Tag: chamber music

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.

AMICI ENSEMBLE – Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts 2010

DEBUSSY – Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp / FRANCAIX – Quintette for Clarinet and Srings / ROSS HARRIS – Four Laments for Solo Clarinet / STRAVINSKY – Three Pieces for String Quartet / RAVEL – Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet

Amici Ensemble: Donald Armstrong, Cristina Vaszilcin (violins) / Gilian Ansell (viola) / Rowan Prior (‘cello) / Phil Green (clarinet) / Bridget Douglas (flute) / Carolyn Mills (harp)

Ilott Theatre, Town Hall, Wellington

Sunday 30th May, 2010

Whether it was my watching Harpo Marx in that memorable harp-playing scene from the film “A Night in Casablanca” which I remember seeing as a child, or my being smitten as a young man by the beautiful Rebecca Harris, the NZSO’s harpist during the 1970s, I’m not entirely sure; but I’ve always been drawn towards music written either for a solo harp or to music with prominent parts for the instrument. My first, wide-eared and open-mouthed encounter with Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro” for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet on recordings was thus a formative, “surprised-by-joy” experience, music which, to my ongoing regret, I had never had the chance to hear performed “live” before this concert. So, it was with a cocktail mix of pent-up excitement, anticipation, enjoyment and some foreboding that I prepared myself to sit through this afternoon’s beautifully-presented programme, awaiting those limpid wind chordings that announce the beginning of the Ravel work. Of course, I needn’t have worried that the performance was going to be anything less than wonderful, as I was pretty familiar with the work of all the soloists whose combined talents made up the Amici Ensemble – and, most importantly, I’d heard Carolyn Mills as both a soloist and accompanist already, playing the harp like an angel in one of the most beautiful performances of Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols” that I ever hoped to have heard “live” or otherwise, with the Nota Bene choir in 2008.

It didn’t take me long to become embroiled in each of the items once the music started, firstly the Debussy, a work I didn’t know, a Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, one of six chamber works planned by the composer, who unfortunately lived to complete only three of them. What struck me was the music’s absolute freedom of impulse within an extremely simple overall framework – a pastoral-like first movement, a gently-animated, occasionally excitable second movement with a touch of sobriety at its conclusion, and an energetic, free-spirited last movement, the work as a whole elusive and discursive in direction and intent, but undeniably attractive in places.  The players enabled us to dream the opening, flute and harp preparing and slowly awakening the ambience for the sinuous viola line, the harp quite “antiphonal” when contrasting its upper and lower registers. At times the detail wrought by the trio was almost Oriental in its delicacy and clarity of focus, the teamwork responsive and beautifully co-ordinated. A somewhat more earthy and animated second movement was largely energised by Carolyn Mills’ harp, the music losing some of its buoyancy and clouding over towards the end, allowing a moment of introspection to take charge, if only fleetingly. The harp also set in motion the finale with toccata-like insistence, flute and viola playing “poet and peasant” in places, contrasting both the colour and texture of their utterances throughout the ebb and flow of exchange. Despite the players’ advocacy, it was a work I confess to finding more admirable than lovable – subsequent hearings may well change my attitude.

But I must confess to a weakness for Jean Francaix’s music – its droll humour, ready sentimentality and unrepentant volatility, qualities I think of as being very French. In some quarters Francaix’s music is thought of as shallow and vapid, with too ready a reliance upon surface effect; but I like his juxtapositioning of states of emotion, as if keeping foremost in mind the principle of life being “a tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect”. The composer’s Quintette for Clarinet and Strings demonstrates this lightness of touch and playfulness of wit – a sweetly nostalgic opening, but with strongly-etched violin lines nicely projected here by Donald Armstrong, and with Phil Green’s liquid clarinet tones making the music glowing like a ferris wheel turning in the sunset. Very much the music’s protagonist, the clarinet initiates a new, impish mood, gurgling with anticipatory glee before dancing off with a “come on!” gesture. The ensemble energises the music beautifully throughout, pausing for a few melancholic reflections, before taking up the adventure with renewed vigour, the instruments tumbling down the hill with child-like delight at the end. Such winning, infectious playing in the cake-walk-like scherzo, the players then leaning elegantly into the trio, again beautifully characterised, with sentimental clarinet set against more ascerbic, knowing strings, the music seemingly reluctant to return to its scherzo-ish manner at the end. Gillian Ansell’s viola established a mood of sombre beauty at the slow movement’s beginning, the music constructing great archways of gathering and falling tones, the playing full of tenderness. The insistent, nagging finale again had the clarinet playing clown to the strings’ more dogged purpose. I loved the clarinet’s waltz tune, played by Phil Green with wonderful insouciance atop the strings continued rhythmic insistence, as was the solo instrument’s outlandish cadenza, Francaix stressing his “comedy to the intellect” stance by gathering up the work’s strands for a classic throwaway ending. All very stylishly done.

Some of us had heard Ross Harris’s Four Laments for solo clarinet earlier that day at the SOUNZ Tender concert, and were thrilled to hear a new work being given not one but two chances to impress in public. The performer and venue were the same as before, but, as with the behaviour of colours when juxtaposed differently, the music sounded different in this context, perhaps with clarinettist Phil Green taking the opportunity to characterise more fully his view of the work. Each piece was inspired by the concept of “lament” as expressed in four different languages; the first, “Klaga”, from Sweden, the sounds ghostly and hollow-sounding, with brief impulses of movement overtaken by a prevailing sense of isolation. The Yiddish “Vaygeshray” had extroverted energies, behind which seemed to lurk an undertow of anxiety and unease, while the “Tangi” movement featured full-throated wailing, occasional birdsong, and evocative overtones mingled with gestural breathing, the ‘mauri-ora’ (breath of life). Finally the Gaelic “Corranach” evoked a wild landscape and snatches of a dance-ritual, scraps of jigs and reels, the age-old disintegration of a richly-wrought life. Again, Phil Green’s playing “owned” the music, realising sounds that somehow seemed “unlocked” rather than newly-made.

Donald Armstrong entertained the audience most engagingly by way of introducing the programme’s next item, Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet. These were written in 1914, a year after the first performance of the composer’s epoch-shaking ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps”, and are unconnected character studies. They were originally published without titles, but Stravinsky later orchestrated them and added a fourth, to create his “Four Etudes for Orchestra”, transferring the names to the quartet pieces. Donald Armstrong asked the strings of the quartet to demonstrate aspects of the work beforehand, and talked about things like the nagging “housewife theme” in the first piece, and the famous London circus clown Little Tich, whose “eccentric movements and postures” Stravinsky modelled the second movement upon. The players confidently characterised each of the pieces, the obsessive four-note folkish repetitions of the opening Danse, the “jerky, spastic movements” of the second piece Excentrique, and the almost liturgical homophony of Cantique, the final one of the set.

After these were done, we settled back to enjoy the afternoon’s final work, Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro” This performance seemed to me to realise everything one could have wished for from the music, apart from a profoundly uncharacteristic wrong note from the clarinet at one point, a slip which seemed to take Phil Green aback as well! But Carolyn Mills’ harp playing was a joy, the strings and wind achieved miracles of delicacy and balance throughout, and the whole ensemble seemed at one in realising the piece’s contours of intensity, colour and emotion. Nothing was shirked, with tones both diaphanous and forthright, as required, from the ensemble, through the “running” momentum instigated by the harp, and the intensification of the argument by the strings, generating waves of joyous energy leading towards the final upward flourish. My reaction to it all was coloured and flavoured by pleasurable expectation, I admit, but it seemed, nevertheless, to me to be a brilliantly successful performance. For this reason I didn’t need “Greensleeves” as an encore afterwards, but it would have pleased the punters no end, and was, I must report, nicely realised.

Waikanae Music Society

The Poinsett Piano Trio: Deirdre Hutton (violin), Christopher Hutton (cello), David Gross (piano)

Beethoven: Piano Trio in E flat major, Op. 1, no. 1

Chopin: Polonaise-Fantasie in A flat major, Op. 61

Halvorsen: Passacaglia after Suite no. 7 in G minor by Handel

Brahms: Piano Trio in C major, Op. 87

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday, 30 May 2010

Chamber music is alive and well in Waikanae; the audience here was larger than it usually is at the Sunday afternoon series at the Ilott Theatre in Wellington.

Wellingtonian Christopher Hutton was making a welcome return, with his Trio, as part of a 14-centre tour of New Zealand, of which this was the last concert. The Trio is based at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. It is named for Joel Roberts Poinsett, a botanist, statesman and physician from South Carolina, whose name is immortalised through his discovery of the Mexican plant with the large, red flowers, which is named after him.

Christopher Hutton is to be commended on his programme notes, which were excellent.

The opening Beethoven trio was played with a nice delicacy, suitable for the composer’s early work, which was very much a classical composition though (as the programme note said) he did not copy Mozart or Haydn, but had his own voice. Despite this, the piano was still the most important part of this trio.

The slow movement was enchanting and lyrical, while the scherzo was cheerful and straightforward. Precision, but also richness of tone marked the performance.

The solo piano work of Chopin was preceded by the pianist’s comments describing the work. Using the printed score, he gave a sympathetic, commanding and engrossing performance of this varied work.

Halvorsen’s reworking of Handel’s Passacaglia (since rearranged for violin and cello from Halvorsen’s violin and viola setting) proved to be thoroughly charming and attractive. The music was beautifully articulated by both players. They were in absolute accord. The writing became increasingly complex and difficult, but the performers were absolutely on top of it, and brought the piece off delightfully.

The Brahms trio was the major work on the programme, and provided an interesting contrast to the Beethoven work – here there was much work for the strings; the piano never dominated. Yet the ensemble playing was impeccable, with complete rapport between the players.

Brahms’s melodies are often full of pathos; this characteristic was conveyed with feeling and deep sonority.

The scherzo was particularly notable for the effects it featured, and for its lovely trio. The finale was full of contrasts, and was admirably played.

This was Brahms without barriers: there was nothing between the audience and the composer’s intentions.

The Trio played as an encore the scherzo from Shostakovich’s second piano trio. This was brilliant, but very different from the concert’s main fare; the trio was a component of the other programme the Poinsetts played around the country.

This is a very able Trio, and I hope they will tour again before too long.