Chamber Music Hutt Valley

The Cook Strait Trio (Blythe Press – violin, Paul van Houtte – cello, Amber Rainey – piano)

Turina: Piano Trio No 2 in B minor, Op76, Psathas: Island Songs, Dvořák: Piano Trio in F minor, Op 65

Lower Hutt Little Theatre, Thursday 30 July 2009

The Cook Strait Trio is just the kind of chamber music group that one hopes and expects Chamber Music New Zealand will promote in its Associated Societies series. That is, the mainly New Zealand groups that it takes under its wing to tour to the score of smaller chamber music societies that flourish – or least survive – in the towns that do not sustain concerts in the so-called Celebrity Series.

Just to remind you of the societies drawing on at least some of the groups in CMNZ’s stable that exist in Greater Wellington – the Waikanae Music Society, Chamber Music Hutt Valley and the Wellington Chamber Music Society (which, for promotional purposes, now drops the word ‘society’). This group had performed this programme at Waikanae on Sunday 26 July.

The three are Wellington-born and/or educated, though it would probably be risky to claim they will long remain working here. Only Amber Rainey has yet to undertake overseas training.

One longs to discover neglected works that prove substantial and beautiful and it was so with the Turina. He is the fourth of the notable Spanish composers born in the 30 years after 1860 and the least known and perhaps least important. Once upon a time his Canto a Sevilla was popular on account of Victoria de los Angeles’ performance.

Though it was most sympathetically played, this trio did not prove more than an agreeable salon piece of a superior kind. That generalization derives from the tone of the music rather than its formal structure which is sophisticated enough, as pointed out in the programme notes. The Spanish character of the music is not of the usual, strongly rhythmic kind, but derived from the more subtle kind of folk music that does fling itself at you. Its besetting sin perhaps is Turina’s excessive use of diminished harmonies that tend to impose a tonal anonymity on the music. The last movement revealed a stronger character, mainly through its piano part, spendidly played by Amber Rainey.

John Psathas’s Island Songs, now 14 years old, has by now attained the rank of a New Zealand classic. The islands are of Greece – not of New Zealand. However, the music, while carrying occasional suggestions of Greek land and seascapes, and sound such as bells chiming in the piano, does not evoke a conventional sound impression of Greece.

In the first movement, the piano underpinned the strings with ostinati reminiscent of Psathas’s early Waiting for the Aeroplane and he surprises those whose knowledge of Greek music is confined to Theodorakis’s music for Zorba and the bouzouki, with the sparest writing to depict the Zeibekiko in the second movement. In the third movement the piano, again moving through a narrow range of pitches, was a little out of step with its colleagues. 

Dvořák’s Piano Trio Op 65 has received some high praise. Some consider it his finest chamber work, but the competition from the Piano Quintet, and the Dumky Trio, the Quintet Op 97, and the American Quartet would seem to be quite strong.

To start with, it is as markedly Czech as one feels the Turina not to be so Spanish. That feeling might stem from its serious, minor key character in the first movement which is announced by the opening unison passage from violin and cello. However, there is a graciousness in the music which Blythe Press’s violin, in particular, caught beautifully, as he did again in the charming slow movement. The strong instruments here were the piano and violin which often tended to cast a shadow over the cello though it enjoyed some lovely solos early in the first movement, leaving no doubt about Paul van Houtte’s musicality.  

There was a certain loss of momentum in the middle section of the second movement: it felt rather more than the Meno mosso marking called for. Perhaps the trio offered the best of themselves through the fusing of their sounds in the Poco adagio, achieving a beautiful stillness at the movement’s end. In the last movement, they handled the many changes of rhythm with great naturalness engaging overdrive excitingly for the final peroration.

PESTOVA/MEYER PIANO DUO
Xenia Pestova, piano; Pascal Meyer, piano
STRAVINSKY: “The Rite of Spring”;
DUGAL MCKINNON: “Diktat, Ditty Half-Life”;
CHRIS WATSON: “Coffee Table Book”.

**STOCKHAUSEN: “Mantra”

NZ School of Music Adam Concert Room, 17 July 2009

**VUW Hunter Council Chamber, 19 July 2009

Is ballet music programme music when performed without the ballet? If it is, then is it “about” the dance action onstage, or is it, instead, more “about” the story and images that inspired the ballet’s  scenario in the first place? If so, then Stravinsky (famous for the dictum that music expresses only itself) may, paradoxically, have written one of the greatest tone poems of the twentieth century.

These were some of the thoughts going through my mind as I listened to duo pianists Xenia Pestova and Pascal Meyer playing “The Rite of Spring”. Their two-piano version provided more resonance and weight than the composer’s own arrangement for one-piano-four-hands, edging just a little closer to the power of the orchestra. At times Pestova and Meyer evoked familiar instrumental timbres (the opening bassoon, the dialogues of muted trumpets): at others they created something fresh and new – from washes of piano arpeggios, to sinister stalking rhythms.

Unexpectedly, rhythm also emerged as a crucial element in Stockhausen’s “Mantra”. Perhaps I should not have been so surprised: after all, “Piano Piece IX” began with a premonitory dose of pre-minimalist minimalism. However, in the 1956/61 piece, the regularly repeated chords were readily deconstructed into irregular flourishes at the extremes of the keyboard. In the 1969/70 “Mantra”, by contrast, a measured pulse recurred many times during the work – at one point with acerbic wit, as when Pestova’s peremptorily iterated high pitch “corrected” a “wrong” note written for Meyer’s part.

Pestova and Meyer’s intimate engagement with the piece enabled them to highlight episodes of lush romanticism and snatches of melody. Despite these, and the extended periods of metre, the 70-minute “Mantra” proved an epic marathon demanding concentration, commitment and stamina – and that was just for the listeners. The duo pianists themselves needed all these, plus exquisite coordination – especially in such instances as when Pestova’s microsecond woodblock had to coincide with Meyer’s attack. For the performers not only had the pianos, but also an array of small percussion instruments (woodblocks, tuned crotales), as well as dials to initiate ring-modulation (an electronic effect equivalent to Cage’s prepared piano, bringing the tone colour closer to that of the crotales).

Expertly controlled by sound projectionist Philip Brownlee, the ring modulation also offered an escape from the prison of twelve-equal temperament, notably in the form of arresting (all the more so for being sparingly deployed) sliding portamenti on piano sustains. With “Mantra”, Stockhausen had returned to more rigorously formulated composition after a period of experimentation with improvisation and chance: had he followed the precedent set by Markevitch, Ives and Wyschnegradsky and tuned one of the pianos a quarter-tone apart, he would have had even more scope for his procedure of expanding and contracting his intervallic material (a process pioneered in the 1920s by Mexican microtonalist Julian Carrillo).

After having been percussionists and vocalizing actors, Pestova and Meyer further heightened the excitement towards the end with a tour-de-force of rushing fugato passages.

Echoes of Stockhausen’s uncompromising modernism were present in Chris Watson’s “Coffee Table Book” in the earlier recital. Intended as the musical analogue of a pictorial volume (as opposed to the structured narrative of literary fiction), the piece was duly episodic, but retained Watson’s characteristic control of the flow of tension.

Xenia Pestova, a graduate of the Victoria University School of Music and pupil of Judith Clark, has always shown a commitment to contemporary (and New Zealand) music. With Luxembourg pianist Pascal Meyer, this seems set to continue with compositions for two pianos. Dugal McKinnon’s “Diktat, Ditty Half-Life”, with its neatly encapsulating concluding gesture, was the first of a series of miniatures for the duo. I look forward to hearing more.

Chamber music from east and west, Music Fair of Japan

Ilott Theatre, Saturday 11 July 2009

This was the fourth Japanese Festival which has included a concert by Japanese musicians. These are the result of collaboration between the Embassy, the Asia-New Zealand and the Japan Foundations and the Wellington City Council. Where the previous ones have featured only a couple of musicians, this time there were five, including, almost as the star turn, the principal double bass of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Hiroshi Ikematsu.

Those who saw him performing at a concert at St Mary of the Angels last year will have vivid memories of both his extraordinary skill and musical gifts and his virtuosity as comedian and musical acrobat. Here he took an early Italian soprano aria that has recently become popular – Caccini’s Ave Maria (my first encounter on Inessa Galante’s debut CD a decade or so ago); it merely displayed the way he refuses to be limited by the bass’s low register, competing with the violin’s range by playing beautiful legato lines.

What delighted and astonished the full house even more was his transformation of Monti’s famous Csardas from the normally impossible violin showpiece to the same on bass, with a few surprise comic stunts thrown in: some involving pianist Susumu Aoyagi as fall-guy.

Yet the rest were not merely excellent musicians. Violinist Ayoko Ishikawa, who graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium, acted as MC with a delightful playful manner and a joyous way with her phrase endings as she introduced colleagues and pieces of music.

As well as playing a couple of charming Japanese pieces, she played the Meditation from Thaïs, Saint-Saëns’s Dance Macabre and Libertango by Piazzola, with quite a swagger.

The concert had opened atmospherically – the lights went gently down and from the back the sound of the Japanese flute (shinobue) arose, playing the well-known piece from the Japanese highlands, Amazing Grace and it was taken up by the koto which was ready in the front and played by Lisa Kataoka in a beautiful kimono. She continued at the koto, singing charmingly, and was joined by the other instrumentalists in two other pieces. 

We saw the flute player, Takako Hagiwara, in the second half, also kimono-clad, again emerge from behind us and continue playing as she walked slowly down the right aisle. She played a composition of her own on the shinobue and with pianist Susumu Aoyagi played her arrangement from Carmen which was a most impressive virtuosic display.

Finally, the pianist. As well as accompanying many pieces, a model of discretion and sensitivity to the music’s character, he had opened the concert with two Nocturnes (Op Post. and Op 27 No 2) and an Etude (Op 25, No 11) of Chopin. Somewhat angular without much subtlety in the left hand, but his Japanese pieces sounded idiomatic and he left the audience somewhat overwhelmed by his tumultuous playing of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody. 

The concert was free and while the style of music was essentially for popular consumption, we had a line up of superb or at least excellent musicians to demonstrate how a non-European nation with deep traditions of its own, can achieve world class standards and build up very large audiences for classical music.

A lesson that may be pertinent for New Zealand.

Old Saint Paul’s: Free lunchtime concert

Violin Sonatas by Elgar (E minor, Op 82) and Franck (A major)

Olya Curtis (violin) and David Vine (piano)

Tuesday 7 July 2009

The sphere of classical music seems more populated by immigrants than any other area, whether of the arts in general, education, or the public and business sectors. That was understandable in earlier times when no tertiary institutions offered musical performance teaching. But since around 1970, one would have imagined that the supply of New Zealand-born and trained musicians would have filled the demand. But note, I am applauding, not lamenting, the often more cultivated character of our immigrant populations.

I wonder if there have been any studies to discover whether the apparently high proportion of musicians from other countries in the industry is the result of positions that cannot be properly filled by New Zealanders, or whether the proportion of musically trained and inclined people is simply higher among those who seek to migrate here.

Violinist Olya Curtis was born and educated in Russia and now divides her time between teaching privately and at Wellington East Girls’ College, and playing in the Wellington Orchestra. She makes a valued contribution to our musical life.

The pairing of these two sonatas ought to have been a success. They have characteristics in common, but one is simply much more popular and loved than the other. The programme note pointed to the very marked difference which has led to the comparative neglect of Elgar’s somewhat sombre piece, but it omits the real reason – a reason which it is not fashionable to account for the essential popularity or neglect of music – the presence or not of beautiful, memorable melody.

It was cold in the church and it was tough to open with the Elgar. Olya Curtis tackled it with care and delivered a sincere account, but clearly she had not been won over by it and she simply did not display great affinity with it, its phrasing, not gauging well how to vary dynamics and tempi, or to find a legato expressiveness to make the most of its (limited) lyrical qualities. Those qualities were rather more evident in David Vine’s accompaniment.

César Franck’s sonata found her much more comfortable with its style and with the emotional content of the music and both players managed the technically testing score well until the last movement when there were a couple of slight mishaps.

But generally, Curtis’s intonation, which was a little wayward in the Elgar sonata, was more accurate and the very tone of her violin seemed to have become warmer and more musical in Franck’s beautiful sonata.

Nevertheless, the regular, free, Tuesday lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s are a happy feature of Wellington’s varied musical life offering a charming visual setting for music that is always worthwhile and well played.

Trio in E flat, K 498 (Mozart), Four pieces from Eight Pieces for violin, viola and piano, Op 83 (Bruch), Violin Sonata in E flat, Op 18 – first and second movements (Strauss), Three Russian Songs for violin, viola and piano (Glinka)

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

Paekakariki Memorial Hall, Sunday 5 July 2009

There’s not a large repertoire for a piano trio that involves viola instead of cello: though there ought to be. For along with the viola’s delicious C string that provides an opulent, legato bass line, the piano can, after all, supply most of the bass quality below that. 

The violin version of Mozart’s Clarinet Trio (Kegelstatt) provides one fine example; unfortunately, the eight pieces that Bruch wrote late in life for the combination, while agreeable, are not in the same class at all; the unpretentious Glinka pieces were at least their equal in simple musical charm.

Though I remember clearly my first hearing of the enchanting Mozart piece, in the record department of a Wellington department store in the 1970s, I have always been disappointed with the premature ending of the first movement whose richness of inspiration seems to me to be worth at least ten minutes. Nothing could have been more ravishing that the warmth of these three instruments in the lively acoustic of the Paekakariki hall, with its very acceptable piano. One of the benefits of the violin transcription is the prominence of the viola, given at least equal status with the clarinet in the original version; Peter Garrity took full advantage of the beautiful writing in the second movement, relishing the extensive passages in its low register.

For the clarinet part, Mozart seeks to demonstrate its tonal beauty as much as the skill of the player – his friend Stadler – and Cristina Vaszilcsin’s violin simply matched the viola’s voice: the two were so at one.

The piano was in equally happy accord, and Catherine McKay’s bell-like contributions in the Finale created such a joyous experience.

Four of Max Bruch’s Eight Pieces for these instruments (Nos 1, 2, 4 and 5), filled out the first half: pleasant, well-made but, apart from the characteristic No 5, Romanian melody, hardly memorable.

The last piece in the concert was another somewhat slight work – Glinka’s transcriptions of three Russian songs – tastefully crafted transcriptions, to which the trio brought the same idiomatic care that they had to the other pieces in the programme. 

The second half had opened with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata, a somewhat discursive, richly decorative work, but convincing evidence of Strauss’s ability to create and sustain interest in an extended form.  Violinist and pianist moved readily to Strauss’s late romantic opulence – two thirds of it anyway, as Cristina Vaszilcsin begged the audience’s forgiveness for omitting the sonata’s last movement, suggesting a visit to Greytown where she and Catherine McKay would play it all.

Such a cut would only have been a problem for those who knew it well enough for the sound of the tantalizing start of the Finale to come into their heads at the end of the Andante cantabile. Nevertheless, all would have been grateful for the romantically seductive performance of the two movements, so much at home with the yearning arpeggiated motifs of the Allegro and the seductive Andante with its pretty, Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos)-like little tune, and ending on a quiet note. The odd blemish in the piano passed almost unnoticed, such was the charm and rapport shown by the two. Nevertheless, it did leave the little question, as we were left rather wanting more Strauss, why its last movement was cut and the little Glinka pieces put in its place.

Serenade No 10, Op 79 (Persichetti), three movements of String Quartet in E minor, Op 44 No 2 (Mendelssohn), Introduction and Allegro (Ravel)

NZSO National Youth Orchestra principals

St Andrew’s on The Terrace, lunchtime Wednesday 1st July

The long-standing, free lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace, most Wednesdays, present a great variety of music: jazz, brass and military bands, student groups, ethnic ensembles, as well as conventional, classical music – solo singers, piano, chamber groups, choirs.

This was the week that the National Youth Orchestra gathered for rehearsals in preparation for their major concert at the weekend; eight section principals took time out to play chamber music.

The result was a most rewarding concert.

A few years ago a composer like Vincent Persichetti would have been slightly disparaged, for music that was rather traditional in form and tonal character, failing to exploit the latest academic fashions. Happily, his music can now be enjoyed without apology; in any case, no one could mistake its idiom as anything but of the past 40 years. It employed Lucy Anderson on flute and Ingrid Bauer on harp who played it with sensitivity and alacrity. It consisted of eight very short movements, starting with an Andante prelude that involved some pitchless strumming by the harp. The following sections alternated between allegros and slow pieces, in clearly delineated moods, rhythms. The third section – Andante Grazioso – giving the flute some charming, diatonic, legato music, was nevertheless keen-edged and pithy, and the fourth section, even slower, was more warm-toned, with subtle flute vibrato, echoing Debussy and Ravel.

In the penultimate movement – Adagietto – flute and harp randomly dropped languid notes with tact and musicality.

The Mendelssohn string quartet was without its short Scherzo, second movement; we heard the best of it, one of his finest, deeply felt chamber works. The playing by these four young musicians made me think of the way many a famous string quartet has begun, with four gifted conservatorium students finding an affinity and a determination to devote themselves to the most refined and sophisticated of musical genres.

Leader Amalia Hall has been in the eye of the musical public for some years and Ben Morrison, second violin, has already gained something of a soloist’s reputation: their playing respectively subdued or emphatically vivid or dynamically subtle. Violist Nicholas Hancox was heard in beautifully calm, meandering passages in the Andante, while one was always aware of cellist Edward King’s attentive underpinning of the textures and musical lines as well as on his own.

The performance held the attention throughout.

A rare chance to hear, live, Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro was, for me, the main draw of this concert. (I indulge myself remembering my first hearing with an Air Force friend, musically more educated than I, during a Sunday off during CMT at Taieri Air Base in 1956).

It involved, in addition to the string quartet, flutist Hannah Darroch, clarinettist Hayden Sinclair and again, Ingrid Bauer. The placing of woodwinds to the left and the harp to the right of the four string players contributed to the sonic interest of the piece which danced and shimmered – echoes of Ravel’s Jeux d’eau of a few years before. Flute and clarinet listened to each other to find a beguiling tonal blend.

As explained in the interesting programme note, it was intended as a demonstration of the powers of the pedal harp, commissioned by the leading Paris piano house, Érard, in reaction to competition from Pleyel’s new chromatic harp for which Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane had been commissioned.

So it was to be expected that the harpist should make the most of her quasi-soloist role and there was no denying the arresting character of her cadenza with its perhaps exaggerated dynamic contrasts between her right and left hands.

The gathering of such a combination of instruments, permitting less familiar and often very beautiful chamber works to be played, is rare and the result, especially from such sensitive players, should never be missed.

Piano Quartet No 2 in A, Op 26 (Brahms), Piano Quartet (Schnittke), Piano Quartet No 1 in C minor, Op 15 (Fauré)

Michael Houstoun – piano, Wilma Smith – violin, Gillian Ansell – viola, Ashley Brown – cello 

Memorial Hall, Waikanae, Sunday 28 June

I gather that the impulse for this happy ensemble came from the Waikanae Music Society, and that its creation inspired other concert promoters to invite them to perform: the Wairarapa Music Group and Expressions Arts Centre in Upper Hutt. Wilma Smith, the first leader of the New Zealand String Quartet and now co-concert master of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Gillian Ansell, her original quartet colleague – first second violinist, then violist in the quartet, and Ashley Brown, principal cello of the Auckland Philharmonia and cellist in the New Zealand Trio; and of course Michael Houstoun himself who needs no introduction. 

The second of Brahms’s two piano quartets, written in his twenties, is longer and less seductive (superficially anyway) than the first, even though it is in the happy key of A major. The performance itself expressed a warm unanimity of feeling and sensibility, as if the four had played together for many years (most of them had, though not continuously). The atmosphere they generated had a surprisingly intimate, domestic air, as if they were playing in a much smaller venue than the vast sports hall in which these concerts take place (it was needed for this concert that attracted over 500).

Where I was sitting, there was no reverberation at all, and I missed that a little, for the Brahms would have flourished better with a more opulent, spacious sound. The first movement was calm, capturing the vacillating emotions that the main theme suggests, though it didn’t provide the cello with as interesting a part as one might have expected in certain passages. Houstoun took full stock of the bold piano-led theme that comes unexpectedly in the middle of the Poco Adagio which slowly subsided into a more intimate phase with a richly harmonised, rhapsodic episode; it was the most beguiling of the four movements. There were a few blemishes in the dense piano octaves in the Scherzo and though the quartet captured the headlong, rhythmic, mid-sentence beginning of the Finale there were a few flaws here too.

Nevertheless, it was a very fine and persuasive performance of a piece that should be better known.

The Schnittke quartet was what one expects of him: it is not everyone’s taste, even for the adventurous, with its feeling of determined chaos tangling unnaturally (in my view at least) with short snatches of familiar music – here a theme from Mahler’s youthful piano quartet, hardly very familiar anyway. The performance defied any real possibility of judging its technical accuracy, for its demands were ferocious and just a little outlandish for all players and the energy and commitment with which these thoroughly rehearsed musicians tackled it left, to say the least, a feeling of total accomplishment, even triumph.

Fauré’s first piano quartet is one of the most charming in the repertoire. Here, the players’ skills were not subjected to such technically taxing music, but to the perhaps more rewarding challenge of creating from the most attractive and essential resources of the instruments, the most beguiling, beautiful music. So perfect was their unity of conception, that it was as if one mind was guiding all four players, through the muted trio section of the Scherzo, through the gentle, elegiac mood of the Adagio; as if the player were playing for each other before they were even thinking about the wider audience.

That is the essence of chamber music: an intimate communion among friends. The last movement reinforced all the virtues that had been audible earlier, the exquisitely judged rubato, wonderfully natural rise and fall of dynamics, but exercised on music of even more unpretentious beauty than they had available to them in the earlier pieces.

TASMAN STRING QUARTET

Wellington Chamber Music:

Bartok – String Quartet No.3

Thomas Ades – Arcadia for String Quartet Op.12

Beethoven – String Quartet in F Op.59 No.1 “Rasumovsky”

Tasman String Quartet: Anna van der Zee, Jennifer Banks (violins), Christiaan van der Zee (viola), Miranda Wilson (‘cello)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington, Sunday, 31st May, 2009

Bartok was originally to have been Mozart, in this concert, a change obliquely referred to by the violist, leaning conspiratorially towards the audience just before the music began, and warning us not to think their Mozart horribly out of tune, or words to that effect! As it turned out, the Quartet’s playing of Bartok’s Third String Quartet was beautifully-nuanced throughout, poised and lyrical, the “special effects” such as playing on the bridge and with the wood of the bow never unduly emphasized for their own sakes, but incorporated into a kind of lyrical folkish manner. It really was playing of an order that seemed beyond the group’s years, except that the intensity of their involvement with the music could be as easily attributed to youthful ardour – but even more impressive was their osmotic way with the music, the different episodes seeming to flow with a naturalness in keeping with the players’ interactive aspect, a constantly flowing process that the group, like their distinguished colleagues, the New Zealand String Quartet, seemed to be able to express with physical movement, almost in choreographic terms, adding a further dimension of appreciation for the audience.

Their sound as a group I thought not especially “moulded” whether by choice or otherwise, but it resulted in a tangy, flavoursome set of timbres whose combination made for ear-catching results. There was so much to savour about their playing of the Bartok – the terrific rhythmic point of the folk-dance episode against the second violin’s sustained trillings, the exciting interplay of their pinpoint pizzicato note-attack leading into an on-the-toes fugato, and the eerie skeletal timbres heralding the “air-raid siren” glissandi from the lower instruments as the rest run for cover; but overall the impression was of a deeply thought-about interpretation, whose salient points – fluidity, colour and rhythmic interplay – took place within an overall shape whose moulding allowed every significant detail to make a telling contribution.

New to me was the Thomas Ades work, Arcadiana for String Quartet, a name suggesting a kind of earthly Paradise, a Greek version of Shangri-La, the music in seven short movements suggesting various aspect of this state of earthly perfection. From the opening Lullaby, whose sounds refracted through a “do I wake or sleep?” kind of sensibility, with things drifting, changing, advancing and receding, the Quartet thoroughly immersed itself in the music’s sound-world. A ‘cello solo sings operatically against bright, chirruping strings in No.2, while the third, taking its cue from Schubert’s watery song invitation seems to glide downwards into as well as along the surface of aqueous depths. Pizzicati spark off arco variants of a heavy-footed dance, folk-fiddles digging in and adding an exotic element, music whose dance-rhythms were inspired by the words “Et in Arcadia ergo”, music in which the “here and now” gradually becomes a kind of swinging gate, as the playground empties, and the golden girls and boys make their way outwards to glory. Delicate, sighing harmonies characterize the opening of the fifth section, leading to an Elgarian reminiscence of an England whose past glories have an autumnal glow, an ambience that extends via the ‘cello solo into the last section, whose name, Lethe, appropriately characterizes the oblivion into which the music disappears at the end.

After the interval the Tasman Quartet tore into the first Beethoven “Rasumovsky” work (Op.59 No.1) as though their lives depended on the outcome, the playing urgent, thrusting and directional, though with enough flexibility to register the music’s mood-changes. The players kept things very tight and tense throughout, the music’s ebb and flow geared to a strongly-maintained pulse, though they didn’t ever make a meal of any of the movement’s “big moments”, such as the great chordal statement of the theme just before the movement’s end, keeping such utterances urgent and dynamically terraced. The second movement’s opening was nicely poised and sharply-etched – perhaps a bit too earnest (youthful intensities to the fore), though the second theme had great ‘schwung”! Trenchant playing in the movement’s middle kept the voltage high and pushed the intensity needle consistently into the red, though the players did relax a little for the cantabile moments, and the “theme-exchange” passages between the instruments.

This quartet has one of the many great slow movements found in Beethoven’s music – at the beginning the players found what felt like a natural-sounding expression, with nothing forced or strained, the lively-sounding Italianate thirds expressed by the violins perfectly in scale. I would expect these players to gradually find over subsequent performances of this music even more stillness in some of the less driven parts of the middle movements. Though exciting and engaging, the intensities of this performance I felt imparted a somewhat dogged feel occasionally to rhythms whose gait could have been less “pushed”, and whose unrelenting focus made true intonation difficult in places for the violins. But having said that, it was all part of a superbly-delivered musical conception which, if occasionally wanting a touch of humour, crackled and sparked with wonderful intensity throughout.

ST.ANDREW’S ON-THE-TERRACE

LUNCHTIME CONCERT SERIES 2009

New Zealand School of Music Students and Staff

JOSEF HAYDN (1732-1809)

String Quartet in C Major Op.33 No.3 “The Bird”

Donald Maurice, Rupa Maitra (violins),Helen Bevin (viola), Brenton Veitch (‘cello)

Concerto in D Major for Piano and Orchestra Hob. XVIII/11

Richard Mapp (piano), New Zealand School of Music Ensemble, Uwe Grodd (conductor)

St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace   Wednesday 27th May 2009

Amongst the great composers I couldn’t think of a better lunchtime companion than Josef Haydn, judging from what’s come down to us regarding the man and his personality that’s to be found in his music, with its strength, candid directness and wry humour. I would expect to come away from such an encounter with the great man totally charmed, highly amused and utterly humbled in the presence of such a rare amalgam of sophistication and simplicity. For his part, I would imagine, he would be part flattered, part amused at the attention his death-anniversary was currently getting world-wide, and would also spend a lot of our time together telling me how marvellous he thought the music of his younger colleagues Mozart and Beethoven was, probably explaining that he’s since had ample time on his hands to revise his initial, somewhat bemused impressions of the latter’s work!

Thanks to the efforts of various members of the New Zealand School of Music staff and student groups, and the St Andrew’s concerts organizers, Haydn was indeed the guest of honour at a recent lunchtime concert in the church which celebrated his life and music by featuring two works, a string quartet from the Op.33 set (subtitled The Bird), and a keyboard concerto, written in the cheerful key of D major. Violinist Donald Maurice introduced the concert, and talked a little about Haydn’s work in developing the range, scope and status of the string quartet, eventually establishing the genre as one of the most significant and elevated forms a composer could use to express his deepest and profoundest thoughts.

Haydn’s Op.33 set of six quartets, sometimes known as the “Russian” Quartets (for the simple reason that Haydn dedicated the set to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia) is a group of works much admired by musicians, a favourite being the third of the set, subtitled “The Bird”, so named because of various avian goings-on during the course of the music, most notably during the first movement, where the tiny grace-notes decorating the first violin’s repeated figures sound like birdsong. The music tells its own little story as well, with the birds’ chattering at one point interrupted by a darkening of the textures, causing some anxiety as to the prospect of rain spoiling a good day out – but with the recapitulation all is well. After a rather un-scherzo-like scherzo, enlivened by some violinistic warblings, the slow movement brought out some elegant phrasing and subtle voicings from the group, with the fairy-tale-like narrative taking us in the music’s darker central section to places where no self-respecting bird would dare to go. The finale presented a relatively unclouded aspect with the cellist providing strong rhythmic support for the rest of the group’s chirruping high-jinks. A few very minor intonation lapses had little effect upon one’s overall feeling of intense pleasure in the music and the playing, the characteristic throwaway-ending essayed with po-faced relish by all concerned.

For the second part of the concert the physical scale of things was somewhat enlarged with a keyboard concerto, featuring an ensemble of a dozen or so players directed by Uwe Grodd, and with Richard Mapp as the soloist. The smallish group revelled in the opportunity to explore and contrast the music’s differentiating textures and colours, the whole delivered with plenty of energy and good humour. Richard Mapp’s playing sounded perfectly in scale, his tones crystalline and stylish, the first movement’s cracklingly quick tempo heightening the music’s sense of joie de vivre. His cadenza had more than a suggestion of Beethoven in its exploratory modulations, but nevertheless preserved the style of the whole. A chamber-like air infused the interchanges between soloist and players in the slow movement, the music encouraging a degree of intimate engagement that I found extremely touching. The wind players did well, here, their sustained notes unerringly supporting the textures and preserving the overall ambience. The Rondo finale was marked “all’Ungherese”, and was taken at a great lick, the tuttis giving strings and winds plenty to do as the horns held forth with golden tones in support, as the soloist’s fingers scampered this way and that. The music’s rapid mood-switches were taken in the musicians’ stride, from piano and strings exploring interesting modulations, through a heavier-footed peasant-like “Ungherese” section, into a piquant minor-key mini-adventure, and then back into the sunlight of the opening, all delivered by the musicians with the kind of infectious enjoyment one feels that Haydn had precisely in mind – all, in all, a modest, but fitting tribute to a great composer.

WAIKANAE MUSIC SOCIETY
Edith Salzmann (‘cello) and Diedre Irons (piano)

JS BACH – Suite for solo ‘cello No.2 in D Minor BWV 1008
BEETHOVEN – Sonata for ‘cello and piano in A Major Op.69
DEBUSSY – Sonata for ‘cello and piano in D Minor (1915)
FRANCK – Sonata for ‘cello and piano in A Major (1886)

Memorial Hall, Waikanae
Sunday 24th May 2009

Composer/pianist Gao Ping was to have played in this concert, but had to cancel, so his place was instead taken by Diedre Irons, necessitating a programme change in the original plan – but considering the calibre of the artists involved in the rearrangement, no-one could possibly have felt hard done by. The programme was a ‘cello-fancier’s dream, beginning with one of those iconic works for the solo instrument, a suite by JS Bach from the set of six, regarded by many as the greatest music ever written for the ‘cello, and followed by sonatas by Beethoven, Debussy and Franck. ‘Cellist Edith Salzmann, born in Germany, has lived in New Zealand since 2001, working at the Canterbury University School of Music and playing in the Canterbury Trio, while maintaining a busy and varied international schedule of performance and teaching. Her colleague, Diedre Irons, well-known to Wellington audiences, has also had a long association with Canterbury, teaching at the University for a number of years until taking up the position as Senior Lecturer in Piano at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington in 2004.

Beginning with the Suite for solo ‘cello by Bach (No.2 in D Minor BWV 1008), the programme took us straight to the heart of the instrument’s expressive and technical geist. Edith Salzmann’s playing I took some time to fully engage with, partly the result of an acoustic in the Waikanae Hall which allowed her tones very little warmth and resonance. As the work progressed my ear “caught” more and more of what she was actually doing with the music, though her approach throughout the suite remained on the “intimate”scale, as though she was performing for a circle of friends, and the rest of us were eavesdroppers. She didn’t seem to want to ever “command” the music, preferring a lighter, more quixotic manner, with suggestions here and there of wider, more deeper realms, her ignoring of most of the repeats contributing to the evanescent nature of it all. The work’s Prelude was delivered in a free and rhapsodic way, with some of the notes in places brushed so lightly as to be practically inaudible – an interesting and somewhat circumspect discourse. She caught the character of the different dance movements well, expressing their speech/movement flexibility with a light touch, digging in where appropriate (as with the Sarabande), and differentiating nicely between the two Minuets. Her final “Gigue” set the dance leaping over the nicely-voiced “drone” throughout, but still, a somewhat “held-back” manner left me with the feeling that she would rather have been playing this music to a small circle of friends.

Beethoven – and Diedre Irons – brought the ‘cellist out of her shell somewhat for the next work,  the A Major “Cello Sonata Op.69. A lovely opening ‘cello solo begins this work, beautifully played here, and answered beguilingly, setting the scene for a fascinating interplay to follow throughout an extensive first movement. A patch of nebulous intonation at the top of the ‘cellist’s first exposed ascent was quickly forgotten amid the hurly-burly of the rest of the movement’s exchanges, contrasting the flying skin and hair in places with a wonderfully hushed reprise of the main theme’s “ghost” before the recapitulation proper. The scherzo, one of Beethoven’s wonderfully angular creations, was relished by both players, the ‘cello’s rather quixotic singing line and the piano’s dancing augmentations providing plenty of forward momentum. A deeply-felt  but short-lived adagio cantabile led into an energetic finale, delivered with plenty of spirit, and building up strongly to an almost orchestral climax with terrific surges of tone from both players.

The concert’s second half presented two works from the French repertory. Debussy’s ‘Cello Sonata is a late work, the first of six instrumental sonatas that he planned to write “for diverse instruments” – alas that only three were completed before his death in 1918. I thought this a strongly characterised performance of the sonata, bringing out the music’s almost superabundance of invention as episode followed episode. The opening’s forthright exchanges between the instruments melts into a lullaby-like section, whose awakening in turn leads to a big-boned, epic passage redolent of the same composer’s “The Engulfed Cathedral”, here relished by both players. The sounds then take on a veiled, sombre quality, emphasised by the ‘cellist’s slight “under-the-note” manner continuing in this vein to the movement’s end, with Edith Salzmann’s ‘cello giving us a lovely high harmonic chord. The second movement began with pizzicato exchanges between the instruments, the extraordinary voicings used by the composer uncannily blending the sounds of the two instruments, though interspersed by volatile goings-on between ‘cello and piano of an entirely different character, Salzmann and Irons really sparking off one another. The finale enters without a break, a cheerful folk-like melody giving the movement in places an almost Dvorakian feel. I felt Salzmann and Irons judged the balance in this movement between propulsion and languour to near-perfection, in a way that heightened the excitement of the final run-up to the work’s piano-and-pizz. conclusion.

Finally, we heard a well-known work in a less familiar guise, Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata arranged for ‘cello and piano (the work of one Jules Delsart, done with the composer’s approval). Perhaps the ‘cello has to work a bit harder to maintain an equal voice with the piano, when compared with the brighter, more insistent violin, but the deeper voice has an attractive “withdrawn” quality at times, especially suiting the first movement’s introspection. Such was the warmth and richness of Diedre Irons’ piano-playing I found it difficult to concentrate elsewhere, so fascinated and absorbed did I become in places by what she was doing. The scherzo’s “whisper to a roar” beginning for piano, and the ‘cello’s colouring the melodic line were brought off with great gusto, the players’ energies and focusings capturing the “schwung” of it all, despite occasional mis-hits by both, which somehow added to the excitement. As telling in this movement were the rapt recitative exchanges between the instruments, the contrasts underpinning the music’s passionate outpourings. Difficult for the ‘cello is the scherzo’s coda, as the instrument can’t really “shine” against the piano’s onrushing figurations as the violin can do, and intonation sounded strained here in the attempt. With the slow movement returns the rapt ambience of the scherzo’s central section, the dialogues between ‘cello and piano capturing that “moment in time” quality so powerfully. Salzmann and Irons beautifully varied the intensifications, facilitating a real ebb and flow of emotion. After all of these somewhat confessional utterances, the finale comes as unalloyed joy; and so it was here, with the music’s contourings again beautifully served, and the work as a whole brought to a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.