Tag: chamber music

Douglas Lilburn – Suite for Solo Viola

Cesar Franck – Sonata for Violin and Piano

Donald Maurice (viola)

Rupa Maitra (violin) / Ching-Fen Lee (piano)

New Zealand School of Music

Lunchtime Concert, Adam Concert Room

Friday 16th July 2010

Having already played Douglas Lilburn’s Suite for Solo Viola at a recent St.Andrew’s lunchtime concert, violist Donald Maurice decided to make further amends for the work’s previous neglect in recital by performing the suite again, at the Adam Concert Room on the Victoria University campus. This brought the work’s total of performances in this country to three, including the New Zealand premiere in 1989, played by Michael Vidulich in Auckland. This second performance by Donald Maurice was, I thought, more confidently and securely voiced than the first, undoubtedly the fruit of the player having brought the work up to performance pitch a second time in a short while, and living with the music close at hand in the interim. I’m sure my own increased familiarity with the music also contributed to the sense I felt of the work being given a deeper, richer aspect this time round, as was my own appreciation of what the composer was able to achieve writing for what must have been for him a relatively unfamiliar instrument. It must have been one he thought well of, enough to write within a few years a second piece featuring the viola, this time in duet with a baritone voice, the Three Songs of 1958.

As noted with the earlier performance, the first movement’s poco lento allowed the instrument’s magnificently rich and uniquely melancholy tones full opportunity to sing –  Lilburn’s blend of folk-lyricism and austerity reminded me this time round of some of Holst’s writing in works like his Lyric Movement for strings and solo viola. In contrast, the following movement’s “Quick” evoked the dance, with lovely reminiscences of the Scherzo of the composer’s Second Symphony, and spiky double-stopped seconds flavouring the melodic line, with a quirkily-slurred pizzicato note to finish the piece. I thought the succeeding piece “Lightly” enigmatic and ambivalent on first hearing, this time registering the music’s insistence and scarcely repressed nervous energy, perhaps denoting some anxiety on the composer’s part at the time of writing – though the piece seems to gradually ritualise its insistence with dance-like measures that finish on a more lyrical, even sombre note (all beautifully and vividly characterised by the player, I thought).

The fourth movement became, of course, the work’s prodigal son, revealing itself only in the performance by the dedicatee Jean McCartney’s grandson, James Munro, in Australia, in 2002. Regardless of whether the composer completed the serialist tone-row sequence he’d set out to do, the music has “other lives” involving effects created by a recitative-like tone punctuated by expressive trills and irruptions of rhythmic patterning. The intervals of the tone-row themselves expressed an interesting “adventure-sequence”, coincidentally in line with the idea of a work rediscovered after being lost in an ambient wilderness. The finale’s flowing ritual was nicely brought out at the beginning, Donald Maurice tightening up the textures and patternings of the music splendidly as the movement progressed, even if the occasional quicker figuration showed some intonation edginess at the tops of the phrases. My impression, after the music had finished, was of a journey well worth making, and with the opportunity to hear the work repeated in such a short space of time nothing short of a godsend.

More analytical minds than mine might well have been able to establish connections between the two works scheduled for this concert, with the Lilburn work followed by Cesar Franck’s full-blooded, overtly passionate Violin Sonata, played by Rupa Maitra, with Ching-Fen Lee on the piano. All I could think of was “vive la difference” as I listened to this gorgeous work unfold at the hands of two very skilful and committed musicians. The work’s opening phrases were beautifully floated, the violinist, though smallish-toned, demonstrating just enough variation to lead our ears onwards; while the pianist kept the music’s poise and gravity to the fore, not letting the feeling spill over at too early a stage. As well, occasional touches of portamento gave Rupa Maitra’s playing a slightly old-worldly air, in keeping with the late-romantic atmosphere the players were generating so well – both the culminating phrase of the “big theme” and the last ascent to the top note at the movement’s end were delivered with just the right amount of weight to realise the pent-up emotion of the music, which of course, surged and overflowed throughout the following allegro. Both musicians dug into the music splendidly, even if the violinist’s intonation occasionally went awry under pressure. The central declamations from both musicians were passionate and involved, and the coda was nicely prepared for, very “charged” at the start, and then excitingly negotiated.

The slow movement’s opening has an almost Shakespearean quality of utterance, both musicians catching the improvisatory and volatile air of the dialogue, and heightening the exchanges with well-timed breath-catchings of great stillness. They also beautifully coloured the finale’s second subject precursor, which stole in for its first appearance, before giving way to the great falling-interval theme that dominates the second half of this movement, here played juicily and whole-heartedly by Rupa Maitra, and supported with rich, spacious tones from pianist Ching-Fen Lee. The finale began sweetly, the canonic theme light and supple at first and gathering weight, with both violinist and pianist suitably trenchant when required, Rupa Maitra surviving an off-colour falling-theme episode which steadfastedly refused to find the note (her previous announcement of the same theme, a few phrases earlier, had been nicely in-tune, such are the anomalies of performance). But recovery was assured and easeful, as the opening theme returned and built gradually towards the “swinging” coda, thrills and spills adding to the excitement of reaching that final unison A – an enjoyable, and at times, stirring performance.

Eyal Kless (violin)

with Catherine McKay (piano)

and Vesa-Matti Leppanen (violin)

Mozart  Sonata in B flat for piano & violin KV 378

Prokofiev – Sonata for 2 Violins in C Major Op.56

Grieg Sonata No. 3 in C minor for piano & violin Op. 45

Aleksey Igudesman – The Crazy Bride

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Friday 9th July 2010

Wellington’s lunchtime concert enthusiasts were given a real treat by visiting Israeli violinist Eyal Kless, who combined forces with both pianist Catherine McKay and fellow-violinist Vesa-Matti Leppanen for what seemed almost like an impromptu and all but unheralded concert, one which certainly deserved more advocacy that it actually received. With sterling support from both his partners throughout the concert, Eyal Kless readily demonstrated the qualities suggested by the snippets of publicity which came my way – “a dynamic and versatile musician” for example – and gave his audience a real sense of his “rich recital and chamber music career”, which involves performing in many places around the world. Eyal currently teaches in Manchester and in Tel Aviv, and besides concerts he gives lectures and masterclasses involving such diverse topics as stage-fright, as well as violin technique. He’s also a sought-after jurist for various international competitions.

The varied programme began with a Mozart Sonata for Violin and Piano KV 378, a work of richly-wrought textures and and wonderfully interactive detailings. Pianist Catherine McKay’s expressively nuanced playing of the very opening of the work drew a like response from the violinist, and cast an aura of contentment over the listening spaces, both musicians relishing their opportunities to fully explore the music’s strength and subtle elasticity. For our pleasure (and presumably for their own) the musicians observed the first-movement repeat, after which there was tension and excitement aplenty generated by the development’s minor-key mood, with the pianist’s forthright attack during the great outbursts matched by the violinist’s equally-focused playing. After this, the recapitulation of the sonata’s opening measures brought from both instruments rich and glowing B-flat colourings to the final bars.

Although the piano seemed at first to take the melodic lead in the slow movement, the violin judiciously added a countervoice, sometimes a simple sustained note colouring the phrase. Then it was the violin’s turn with the second subject, very operatic in effect, with a beautifully flowing accompaniment from the piano, both of the instrumentalists through all of this registering and delivering the music’s ebb and flow. The finale wasn’t at all rushed, the players pointing the rhythms nicely to keep the momentum going, but generating a lot of “schwung” in the minor-key episode. Some fairy-light triplet-playing scampered deftly to the treble-tops before returning the music to the rondo-theme with a nice “rounded-off” sense of homecoming.

Vesa-Matti Leppanen then joined Eyal Kless for a performance of Prokofiev’s Sonata for 2 Violins, written by the composer in 1932, and described by Prokofiev’s son Sviatoslav as “lyrical, playful, fantastic and violent, in turn”. The players brought out the music’s exploratory, improvisatory character at the beginning, the harmonies very bittersweet, and the lines in places ethereal and stratospheric, happily with Eyal Kless’s playing in particular fully up to the challenge. Both musicians dug into the pungent rgencies of the second movement, dovetailing their lines skilfully, and enjoying the canonic interplay throughout a trio-like section of the music. The third movement’s graceful, “other-worldly’ melancholy provided a telling contrast with the dance-like opening of the finale, with its rapid-fire exchanges between the players – if intonation occasionally slipped under pressure, such as during parts of the “whirling dervish” conclusion, it mattered not a whit to the spirit of the dance.

Violinist and pianist rejoined forces for a performance of Grieg’s C Minor Sonata which certainly flung down the gauntlet at the opening with passionate, full-blooded utterances, even if I imagined those melismatic phrases at the beginning sounding somewhat earthier, with stronger, more “dug-in” articulation. Throughout, the music’s episodes of great agitation were contrasted well with moments of wonderful stasis, the performers having the ability to “fuse” both the lyrical and dramatic moments into a coherent shape. The composer’s characteristically piquant harmonic shifts were again evident at the slow movement’s piano-opening, here beautifully played by Catherine McKay and richly rejoined by her violinist-partner. They captured the gypsy-volatility of the music’s middle section, before delivering the big tune’s reprise with melting sweetness, and a burst of great emotion throughout the double-stopped octave violin passage almost at the end, the violinist unfortunately besmirching his final note in some way and looking annoyed with himself as a result!

The concert concluded with another violin duo work, Kless joining forces once again with Vesa-Matti Leppanen to bring an entertaining piece of almost music-theatre to life, a work by Aleksey Igudesman called The Crazy Bride. The music worked in tandem with a number of racy spoken descriptions by Kless of a Jewish wedding at which the people and events are somewhat larger-than-life!  Consequently, there was never a dull or drab moment, the music seeming to delineate a run of events where crisis followed crisis (I’m told, however, that weddings tend to bring out extremes of whatever in people), the whole akin to having a dramatised wall-to-wall sequence of Monteverdi’s most emotionally candid madrigals. Kless and Leppanen enjoyed themselves hugely and conveyed such a strongly-flavoured sense of occasion that the archetypal characters in the scenario came to life before our eyes. Even though most of the audience was probably outside the tradition looking in, what seemed like the “Jewishness” of it all, music, movement, gesture and feeling was conveyed with strength, vigour, humour and ultimately, affection. Best of all I liked the Wedding Dance, with its gradual accelerando style set against an emotion-laden middle section whose poise and depth of feeling spoke volumes amid all the hilarity and showmanship.

Josef Špaček (violin) and Michael Houstoun (piano)

Violin Sonatas by Martinů (No 1), Janáček and Beethoven (Op 30 No 2) and solo Violin Sonata in E, Op 27 No 6 (Ysaÿe)

Wellington Town Hall

Monday 5 July

This concert in Chamber Music New Zealand’s evening series was co-promoted with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra: part of the first prize in last year’s Michael Hill International Violin Competition.

One has to confess that, far from offering a brilliant young violinist – still only 23 – a platform for performance that he might still be struggling to establish, the benefits are surely entirely in the other direction. For winning the contest obliged a player already with an international career, to play in Motueka and Whakatane, Waikanae and New Plymouth: hardly necessary for one who has already played in many of the world’s famous halls and with many of the great orchestras and conductors.

Špaček is a fully-rounded and superbly schooled musician, a case where a more ordinary mortal wonders, on reading that he studies at the Juilliard School with Itzhak Perlman, what on earth even a Perlman might have to teach him. When he can bring forth music from the fantastic galaxy of cascading notes that litter Ysaÿe’s solo sonatas. For this was the first time I have heard one of these post-Paganini extravagances brought to life as a complete and beautifully formed musical gem.

His encore, Henri Vieuxtemps’s riotous handling of Yankee Doodle (Souvenir d’Amérique, variations burlesques sur ….) was another example of fireworks in which he turned a perhaps vapid show-piece into an exhilarating, thrilling farewell offering. . 

To follow the Isaÿe piece with Beethoven’s beautiful and somewhat melancholy Sonata in C minor was, first, the mark of a perceptive and original programme builder, but more significantly, a demonstration of an artistic maturity that the Isaÿe might not have proved. He moved through each of the four movements with such an unerring feeling for style and musical mood. In the Adagio cantabile, for example, there was his febrile, urgent thrust, with its dark Mephisto quality, against Michael Houstoun’s elegant piano which laid out restrained, sombre and immaculate textures that supported the violin’s subtle, long breaths. How nicely they handled the little fanfare-like cadences that punctuated the later phase, pretending to presage the close, with straight-faced, Haydnesque wit. But the real close, when it came, was disarming and gorgeous. Here in the finale was playing, again, of an essentially Beethoven melody that was quite without indulgence or pretention, the very essence of honest, insightful musical performance. 

The first half was a celebration of his own country. Janáček’s sonata, on the strength of this performance, is an under-exposed masterpiece, not of modernist complexity, but of richness and singularity; Špaček, together with Houstoun’s highly idiomatic contribution, understood and enhanced its unique beauties while relishing the characteristic intervals that make Janáček’s music distinctive.

For me the Martinů was the greatest delight however: if not quite the equal of the Janáček, it is a delightful example of Martinů in his French/ragtime/neo-classical phase. And Špaček gave full colouring to the contrasts between the meandering, somewhat angular solo violin, and the ragtime rhythm and the solid swing that the piano’s entry suddenly brought about. It is an interesting case of the two instruments representing sharply contrasting styles, which yet creating an entrancing whole.

 

 

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts Series

Martin Riseley (violin) / Diedre Irons (piano)

Music by SCHUBERT, STRAVINSKY, CORIGLIANO and KREISLER

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 4th July 2010

I’d hoped initially that Martin Riseley and Diedre Irons would give us Schubert”s heartwarming C Major Fantasia for Violin and Piano – the one that liberally quotes from the composer’s song “Sei mir gegrüsst” – but instead we got something darker and leaner, the Rondo in B Minor, D.895, a work whose intensely-focused moods and organically-motivated transitions throughout present a highly-concentrated dialogue between equal partners, at once demanding and rewarding to play and to listen to. Right from the beginning the performers plunged into the fray – Martin Riseley and Diedre Irons are both “big” players, chamber musicians who can think orchestrally when the music requires a large-scale declamatory response, while keeping the overall picture in mind – so we enjoyed the opening’s stern, imposing piano chords, and the agitated string figurations, and how the tensions seemed to mould themselves most naturally (though not completely) into a more lyrical, somewhat introspective mood. Riseley and Irons kept an undertow of unease going, so that we sensed the inevitablilty of things returning to come to a head – strong exchanges, again, very “orchestral” and full-blooded, the moment of dancing liberation into the Allegro a treasurable frisson of hesitation overcome by impulsiveness (I would take issue with the writer of the otherwise excellent programme-notes using the expression “seamlessly” to characterise that gorgeously teasing transition!).

Throughout the Rondo section, Riseley and Irons never shirked the music’s dynamic contrasts, realising the work’s volatility, the violin writing in particular requiring repetitive figurations of almost obsessive intensity in places, and the piano part visited with its own demands involving rapid alternations of poise and vigour, lyricism and exhilaration. I loved the composer’s surprising “false ending” at one point, the music seeming to deliver penultimate cadences before dancing away on its voyage of recapitultion, with a few variables thrown in a second time round, pianist and violinist equally relishing the opportunities to revisit and revitalise the experience. The occasional strained intonation in Riseley’s playing served to define the interpretative limits to which he was prepared to push the music to get the message across, and certainly helped convey the work’s ever-burgeoning excitement and sense of ultimate arrival – thoroughly invigorating!

Stravinsky’s Divertimento for Violin and Piano comes largely from the music for his own ballet Le baiser de la fee (The Fairy’s Kiss), which is, in turn, a reworking of music by Tchaikovsky, mostly from his songs. Throughout, the music’s fragmentary, spiky character was given a no-holds barred response from both vioinist and pianist, the moments of lyricism and melancholy associated with some of the Tchaikovsky originals spiced with Stravinsky’s fondness for both pesante rhythms and accents and increasingly complex neo-classical metric changes and dynamic contrasts, the formula roughing up the music no end. What came across most strongly in this performance was a sense of story, of rich descriptive detail, of expression and narrative taking centre-stage, so that even if some of the music’s angularities produced a performance effect outside one’s listening-comfort zone, the end result was at the service of the composer and his music.

After the interval, the first movement of John Corigliano’s 1963 Violin Sonata seemed in fact to continue the ascerbities of the Stravinsky, though perhaps with a more tongue-in-cheek commedia dell’arte flavour – plenty of 5/4 rhythms, string harmonics and double-stopped octaves, and tricky syncopations between violinist and pianist, tough and angular, but approachable.

Relief came with the almost Cole-Porter-like Andantino, nostalgic and reflective, with both musicians controlling the tones and dynamics most expertly – passages of melting sweetness set off against more forthright episodes, a 7/4 rhythmic section suggesting nostalgic “road music”, the trajectories engendering a lovely, spacious ambience all around. Riseley and Irons then opened up the music operatically, everything romantic and big-boned, even becoming ritualistic in the manner of Mussorgsky’s “Great Gate at Kiev”, before the quieter 7/4 passages brought the music home once more, floating the violin cross-rhythmically against the piano, the string tone stratospheric and celestial. The Lento third movement brought big “grim reaper” chords from the piano, set against gypsy-style rhapsodisings from the violin –  Martin Riseley at full stretch here, first with fiendish Paganini-like double-stoppings, then launching into a cadenza-like recitative that finished with ghostly high notes over a forlorn piano accompaniment, and  some elfin pizzicati resolving into a somewhat bleak sostenuto for both instruments.

Finales can defuse tensions, or else find ways to break an impasse; and so it was with this one, the music playful and teasing between the instruments at the beginning, the violin in molto perpetuo mode against the piano’s spiky angularities (the composer asking for slashing violin chords amid the restless figurations), and a couple of interludes bringing respite from the energies. Amazingly, both musicians were right on top of the music’s incredible exuberance over the last few pages, abandoning all caution, and leaving their audience tingling with excitement at the end. After these almost Dionysian excesses it was a good thing for all concerned that Martin Riseley and Diedre Irons took us to the Vienna of Fritz Kreisler to finish the concert – the great violinist’s pastiche-like compositions inhabiting an old-fashioned charm-suffused world of sentiment, with every brilliant violinistic touch matched by a melting moment of lyricism (and some of the brilliant bowings in the second piece La Clochette having certain Paganini-like whiffs of sulphur about them). Beginning with a set grandly titled Variations on a theme of Corelli after Tartini, and concluding with one of Kreisler’s favourite encore pieces, Schön Rosemarin, the musicians were able to bring to a conclusion an engaging and somewhat tumultuous afternoon’s music with more relaxed tones and accents, very much appreciated.

VIOLIN DANCES

STRAVINSKY- Suite Italienne  /  TCHAIKOVSKY – 2 Pieces from Swan Lake

KHACHATURIAN – 3 Pieces from Gayaneh  /  GLAZUNOV – 2 Pieces from Raymonda

SARASATE – Carmen Fantasy Op.25

Kurt Nikkanen (violin)

Rosemary Barnes (piano)

Genesis Energy Theatre

Classical Expressions, Upper Hutt

Tuesday 22nd June 2010

“Violin Dances” the concert was called, and “violin dances” was certainly the case throughout the evening –  and in the manner of true dancing, the violin was partnered by piano-playing whose music-making trod just as sprightly and gracefully a measure. Violinist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Rosemary Barnes enlivened everything they played, bringing together melody, colour and rhythm in a winning amalgam of various dance music drawn from several well-known ballets. Their command of these basic elements was so assured, and their playing so vivid that we in the audience never once wished for the weight and colour of an orchestra, and were left fully satisfied with the music-making’s flavour and energy.

Beginning the recital with Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne was a particularly engaging piece of programming. This was a work that began as Pulcinella, a ballet score for a commedia dell’arte scenario proposed by the impresario Diaghilev, and based on music attributed to the 18th-century composer Giovanni Pergolesi. Stravinsky rearranged (and recomposed) the music for orchestra and solo voices for the original ballet, then dispensed with the voices for an instruments-only suite, before transcribing the music further for violin (or ‘cello) and piano. The original Pulcinella was one of the earliest examples of neo-classicism, and has retained its popularity in all forms to this day. Kurt Nikkanen and Rosemary Barnes danced into the world of the work with a flourish, varying the opening theme’s cheerful insouciance with lovely sotto voce episodes, bringing out the Russian melancholy of the Serenade, and tearing into the Tarantella with skin and hair flying, finishing with a nice touch of throw-away po-faced wit.

There was both elegance and theatricality on show during the Gavotte and Variations sequences and throughout the Menuet’s ever-growing pomposity, followed by a sudden dash into the helter-skelter finale. Nikkanen and Barnes demonstrated plenty of virtuosity and great teamwork, here, exchanging and countering irruptions of energy and exhilaration right to the end. Before beginning the next item, Nikkanen talked with his audience regarding his own early love of music that had plenty of rhythmic vitality – Stravinsky and Bartok, for example. Ironically, the first exerpt from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake that followed demonstrated more the composer’s infinite capacity for melody than for rhythmic excitement. Still, the beautiful playing of both the violinist and pianist in the famous Act Two “Pas de Deux” was utterly captivating, with the piano taking the original ‘cello part, and duetting with the violin, to indescribably expressive effect. The Russian Dance, from Act Three of the ballet, brought out that indigenous folk-quality which Tchaikovsky exploited so fruitfully in his music, the performers responding to the deep melancholy of the opening before springing into the whirl of the concluding dance with great energy and physicality.

Kurt Nikkanen talked about being inspired as a young man by hearing the Russian violinist Leonid Kogan play music by Khachaturian on the radio, in particular a dance  from the ballet Gayaneh. We got a gritty, no-holds-barred rendering of Aysche’s Dance, Nikkanen and Barnes giving the effect of digging into something directly and deeply, playing with an intensity that also informed the Nocturne and the succeeding Sabre Dance, the piano adding to the music’s wild abandon with flailing note-repetitions alternating with the violin’s stinging pizzicati. The interval allowed a breather from such full-on engagements, as did the second-half’s opening bracket of items from Glazunov’s ballet Raymonda, firstly a waltz whose “teashop charm” evoked something of a bygone era, and a Grand Adagio which allowed the performers to dig a little deeper into the emotions, Nikkanen delighting us with some deft melismatic flourishes and even the occasional touch of elfin wickedness, admirably supported at all times by his pianist.

But I can pay no greater compliment to Kurt Nikkanen and Rosemary Barnes regarding the concert by avowing that they managed to make even Pablo de Sarasate’s tiresome Carmen Fantasy work its magic (I must confess to an aversion to virtuoso violin arrangements, pot-pourris, medleys, etc. of this ilk). Even when content became thoroughly subservient to display, as with the second-movement Habanera, the playing had such style and panache that I was thoroughly absorbed by what they were doing and how it was being achieved. Rather more than the obvious pyrotechnics elsewhere, I liked the ghostly insinuations of the lento assai third movement, the music accompanying Carmen’s sexy taunting of Don Jose when being taken by him to prison.

By dint of audience appreciation we got two encores from the pair, firstly Moussorgsky’s Gopak from his unfinished opera Sorotchinsky Fair, a raunchy folk-fiddle-fest with brandy on the breath of the music (to paraphrase another far more famous and far less approbatory critical remark about Russian music), followed by what seemed like its antithesis, Elgar’s charmingly wistful Chanson de Matin, a piece which the violinist told us reminded him of his recent explorations of Wellington, walking around amid the beautiful sunny weather. It made for an elegant finish to a consistently stimulating concert.

MOZART – String Quartet in D Major K.575 “Prussian”

CHINARY UNG – Spiral III for String Quartet

SCHUMANN – Piano Quintet in E-flat Op.44

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

– with Richard Mapp (piano)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 20th June 2010

The very opening of the Mozart quartet fooled me into thinking the NZSQ was for some reason playing the music in E-flat. I sadly fear that part of my confusion was due to my ever-declining ability to precisely recognise note-pitch; but in my defence I ought to state that the quartet’s playing of the opening paragraph of Mozart’s wonderful K.575 in (wait for it!) D Major was so warmly and richly expressed, the music SOUNDED momentarily as though it was in the higher, mellower key. I thought the players’ combination of warmth and focus quite captivating, with both the ensemble and the solo instruments drawing on a full range of tones that took Mozart’s music out of the drawing-room of taste and decorum and into the world of pulsating human interaction. Even if intonation wasn’t absolutely perfect at all times (more in the softer, throw-away phrasings than in any of the leading lines), the group’s interplayings of different strands, and ready command of colour and texture, ever led the ear onwards through a fascinating amalgam of narrative and interaction.

The players darkened the textures beautifully with the lead-in to the development, whose dynamic, almost confrontational mode was achieved by great attack, especially from the ‘cellist – playing which gave the music all of its emotional range and expressive force. All the more joie de vivre was generated, then, with the return to the opening, the quartet’s energy and brio culminating in final flourishes of great elan at the end. The slow movement’s full-throated tones fragment beautifully into individual voices, here characterised by each player with piquant expression, drawing the listener into the world of both sounds and gesturings, whose combination makes live music-making such a pleasure, as was the case this time round. The daintily tripping Minuet enjoyed its occasional angularities, the players again not hesitating to get “physical” with the music, their bodily movements frequently choreographing the sounds in a way that suggested their total involvement in the ebb and flow of things. The quartet made an adventure out of the finale as well, the viola-and-‘cello exchanges decorous and ritualistic at the beginning, but with poise occasionally giving way to high spirits, a dancing triplet theme dominating the middle section, and archways of dotted rhythm figurations and melismatic impulses adding to the festivities – the players here emphasised the energies of the music more, I think, than the moments of circumspection which every now and then glanced furtively outwards at the world.

In between two more-or-less “standard” classics the NZSQ presented a contemporary piece which they discovered through Jack Body. The composer, Chinary Ung, born in 1942, in Cambodia, went to the United States in 1964 to study at the Manhatten School of Music, winning a number of prizes and honours for his music, and teaching at various institutions – he’s currently the Professor of Composition at the University of California in San Diego. His music combines the worlds of South-east Asian music and western art-music, resulting in works such as Spiral III (as the name suggests, the third of a series), the one programmed for this concert.

Helpfully, the players, prompted by Quartet leader Helene Pohl, demonstrated some of the work’s most prominent features, a couple of distinctive themes (one sounding as though it could have been written by Gershwin), and a few examples of the music’s wide variety of texture (plenty of ponticello, or playing close to the bridge – and its antithesis, bowing at the other extreme, over the fingerboard). The work itself made a remarkable impression – a forthright opening, with the “traditional music” ambience quickly evident through those exotic sounds created by the ponticello technique, the bluesy pitch-slides and colours seamlessly fusing with the South-East Asian folk-sounds, the melodies lovely and the accompaniments spidery. More rhythmically volatile and rhapsodic episodes reminded me in places of Janacek’s music, the language in places almost disjointed and whimsical, but whose overall effect is something strong, vital and deeply-rooted. And as well as this ground-based folkish feeling, there’s also an other-worldliness whose beauties can curdle without warning – one is taken away and then suddenly re-confronted with more immediate and pressing realities as part of a continual process discovery and rediscovery. I look forward to the Quartet’s projected CD of this work, as part of a project featuring works by Asian composers, the others being by Toru Takemitsu,Tan Dun, Gao Ping, and Zhou Long, in a recording to be undertaken over the coming month.

After the interval Richard Mapp joined the quartet for a performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet, a timely act of homage to a composer born, like his great contemporary Frederic Chopin, two hundred years ago this year. Right from the beginning the players caught the work’s “stride” with a resounding flourish, then moving easefully into those soulful lyrical utterances that could be by no other composer – ‘cello and viola introduced a beautifully-weighted second subject, as beautifully answered by the piano, the whole episode then “swung” back to the beginning with great relish for the repeat. The piano’s introduction to the ensemble showed up the distinctly unglamorous Ilott Theatre sound, very precise and focused, but with little warmth and resonance – thus the rather “Gothic” descent into the world of the development lacked the ultimate in romantic atmosphere, but through no fault of the performers. This also affected the opening of the slow movement, the sound having a curiously “dead” quality in between each muffled drumbeat, though the contrasting flow of the major-key sequence worked better, with lyrical, song-like playing from all concerned. The Sphinx-like transition to the agitato passages created a frisson of tension, from which burst forth terrific energies, before subsiding into a more troubled lyricism, Gillian Ansell’s viola tones conveying the retreating march theme’s sombre character in tones of grey and purple. A pity, then, that the quiet concluding chord’s treble voice sounded, to my ears, slightly under-the-note.

The Mendelssohnian energy of the scherzo danced and fizzed with plenty of spirit, the players capturing the darker-browed drive of the contrasting trio, piano and string pizzicati properly angular and prickly; while the finale, beginning gruffly, drives the argument forward with resolute purpose. One senses the composer looking for ways of resolving inner conflicts through music, those characteristically sombre themes being fought with and eventually conquered, here with great rhetorical gesturings by use of the work’s very opening theme, introduced by the piano, and developed fugally by all the instruments, against the counterpoint of the finale’s opening theme – as with the Fourth Symphony’s finale, a heart-warming “working out” is driven by tremendously buoyant rhythmic energies, the musicians here bringing out that sense of resolution and homecoming in the music that makes the work’s journey such an invigorating experience.

Waikanae Music Society

Josef Špaček (violin)and Michael Houstoun (piano)

Bach: Chaconne from Partita no.2 in D minor / Mozart: Sonata no.22 in A K. 305

Gareth Farr: Wakatipu / Ysaÿe: Sonata no.3 in D minor Op.27 ‘Ballade’

Prokofiev: Sonata no.1 in F minor Op.80 / Smetana: From my Homeland

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday, 20 June 2010

A packed Memorial Hall greeted the winner of the Michael Hill violin competition 2009, Josef Špaček, for the first recital in his Winner’s Tour with Chamber Music New Zealand.  Though still a very young man and still studying (at Juilliard, with Itzhak Perlman), Josef Špaček already has a number of performance with leading orchestras and conductors in a dozen countries behind him, and appearances at music festivals.  He has won numbers of competitions – and no wonder!  He is a consummate violinist, with intelligence, imagination, and impeccable technique.

These features of his playing were particularly to the fore in the unaccompanied Bach, which he played from memory.  This was a very rhythmic, but not mechanical performance. Josef Špaček made great use of stresses and a range of dynamics.  This made for a more interesting performance than one sometimes hears.  The double-stopping and spread chords were played as if with ease, so secure is his skill.

Considered by some to be one of the most demanding works in the violin repertoire, it delighted the audience.  The programme notes were ample and absolutely excellent in giving the background to this and all the pieces played.

Mozart followed; not his most interesting sonata, but it was appealingly played here, with flair and beauty by both performers.  Despite, as the programme note explained, Mozart’s making a greater emphasis on a duo partnership for the instruments than had been the case previously, there were nevertheless extensive passages for violin alone, played unerringly and ravishingly by Josef Špaček.

Gareth Farr’s work was a test piece for all the competitors in the first phase of the Michael Hill Violin Competition, in Queenstown.  As in all the works, Josef Špaček played with a bright sound.  He is a confident and superb soloist.  It was hard to imagine that there could be a more skilled performance of Farr’s difficult unaccompanied piece – played here with a continuo background of the sound of pouring rain.

Ysaÿe’s sonata followed, also unaccompanied and played from memory.  A real virtuoso work this, with a variety of moods, all performed with expertise and evident talent.

Following the interval, Prokofiev’s sonata demonstrated what a demanding programme the performers tackled. Špaček’s intonation is flawless, and the range of emotions and temperaments in the work were conveyed well. The bombastic second movement was followed by very gentle, lovely pianissimo in the lyrical, dreamy third. Špaček’s playing in the last movement was masterful, and its very thoughtful ending capped off a brilliant interpretation and performance.

From My Homeland by Smetana was a good way to end the recital, since Špaček, like Smetana, is Czech (though Smetana’s homeland was called Bohemia in his day).  The gentle first movement gave another opportunity for Špaček to demonstrate his beautiful, controlled pianissimo.  But he has strong, even tone when required.  This was a much more mellow work than the Prokofiev, but demanding for both performers.

It was met with a rapturous reception from the audience.  Sensibly after such a demanding concert, Špaček did not provide an encore, and so one was left not with lollipops, but with an outstanding work played by a violinist with formidable talent, technique and memory.  He seems a natural with the violin, and should rise to the top.

Throughout the works with piano, Michael Houstoun was a true partner – supportive, eloquent, and thoroughly accomplished in interpretation.