Tag: chamber music

Sounds contemporary – Stroma and SOUNZ Contemporary…

Posted on by Alan Wells

STROMA: Sequences

Featuring Dave Bremner (trombone), Bridget Douglas (flute), Peter Dykes (oboe), Rebecca Struthers (violin), Lenny Sakovsky (flowerpots),

Hamish McKeich and Mark Carter (conductors).

Berio: “Sequenza I”, “Sequenza VII”; Xenakis: “Charisma”; Rzewski: “Song and Dance”, “To the Earth”; Ross Harris: “Fanitullen”, “Trombone Opera”; Chris Gendall: “Rudiments”.

St Andrews on the Terrace, 1 May 2010

also: SOUNZ Contemporary Award 2010  (preview): Chris Gendall: “Rudiments”; Ross Harris:  “Violin Concerto No. 1”; Chris Cree Brown: “Inner Bellow”.

New Zealand Music Month 2010 began with a highlight – the “Sequences” concert from leading contemporary music group Stroma, which  featured NZ premieres of two recent offerings from Ross Harris and Chris Gendall. These large-ensemble, almost orchestrally weighty scores, bookended a series of  mainly solo pieces showcasing the virtuoso talents of individual Stroma members.

Luciano Berio’s 1958 monodic classic “Sequenza I” gave star flutistBridget Douglas scope for delicate multiphonics, and a twentieth century version of baroque “virtual counterpoint” on a single melodic line. Interestingly, I did not particularly notice any of the microtones and pitch-bends that have become a characteristic of many, more recent, pieces for solo woodwind. Berio’s 1969 “Sequenza VII” took oboist Peter Dykes on a breath-control marathon, with its dissolves from multiphonic fuzziness to “uniphonic” clarity, and – again – the use of contrapuntal lines sketched from contrasting registers (here anchored by a recurrent tonic).

The tense, telling gestures of Iannis Xennakis’ 1971 “Charisma” (fortissimo scrunches, and tremolando slides, on Rowan Prior’s cello; bell-like grace notes on Patrick Barry’s clarinet) were fitting in a work written to commemorate a premature death. More celebratory was Frederic Rzewski’s 1977 “Song and Dance” ( vibes, flute, bass clarinetand contrabass) in which “song” sections with their graceful flute lines and plaintive bowed contrabass, were set against the rhythmic, jazzy “dance” episodes. A later Rzewski piece, “To the Earth” from 1985, had been performed during the composer’s visit here a few years ago. It was a solo (or perhaps more accurately, a duo for one): percussionist Lenny Sakovsky played in a tetratonic scale on four flowerpots (made, of course, from clay – from earth),  while reciting a hymn to Gaia (Earth) translated from the ancient Greek. The effect was one of affecting simplicity.

Ross Harris’s “Fanitullen” was written as a test piece for the 2007 Michael Hill International Violin Competition. Taking its cue from Scandinavian folk fiddling and the legend underlying “The Soldier’sTale”, this “devil’s tune” demanded virtuoso playing from Rebecca Struthers – by turns fiery and ghostly, with polyphony within a single line, as well as double-stopping. Harris’s “Trombone Opera” was inspired by pansori, a form of Korean monodrama for a singer –  with only her fan for a prop – and a drummer. Not a fan in sight with Stroma, but a battery of three percussionists (including bass drum, marimba, and bells) were amongst the support for the recitatives of David Bremner’s golden-toned trombone. Bremner notwithstanding, I did not find the work attractive (it probably wasn’t meant to be). It seemed to belong to the gnarly, knotty sound-world of those discomfiting compositions in which Harris (sometimes courageously) confronts the darker, angst-ridden side of human nature. Among these are “To the Memory of I.S. Totska”, “Contramusic” (one of Harris’s earlier essays for Stroma), and also “Labyrinth” for tuba and orchestra (the NZSO) –  which received a Sounz Contemporary Award (unlike the awards for Harris’s Second and Third Symphonies and for “…Totska”, which were all eminently deserved, I thought the win for “Labyrinth” was suspect, displacing as it did Ken Young’s enigmatic but ultimately powerful Second Symphony).

As in “Labyrinth”, there was a significant place in “Trombone Opera” for tuba (Andrew Jarvis), and as in “Contramusic”, Hamish McKeich featured on the contrabassoon. “Trombone Opera” was written in 2009 while Harris was Creative New Zealand/ Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence at the NZ School of Music. The prospective (now current) holder of the  Residency is Chris Gendall. While a student at Victoria University, Gendall was noted for his impressively energetic, rhythmically driven compositions, such as the piano duo “Xenophony”, and “So It Goes”, which won the inaugural (2005) NZSO/Todd Foundation Young Composers Award (in my view, it should have been first equal, along with Andari Anggamulia’s exquisitely Webernian “Les Images”). Even as early as 2002 (with “Sextet”) and 2003 (“Miniatures” for guitar, cello, contrabass and drums), however, Gendall was interrupting his  motoric momentum with passages of fragmentary free rhythm. Gendall has now completedpostgraduate studies at Cornell University, and in his most recent scores, such as the 2008 “Wax Lyrical” (another Sounz Contemporary winner, also performed by Stroma last year), and in “Rudiments”, the ostinati have been almost entirely dispensed with, and the jagged, disjunctive rhythms have come to predominate.

The three movements of “Rudiments” were based on three foundations of music: melody, harmony and counterpoint (rhythm, notably, did not get a mention). The energy of “So It Goes” was still here, but expressed as a kind of textural exuberance (for my part, I miss the metre). In the first movement there was a dense tone-colour-melody, and a progression from single note to cluster. In the second (“Forest for the Trees”) there were some remnants of pulse, while in the third, hints of contrapuntal  imitation. For this piece, the versatile HamishMcKeich packed away his contrabassoon and took up the baton.

Gendall’s “Rudiments” is one of three contenders for the 2010 Sounz Contemporary Award, to be announced on 8 September. While undoubtedly a strong work, it remains to be seen whether it will be a landmark, and whether Gendall will consolidate his current style or explore other areas. Ross Harris is again in contention for the Award, this time with his Violin Concerto, first performed by Anthony Marwood and the NZSO in this year’s Made in New Zealand concert (7 May). Here the soloist wove an almost continuous commentary around the orchestra’s discourse, which ranged from the idiom of Webern, to Berg, to (even) Shostakovich. The episodic one-movement structure could seem either delightfully rhapsodic, or confused and meandering.  Despite the impeccable advocacy of Marwood and the NZSO, I was unconvinced by the premiere. After hearing subsequent Radio New Zealand Concert broadcasts, I have warmed to the work a little, but still remain ambivalent. If time-frames had permitted, I would have  much preferred Harris to have been represented by either “The Floating Bride, The Crimson Village” (Jenny Wollerman, NZSO/Sounz Readings last year; and Made in New Zealand 2010), or “The Abiding Tides” (Jenny Wollerman and the NZ String Quartet,  Arts Festival, 7 March). “The Floating Bride”was a romantically Mahlerian song-cycle, and while “The Abiding Tides” had some of the stylistic diversity of the Violin Concerto, in the chamber work the different styles tended to be confined within separate movements, and furthermore had a purpose in underlining Vincent O’Sullivan’s compelling texts.

Nevertheless, I would put money (if I had any) on Harris winning the Award. My own choice though would be  Chris Cree Brown’s “Inner Bellow” for clarinet and electronics. Performed by Gretchen Dunsmore at the CANZ Nelson Composers Workshop opening concert (4 July 2010), “Inner Bellow” not only seamlessly blended live and recorded sounds, but also created strange new colours from the partially dismantledclarinet, with intervals being compressed (instant microtones!) in some registers. As in “The Triumvirate”, played by the NZ Trio during the 2005 Nelson Composers Workshop, Cree Brown employed an adventurous musical language within a reassuringly conventional structure (with recurring elements suggestive of  a rondo).

Given the calibre of this year’s contestants, whoever receives the Award will be a worthy winner.

______________________________

HellHereNow – Anzacs at Gallipoli, Pataka Museum, Porirua

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Gallipoli Diary of Alfred Cameron

Paintings by Bob Kerr

Music by Alfred Hill and Gabriel Faure

Slava Fainitski (violin) / Brenton Veitch (‘cello) / Catherine McKay (piano)

Robin Kerr (speaker)

Pataka Museum, Porirua

Sunday 25th April 2010

At Pataka Museum in Porirua, an exhibition featuring a series of paintings of Gallipoli by Wellington artist Bob Kerr was presented, bearing the title “HellHereNow”.  The ten paintings together made up a sizeable panorama of Anzac Cove in Gallipoli – a place that uncannily resembled Makara, not far from Wellington, one similarly rugged and desolate. Interestingly, the ambience and atmosphere of each panel was reflected by the elements in different ways – the landforms were depicted as more constant and immutable from image to image, whereas the sea and sky expressed movement, change and occasional volatility. The sequence thus engendered at once a sense of permanence and the unceasing movement of time and tide.

At the bottom of each of the panels Bob Kerr wrote an exerpt from a diary written by Alfred Cameron, one of the young New Zealand soldiers who saw action during the First World War at Gallipoli, while along the top of all except the outside pair was written the words of a statement attributed to a Turkish officer, Ismail Hakki, expressing his anger at the senseless of soldiers being made to “kill each other without reason”. The effect of these writings transcribed upon images of a totally unpeopled and forbidding landscape is a somewhat ghostly one – almost as if the land is quietly murmuring the sentiments of the shades of the soldiers who fought there, keeping their stories alive for those coming after who would take the trouble to stop and listen.

Kerr found Alfred Cameron’s diary among a collection of  fifty World War One diaries in the Alexander Turnbull Library, and was struck by the directness, the honesty and the clear-sightedness of the young man’s writing, enough to want to express in visual terms the all-too-enthusiastically expressed spirit of the age, a desire to experience the adventure and excitement of going to war.

Alfred Cameron’s diary captures the wide-eyed idealism of the young men who went off to war, as well as the bitter disillusionment which followed. Over twenty-one days of diary-writing Cameron had gone from reflecting this idealism to expressing the brutal realisation of the situation’s realities in one of the final entries – “It’s hell here, now”. Alfred Cameron was subsequently wounded at Gallipoli, hospitalised, and eventually repatriated. He returned to farming in New Zealand in North Canterbury, married, and raised a family, some of whose descendants now live in Wellington.

The paintings were exhibited at Pataka for over two months, from March 20th until  May 23rd. During this time, appropriately enough on the weekend of Anzac Day, the exhibition featured several performance presentations of the diary writings as a spoken narration to the accompaniment of live music, all set against the backdrop of the series of paintings. With the artist’s son, Robin Kerr as an impassioned and theatrical, though nicely-poised reader,  along with the heartfelt playing of a trio of musicians, violinist Slava Fainitski, ‘cellist Brenton Veitch and pianist Catherine McKay, presenting exerpts of music by Alfred Hill and Gabriel Faure, Alfred Cameron’s diary writings took on even more of the emotive force of a living, cumulative tragedy.

The performers chose Alfred Hill’s music as reflecting the somewhat naive patriotic spirit of the times,  playing a reconstructed work, a piano trio written in 1896, whose piano and violin parts were subsequently lost, but which had also been reworked by the composer as a Violin Sonata. From this work, Australian musicologist and publisher Alan Stiles had been able to put the Trio back together along its original lines, to marvellous effect in the work’s opening movement, much of which was used to reinforce the forthright optimism of the diary’s first few entries, eagerly and youthfully conveyed by narrator Robin Kerr.

The presentation began with Bob Kerr welcoming the audience and speaking about his paintings, after which it was the turn of the musicians and the narrator to take up Alfred Cameron’s story. The first music we heard was the opening of the Trio by Alfred Hill, at the outset arresting, forthright chords and strongly syncopated emphases, with lyrical lines in between the more energetic episodes. A second subject was beautifully prepared by the writing and nicely shaped by the players, the ‘cello having the line and the violin the descant, before the instruments joined, with piano accompaniment.

Whenever the playing broke off to allow the speaker his turn I found myself torn between wanting to hear the music continue, and waiting for the next piece of the narrative. The words of Cameron’s diary brought out the young man’s essential boyishness excitement at the prospect of going to war, and the first exotic ports of call that the young men experienced, in Egypt and at Suez. The music began again at the diary’s description of the young soldiers’ going out to dinner in Cairo, the sounds wistful at first, then gradually returning to the mood of the opening, jagged and athletic, with strength and lyricism well-harnessed together. Throughout I liked the tensile, well-wrought argument between all three instruments, the robust and rugged interworkings and the singing of the lyrical lines contrasting to rich effect.

The diary narrative skilfully dovetailed with the music – the first news of casualties from the “front” was contrasted with descriptions of the beauty of the Mediterranean, and the excitement of the arrival at the Dardanelles, where, upon approaching and landing on the beach the soldiers were suddenly confronted with the realities of war, the company being heavily shelled by the Turkish forces. Before long the situation’s hopeless tragedy became apparent, the diary towards the end describing the desperate conditions, the ill-fated skirmishes, and the loss of life – the description of the soldiers’ graves was placed alongside Gabriel Faure’s  Elegie, beginning with sombre ‘cello and piano, and with violin eventually joining in as the music became more impassioned. The full force of Alfred Cameron’s words seemed to find expression in the instruments’ tones: – “It’s just  hell here, now, no water or tucker, only seven out of thirty-three in number one troop on duty, rest either dead or wounded. Dam the place, no good writing any more.”

At the end, the music took over from the words, the heartfelt playing by the trio of musicians ineffably expressing the mood of the evocation, wrought in tandem with the paintings and the narratives. Altogether, the presentation made a stunning effect, the synthesis of visual art, music and spoken narrative finely and sensitively judged by all concerned, artist, speaker and musicians – an Anzac Weekend event to indeed remember.

New Zealand Trio looks towards Australia

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Trio (Chamber Music New Zealand)

Sarah Watkins – piano, Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello

Mozart: Piano Trio in B flat, K 502; Judy Bailey: So Many Rivers: Stuart Greenbaum: The Year without a Summer; Pärt: Mozart-Adagio; Schumann: Piano Trio in D minor, Op 63

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 24 April 7.30pm

The second concert in Chamber Music New Zealand’s 2010 subscription series offered another concert from the New Zealand Trio (their trade name: NZTrio) which was one of the groups that played in the chamber music weekend during the International Festival last month.

Though this evening we were offered complete works, a similar balance between standard repertoire and new music was aimed for. One of the two established pieces was by Schumann, no doubt to mark his 200th birthday this year. It is conventional to give more praise to his chamber music involving piano than his string quartets, not a view I subscribe to; this D minor trio is certainly a fine work. It achieves a balance between piano and strings and the writing for strings sounds idiomatic and comfortable, though I confess I have not consulted string players specifically on the point.

It opened (Mit Energie und Leidenschaft – appassionato) with a relaxed tempo, slow, allowing nicely-judged rubato and sometimes a quixotic variety of mood; there were attractive piano moments, and the cello took the spotlight for a few bars. Through the lively second and the soulful, adagio third movements, the players expressed themselves with a convincing naturalness; it was the last movement’s more striking melody that endeared itself and set it alight. It was the last item in the concert; nevertheless, I had a feeling that it ended with a shade less energy than they had brought to the opening Mozart trio.

Mozart’s K 502 had indeed begun with a tremendous flourish, mainly driven by pianist Sarah Watkins, and the striking first theme tended to dominate. In fact the piano, from where I sat, on the right side of the balcony, close to the players, left the violin and cello somewhat obscured, in terms both of volume and of musical interest (and I’d have liked less choreographed head and shoulders effects from the pianist). Much of the time the cello acted as little more than a basso continuo instrument. In the second movement there was greater equality as both violin and cello were given more interesting material; the violin displaying a wonderful refinement and the cello too emerged clearly and vividly.

The rest of the programme comprised small pieces: two premieres – on this tour, if not on the night – and an odd piece by Arvo Pärt that toyed amusingly with the Adagio of Mozart’s piano sonata, K 280.

Both the pieces by Judy Bailey and Stuart Greenbaum, both resident in Australia, were quasi visual in inspiration, with some kind of ecological/political subtext. Though I am not convinced that music (unless accompanied by words) lends itself to polemical, or even visual or narrative material, it can succeed if your name is Berlioz or Strauss: success depends on the creative strength of the musical impulse and sheer genius.

So Many Rivers made pleasant noises, jazz or blues coloured, but left me with the impression of meandering improvisations rather than of music that emerged from any powerful musical inspiration.

The second piece, The Year without a Summer, by Stuart Greenbaum attempted a portrayal of the huge volcanic eruption in 1815 of Mount Tambora in Indonesia which dimmed the skies in the following year around the world (did it colour the outcome of the Congress of Vienna?). Though it too sounded often like the work of a gifted improviser, its meditative character suggested some musical inspiration.

Without attempting to relate its phases to the event and its effects, the music was better constructed than the Bailey piece, stood on its own feet without the need of its narrative, and revealed a composer of considerable sophistication even if, in the end, it did not seem to be a work of great depth.

On balance, I left with the feeling that there was not quite enough music of real consequence in this programme, though the players are among the most talented in the country and they play to audiences that generally seek weighty classics, as well as being prepared for substantial new music.

Musica Lyrica in the 17th and 18th centuries

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Musica Lyrica

A concert embracing visiting Auckland cellist/gambist Polly Sussex, of music the 17th and 18th centuries. By Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Johan Jakob Froberger, Joseph-Hector Fiocco, Handel, Buxtehude and Anon. 

Rowena Simpson (soprano), Shelley Wilkinson (baroque violin), Emma Goodbehere (baroque cello), Douglas Mews (harpsichord) and Polly Sussex (cello, piccolo cello and viola da gamba)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University

Wednesday 21 April 6.30pm

Perhaps this concert was presented by the New Zealand School of Music because Polly Sussex was in town; she had played in the weekend with the baroque/classical ensemble Musica Lyrica at St Paul’s Lutheran church in Mount Cook. Sussex teaches at Auckland University and has an international reputation as a specialist in the early cello and viola da gamba. The ensemble, formed with the support of the church to perform Bach cantatas in their original Lutheran setting, comprises a total of about 15 musicians, varying according to requirements. 

In its advertising the concert was characterized by a Latin proverb Musica laetitiae comes medicina dolorum (music is a companion to joy and a balm of sorrow). No one can quarrel with any attempt to keep a vestige of Latin alive now that it has been almost entirely banished from the New Zealand school system (I heard that only 25 candidates sat Latin for NCEA Level One, alias School Certificate, last year).

The Hunter Council Chamber – the former main library that was socially central to students of my era, laid out with book-lined alcoves and shelves rising to the ceiling on all walls, reached by two levels of narrow iron gangways – may now be visually bereft, but it offers excellent acoustics for small instrumental ensembles though not so good for an orchestra.

The players presented a pretty sight. In addition to the delicately adorned harpsichord, a viola da gamba with a body of contrasting laminations and a cello, lay on the floor. While a piccolo cello and a normal cello were in thee hands of Polly Sussex and Emma Goodbehere, the two string players for the first piece, by Barrière. Barrière lived in Paris in the 18th century in the early years of Louis XV and became a virtuoso cellist.

The two cellos created a sound blend that I had never heard before, flowing harmonies that combined their voices in an utterly enchanting way. I was surprised by the sound of the piccolo cello, distinctly more open and sweet than many violas, and less nasal than the typical cello played high up the finger-board.

The Sonata II a tre, for piccolo cello, cello and harpsichord, comprised four short movements, some treating the two in canon, some as a normal duet. There was nothing complex or musically rich, but much that was technically tricky and quite charming.

Johan Jacob Froberger lived a century earlier, in Germany, Italy and England, and his influence was widespread, through Bach and Handel even perhaps to Mozart and Beethoven. It was a harpsichord Tombeau – a memorial honouring a dead person, in this case one M Blancrocher – that Douglas Mews played next. It offered an admirably warm and clear display of the sonorous possibilities and playing techniques of the harpsichord, in interesting harmonies: very slow and quite elaborate in conception.

Mews also played the famous last movement of Handel’s ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ keyboard Suite in E.

Jean-Hector Fiocco was Belgian, a contemporary of Barrière. Soprano Rowena Simpson had the company of the two cellists and Mews in his Lamentatio prima which, according to the programme note, is a setting of Chapter 2 of the Book of Jeremiah. Rowena returned three years ago from years of study and singing in Holland and elsewhere in Europe and her voice projected confidently, reflecting that experience not simply in early music but also in dramatic interpretation; sustaining her breath over quite elaborate passages and handling decorations, including a cadenza near the end, with ease.

She also sang the next piece – a German aria of the 1720s by Handel: ‘In den angenehmen Büschen’. It was distinctly more modern sounding, though light in spirit and unlike his typical operatic writing of that time. The accompaniment of baroque violin (Shelley Wilkinson) and harpsichord however connected it clearly enough with an earlier era.

Then came a surprise: an anonymous viola da gamba sonata recently discovered in the Bodleian Library. Polly Sussex explained what was known of its provenance: found in 2006 in a collection, bearing the hallmarks of a French viol piece of the late 17th century, though described on the modern printed score as of Lübeck. It was pretty, exercised the player’s technique and the resources of the instrument, a normal seven-string bass viol of the time.

Finally Rowena Simpson returned, accompanied by Wilkinson, Sussex and Mews to sing Buxtehude’s cantata ‘Singet dem Herrn’, one of the few vocal works of this mainly organ composer. It exercised the musicians while proving most engaging, with undulating dynamics and attractive passages of tremolo or trilling.

It’s encouraging that such small, specialist ensembles keep arising around Wellington, evidencing the abundance of musical talent ready to take initiatives to attract audiences of both aficionados and newcomers to the genre in question. This ensemble has talent to spare.

New Zealand String Quartet: Lower Hutt

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schubert: String Quartet no 1 in G minor/B flat major, D.18; Helen Fisher: String Quartet; Tan Dun: Eight Colours; Beethoven: Duet for viola & cello, WoO 32; Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, Op 74 no 3 “The Rider”

St. James’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 14 April, 8pm

As the excellent programme note for the opening work said, “there is enough musical meat here for us to enjoy the work on its own terms” despite the lack of subtlety employed by its composer in his extreme youth: he was only thirteen when he wrote it.

It was played with the usual NZSQ care, commitment and attention to detail. The players illuminated all the felicities in this delightful quartet.

The opening andante was followed by presto vivace, yet the movement remained largely sombre. The second movement minuet was ländler-like; quite enchanting. The andante third movement was like a slow waltz: most attractive. As the note said, the drama was particularly in the two outer movements. The presto finale featured more modulation than in the earlier movements, and thus more drama.

Helen Fisher’s quartet was premiered by NZSQ in this very venue, 15½ years ago. It opens with the members of the quartet vocalising the Maori word “Aue!” Gradually the instruments enter, with glissandi at the end of notes and phrases similar to those employed in traditional style at the end of the word “Aue”.

Helen Fisher addressed the audience, and told of her inspiration from the karanga sung by women on the marae. There were indeed many inspiring moments on this 15-minute journey from grief and pain to hope (as described by Fisher), along with discordant phrases depicting pain. It all made sense in the sensitive hands of the New Zealand String Quartet, though the pain and grief threatened to overwhelm at times.

Even the dance section seemed subdued, despite its complexity of cross-rhythms and intersecting tonalities. An underlying agitated accompaniment gave coherence to the song sequence that concluded the work, which ended with a hopeful upwards glissando.

Eight Colours, by Tan Dun, was as colourful as the name suggests. Written as a sort of drama derived from Peking Opera (as described by the composer), the sections are titled: Peking Opera; Shadows; Pink Actress; Black Dance; Zen; Drum and Gong (in which the players rhythmically slap the hands onto the strings and finger-board); Cloudiness; Red Sona.

The alternating slow and fast movements use a variety of string techniques (including some that are a ‘no-no’ in Western music). The work is extremely demanding technically and rhythmically. The New Zealand String Quartet has played it before, and it’s New Zealand premier was in Wellington in 1998 (by other New Zealanders).

Tan Dun has written ‘I found a danger in later atonal writing to be that it is too easy to leave yourself out of the music. We can therefore assume that this is expressive of himself and his approach to life.

The very percussive music employs numbers of intriguing sounds, including those of birds. The music is not totally unemotive, but full of effects for the listener to interpret. Some of the effects are not easy on the Western ear. It is a tribute to the players that they could coax such a variety of timbres from their instruments and use so many different techniques.

The work ends abruptly and amusingly.

The amusement continued after the interval, with Gillian Ansell and Rolf Gjelsten playing a short duo by Beethoven, written for himself and his friend Baron Nicolaus Zmeskall von Domanowecz, a talented amateur cellist, to play. Its subtitle ‘with obbligato eyeglasses’ was obeyed literally by the performers: both sported spectacles, and not a little ‘hamming up’ was employed here and there.

A jolly piece, it is nevertheless virtuosic in places, and as Rolf Gjelsten said in his introduction, used some techniques that were advanced for the time of the work’s composition (though paling beside those used by Tan Dun). This was a delightful cameo to throw into a concert programme.

Haydn’s “Rider” quartet, probably named for the galloping, high-spirited finale, gave rich enjoyment as always with a Haydn chamber word, revealing the cheerful character and inexhaustible invention of the composer. While at times the structure seems classically formal, at others, apparent spontaneity and exuberance take over, the more so in the lively yet nuanced playing of the New Zealand String Quartet.

The sublime rising intervals of the largo assai movement, following the interesting opening allegro, give an almost Romantic cast to the movement, as well as epitomising the positive nature of Haydn’s musical mind. It was richly and warmly played.

The minuet was certainly no predictable classical movement; it had a lively character in both musical language and rhythm.

The finale featured great animation and a fine singing quality.

This was a concert of a range of music that demonstrated the sheer accomplishment of this, New Zealand’s premier chamber ensemble. The players’ consummate skill and artistry never came between the music and the listener.

 

New Zealand String Quartet and Diedre Irons at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

String Quartet in G minor, Op 74, No 3 ‘Rider’ (Haydn); Song of the Ch’in (Zhou Long); Piano Quintet in A minor, Op 84 (Elgar) 

New Zealand String Quartet and Diedre Irons (piano)

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 11 April 2010

Waikanae’s chamber music concerts take place in a large hall which is equipped for indoor sports and so it has a high roof and is much longer and wider than needed for music other than on the scale of a symphony orchestra.

The size is mitigated somewhat by the players being in a recessed stage at one end; that helps focus the sound. The result nevertheless, is a sound that, while not unduly small, seems light and lacking in bass resonance.

This was the first in their splendid, nine-concert 2010 series.

The impact of the playing of Haydn’s ‘Rider’ quartet was discreet and perhaps unintentionally fastidious. The music’s minor key offers a somewhat sober gloss on the potentially boisterous character in the riding rhythms of first and last movements, and this acoustic refinement added further gentility.

My memory of the quartet’s earlier performances of this piece, which I recall as one of their early favourites, is of a much more robust approach, and of a piece that they interpreted with more abandon and gusto. At the end of the first movement I felt as if a promised adventure had been somewhat uneventful.

Similarly, the Largo assai seemed to skirt round any temptation to utter profound thoughts, though by its end I had become more impressed by the wonderful refinement of the playing, here absolutely in place.

The last movement revealed the players’ ready response to Haydn’s delight in little teasings and surprises, all delivered with the most disingenuous straight face.

Zhou Long is an important Chinese composer, based in the United States, now aged 56; his Song of the Ch’in is a most effective amalgam of Chinese music as played on the ancient seven-stringed instrument, heard through the filter of western contemporary conventions. The result, a remarkably subtle piece, could hardly have found more sympathetic players, at ease with the variety of pizzicato, trembling bow strokes and delicate glissandi, decorated with idiomatic ornaments. In several sections, in contrasting tempi and moods, and an interestingly cyclical shape, it reached a discreet climax before subsiding into its earlier meditative state.

The first half ended with the unadvertised addition of a droll duo by Beethoven called Duet With Two Obbligato Eyeglasses for viola and cello (WoO 32).  An example of the kind of satirical piece, popular at the time, that mocked clumsy composers who used stock phrases and clichés but were incapable of finding ways to develop or integrate their musical ideas in coherent forms. At least the players here, Gillian Ansell and Rolf Gjelsten, gave it a performance that exhibited all its mocking strengths and weaknesses convincingly.

The second half was devoted to Elgar’s Piano Quintet. Diedre Irons and the quartet approached it with an affection and sympathy that gave it a softness and charm that perhaps robbed it of a certain strength. Nevertheless, the first movement, with a couple of quite enchanting melodies, has a charm that is all its own and the players, in evident accord, made no attempt to dress them in anything other than the sweetest tones.

Though the programme note recorded a common view that the slow movement is its highlight, this performance didn’t convince me. There is melody, meandering and elegiac, but its ideal expression demands a very special balance between sentimentality and Brahmsian pensiveness, which I have heard captured; perhaps chamber musicians do not have a great deal of scope for the cultivation of that peculiar kind of English idiom.

I did not miss a scherzo movement, which is a convention that I often find surplus to the needs of a sonata composition.  For the Brahmsian (again) energy that drives the varied last movement serves a scherzo function excellently and it rekindled my attention to the rather unique loveliness of this quintet, and the regret that Elgar was not among the English composers of around the 1920s who cultivated chamber music more seriously.

Chamber Music Hutt Valley emboldened to survive

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Earlier this year the committee of Chamber Music Hutt Valley reported a resolution to wind up. It was assumed that the reason was primarily falling support for their concerts.

Their April newsletter announces the welcome decision, by a new and strengthened committee, to carry on, disclosing that their earlier anxiety stemmed in part from lack of strength in the committee. Four new committee members have just been elected.
“The committee is optimistic that the society can remain viable for the foreseeable future”, says the newsletter.

And the first concert of the year will be on Wednesday 14 April in St James Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt, from the New Zealand String Quartet. The programme comprises string quartets by Haydn, Schubert and Helen Fisher, as well as Beethoven’s Duet for viola and cello and Tan Dun’s piece entitled Eight Colours.

See the Coming Events at 14 April.

Further concerts are scheduled for:

13 May Zephyr Wind Quintet and Diedre Irons

7 June  New Zealand Chamber Soloists

10 August   Amalia Hall and John Paul Muir (violin and piano)

14 September  Hot Young Strings, directed by Donald Armstrong

Paekakariki’s Mulled Wine Concerts: Houstoun and Brown

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Beethoven’s cello sonatas, Op 101; Elégie by Fauré; Cello Sonata by Rachmaninov.

Michael Houstoun (piano) and Ashley Brown (cello)

Memorial Hall, Paekakariki

Sunday 28 March  

The second in the 2010 series of Mulled Wine Concerts in one of Wellington’s unique concert spaces, found the sun pouring in the west-facing windows, the sea across the road and Kapiti Island beyond. There was hardly a spare seat.

That two of New Zealand’s finest musicians should be prepared to play in this modest community hall, is evidence of the reputation of the series and the commitment of a devoted audience.

There were no concessions to musical standards. Beethoven’s last two cello sonatas are not very familiar, but reward acquaintance. Though I know them quite well, I am always surprised by passages that I had not remembered, which had failed to take root, perhaps because of the apparently awkward shapes and somewhat dry character of some of the music, especially No 1, in C. They are not quite as immediately memorable or attractive as most of Beethoven’s music; but in the hands of two such committed and gifted musicians, even the most difficult music becomes engrossing. Op 101 was written in 1817, at the start of his last decade that saw the composition of the Choral Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the last great piano sonatas and string quartets.

The first of the two is a fairly gritty, severe piece, consisting mainly of short phrases that don’t seem to evolve very much; in the Adagio introduction to the second movement the cello adopts a grainy, almost gruff tone while the piano countered with a lighter, decorative quality; the final Allegro vivace emerged as a movement of stark contrasts, with little overt lyricism.

In the second sonata, in D major, the cello relished its charming melodic theme in the optimistic first movement, and in a more sympathetic, lyrical middle movement the cello again enjoyed a real tune that Brown explored in his rich middle register, not concealing its mood of anxiety which the two musicians dispelled in a rhapsodic performance.

The second half consisted of the Rachmaninov sonata, and Fauré’s Élégie, which is a lot more than just the salon piece that its title might suggest. It is a small masterpiece, the clearest evidence, the disturbed rather un-Fauréish middle section that came out as an arresting and profound expression of loss.

Finally they played one of the few great, and much loved, cello sonatas of the 20th century: Rachmaninov’s, written just after his Second Piano Concerto; various episodes, particularly in the piano part, indeed recall details of the concerto.  For that reason, it is easy to hear it at times as a piano sonata with cello obbligato, but the cello is given some highly characteristic passages, for example, in the second movement with its rather unorthodox, low lying theme that swung from the ominous to the cheeky. Here, while the cello had a leading role, the piano’s decorative accompanying figures proved almost the more interesting to listen to.

The third movement was enriched by the cello’s deeply expressive melody and the piano’s later full-blooded work-out. Both players brought a muscular quality to their performance that drew attention to its structure, largely avoiding the temptation for romanticizing or sentimentality; what there was of that, was pretty disciplined. 

The concert maintained this congenial series’ impressive level of musical quality and commitment.

Netherlands and New Zealand music from SMP Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The SMP Ensemble conducted by Lucas Vis

VISTAS — music by Karlo Margetic, Louis Andriessen, Jack Body, Dylan Lardelli, Anton Killin, Yannis Kyriakidis  

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Friday 26 March 2010

The recent St Andrew’s series during the Festival included a concert by the SMP (Summer Music Project) Ensemble; that comprised music by Polish and New Zealand composers. This concert was entirely of New Zealand and Dutch music. Michael Norris introduced the concert Caprice Arts Trust director . They included the Caprice Arts Trust, the New Zealand School of Music, both universities, the Netherlands-New Zealand Association, KLM and Creative New Zealand. There was one premiere; some pieces were quite new and others as much as 40 years old.  

The title of the concert was Vistas: I suppose honouring Dutch conductor, Lucas Vis, a prominent figure in the promotion of new music. Most of the music in this programme was written for unconventional instrumental combinations and most eschewed the kinds of sounds that have been embraced by the generality of music lovers. Composers of this turn of mind seem comfortable carving a isolating niche, largely rejecting the standard musical formations and forms, such as the symphony orchestra or the string quartet, most kinds of tonal music and even the strains of contemporary music that have found more general acceptance.  

The first piece, written for a probably unique combination, was Karlo Margetic’s Hommage à WL: that is, Witold Lutoslawski. It opened, and closed, with Yoshiko Tsuruta playing with soft mallets on a wood block, soon supported by a dense bed of winds and strings: clarinets and horn; violin, viola, cello and double bass; piano and percussion, and it evolved into an aleatoric exercise (for which Lutoslawski was noted) each instrument playing according to his/her own instinct, but launching afresh at the end of each phase; those points were about the extent of the conductor, Lucas Vis’s, role. Occasionally a definite punctuation point arrived, e.g. with piano and cello; the mood became increasingly disturbed, even frenzied, before subsiding.  

Louis Andriessen’s Zilver was written in 1994. The prevailing character was vivid contrasts of pitch, setting flute against piano, vibraphone and marimba, all of which played identical or closely related lines. While the effect was distinctive, one lost a sense of the individual instruments; this was the effect of much of the music in the concert, for while the ensemble was smallish, several pieces were scored extensively for all together, in this case seven voices that the ear is not accustomed to hearing all sounding at once.

The music, nevertheless, gained in coherence as repeated motifs – gestures rather – were handled, at slowly increased speed and changing rhythms, at one point seeming to make wry allusions to the Viennese waltz. It drew to a close by dismantling the tighter framework that had evolved.

Jack Body’s Turtle Time dates from 1968 – a setting of surrealist poems by Russell Haley. Dated? well, perhaps, but it successfully maintains its character: witty, eccentric, the poems brilliantly articulated by Karlo Margetic, with huge gestures, likewise surreal, that reached out insistently to the audience. The music and its performance by piano Sam Jury), harpsichord (Jonathan Berkahn), organ (Matt Oswin)and harp (Natalia Mann), imposed a sort of irony of very traditional sound sources handled with drollerie and wit.  The words might have been a useful addition to the programme note.

Then came the ‘World premiere’ (I do wish we could just settle for ‘first performance’; I do doubt that even the composer expects a rush of breathless music publishers and promoters wanting performance rights in Buenos Aires and St Petersburg). Dominating the stage was the contrabass clarinet of Justus Rozemond, reaching two meters high, along with piccolo, piano, viola and cello.  

Noh theatrical precepts lay behind Dylan Lardelli’s piece, entitled Aspects of Theatre; where each performer rehearses alone, and the eventual performance is the first time the players have got together. The resulting spontaneous spirit was palpable; the musical experience was of extreme dynamic variety, of seemingly random, widely spaced pitches, whose relationships were irrelevant.  Though I have to plead failure to get Noh theatre, in spite of first hearing 40 years ago at the Athens Festival, and subsequent exposures.

Anton Killin’s Two Moments were approximately that; when its end seemed unexpectedly close to its start, Vis led a second performance there and then. In spite of its brevity, the composer had taken pains to score it carefully for seven strings, winds and an accordion carefully arrayed on stage. Interesting, though the purported depiction of the life of Denisovich and the death of Solzhenitsyn failed to register with me, and I had to wonder about the sort of audience envisaged by the composer.

The last piece, Tinkling, was for a much larger ensemble, ten players. Eshen Teo – flute, Andrzej Nowicki – clarinet, Peter Maunder – trombone, Dylan Lardelli – guitar, Dorothy Raphael – percussion, Yoshiko Tsuruta – marimba, Vivian Stephens – violin, Charley Davenport – cello, Simon Eastwood – double bass, Sam Jury – piano. A reworking, shortening of an earlier piece, based on a riff by Thelonius Monk, there was more for the mind to adhere to than with some of the other pieces.  More familiar musical patterns and procedures were suggested; subtle dramatic moments occurred, and arresting little accelerations; attractive hints of rubato in repeated phrases. Again however, I found the busyness of the scoring prevented distinguishing many individual instruments a lot of the time; why bother then with such detailed instrumentation? Pianist Sam Jury had been particularly notable and conductor Vis singled him out.

There was no question about the accomplishment of the players who devoted themselves with commitment to some pretty challenging music that clearly appealed to this audience. The concert was well-attended and there was long applause for the ensemble and for the conductor in particular.

Full-frontal Mahler at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MAHLER – Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn)

Linden Loader (mezzo-soprano) / Roger Wilson (baritone)

Terence Dennis (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace Season of Concerts 2010

Friday 19th March

No composer is more identified with song as integral to his output than Gustav Mahler. The creator of a number of vast symphonic edifices, he worked into most of these compositions either direct quotations from his own songs or melodies derived from them. His Eighth Symphony is, in essence a choral symphony, and his orchestral song-cycle Das Lied Von Der Erde he regarded as a symphony in all but name.

Mahler grew up in the garrison town of Jihlava, in Moravia, a region steeped in folksong, and a place which would have frequently rung with the sounds of military marches, the boy’s enthusiasm for these tunes probably accounting for the prominence of such melodies and forms in his instrumental works up to the Eighth Symphony. His forty or so songs include no less than twenty-one settings of verses from a German folk-collection of verses entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn), an anthology which first appeared in 1805, with two further volumes following. These poems, collected by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Bretano, include a colourful variety of themes, topics and characters, both religious and secular, all displaying an engagingly simple but deeply direct set of fireside-wisdoms.

Mahler first set some of these verses in 1883 for a collection entitled Lieder und Gesange; but better-known are the twelve settings which make up the composer’s “Wunderhornlieder”, and which we know indeed as Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The use of orchestral accompaniment brought out Mahler’s skill at fashioning chamber-like instrumental sonorities, often using single lines or small groups for colouristic effect, though the expediences of publication and performance saw Mahler write piano versions of the accompaniment as well.

To have the whole set performed live would be, I think, a rare treat anywhere; and singers Linden Loader and Roger Wilson along with pianist Terence Dennis threw themselves into the humour, tragedy, irony, drollery, foolishness and romance of the different settings with plenty of feeling and gusto. The theatricality of some of the duets brought out a ready response from Roger Wilson, putting his extensive operatic experience and vocal acting skills to good use with some vivid characterisations. If somewhat less outwardly demonstrative and spectacular in her character portrayals, Linden Loader’s beautiful voice made the perfect foil for her partner in their duets, such as in the opening Der Schildwache Nachtlied, a dialogue between a soldier and a beautiful ghostly temptress. And she nicely caught the cocquettishness of the girl in Trost im Unglück, a song abut a hussar and his recalcitrant sweetheart, one in which the singers played the contrasts off each other deliciously. For me, the “plum” of the duets is Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen, a song whose music is filled with eerily-charged beauty and deep regret, depicting an encounter between a girl and her dead lover – both singers here characterising their parts with the utmost feeling, and Terence Dennis’s piano-playing getting everything right, from the ghostly trumpet calls near the beginning to the flashes of anguish transfixing the girl’s vocal line, and the beautiful transitions between the warmly romantic music in 3/4 time and the spectral reveille-calls of wind and brass. Elsewhere, perhaps Roger Wilson’s extremely boorish lad in Verlor’ne Müh might have been thought by some too dunderheaded to be a credible object of a young girl’s attention; but I enjoyed it immensely.

The individual songs were no less finely done by each singer. Again, Roger Wilson pointed the words of Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt with obvious enjoyment, relishing the irony of the fishes’ pragmatic response to St Anthony’s sermonisings, and later, turning his gift for comic irony towards creatures of a different kind in Lob des hohen Verstandes, bringing off the brayings of a donkey most beautifully. He was suppported to the utmost by Terence Dennis, whose playing nicely underpinned the garrulousness of the saint’s preachings (a fiendishly difficult “perpetuum mobile” piano-part), as well as pointing all the fun and pomposity of the animals’ pronouncements in the latter song. And Linden Loader caught our sympathies all too heart-rendingly on behalf of both mother and child, in the tragic Das Irdische Leben, but then in due course restored equanimities with a charming, nicely-related Rheinlegendchen, the music lovely, lilting and lyrical (the performance surviving the all-too-audible and out-of-rhythm tappings of a nearby workman!).

Performing Revelge, the longest song of the set last of all in the concert naturally threw weight onto the darker, more serious side of the collection – the piece describes a post-battle parade of ghost-soldiers, with music that’s mostly funeral-march in character, but filled with sardonic, mock-heroic gestures as well as grim finalities. I thought Roger Wilson and Terence Dennis gave the piece such vivid, in-your-face treatment that anything that followed afterwards would have seemed impossibly pale and wan. The singer’s repeated cries of “Tra-la-li” at regular intervals seemed, if anything, to increase in energy and desperation as the song marched grimly onwards, with the piano-playing at times practically orchestral in its amplitude and colour, resolutely supporting the singer to the bitter end. For some tastes, perhaps, a little TOO over-the-top – but not for mine! Any music written by a man who, upon visiting Niagara Falls, exclaimed “At last – fortissimo!” cries out for the kind of full-blooded performances which we certainly got during this splendid concert.