Tag: chamber music

Octets from Amici Ensemble at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Amici Ensemble: Donald Armstrong, Andrew Thomson, Lyndsay Mountfort, Robert Ibell, Hiroshi Ikematsu, Gregory Hill, Philip Green, Robert Weeks.

Jean Françaix: Octet “A Huit” (1972)
Anthony Ritchie: Octet, Opus 129 “Octopus”
Schubert: Octet in F major, D.803

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace, Thursday, 11 March, 6.30pm

To hear ensembles of more than four players is unusual, and when an octet plays a delightful programme such as this, it justifies an audience larger than that which attended.  In the peaceful and acoustically excellent setting of St. Andrew’s on The Terrace, it is a great pity that more people have not so far availed themselves of the opportunity of hearing such wonderful music. 
However, one person told me that the brocuhre describing the concerts came out so much later than the Arts Festival programme that she was already fully committed to as many concerts as she could manage.

It is also a shame that the early evening concerts were not all timed to fit in with events starting at 8pm in the Festival that patrons might be attending.

The first item, verbally introduced, as were the others, by Donald Armstrong, was a wonderful piece of writing, with strong parts for woodwind.  These NZSO players are nearly all principals of their sections.  It showed in their assurance, impeccable playing and ensemble.

After the quirky opening Moderato, the Octet’s Scherzo was lively; it was followed by an effective Andante, featuring a muted opening section for strings only.  The Mouvement de Valse began in most un-waltz-like fashion.  The comic waltz that followed sounded as though it was written for an elephant and a humming-bird.  Light-hearted, witty and rhythmic, it was played with panache and skill.  Were we being treated to a palm court orchestra in Galeries Lafayette, or Samaritaine?

The first movement, ‘Octopus’, of Anthony Ritchie’s quartet was certainly descriptive of the creature, its tentacles incessantly moving through the water.  In the second movement, ‘Sacrifice’, it seemed that we could hear the little octopuses (octopii?) crying, while in the ‘Survival of the Small’ the final violin motif perhaps signified the plantive survivor of the little octopuses.

This was imaginative writing, at times complex.  The playing included some of the best tones I’ve ever heard from a bassoon.

The woodwinds carried on their prowess in the Schubert octet.   In the first movement, sunny, bouncy and cheerful woodwind solos interrupted the strong string passages.

The andante second movement featured a beautiful clarinet solo, which gave way to the first violin’s mellow lower strings sometimes the upper strings were somewhat strident), and a return to the clarinet.

At that point I had to leave but Lindis Taylor, who was there, offered the following comments on the rest of the performance.

The ensemble’s vitality created an energetic Scherzo which contrasted strikingly with the slower pace of the Trio’s middle section. An octet that blends strings and winds provides such variety and clarity of sounds giving every player a share of the limelight and throughout the Scherzo, the clarinet of Philip Green was distinctive, giving special edge to the spirited, tripping rhythm.

The fourth movement, Andante, was taken quite quickly, but after a moment it seemed a perfectly natural pace. It’s a variations movement based on a tune from one of his operas, Die Freunde von Salamanca, in which several instruments take their turn in the lead. Greg Hill’s horn, an important contributor throughout, led in the third variation, mostly warm and polished though with occasional proof that ‘perfection’ and ‘horn’ is an oxymoron. And the playing of cellist Robert Ibell, supported vividly from below by Hiroshi Ikematsu on the bass, was particularly elegant.

In the Menuetto, the fifth movement, clarinet and bassoon had an entertaining alternating passage, in passages alternating between major and minor keys.
Then came the most magical opening, Andante molto, of the last movement. I have never heard it played with such tremulous apprehension, a premonition of the unknown, with cello tremolo and studied placing of wind chords: a splendid introduction to the spirited, remarkably optimistic Allegro which is a brilliant section that keeps producing new ideas and fresh angles on old ones, ending in a thrilling climax.

One of the virtues of the performance was the omission of several repeats; Schubert’s repeats are sometimes troublesome; they disrupt that tumbling flow of inspiration. Without them we are left simply to marvel at Schubert’s endless inventiveness.  Anyway, three-quarters of an hour is long enough for most compositions.

SMP Ensemble: Nexus – Poles Apart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SMP Ensemble

Music by Jack Body, Anton Killin, Simon Eastwood, Karlo Margetic,

Jan.W.Morthenson, Charles Ives, John Adams, Francis Poulenc,

Henryk Gorecki, Richard Robertshawe, Andrzej Nowicki, Carol Shortis

The SMP Ensemble

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

Wednesday 10th March

The SMP Ensemble was formed in 2008, and set up as a forum for the work of Wellington-based composers and performers. Over a short period it has, under the direction of Andrzej Nowicki,  already developed a reputation as a fresh and stimulating force in the capital’s contemporary music activity, organising and performing a number of concerts. Its most recent was a presentation at one of the St.Andrew’s March 2010 concerts, set up to run parallel to the NZ International Arts Festival music offerings.

One of the concert’s themes was a Polish connection, hence the “Poles Apart” reference in the concert’s title. A number of the works drew inspiration from Polish writing, history or political events, among them a work by local composer Carol Shortis commemorating the arrival, sixty-five years ago, of a group of Polish refugee children in New Zealand, many of whom still live in this country. Other works by Simon Eastwood and Karlo Margetic took as their starting-points events or artistic achievements whose source was Poland. As it turned out, the concert presented a tantalising mix of home-grown and off-shore music whose sources of inspiration seemed to demonstrate the “music in the air” maxim.

Jack Body’s “Turtle Time” sets a text by Russell Haley, here spiritedly spoken and enacted by Karlo Margetic, his powerful expression of the words and use of the physical spaces heightening the piece’s theatrical qualities. The ensemble produced some lovely sounds which variously chatter, babble, scintillate and clatter, the sound-picture flipping between ambient and pointillistic, sometimes running with, sometimes countering the words of the poem. These constantly-changing colours and patterns of the soundscape were a source of continual delight, apart from the organ’s swell-pedal which I found too crudely applied and rather irritating.  Given that Karlo Margetic used his voice and the stage so well, I wondered whether the musicians and their instruments could have been placed more outrageously antiphonally, emphasising both the fragmentary nature of the realisation and the efforts made by the ensemble itself to bring their individual sounds more in accord with one another. Interestingly, the voice wasn’t microphoned or otherwise enhanced in any way, as it is on the work’s only recording that I know of, made for Kiwi Records in the 1970s – for me the piece worked just as well in the “real” physical space of St.Andrew’s, the sounds exchanging the claustrophobia of the recording’s close-microphoning for a freer, more theatrical interaction. At the piece’s end, the escape by the “voice” from the turtles’ predatory time-snapping, past wave upon kaleidoscopic wave of obsessive instrumental obstruction, had a satisfying, almost ritualistic feel to it in concert. Abstractionists might object, but my feeling regarding a piece such as this, with so many overtly theatrical elements already present, is that the work’s innate capacity for suggesting interactions in visual terms cries out to be exploited further.

Anton Killi’s electroacoustic piece A Priori resembled for me a message in human speech deprived of its consonants, nostalgically accompanied by feed-back-like squeaks, whines and ambient “radio noise” interference, suggesting to my ears memories of the golden age of radio. Along with these half-words underpinned with white-noise resonances came Ligeti-like vocalisings, impulses of communication either dragging themselves from the pupa or distending their resonances into lengthy, ritualistic sequences of mesmeric mystery.  Less equivocal was Simon Eastwood’s “Jericho – Walls Will Fall”, one of several works in the concert with a Polish connection, in this case the music inspired by a protest song from the 1980s Polish Solidarity Movement, describing how walls will fall if people have the will to knock them down. Written for a Brass Trio, featuring trombone, horn and trumpet, the work constantly delights with its inventive explorations over four brief movements. The first sounds plenty of warning warring notes, each instrument in turn allowed to take the lead with its own patternings. Then, Alex Morton’s horn and Mark Davey’s trombone mute their tones and become nature-drones, leaving Dave Kempton’s trumpet to play its own flourishes, before joining with the others in further melodic and rhythmic combinations. A toccata-like piece follows, trumpet and horn stuttering while the trombone swaggers and struts its stuff. By this time the walls seem to have capitulated and fallen, because the fourth-movement brass cantilena is valedictory in tone, though more insistent at the point where things abruptly cease, the fight having been won.

Karlo Margetic’s “Hommage a W.L.” is a tribute to the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, the gesture itself an interesting idea, giving rise to the question regarding which composer’s work should take the credit for whatever success the ensuing piece earns for itself or is accorded. Quoting Lutoslawski’s idea of using aleatoric compositional techniques in a free and spontaneous way, Margetic characterises the older composer’s avoidance of rigour and dry complexity as “a wonderful act of subversion against the dogmatic avant-garde”. The piece (for mixed ensemble) begins with a woodblock-like roll (repeated at certain “get ready” transition-points throughout the work), and a “Bluebeard’s Door” chord immediately following, whose sustained resonances beautifully build the musical argument through melismatic strings-and-wind repetitions towards magically transformed stratospheric explorations of similar material. A string quartet “jams it” along with tattoo-like percussion rhythms, screwing up the tension until the breaking tides wash up and leave aeolian harp-like figurations teetering backwards and forwards, the strings and winds returning to tighten and screw things up again, to the point of near-frenzy. After still more irruptions the energies and tensions slowly dissipate and unravel, brass and piano contributing to a somewhat crepuscular feeling, which the composer promptly and somewhat unexpectedly banishes with an abrupt forte and a pulsating woodblock having the final word. I thought this was a great work, deserving of future notice.

I liked also Jan W. Morthenson’s Unisono, for bassoon, piano and electronics, a piece in which two instruments play with the idea of working in unison, but experience all kinds of tensions while trying to do so. Kylie Nesbit’s bassoon was amplified after her opening acoustic gambit in tandem with Jonathan Berkahn’s piano harmonies, Richard Robertshawe contriving all kinds of timbral modifications to the former, creating almost surreal effects, especially during the ensuing game of chase with the piano, both instruments occasionally pushed to their physical extremities for single notes or chords, and each trying to outdo the other in constructing edifices of sound. Even more of a “cosmic landscape” was attempted by Charles Ives’ 1906 piece “The Unanswered Question”, a work not published for over thirty years after its creation. Ives writes beautifully for the strings at the beginning, the chords slowly oscillating and changing colours before the trumpet enters (here placed at the back of the church, as were wind and brass ensembles), interacting with the antiphonal forces with a view to solving certain of life’s mysteries, but being little the wiser at the end of it all.

After the interval came John Adams’ rumbustious (and, I thought, rather gruff!) tribute to John Phillip Sousa, one which didn’t really do much for me, apart from evoking marching feet and a sense of cumulative excitement. Far more to my taste was the wonderful Sonata for Bassoon and Clarinet by Francis Poulenc, played here at a crackling pace by Kylie Nesbit and Andrzej Nowicki, with sheer momentum and nimble articulation the order of the day right up to the last few drolleries being lightly tossed off. A nicely-judged slow movement, with each instrument a perfect foil for the other, was followed by a finale whose romp of exchange would have melted all but the hardest of hearts. Songful clarinet and droll bassoon momentarily resembled Don Quixote and Sancho Panza setting off home to recover from the latest set of exploits, while the circus clowns returned to flop-start the exchanges for the stop-start concluding statements of the work. A more telling contrast than the Piano Sonata by Henryk Gorecki (he of “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” fame) couldn’t be imagined. Its ferocity and teeth-in-the-bone tenacity owed much to Bartok, with similar drive and folk-like primitives and repetitions. The brief but exceedingly lovely slow movement provided but a respite for the sensibilities before the finale burst into the ambient spaces, drove through contrasting episodes, then teased us all somewhat with whimsical juxtapositionings of energy and reflectiveness towards the end, before finally delivering a brutal-sounding payoff to finish. Great playing throughout by Sam Jury.

This concert had promised both substance and variety, which by this time had been achieved handsomely on both counts, though there was still more to come. Andrzej Nowicki’s whimsically-titled Concertino 5b was light relief after the Gorecki work, featuring two musicians dressed in pyjamas, one with an amplified clarinet and the other working the electronics.

It was an entertaining piece of music-theatre, with the energetic clarinettist gradually running quite seriously out of steam, and going to sleep, making in the process some suitably drowsy sounds. Synthesised resonances of what the clarinet had commented on and shared before added a kind of coda to the remnants of the performance.

Finally, another work with Polish resonances was performed, a short cantata-like piece by Carol Shortis whose music was inspired and based on both a Polish folk-song “Polskie Kwiaty” and a13th-century hymn Bogurodzica, and was written to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the arrival in New Zealand of Polish refugee children in 1944. Most of these children had been separated from or lost their parents and other family members. Carol Sortis wrote “Tesknota” (Yearning”) as a response to the story told by one of these refugees, using the traditional melodies of folk-song and hymn to evoke “Old Poland” before the Russian and German invasions of 1939.

Beginning darkly on a double bass, then a ‘cello, and climbing into the higher strings the music sweetly and lyrically bloomed as the choir entered, with the words “Spiewa Ci obcy wiatr” (A foreign wind sings to you) to the accompaniment of wind noises made by additional voices. Counter-tenor Laurie Fleming rejoined with “A serce teskni…” (But the heart yearns….”), the voice truthful and clear, if not ideally strong in the lower register, so that he’s somewhat masked by the other voices at times. Stronger and brighter was soprano Olga Gryniewicz with her “Stokrotki, fiolki, kaczence i maki” (Daisies, violets, buttercups and poppies), the voice pure, radiant and beautiful, the high note at the start pure and sweet with little hint of strain. From here, strings and piano radiantly sing an almost Martinu-like accompaniment, the counter-tenor and soprano voices rising briefly for the last time out of the instrumental and vocal ambiences which go on to conclude the work. Heartfelt and extremely moving.

Festiva Piano Quartet playing for keeps at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

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

MOZART : Piano Quartet in G Minor K.478

MAHLER – Piano Quartet in A Minor

BRAHMS – Piano Quartet No.3 in C Minor Op.60

Festiva Piano Quartet: Cristina Vaszilcsin (violin), Peter Garrity (viola),

Robert Ibell (‘cello), Catherine McKay (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Tuesday 9th March

I can think of no higher praise for the playing of this group throughout the present concert than expressing the wish to hear them tackle, one day, (with the help of another violinist) a favourite work of mine, the Cesar Franck Piano Quintet. That’s not to say that I don’t want to hear them in other repertoire as well – in fact, one of the features of this concert was how completely and unselfconsciously the musicians found the style and voice of each composer’s music throughout the evening. To the Mozart work they brought strong, well-focused contrasts – dark and sunshine, tension and gaiety – knowing just when to “grip’ the music and when to relax. The relatively unfamiliar Mahler Quartet Movement was given concentrated and committed advocacy, with singing lines and deeply-dug intensities from all concerned, while the Brahms work added to the playing tensile strength and intellectual vigour, realising the music’s remarkable synthesis of romantic feeling and iron-wrought discipline.

I mention the Franck Quintet, because I couldn’t help being frequently reminded of it throughout the latter part of the concert, especially during the Festiva Quartet’s wholehearted tackling of the Brahms work – though Franck’s language and thematic constructions are of course quite different to Brahms’ in this Quartet, the works share a fair degree of nineteenth-century “sturm und drang”. No less heartfelt was the musicians’ approach to the Mahler, whose often feverish effusions in places put one even more in mind of the Belgian composer’s candidly-expressed outpourings. Again, the playing brought out the character of the music in each case, I thought, emphasising in Mahler’s work a certain febrile quality in some of the writing, while informing the Brahms Quartet with richer, deeper-throated tones, bringing out a more layered and complex web of expression.

First up, however, was the Mozart Quartet, the key of G Minor promising, as with other works from this composer, a vein of dark, agitated feeling colouring the music. So it proved, the players making the most of the music’s contrasting moods, the opening filled with foreboding and unease, and the second subject light and tripping, with some nice flashes of musical temperament in violinist Cristina Vaszilcsin’s work. It was playing that made the repeat a real pleasure to experience, as one could focus on different aspects of the music-making – the strong rhythmic support from Robert Ibell’s ‘cello, for example, and the clear, sparkling lines maintained by pianist Catherine McKay. The development’s surge and flow was nicely realised, the strands of melancholic feeling well-activated, with intense dialoguing between violin and viola (Peter Garrity), and an almost Beethovenian strength coming out in the piano part.

In the slow movement, the piano-and-strings exchanges exhibited grace and tender feeling, the violinist negotiating her extended “running” solo with deft elegance. The group generated great “schwung” in the finale’s concerted passages, the piano taking the spirited lead, and the individual strings allowing themselves some “glint” when negotiating their separate lines, occasionally setting against this lovely trio-voicing moments during softer episodes. The players enjoyed the work’s “teased-out” ending, Mozart treating us to a few bars of remote modulation before returning to the home key for a grand finish.

Mahler’s Piano Quartet Movement came from a work written when the composer was just 16, the rest of which he later destroyed, apart from a few bars of a Scherzo. It remains a fascinating glimpse of a “composer-in-gestation”, one whose characteristic fingerprints are already discernable. The piano-dark, brooding opening, with its repeated emphasis on a three-note motif swung between lyricism and angst, building up towards lines of running counterpoint, with every instrument singing its own song. The three-note motiv dominated the music’s central section, driving things to fever pitch in places, and creating what seemed like an unstoppable tide of impassioned feeling – full credit to Catherine McKay for her full-blooded pianistic flourishes, and to the strings for their similarly-expressed energies. The music and the playing continued to enthral, throughout contrasting episodes of exhausted calm (voices singing atop of murmuring piano chords), quickening tensions with occasional major-key flirtations, and exotic colourings (a gypsy-like violin solo leading a valedictory processional – very Mahlerian!), right to the hushed pizzicato ending.

But it was the Festiva’s playing of the Brahms Op.60 Piano Quartet which capped off an evening’s remarkable music-making. Big-boned playing, with full-bowings and richly dark piano tones captured the work’s opening, and made the contrast with the second subject markedly “tell”, the piano’s lyrical reflections answered with real depth of feeling, real “hurt”, conveyed by the rest of the ensemble. In places I could almost feel the players listening intently to their own interactions, while in others I had a sense of playing-for-keeps risk-taking, close to the edge of abandonment, as the music surged and seethed through the development. The performance had the feeling of a soul taking stock of its own strength after intense tribulation, and renewing its journey through sheer will.

The scherzo’s tricky syncopations were played with glint and fire and real “point”, with a dynamic range encompassing everything from a roar to a whisper, and a  storytelling impulse able to realise the suggestion of headlong flight with demons in pursuit. By contrast, the slow movement’s various instrumental combinations wrought magical results, ‘cello and piano beginning, followed by violin and ‘cello, and then violin and viola, each pair adding a different strain of feeling to the melody, whose eventual dying autumnal fall at the close evoked an atmosphere so beloved of this composer. The group caught the agitations of the finale’s opening, strings pounding in three against the piano’s four (and then swapping around!), the second subject’s hymn-like respite being overtaken by the restless opening music, the turbulence surging and abating throughout the development – exciting playing from all concerned! Catherine McKay’s emphatic march-like piano chords triumphantly proclaimed the hymn-like tune’s affirmations on its return, though to conclude the composer resolutely led the argument through a further agitated flurry and into the autumnal regions once again, the players determinedly and assuredly going with the music’s flow and delivering the final chords with proper and characteristic gruffness.

The muicians received an enthusiastic and well-deserved ovation from an audience whose enjoyment would, I’m sure, have helped spread the word regarding these St.Andrew’s concerts, in the wake of such exciting and involving performances.

Kugeltov: Klezmer music opens the St Andrew’s Concert Season

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Klezmer music old and new

Robin Perks (violin), Tui Clark (clarinet), Ross Harris (accordion), Malcolm Struthers (double bass)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Monday 8 March 2010 midday

(N.B. Ross Harris has drawn my attention to a mistake and to a couple of other misunderstandings in my review and the review has now been amended.  Wednesday 10 March)

The series of lunchtime and early evening concerts at St Andrew’s opened with a highly diverting concert of Klezmer music – the music of the Jewish cultures of Eastern Europe, whose traditional language is Yiddish, derived from Middle High German, mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slav and Romance languages.

The group’s name, Kugeltov, dervives from Kugel which means ‘ball’ in German. A Kugel is a staple of Jewish cooking and it originally referred to balls of noodle dough. (The programme note included a recipe for ‘Malcolm’s Kugeltov Cake’).

Their music, likewise, echoes these cultures, so lovers of the music of Serbia and Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania, Greece and areas of southern Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus will find much delight.

The series revives one of the original elements of the New Zealand International Arts Festivals: concerts by mainly New Zealand musicians at lunchtime and in the early evening, playing music of all kinds (apart from commercial popular stuff). The concerts were hugely popular from the start and reached their peak in the festivals of 1990 and 1992, under Chris Doig. It is a mystery that festivals in the last decade have so reduced the amount of music generally and turned their backs on these fine opportunities for New Zealand musicians to stand alongside overseas artists in concerts that are cheaper and more informal than the NZIAF itself. They also offered an extra draw-card for visitors from elsewhere who look for things to do during the day.

The musicians offer another example of the way professional Wellington musicians get involved in popular music of all kinds. Two of these players are in the NZSO – Robin Perks and Malcolm Struthers, one in the Vector Wellington Orchestra – Tui Clark, and Ross Harris, who taught  at Victoria University and has other lives as composer and French horn player, not to mention a commitment to Klezmer music.

So the quality of the playing was one of the striking features. Nothing was more striking than the frequent clarinet sallies from Tui Clark, a player of lively brilliance with an uncanny instinct for idiomatic styles rendered with excitement and real delight.

The first piece, by Ross Harris, opened with an exciting, anticipatory, plucked bass intro, followed by squealing clarinet rushes and staccato phrases; accordion and violin soon fleshed it out.

The second medley of three tunes opened with Robin Perks’s perfectly idiomatic gypsy sounding violin, that turned from melancholy to a wild, foot-stamping dance.

Most of the pieces, many consisting of two or three distinct tunes fused in cunning ways, were of genuine folk origin, and ten tunes were by composer/accordionist Ross Harris.

The centre piece was Ross Harris’s Klezmorphology, which was the most extended and took the genre to areas remote from the simple Klezmer, almost losing sight of its origins at times and becoming a piece that may well please conventional chamber music lovers, and there were many at this concert.

The quite large audience clapped along with the infectious final number, the popular Klezmer tune, Hava Nagila. The series has got off to a great start.

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DIRTY BEASTS and other stories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Oliver Hancock – Three Tolkien Miniatures / Paul Patterson – Rebecca / Little Red Riding Hood

Martin Butler – Dirty Beasts

Nigel Collins (narrator), Diedre Irons (piano)

ZEPHYR – Bridget Douglas (flute), Robert Orr (oboe), Robert Weeks (bassoon), Phil Green (clarinet)

with: Vessa-Matti Leppanen (violin), Rowan Prior (‘cello), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Mark Carter (trumpet),

David Bremner (trombone), Leonard Sakofsky (percussion), Emma Sayers (piano)

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday, 7th March 2010, 2pm

Music, theatre and story together provided diverting entertainment for an enthusiastic audience of children of all ages at the Town Hall, with something for everybody, young and old and somewhere in between. These settings of different generations of cautionary tales for children by contemporary composers were brought to life by narrator Nigel Collins, with vivid and colourful support from some of Wellington’s finest musicians, some of whom were, at times, tantalisingly difficult to recognise in their various costumes.

A pity the staging of this presentation wasn’t ideal, with the Town Hall platform built out as a smallish square onto which the performers crowded, the musicians in a rather tight and inwardly-looking semi-circle that didn’t help generate enough performer-and-audience contact – we weren’t sufficiently encouraged by the arrangement to project ourselves into the music-making spaces. What it meant was that Nigel Collins and his cohorts had to work all the harder to draw their audience in and enable that fusion with fancy and imagination which makes for memorable theatrical (and musical) experiences. And, if the stage was too small, the venue itself was too big, the empty spaces not allowing that sense of intimacy and involvement between and with all those present, performers and audience members.

This said, the energies and skills of the performers kept up the flow between platform and auditorium – of course, the “nature of the beast” meant that there would possibly be a few surprises in store, everything seeming to be somewhat outside the parameters of a “normal” concert-going experience, which was itself an enticing prospect. The performers certainly entered into the spirit of the entertainment, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves – as did the audience, a few “drop-offs” apart (which is par for the ‘children-entertainment’ course, I would expect).

Nigel Collins’ appearance as The White Rabbit was the occasion for great mirth, though I thought the section describing the predatory habits of wolves, vividly illustrated by the musicians though it was, elongated the somewhat arch Roald Dahl story of Little Red Riding Hood overmuch in Paul Patterson’s setting. Even the narrator’s gorgeously dipsomaniac Grandma didn’t rescue the retelling from its longueurs (partly the author’s fault), though the denoument, with a very modern Miss Riding Hood conquering all, finally got things moving (and I loved the epilogue’s Facade-like strains accompanying Miss Hood’s parading of her wolf-skin coat). Oliver Hancock’s Three Tolkien Miniatures was next, the wind players, helped by some magical piano-string activations, marvellously evoking the dark expanses of the Forest, with its gradually-burgeoning alarms and horrors recalled by the Tolkien poems, focusing upon both Middle-Earth and pre-Hobbit characters.

Paul Patterson’s Rebecca (who slammed doors for fun and perished miserably) brought to mind for those with long enough memories a different, somewhat more punitive era of child-rearing. Projected with a deliciously awful French accent by Nigel Collins, the “contes de fée noir” came to life with the help of the deliciously disguised Emma Sayers on piano and Lenny Sakofsky contriving percussive noises, the latter making excruciating sounds with a number of balloons after releasing a brace of helium-filled ones (an opportunity for child-involvement missed, there, I thought). Nigel Collins mixed up a couple of words in the excitement surrounding the unfortunate eponymous heroine’s demise, but it all added suitably to the furore, which became nicely funereal towards the end (apart from a rogue balloon leaving its mark on the proceedings, doing what balloons do best).

Last was Martin Butler’s “Dirty Beasts”, settings of Roald Dahl’s somewhat nauseously crude poems depicting various interactions between animals and humans. Of the three sections I enjoyed the music for the first most of all, the spiky, chattering writing for winds readily evoking the pig’s rising panic concerning his fate and his vengeful plan of grisly retribution. Somehow the other two realisations didn’t have sufficient visceral impact to be truly memorable, the “Tummy Beast” in particular disappointing us with its refusal to explore any truly gastro-endocrinal depths in the writing – perhaps a contra-bassoon was what was lacking! Nevertheless, appetites were more-or-less satisfied, and a sense of good having more-or-less prevailed sent everybody home contented.

A great concert from the Borodin Quartet

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

 

(The New Zealand International Arts Festival and Chamber Music New Zealand)

String Quartets: No 2 in D (Borodin), No 8 in C minor, Op 110 (Shostakovich), No 1 in D, Op 1 (Tchaikovsky)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 6 March 2010, 7.30pm 

Occupying one of just two chamber music concerts in evening slots in the Festival, this superb group was co-promoted by Chamber Music New Zealand and, as far as the Festival is concerned, may well not have contributed to visitors coming from other parts of the country since the Borodin Quartet is touring all ten centers in which CMNZ performs. There was a full house, in any case.

Their all-Russian programme might not have been very adventurous but the pieces are undoubtedly among the greatest in the repertory.

The first thing that struck me was the feeling of ease and the absence of any ferocious intensity, even in the Shostakovich. The players have not given in to increasingly common habit of adopting casual, stylish clothes and refrain from speaking to the audience (nothing wrong with either of those, let me add). Instead, they simply did their work in the traditional manner, with the clear aim of removing their own individual personalities from the stage and giving the limelight to the music.

They might have played Borodin’s warm-hearted, beautiful second quartet five hundred times but that has not led to anything perfunctory in their approach; one’s attention turned to each player as solo passages arrived, wondering at the intimacy and finesse produced in the famous Nocturne and the effortless fast passagework by the two violins in the last movement, for example, that contributed to the air of delight that enveloped the audience.

Though I must express a slight regret that Shostakovich’s eighth quartet gets played almost to the exclusion of any of the others, most of which are fine works, this was a performance to treasure, as much for its restraint and the group’s determination, again, to dwell on the music’s beauty rather than to highlight the underlying anger and torment that the composer transforms into art. Its darkness, the signature sardonic quality of much of his music, its uneasiness and its cynical gaiety were all there: the group adheres to what I believe is the proper function of art – not to thrust horrors, perversions and ugliness at us but to universalize the nasty or tragic realities of life into shapes and sounds that employ ambiguity, symbolism and suggestion to evoke sympathetic response but that do not repel through literalness and crudity. The three awful down-strokes that return were never ugly, and the emotion was far better expressed through their restraint and beauty.

Tchaikovsky’s first quartet which, like the Borodin, contains one of the most popular and beautiful slow movements filled the second half. Its gentle, even rhythm and the limited range of pitches slowly generated excitement, creating an almost orchestral texture from Tchaikovsky’s skilled composition. The Andante Cantabile revealed again the players’ approach to such music; the shifts from note to note were utterly imperceptible, involving no glissandi, no stop and start; their legato character was immaculate. In the Scherzo the first violin’s febrile, almost bell-like tone turned the music into a spirited dance without motion; nothing bold or too emphatic was necessary to create its atmosphere. I admired the slide into pianissimo and the guileless, un-heralded end.

It was heartening to see the sold-out Town Hall and to think that far more than the normal number of people might have gone home with some inkling of what truly great music making is.

New Zealand Trio in excerpts for the Festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

(New Zealand International Arts Festival)

Music by Beethoven, Ross Edwards, Dvorak, Chen Yi, Ravel, Phil Dadson. David Downes

New Zealand Trio: Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello, Sarah Watkins – piano

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 6 March 2010, 4pm 

(With a contribution from Peter Mechen)

The juxtaposition of single movements from orthodox piano trios and two New Zealand pieces that set music against images was an unusual idea, and one that ran a serious risk of puzzling many of the audience.

To present a concert of single movements risks automatic disapproval by most regular concert-goers and those at all familiar with classical music and its playing traditions. This suggested an effort to court ‘a new audience’ of those unfamiliar with chamber music, or classical music generally. While well-intentioned, the efficacy of such programming is dubious and to have included some very atypical and, frankly, problematic pieces in the programme hardly seemed likely win over any neophytes.

Three of the movements were among the real classics of the repertory: the first movements from Beethoven’s Ghost Trio and Dvorak’s F minor trio, Op 65, and the Pantoum movement from the Ravel trio; the others pieces, both New Zealand and from abroad, were unfamiliar.

As an aside, I must record a certain style-based concern with the trio’s ‘trade name’, NZTrio. In my long career with writing, a fundamental tenet has been the impropriety of abbreviating the names of, inter alia, countries. Look, for example, at the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and the New Zealand Style Book (Government Publications Ltd).

The piano sparkled in passage-work in the Beethoven, the cello spoke eloquently and the playing was of exceptional finesse, balance, refinement, each player demonstrating a polish and virtuosity, perfectly judged dynamics and rubato, that simply puts them in very distinguished company, internationally.

The Dvorak sounded at times like a small concerto, so full and rich was the ensemble, expressing a thoughtfulness, resoluteness, a sanguine quality that are some of Dvorak’s essential characteristics. One of the very small handful of real masterpieces in the 20th century trio repertoire, the Ravel Trio, with its inimitable French sound and its energy, simply left me wanting it all.

Ravel’s movement followed a highly diverting, brilliantly coloured piece by ChenYi, Tibetan Tunes. He is a Chinese-born American and his piece was a successful recycling of a folk tune in western classical clothes and its startling variety of string effects that derived from the Chinese violin, the erhu, were handled with marvellous skill.   

Earlier, we had heard a movement from Ross Edwards’s Piano Trio, written for the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition; it began as a duo for violin and piano, easy, tuneful, in the same class as his well-loved violin concerto, Maninyas. There was a dream-like quality that could not have been more at odds with another kind of dream that we were offered in the last piece in the programme by David Downes.

The last two pieces both used images projected on a large screen as part of the performances. Phil Dadson’s Firestarters, cast in at least half a dozen sections, was used to show the unusual, though by now rather hackneyed, games that some composers liked to play with their instruments: using objects to strike or stroke the strings inside the piano, using two violins propped on chairs in percussive ways; later unusual camera angles focused on the players themselves. What about music itself? I closed my eyes to hear sounds that were of the kind that a thousand other avant-garde composers have created over the past half century.

Let me add that I have always had great affection for Dadson’s music with From Scratch, which I first heard in the 1987 Sonic Circus, the wonderful, but last such jamboree of 24 hours of New Zealand music in Wellington’s Town Hall and Michael Fowler Centre.

In David Downes’s piece, Kingdom, it was the images that dominated, more a film with musical accompaniment, of nightmarish character revealing a weirdly disturbed personality. The images varied from ghoulish doll-like figures representing an unhinged family in a surreal, lunatic eating ritual, interspersed with reproductions of medieval portrayals of the cosmos, astronomical charts, wheels of fortune. On the whole, I didn’t get it,

My colleague Peter Mechen reviewed the concert on Radio New Zealand Concert on Monday and reacted more patiently than I did to these two works. I asked him to allow me to use the notes that formed the basis of his review, in order to allow readers a fairer view of the pieces.

 

“The first of two New Zealand works in this concert was written by Phil Dadson. Phil was, of course the founder of this country’s most original rhythm/performance group “From Scratch”, and has become well-known in the area of experimental and invented instruments, video/sound installations, sound-sculptures and graphic scores.This work was called Firestarters, and it gave the impression, aided by some wonderful close-up camera work of the musicians creatively manipulating their instruments (they did much more than “play” them in an accepted sense!).

“Looking at the screen enabled us to feel as though we had metamorphosed into insects, with an insect’s-eye view of things and an insect’s awareness of barely discernable sounds – because some of these sounds were micro- to say the least.

“Besides the string players, the pianist also contrived out-of-the-ordinary sounds from within the instrument, manipulating the strings with various objects such as a golf ball at one point, and what looked like stones at another (the camera enabling us to “peep” over the instrument’s side and into the heart of the beast). It became as much a visual choreographic outpouring as well as an aural one, and had a kind of unique beauty and grace as such, accompanied sounds of a fabulous, out-of-the-ordinary sense.

“Different sections of the music brought different and innovative sound-makers to play, such as electric fans in the second section, whose tintinabulations against the strings and cases of all three instruments compelled us to listen with what one might imagine was a new dimension of musical awareness. At the end a Dali-esque dissolution of sounds within time was suggested by the players’ rhythms running slowly down to eventual silence – to be aware of such actual dissolution was to again enlarge one’s aural sensibilities in an unexpected and thoughtful direction.

“The concert’s world premiere was a piece by David Downes, written to be played in tandem with a film, a piece of music animation described as an exploration of ritual and fantasy surrounding a family meal. The animations were best described as surreal, though a psychoanalyst might have had a wonderful time ascribed certain subconscious preoccupations with the shapes of the figures and their preoccupations with appetite and obsessive fulfilment, underlined by several close-ups of rodent-like mouths.

“With the Brothers Grimm stories in mind, and the subsequent analyses of the themes, motivations and actions of the stories and characters there for the reading, one could extrapolate at will regarding the composer’s own childhood, and the fantasy/reality syndrome. There was humour of a dark,obsessive kind, underscored by sounds which, in places made one think of Noel Coward’s remark about “the power of cheap music”, while in other places there were more overt references to menace and disturbance.

“The dissolution of order and security at the end, if a trifle cliched, was perhaps to be expected, given that the scenario was dream-like and hallucinatory, but nevertheless the suggested dismemberment and burning of family members made a disturbing impression. Of course, the problem with any piece of music-theatre or animation, is that the eye is sometimes engaged to the detriment of the ear’s ability to register sounds – and something of this process happened for me. I can only report that the composer’s scoring would seem to have underpinned the visuals appropriately, such was the effect of the whole on my sensibilities. I look forward to seeing/hearing the piece again.

“And one could, at the end, only applaud with great wholeheartedness the commitment of a trio of fine musicians in bringing to us an astonishing variety of music and performing it with such incredible verve and skill.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gems of German Baroque at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Calvin Scott (oboe)

Margarte Guldborg (‘cello)

Ariana Odermatt (harpsichord)

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series 2010

Wednesday, 3rd March

Here, throughout this lunchtime concert at St.Andrew’s, was old-world charm and sensibility aplenty, a kind of “window in time” feeling, adding to the pleasure of it all. The music was delivered by three skilled musicians bringing varied instrumental voices and markedly different temperaments to play in their combinations, of the kind that nicely brought out that “baroque” sensibility of contrasting conversation and elaborate soliloquy. A sensitive, small-toned harpsichord threw into bold relief a bright, cheery oboe sound, while the ‘cello took a middle course, now soft-grained, now penetratingly nimble in passagework, always alive to what was suggested by the other two instruments. Contrary to my expectations regarding this composer’s music, the CPE Bach work that began the programme was more than usually urbane and straightforward, played here by oboist Calvin Scott with plenty of warmth and feeling, though I thought harpsichordist Ariana Odermatt took a while to warm up at her instrument, producing steady, but overtly mechanical playing throughout the first movement. The Adagio second movement brought out a more expressive manner, with flexible pulsing from both players and some admirably sustained notes from the oboe. Not even in the finale did CPE Bach reveal his sometimes peppery and idiosyncratic side, apart from a certain insistence in the music’s repeated, stuttering notes at one point, the music remaining highy engaging in a conventionally conversational manner, nicely brought off by both instrumentalists.

The next two items came from “Old Bach”, a Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat major (BWV 998) for solo harpsichord, followed by a sonata written for viola da gamba and harpsichord in G major (BWV 127). The harpsichord solo established a stately, gracious mood at the opening, the formalities being allowed to nicely “unfold” in Ariana Odermatt’s hands. The player seemed not to be inclined to use the upper keyboard of the instrument, except for the occasional “echo effect” in the last movement. With the sonata for viola da gamba (played here on the ‘cello by Margaret Guldborg), the music’s expressive capacities moved upwards several notches – the opening Adagio, though surprisingly light on its feet, was given a soft-grained and sensitive performance. This was followed by an Allegro in which the players again brought out the lyrical than the rumbustious aspects of the music, which might have been thought by some a little too much of a good thing by the time the subsequent Andante had finished – but I loved the way the “held” notes from the ‘cello allowed the harpsichord’s voice to decorate the linear spaces. Happily, the concluding Allegro moderato sparked exchanges of gaiety between the instruments (“gambolling” I wrote), with some skilful rapid passagework by the ‘cellist.

Calvin Scott returned with his oboe for a Sonata in E Minor by Georg Philipp Telemann, for oboe and basso continuo – he produced a lovely, creamy sound in the opening Largo, and set the tone for fine teamwork in the following Allegro, stimulating a skilful give-and-take between the instruments.The brief pastoral Grave was an idyllic moment between two separate energies, the Vivace finale going at a great lick, but with the players finding a balance between driving energy and boisterous spirits – delightfully adroit phrasing from the oboe, and some telling touches from the ‘cello, solidly supported by the harpsichord.An eloquent conclusion to the concert was provided by a sinfonia from one of JS Bach’s cantatas, No.156 “Ich steh’ mit einem Fuss im Grabe” – a heart-easing performance,with musical touches in every register – oboe lyrical and plaintive, ‘cello gently purposeful, and harpsichord tastefully colouristic and decorative.

St Andrew’s: Valerie Rigg and Tessa Olivier in Vitali Chaconne and Prokofiev sonata

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chaconne in G minor (Tomaso Vitali); Violin sonata No 2, Op 94 (Prokofiev)  

Valerie Rigg (violin) and Tessa Olivier (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wednesday 2 December 2009

This turned out to be a highly impressive and enjoyable recital of two famous works.

Valerie Rigg played with the NZSO  for 19 years, eventually as principal first violin, and she also had a professional career in England, Germany and Canada. She now lives again in Wellington.

She and Tessa Olivier (who emigrated from South Africa in 2002) played these pieces at a September concert at Old St Paul’s, which I heard.  This week’s performance displayed a noticeable advance in their playing of both pieces.

Wikipedia states that the manuscript ascribed the Chaconne to “one ‘Tommaso Vitallino’ who may or may not be Vitali” (his first name is spelt variously with one or two ‘m’s). Further, Wikipedia notes that it “is generally known in a heavily recomposed version by German violinist Ferdinand David” who, as you know, was the concertmaster of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the dedicatee and first performer of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. In fact, some believe it could have been a pastiche by David, of several motifs by obscure Baroque composers; it appeared in a collection edited by David called Die Hoch Schule des Violinspiels.

In 1911 it was further ‘enhanced’ by French violinist Léopold Charlier who produced what is described as an even more taxing version. It was this that Valerie and Tessa played.

If we accept the kernel of the composition as authentic, the original piece could predate Bach’s solo violin works, since Tomaso was born 20 years before Bach; but it sounds far more ‘modern’ than Bach’s Chaconne, for example, because of the frequent and very radical series of modulations through which the variations move, a rather uncommon baroque procedure. In fact, scholars note that none of Vitali’s authenticated works are remotely like the Chaconne.

It has been called ‘astounding’, ‘a gripping tour de force’; that’s what I thought.

The Chaconne became very popular after its emergence through Ferdinand David, though I cannot ever recall hearing it played live; regardless of its provenance, it deserves to be included in violin recitals, and I welcomed this opportunity to hear it, both at Old St Paul’s and at St Andrew’s.

It was not a performance quite to compare with Milstein or Heifetz perhaps; but merely to play it marks out a violinist as pretty distinguished for it is indeed a highly challenging piece technically. Valerie Rigg had its measure, confidently, right from the stately first announcement of the main theme, in terms of its musical energy and her approach to its varied tempi and pyrotechnic elements that become increasingly hair-raising.

Tessa Olivier’s piano accompaniment, in the nature of a continuo but with a lot of individual interest as piano partner, was accurate and sympathetic, though there were moments when the two seemed rhythmically not quite at one.

The same boldness and confidence characterised their playing of Prokofiev’s second sonata which was his own arrangement of his Flute Sonata (so it’s normally labelled Op 94b).  Prokofiev’s music demands high technical skill, and a rhythmic pulse and momentum that exists in a strange kind of neutral emotional environment. In spite of the variety in the treatment of the themes and their undeniable musical interest, there remains a feeling of non-commitment – not on the part of the players but in the music itself.

The second movement has the feel of a moto perpetuo, in a spirit that is brusque and staccato; the performance was not perfect but splendidly outgoing and committed. Perhaps the real test lay in the playing of the calm Andante movement, beautifully realised through a common vision that maintained a steady focus. In the last movement – Allegro con brio – when writing originally conceived for flute was never far away, its pace was a little less exuberant than I was familiar with; but it gave Prokofiev more space, becoming even more appropriate and successful as a violin piece, combining lyricism with virtuosity. Those qualities, as in the first two movements, were the final demonstration of the admirable interpretative skills of these two musicians. 

 

 

Lunchtime at St Andrew’s: Mozart Trio, Strauss Violin Sonata

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Mozart: Trio in E flat, K 498 (‘Kegelstatt’) with violin in place of clarinet; Violin Sonata in E flat, Op 18 (Strauss)

Cristina Vaszilcsin (violin), Peter Garrity (viola), Catherine McKay (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wednesday 25 November 2009   

These three players have been tantalizing us with Strauss’s youthful, highly coloured violin sonata, with performances of just the first two movements (at Paekakariki) and of the Improvisation movement alone (at the Friends of the NZSO concert a week earlier); I’d heard both. Here at last we heard the whole thing, though it was not without its curiosity even here.

As the players prepared to start the second movement (Improvisation), Cristina dashed off to get her mute; she then played her first two notes – alone; Catherine got up from the piano and went out and when she didn’t come straight back Cristina left too. Time passed.  Concert organizer Marjan Waardenberg went out too and we waited; one or two people left, but the first movement had been so compelling that almost all remained seated, hopefully.  A good five minutes later they all returned and calmly began the second movement.

Catherine had had a nose-bleed.

It was the energy and rapport displayed by these two players that was striking; one sensed a strong shared commitment to and sympathy for the sonata which is an early work, written aged about 23, and not universally admired; it is given to exploiting both Strauss’s fecund compositional gifts, a romantic imagination fed by a growing admiration for the aesthetic of Wagner and Liszt; I found it curious that I was here and there reminded of Franck’s sonata, even though Strauss could hardly have known it since it was written only a year earlier.

Even though marked Andante, the first movement creates a passionate impression that belies the actual underlying tempo, and it was this impulse and thrust that animated the performance most strongly. The second movement suffered not the least from the pianist’s brief ailment; in fact it was as if the problem inspired an even more rhapsodic, expansive performance, filled with graceful phrasing and ecstatic piano filigree supporting the violin’s more legato lines.

The third movement was the place for even more highly romantic effects, endless scales and decorative arpeggios played as if they were much more than flashy gestures, then a middle section where the violin became playful in a perfectly wholehearted way. There was always the sense of impassioned momentum that sustained a constant awareness of the larger picture.

They had begun the concert with Mozart’s wonderful clarinet trio, with the clarinet replaced by Vaszilcsin’s violin. Not only did the violin quite seduce me with a feeling that this might well have really been the sound Mozart had in mind, so natural and gorgeous was it, but the different environment also lent the viola greater distinction than it had, at least in the traditional sounds lodged in my mind, alongside the clarinet.

In the Rondeaux allegretto (last movement) the violin’s summery joy and warmth led to a feeling of deep, if very histrionic, soulfulness which the viola reflected in its lovely duo with piano in the middle section. I am given to exclaiming about performances that are unlikely to be excelled this year, but this was such a performance, of two wonderful works that are too rarely heard.