Tag: chamber music

String Quartet in F, Op 77 No 2 (Haydn); John Adams’s String Quartet; Octet in E flat, Op 20 (Mendelssohn)  

Saint Lawrence String Quartet and the New Zealand String Quartet:

Town Hall, Friday evening 16 October 2009  

This final concert in the 2009 season of Chamber Music New Zealand, was a brilliant ending to the year; and General Manager Euan Murdoch announced the 2010 season, CMNZ’s 60th anniversary year which opens with a concert in the International Festival next March from the great Borodin String Quartet.

The first half belonged to the St Lawrence Quartet, from Canada.

The Quartet in F was the last Haydn completed and though it’s not as familiar as several of those in the immediately preceding sets, it is highly original in character, and in this remarkable performance exhibited qualities that even Haydn might have been surprised by. I suspect that the tonal variety, the pungent expressiveness and the compulsive momentum might have been unusual around 1800. But today, such extremely vivid, and rhythmically and dynamically varied interpretations are almost essential for musicians who want to distinguish themselves from the rank and file.

Certainly, Haydn invites such performance through his pains to avoid the expected, the cliché, the routine, so that the composer’s wit and intelligence found ideal interpreters in these players determined to bring the piece to life in a thoroughly arresting way.

John Adams has gained fame chiefly in the opera house and secondarily the concert hall: he has not written much chamber music. His string quartet, written for the St Lawrence, and first performed in New York in January, shows a gift that will surely inspire other similar commissions. One is impressed by the fecundity of his invention, its profusion and variety and his structural skill in manipulating it; and even more overwhelmed by the exuberance and phenomenal brilliance of the performance that will set a benchmark hard to equal.

Adams’s work was evidence of his genius for creating a substantial and compelling work that maintained its momentum through many moods, marvellously captured by these players.

Adams has moved far beyond ‘minimalist’ style of his early years; he belongs to no particular school and this work was simply evidence of Adams’s individuality and his flair for creating a substantial and compelling work that maintained its momentum through its huge vitality and variety that the quartet .

The New Zealand String Quartet joined the Canadians for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet, possibly the most astonishing creation by any composer in his teens. The arrangement of the parts meant that the St Lawrence Quartet, and especially their first violinist, Geoff Nuttall, rather dominated both by the energy and endless tonal variety of his first violin part, and by his total physical involvement; leg-work that even Michael Jackson might have envied.

The other members of the St Lawrence quartet and the New Zealanders displayed comparable mastery if less physically conspicuous.

The fast movements were both spectacular in their ever-changing rhythmic and dynamic expressiveness; it was a revelatory experience, reinforcing the octet’s place as a singular masterpiece. 

(an extended version of the review printed by The Dominion Post on 20 October)

 

 

 

Vieuxtemps: Viola Sonata in B flat, Op 36; Bax: Viola Sonata (1922)

Helen Bevin (viola) and Rafaella Garlick-Grice (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 7 October 

This recital was by two graduates of the New Zealand School of Music: it was at least illuminating if not exactly revelatory, an opportunity to hear to greatly gifted musicians who have been acknowledged in other countries before they have been listened to and appreciated in their own country – a rather common experience.

The pair began playing together, as Duo Giocoso, in 2008 while they were studying at the New Zealand School of Music, won a scholarship that took them to Britain where they played both at the Edinburgh Fringe and in a lunchtime concert at St Martin in the fields in London. 

Vieuxtemps was the great Belgian violin virtuoso of the generation before Eugène Isaÿe, a contemporary of César Franck, known mainly for his violin concertos. It was interesting to hear a chamber work, carrying the opus number before his last Violin Concerto – No 5, though there was nothing in it that would have surprised listeners of a generation earlier. Nevertheless it’s a very attractive piece, whose romantic quality found a champion in Helen Bevin’s beautiful, rich viola tone; she and Rafaella Garlick-Grice played its generous tunes with phrasing that was delightfully musical, resisting any temptation to conceal its frank sentiment or to belittle its unpretentious, popular character.

The second movement, a Barcarolle, enjoyed a plain melody that might have looked backwards, but the performance conferred on it a certain weight, especially in the last movement where the viola spends much time on the C string.

Bax’s Viola Sonata was the result of his friendship with Lionel Tertis who was largely responsible for turning the viola into an important solo instrument. The first movement has a recognisable English character where the duo created interest with their instinct for the Bax’s musical personality. The second movement was played with energy, abrupt chords from the viola, but never an ugly note.

In the last movement I felt a certain Irish sentiment which was treated rhapsodically, with thick piano chords and a charming pensive melody given to the viola.  

Though such a programme might not have been a particular draw for a paying audience, we must count ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy these free lunchtime concerts of very worthwhile if less known music; however, I gather that the voluntary organizers and their overhead costs seem not always to be appreciated, judging by the amount of koha left by audience members. There’s always scope for greater generosity. 

 

Goldberg Variations (Bach, arranged by Cowdery); Piano Quintet in A minor (Elgar)

New Zealand String Quartet and Diedre Irons (piano)

Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt. Monday 5 October 2009 

The New Zealand String Quartet have had William Cowdery’s version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations under their belt for a couple of years though this was my first hearing. 

The nature of Bach’s contrapuntal keyboard writing gives almost equal importance to all four voices as the melodies or themes pass from one to another. 

The first impression of the performance is of clarity of lines; played on the harpsichord or piano the several voices are not nearly so distinct, and I found myself delighting in the individual timbres of the four, almost more striking than in most custom-written string quartets.

In addition to the pleasure of hearing the separate voices was that of hearing the inner voices of the quartet – Douglas Beilman’s second violin and Gillian Ansell’s viola, taking a more important part in the fabric than is normally the case with Haydn or Beethoven quartets.  Many of the variations are for two and three parts while the other instrument(s) stand(s) idly by, and it was a treat to hear Beilman’s warm and fluid playing in many of these. The cello is quite prominent in many traditional quartets but Rolf Gjelsten too must have relished making such prominent statements.

The effect was most marked in the canons and fugues, such as Variation 10 when the theme began in the cello and moved up.

Furthermore, the four instruments could obviously create far more interesting dynamic contrasts than is available on the harpsichord, or even on the piano; and they seemed to highlight the varied rhythms though, as I found later when I refreshed my memory with a harpsichord recording, that rhythm was not as piquant and alert.

It is illuminating to have programme notes that draw attention to the time signatures and the dance rhythms of each variation, though I have seen other sets of notes that are rather more detailed. The work was called by Bach ‘Aria mit verschiedenen Veränderungen’ (Aria with diverse variations) – the Goldberg story is doubtless apocryphal – and it is in fact a compendium of most of the dance forms – German, French, Italian, English – that Bach would have known, and there is always the diversion of working out the exact nature of the rhythm of each variation if the work were to become at all tedious – which of course it doesn’t.  

It opens with an Aria, the statement of the melody very slowly. It seemed slower than it does on piano or harpsichord, but I think that was an illusion as a result of the greater tonal variety presented. The four string players thus seemed to extract more of the melodic beauty from it.

On the other hand, there’s always a price to pay. I later listened to Gustav Leonhardt’s harpsichord recording of the work, expecting to find it dry and colourless by comparison. Not at all: even though shorn of repeats (perhaps because of), I found this more monochrome performance thoroughly engaging, like a musical stroll along a windswept coast. At the hands of such a gifted player, the plucked notes of the harpsichord sharpen the rhythmic character, enliven the pulse and substitute rhythmic vitality for the richer timbres of the strings.  While I’d like to add this string quartet version to my ever-growing desert island, I-Pod collection, I won’t be deleting either of the already loaded piano or a harpsichord versions from it.

Elgar’s Piano Quintet could hardly have offered a more different world.

It’s not a piece that seems characteristic of Elgar for he was not a piano composer; yet from the start, the quintet sounds highly idiomatic, the piano part integrated comfortably with the string quartet.

The players approached the beginning with a rather engaging hesitancy which heightened the emergence of the big, very Elgarian, first movement tune which put its stamp on it. With that and later very conspicuous tunes, it’s a wonder the quintet is not better known.  

 

 

 

Nadia Boulanger: Three Pieces for cello and piano, (1915); Brahms: Cello Sonata No 2 in F major, Op 99

Robert Ibell (cello) and Catherine McKay (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 30 September

The first of Nadia Boulanger’s three pieces is marked modéré. Though it’s the only one of the three in a major key, it is calm, of exquisite peacefulness though written nt eh first year of the first World War. It offered the chance to hear Robert Ibell,outside the orchestral or string quartet clutter, as a cellist able to draw the listener into a sound world filled with delicacy and subtle colours. For the cello part enjoyed most of the melodic character of the piece while the piano, just as engagingly played, decorated the music with a rocking motif and supported the delineation of its graceful shape.

The second piece, ‘Sans vitesse et à l’aise’, had an open air feel, though nothing too lively; Boulanger’s debt to Fauré could be heard in the melody here, elusive, fragile, leaving one seeking their prolongation and perhaps repetition, but French art is distinguished by its reticence and economy of expression and Boulanger was the inheritor of that and its transmitter through her many famous pupils (not all of whom followed all her precepts).

The title of the third piece was just as apt as the others: ‘Vite et nerveusement rythmé’; it was a bit louder and more extrovert, certainly a bit agitated, but it broke off for a meditative phase, and later returned to a quick quasi dance in commontime. The highly attractive and persuasive account by both players, sustained throughout its duration, makes one curious about Boulanger’s other music. It is odd that it is the compositions of her sister Lili, who died very young, which have gained more exposure in recent years.

Brahms’ second cello sonata was probably the main draw-card for this recital; so it was for me in anticipation though, in retrospect, the above experience altered things. In all, this was a highly persuasive, beautifully played performance by both musicians, though I was a little bothered sometimes by the imbalance between cello and piano and felt that the piano lid might well have been down in order to allow the cello its due; it was not such a problem in the emphatic and impetuous gestures.

The second movement, affettuoso, was particularly – well – affecting, shifting between careful pizzicato and dreamy legato, with vibrato that was perfectly pulsed. The rise and fall of dynamics, the long crescendi, in the third movement, building towards dark passionate climaxes, and then subsiding to a divine quietness, was the real Brahms. So was the strong playing of the final Allegro molto.

In two weeks we’ve had recitals by violinist and cello plus piano: look for our review of next Wednesday’s concert by viola and piano (Helen Bevin and Rafaella Garlick-Grice) to complete a set of duos for strings and piano.

Violin Sonata, Op 24 ‘Spring’ (Beethoven); Sonata No 1 in E (Howells); Sonata No 2 in A, Op 100 (Brahms); Sonata in E, Op 82 (Elgar)

Jack Liebeck (violin) and Stephen De Pledge (piano)

Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt. Monday 21 September

Chamber Music New Zealand have been promoting solo piano recitals by Stephen De Pledge, in their main concert series in the major centres, and violin and piano recitals involving De Pledge and English violinist Jack Liebeck in a series of concerts for the so-called ‘associated societies’ that exist in smaller centres.

When the tours were published I wondered why this arrangement had been decided upon in the light of the kind of attention Liebeck has been getting in concerts and recordings in Britain and elsewhere.

Fortunately, the proliferation of chamber music organizations in Greater Wellington makes it easy to enjoy both the piano alone (at the Wellington Town Hall and at Waikanae) and the duo at Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt where different programmes were being presented.

At Upper Hutt the emphasis was on English violin music, with an unfamiliar sonata by Herbert Howells and a somewhat better known sonata by Elgar. Before they began the Howells, Liebeck said a few words about his awakening to English music, and his keen advocacy of it was clear.

The Howells sonata has four connected parts that hardly follow the classical pattern. The opening movement spoke with a rather English voice, to be sure, in reflective elegiac tones which soon turned more lively, though hardly suggesting emotions that would have upset Victorian England (it was composed, I must point, out durng World War I). In the second movement the pace slowed again and my reaction was both to wonder at the insight shown by both musicians and their rapport, and to regret the absence of an anchor in the form of a melody or two.

The music evolved again, rather than making a distinct change, by means of emphatic piano chords into a third movement with rudiments of a dance-like tune. A fourth movement, assai tranquillo, seemed to be the composer’s most natural form of expression for it was here at last that there was a oneness between the music and the spirit of the two players.

I had heard Elgar’s violin sonata a few months ago played by a couple of local musicians; I did not know it well at that stage, and it remained something of an enigma. But in the hands of these two, it emerged as a work of considerable stature, a variety of moods and styles that Liebeck and De Pledge commanded with great conviction, both in the opening flourishes and as it settled into an attractive lyrical character and clearly structured shapes.

The first movement ended with a fine sense of power and authority. The last movement was coloured in the early stages by an ‘English light music’ quality that I find uninteresting, and its conclusion seemed to fall short in a sense of resolution and grandeur. It was the second movement with its two very distinct parts that I found most persuasive as the players exploited it melodic strengths and here, in its gorgeous muted tones, I was conscious of being in the presence of a considerable violin talent.

The other two works were familiar. Beethoven’s Spring Sonata was a delightful start to the concert, demonstrating the violin’s elegance and lyricism and the pianist’s flair for turning phrases in ear-catching ways, pointing to features and emphases that seemed somehow new.

The least interesting, most surprisingly, was Brahms Second Sonata. It was entirely flawless and unexceptionable, but perhaps as a result of the context, it seeming of rather less stature that it actually possesses, the last movement failing to rise to a finale of much consequence.

However, in spite of what was probably a personal response on my part, nothing detracted from the impact of this very fine artist, and enjoyment of the rapport that was always evident between the two musicians.

Haydn: String Quartet in G, Op 54 No 1; Szymanowski: String Quartet No 2, Op 56; Beethoven: String Quartet in E flat, Op 74 (Harp)

The Aroha Quartet: Haihong Liu and Beiyi Xue – violins, Zhongxian Jin – viola, Robert Ibell – cello

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Saturday 5 September 2009

The Aroha Quartet, comprising four Chinese players, three of them in the NZSO, has been around since 2004. I heard what I think was their first public performance, at Old St Paul’s in Wellington, and was very impressed; I have heard them since then and have enjoyed their programmes and their performances. But the group has not really achieved what it might have if the players had been able to devote more time to playing together. They have now suffered a slight set-back with the loss of their cellist Jiaxin Cheng, after she married Julian Lloyd Webber; she has been replaced by NZSO cellist Robert Ibell, an experienced chamber musician, formerly cellist in the Nevine Quartet which has disbanded.

Once again, the quartet put together an excellent programme, of one of Haydn’s less often heard quartets, Beethoven’s splendid Harp Quartet (not for the harp), and Szymanowski’s second; that was the best thing in the concert.

The programme notes comment that Haydn’s Op 54 quartets are ground-breaking and that No 1 is among his most popular. If that is so, I have been neglectful, not having heard it played live before. But it is indeed an adventurous piece: lively, witty, varied, entertaining. I had mistaken the start time – 7pm – and missed the first and some of the second movement; the minuet was highly diverting, never mind an occasional slip, and the players made the finale a thing of teasing boisterousness.

The best known work was Beethoven’s Op 74. Here it was possible, in spite of the absence of the kind of polished ensemble and virtuosity that we are used to hearing on recordings by great quartets, simply to enjoy the frank and disarming enthusiasm that’s so infectious in players like these. If the somewhat startling dynamic outbursts in the open phase of the first movement sounded a bit unconvincing and there was some smudgy ensemble in the Scherzo, all it did was do highlight a musicianship and technical skill that was generally irreproachable; their grasp of the style and intellectual character of the music was of a high order.

It was in the Szymanowski quartet that these talents could best be enjoyed; most of us did not have the sounds of some famous recording in our ears and were therefore more ready to hear what the Aroha Quartet did as definitive. Its shape is unusual, the first and last movements, using folk-like tunes, quieter and more lyrical than the second movement which is marked Vivace, scherzando. The haunting effect of the opening passage, with its muted strings played at the octave, and tremolando violin and viola, caught the mysticism that had entered the composer’s imagination through his involvement with eastern philosophy. All changed in the second movement with a big extrovert melody that suddenly turns assertive, even violent.

Though the repertoire of the string quartet is probably even larger than that of the symphony, so there is no urgency for new works, the Aroha Quartet made a good case for the more frequent dusting off of Szymanowski’s two quartets.

Haydn String Quartets: Op 64 No 5 (The Lark), Op 74 No 3 (The Rider), Op 20 No 5, Op 77 No 1 (Compliments)

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Douglas Beilman – violins, Gillian Ansell – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – cello)

St Mary of the Angels, Saturday 29 August 2009

Peter Mechen has written a review of the first of the two concerts by the New Zealand String Quartet on Tuesday 25 August, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Haydn. That concert contained, not only 21 excerpts from the quartets, from Op 1 to Op 103, but also recitations by the four quartet members from letters and memoirs recorded by a number of biographers and commentators. (Admirably, the programme listed the references so that the audience could seek out some of the books the next morning at library or on internet).

That tour de force of musical adventure and theatrical entertainment was not repeated in the second concert which I heard on Saturday (it had been played first on Thursday 27 August in the Hunter Council Chamber).

This repeat of the second programme was held at 6pm, in part, presumably, to enjoy the evanescent light of day as it dimmed through the stained glass, allowing the church soon to be lit only by prolific candelabra (in the singular it’s ‘candelabrum’, by the way).

For this they chose four of their favourite quartets, and played them with profound affection, brilliance and insight.

Many of the popular quartets have acquired nick-names; three of the four were The Lark, The Rider and Compliments. The earliest was from Op 20, published in 1772, a group that was nick-named The Sun, presumably on account of the publisher’s engraving on the cover. Just as the earlier concert had been a revelation in terms of the growing maturity and the increasing complexity and sophistication of Haydn’s writing, so the comparison between the two quartets in the second half, Op 20 No 5 and the Op 77 No 1, 30 years apart was very striking.

The former is a serious work, in F minor, and the themes of the first movement lend themselves to imaginative development that evidences the compositional learning Haydn already commanded. Though it was the Op 33 set, ten years later, that inspired Mozart’s set that he dedicated to Haydn, it is easy to understand how the style, shape and melodic evolution of this earlier quartet would have impressed the younger composer.

The first movement impresses with a convoluting, ever-expanding theme, and the quartet managed to portray its unusual character without excessive minor-key sombreness; on the other hand the thoughtful, quite elaborate Minuet does not present the normal unbuttoned peasant dance; and the unusual Adagio, a Siciliano in triple time ends with typically Haydnesque flippancy. All of these unconventionalities the players handled with calm understatement. And then there’s the fugal, though quite short, last movement; just to show that he wasn’t simply a tunesmith.

The rapport and compatibility of the string quartet members and their marvellous command of the notes justified the performance of this relatively early quartet.

Op 77 No 1 (Compliments) has a far more varied and confident character, each instrument offered a great deal more individuality, all manner of original, vacillating rhythmic and melodic touches in the first movement ending with enchanting scales from Rolf Gjelsten’s cello. It was written, indeed, after the publication of Beethoven’s Op 18 set and in many ways it demonstrates an intellectual and artistic breadth that Ludwig would have embraced. I have rarely heard the quartet playing with greater accomplishment and in an accord so completely engaged.

The first half contained the more diverting works – familiar, brilliant, melodic: The Lark, clearly justifying its name, with Helene Pohl’s violin soaring beautifully in the first, too short, movement; with one of the loveliest of Haydn’s slow movements in a ravishing performance; and a vivace finale which they turned into a scintillating prestissimo.

The Rider was one of the quartet’s earliest Haydn quartets and for me, their handling remains unexcelled. They tackled the opening Allegro with such a carefree, open air spirit, in spite of its minor key (the common classification of major and minor modes as happy and sad really is nonsense). The slow movement, somewhat reminiscent of the great slow movement of the Emperor quartet, highly ornamented, so different in tone from the adjacent movements, was laid out exquisitely. The infectious galloping rhythms in both first and last movements faltered at none of the hurdles and the lower strings supported the sure-footed gallop: so fast, so ‘con brio’ in the final Allegro, that its excited breathlessness hinted at the mood of which Mozart was master in The Marriage of Figaro.