Tag: chamber music

Chamber Music Festival under way in Nelson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Adam Chamber Music Festival, Nelson, 3 to 12 February 2011.

The Eleventh Adam Chamber Music Festival began with a gala dinner and concert at the Woollaston Winery out of Nelson with musical contributions from all the musicians present at that point; the New Zealand String Quartet whose first violinist and violist are the festival’s artistic directors; Canadian clarinettist James Campbell joined the quartet to play Weber’s Clarinet Quintet; special treat throughout the 10-day festival, of a fast rising Russian string trio, the Hermitage Trio. Their contribution was one of Beethoven’s string trios – the Op 3. Members of both the quartet and trio contributed towards Boccherini’s String Quintet in C. Finally, the NZSO’s principal bassist, Hiroshi Ikematsu, found a slot with cellist Rolf Gjelsten to play Rossini’s hair-raising and hilarious duo for those two instruments.

It was a stylish affair, with music between each of the courses of the elaborate dinner. I was not there, but patrons were delighted at the entire presentation.

The purely musical Grand Opening however was on Friday the 4th in the Nelson Cathedral.

Audiences at the festival have grown steadily over the years, till now several concerts were either sold out or almost so. That can be explained partly by the eventual awakening of New Zealanders, and a few overseas visitors, to the phenomenon that has taken firm root in other parts of the western, and even the Asian, world: the music festival, usually in summer in a charming place – like Nelson. The other stimulus in the case of New Zealand is the steady decline in artistic standards by the New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington, to the point where classical music has a minor place and the festival is dominated by events aimed to attract casual audiences of limited interest in the arts, little cultivation and knowledge of music or the other mainstream performing arts. None of the other festivals in New Zealand, least of all the one in Auckland, takes its role as an arts festival seriously either.

Esa-Pekka Salonen recently remarked that people in their thirties and forties are awakening again to real music: “You realise that your time in not unlimited, that there might be an end to all this, and that life is too short to be wasted on things that are not quality”. In most countries, a whole generation has been let down by a school of ill-educated educationalists who have impoverished school curricula and allowed what is called the relativist view of culture to banish the systematic teaching of literature, general history, and the arts.

They have discovered that they can now come to Nelson for a rich diet of great, varied and wonderful music from top international players.

This festival was compressed into 10 days in comparison typically to about 17 days in the past. There have been varied reactions to this and time will tell how a programme with more music each day, but somewhat less overall, will impact on audiences and musicians …  and the bottom line.

We will post reviews of each concert in the coming days.

Delightful Dvorak excites at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

DVORAK – Piano Quintet in A Major Op.81

Cristina Vaszilcsin, Lyndon Taylor (violins) / Peter Garrity, viola

David Chickering, ‘cello / Catherine McKay, piano

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

Wednesday, 1st December 2010

At the end of the first movement of this performance of the Dvorak Piano Quintet I was flabbergasted – here was a group of musicians who had come together just for the occasion performing at a free lunchtime concert in Wellington, giving us playing and interpretation of a stature I was confident I’d not heard previously bettered in this music. I had heard the first violinist, violist and pianist play as a trio before, but within this extended configuration of performers Cristina Vaszilcsin, Peter Garrity and Catherine McKay seemed to me inspired beyond anything previously I’d heard them perform together – obviously the “enhanced” alchemy generated by the presence among the ensemble of Lyndon Taylor and David Chickering (playing violin and ‘cello, respectively) was working brilliantly.

Several things at once registered regarding the group’s playing: – firstly, the beautiful timbral focus of each instrument, at once distinctive and proportioned, each individual line a delight for the ear to follow. Then the unanimity of both attack and of phrasing, five instruments playing as one, yet each seemingly free-spirited, realized both the music’s strength and poetry. Whether one listened to each bar, or a phrase or succession of phrases, one felt the musicians had swallowed the music whole, finding both incidental delight in detail and long-term purpose and strength in the movement’s overview.

So every aspect of the music was given its place – the lyricism of the opening ‘cello-and-piano melody (beguiling tones from David Chickering and Catherine McKay, here), the vigor and point of the response, the depth of colour and texture in the middle voices, the distinctive tone of voices such as the viola’s, and the volatility with which things such as tempi, dynamics and textures would change – but it was the cumulative impact of the whole which truly galvanized our sensibilities as listeners. The quickening of tempi at the movement’s end thus seemed an entirely natural outcome of exuberant release from the energies the playing had built up throughout. Perhaps we in the audience should have forgotten our inhibitions and clapped and cheered at that point – instead we simmered with the excitement of it all, and waited impatiently for the next movement to begin.

The gorgeous viola solos in this work reminded us that the composer himself played the instrument – Peter Garrity’s open-hearted tones were set off beautifully by Catherine Mckay’s piquant piano-playing throughout the slow movement’s opening, one whose melancholy brought out the sunny remembrances of the con moto sections which followed. Here, rhythms were buoyed by enthusiastic pizzicati, with Cristina Vaszilcsin’s and Lyndon Taylor’s silvery violin duetting delightfully recalling happier times, the exuberance marred only by a brief moment of imprecision with the staccato downward phrase at the end. Although viola and violin soulfully revisited the opening, cheerfulness kept on trying to break in – there was a merry dance in whirling triplets begun by the viola, mischievously spiked by the piano in a two-against three game of chase, and a return to the con moto pizzicati impulses, with more cross-rhythms to keep the musicians on their mettle and beguile the listener’s ear – but a stoic sadness seemed to prevail and wander into lonely silence at the end.

As with Schubert’s music, tragedy often sits alongside exuberance and gaiety in Dvorak’s work – and the Scherzo of the Quintet immediately dispelled the previous movement’s sobriety with energies of the most infectious, almost unseemly kind, here brilliantly realized by the players, the “furiant” aspect readily recalling some of the most brilliant of the composer’s Slavonic Dances.  In the middle of it all, a gentle pastoral-like trio played engagingly with rhythms, suggesting a lovely ambiguity of trajection before skipping back into the dash and propulsion of the main dance. At the finale’s onset I thought the tempo a fraction too fast at first; but the players sustained both their articulation and ensemble, Lyndon Taylor’s violin getting a rare chance for its voice to shine alone by leading off the energetic fugal section of the movement, here especially relished by Catherine McKay’s piano-playing. Towards the end, the strings’ arched descent, echoing that of the piano a few bars before, gave regretful notice of the music’s conclusion, the musicians seeming reluctant to release those final graceful stepwise utterances, which grow inexorably into whirling flourishes of brilliance. These last sounds were greeted here with the utmost enthusiasm by a good lunchtime crowd, whose members seemed unanimously of the opinion that they had witnessed some extraordinary music-making.

Caprice Arts Trust present saxophones and a fine wind quintet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Altotude Saxophone Quartet: Pieces by Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Paul Pierné, Bryan James, Piazzolla.

Lucy Rainey (soprano sax), Greg Rogan (alto sax), Amity Alton-Lee (tenor sax), Bryan James (baritone sax)

Quintet X: Nielsen: Wind Quintet – first movement, Armando Ghidoni: Adagio from Badaluk – Concerto for wind quintet, Poulenc: Sextet for winds and piano

Kirsten Sharman (French horn), Rachelle Eastwood (flute), Marianna Kennedy (oboe), Lucy O’Neill (bassoon), Taleim Edwards (clarinet), Paul Romero (piano)

St Mark’s church, Lower Hutt

Tuesday 16 November, 7.30pm

The Caprice Arts Trust continues to offer chamber music with a difference, generally taking concerts to two or three venues in the Greater Wellington region. This concert, shared by two groups, was first played at St Andrew’s on The Terrace on Friday 12 November: I caught the second performance at Lower Hutt.

I had previously heard – indeed, heard of – neither ensemble. The Altotude Saxophone Quartet which, I gather, draws on a variety of players, occupied the first half. They played the pieces in an order different from that in the programme.

As is to be expected. it was the pieces written originally for saxophone quartet that came off best, though an exception was the opening piece, an arrangement of part of Gershwin’s American in Paris, which the composer scored for full symphony orchestra including all four saxophones. That achieved a fusion of a jazz sensibility with French piquancy that lent itself readily to a saxophone quartet; and its essential character survived the transition.

But the second piece, the Andante cantabile from Tchaikovsky’s first String Quartet, was another matter. Though leader Bryan James claimed that its origin for four string instruments made it suitable for another family of four instruments, the music’s essence, so perfectly conceived for strings by a composer with an extremely refined ear, was simply lost. Almost every aspect of its articulation and dynamics, its sound world and emotion, was obliterated. Perhaps a listener who had never heard the original would not have had this reaction, but its familiarity, so rooted in the string quartet medium, excluded that possibility for me. In particular, the entry of the second theme seemed irredeemably crude.

A couple of pieces by Bryan James followed: Blue Pig and Desert Storm. In both pieces, the comfortable writing for the quartet was as successful as one might expect from a saxophonist. Blue Pig captured an idiomatic jazz feeling, in which individual instruments, starting with Amity Alton-Lee’s tenor sax, took effective solos. Desert Storm was inspired, not directly by the Gulf War, but simply by that landscape; its use of the whole tone scale was evocative but the melodic and rhythmic motifs eventually became repetitious.

The third part of Three Conversations – Animé by Paul Pierné (1874 – 1952 – a cousin of organist and composer Gabriel Pierné), emerged a lively piece that could be judged by normal early-20th century classical music criteria, sharp bursts by the chorus followed by ejaculations by individual instruments captured the air of dispute hat apparently inspired it.

The final piece, two parts of Piazzolla’s Histoire du tango, originally for flute and guitar but in many arrangements, is in a spirit not too remote from jazz, could well have worked for saxophones; Café 1930 was a comfortable fit, but Night Club 1960 suffered through an arrangement I found uncongenial, with uncomfortable tempo changes and uneven balances.

The talented wind quintet. Quintet X,  was the creation of Caprice’s Sunniva Zoete-West, especially for use in these concerts. The initiative was a triumph, and the quintet played all three pieces with taste, energy, accuracy and excellent ensemble. They began with the first movement of Nielsen’s wonderful wind quintet which offers no place to hide for any of the instruments: all justified their places in a performance that was generally very close to professional level. The choruses by the three high woodwinds were especially beguiling; the horn’s tone was velvety and elegant and the bassoon a highly polished performance from one of the school of music’s gifted students. O for the entire work!

Another single movement followed – the Adagio from a work called Badaluk-Concerto by the contemporary French/Italian composer Armando Ghidoni, which turned out to be a highly attractive piece that has ingested all that is best in today’s music, now freeing itself from the compulsion for self-indulgent avant-gardism. That’s not to say it’s easy to play; lamenting that we could not have heard it all, I was told that if I thought this ‘slow movement’ was pretty challenging, I should have looked at the other two: the players didn’t have a spare year in which to master it. I thought too that the name Concerto didn’t suggest its character as well as a word like Sinfonietta or Sinfonia might have, reflecting better its impressive textures and evident formal structure. It was a most accomplished performance.  I had not heard of Ghidoni, but intend to follow him up: his website looks interesting.

The last piece was the entire sextet for piano and winds by Poulenc. Written in 1932, Poulenc became dissatisfied with it and rewrote it in 1939/40. Typically with Poulenc, the music is an interesting blend of certain contemporary styles such as 1920s Germany, along with his individual melodic and instrumental characteristics. Each part is scored for the instrument in its most attractive and rewarding register, where it is most at ease, and though that does not imply that it’s an easy piece, the players were conspicuously comfortable in all aspects. The opening phase, typical of the mature Poulenc, demands emphatic playing, and the piano – a fine instrument – sounded somewhat muddied in the acoustic, but was happier when the dynamics became more calm.  The first movement, the longest and most varied, moved from phase to phase with a fluency that evidenced intelligent and thorough rehearsal; and the central Divertissement movement became a particularly joyous affair.

In spite of publicity efforts however, audiences have generally remained shy for the excellent concerts that Sunniva Zoete-West and Caprice have promoted – no more than a couple of dozen were at St Mark’s – and she is threatening to abandon the undertaking. The concerts which have typically presented interesting contemporary music and music for wind instruments, of which there is a quite substantial and excellent quantity, fill a niche that other chamber music promoters tend to neglect.

It is well to remember that the Wellington Chamber Music Society’s Sunday afternoon chamber music series, now at the Ilott Theatre, began life (in the University Memorial Theatre) with the aim, in part, of employing young Wellington musicians in music that was ignored by the then Chamber Music Federation (now Chamber Music New Zealand), particularly wind ensembles such as the great Mozart wind serenades.

Chamber Music New Zealand’s Schubertiade at Sixty

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUBERT – Notturno Movement in E-flat D.897

String Quartet No.15 in G D.887

Piano Quintet in A D.667 “Die Forelle” (The Trout)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman – violins,

Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – ‘cello)

Michael Houstoun (piano), Michael Steer (double bass)

Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 28th October 2010

Sixty years ago in Wellington, in 1950, the ubiquitous “Trout” Quintet was performed by members of the Alex Lindsay String Orchestra with Frederick Page at the piano. This was one of the highlights of the very first season of concerts organised by the New Zealand Federation of Chamber Music Societies that year; and so it seemed more than appropriate that this same work would feature in an anniversary concert this evening devoted to one of the most beloved of composers of chamber music. Called a “Schubertiade”, the concert was a grand celebration of sixty years of fine and auspicious music-making, as indicated by the many world-wide household names appearing among the “historical” lists of contributing artists printed in the programme.

What better way to open an evening devoted to Schubert’s music than with the adorable Notturno, that mysterious fragment of an uncompleted Piano Trio whose serene beauty has given it a life of its own as a concert piece? Michael Houstoun’s first gently undulating piano notes were the waters on which the beams of light from the strings played, long-breathed and with graceful turns, the music’s shape nicely choreographed by the players’ physical gestures, the string players’ bows delineating the pizzicato notes like rippling, scintillating light-shafts. Throughout, the trio of musicians went to the places that the music did, revelling in the ebb and flow of lyricism and intensity, and characterising the different episodes with, by turns, colourings rich and subtle and rhythmic impulses strong and delicate.

Having confirmed Schubert’s credentials as a lyricist, the musicians realigned their forces for a performance of the greatest of the composer’s string quartets, No.15 in G Major, D.887. This music poses huge interpretative challenges, physical, intellectual and emotional, not the least of which is how to establish a “through-line” across four markedly diverse movements. My feeling was that the New Zealand String Quartet characterised the first three movements wonderfully, but then took a rather lightweight view of the finale, which seemed not to invest the music with enough “demon” at the outset for the drama of the  major/minor key contrasts to tell.  This music shares with the first of the same composer’s D.946 Piano Pieces a series of “dark flight” sequences set against grittily determined major-key pushes towards the light, generating a feeling of unease masking something not far removed in places from fear and desperation. I thought the playing needed more of an edge, such as the NZSQ was able to amply demonstrate during their recent Shostakovich quartet performances – in this instance, for my liking, the music was allowed a little too much respite.

Which was a pity, because the musicians had dug in boldly right at the quartet’s beginning – again, not the most searing of accounts that I’ve heard, but whose control and command in itself created tensions associated with a sense of chaos barely held at bay. Here, and in the almost schizophrenic second movement, the quartet’s workings-out explored every nuance of feeling, every impulse of contrast, the playing very “integrated” and coherent. One was tempted at first to blame the ample acoustic of the Town Hall for what seemed like a certain lack of immediacy – but these same players had in no uncertain terms filled out the comparable vistas of the Church of St Mary of the Angels not long ago with Schumann and Shostakovich; so one’s conclusion was that their response to this music was here being more-or-less truthfully conveyed.

Rightly or wrongly, one tends to associate the historical Schubertiades with more gaiety and conviviality of utterance, than the angst and astringent feeling generated by this quartet. What happened next was far more in accord with this rose-tinted view, with the appearance of baritone Roger Wilson making a dapper figure in cloak and gloves, accompanied by Michael Houstoun, to perform the song that both inspired and gave the eponymous Quintet its name, “The Trout”. Chamber Music Chief Executive Euan Murdoch had seated himself on the stage ready to welcome the singer and his pianist (a few more staged “bodies” gathered to listen would have engendered even more of a Schubertiade atmosphere, methought – but nevertheless the feeling of it was right). Roger Wilson delivered a pleasantly-modulated, if somewhat understated performance of the song, as if he was, surprisingly, a little overawed by the occasion (I’ve heard this singer deliver a number of splendidly characterised performances on the recital platform in the past, and was thus a tad disappointed…) After he had finished and departed. Euan Murdoch welcomed the audience to the concert, spoke briefly about the Society’s sixty years of history, and wished all of us many more years of listening to great chamber music played by more wonderful artists.

For such an occasion, the “Trout” Quintet was an obvious choice – more reconfigurations of personnel saw Douglas Beilman take the leader’s position, Michael Houstoun rejoin the ensemble, and double-bass player Michael Steer, late of the NZSO and currently based in Dunedin for post-graduate study make his first appearance of the evening. I thought the performance was beautifully held together by Michael Houstoun, who proved to be an excellent chamber musician (not always the case with star virtuosi). His contributions surged outwards, or melted into the ensemble at appropriate moments, the rest of the time maintaining the flow and upholding what the other musicians were doing. It wasn’t Michael Steer’s fault that he looked far more impressive than he sounded – the music was obviously written for an amateur performer – but I still felt a bit more temperament in places wouldn’t have gone amiss. The other string players made the most of their opportunities for ensembled give-and-take, though I felt leader Douglas Beilman wasn’t having the happiest of times with some of his ascents on the e-string. I did like his trilling during the Variations movement – these were no caged birds whose song we heard, but sounds that were wild and free.

Despite the ‘chalk-and-cheese” effect of the concert’s two halves, I thought the “Schubertiade” concept was a wonderful idea. The Society’s many supporters made obvious their enjoyment of and delight in the concert in a way that would have heartened those who work to foster the continuance of chamber music in all parts of the country. Birthday congratulations to the Society are definitely in order.

Israeli cellist with a short programme in the Hunter Council Chamber

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Inbal Megiddo – cello and Diedre Irons – piano

 

Shostakovich: Cello Sonata, Op 40;  Brahms’s Piano Trio No 1 in B Major, Op 8 – first movement, with Martin Riseley (violin); Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces, Op 73; Popper: Hungarian Rhapsody

 

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

 

Wednesday 27 October, 7pm 

 

A century ago, perhaps, a player with the talent of Inbal Megiddo would have been a household name by now – she’s 33 and her early career was phenomenal. She was born in Israel and is now resident in the United States. Picking up on the example of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, her regular recital accompanist is Palestinian Saleem Abboud Ashkar.

 

After a prodigious rise to youthful eminence, however, her career has settled into something a little short of that of an international star; she appears to have played with none of the top symphony orchestras, and has recorded with none of the major labels. Yet she has played at the Lincoln Centre and at Carnegie Hall, New York, and in the Kennedy Center in Washington. She played recently with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and in recital at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin; with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and with the Lithuanian Philharmonic Society. She has toured and recorded with The Yale Cellos and recorded with the Yale Philharmonia.

 

That famous orchestras do not feature on her CV is much more a commentary on the bewildering numbers of brilliantly gifted musicians competing in a frighteningly crowded profession, than on her musicianship.

 

For the evidence offered at this recital at Victoria University was of a mature cellist whose technical prowess, in Popper’s Hungarian Rhapsody for example, is prodigious, and whose interpretive powers are guided by a profound feeling for the composers’ nature and intentions.

 

Shostakovich’s only cello sonata makes huge demands of both technical and intellectual resources, even though a relatively early piece; yet it seems not to be unified by a particularly coherent structure: the normal disparate character of the four movements are without the feeling that they are inevitably parts of a whole.

 

The performance, by both pianist and cellist, was full of dramatic variety, thrusting and energetic, agitated at the start and melodious later in the first movement; particularly arresting was the music’s rallentando and transformation into a sort of intermezzo before the second movement starts. Again, in this triple-time Allegro, the sense of unity between the instruments, supported by Diedre Irons’s astringent piano and the big robust sound of the cello with its ostinato motifs, was a hard-hitting experience. The Largo was the main opportunity to enjoy Megiddo’s rapturous, deeply expressive playing, particularly as the movement ended in beautiful calm, and she repeatedly sought out Diedre Irons’s eyes to ensure an ideal rapport.

 

One has always to regret the truncating of great music, and even if Brahms’s first piano trio, its first version written aged 20, is not one of his greatest works, the end of the first movement left us up in the air, waiting for the staccato, mephisto-dance of the Scherzo. But that wasn’t the main problem.

 

Martin Riseley, the head of string studies at the school of music, took the violin part; perhaps I was not sitting in an ideal position, but the balance of the three instruments was defective. Riseley’s sound was not the equal of either cello or piano, though when I made an effort to exclude the other instruments, his playing was unexceptionable, even if not as voluptuous as it is in my head.

 

My colleague Rosemary Collier recently lamented the frequency with which cellists put Schumann’s Fantasiestücke in their programmes. Though I have a special love of Schumann and also of the cello, I have to agree. There were dozens of pieces in her repertoire, to be seen on her website, that I’d have been delighted to hear. The duo made a nice job of the Schumann, but it was not a highlight.

 

David Popper is one of those composers known mainly to cellists, for that was the tool of his fame in the late 19th century. His Hungarian Rhapsody, drawn from several of Liszt’s eponymous pieces, was great fun as well as the predictable opportunity to demonstrate a lot of hair-raising pyrotechnics, brilliantly supported by the pianist whose task was hardly diminished as a result of the limelight being removed from her.

Aroha Quartet at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MOZART – String Quartet in D Major K.499 “Hoffmeister”

ZHU JIAN-ER & SHI YONGKANG – Bai-Mao-Nu (White haired Girl)

TCHAIKOVSKY  – String Quartet No.3 in E-flat Minor Op.30

Aroha String Quartet: Haihong Liu, Anne Loeser, violins / Zhongxian Jin, viola / Robert Ibell, ‘cello

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

Saturday 9th October 2010

Like New Yorkers have done with their numbered streets and avenues, one does get used to numberings in classical music, however bewildering and daunting it may seem for a beginner listener to register titles like Symphony No.97, String Quartet No.79, Piano Concerto No.27, or Piano Sonata No. 32. It’s probably one of the reasons that descriptive names, often nothing to do with the composer, have been so freely appended to pieces of music. These nicknames work invariably to the music’s advantage, however much the purist may scoff at the superficiality of the exercise. And especially if a composer has a reasonably sizeable body of work, such names can help people readily identify specific pieces otherwise buried anonymously in catalogues of numbers – for example, many of Haydn’s 100-plus symphonies owe their popularity to either individual titles or to names given to sets of works, such as the “Paris” or “London” Symphonies. One wonders at times whether these numbers really do register in peoples’ minds – as with the lovely story of the music student who was asked how many Beethoven symphonies there were, and who replied, “Three – the “Eroica”, the “Pastoral” – and the Ninth!”

Lest readers begin thinking that this reviewer has REALLY lost the plot on this occasion, I hasten to point out that the above remarks were prompted by my profound enjoyment of the Aroha Quartet’s playing of Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” String Quartet at St.Andrew’s Church on Saturday evening. I hadn’t heard this work for some time, but after experiencing this group’s warm, mellow playing and beautifully natural sense of ensembled give-and-take throughout, I’m certain that I’ll associate this “named” quartet for a long time to come with what was here an extremely pleasurable listening experience. It’s true that Haydn is regarded as the “father” of the string quartet, but on the evidence of works such as this one Mozart brought to the genre his own sublimity and distinction. From the outset, the Aroha Quartet brought a mellow warmth to the music, with a beautiful blend of distinctive tones, at once characterful and responsive in the interests of a larger expression, the players readily able to vary their dynamics as one with with plenty of energy and volatility, throughout the first movement.  A full-bodied, colourful and exuberant minuet followed, the players digging into the music and in places almost bursting the dance at its seams – the minor-key triplet variants of the theme, tossed around among the instruments, provided a more circumspect contrast.

I liked also the tender, eloquent opening of the adagio, the playing very “giving” and interactive, almost theatrical in its thematic and instrumental exchanges. And the finale also engaged for different reasons, the players generating a lot of excitement with spectacular runs from violin and ‘cello over stuttering accompanying figures, with energy levels dancing near the tops of their gauges, and elements of surprise and contrast very much to the fore. One imagines Herr Hoffmeister listening to the work’s first performance and beaming with delight at the thought of his name being carried forward in musical history by this marvellous piece.

The leader of the quartet, Haihong Liu, welcomed the modestly-sized audience to the concert before introducing the next piece, from China, an arrangement for string quartet of a ballet Baimao Nu (in English, White-Haired Girl) by the composers Zhu Jian-er and Shi Yongkang. The story is based on the documented life-histories of half-a-dozen women from different periods of Chinese history, from the late Qing Dynasty to the 1930s, and existed and was performed as an opera before the Communist takeover in China in 1949, which resulted in later adaptations for ballet and film having some political propaganda input, changing some aspects of the story, and becoming a “modern Chinese classic”. A strong unison statement, like the opening of a curtain, began the work, whose lyrical, flowing manner, flecked with little folk-touches of portamento, created an attractive, if somewhat filmic impression. The narrative style was emphasised by frequent changes of metre and contrasting episodes, alternating wistful single-instrument lines with concerted, orchestral-like crescendi culminating in dramatic minor-key plunges – attractive, colourful music, obviously intended to entertain and uplift rather than ponder any fundamental tenet of existence that could be called to question. The Aroha Quartet players delivered it all with the sort of commitment and level of skill one would expect the players to bring to much greater music, but without ever over-inflating the range and scope of the piece.

A work that certainly required full-blooded treatment was Tchaikovsky’s Third String Quartet from 1876, a work for too long overshadowed (like the Second Quartet) by the first of the composer’s essays in this medium five years previously, with its celebrated Andante Cantabile movement. I thought this deeply-felt performance took us right to the heart of the music, the first movement, after a beautifully-breathed opening and a deep, rocking melancholy underpinned by pizzicati, fixing on a working-out of the themes with energetic and persistent drive and focus – tense, tortured stuff. It was possible to think that, in places, the mood of the playing might perhaps have been even a little too dogged and unyielding, with no hint of pathos or rhetoric at cadence-points – but it was indeniably involving and exciting. The second movement’s elfin and energetic brilliance had a surety of touch that encompassed both the music’s playful aspect and the more explosive accents and emphases, also making the most of the trio section’s droll, droning bass, with snatches of the allegro re-energising the music – lovely playing!

Tchaikovsky wrote the quartet as a tribute to a violinist friend who had died the previous year, and the grief of his loss was made manifest with the slow movement’s andante funebre marking. Here, the Aroha’s compelling focus brought us right to the edge of the music’s well of deep emotion, giving those opening discords and dolorous chanting figurations plenty of weight and emphasis, before allowing the more rhapsodic second subject group some remembrance of happier times. However, darkness soon overtook the music once again, a sombre processional becoming trenchant and threatening, before the chanting sequences beautifully and hauntingly returned at the end. After this, the finale plunged into an energetic “life goes on” dance, the spirit of it all reminiscent of the composer’s Fourth Symphony, the quartet enjoying the music’s physicality as well as registering the more delicate, elfin-like aspects of the discourse. A brief reminiscence of the previous movement’s solemnities became the prelude to a dancing coda, thrown off here with plenty of excitement.

Our enthusiasm for and appreciation of the music-making was rewarded by the Quartet’s playing of an encore – a piece that, for all the world sounded Central European, with soulful folk-themes, czardas-like dance-rituals at the beginning and brilliant accelerandi to finish. But it was, according to Quartet leader Haihong Liu, a Saliha, from the Silk Road region of China, which might well account for what sounded like gypsy-like tunes, rhythms and structures. It made a rousing conclusion to a most enjoyable concert.

NZSM showcase for viola and violin students

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Bartók: Viola Concerto – movements II and III; Rebecca Clarke: Viola
Sonata – movements I and II; Glinka: Viola Sonata – first movement; Reger: Solo
Viola Suite No 3 in E minor – fourth movement; Khachaturian: Violin Concerto –
first movement

Gillian Ansell and Douglas Mews and students from the New Zealand School
of Music

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 6 October 12.15pm

There was a relatively large audience at this concert that featured two
violists and a violinist and they were rewarded both with some out-of-the-way
music and by hearing some talented players.

Though it was advertised as a concert of violists, it was, rather, a
showcase for three students of Gillian Ansell, violist in the New Zealand
String Quartet, at the New Zealand School of Music, one of whom, Karla Norton,
was a violinist. She, with the buoyant support of Douglas Mews at the piano,
made Khachaturian’s splendid violin concerto sound almost as if he’d written it
as a sonata for violin and piano: she played the brilliantly tuneful first
movement with accurate intonation, its phrases confidently shaped and polished.
Though a violinist, she is a pupil of Gillian Ansell’s; as a third year
student, her performance stood out as a little more accomplished than her two
violist colleagues who were in their second year.

The pieces
played by Leoni Wittchou and Megan Ward were, like so much of the viola
repertoire, unfamiliar. Leoni played two movements from Rebecca Clarke’s Viola
Sonata, a most rewarding piece by this British violist and composer, written in
1919. Though not tainted by serialism, it sounded absolutely of its age,
speaking in a voice that sounded authentic and individual. Leoni had absorbed
its idiom and managed to unravel its dense harmonies and rather complex
rhythmic character, conveying a confidence and assurance that was rather
impressive. After playing the first movement, Impetuoso, (it alone was
scheduled) she played the short allegro second movement, which was playful and
demanding.

Megan Ward was the second violist: she chose the first movement of an
unfinished, early viola sonata by Glinka that bore hardly any of the Russian characteristics
for which he was later renowned. It had little to recommend it: sentimental in
tone, uncertain in the handling of its themes, like a struggling pupil of
someone like John Field. Megan made a sterling effort with it, but her playing
was marred by intonation flaws and the insecurities of a student at her stage
of development.

She followed the Glinka piece with the fourth movement of a solo viola
suite (No 3) by Max Reger, and she succeeded in creating from this Bach-like
piece, musical shapes that could easily have remained sterile strings of notes.

Behind all the performances, save the Reger, was the piano support from
Douglas Mews which provided interesting textures and sustained interest where
the viola might have sagged. Nowhere
was his part more arresting than in the first piece in the programme: the
second and third movements of Bartok’s Viola Concerto (in the completion by
Csaba Erdelyi). Here was the chance for the teacher, Gillian Ansell, to be
heard in a role not normally available to her. Viola and piano were in
wonderful accord: the piano providing almost all the harmonic interest that one
would expect of an orchestra, and the viola demonstrating a mastery of this
difficult work that one would expect only from a seasoned solo musician. It was
a simply splendid performance, making me wonder when an orchestra
might engage her to play the entire concerto.

 

Rigg and Olivier delight with Debussy and Prokofiev at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Valerie Rigg (violin) and Tessa Olivier (piano): Berceuse, Op 16 (Fauré), Violin Sonata in G minor (Debussy), Violin Sonata in D, Op 94 bis (Prokofiev)

 

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

 

Wednesday 22 September, 12.15pm

 

There are days when Wellington is one of the best places in the world. When the sun’s shining after a southerly and you can see the trees on the Orongorongos and a midday concert at Lower Hutt calls for a drive (though better, a train ride) along the Wellington fault line. You see across the brilliant harbour to the snow-brushed Orongorongos and the Tararuas further north more thickly covered.

 

St Mark’s church on Woburn Road near the east end of the Ewen Bridge is easy to reach (the train from Wellington and the bus from Petone which stops nearby). Volunteers offer coffee for the audience before the concert; the front rows have padded seats and the church has a remarkably high vault which creates a generous acoustic.

 

Last year I heard Valerie Rigg, a former principal violinist with the NZSO, with pianist Tessa Olivier, playing Vitali’s (or who-ever’s) Chaconne and Prokofiev’s second violin sonata (I had not remembered that it was there that I had heard her play it). She was playing the same Prokofiev again, so I looked at what I’d written last year, and was delighted to find that I’d responded so well to it.

 

In this concert, a day after Olya Cutis and David Vine played it at Old Saint Paul’s, the Prokofiev was coupled with Debussy’s Violin Sonata; as a prelude, they played the charming Berceuse by Fauré. The latter was the perfect introduction, for the duo played it with great warmth and an obviously sympathetic musical rapport. I enjoyed its easy swaying rhythm.

 

Debussy’s sonata is as hard to play as it sounds, so that a performance that sounded as if the two musicians had lived with it for hundreds of hours was a real delight. Though I should have been prepared, from last year, to be totally beguiled by their playing, one does not always expect a player who’s spent most of her life in the ranks of an orchestra, to emerge as a comfortable and polished solo performer. Her intonation was as good as it gets, her command of Debussy’s quick-moving, glancing ideas was captivating.

 

Debussy’s piano demands more attention than the piano sometimes gets in a duo. Tessa Olivier was a most congenial companion, often catching the attention, but never obscuring the violin’s more outgoing lyrical contribution.

 

The church’s recently refurbished Bösendorfer is a lovely, and appropriate instrument for a recital like this: a mellow and somehow ready-made fit with the violin. It either refutes the common view (did it originate with Brahms?) that it is extremely difficult to achieve a blend of the two, or is a credit to both players and the way they use their instruments.

 

One of the most touching phases was in the last movement where fluttering trills and uncommon plunges to the open G string lead toward the beautifully crafted conclusion.

 

Prokofiev was the unusual hybrid who passed through his bad-boy phase, where it was more important to ‘épater le bourgeois’ than to make beautiful sounds; eventually, of course, like any really gifted composer, he found his way back to melody after his return to the Soviet Union in 1933 where, give or take the odd Stalinesque purge, there was an environment where his belief in the fundamental importance of melody was not a matter of scorn. There’s character, lyricism, attractive discord, rhythmic teasings, and tunes; yet this sonata, originally for flute, could have been written no earlier than about the 1930s (actually in the 1940s). Every movement has its individuality which the two players fully realized, relishing the gruff bowings in the middle of the Moderato first movement, the sort-of moto perpetuo that drives the Scherzo, with a slightly too hasty up-and-down motif.

 

What a sweet languid movement they made of the Andante! as the piano planted its even crotchets below the violin’s twisting and weaving. Only in the Finale, were there moments where the spirited, perhaps too confident violin might have been at the expense of perfect intonation and clean articulation. But always the combination of an agile left hand and a bowing arm that created both beautiful legato and the most full-blooded attack was exactly the recipe for this music.

 

The two awoke in me the odd sense that the music was not so much being performed, as simply being allowed, through the medium of the two musicians, to fill the space and follow an inevitable path into our souls.

 

Sadly, Tessa Olivier is about to return to her homeland, South Africa. May I suggest that wherever and whenever Valerie Rigg next appears, with whoever follows Ms Olivier, you make sure you’re there. 

 

 

Violin and piano duo in interesting 20th century recital at Old Saint Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Vaughan Williams: Pastorale in E minor; Janáček: Violin Sonata in A flat minor; Prokofiev: Violin Sonata in D, Op 94 bis   

 

Olya Curtis (violin) and David Vine (piano)

 

Old Saint Paul’s

 

Tuesday 21 September 12.15pm

 

Last year I heard these two musicians play the Elgar and Franck sonatas in this place. This year they stepped firmly into the 20th century, even though, ironically, Janáček was born before Elgar.

 

The Vaughan Williams Pastorale was not the typical English pastoral music that came to be rather scorned a generation or so ago; perhaps it was the fact that the violinist was Russian and it was warm and gentle, somewhat modal in its flavour. But just as much, the tone was set by pianist David Vine who, though English-born, plays idiomatically in whatever style is in front of him. 

 

The Janáček sonata was written during the First World War years and premiered in 1922. Though it’s ostensibly Slavic music, and Janáček was rather passionately pro-Russian, he found such a unique manner that a musician’s nationality can have no bearing. In any case, Curtis seemed less at home with the irregular tempi and diverse character of its first movement than did Vine; it went fairly slowly, not as Con moto as I expected from that marking. The players produced a more lyrical second movement, marked Ballada, with long melodies, though elsewhere the characteristic isolated and sharply contrasted motifs did not integrate so persuasively. They brought off the Allegretto well, with energy and conviction and, in spite of minor intonation flaws, captured a real Janáček feeling in the Finale, a sound that is unique in all music.

 

(Janáček is reported saying that the tremolo piano chords in the finale represented the Russian army entering Moravia, liberating it from Austria-Hungary. The Russian army may have penetrated as far as Moravia in the early stage of World War I, but was quickly driven back by the German army. It was the Treaty of Versailles that later gave the Czech and Slovak lands independence from Austria-Hungary.)

 

Prokofiev’s second sonata was in fact completed before his first (Op 80), which was not completed till 1946. David Oistrakh to whom Prokofiev had promised it before the war, had become impatient as the composer was heavily committed to other things such as the ballet Cinderella, and so he made a careful transcription of his flute sonata of 1942 which Oistrakh premiered in 1944.

 

The easy lyricism of the first movement of this sonata seemed to suit Olya Curtis rather more than the Janáček, and even in the scampering passages of the second movement, in spite of a few smudges, both players caught its spirit well. But she might have taken better advantage of opportunities to dig into its emphatic notes more strongly. In Prokofiev’s Andante, I could hear most clearly the ghost of the flute, in its most warm and open mood, as she moved her bow as far as possible from the bridge. Finally, in the Allegro con brio, there were a few rough edges and I was haunted by the sounds of certain great violinists whose miraculous renderings somewhat intruded. Nevertheless, the duo succeeded in bringing one of the liveliest and most approachable violin sonatas of the mid-century vividly to life.

 

 

Flute and string quartet wide-ranging end to Wellington’s Sunday afternoon series

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Boccherini: Quintet in C for flute and strings; Max Reger: Serenade for flute, violin and viola in G, Op.141a; Turina: The Bullfighter’s Prayer; Mozart: Quartet for flute and strings in D, K 285; Copland: Two Threnodies; Ginastera: Impressiones de la Puna for flute and string quartet

 

The Elios Ensemble: Martin Jaenecke and Konstanze Artmann (violins), Victoria Jaenecke (viola), Paul Mitchell (cello), Karen Batten (flute)

 

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall

 

Sunday 19 September, 3pm  

 

The last in the Sunday 3pm concert series from Wellington Chamber Music was a relatively new ensemble of musicians of varying backgrounds, who presumably do not play together as often as does a professional ensemble. Yet they sounded in command of the music, totally familiar with each other, and comfortable with the disparate programme they had so imaginatively put together.

 

The addition of Karen Batten’s flute both added to the variety of the concert, and brought about a certain lightening of the tone; even though fundamentally the ensemble is a string quartet, the inclusion of a flute limits the range of music available. On the other hand, the most striking thing about the programme was the seriousness of more than one of the pieces.

 

The first movement of Boccherini’s flute quintet in C (two in that key are listed in the Gérard catalogue, G 420 and 427) had an unusual robustness, heavily built that seemed out of character with the usual tone of the flute. Its first theme, pithy and abrupt, which was dominated by the flute, could hardly less have reflected the soubriquet ‘Haydn’s Wife’ that was attached to Boccherini in the 19th century on account of the perceived feminine character of his music. The second movement, Minuet, in a slow ländler-like rhythm, allowed first violin more attention, while the Finale offered the first hints of the Boccherini that is familiar through the recent exploration of his hundreds of string quartets and quintets.

 

One of the characteristics that marked the piece was the more interesting cello part played by Paul Mitchell – the composer was one of the most famous cellists of his day. But in spite of the ingratiating flute part, and the attractive writing for the ensemble, the quintet hardly recommended itself as a singular musical discovery.

 

Max Reger’s Serenade for flute, violin and viola had qualities that were diverting, but in spite of a liveliness and lightness of spirit in the outer movements and a certain pensiveness in the Larghetto, it failed to make a great impression. This, in spite of a performance that made the most of its colour and the sprightliness of the flute playing, and which proved sympathetic with the idiom that Reger had developed: something between Bach, Schumann, Brahms, and perhaps less kindly, composers like Max Bruch or Carl Reinecke. Sadly, its undistinguished melodic quality left it without much reason to look for another hearing.

 

Turina’s La oración del Torero, for string quartet, lifted the first half with its unpretentiousness, and its feeling of genuine musical impulse. It is a modest piece which paints a feeling, emotional picture, using melodies that may not be striking but have a certain distinction, and a quiet drama that hardly suggests the bravado of the bull-ring, but rather the quasi-religious emotion that devotees of the art of the torero lay claim to.

 

Undoubtedly the best and most attractive piece in the concert was Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D – one of the two he wrote. Nothing in it suggests Mozart’s alleged indifference to the flute, and the performance captured all the charm of its three lively, imaginative movements. The second, Adagio, is largely a solo for flute with pizzicato strings, and was a delightful vehicle for Karen Batten’s melifluous playing.

 

Copland’s two late Threnodies, the first, highly compressed, for the death of Stravinsky and the second, rather more discursive and expressive, for that of arts patroness Beatrice Cunningham, launched the second half in a somber vein, Though these pieces would hardly seem natural territory for the flute, Batten turned her talents persuasively towards their elegiac mood and their interpretation; if the Copland of Appalachian Spring and El Salón Mexico was remote, a serious spirit was not unwelcome here,.

 

The choice of music suited to unusual instrumental combinations has become much easier with the facilities of the Internet, and an interesting programme such as this is more easily achieved, given the taste and idiomatic sensibility that this ensemble exhibits.

 

The final piece marked a different direction again, and though superficially in a vein culturally related to the Turina, much had happened in the 35 years between the two composers. Impressions of the Andean Uplands, rather than being visually inspired, reflected the flutes, songs and dances of the peoples in its three parts, though it seemed to me that human beings were not Ginastera’s main concern. The first part, Quena (a type of Andean flute), suggested a somewhat bleak landscape, its flutes bereft of those who might be playing them. The second, in triple rhythm, and third parts, were more lively, with writing that taxed the players and entertained the audience.

 

Wellington is fortunate to have yet another quartet and a solo flutist of this quality, drawn mainly from professional orchestral players of individual talent who have been together long enough to develop an impressive ensemble feeling in a very wide variety of musical styles.