Tag: chamber music

Piers Lane and the Doric String Quartet in rapturous accord

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Haydn: Quartet in D, Op 64 No 5 ‘The Lark’; Bartók: String Quartet No 3; Chopin: Nocturne in E flat, Op 55 No 2; Ballade No 3 in A flat, Op 47; Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op 34

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 10 September, 7.30pm

To the simple music-lover, this looked like the most attractive of the year’s chamber music concerts from Chamber Music New Zealand. Though the audience was quite large, I’d expected to see a bigger house than this. My guess was about 750 customers.

Perhaps the Doric Quartet is not as well known as I thought; it’s getting harder and harder for the casual music lover to distinguish the excellent from the superb from the amazing as more and more groups pour out of music academies all over the world.

It certainly is a pity that human beings are so attached to reputations that are very substantially manufactured by publicity hype or luck, and are ready to allow their ears to be misled accordingly.

But on top of the superb quartet there was Piers Lane, one of the most engaging and musical of international pianists, though not a star in the class of Kissin and Grimaud, Aimard and Uchida, let alone the dozens of brilliant and good-looking youngsters that flash across the night sky, many not to reappear. .

Lane was certainly the biggest draw-card at the 2009 Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson, and here he offered us a reminder of how to play Chopin in a whole-hearted way, with all the virtuosity needed yet with immaculate taste and refinement.

He opened the second half alone, with two pieces of Chopin – the concert’s only nod to the two bicentenarians (they played Schumann’s piano quintet in the other series). His Nocturne was broad, confident, in a quintessentially romantic vein; the third Ballade was inspired by similar approach, its several phases colourfully distinguished, giving particular attention to accents within phrases; it was a performance that was of the very essence of the period in which in was written.

Well-known as these pieces are, through recordings or our own struggles at the piano, live piano performances have become rare , not just of Chopin, but rare as a genre: even from the great pianists brought here by the NZSO or the APO.

The concert had begun with Haydn’s ‘Lark’ quartet, one of the most spirited and engaging. Though the first two movements demonstrated the quartet’s extraordinary awareness of the subtleties and the secrets that Haydn planted in each separate part, there were discoveries and revelations, and the surpise of speed in the last two movements. Quartets of this period were show-pieces for the first violin and without undue display, Alex Redington allowed his easy mastery, clear and penetrating, to perform that role, though at the start he created the sweetest, smallest sound. The quartet relished an exquisite languor in the second movement, beautifully decorated little violin cadenzas and long pauses as it changed direction. The last two movements were uncommonly but convincingly fast, creating will-o’-the-wisp effects that light up and then died away. The speed of both movements seemed to raise them into a transcendental state which never settled for a moment.

Bartók’s 3rd quartet is relatively short, but it is one of the more acerbic of the six, as he made his mark among the avant-garde of the time – the late 1920s; jagged rhythms and pithy motifs that suggest Magyar modes and melodic shapes, but avoiding any hint of the late romantic. Though in four sections, there are no breaks and the labels attached to each of the ‘nominal’ movements hardly matter, as Bartók allows each in turn to add bits of a whole to form a remarkably integrated composition. The players’ spiritual sympathy with the music was remarkable, as was their commitment to its time and place, all of which drew lyricism and musical vitality from what can be merely difficult music in lesser hands.

The audience responded to the grand opening of Brahms Piano Quintet with an almost audible sigh of luxury, and even more as the mood dropped to something that took us secretively into its confidence. The unease of one moment was turned magically to gaiety, but nothing lasted long. The quartet, and pianist, were throughout in the most perfect rapport, neither party dominating or out of character with the whole. The third movement, Scherzo and Trio, was splendid, ending almost too thunderously.

The labeling of Brahms as a classicist by scholars has always struck me as the view of those who study the score and its formal niceties, but who don’t bother to listen. Nothing could be more whole-heartedly romantic, expressive, occasionally quixotic in character, than this work and especially the opening of the Finale; reticent, almost wracked with self-doubt. And yet it evolves into the most magnificent, heroic pageant which is gloriously prolonged and entirely envelopes the members of the quintet. An utterly memorable performance.

 

Duo Tapas – exotic lunchtime fare at Old St.Paul’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Duo Tapas

Rupa Maitra (violin) / Owen Moriarty (guitar)

de FALLA –  Cinco Canciones Populares Espanolas / IMAMOVIC – Sarajevo Nights : Jamilla’s Dance   PIAZZOLLA – Histoire du Tango / KROUSE- Da Chara

Old St.Paul’s Lunchtime Concert Series

Tuesday, 7th September, 2010

Something about the splendid ornateness of the interior of Old St.Paul’s Church, if not especially Moorish or Iberian, suited the exoticism of parts of the programme presented by violinist Rupa Maitra and guitarist Owen Moriarty on Tuesday at lunchtime, part of an excellent series of concerts organised for performance at the church. Ever approximate, I arrived late for the concert’s beginning, picking up what I thought was the third piece, Cancion, of the Cinco Canciones populares Espanolas by Falla, an entry-point which immersed me into a world of dark, sultry atmospheres and insinuations, a mournful melody expressed in lovely, earthy accents and tones . A central section took a more cheerful major-key aspect, the transition further demonstrating the rapport of interplay and balance between violinist and guitarist. Both played with a nice touch of “pesante” impulsiveness, textures and rhythms brought to life.

They then played what I figured was Asturiana, a slow, langurous violin melody, soaring over an octave ostinato for guitar, beautifully sustained by both musicians. Finally came Polo, the violin giving voice to passionate declamations over driving guitar rhythms, quintessentially Spanish, and realised with lots of life and colour.

Owen Moriarty inroduced the next item, two pieces by the Los Angeles-based composer Almer Imamovic which, if not exactly Spanish, had an exoticism of their own. Originally written for flute and guitar, their character was appropriately realised by the violin’s range of colour and timbre – the first, Sarajevo Nights, danced a sinuous, melancholy melody with asymmetrical rhythms, both instruments creating tensions with tremolando passages, and the guitarist augmenting the music’s trajectories by knocking his instrument’s body with his hand. The second piece, Jamilla’s Dance, began with cimbalon-like tones from the guitarist and pesante-like slides and colours from the violin, all extremely evocative and colourful. Beginning like the traditional Jewish hora, the dance slowly and suggestively stepped out, increased gradually in vigour and excitement, but suddenly releasing surges of energy, rather like a Hungarian czardas. The musicians recreated the piece’s pent-up excitement with verve and enjoyment.

Famed South American composer Astor Piazzolla was next, with his suite of pieces Histoire du Tango. Listed as a four-movement work, I could discern only three sections, though maybe Rupa Maitra did allude to this in her soft-spoken introduction to the performance, the words of which I had trouble catching. The first section, entitled Bordel – 1900, is a kind of picture of Buenos Aires at the turn of the century, a work expressing the composer’s playful, more sunnily-disposed side, indulging himself occasionally with a sultry swerve into a different episode, but generally keeping things light and evenly-poised, the violin catching the piece’s light and shade, and the guitarist keeping the rhythms going using both strings and percussion effects. The second piece, Cafe – 1930 gave us the true tango, Piazzolla-style, darker and more pensive, a guitar solo filled with dreamy melancholy, and the violin really digging into a melody laden with feeling, the tone tight and focused, carrying as much weight as it needs and no more. A major-key episode lightened both colour and rhythm, before the music again gathered and wrapped all around in more sultry atmospheres. The third piece, Nightclub – 1960, was mentioned, but not listed as played – instead we seemed to get Concert d’aujourd’hui (Contemporary concert), a piece featuring off-beat harmonies and angular melodies of the garrulous and gossipy type, a kind of “up-dating” by the composer regarding his more developed style of writing, and that of the tango itself, influenced greatly by jazz. A fascinating work, skilfully presented.

Finishing the programme with a piece by American composer Ian Krouse, Owen Moriarty assured us that this was one of the easier Krouse pieces to play – its title Da Chara, is Gaelic for “Two Friends”, and was, like the pieces by Almer Imamovic, written originally for flute and guitar. Its ostensible “Gaelic” character could be discerned in the free and airy opening melodic phrasings from the violin, with their occasional rhythmic snap, the guitar taking over with a solo, then joined by the violin to repeat the opening melody – very attractive ‘filmic” kind of music and skilfully realised. The guitar began a march-rhythm, joined by the violin, the players further energising the music with a wild, reel-like dance, the players letting their hair down in great style, Rupa Maitra catching the folk-fiddle aspect of the music nicely, and Owen Moriarty generating surges of energy from his instrument.

Memorable and commanding Schumann and Shostakovich string quartets

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The New Zealand String Quartet

Schumann: String Quartets Nos 1 in A minor and 2 in F; Shostakovich: Nos 13 in B flat and 7 in F sharp minor

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Tuesday 31 August, 7.30pm 

This was an important series of ten concerts by the New Zealand String Quartet, in five centres nationwide; it included two different programmes, of all three of Schumann’s quartets and four of Shostakovich’s 15.

I heard the first of the two programmes at the church of St Mary of the Angels on Saturday the 28th, which my colleague Peter Mechen has reviewed (that programme had also been played a week earlier in the Hunter Council Chamber at Victoria University) and the second on Tuesday 31 August, also in the Hunter Council Chamber. There were probably round 200 at St Mary’s and a full house (about 160) at the Hunter room.

The quartet’s challenge was to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Schumann who wrote only three string quartets, by putting them with another composer whose music might complement it in some way. At first glance, Shostakovich looked an odd choice, and though Helene Pohl made a reasonable case in her introductory remarks, the connections were rather tenuous: Schumann’s personality dichotomy: his imaginative creations Florestan and Eusebius, and Shostakovich’s two faces – the public one acceptable to the Soviet authorities and the private one which expressed his inner self.

In the end I felt Schumann had paid the bigger price, for there is hardly any music written in any age that equals Shostakovich’s intensity, anguish and profound personal self-revelation in a fearful political environment. Most composers in past eras have lived under repressive regimes of various kinds, but they were the norm; social barriers, lack of freedom and extreme inequality were everywhere; it did not occur to them to depict it in their music.

But Shostakovich’s fate was to live in a place which had declined into a condition that had become much more repressive and dangerous than the rest of Europe (give or take Fascism).

Alongside Shostakovich’s, some of the Schumann music sounded to me emotionally lightweight, as if he was trying to write music that would entertain rather than what was genuinely spirited, with integrity and genuine expressive power.

That struck me particularly in the F major quartet, played last. In the second movement Schumann seemed to be putting on the mask of a happy face to please Clara, who had urged him to write music that audiences would understand. While the Scherzo appealed strongly as one of the most interesting movements, of variety and confident handling, I felt that in the finale, Schumann reverted to his jolly mask, writing music that was more conventional. The real Schumann, on the other hand, wrote music that was joyful, spirited which, up to a point, becomes more exciting the faster it is played, such as the March of the Davidsbündler in Carnaval or the finale of the Piano Concerto, or the Piano Quintet.

Though I had had similar feelings about the last movement of the A minor quartet, its minor key succeeded in keeping Schumann from conventional temptations in the three earlier movements, and the players always exploited in the liveliest way his inventiveness and impressive competence of writing for the four instruments.

What was striking about all Schumann’s quartets however, was both the warmth of the tutti sound, and the interesting music given variously to all four instruments; and I heard more arresting individuality from Gillian Ansell’s viola and Douglas Beilman’s violin that one often hears in quartet context.

Though it was Schumann’s birthday, it was Shostakovich who really stole the limelight. Again, we had the pleasure (if that is in any way the word) of two more of the little-known quartets of Shostakovich. If there were rewarding passages for the viola in Schumann, Shostakovich could be accused of having a torrid love affair with it.

No 13 is an extraordinary piece, written in 1970 when the composer was ill, and at its opening the viola carries most of its unrelenting bleak view of the world – of his world at least. It is in one movement, though there are several contrasting episodes that do offer sufficient variety and structural character to justify its formal status as a quartet. Rolf Gjelsten’s cello also has a major role in the music’s landscape.

Though Shostakovich’s language is essentially tonal, dramatic use is made of pointed discords, that might be followed by high, marcato notes from the violins. Above all, if one does not succumb to the outward pessimism, there is dark and tragic beauty in this piece, which ends with a series of rising harmonics that might suggest either some kind of spiritual aspiration or merely life evaporating to nothingness.

In the second half, they played the more conventionally ordered No 7; three movements following the normal pattern, through a dark liveliness in the first movement, to which the players brought a fierce energy and a thrusting sense of momentum; the change in the Lento movement to Doug Beilman’s angular violin arpeggios, soon joined by Helen Pohl’s febrile first violin. The last movement opens with stunning violence that Gillian Ansell diverted to hollow rhetoric with her beautifully resonant viola; and the piece ends with the violins and viola in flighty ascending scales that seemed to offer solace or consolation.

A Shostakovich Quartet Series
That the quartet has got nearly a third of Shostakovich’s quartets under their collective belts for these two concerts prompted the rather obvious thought that they should be encouraged to master them all and offer them as the musical highlight of the 2012 New Zealand International Arts Festival. It is time for a musical renaissance at the festival.

I was at the wonderful Verbier Festival in Switzerland in 2007 where, at 10pm every other night in the alpine village’s minuscule protestant church, the Israeli Aviv Quartet played them all, not in order but in groups evidently guided by length and contrast. During a week’s stay I heard seven quartets in three concerts (Nos 4 and 14, 1, 12 and 8, and 3 and 7).

The performances captured the more dedicated chamber music lovers and there were struggles to get inside the church, all successful, overcoming any scruples by the local fire department or festival administrators.

These concerts have proved that we have a string quartet capable of interpreting these works with a passion, ferocity, and depth of musical and political insight that is rare. They should be encouraged to undertake the entire Shostakovich quartet canon, some of the greatest music of the 20th century.

Sunday evening with Moky Gibson-Lane – a ‘cello and piano recital

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Mok-hyun Gibson-Lane (‘cello)

with Catherine McKay (piano)

JS BACH – Suite No.1 in G Major, for Solo ‘Cello / GYORGY LIGETI – Suite for Solo ‘Cello

LUIGI BOCCHERINI – Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano in C Major

MAX BRUCH – Kol Nidrei Op.47 / DAVID POPPER – Elfentanz (Dance of the Elves) Op.39

Central Baptist Church, Boulcott St., Wellington

Sunday 29th August 2010

Moky Gibson-Lane, visiting home in New Zealand from her various commitments as a performer in Europe, gave a delightful recital in Wellington’s Central Baptist Church, one which stimulated as much audience pleasure as a similar concert she gave on a home visit a year previously. She’s currently playing with the Berlin Staatskapelle, frequently conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and is a foundation member of the Stabrawa Ensemble, led by the Berlin Philharmonic’s concert-master, Daniel Stabrawa. She makes frequent Arts Channel television appearances in Germany, and has recently taken part, with Barenboim, in the Berlin premiere of Mosaic, a new work by Elliot Carter. The prospect, therefore, of hearing a musician with such credentials was too good an opportunity to miss; and, happily, as with last year’s recital, the young ‘cellist amply demonstrated with her playing why she’s such a sought-after musician in one of the world’s musical capitals.

Her recital was half-solo, half ‘cello-and-piano partnership, beginning with two major solo works, one a standard classic, and the other a contemporary masterpiece. Just what it is about JS Bach’s music that enables one to listen to countless performances of it without tiring I’m not quite sure (an exploration beyond the scope of a recital review), but the perennial freshness of the notes invariably seems to re-kindle from various musicians the same sense of re-awakening, of re-discovery, one which Mok-Hyun conveyed in her performance of the G Major Solo ‘Cello Suite from first note to last. From the expressive sonority of the Prelude, through the Allemande’s stately ornate decorations (very baroque-defining!), and the wonderfully spontaneous mixture of freedom and constraint with which she propelled the lively angularities of the Courante,  the ‘cellist proceeded to make the work her own. Her Sarabande had beautifully-focused dignity, contrasting beautifully with the energies of the two Minuets, the first cheerful and forthright, the second wistful and circumspect; while her “lightness-of-being” touch with the concluding Gigue brought out all of the music’s life-affirming buoyancy.

I’d never heard the Ligeti Solo ‘Cello Suite before, and was prepared for something a lot more acerbic and uncompromising than what was presented. The work itself had an interesting, and somewhat fraught genesis, being originally inspired by Ligeti’s unrequited passion for a female ‘cellist and fellow-student at the Budapest Music Academy in the late 1940s. Ligeti was then asked, a few years later, by an older, well-known female ‘cellist, Vera Dénes, for a piece she could play. The composer expanded his previous one-movement work into a two-movement Suite; but with Hungary under Soviet control in the 1950s, the piece had to be submitted to the all-powerful government-controlled Composers’ Union for acceptance. Interestingly, the committee allowed Vera Dénes to record the work (for a planned broadcast which never took place), but refused its performance in public, on the grounds that its second movement was “too modern”. It wasn’t until 1979 that the piece was performed again. Ligeti called the first movement a “dialogue”, intending (no doubt with his youthful student amour in mind) a man and a woman conversing. He remarked also that this music was “heavily influenced” by the works of Zoltan Kodaly. A sense of something tender and heartfelt awakening was conveyed by the soft strummings of the opening, alternating with measures of full-throated melody, the strummed notes “bent” to give a heightened emotional effect. An impassioned middle section alternated between low and high lines, and brought out powerful playing from Mok-Hyun, the “Hungarian” melody then giving way to further soft pizzicato chords that ended the movement.

Ligeti aimed for contrast in the virtuoso second movement, modelling the title Capriccio on Paganini’s well-known Caprices for solo violin. The “Presto con slancio” directive for the performer means “‘very quick, with impetus”, and produced here an extremely exciting performance, running figures, trenchant attack, and tortured, agitated lines – a wonderful volatiity, almost an expiation of the heart-on-sleeve feeing evinced in the first movement. The exuberant final bars brought out an enthusiastic audience response to some great playing.

Moky Gibson-Lane was joined by pianist Catherine McKay for the second half, beginning with a Sonata by Boccherini which sounded like Haydn at the beginning, the music having plenty of muscularity and sprightliness. It was mostly ‘cello with dutiful piano accompaniment in this movement, really, with the development bringing out a more colouristic and in places even sombre mood, though nothing too tragic or heart-rending. The slow movement brought out the ‘cellist’s beautiful cantabile, rich and low in places and decorated occasionally with melismatic impulses; while the finale began as a good-natured jog-trot, but with demands on the soloist involving spectacular high finger-board work – not always DEAD in tune, but impressively virtuosic, nevertheless.  Rather more musical substance was provided by Max Bruch’s lovely, lyrical “Kol Nidrei”, the opening exchanges between piano and ‘cello long-breathed and full of feeling. Here, the rhapsodic melodies became big-hearted, committed statements, but with both ‘cellist and pianist preserving a ritualistic, almost ecclesiastical feeling about the exchanges, before relaxing into the rapt, hymn-like romantic dialogues of the work’s final section. Mok-Hyun celestially floated the last few measures of her line, the final ascent perhaps not ideally pure of tone, but nevertheless, together with Catherine McKay’s angelic support, a beautiful supplication.

We sinners needed bringing down to earth again after experiencing such stratospheric evocations; and the final item did just that – Czech composer David Popper’s sprightly, and in some places somewhat manic “Elfentanze” (Dance of the Elves) was a kind of  Bohemian version of “Flight of the Bumble Bee”, featuring plenty of rapid figurations from both ‘cellist and pianist, and some hair-raising, right-off-the-fingerboard bedazzlements from the ‘cellist at the end, which, to use the classic phrase, brought the house down. At a supper straight afterwards most people were happily able to more fully extend those gestures of appreciation that we readily and enthusiastically showed both musicians at the end of the concert.

New Zealand String Quartet: Schumann put in the shade by Shostakovich……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SCHUMANN AND SHOSTAKOVICH

The New Zealand String Quartet : Helene Pohl, Douglas Beilman (violins) / Gillian Ansell (viola) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

SCHUMANN – String Quartet in A Major Op.41 No.3

SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major Op.92 / String Quartet No.9 in E-flat Major Op.117

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St., Wellington

Saturday 28th August, 2010

Poor old Schumann! Of course he had no way of seeing Shostakovich coming when he wrote his quartets, and therefore didn’t feel the need to overtly externalise the flamboyant, turbulent side of his nature in much of his music, especially in a medium which was generally regarded as a vehicle for expression of a reasonably circumspect provenance. True, he had Beethoven’s magnificently virile example as a writer of quartets to refer to as exemplars of a more cosmic and elemental style and effect – but Schumann was no Beethoven, being a split personality far more seriously troubled by the demands of his muse and the disorders and conflicts of his inner being. His quartets are therefore imbued with quixotic contrasts between exuberance and poetic feeling, marvellously inventive, yet touchingly fallible – music very much at the mercy of performance sensibility, and thus needing from performers a sympathetic and sensitive attitude to interpretation for it to blossom and reveal its particular strengths and beauties.

These were the thoughts that coursed through my mind immediately after the concert given by the New Zealand String Quartet at which we heard Schumann’s Third String Quartet in A Minor Op.41, followed by two searing, dynamically-presented twentieth-century quartet masterpieces by Dmitri Shostakovich. On a certain level it was a case between the composers of “vive la difference!” (and the Schumann is, I admit, gradually “coming back” for me as a remembered concert listening experience), but at the time the Shostakovich works seemed to literally blow the Schumann Quartet out of the water. The group of people among which I sat were stunned at the end of the concert, by both the music and its realisation, our applause fitful to a fault, not because we didn’t appreciate the performances, but because we were more-or-less flattened by them, and wanted to sit in silence for a bit and let our sensibilities recover. Perhaps people who had heard ensembles like the Borodin Quartet play these works might have been more used to this feeling of being overwhelmed; but these were first-time concert hearings of these works for me, and I couldn’t imagine them being done more brilliantly than by this ensemble.

Some more information regarding the concert: this was one of two presentations designed to play homage to Robert Schumann during his two hundredth birth anniversary year, at which all three of the Op.41 Quartets would be presented. This being Programme One, our portion tonight was the third, and perhaps most elusive of the three, in A Major. Shostakovich was chosen by the NZSQ as a “foil” for Schumann as a quartet-writer, as there were several parallels between the two composers, which quartet-leader Helene Pohl talked eloquently about in between the two works presented in the concert’s first half. Pohl equated Schumann’s psychological duality as a personality with Shostakovich’s politically-enforced double-life, pointing out that both composers strove to reconcile these opposites in their music, while clearly and unequivocally acknowledging and characterising the differences, and the divide between them. I was intrigued at the choice of venue for this concert, wondering whether the ample acoustic of a sizeable church would tell against the characteristic intimacies of the string quartet medium, regardless of the beauty of the surroundings and the atmosphere engendered by the numerous candles placed around and about the sanctuary (this was advertised as a “quartets by candlelight” concert). I need not have worried unduly – after registering a certain “halo of warmth” around and about the sound when the performance started, I found I could discern the lines of the individual instruments quite clearly; and, in fact, I thought the Schumann quartet benefitted immeasurably from its textures being suffused with more glowing warmth than is usual.

Of Schumann’s three quartets, the Third has until now been a kind of “Cinderella” for me, one which seemed more than usually imbued by the composer’s rhythmic obsessiveness, to the work’s overall detriment. This being a judgement I made a good many years previously, I hadn’t sought out this particular work for listening to for some time; and was therefore charmed by my reacquaintance in this performance with the work’s ready lyricism and freely inventive juxtaposing of themes, skilfully realised by the players. They were able to balance most beautifully the tender lyricism of the themes’ expositions with their more forthright working-out, bringing considerable intensity and physicality to the development, but leavening the mood with their flexible and sensitive phrasings. I loved the “sigh” with which the group brought back the opening motto theme – a near-perfect encapsulation of a romantic composer’s world.

This time round I coped better with the scherzo rhythms, which were as obsessive as I remembered, but without being dry (the acoustic probably helping, here). I loved the triplets that came to the rescue of the music’s opening trajectories, and the frenetic contrapuntal energisings which threw more wistful and melancholic moments into relief. Altogether, the two middle movements I found surprisingly compelling, the slow movement quite gorgeously passionate at the outset, the viola leading the opening statements towards even more intense utterances of poetic feeling. The ghostly pulsatings that followed led to darkly-expressed agitations, so richly-coloured by the players, the acoustic imparting an almost “orchestral” ambience to the music argument, though perspectives such as the ‘cello’s wonderfully varied rhythmic pizzicati beneath the soaring lyrical lines remained in an overall “chamber” context. Perhaps the finale’s repetitive opening rhythmic motto runs the risk of becoming too much of a good thing, though Schumann contrasts the mood with tripping figures and a ritualistic round-dance, energetically characterised by the players here, who revelled in the alternations before dashing into a “last hurrah” with the motto rhythm, cranking up both its detailing and its energies for an exhilarating finish to the work.

What can one say about the performance of the Shostakovich works? – except that they were as committed and wholehearted performances of anything I’ve ever seen and heard the NZSQ do. The Fifth Quartet, completed in 1952, was one of a number of works written by Shostakovich over a number of years that had not been offered for performance until after the death of Stalin in 1953, due to the savagery of a previous attack on the composer’s music by the Soviet authorities. The Tenth Symphony was written at around the same time as the quartet, and the two works share a similar breadth and orchestral way of thinking, Shostakovich’s writing in the quartet in places creating a massive, orchestrally-conceived sound. Another link between symphony and quartet is the composer’s use of his motto, the notes DSCH (D/E-flat/C/B) which the viola plays repeatedly in the quartet’s first 12 bars.

At the outset, the NZSQ caught the droll, march-like sense of a long-breathed story about to be told. Episodes of furious activity which followed had an almost visceral, full-blooded quality, matched by the growing sense of unease and rising anxiety, like an approaching firestorm or imminent terror, relieved only by the lyrical waltz-like second subject. The conflicts and intermittent episodes of bleak calm were stunningly delineated by the players, whose focused concentration exerted a kind of surreal hypnotic trance over the auditorium’s listening body, a spell maintained without a discernable break throughout the work’s three continuous movements. Of particular note was the middle Andante movement, whose intensities were coloured by Shostakovich’s use of a melody by a student and fellow-composer, Galina Ustvolskya, with whom it was said he was “emotionally involved” – the NZSQ players demonstrated enormous physical and emotional resources energising these long-breathed intensities before hurling themselves into the final movement’s maelstrom of thematic interaction, and finally sustaining the violin-and-viola-led exhalations of bitter-sweet release that floated uneasily through and around the becalmed vistas.

The Ninth Quartet, has its own peculiar engimatic character, not least because the composer had actually written an earlier version of the work, which he destroyed in what he called “an attack of healthy self-criticism” three years earlier. Where the Fifth Quartet had come across as a brooding work punctuated with powerful, uncompromising outbursts, the Ninth sounded rather more exotic throughout many of its episodes, and certainly in the opening movement. The players gave themselves wholly to a parallel sense of ritual and unease, with sinuous melodies and oscillations at the very beginning criss-crossing over the top of spacious pedal-points. That same intense concentration carried the music unswervingly through the somewhat charged pizzicato jogtrot rhythms, and into the long-breathed elegiac utterances of the second movement than followed. The composer’s penchant for near-manic energies was given full rein by the players in the polka-like dance that sprang from the music’s hesitant pulsings, before some superbly-projected pizzicati declamations (startlingly and effectively repeated at certain cadence-points) redirected our sensibilities into the strange and somewhat grotesque territories of the final movement. The NZSQ players seemed to take us into the heart of each phrase, each succeeding episode, each abrupt change of mood, colour and pace, before throwing everything into the wild concluding dance, with its abruptly sardonic concluding gesture.

The resulting audience acclamations were as much release of pent-up feeling as deep appreciation concerning the music and its performance. It seemed to me hard on Schumann at the time, but such was the visceral and emotional impact of the Shostakovich performances that it took this listener some time to work backwards through the whole worlds of intense feeling wrought by the Russian composer’s  sharply-focused and deeply-weighted evocations towards retrieving the erstwhile beauties of the Schumann quartet’s performance. One could, fatuously at this stage, suggest that Britten’s quartets might have provided a different, and more equally-weighted set of twentieth-century parallels with those of Schumann – but such metaphysical speculation shouldn’t get in the way of acknowledging the NZSQ’s stellar achievement in realising all the music in this concert so very completely and compellingly.

Cook Strait Trio in distinguished performances

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Music Society

Turína: Piano trio no.2 in B minor, Op.76; Rebecca Clarke: Piano trio; Mendelssohn: Piano trio in D minor, Op.49

Cook Strait Trio – Blythe Press (violin), Amber Rainey (piano), Hugo Zanker (cello)

Ilott Theatre. Wellington Town Hall

Sunday, 22 August 2010, 3pm

It was a pleasure to hear this young trio again, albeit with a different cellist – this one from Canterbury, now playing in the Magdeburger Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany.  The other two are still studying, Press having completed his Bachelor’s degree at Graz, Austria, and now studying for a Master’s; Rainey is studying piano accompaniment at the Guildhall in London.

It was amazing that two piano trios made up of young players could be heard in Wellington in two days, the other being the Boyarsky Trio on Friday evening.

A confident start to the Turína work set the tone for the entire concert.  I was unfamiliar with this trio, but it had much charm in the first movement.  All three instruments were in complete accord, playing with full tone, and complete rhythmic and interpretative integrity.

The second movement featured vivace opening and closing, with a slow section in the middle.  Despite much repetition in the string parts, the piano never dominated.

The final movement was stirring and vigorous, and played with a panache which the solid technique of each of the players permitted.

Pianist Amber Rainey spoke before the Rebecca Clarke work, in which it was revealed that Hugo Zanker had only played with the other two musicians for a month.  She continued with an informative introduction to the Rebecca Clarke work, asserting that it should be played more often.  She described it as impressionistic and dissonant.  However, I didn’t entirely agree with her remark about the status of Clarke; what about Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann?

Two years ago we heard the Tawahi Trio play Rebecca Clarke in the WCMS Sunday afternoon series.  That time, it was Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale, which made a very favourable impression.  Since then, I have heard Clarke’s works on the radio a number of times, and I find that there is a Society recently created in her name, to promote her works.  Grove dismisses her as a violist, married to the pianist James Friskin.  (Probably only in the case of Schumann is a wife ever noted in writings about the husband!)

The first movement featured abrupt mood changes, and lower register passages for both strings, which produced lovely tone.  This was true in the second movement also, yielding a mysterious quality. In the third movement a sonorous piano solo was underpinned by delicate string accompaniment.  In this movement particularly, there were intriguing figures for all the instruments.  The middle section had a dreamy quality, then it was back to the sparkling opening.

The piece was interesting and skilful, and played by a group of talented young musicians, but I did not find it an endearing work.

Endearing and entrancing are, however, the words for Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor.   There was plenty of warmth and depth to this playing.  The opening agitato movement was not uneasy, like Clarke’s appassionato.

The soulful second movement was notable for the many changes in dynamics, always appropriate.  Listening to these performers, one would not guess their youth.  Amber Rainey has a compact, unfussy style of playing, and is always totally in accord with her colleagues.

The Scherzo and Finale exhibit Mendelssohn’s delightful treatment of his themes.  The latter’s ending was brilliant, especially from the piano.

This was thoroughly delectable playing of a wonderful work, completing a concert of distinguished, finely crafted performances.

All present would wish the trio well in their continuing studies.

Trio Boyarski (Ben Baker – violin) entertain with food, drink and strings

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schubert: String Trio in B flat, D 581; Beethoven: String Trio in G major, Op. 9, no. 1; Dohnanyi: Serenade, Op.10; K. Boyarski: Mosaique Musicale

Trio Boyarsky: Ben Baker(violin), Konstantin Byarsky (viola), Amelia Jakobsson-Boyarsky (cello) – Capital Theatre Productions

Old St. Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Friday, 20 August 2010, 5.30pm

About 90-100 people attended the concert; the rather odd hour prompted the organisers to sell drinks, sandwiches, muffins and chocolate bars before the concert and during the interval – an excellent idea.

While the printed programme gave plenty of information about the young performers (Ben is just 20),the works played were simply listed, with no programme notes, and not even the tempi markings of the movements.  Ben Baker gave spoken introductions to the items – very brief in the case of the Schubert, longer for the Beethoven including historical background.  The Dohnanyi and the work by the violist in the trio both received good introduction.

The concert opened with a truly lovely sound, right from the first chord of the Schubert, partly at least due to the warm wooden acoustic of the building.  There followed beautiful phrasing and shimmering tone throughout the trio.

Boyarsky’s rather small viola did not have the effulgent resonance of the violas in the NZSO, which were so highly praised by conductor Richard Gill in the Town Hall last night, but the playing, as of all three musicians, was of a very high standard indeed. It was a very enjoyable rendition.

The Beethoven began with a little more vibrato than I would have liked, in the dramatic opening chords.  But it grew into a very fine performance; assured, accurate playing. Each player had impressively fluent bowing action.

It was strange that there was little eye contact between the performers, but it didn’t seem to matter: nuances were faithfully observed.  The first two movements are sombre in mood, and if there was not always a depth of feeling apparent, this will come as the players mature.

The melodies the composer assigned to the different instruments were effectively given prominence, especially in the third movement.  In the quick finale there were beautifully graded dynamics, before the spirited ending.

Dohnanyi’s romantic Serenade contrasted with the previous two works, and the style of playing reflected this.  There was lovely tone, and good dynamic contrasts.  As in the other works, these talented young musicians were technically accomplished.

Boyarski’s work, dedicated to his wife, the cellist, made a slow build-up through low notes, followed by repeated, rapid passages leading to a slow melody, then through slow modulations to a violin melody with pizzicato accompaniment.  It traversed many moods.  There was extensive and interesting use of harmonics, and a robust cello solo.  It then livened up and became frenetic and discordant.

I wasn’t sure if ‘Mosaique’ in the title meant ‘to do with Moses’, or Mosaic as in a pattern of coloured tiles or gems – I suspect the latter.

Towards the end, the piece seemed to get bogged down, but it was an interesting and worthwhile work.

Although the addition of continuous seat cushions has made the pews in Old St. Paul’s somewhat more comfortable, the minimal depth of the seats (fine for Anglican services, where standing and kneeling are intrinsic) means they are not ideal for a full-length concert – at least, not for anyone over about five feet tall (or should that be 1.5 metres?)

Another matter to do with the audience rather than the players is the perennial one of coughing.  I would have thought that open-mouthed coughing at concerts would be a ‘no-no’ on health risk grounds as well as those of being disruptive of the music.  Cloth handkerchiefs (better as stifling tools than paper tissues) are not expensive, nor is the crook of one’s elbow.  If I can’t suppress a cough I normally endeavour to cough with a closed mouth.  It can be stressful, but it can be done, with greatly reduced volume the result.

Birthday presents from Stroma in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma – Living Toys  (10th Anniversary Concert 2010)

Thomas Adės – Living Toys (1994) / Peter Scholes – Relic (2010) / Alexandra Hay – An Island Doesn’t Either (2010) / Jeroen Speak – Silk Dialogue (VI) (2009) / Iannis Xenakis – Thalleïn (1984)

Stroma: Paula Rae (fl/pc), Peter Dykes (ob/ca), Richard Haynes (cl/bcl), Phil Green (cl), Ben Hoadley (bsn/cbsn), Ed Allen (hn), Mark Carter (tpt), Dave Bremner (tbn), Claire Harris (pf), Thomas Guldborg, Jeremy Fitzsimons (perc), Vesa-Matti Leppanen, Rebecca Struthers, Emma Barron, Kristina Zelinska (vlns), Andrew Thomas (vla), Rowan Prior (vc), Victoria Jones, Matt Cave (db), Su Yi (hps)

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington

Thursday 12th August 2010

Wellington-based contemporary music group Stroma couldn’t have chosen a more engaging and demonstrably virtuosic ensemble piece than British composer Thomas Adės’ work Living Toys, with which to commence the celebrations marking their tenth anniversary as a performing ensemble. As well as beginning the concert, the piece also gave the evening its truly apposite title, one which seemed to express something of the character of each of the works chosen by the group, an alchemic sense of something having been created in each case which then evolved a life of its own – a metaphor, of course for all artistic creation, but particularly suited to the abstract medium of music. In other ways the sense of occasion regarding the anniversary wasn’t exactly writ-large or over-inflated by the group – the printed programme sweetly featured a modest image of a single burning birthday candle, accompanied by a “thank you” note to the group’s supporters for their encouragement and attendance at concerts over the years. It was the music that did the talking and the ensemble that brought it all to life – an anniversary celebration that proclaimed that Stroma meant to go on as it had begun, the implication being an intention to deliver at least ten more years of exhilarating chamber music.

One of a number of things that was pleasing about the concert was the programming of both New Zealand and overseas works – of course the “double whammy” of such an arrangement was the tacit proclamation that (a) home-grown works could stand alongside pieces by iconic composers such as Thomas Adės and Iannis Xenakis, and (b) local musicians had the skills and interpretative capacities to tackle the best of the contemporary crop, both from home and off-shore. The New Zealand works were freshly-minted, two of them world premieres ( Peter Scholes’ Relic and Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either), and a third, Jeroen Speak’s Silk Dialogue VI, receiving its New Zealand premiere at this concert. Incidentally, two of the musicians in the ensemble played in the world premiere of this work in Australia last year, clarinettist Richard Haynes (for whom the work was written), and flutist Paula Rae, from Melbourne. Rae had to be flown in from Australia on the day before the concert to deputise for Bridget Douglas, Stroma’s regular flute-player, but alas, flu-ridden and temporarily out of action.

Thomas Adės’ 1993 work Living Toys is a kind of chamber symphony in a single movement, but with clearly-defined, often insinuating narrative episodes (a detailed note by the composer was reproduced in the programme). The piece seemed to resemble a continuous interaction of confrontation and persuasion, the sounds alternating rapidly between the two states, with the sharp bite of some of the writing a perfect foil for the lullabyic character of the contrasting episodes, befitting the work’s prefaced programme – a somewhat elliptical account of a child’s dream-fantasies that blurs the divide between sleeping and waking. The raucous squeals of delight right at the work’s beginning quickly moved into narrative mode, with arabesques rolling around a bardic horn solo, the music going on to depict a kind of subconscious Jungian unfolding of imagery involving angels, extinct bison and space-age computers (the iconic H.A.L. from the film 2001 A Space Odyssey even makes an appearance!). Then there were connecting sequences whose anagram-style titles both helped to connect and further complicated the scenario. While it might seem invidious to single out single players in a performance of such a complex ensemble work, one must particularly mention Mark Carter’s brilliant trumpet-playing during the “militia men” sequence of the piece. Conductor Hamish McKeich directed with both energy and patience, steering the players through both concerted and fractured frenzies, and the equally compelling ghostings of timbre and colour that propelled and intensified the work’s course.

On the face of things, any music following Adės’ cornucopian inventiveness might seem to have a hard time making any kind of impression; but both Peter Scholes’ Relic and Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either provided soundscapes of such a different and distinctive order that one’s ear was straightaway led to contemporary equivalents of Schumann’s “different realms” of expression. Scholes’ relatively tonal style evoked a certain exotic element in his work’s colourings and an underlying suggestion of ancient ritual in its rhythmic character. The composer indicated in a programme note a certain fascination with Middle Eastern antiquity and its manifestations, stimulated by a visit to Egypt and the prospect of working with Arabic musicians, the harp-and-drum combination that opened the piece presiding over age-old processionals, then goading the ensemble into a lively primitive-sounding dance. Interestingly, Scholes cites the Locrian mode as the dance’s melodic “key”, emulating twentieth-century composers as diverse as Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Sibelius and Britten in his use of this exotic-sounding sequence (a minor scale with the second and fifth notes lowered a semitone). I enjoyed the music’s concurrent states of mystery and clarity, judiciously worked by the composer.

Alexandra Hay’s An Island Doesn’t Either was a piece whose sounds were more hinted and suggested in effect than articulated, but as one moved into her aural world the many subtleties of timbre and colour brought innumerable impulses of delight to the careful listener. Verses written by the composer gave clues here and there as to the music’s direction, with phrases such as “chance unions are framed in watery free fall” hinting as much, one suspects, at the piece’s creative philosophical impulse as suggesting a poetic description. That tone and pitch were pared away almost to nothing created worlds of burgeoning potential involving gestures and timbres which were as likely to dissolve as coalesce, those “chance unions” given their freedom and charged with expectation at one and the same time. I enjoyed the feel of the underlying tensions which to my delight occasionally irrupted as scintillations, whose “ripples-on-a-pond” effect create resonances very much at the mercy of the same random impulses that influence our lives, whose grip upon existence on “the warm surface on this limb of archipelago” is of course as evanescent as each breath exhaled by the music that we heard. A bold and compelling work, realised by the ensemble with considerable sensitivity.

Jeroen Speak’s Silk Dialogue VI, composed in 2009, was written for and dedicated to the Australian clarinettist Richard Haynes, whom I had heard play with Stroma previously to stunning effect. This performance, more concertante- than concerto-like in effect was nevertheless astonishing in its virtuosity and sensitivity. The music reflected Speak’s current activity in both China and Taiwan, where he has worked since 2004, among other activities studying ancient Chinese music notation systems with a view to reviving some of the traditions in “new approaches to contemporary notation, instrumentation and tonality”. A feature of the new work was the use of snare drums by each player in addition to his or her own instrument, the resulting activation of percussion adding a theatrical element linked by the composer to traditional Chinese opera, as well as delineating the flow of time throughout the work. From the beginning, the music pulsed outwards and upwards, each individual burst of energy an almost systolic-like impulse countered by a gentler exhalation. These alternations gave rise to the idea of the sounds seeking light and space, inclined as they were towards buoyancy rather than weight, and accompanied by a gradual emptying-out of tonal and colouristic elements in the music. Speak’s researches into a particular aspect of Chinese notation involving a traditional instrument called the guqin (a kind of zither) emphasised his interest in the gestural aspects of the music-making, and suggested a certain kinship across centuries with independently-conceived soundscapes like those of Alexander Hay in the previous work. But the added theatricality of Speak’s music made a powerful individual impression, especially the clarinet’s increasingly desperate attempts to give voice to the growing abstractions, before resigning itself to seeming incoherencies, its gestures at the work’s end indicating a hard-wrought transition towards an even subtler language.

In attempting to sum up ten years’ worth of contemporary music performance Stroma very appropriately turned to the work of an iconic figure, Iannis Xenakis, often described as a true renaissance man because of the range and scope of his interests and activities both in music and other associated areas. His works touched every media, from acoustic, through electro-acoustic to multi-media; and his interests took in mathematics, experimental engineering, architecture and education. His work Thalleḯn for fourteen instrumentalists dates from 1984, one whose Greek title suggests growth or germination leading to organic evolution, except that the composer stipulated the exclusion of all human gesture and expression in performance, thus denying conventional musical rhetoric and emphasising “a more impersonal sound-utterance” (for instance, Xenakis wrote on the front page of the score “vibrato is not permitted”). Theoretically, the plan sounds impervious, except for its realization via the same human element in performance, which sets up all kinds of creative tensions as different attitudes on the part of both musicians and audiences kick in. Be the approach one of acceptance or denial of the composer’s visionary directives, confrontations were bound to occur between participants in the exercise – not everybody would, I expect, want to buy into the composer’s “purification of the spirit” idea as a pre-requisite to understanding or enjoying the music. There was no question as to the music’s raw power, or its ability to engage with its listeners, as the opening “no holds barred” paragraphs demonstrated. Perhaps the composer might have found Stroma’s full-blooded performance manner too engaging, too expressive, as the players certainly seemed to put their energies on the line within the instrumental “blocks” and confront one another without reserve. As with the Adės work, the soundscape was occasionally saturated, the music’s intensely physical aspect at those times both imbued with and going beyond what the programme note (Xenakis’s own?) called “the heat of the human world”. My own reaction to the music was ambivalent – such unidentifiable realms as the composer’s sounds hinted at I felt both drawn towards and repelled by almost by turns, possibly reacting to the inevitable process of recognising such gestures as the players were visibly making, and then struggling to equate my expectations with what I heard, and drawing back in search of more solid ground on which to put my feet. My enduring memory of the work is a sense of a mid-life melt-down crisis (contrasting markedly with the feeling of things thrusting upward suggested by Jeroen Speak’s work), followed by energised reawakenings of those same instrumental blocks registered earlier and their incorporation into a march-like processional, whose short-lived but unashamed theatricality occasioned brassy shouts, percussive roarings, shimmering strings and trilling winds. What was Xenakis thinking of? Drama and interaction such as this surely tends to stimulate, not eliminate, “human” gesture.

Presumably, reactions such as the above keeps the skin of music porous and moist and stimulates the heart still beating within (more human imagery? – what is this reviewer thinking of?). At the concert’s end the enthusiasm of the audience for the performances, the programming and the occasion must have gladdened the sensibilities of Stroma’s players and administrators. It struck me that people at the concert who regularly go to hear the NZSO wouldn’t have failed to register familiar faces from orchestral ranks among the ensemble’s personnel, suggesting lines of connection between what’s considered “establishment” and the newest music, and helping to break down the “that” and “this” divide which puts art in pigeonholes, to everybody’s long-term disadvantage. On that count, Stroma represents a powerful force for new music across a wider spectrum than its own performance schedules. But considering simply the ensemble itself, one looks expectantly towards the next ten years and wishes the group a similarly fruitful and richly constituted twentieth anniversary celebration.

NZSM student woodwinds at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Woodwind Soloists from the New Zealand School of Music

 

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

 

Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 12.15pm

 

Woodwind in name only; there was no wood in evidence – there were silver flutes and brass saxophones. 

Naturally, there were varying levels of achievement amongst the students featured, but they all gave a good account of themselves.  Throughout the concert (there was only one unaccompanied item), piano accompaniments were sensitively and musically provided by Emma Sayers, in a wide variety of pieces.

The students apparently were required to give a spoken introduction to their pieces.  It is a pity that they (and their tutors!) are not given more help with doing this.  They need to be encouraged to project their voices.  St Andrew’s is a large, resonant space, so anyone speaking without amplification must talk more loudly and slowly than some did at this concert, otherwise there is no point at all in speaking.

 

Quite a proportion of the people who attend the lunch-hour concerts are elderly and have less hearing than the young do.  It is very frustrating for them if they cannot hear what is said.  Some performers treated the spoken introduction as something to be got over quickly, while a few, notably Julia Deverall, provided plenty of background in her remarks, and spoke clearly and not too quickly.

 

A lack in the programme was that no dates were given for the composers, and although some of the players gave dates for the compositions they performed, for others, we were left in the dark as to when the composers flourished.

 

The first performer, Chloe Schnell on the flute, spoke clearly but a little too quietly.  Her piece, Black Anemones by Joseph Schwanter was very impressionistic and featured a lovely piano accompaniment.  It was played well with excellent tone, although the breathing was a little noisy.

 

Dubois (1930-1995) was the next composer, of A l’Espagnole for alto saxophone, played by Katherine Maciaszek, who announced her piece with much better projection.  The music was bright, jazzy, fast, and off-beat, and the performance thoroughly convincing.

 

Sehr Langsam from sonata for flute and piano by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was performed by Monique Vossen.  We heard her introduction well; the piece turned out to be reflective and gloomy (rather than the predicted ‘doomy’), but enjoyable, and well communicated.

 

Back to alto saxophone for ‘Vif’ from Scaramouche by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974); a typically lively piece of the composer’s works for winds.  It was played very well, with plenty of light and shade.  The spoken introduction started clearly, but unfortunately Emma Hayes-Smith then lowered her voice and sped up so as to become unintelligible.

 

Adagio from Concerto for flute and orchestra by Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) was the choice of Anna Newth.  This was a very romantic piece, beautifully played.  Her introduction was a little soft, but intelligible from my seat, about five rows from the front.

 

Flamenco Jazz for solo baritone saxophone was the work played by Geraint Scott.  It was composed by Englishman Paul Harvey, who, we were told in the rather rapid introduction, lived in Spain for a considerable time.  The fusion between flamenco and jazz was interesting, but there was little dynamic variation in the performance.

 

John Ritchie (b.1921) wrote The Snow Goose in 1982, based on the famous Paul Gallico story from World War II, we were told in Julia Deverall’s exemplary introduction.  This gorgeous piece for flute and piano was extremely well played with good attention to dynamics, though occasionally noisy breathing.

 

American Paul Creston (1906-1985) wrote a sonata for alto saxophone and piano, the ‘With Vigour’ movement from which was chosen by Reuben Chin.  It was written in 1939, the performer’s rather too quiet introduction informed us.  It was tastefully played with plenty of subtlety, and light and shade.

 

Despite my criticisms of the way in which items were introduced, this was an interesting and pleasing presentation of work from the wind students, who have reached a considerable level of accomplishment. 

 

 

 

Violin Sonata spectacular at Lower Hutt: Hall and Muir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music Hutt Valley; Amalia Hall (violin) and John-Paul Muir (piano) 

 

Sonata for violin and piano: Mozart’s in E minor, K 304; Fauré’s No 1 in A, Op 13; Brahms’s No 1 in G minor, Op 78; Debussy’s in G minor, Lesure 140

 

Lower Hutt Little Theatre

 

Tuesday 10 August at 8pm

 

The second to last in the concert series of Lower Hutt’s chamber music organization featured two young musicians, still in the midst of studies, now overseas. Yet their programme made no concessions to youth and imagined inexperience for both players have played together, sporadically, for at least three years and are much at ease on the recital platform.

 

Before I proceed however, it is worth noting the amount of music, particularly chamber music, that happens outside of Wellington city itself. All of it deserves the attention of those who live in other parts of the metropolitan area; one of the reasons for my quitting reviewing for the Dominion Post was its ban on the coverage of performances outside the city, along with other frustrations.

 

There is the particularly successful, and often adventurous series at Waikanae, a smaller but excellent series at Upper Hutt and the quirky Mulled Wine concerts at Paekakariki which sometimes extends beyond the strictly ‘classical’ field. With train services reasonably convenient for Upper Hutt and Paekakariki, and soon for Waikanae (but sadly not for Lower Hutt), there need be no fear of traffic or parking problems.

 

The Lower Hutt Little Theatre is a more attractive venue than it was; the piano does have certain shortcomings but the acoustic should not be subjected to the sort of comment that I sometimes hear. It is clear and lively.

 

We heard four sonatas, all central to the repertoire. The Mozart is one of a Paris-published set that follows a two-movement pattern, copying the form from composer Joseph Schuster. For the 22-year-old, it shows amazing confidence and maturity: minor key, more than usual prominence to the violin, with invention and treatment of melodic ideas with strength and individuality.

 

Nevertheless, Amalia Hall played her opening phrases with studied diffidence and hesitancy alongside the bold and confident piano of her partner. Yet as they played together he modified his dynamics to match hers. It’s not to say her playing is routinely self-effacing, for it was often full-bodied and generous, and always alert to the needs of every phrase, with scrupulous use of vibrato. In fact her vibrato showed her attention to the emotion and meaning of every phrase; it was not simply a routine shake.

 

John Paul Muir performed some kind of unusual rhythmic turn in the very first bars of Fauré’s sonata that hinted at a slip, but I remained uncertain of what I heard. There was no doubt about is feeling for this music however, in which he again applying clearly contrasting dynamics to his role in response to the violin’s needs. The piece is filled with the seductive melody that Fauré lavished on his early works, and the pair played rhapsodically, taking every chance to discover fresh nuances; and especially in the slow movement Muir evinced an endless curiosity, constantly seeking to find what might be behind the plain notes on the page. Dynamic delicacy led him to give occasional emphasis to certain notes, making the accompaning violin part even more interesting and charming. I felt there was more exploratory curiosity than plain ‘vivo’ in the scherzo movement. Here I wondered at the odd blurred note from the piano, whether its action is a bit heavy to respond reliably to soft, fast repeated notes; and there were a few blemishes in the last movement from the piano.

 

The order in the printed programme of the sonatas in the second half was reversed. They played first the Brahms, then Debussy.

 

If Fauré was the French Brahms (as has been remarked, with that disagreeable hint of German condescension), then let me call Brahms’s first violin sonata, with its rhapsodic charm, a work of the German Fauré.  Much as Muir’s playing was imaginative and filled with an exploratory sense, there were times when his penchant for emphasis of particular notes and phrases was misplaced, and I felt that here a difference of maturity was evident; the shy, quieter passages were not what they might have been.

 

In the second movement Hall captured its profound meditative beauty, and the last movement which is no bold heroic finale, was again the opportunity to be touched by her ability to sustain long melodic lines filled with genuine emotion.

 

I found myself, first, simply filled with wonder at the remarkable assurance and level of melodic and rhythmic originality in Debussy’s sonata, hardly paying attention to the playing itself. Happily, it dawned on me that my wonder at Debussy was the fruit of the performance itself. It (the composition) was assured and confident because, even in pain, Debussy’s genius did not desert him and his sure feeling for shapes and harmonies created something that sounds perfectly inevitable and natural even though it had moved so far from the sounds of most of his contemporaries: even in the terrible war years that distressed Debussy so profoundly.

 

Though the piano was still inclined to overemphasis, it became clear why they had decided to end with Debussy. For the playing by both artists captured the playfulness of the Intermède, and the restrained animation., the scintillating finale, was an uplifting experience, filled with gaiety, flippancy, wonder and breathlessness (to borrow from the programme notes).

 

Just in case the audience were in any doubt about sheer virtuosity, they encored with Sarasate’s Gypsy Dances, which was overwhelming, evidence of the violinist’s skill as well as her sheer musicianship.