Tag: chamber music

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.

 

 

Martin Jaenecke and Cheryl Grice-Watterson at St Andrew’s for lunch

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Music by De Gant, Debussy, Ravel, Piazolla, Chopin, Villa–Lobos and Dyens

Duo Mosaica: Martin Jaenecke (violin and soprano saxophone) and Cheryl Grice-Watterson (guitar)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 4 August 2010, 12.15pm

A German violinist (and saxophone player) and an English guitarist both emigrated to New Zealand.  The result is, in part, this delightful duo.  Both players are highly skilled professional musicians, and their relaxed playing, with a few spoken introductions, revealed their enjoyment of music-making. Hearing a guitarist of this standard was quite a revelation.

Their programme spanned the centuries, from the seventeenth (Loeillet de Gant’s charming Sonata) to the twentieth (Roland Dyens).  It included transcriptions (Chopin: Valse opus 34; Debussy: La fille aux cheveux de lin, amusingly misprinted to mean horses rather than hair), a work written for guitar solo (Villa-Lobos: Prelude no.2) as well as Piazolla: ‘Two Tangos’ from Histoire du Tango, played by both instruments. 

The solo featured exquisitely played harmonics; the Piazolla’s tangos were full of atmosphere and colour.

The surprise was to hear Villa-Lobos’s famous aria Bachianas Brasileiras no.5 played on guitar with the vocal line played by Jaenecke on soprano saxophone.  The tone of the saxophone was somewhat too loud for the guitar at times.  The guitarist used subtle amplification throughout the concert, presumably to match the volume of the instruments better, but it was always tasteful, and apart from in this work, the balance was just right.

The final item, Tango EN SKAI, by Dyens, was a jazz number which also featured the saxophone, and ended the recital in an upbeat mood.

Amici’s beautiful French programme at Upper Hutt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Upper Hutt Music Society: Amici Ensemble (Donald Armstrong, Cristina Vaszilcin, Gillian Ansell, Rowan Prior, Philip Green, Bridget Douglas, Carolyn Mills)

 

Two Interludes (Ibert), Quintet for Clarinet and Strings (Françaix), Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (Debussy), Three Pieces for String Quartet (Stravinsky), Introduction and Allegro (Ravel)

 

Expressions Theatre, Upper Hutt

 

Tuesday 3 August 8pm

 

I missed Amici’s concert in Wellington Chamber Music’s Sunday series at the end of May so was delighted to be able to hear this engaging programme in what I repeatedly refer to as the most attractive concert venue in metropolitan Wellington.

 

There was only one change from the Wellington programme – the substitution of Jean Françaix’s clarinet quintet for Ross Harris’s new piece that the Wellington organization commissioned.

 

This group with varying membership, led by NZSO Associate Concertmaster Donald Armstrong, is a particularly valuable feature of Wellington’s musical life, for chamber music is so dominated by the string quartet and the piano trio that audiences have come to feel that all else is inferior.

 

I discovered the truth in my teens when in one of the surprising by-products of compulsory military training an Air Force colleague introduced me to the lovely Debussy and Ravel pieces that feature the harp in different configurations – respectively the Danse sacrée et danse profane and the Introduction and Allegro; the latter brought the present concert to an end. Debussy’s other piece with harp, played here, I discovered many years later. Sadly, while there are many beautiful pieces for string quartet plus other instruments, particularly winds, the harp continues to have a thin time of it.

 

So the Debussy and Ravel pieces were at the heart of this concert and were separated in the second half by Stravinsky’s rarely played quirky, diverting pieces for string quartet which was an adroit move.

 

Violist Gillian Ansell introduced the Debussy nicely, with illustrations of the motifs in the first and second movements, always an excellent way to prepare the mind to follow the course of unfamiliar music.

 

My first thought as it began was how miraculous Debussy’s music still sounds when juxtaposed with most other music of its time and after. Of course the Stravinsky piece is evidence to the contrary, also written during the first World War, but the two pieces in the first half, charming and interestingly written as they were, seemed not to have imbibed much from their great compatriot who cultivated tonality with originality and wit, ignoring the arid, artificial procedures that some contemporaries were alienating audiences with.

 

In the first movement, rather enigmatically called Pastorale given its Boulevard Saint-Michel flavour, these brilliant players gave vivid expression to the spare themes that are innately decorative and contain their own intrinsic development, needing no further embellishment; just an uncanny genius for turning from one to another with ingenuity and an unerring feeling for their relationships. The second movement contains more extended ideas and its discursiveness did offer an ‘Interlude’ of greater repose. The ensemble’s performance, with flute assuming the violin’s usual role in chamber music, made it a brilliantly cut gem where all three players were so in accord.

 

The Ravel was the only piece employing all seven players and it is a pity that such a singularly attractive blend has not become a standard. It is a remarkable, virtuosic as well as perfectly idiomatic piece for all the players, particularly Carolyn Mills strong and brilliant display on the harp; and again, the performance was simply of recording quality, so finely balanced, so together, so lively, graceful, elegant.

 

An encore involving all seven was not easy to find: Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on Greensleeves fitted admirably.

 

Their achievement is no doubt the combination of years of orchestral discipline and a great deal of playing in small chamber groups where they can hear and respond to everything so clearly.

 

The first half was devoted to two much later French pieces, post second World War; they were obviously influenced by their great predecessors, but some way below them in musical profundity and imagination.

 

The Ibert of Escales or the Divertissement is really rather more interesting than these harmless though highly expressive pieces; the second ‘Interlude’, more purposeful, allowed more of Ibert’s liveliness to show.

 

The Françaix quintet was, naturally, a more serious effort, but the character of its raw material and its treatment does not suggest a neglected masterpiece. It was very much a piece that celebrated the clarinet, allowing Philip Green the spotlight with a great deal of entertaining work; in an interesting feature in the last movement, the clarinet departed from the general jaunty pattern to follow a much slower, independent path till a brilliant cadenza led it back to the main route.

 

Happily, the entire performance was so polished and filled with energy that it was possible to overlook the music’s less memorable features. The entire concert was extremely accomplished and hugely enjoyable.

 

 

Superb Aroha Quartet in the Sunday Series

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Beethoven: String Quartet Op 18 No 1; Tan Dun: Eight Colours for String Quartet; Britten: String Quartet No 3, Op 94

The Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu, Anne Loeser, Zhongxian Jin, Robert Ibell).

Sunday afternoon, 1 August

Since its formation about six years ago the Aroha Quartet has gained a place close to the New Zealand String Quartet for its intuitive musicality and virtuosity.  Their previous performances in this series and for Chamber Music New Zealand around the country have left no doubt about their quality and so it was a little surprising to find the 300-seat Ilott Theatre little more than half full: the weather; the Film Festival; too much other music?

The quartet has adopted a new second violinist temporarily replacing Beiyi Xue; she seems to have slipped gracefully into the sound world that distinguishes the quartet.

Beethoven’s first set of string quartets, written aged about 28, show him mature and confident, disposed to make big demands of players, though not departing significantly from the form and musical style of his time.

In some music, played by some quartets one struggles to pay attention to the work of individual players, but the striking individuality of these players sometimes distracted me from attention to the bigger picture. That did not mean any lack of a unified view of the music, of homogeneity, for the integrity of the whole persisted through the perfect command of rhythms and the sense of flow and the meaning of whole paragraphs. Here it was the viola that captured my ear first and at many later stages, but the cello’s alert and lively contributions also stood out. The slow second movement is a remarkable creation and the quartet played it with a rare fastidiousness, with its singular pauses extended to create an uncanny feeling of anticipation, utterly unhurried.

Every movement in fact carried delights and surprises that are not routinely to be found with such familiar music.

Tan Dun’s Eight Colours brought us face to face with modernity; not a particularly abrasive kind, though the first section, Peking Opera, took the instruments’ capacities to extremes, with some use of ‘extended’ techniques like heavy bowing to produce harsh sounds. In the second section, Shadows, the cello and viola brought more comfort with their more lyrical, bowed passages.
The piece was written when the composer was about 28, his first after reaching New York and it reflects both Chinese and Western forms.

The titles seemed arbitrary; I paid no attention to them during the performance and afterwards was surprised that the music had suggested so little of what they hinted at, though the glissandi in Pink Actress might have been diverting. Black Dance did indeed feature a nice little dancing idea, leading to descending glissandi and hard, rapid pizzicato from the viola. Black as in evil or in nocturnal?

Perhaps the most visible, for the literally-minded, might have been the low-set cello opening of Cloudiness, and the later descending cello phrases that might have described an aircraft descending through cloud.

The second half was devoted to an important work that I had not heard live before. It was written in Britten’s last year, 1975. Robert Ibell who talked a little about it before playing had led me to expect a more tragic or despairing quality, but in spite of references in the last movement to motives from Death in Venice, it emerged as strong and life-affirming, if elegiac and profoundly thoughtful.

In particular, it again offered proof of the striking gifts of the first violinist, Haihong Liu, whose every solo passage illuminated the music so vividly. Though she has not quite the strong musical personality of her leader, Anne Loeser’s contributions matched the ensemble with her acute feeling for style and musical shape.

Certainly there were a few angry moments, as towards the end of the first movement, but much more music that was seriously absorbing and pretty sanguine. Of influences, Britten offers few hints, such is his strength and originality. But the opening of the third movement, Solo, in many ways the heart of the piece, Shostakovich was present, in a sense of disconnection and loss; again, the viola was prominent in carrying a long melodic idea and then an accompanying passage where its powerful cross-string motif actually dominates the scene.

The form was interesting: the scherzo divided to frame the middle movement, so disguising its basic four movements. So the last movement, Recitative and Passacaglia, like the third, is substantial, with important utterances, that again expose the strengths of each individual player. The combination of tonal expression, rich musical content and some kind of reminiscence of string quartet origins suggested nothing less than the world of Beethoven. 

It may have contained two works from the last quarter century but the whole was a concert of very great interest and satisfaction. I only hope one of the reasons for the small attendance was not the programme.

Christchurch scores at Schools Chamber Music Contest

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chamber Music New Zealand: New Zealand Community Trust Chamber Music Contest, 2010 National Finals

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 31 July, 7.00pm

As well as providing an exciting contest, the annual finals made for a most enjoyable concert and a varied programme of music from young amateurs.  But make no mistake, this was music-making to a very high standard, some of it on a professional level.

Some of the combinations of instruments were unusual.  The first group, from St Cuthbert’s College in Auckland, played violin, piano and clarinet  performing four of the five movements of Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat Suite.  The three girls’ handsome red and black outfits were appropriate to their name: Diable.  Sometimes the other instruments were a little too loud for the violin, but this was very competent playing of difficult music.  The first movement March was given a suitably acerbic tone, while the Petit Concert was bright and rhythmic.  The Tango-Valse-Rag incorporated a variety of well-executed techniques for the violinist.  Although there was less clarinet in this movement, her part featured sliding notes, expertly played.  The fifth movement, Danse du Diable, was pretty demanding.  Both A and B flat clarinets were employed in the work.

Another Auckland trio followed, named Alpine Trio; their work was Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock.   It was good to have a singer in the finals; something I haven’t heard for years.  Nor have I heard this beautiful work on the concert platform for a long, long time.  Clarinet and voice both performed from memory, and all the musicians were in command of a difficult work.  The fine soprano’s low notes tended to disappear, and once or twice she ran out of breath.  The performance was a little pedantic, and perhaps needed to be more romantic, but towards the end the players seemed to relax and ended with rubato.  Overall, it was a very enjoyable rendering of beautiful music.

The Roseberry Trio, also from Auckland, tackled challenging music that is nevertheless quite well-known: movements 2 and 4 from Shostakovich’s Piano Trio no. 2 in E minor.  The young cellist, Sally Kim, played with great vigour and a robust sound.  She was the only performer on the night to play in two groups, though there were others doing this in the two semi-finals held the previous day.  In reply to my question later, she told me she was 15 years old.  All three players had marvellous technique.  The violin pizzicato was sensational at the opening of the fourth movement, then the cello joined in doing the same, with the piano playing a sombre unison theme.  This work is pretty full-on for all three players.  There were gorgeous ripples from the piano, great attention to detail, and a lovely ending to the work.

This trio provoked great applause from the audience, and in a normal concert they would undoubtedly have come back for a return bow.  The players from these last two groups comprised three from Westlake Girls’ High School, one from Westlake Boys’ High School, and one each from Kingsway College from St Cuthbert’s College.

Next it was the turn of Christchurch, with four Burnside High School students in a group named Sw!tch performing Philip Norman’s delightful Short Suite, on SATB saxophones.  They made a lovely sound; their timing was absolutely unanimous, as were their dynamics.  The characteristics of the five movements were beautifully portrayed; the first jolly and fast, the second slower and thoughtful, the third jaunty and spiky, the fourth sombre, in a minor key, and the fifth fast, agitated and rich-toned.  It was not a great surprise when this group took out the KBB award for woodwind, brass or percussion performance.

They were followed by the Genzmer Trio, also from Christchurch, with two of the three players from Burnside High School.  Apparently the musicians: flute, bassoon and piano, Googled to find music for their combination, and came upon the German composer Harald Genzmer, and his trio for their instruments, composed in 1973.  They were able to locate a copy of the music, and worked on it largely on their own.

A most attractive first movement revealed the excellent balance and ensemble of this group.  While there was not as much eye contact between the pianist and the wind players as there was between the latter two, this did not seem to matter.  An andante second movement and a very fast finale demonstrated all the considerable skills of the performers.  They gave a great account of this appealing work, and made us like it.  It was hard to believe that these were school students: pianism of a very high order from Saline Fisher and very fine playing from Hugh Roberts (flute) and Todd Gibson-Cornish (bassoon) had the audience totally involved.  They were worthy winners of the Contest.

Finally, the Euphonious Quartet (three from Westlake Girls’ High School and one from St Cuthbert’s College) performed.  The girls all wore beautiful yellow dresses and silver sandals (not the practical flat shoes of other groups).  They chose the first and fourth movements of Dvořák’s well-known ‘American’ string quartet.  Euphonious it was, but the performers were perhaps handicapped by playing something so familiar, where any slight errors are more noticeable.

These were two fast movements, putting the players on their mettle.  In the opening movement the viola had some intonation errors.  Other wise, accuracy and tone were good, although the tone was not as mellow as one usually hears in this work.  Dynamics were well observed.   The cellist was exceptional, as she was in the Shostakovich.  The first violin melodies in the fourth movement were played superbly.

After all the competing groups had performed, the winning original composition ‘Mr Gengerella’ was played by its composer, Finn Butler on piano, with Rowena Rushton-Green, violin, and Rosalind Manowitz, flute, performing as ‘Shady Groove’, from Logan Park High School in Dunedin.  This was a very accomplished work, with plenty of ideas and subtleties.

At times the piano was a little too loud for the other instruments, but Finn is certainly a fine pianist, and there was plenty of light and shade.  This is a work that deserves being heard again.  It had complexity, but not for its own sake.  The performers all did well in communicating the music.

As well as speeches from CMNZ president June Clifford, Peter Dale representing the principal sponsor New Zealand Community Trust, Minister for the Arts Chris Finlayson and CMNZ Chief Executive Euan Murdoch, and Julie Sperring of SOUNZ, and presentations of the SOUNZ original Composition award, the KBB Award for the best wind group and the award to the members of the winning group, there was the award of the Marie Vanderwart Memorial Award to long-serving string teacher and chamber music coach from Hawke’s Bay, Marian Stronach (a friend of mine from primary and secondary school and Teachers’ College days in Dunedin).   Euan Murdoch had the pleasure of announcing that James Wallace had decided that very evening that his Arts Trust prize for each member of the winning ensemble should be doubled to $2000.

The judges for the contest were Bridget Douglas  (principal NZSO flute), Wilma Smith (former NZ String Quartet member and former NZSO concertmaster, now in the same role in Melbourne) and Michael Houstoun (leading pianist).  Bridget Douglas spoke about what the judges were looking for in awarding the KBB prize, and Wilma Smith spoke on behalf of all the judges about the main award.  She said that they were unanimous in their decision, and that she considered the level this year better than she had heard it before.  She said the judges were looking for maturity, passion, commitment, good ensemble but also good solo playing, and that the players knew when to bring their instrument forward.  She mentioned ability to characterise the music, phrasing, understanding the idiom of the piece, and communicating it to the audience.  She said they considered that the winning group demonstrated all these qualities.

In interviews broadcast the following day, Michael Houstoun reiterated Wilma Smith’s remark that some of the groups tackled music that was beyond the level of their maturity and life experience: The Shostakovich and the Dvořák were probably particularly in mind here.

As Michael Houstoun said, this was a happy evening.