, and his writing for the flute, for starters, showed how acute Beethoven’s sense of instrumental timbre and capacities was. The first movement, starting with a veritable flute fanfare, belonged very much to Karen Batten.  Elsewhere, violin and viola were rewarded and these two superb, somewhat unacknowledged players had plenty of exposure, in particular in the Andante con variazioni.

Reger’s Serenade was very clearly based on Beethoven’s and afforded him the chance to show a levity and gaiety that are not qualities usually encountered. Written about a year before his death in his early 40s, perhaps he was attempting to redress the balance. It showed Reger as a perfectly gifted melodist (I read a recent review that remarked that he couldn’t write a tune to save himself – not true!). Generally, he had concerns other than merely writing tunes, which might have been a bit misguided.

This proved an engaging suite – like Beethoven’s, in six movements – that was sometimes thoughtful, often gay (original sense), entertaining in its treatment of the three instruments and achieving nicely, just what one felt Reger wanted.

Debussy’s contribution was the predictable Syrinx for solo flute where Karen Batten demonstrated her virtuosity as well as her feeling for the piece’s place as sinuous, sensuous impressionism, and a brilliant little show-stopper.

Bartók comes next, though his pieces were first in the programme. I’m not acquainted with the entire collection of 44 Duos, but after this brilliantly played foray in which the two violins were replaced by, variously, viola, alto and normal flute and soprano saxophone, I will be exploring them. The pieces played were Ruthenian Song (Ruthenia was the little territory at the eastern end of the inter-war Czechoslovakia, north of Hungary and Romania and now in Ukraine), Teasing Song, Slovak Song, Pillow Dance, Fairy Tale, Mosquito Dance (very nocturnally disruptive), Sorrow and Dancing Song.

Ginastera’s Duo was originally for flute – alto flute – and oboe in three movements; like much of his music, it’s a bit hard to place both geographically and chronologically. At times, it seemed like a serious Françaix or Ibert, even, at times, not very remote from Britten’s sound world. There was little evidence of the popular Latin American musical world, and one accepts the statement that it employs Argentinian folk music. Persuasively performed, the Duo nevertheless made less impact on me than most of the other pieces in the programme.

Tigran Mansurian was born in 1939 in Beirut of Armenian parents. His piece, Lachrymae, is for soprano saxophone and alto flute, offering a lovely exhibition of these two very distinctive instruments. In general terms it evoked the sounds of the region – Caucasus, central Asia, the Levant, which of course is as various in its music as in its history and its religions; the use of quarter tones was just one of the identifiable features. It was also curious to hear the soprano saxophone exploiting its lowest register, sounding like an alto sax. As it did with one or two of the Bartok pieces, the saxophone seemed radically to alter the character of the music, inevitably in a trans-Atlantic direction.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lachrymae, making a mental note to explore more of Mansurian’s music.

Finally came a name altogether unfamiliar to me: Aleksey Igudesman (born Leningrad 1973). A more knowledgeable friend described his stage (or cabaret?) performances, with Hyung-ki Joo, that are very clever, very musical and very funny. (See www.igudesmanandjoo.com). There were three pieces, all with their feet in Ireland, but their heads somewhere else, mainly in the former Yiddish world of Eastern Europe where Klezmer was endemic. They were highly entertaining; the first in the infectious rhythms made familiar by the phenomenon of the River Dance. I have never heard such a piquant rendering of Danny Boy which I recoil from in its usual boring, unadorned harmonic dress. Igudesman had devised such an engaging and amusing harmonic setting – comparable to, but even more diverting than, Britten’s folk song arrangements – that it became a new song. The Klezmer element was strongest in the third piece, Giora Feidman lost in Dublin. Loved all of it.

Enchanting concert by Antipodes Trio at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Antipodes Trio (Christobel Lin – violin, Nicholas Hancox – viola, David Requiro – cello)

Dohnanyi: Serenade in C, Op 10; Lilburn: String Trio; Handel/Halvorsen: Passacaglia in G minor on a Theme by Handel (from Harpsichord Suite HWV 432); Schubert: String Trio in B flat, D 471; Beethoven: String Trio in C minor, Op 9 No 3

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 13 March 2.30pm

One of the reasons for going to this concert was the patriotic impulse to hear a Wellington musician who’s making good in Europe. Nicholas Hancox took his B Mus (Hons) at Victoria University and has now completed a master’s at the University of Michigan. Learning never ends: he has moved to Munich for post-graduate work at the Hochschule (Academy) für Musik und Theater. The group’s violinist Christobel Lin is from Auckland and studies four hours away by train, in Vienna. Their cellist derives from a New York connection; he’s appeared as a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington and the Tokyo Philharmonic, and is now artist-in-residence at the University of Puget Sound in Washington State.

The subsidiary reason for going to Waikanae, really just a big bonus, was the pleasure of going all the way by train which discharges you about 100 metres from the hall. Even without a Gold Card, the journey would be so infinitely more enjoyable than sitting behind a car wheel: the commuter queues on the roads north leave me incredulous.

Finally: the concert. They confess that their ensemble is not of long standing, but I needed to be told that as it would not have occurred to me. Individually they play with great accomplishment; it may well be perceived that the cellist has a slight edge in terms of finesse in articulation and tonal variety, but the excellence of their musical togetherness kept me from observing significant differences in their levels of artistic attainment. Critics often make a display of perceiving such niceties; the truth is that only the players themselves and perhaps their tutors can really notice the almost imperceptible nuances.

The string trio is a much less common creature than either the string quartet or the piano trio and its repertoire is much smaller. Two of Beethoven’s early opus numbers comprise string trios, usually seen as rehearsals for his graduation to the string quartet; we heard the third of the Opus 9 group. With its C minor key, it has the outward signs of seriousness and it was the second movement where both the music’s quality and the players’ understanding became evident, taking their time through its spaciousness and imposing, slow tempo. That was the last piece in the programme.

The concert had begun with Dohnanyi’s now rather familiar Serenade (it was played in the recent Chamber Music Festival at Nelson), written with an ear touched by the Beethoven model (his Serenade, Op 8, in D and the Serenade for flute, violin and viola, Op 25, which the Elios Ensemble played two days later in the St Andrew’s season of concerts ).

The Dohnanyi was handled with vivacity, with striking attention to the detail of dynamics even to the detailing of individual notes. that could be compared not unfavourably with its performance by the Hermitage Trio in Nelson. The serenade form here seems to be shorthand for a series of short movements that avoid the sonata form’s succession of themes and their development and elaborate recapitulations. There was no time to become impatient of slender ideas, no matter how charming. Interest was maintained through sharply contrasted movements: a Romanza that took us on a light-hearted journey, diverting through the varying roles given to the three instruments and their playing techniques: each had its turn in the limelight. A Theme and Variations had ever-changing tempi, and allusions to the most serious devices employed by serious classical music.

Lilburn’s string trio from the mid 40s, when he was about 30, is a fairly insubstantial piece. Any kind of criticism of Lilburn is comprehensively outlawed in this country, but I have to confess to finding this piece so generally uneventful, the melodic fragments insipid and so tentatively handled that it is hard for me to say much apart from remarking its sympathetic and idiomatic performance.

After the interval, the trio played the Passacaglia for violin and viola that Norwegian composer Halvorsen based on theme of Handel (the Harpsichord Suite No 7, HWV432). A tune that lends itself to variations, it is treated with little reference to its origin, handled with imagination and variety in the sequence of variations that such a theme often invites. Being something of a virtuoso showpiece (though it is rather more than that) it was just one occasion that I was highly impressed by the performances by Lin and Hancox. Both combined bravura and artistry, nowhere better displayed than in a beautiful, breathless, pianissimo passage played at the octave. It was as satisfying an experience as anything else in the programme.

The remaining piece was the single movement String Trio in B flat, D 471, by Schubert. A simple utterance based on charming themes, it gains its place more through that melodic simplicity than through any interesting evolution and development. The players had all the musical resources to make it a wholly enchanting performance.

Two supreme chamber works at St Andrew’s season of concerts

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Musika Ensemble – Christina Vaszilcsin and Lyndon Taylor (violins), Peter Garrity (viola), David Chickering (cello), Catherine McKay (piano)

Borodin: String quartet No 2 in D; Dvořák: Piano Quintet in A, Op 81

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 11 March, 7.30pm

The second concert in this admirable series arrived at the very heartland of chamber music. The two pieces played are, I am sure, among the top ten of any real music lover’s favourites, both coming from the wonderful store of Slav romantic masterpieces. But you wouldn’t guess that from the sad array of worthy but utterly predictable stuff that gets into Radio New Zealand Concert’s New Year count-down every year.

Just to animadvert there for a moment. No piece of chamber music made it this year; though there were a couple of piano pieces (including, amazingly enough, the Waldstein and not the Moonlight sonata). However, I recall that both Schubert’s marvelous String Quintet and his Death and the Maiden Quartet have been there in past years.

You’d have thought that the endlessly played trailer that touted for votes for weeks might have prompted a few punters to include Berlioz’s Nuits d’été. But I suspect that, failing to recognize it, none had sufficient curiosity to identify it. I don’t recall Berlioz ever featuring on the list: to me, blindingly incredible.

It’s one of music’s great tragedies that Borodin was such a conscientious scientific researcher that he had so little time to compose; many have compared his genius with Schubert’s for its natural sense of form, its spontaneity and melodic abundance.

His second string quartet is dangerously overloaded with tunes, rich and long, that hurl themselves at you right at the start. Hurling was the operative verb this evening as the four players, in a readily amplifying acoustic on hard timber floor, made an overwhelming noise; I mean in the way of Beecham’s joke against the British: they didn’t like music much but loved the noise it made.

Each player seemed equipped with the most opulent and beautiful instrument and each played as if they’d been together for years and were in total accord.

Curiously, none of the string players are New Zealanders by birth; and one (Lyndon Taylor), sadly, is about to return to the States.

Borodin’s first movement was driven by playing of wonderful sonority and romantic sensibility. The second, a Scherzo, without a trio but with a changed tempo middle section, was no less luxuriant in tone though it might have lost a little in polish. (A few years ago a couple of the tunes in this quartet would have been familiar because of their use in the Borodin-inspired musical, Kismet). The disappearance of that pastiche has meant that Borodin’s music no longer suggests something that at times seems overly sentimental. The fact that the Nocturne has become more familiar in an orchestral transcription, however, doesn’t help: the real thing cleanses the palette, especially in a performance such as this, shamelessly romantic.

Borodin’s attention to the string quartet form met with the disapproval of some of his fellow ‘Mighty Handful’ (‘Могучая кучка’ – Moguchaya kuchka, earlier known as ‘The Five’) colleagues. Though there are melodic suggestions of Russian folk music, they are by no means as foreign to western European ears as is much of the music of the Balkans that Bartók and others later exhumed. It has always seemed a strange obsession that some Russians are determined to claim their music to be quite ‘uneuropean’, exotic, when Russia’s cultural as well as political history is so profoundly tied up with Europe.

The audience could count itself doubly blessed, with Dvořák’s beautiful piano quintet in A as the second piece. Along with Borodin and Schubert, Dvořák too was one of the greatest naturals of the 19th century, or any century, and this quintet is as full of melody as anything in the repertory. Dvořák’s gift not only unleashes endless melody but enables him to explore and develop them in full symphonic scope.

The addition of a piano to the ensemble seemed to bring about a degree of tenderness and refinement in the playing. Here, there was no question of any unwelcome dominance by the piano, and things were near perfect. For much of the time the strings create such beautiful sounds, having the monopoly of thematic presentation, that the piano is there simply (far from simply) to create illuminating texture, a feminine, supportive role, offering sparkling contrasting splashes. But every so often the piano grabbed the spotlight. When she had it, Catherine McKay used it with discreet delicacy, lightly fluttering, sounds of ravishing musicality, weight without noise, flawlessly judged in its relationship with the strings.

To simulate an orchestral sound is not the aim of chamber music, but the best chamber music, played by the most percipient musicians in a generous acoustic does attain that level of richness and opulence. This was such an occasion.

For the Dvořák, first and second violins changed places. While in the Borodin, Taylor’s lead fiddle was strong and confident; in the Czech music, Cristina Vaszilcsin led with a greater delicacy and diffidence in places where it counted, and that included the most boisterous parts of both the Dumka and the Furiant movements. Her own background in the Transylvanian region of Romania, and with what I assume to be (from her name) her own Magyar descent, she sounded at ease in the music from a few hundred kilometers to the north, with no need for invented histrionics.

I must say I was somewhat distressed that a larger crowd was not here for this programme of two of the most beautiful pieces of music – ideal as an introduction to anyone who thinks classical music is not for them. This is the kind of programme and the kind of musicians that an enlightened education ministry (don’t laugh – I’m serious) should be funding to tour the secondary schools of the country on a regular basis in an attempt to alleviate the cultural deprivation that curriculum changes over the years have stricken us with.

Menage a Trio – relishing the contrasts…

Posted on by Peter Mechen

CONTRASTS

Aram Khachaturian – Trio (Ist Movement) / Bela Bartok – Contrasts

Charles Ives – Largo / Paul Schoenfield – Trio

Menage a Trio : Julia Flint (violin) / Anna Coleman (clarinet) / Chris Lian-Lloyd (piano)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Wellington

Saturday 5th March, 2011

Menage a Trio’s combination of violin, clarinet and piano vividly and triumphantly presented both contrast and fusion throughout an enterprising program. This was the Australian group’s second Wellington outing, a little better attended than the first the previous evening. A pity, as such playing as we heard on the Saturday evening deserved far more widespread appreciation.

Beginning with just a single movement of the Khachaturian Trio, the group straightaway established the music’s exotic colour and flavor, those evocative chordal clusters on the piano bringing forth a soulful response from the clarinet and a beautiful sinuous line from the violin, capturing the work’s opening ebb-and-flow character. And how beautifully the players reversed the roles of clarinet and violin, the clarinet quixotic and decorative in its figurations and the violin soulful and intense. The Trio readily brought out the music’s volatile undercurrents besides relishing its heartfelt, folky atmosphere.

With Bartok’s Contrasts, the work that gave the concert its name, the players again took us right into the music’s world, the opening pizzicato blues of the Verbukos (the so-called “recruiting dance”) with its near-cabaret rhythms, piano tintinabulations and splendid clarinet cadenza acquainting us well with the character of the instrumental interactions. Bartok’s title for the work reflected the composer’s attitude that the instruments didn’t really belong together – he wrote the piece for two prominent instrumentalists, clarinettist Benny Goodman and violinist Josef Szigeti, each part emphasizing great virtuosity, while underlining the differences between the instruments – hence the title “Contrasts”. Even so, the first few minutes of the Pihenö (relaxation) movement features beautifully interactive instrumental textures, evoking one of the composer’s nocturnal scenes with the surest of touches, the playing here etching the sounds onto the aural scenario with the utmost sensitivity.

The last movement was something else, complete with a mid-music change of violin, the composer directing that at the start of the movement the violin’s lower string be raised half-a-tone to G# and the top string lowered to E-flat, creating a tuning effect known as scordatura, one common in European modal folk-music. The player reverts to a normally-tuned instrument after thirty or so bars; but the effect at the outset was striking, not unlike the opening of the second movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with a fiddle tuned higher than usual. It launched a proper “Danse Macabre”, with a whirling dervish aspect, conveyed with plenty of visceral impact by these musicians (echoes of the “Concerto for Orchestra” in places). A wistful, folk-flavoured central episode gradually took on a hallucinatory fire-siren aspect, out of which sprang madcap gallopings, a full-blooded violin cadenza, and exuberant shrieks from all participants, the players and their instruments dashing towards the music’s destiny amid exhilarating swirls of sound, the Bulgarian folk-rhythms adding to the excitement of it all.

Charles Ives’s Largo survived its transition from an intended, then rejected violin sonata movement to enchant us in these musicians’ hands – a dreamy, contemplative opening allowed firstly the solo violin ample opportunity to rhapsodize (difficult passagework giving rise to a strained touch in places), and then the clarinet, the latter proving a galvanizing force, goading the music into various volatile juxtapositionings, until the violin returned to call things to order and draw forth processional chordings from the piano, the dying fall of the music sweet and valedictory – a lovely performance.

The “dark horse” of the program for me was a work by the American-Jewish composer Paul Schoenfield – a Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano. Inspired largely by Hassidic worship, the composer wanted the music to reflect the celebratory nature of Hassidic gatherings, as well as generate an exotic appeal to classical audiences. Though drawing from the work of Klezmer Bands, the music’s high-octane energies and cutting edges impart a somewhat frenetic performance aspect that might well have left most traditionalists reeling. Right from the galloping opening, punctuated at the pauses by heartfelt glissandi and rumbustious pianistic energies, the music never let up, the first movement’s closely-argued convolutions tightening all the more throughout a final breathless accelerando, again very excitingly played. A portentous march-like opening to the second movement featured a mournful, almost drunken clarinet supported by equally doleful violin-playing, the piano, with flailing arpeggiations keeping the beat going, the players seeming to relish the grotesqueries, screeches, slurs and all – totally absorbing.

The atmospheric Nigun movement, the most meditative part of the work, was set in motion by the clarinet alone, the violin’s answering figurations rather like the impulses of two landmarks in a desolate landscape, with the piano supplying the Bartok-like night-sounds. Without a break the players plunged into the exhilarations of the finale, whose beating heart drove the music into and through celebratory rituals of both circumspection and abandonment, the last couple of pages releasing surges of energy – altogether, a demanding work, but one which these young Australian instrumentalists excitingly made their own throughout.