Tag: choral

Orchestra Wellington – heroically fulfilling the need for music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
A MODERN HERO

EVE de CASTRO-ROBINSON – Hour of Lead
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – War Requiem

Morag Atchison (soprano)
Daniel Szesiong Todd (tenor)
Benson Wilson (baritone)

Orpheus Choir, Wellington
Wellington Young Voices

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (music director)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 7th December, 2024

What could possibly preface in concert a work such as Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem?  Here, on Saturday, at Orchestra Wellington’s epic presentation “A Modern Hero”, that challenge was taken up by Auckland composer Eve de Castro Robinson with her brief but searingly concentrated orchestral composition “Hour of Lead”, a sonorous meditation on a similarly-titled poem by Emily Dickinson.

The poet’s words explore the consciousness of pain in a variety of forms and processings, its progressions variously rapier-like, systematic and torpid, with responses paralleling thought, reflex and movement, as do the different characters of the four movements of de Castro Robinson’s work, with each outwardly signing inner turmoil. The first, Searing, takes just milliseconds to live up to its name, with an opening ostinato suddenly pierced by screams. The rhythms trundle jazzily onwards, set upon by punch-drunk szforzandi, whose assaults bring forth raucous clamourings, and building to a tutti for the tumultuous ages. After this comes music of the air, Bittersweet, a vertiginous scenario whose incessant movement quixotically dissolves into a juicily-flavoured hymnal, and reaching zany volume levels with a single, tumultuously constituted chord that eventually self-destructs!

Next is Leaden, with its “quartz contentment”, deeply-wrought sounds with richly-purposeful rumblings, its darkness countering the previous movement’s scintillations. A flowing viola/cello melody sings above the rhythms as winds and brass emit birdlike sighs and cries, which brass turn into gargantuan earth-groans – how wonderful to hear the  strings playing an Orpheus-like role here, their sounds taming the beasts’ convulsions, raising their spirits, and suggesting an ecstasy on the other side of the darkness which reclaims the last few bars.

“Remembered, if outlived” says the poem; and the beginning of the final Chilling scintillates on percussion, winds and high-register-strings before becoming almost extra-terrestrial, freed from gravity and atmosphere! –  all impulses are drawn towards a super-galactic kind of rendition of “Abide with Me”, a kind of invitation for sensibilities frozen in the manner of “centuries before” . Perhaps the “stupor – then the letting go” is the reawakening of human consciousness via the bringing into being a gloriously aleatoric-like pitchless chord which grows to fullness before being “taken up” by the same players’ stamping,, clattering, and then gradually receding footsteps – whether “taken up”, or “being taken”, one is not quite sure, but what an enigmatically human way to end the piece! After such colourful coruscations, the appearance of the piece’s composer, Eve de Castro Robinson, called to the platform at the end, seemed like some kind of angelic or otherwise blessed visitant, come to lift the spell by which her work had held us all in thrall.

And so, to the Britten – after the extra players and singers and their conductor had all made their entrances and set themselves up to begin, conductor Marc Taddei raised his baton and the first sounds of the War Requiem were made by the strings, awkwardly-pulsating figures gradually brought to life. For some reason I felt a proper sense of “atmosphere” lacking, without being able to put my finger on just what was missing – and only right at the work’s ending did I experience what could have made an enormous difference at the beginning. Accompanying the final exchanges between the children’s choir at the words Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis, and the main chorus’s Requiescant in pace, Amen  was the stunning effect of gradual dimming  the stage lighting to near-darkness, the voices’ diminuendo contriving the sounds to disappear as if by magic. How wonderful, I thought, if the work had begun this way, and the lights gradually brought up as the music threaded its way towards its first climax at the choir’s first full-blooded Et lux perpetua luceat eis joined by full-throated bells and percussion!

Britten’s use of the tritone, the interval C-F-sharp, in medieval times known as “diabolus in musica” (the devil in music) dominates these opening exchanges, here brought off tellingly by both voices and orchestra, the composer seeking to suitably “haunt” the text’s idea of “eternal rest”,  usually, in conventional requiems, given the most consoling music possible.  Increased tensions crackled and blistered with the tenor’s first solo entry intoning the first of poet Wilfred Owen’s bitterly challenging verses “What passing bells for these who die as cattle?” – though I found Daniel Szesiong Todd’s enunciation of the words less than clear, he still conveyed the words’ terrible ironies, along with the sounds depicting the battlefield slaughter and the “tenderness of silent minds”. All of the forebodings were then given full vent in the brutal contrasts which followed, the rapt “Kyrie/Christe eleisons” and the great onslaught of instrumental and vocal sounds of “Dies Irae”. Just as awe-inspiring and pitying were the poet’s words in the at once tranquil and fearful, “Bugles sang” which followed,  redolent with echoes of the “Dies Irae” in baritone Benson Wilson ’s hushed but growingly apprehensive conveyance of the bugles’ tones, sounding their sorrowful calls and catching the portentous mood.

Though Morag Atchison’s soprano tones “spread” when put under pressure in the “Liber Scriptus”, she effectively and sonorously “nailed” the text’s message that nothing would remain unjudged or unavenged, sentiments echoed by the chorus’s troubled utterances at “Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?” and by the soprano’s stentorian “Rex tremendae majestatis!” Then, the poet’s supremely ironic “Out there” verses came bounding in, the two soldiers teasing death as a playfellow, an “old chum” , and never as an “enemy of ours”. (we could have done with surtitles for the poetry as the auditorium was too dark to be able to properly follow the words in the programme)!

The chorus splendidly contrasted the women’s prayerful “Recordare Jesu pie” with the men’s later, jagged-edged “Confutatis maledictis”, halted by the timpani’s introduction to the baritone’s saluting of the great gun – “thou long black arm” – ironically addressing its malevolence before uttering a curse upon its being (though the words were not clear the tone of voice was unmistakeable! – great timpani and brass playing, here!). Its brazen function then became clear as the music burst once again into ”Dies Irae”, again magnificently  delivered, but then dramatically slowing, and holding everything in cosmic thrall for the “Lacrimosa” to make its heart-wrenching appearance  – Morag Atchison’s singing was to die for, here!  Britten brilliantly uses the “Lacrimosa” in tandem with what are perhaps Wilfred Owen’s most moving verses in the entire work – “Move him gently into the sun” – no matter that the words were not entirely clear in places, as the overall sense of grief was here palpable beyond description. I think we needed to have been told, somewhere, that there was an interval at this point, because we were uncertain as to what to do at first, after the choir had breathed its concluding “Dona eis requiem” – still, our somewhat mesmerised state wasn’t inappropriate!

As with every note these angelic voices sang this evening, the Wellington Young Voices’ Choir covered itself in glory  with the Offertorium that began the work’s second half – and, not to be outdone, the Orpheus voices then launched into the text with sterling orchestral support, firstly at Sed signifier sanctus Michael, and then giving us a deliciously-crafted fugal romp through Quam olim Abrahae promisisti, one whose conclusion then tossed the momentums into the introduction to another of  Owen’s poems. This one was a setting based on part of the composer’s earlier canticle, “Abraham and Isaac”, but this time with a different and brutal ending to the story. Both soloists here projected their texts more clearly, combining their voices particularly beautifully when describing the “Ram of Pride” sent by God for sacrifice –  glorious singing again from the Young Voices here, in heart-breaking response to the story’s murderous end, in which we were told Abraham “slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one!”, the soloists obsessively repeating the final phrase of the poem. Afterwards, the choir and orchestra then returned to the “Quam olim Abrahae” fugal passage to complete the savage irony of the tale.

Came the Sanctus, resplendent in its glory and especially so in the wake of the Parable’s bitterness – a plethora of shimmering instrumental tintinnabulations and with ecstatic acclamations from the soprano, after which the choir divided into eight parts for Pleni sunt Caeli in terra (the choir stood up section by section, which created great visual excitement!), using the rapidly-repeated words to create an excitable babble of ever-burgeoning voices to the accompaniment of a great instrumental crescendo!  A pause, and then brasses and voices began firstly, the Hosanna in excelsis and then, led by the soprano, the gentler, more processional  Benedictus, the interactive flow here kept alive with great presence by Morag Atchison interacting with voices and orchestra under Marc Taddei’s expert control.

A final Hosanna from chorus and orchestra produced a concluding flourish, and the baritone began Owen’s thoughtful meditation, The End, the poem questioning  the Earth’s capacities for forgiveness of humankind for the carnage, with the beautiful instrumental colourings accorded the words’ images emphasising the bleakness of  the previous music’s religious exaltation. Again, the solo singer’s words were difficult to make out, but the sense of desolation held fast.  The tenor’s rendition of the following verses from At a Calvary Near the Ancre intersected here with the choir’s sing of “Agnus Dei” from the Requiem Mass, the words again highlighting the poet’s angst and anger with war – here, Owen castigates the institutionalisation of  Christian faith and patriotism  by clergy and polilticians. with Britten’s own pacifism never more unequivocally articulated than in this part of the work.

The Libera me, as with Verdi’s setting in his famous Requiem Mass, contains some of the most searing and heartfelt writing, with again, in Britten’s work the universal plea for deliverance and mercy extended to include the “pity of war”.  The opening here was as portentous as anything by Berlioz or Verdi, with the writing filled with vertiginously fearsome chromatic shifts of harmony and colour, gathering momentum and fervour, and brought into sharp focus for us by the soprano’s sudden entry (“Tremens! – Factus sum ergo!”) when she spits out her words, bring the choir’s voices with her, and realising with the orchestra a cataclysmic ferment of energies and strengths –  a truly apocalyptic threshold through which we were taken and left gasping as the sounds gradually died away, leaving the  two soldiers about whom this work has told us such a lot, and, of course, very much on our behalf!

Which left the poet’s last text, a poem called “Strange Meeting”, bringing to us a dream-like sequence  in which Owen describes an encounter involving two soldiers who had been on opposing sides in a battle, one of whom had killed the other in combat – “I am the enemy you killed, my friend”…. exchanging as well “the undone years, the hopelessness” along with “the pity of war, the pity war distilled”, and bringing to bear the desire to cleanse the human spirit with water from the “sweet wells we sunk too deep for war”. And it was difficult to remain dry-eyed throughout the music of reconciliation, with the two men sharing the line “Let us sleep now” in a sequence magically wrought all about its perimeters by the choir’s intoning the Latin hymn In Paradisum – “Into Paradise may the Angels lead thee”, but with Britten again disturbing the conventional idea of “eternal rest” of such commemorations by using the tri-tone interval for the Children’s Chorus’s final utterances of “Requiem Aeternam….” as a kind of “warning” for mankind.

Then came a stunningly evocative ambient withdrawal from the work’s world, achieved by the slowest of diminuendi throughout the work’s final chord sequence, allowing the performers and their sounds to magically and memorably dissolve into the darkness. It was only then I found myself wishing that the musicians had brought the work’s beginning out of the same darkness at its beginning – a work that everybody had so brilliantly recreated for our on behalf of the genius who wrote this music…..

“Achieved is the Glorious work!” – Orpheus Choir with Orchestra Wellington recreate Haydn’s “The Creation”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JOSEPH HAYDN – The Creation
Anna Leese (soprano), Frederick Jones (tenor), Joel Amosa (bass-baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor)
with Airu Matsuda/Jemima Smith (dancers)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 24th August, 2024

Haydn’s “The Creation” seems to be on the “short list” of anybody’s compendium of great choral music experiences, but it was something that had, purely by accident, evaded me over the years. This of course necessitated on my part some urgently-driven and intensely-constituted preparatory experience of the work prior to my attending the Orpheus Choir’s and Orchestra Wellington’s eagerly-awaited Wellington performance.

My plan was to listen to several highly-regarded recordings, thinking I would get a well-rounded view of it all, though I confess to taking little notice of the circumstance that all of these performances presented the work in German even though I do remember reading about the fascinating peregrinations of the original anonymously-written English libretto that came into Haydn’s hands while in England.  He then took it back to Austria and turned it over to Gottfried van Swieten, who translated it into German for Haydn to set to music, van Swieten also recasting the English words to “fit” with the composer’s work. It was one of the first works up to that time published with a libretto in two languages.

Having digested all of this, and feeling by the end of my listening that my surroundings and person-prototype had been suitably, not to say systematically reconstructed by the composer with the aid of an anonymous libretto drawn from Genesis, the Book of Psalms and John Milton, I felt more than ready for some ”live action”, as popular advertising would have it! And I was, of course, further intrigued by the publicity accompanying the Orpheus Choir’s 2024 presentation, with its promise of “stunning special effects” including a cinematic LED screen adding sight to sound, and dancers from Footnote New Zealand choreographing parts of the music-making! Obviously something special was afoot!

Adding “special effects” to live music-making in general is nothing new of late, and not even in the case of the classics, where, in performances of music traditionally presenting the notes of the score alone, there’s been a world-wide interest in augmenting such activities with just the kinds of things we were given this evening. Even certain works whose essential gravitas seemed to require a pure and unadorned approach have been given extra “componentry” in that it’s more than just the “sound” of the music that’s presented – Bach’s St.John Passion has , for example, been presented with dance choreography at this year’s prestigious Salzburg Festival.

These initiatives of course come with the best of intentions, with purposes most persuasively put – to quote the words of one entrepreneur: “Interractive concert technologies have introduced exciting ways to engage audiences during live performances. From synchronised light shows and projection mapping to mobile apps that enable audience participation, these technologies create a multisensory experience, blurring the boundaries between performers and spectators and fostering a deeper connection between the music and the audience.” A frequently recurring theme in these philosophies is the perceived “conservatism” and “exclusivity” of classical music as a barrier that needs to be broken down – as one event director put it, “….trying to make the music less intimidating and exclusive to people who can’t identify with the conservative, exclusionary image that classical music often has.”

Something that routinely divides audiences at performances with these “special effects” is the difference in attitude between age-groups. Those I talked with on Saturday night after the “Creation” performance included younger people who in general enjoyed the screened images and the dancers, and older people who mostly found them distracting and even annoying. For myself (these days a paid-up member of the grey-haired brigade!) I found parts of the screened imagery appropriately theatrical and dramatic (the contrast between the opening “void” with its convoluted and claustrophobic imagery and its sudden, dramatic, near-blinding light at the choir’s words “and there was LIGHT!!!” was stunning in its effect, for example, as was the ”sunrise/moonrise” imagery accompanying some of the beautiful concluding music of Part One).  However as scene followed subsequent scene I found myself wondering what we were expected to be most engaged with – was it the music or the accompanying images?  Under such circumstances I felt the most important consideration was a question of a proper synthesis between the two – and for me there seemed a significant proportion of the visual throughout the evening whose “busyness” was more of a distraction than the interactive motivation which the music surely deserved. The “extra” detailing I enjoyed as much as the more focused visual depictions was the presence in Part Three of the two dancers, Airu Matsuda representing Adam and Jemima Smith depicting Eve, their movements always in what seemed like properly organic synchronisation with both the words and the music, and earning them well-deserved plaudits of their own at the end.

Turning to the music and its performance by the singers and orchestra is to encounter what I thought were the occasion’s most resplendent qualities – right from the dark-browed, brooding instrumental opening of the work followed by bass-baritone Joel Amosa’s entrance as the Archangel Raphael and his splendidly-weighted voice (making me catch my breath momentarily at the realisation that he was singing in English!), the sounds held us in a grip of wonderment and expectation! It made that moment of release of both the choir’s and orchestra’s tumultuous torrent of sound at the word “Light” all the more elemental in its power and joyous in its liberation!  What better a beginning, I thought, to such a cosmic event!

If tenor Frederick Jones sounded at first slightly tentative during the opening of his aria “Now vanish before the holy beams”,  his voice “broke through” with the description of Satan’s host’s defeat and consignment to “endless night”, with the Orpheus voices revelling in the writing’s energy and determination with their cries of “Despairing, cursing rage attends their rapid fall”. And his ringing tones splendidly capped off the orchestra’s depiction of the majestic sun and the beauteous moon to great effect. Even better was his performance in Part Two of the great aria “In native worth and honour clad”, one describing the creation of man and woman (the sequence appropriately accompanied by the famous Michelangelo Sistine Chapel depiction of God creating Adam – however clichéd the image, it had for me that interactive “rightness” that made its proper mark).

Soprano Anna Leese’s brightly-focused voice made the perfect contrast to Joel Amosa’s splendid recitative “And God made the Firmament” when she undertook the celebratory “The marvellous work” with the choir again matching the soloist’s exuberant mood, Leese returning in more lyrical fashion for a bewitching “With verdue clad”, to which the orchestral winds added evocative detail that heightened the “ravish’d sense” of the beholder. As befitted the extra dynamism of living creatures, the soprano’s “On mighty pens” paid both sprightly and lyrical homage to the birds of the air, specifically the eagle, lark, dove and nightingale, the visuals “treating us” however vicariously and distractedly, to a simulated ride on the back of an eagle during this section! – though Anna Leese’s voice did manage to refocus our attentions on the music for some of the time, and garner sufficient appreciation for a lovely performance!

Of course the duet sequences of Part Three between the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, are always a highlight of this work – and here we were charmed by the interaction between the pair, firstly by the aforementioned dancers’ sequences which I thought of a piece with the whole in terms their simply-adorned and dream-like quality of expression; and then with the re-entrance of Anna Leese as Eve and Joel Amosa as Adam dressed almost as if for a wedding, which of course their union symbolizes in an archetypal sense. Even the tenor took part in the ritual’s beginning, introducing the pair in the most mellifluous of tones “In rosy mantle now appears”, a lovely piece of singing by Frederick Jones! It’s the precursor of a series of duets and declamations heart-warming in their effect, be it the pair’s alternating praise of and delight in the newly-created world (“Of stars the fairest”) or each one’s heartfelt declaration of love for the other during the course of “Our duty we have now performed”, both singers conveying a real sense of wonderment at their “coming into being” in a new world and sharing their rapturous excitement.

In attendance with all of this, and in places leading the way was the wonderful Orpheus Choir – music director Brent Stewart must have been well-and-truly stoked with his voices’ response to the composer’s every storytelling excitement, rhapsodic description and grandly resplendent moment,  through all of which the choir never faltered. To single out any particularly memorable moment (which I’ve done already!) would be to underplay the totality of the Orpheus’s achievement in conveying Haydn’s sheer inventiveness and flexibility. Right with the choir for every demisemiquaver of the journey was Orchestra Wellington, whose recent appearances in a punishing schedule of concerts had already confirmed its reputation as a brilliant and formidable ensemble – here, enhanced even further.

While the effectiveness of much of the “reimagined” aspect of the presentation will remain a matter of taste and opinion, there can be no doubt as to the stellar musical qualities of the occasion thanks to all concerned, conductor, soloists, choir and orchestra! To quote wholeheartedly from the libretto itself – “Achieved is the glorious work!”

 

Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei – legacy of The Classical Style

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei – photo credit: Latitude Creative

SERGE PROKOFIEV – Symphony No. 1 “Classical”  Op.25
GERMAINE TAILLEFERRE – Piano Concerto (1924)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor “Choral” Op. 125

Somi Kim (piano)
Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano),
Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor), Robert Tucker (baritone)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 6th June 2024

Orchestra Wellington’s visionary and compelling 2024 survey of concert music and some of its significant milestones certainly lived up to expectations with “The Classical Style”, a most attractive and “something for everybody” selection highlighting pieces whose composers took their inspiration from classical forms through which they were able to refract their own individuality and distinctive voices.

The highlight of the evening for me was undoubtedly the Piano Concerto by the French composer Germaine Tailleferre, a beautifully luminous and engaging piece whose relative neglect until recent times I find difficult to fathom on the strength of pianist Somi Kim’s sonorous, attractive playing and Orchestra Wellington’s gorgeously sinuous accompaniments. Also, framing this work were two far better-known but still ineffably fascinating pieces by Prokofiev and Beethoven whose “add water” appeal would have nicely eased audiences into Tailleferre’s relatively unchartered territories.

Before the concert began, maestro extraordinaire Marc Taddei took the liberty of using the occasion to promote an important new recording project involving the orchestra and himself, one paying tribute to the music of a composer whose work Taddei and the Orchestra have valiantly supported over the years, New-Zealand-Greek composer John Psathas, (born in Wellington, in 1966, to Greek parents). This is a recently-recorded two-disc (both vinyl and CD) set on the Atoll label titled “Leviathan” containing four concerti, three for percussion and one for tenor sax. (“Leviathan” is, of course the title of one of the percussion concertos). With the help of concertmaster Amalia Hall, Taddei displayed the LP set with its stunningly-contrasted coloured vinyl (one disc white and the other blue), all with the kind of “fatal attraction” allure that a vinyl-collector like myself would find impossible to resist – as with the orchestra’s previous unmissable recording project involving two Beethoven symphonies to which, of course , I readily succumbed! If this paragraph sounds like an advertisement, it’s because I simply can’t help myself at this point! – so, back to the concert! (see the conclusion of this review for details regarding the recording’s availability)….

Where was I? – Oh, yes! – one finds it difficult to think of a better choice to begin such an evening as we had scheduled than with Prokofiev’s self-proclaiming “Classical” Symphony, and in a performance which, for three of the four movements seemed to me to attain an “ideal” regarding the ever-tantalising balance in performance between surface execution and feeling.  The opening movement properly launched itself upwards with great gusto, but with enough ‘wriggle-room” for the momentums to generate the piece’s infectious eagerness while allowing a flexibility of movement between the different themes.

The adorable slow movement was by turns tender, limpid, forthright and glowing – I particularly enjoyed the enticing “lift” to the triplet rhythms that accompanying a later reprise of the principal theme, and the quiet dignity with which it all ended. The Minuet I also found utterly charming, Marc Taddei allowing his players enough “expression” in their exchanges to reinforce the idea that these were real dancers, rather than simply marionettes going through the motions. After these delights I thought the finale a tad too hasty, to my mind exchanging some of the music’s deliciousness for the sake of sheer brilliance (though the orchestra certainly rose to the occasion, the wind players in particular performing miracles of fingering and tongueing in keeping up the tempo!).

French composer Germaine Tailleferre has until relatively recently been known by the musical world at large merely for her membership of the French group of composers named “Les Six”, and for little else, a similar fate to two other group members, Louis Durey and Georges Auric. Tailleferre, who had distinguished herself as a pupil at the Paris Conservatoire, and who received further encouragement from both Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel, became a member of “Les Six” in 1920. She composed a great deal during the 1920s and 30s, much of which was lost during World War Two after she had fled France for the United States – her creative output continued after her return to France up until her death in 1983, by which time she had produced almost two hundred finished works. Her 1924 Piano Concerto survived the war, becoming one of several concertante works she completed, including a Second Piano Concerto, a Violin Concerto, a Double Piano Concerto and a Double Guitar Concerto!

Somi Kim, piano, plays Germaine Tailleferre’s 1924  Piano Concerto with Orchestra Wellington – photo credit: Latitude Creative

Though not a long work the Piano Concerto features the piano playing practically without a break, a task which the soloist Somi Kim undertook sporting a sparklingly eye-catching dress which seemed to visually echo the music’s constantly effervescing glitter throughout the three movements, and especially in the outer ones, with coruscations continually flying off in all directions!

The first movement, in lively, quick-march tempo, straightaway engendered a sense of a festive occasion, with music that seemed to be purposefully “on the move” somewhere, the playing beautifully gradated by both pianist and orchestra to a similar objective, whatever the orchestrations and however discursive the key-changes. Throughout, I was put in mind of JS Bach’s First and Third Brandenburg Concerti with their constant sprinklings of instrumentation channelled towards both the act of interchange and the establishment of a kind of overall “understanding” between the participants as a desirable and complementary process, rather than any kind of duel or contest.

The slow movement seemed the emotional “heart” of the work, with Somi Kim’s piano solo seamlessly enhanced by the winds, and Marc Taddei enjoining the strings to make the most of an ongoing sinuousness melody. The ensuing tutti took it up, buttressed by rich chordings from the piano and further warmed by a sappy trumpet solo – so much achieved, I thought, with relatively simple means! A warm-hearted oboe solo then gave way to a “worrisome” flute, bringing a forlorn note to the proceedings before the movement’ concluding surprise – a remarkably haunting and certainly unexpected modulation to distant realms right at the end!

I enjoyed the ambivalence of the finale’s opening rhythm, my ear jumping to and from different numbers of beats to the bar as the music’s trajectories evolved, keeping me guessing in delicious-sounding ways. Again, It’s all more of a concertante work than a concerto, really, a true partnership in the baroque/classical manner, rather than any kind of contest between soloist and orchestra – Kim and Taddei dovetailed their piano and orchestral parts splendidly throughout, and the solo cadenza near the end gave the pianist the chance to “sound out” a couple of beautiful church-bell-like cascades before the solo trumpet invited the rest of the orchestra back into the discourse for the work’s coda, one not unlike a gentler, more urbane version of the final bars of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto, with its prominent solo trumpet part! Certainly, I felt,  a work to get to know better.

Somi Kim responded to the warm audience applause at the end with a lithe, nimble-fingered encore rendition of the well-known Rondo a la Turca from Mozart’s Piano Sonata K.311. I would have enjoyed as much her playing something by Poulenc or Satie or even Ravel, if only to keep up Gallic appearances, but the audience obviously loved it – so c’est bon!

After the interval, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony might have seemed “le deluge”-like at such a concert – it was, after all, the nineteenth’s century’s most influential symphony with even its “number” becoming an insuperable burden for at least seven subsequent symphonists I know of who ventured into those same numerical realms and faltered – Schubert, Dvorak, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold and Roger Sessions. Marc Taddei further stressed the significance of Beethoven’s work by talking about the composer’s simultaneous adherence to tradition (four contrasting movements, including a sonata-form opening movement, a scherzo and a slow movement) AND to the work’s ground-breaking aspects (the work’s epic length, and with a symphonic finale like no other with vocal soloists and choir!) So the work epitomised a composer’s knowledge, experience, use and further develop of this creative ethos called “The Classical Style” like no other had done up to this time.

As I’d found with his conducting of the “classics” occasionally in the past I found Marc Taddei’s very direct and at times to my ears more-than-usually brusque approach to Beethoven’s opening movement of the Ninth Symphony hard to get in accord with at first – I’d always thought of Beethoven’s opening movement as having a rugged epic grandeur which explodes in places with excitement – but Taddei’s “never-let-up” tempo made the whole movement seethe with barely-contained energy, exciting in its way, but hardly with a “epic” quality.  I thought the famously seismic “middle section” of the movement, for instance, didn’t have the sheer impact I was accustomed to feeling because much of the rest of the movement had already been given so agitated a character. It certainly made me rethink what Beethoven himself might have been after – something less monumental and more kinetic and volatile, which Taddei and his players certainly put across with few holds barred and with such elan and brilliance! I did come to the end of the movement thinking “Golly! It’s over, already!” having lived for so long with more colossal-sounding traversals. This one was, for me, quite a wake-up call, and certainly an ear-opening experience!

I could far more readily equate with Taddei’s treatment of the Scherzo, the opening biting and incisive, the timpani blows galvanising and the rhythms spot-on throughout – the movement’s  compelling amalgam of high spirits and restlessness was put across with incredible panache, both in an ensemble and individual sense – the timpani’s almost visceral attack was exhilarating, and the wind-and brass playing throughout the Trio sections were a joy to listen to! And I did appreciate the repeats, enabling us to enjoy that feeling of physical excitement and exhilaration for much of the piece all over again!

As with the first movement I took a bit of getting used to the quicker pulsings of the slow movement, again wanting a longer-breathed, more “epic” quality to prevail, something which, as my own rhythms “caught up” with the conductor’s, I increasingly enjoyed as the movement progressed, Taddei actually allowing the strings enough space for their phrases to bloom,  and the lines to sing. The sequence with the winds and the solo horn took on a lovely glow in places (the latter player’s brief solo flourish was gorgeous!). And though I again felt the triplet variation section was overly pushed along, it was given a charm of its own by the superb playing. I didn’t like the excessively staccato treatment of the great fanfares, wanting them to have more of a “resounding” character in those celestial spaces hovering around and about the notes. In all, the movement certainly sounded beautiful playing-wise, even if I felt my listener’s usual “transfigured”  sense of feeling  in this music thwarted by its quicker-than usual pace…..

Soloists Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn, (mezzo-soprano), Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor) and Robert Tucker (baritone), with the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, Orchestra Wellington, and Music Director Marc Taddei –  Photo credit: Latitude Creative

And so to the finale! – what a magnificent “horror chord” opening utterance we got, straightaway! The recitatives then jumped out of their blocks quickly, perhaps with not enough weight to convey firstly their disapproval (instrumental versions of “O Freunde. nicht diese töne!” – O friends, not these sounds!) and then their exultation when the “Ode to Joy” melody finally appears (“O Freunde, freuden vollere!” – O friends, more joyful ones!). The orchestral basses were INCREDIBLY quiet at the beginning of their “Ode to Joy” theme, while the strings and winds partnered really well for their verses, and the brasses were simply magnificent in their utterances!

A second “horror” chord introduced the soloists – and Robert Tucker made a tremendous initial impression with his recitative, though less so with his verse, the line being low for his voice – I suddenly felt that the soloists perhaps ought to have been at the front with the conductor, and not behind the orchestra – surely Beethoven wanted them to be heard, and not just as solo choral voices! I was surprised when I realised that Margaret Medlyn was singing the alto part, and not Melissa Crennan, as per programme (I was told later that the latter had fallen ill). Generally the soloists were audible, though soprano Emma Pearson’s clear, bell-like tones stood out from the rest. The Orpheus Choir were the real heroes – great shouts of “Vor Gott” (Before God) ushered in the tenor solo, (Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono), though he was hampered by the trajectories disappointingly sped up and the rhythms flattened out, leaving him almost no swagger in his step, and little room for any real heroic timbre in his voice!

I wondered why the horns sounded here as if they were “joining” their pairs of repeated notes in the brief introduction to the choir’s reprise of “Freunde, schöner Gotterfunken” (they WERE playing very softly)…..the latter was splendidly done, as was the whole “Seid umschunglen, Millionem” (Oh, you millions, I embrace you!), during which sequence I at last got a real “cosmic” sense from the music, thanks to the “space” accorded the singers by the conductor, expressing the moment’s mystical and epic gravity. Perhaps the Orpheus’s most splendid moment was the great Choral Fugue “Seid umschunglen, Millionem” which then followed, the voices and orchestral brass achieving real grandeur together!

The solo quartet’s “moment of truth” came at the end of the sequence with the choir at “Freude, Tochter aus Elysium”  (Joy, Daughter from Elysium), and the “Alle menschen werde Bruder” (All men shall be Brothers) sequence, where the soloists individually rhapsodised over the words, raptly concluding with a high B-flat from soprano Emma Pearson – nicely, if a wee bit circumspectly rounded off! Then it was the famous final presto sequence, choir and soloists intoxicated with joyful feeling and racing to the work’s conclusion, with the orchestra having the final riotous say!

Away with the perfidy of critics! – all were heroes, singers, choristers, players, conductor! – and all were enthusiastically and resoundingly applauded, and the magnitude of their achievements, singly and corporately,  given their just dues. I babbled about the performance highlights afterwards to anybody nearby who would listen, and gleaned from the exchanges that those present absolutely revelled in what they’d just heard, drunk with those copious dollops of “Freude, schöner Gotterfunken”, given to humankind as a gift for the ages.

Up with Bacchus!

Posted on by Anne French

THE TUDOR CONSORT – Repast

Khandallah Town Hall
Saturday 15 June, 4 pm

Director Michael Stewart in front of The Tudor Consort
Photo credit: Joel Chuah Jayson

If you’ve ever wanted to know what the Tudor Consort sounds like when it’s off the leash, this concert provided the answer. Repast comprised drinks and nibbles for the audience, and bite-sized chunks of mostly early music, some full-throated singing, and plenty of fun. I loved it.

Some of the best moments came from the most obscure composers. In ‘Nous sommes de
l’ordre de St Babouyn’, by Loyset Compère (1445-1518, a contemporary of Josquin), four monks sit around boozily explaining the rules of the Order of St Baboon, which involve eating and drinking well, with a comely wench after midnight.. Music Director Michael Stewart revealed his beautiful alto and comic acting, while his colleagues showed off their fine voices (bass Joshua Jamieson sounded especially splendid).

Humorous music can often be hard to pull off. My heart was in my mouth during the hardest
of the three Drinking Catches by Purcell, ‘Down with Bacchus!’, largely because of all the words. A catch is a kind of round, for three or more voices, and stopping tidily can be tricky. But the speed was maintained, and no one fell over at the close.

There were some delightful surprises. A madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, ‘Sing we at pleasure’,
is only to be expected of the Tudor Consort, and tidily done, but the two Georgian ‘table songs’, ‘New Year’s Wishes’ and ‘Praise to the Barbecue’, brought a very refreshing tonality. Georgian polyphony, we were told, is always in three parts, and the harmony is based on seconds, fourths, and ninths. The basses were the stars of the first song of the pair. Michael Stewart conducted unobtrusively from the far end of the male section.

But moving swiftly on, it was time for a drinking song by Poulenc, whom Stewart described
as ‘part monk and part thug’. This piece was written by the young thug in 1923 for the Harvard University Glee Club, and was the first piece of choral music Poulenc ever wrote. As you might expect, it was difficult: very fast, with tempo changes, and close 4-part harmony writing. The Harvard Glee Club was a large and clearly ambitious male choir, but the men of the Consort rose to the occasion

From left: Alexandra Granville, Keith Small, Rebecca Stanton (in front).
– photo credit Joel Chuah Jayson

The Poulenc was followed by a song of praise to a fat goose by Orlando di Lasso, for ATTB, which sounded glorious. After the sublime Lasso, John Ritchie’s ‘Make Room for the Bouncing Belly’ (a setting for women’s voices of a comic Ben Johnson poem) was showing its age.

The last two works were, in my view, the most satisfying. In ‘Vidi Alios Intrantes’, the
sopranos, altos, and basses sang solemnly on the floor of the hall in Latin about the grubby scene outside a bar while the tenors sang in German from the balcony above about drinking all night. The effect, if you are paying any attention at all to the text, is very amusing. To everyone’s great credit, there was no hamming. The composer, Caspar Othmayr (1515-1553), would have been delighted.

And at last, home ground: a motet for two choirs by the sublime Orlando di Lasso. Michael
Stewart sang as an alto in the second choir to balance the numbers, and also conducted for the first time in the concert. Although the title sounds religious, ‘Iam lucis orto sidere’, here the arrival of the sun’s early rays signals the time to start drinking – ‘in sempiterna saecula’ (for all the ages). The choir sang gloriously (and completely straight), and the concert was over all too soon.

For me, the delight of this concert was the constant changing of sound, as the singers
grouped and regrouped, allowing the beauty of individual voices to shine out. The Tudor Consort choral sound is mellifluous and uniform, groomed to bloodless perfection. But in this lovely concert we had a sense of the choir as individual singers, engaging with each other in their trios and quartets, and with us, the audience. A thoroughly satisfying musical result. More, please!

Cantoris’s enterprising coupling of Gounod and CPE Bach

Posted on by Anne French

CHARLES GOUNOD – St. Cecilia Mass
CARL PHILLIPP EMMANUEL BACH – Magnificat

Cantoris Chamber Choir, with the Queen’s Closet
Thomas Nikora (conductor)

St.Peter’s-on-Willis, Wellington

Saturday 18 May 2024

Saint-Saëns thought the St Cecilia Mass was Gounod’s best work. But I’d never heard it before, so I was interested to go along to Cantoris’s first concert for 2024 to hear it. As for the ‘Bach Magnificat’, I was excited to find it wasn’t the familiar Magnificat in D major by JS Bach but a completely different work by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, supported by the early music ensemble The Queen’s Closet.

The St Cecilia Mass was written to be performed on St Cecilia’s Day, 22 November1855, at St Eustache Church in Paris, where they customarily presented a new mass setting each St Cecilia’s Day. It was originally scored for enormous forces: a large orchestra including six harps, an organ, a four-part chorus, and three soloists (STB). Last night Cantoris gave us Jonathan Berkahn on the organ of St Peter’s Church, as busy as you might imagine, as well as the chorus and three soloists.

It is a big Romantic work, even without the six harps, full of impressive effects. The three soloists usually sing in a trio or duets, rather than taking solo arias, which gave an opportunity to assess them together as well as separately. Soprano Caroline Burchell has a lovely voice, well suited to Gounod’s requirements, silvery and expressive, with plenty of power. There was a slight risk at times that she could overwhelm the light, flexible tenor of Herbert Zielinski, a young chorister who was tenor lead in the 2021-22 Secondary Students’ Choir and currently sings in the National Youth Choir. But she kept things in check. Zielinski sounded most interesting in duets with the bass soloist, Mark Bobb, an opera singer and teacher: together their voices blended with an unusual timbre.

Conductor Thomas Nikora had the forces of the choir mostly under control, although there was a bit of rough tuning from time to time. If Gounod had been directing operations, he would have asked for a more uniform ensemble sound – and an orchestra to support them. With harps.

This is an interesting work. The text setting is slightly quixotic (or perhaps reflects mid-nineteenth century French practice), with a Kyrie in which tenor and bass do much of the work, a slightly plodding Credo; and the ‘non sum dignus’, which is usually said before the Eucharist, tacked on to the end of the Agnus Dei (it is usually not attached) before a final Amen. The Offertory was an organ solo in this version, with a distinctly spooky quality. I’d love to hear the work performed again with larger forces.

CPE Bach was only nine years old when he heard his father’s Magnificat performedfor the first time, in 1723. Ten years later, Bach revised it and put it into the key of D major. Carl Phillipp Emanuel, the second surviving son of that remarkable family, wrote his own Magnificat in 1749, just in time for the old boy to hear it. But he kept revising it until 1786, which makes it an interesting record of the change from Baroque to Classical style. CPE was a prolific keyboard composer, but the Magnificat is his most substantial choral work.

Last night Cantoris was supported by The Queen’s Closet, an early music ensemble,with Gordon Lehany on first violin, Antonia Grant on second, Samuel Berkahn viola, Tomos Christie cello, and the versatile Jonathan Berkahn on spinet. This was in place of a Baroque orchestra comprising two transverse flutes, two oboes, two horns, bassoon, plus three trumpets and timpani in addition to the strings and continuo. That would have been ruinously expensive at today’s prices, but gorgeous.

Once again, it was interesting to hear CPE ring the changes. He was definitely not a pale imitator of his father. Apart from ‘Deposuit’, which they both gave to the tenor (CPE also adding the alto), the disposition of soloists and chorus was quite different. ‘Quia respexit’ was given to the soprano soloist, who sounded fabulous. It sat very well in her voice. Sadly ‘Quia fecit mihi magna’ falls to the tenor soloist, and the young singer managed the runs gamely but struggled with some of the wider leaps. The bass soloist showed what he could do with ‘Fecit potentiam’. Mark Bobb has an operatic sound and the necessary fearlessness. ‘Deposuit’ started with the tenor, with the alto being added.

What a delightful singer Helene Page is, poised and assured, with lovely tone and phrasing. Tenor and alto sang in close harmony, and sounded beautiful together. CPE gave ‘Suscepit Israel’ to the alto, which Helene Page sang beautifully, blending sensitively with the instrumental support.

This Magnificat has relatively little for the choir to do (only the first movement, the fourth, with soprano and alto, and the last two). Moreover, the chorus writing is mostly in four parts, with divisi tenors and basses at times for effect (whereas JS Bach wrote his for SSATB). But it is a most attractive and interesting work, and I would love to hear it again.

‘I find her becoming’: Nota Bene at 20

Posted on by Anne French

Nota Bene
Twentieth Anniversary Gala Concert

St Andrews on the Terrace,
27 April 2024

What’s the difference between an orchestra and a choir? No, not a trick question. The
difference is that choirs usually love their music directors.

At Nota Bene’s 20 th anniversary concert on Saturday, the affection and trust between
conductor and choir were evident. Nota Bene is a Wellington choir founded by Christine
Argyll, who served for ten years. She was followed by Peter Walls (2016-19) and Maaike
Christie-Beekman (from 2020 to the present). All three were conducting on Saturday, along
with choir member Shawn Condon, who has been guest conductor at times. The result was
interesting. The audience could observe the different styles and approaches and compare
the results.

Nota Bene is a chamber choir, but the anniversary concert attracted a few former members,
so it fielded 43 singers, including the conductors, all of whom sang when they were not
waving their arms about. The programme was a kind of greatest hits of the last 20 years,
favourite works of the conductors – which worked most of the time. Brackets were
interspersed by little histories of this or that aspect of choir life. Too many of them, I thought;
a bit too cosy and self-congratulatory, since the audience was mostly people who are not
choir members. Some of the content would have been better suited to the after-match party.

Nota Bene, on its best days, has a beautiful sound. The tenor section is warm and creamy,
the sopranos bright and tuneful. This was evident in the first work on the programme, an
arrangement of the timeless ‘Es ist ein Ros’, which incorporated humming (very hard to stay
in tune) and a vocal quartet singing the tune, very slowly. There was an alto solo from
Maaike Christie-Beekman (such a gorgeous voice). A lovely start.

Next was ‘The Shepherd’s Carol’ (Sansom/Chilcott), which also featured humming, again
with bright, fresh soprano tone, gorgeous tenor sound, and subtle bass action. It was
followed by Arvo Pärt’s ‘Bogoroditse Devo’ (a setting of the Russian Orthodox Ave Maria).

Most of us are used to the slow, alto-driven Rachmaninov version. Pärt’s setting is fast and
lively (though not very Russian or even reverent in feel), and the Nota Bene basses rose to
the occasion.

Jacqui Coats, who has been responsible for the choir’s stagecraft, spoke about the staged
concerts, one of which was St Nicholas (in 2011), under Michael Vinten. I was sorry to have
missed that. Another that the choir was proud of was ‘A Sentimental Journey’, based on the
conceit of a late-night radio request session, which sounded like great fun.

Next came David Hamilton’s ‘Caliban’s Song’. I am used to the Viva Voce version, which still
gets airplay on RNZ Concert. VV has a much more operatic sound than NB, especially in
the higher voices, whereas NB is more choral in tone. The Hamilton was exciting, with very
beautiful singing in the chordal passages.

Then Peter Walls took over for a bracket of Purcell Psalm settings. Psalm 63 was scored for
Treble Countertenor Tenor and Bass. Peter Walls used an ATB trio for one of the verses
and trio of women’s voices (SSA) for the other, which worked well. He followed it up with
Psalm 79 (SSATB) that incorporated a beautiful quartet, and Psalm 104 (SSATB), originally
written with a basso continuo. Once again, rich Purcellian sonority, enlivened texturally by
two trios: first ATB (Virginia Earle, Nick McDougall, and Robert Easting) taking the cantor’s
part, and next SAA (Tina Carter, Marian Wilberg, and Marian Campbell). Intellectual,
restrained beauty.

Maaike Christie-Beekman took the podium for the last two items in the first half:
Rheinberger’s ‘Abendlied’, with mellifluous tenors and, later, bright soprano voices floating
over the chords of the three lower parts; followed by Lauriden’s schmaltzy crowd-pleaser,
‘Sure on this Shining Night’, dedicated to Peter Barber and two other deceased choir
members. Heather Easting played the piano with delicacy, and the choir showed off its lovely
lower voices, followed by a fabulous first soprano moment – ‘bright but not shrill’, say my
notes. There are big dynamic movements in this work, an exciting crescendo to ff, and a
very beautiful decrescendo from mp to pp.

After the interval, Shawn Condon took the podium to conduct Fergus Byett’s sentimental
Karanga Akau. There’s an awful lot of Māori in this work, and the language wasn’t entirely
convincing. Once again, the choir was supported by Heather Easting on piano; the tenors
led and were lovely as ever, and the choir navigated the interesting harmonies with
conviction. The next work was by Graham Parsons, a charming setting of a poem by Jenny
Bornholdt, ‘How to get ahead of yourself while the light still shines’, with Heather Easting on
piano. Despite some tricky writing, the choir performed it with verve, clearly enjoying
themselves.

Next the men took a back seat, and the women sang ‘Sing Creation’s music on’, a setting of
the John Clare poem by Stephen Paulus. Although Heather Easting and the women did a
good job of this under Shawn Condon’s direction, the work sounds ill-judged as a
composition, far too big and bombastic for the slender little poem. Clare is not a poet who
shows off; but Stephen Paulus, an American composer and Grammy winner, did not let that
get in his way. It was, I fear, noisy.

Undaunted, we had some Hildegard of Bingen (the lovely ‘O Frondens Virga’) arranged by
the American composer Drew Collins. I’ve sung the original Hildegard plainchant, and I was
unconvinced by this arrangement on first hearing, but I would need to hear it again to make
a judgement. Next came ‘There is Sweet Music’, a piece of Tennyson set by the American
choral composer Daniel Gawthrop, which I thought was absolutely gorgeous – ‘static and
tender’, according to my notes. The last work of this women’s bracket with Shawn Condon
was ‘Finding her here’ by Joan Szymka, a terrific work that I first heard NB perform at the
Hilma af Klint exhibition at the City Gallery. It was just as good on a second hearing.

Next, the men came forward for an unconducted version of Billy Joel’s ‘And so it goes’,
arranged by Bob Chilcott. This was a show-stopper – insouciant, plaintive, resigned – with
excellent singing on the part of the tenors, and a ravishing solo by baritone Simon Christie
with humming sotto voce support. It doesn’t do to interrogate the words if you are not given
to sentimentality, but the arrangement was anything but sentimental. Stunning!

The choir came back together for the last two works under Maaike Christie-Beekman. One,
‘Bruremarsj’, I think may have been included in the Hilma af Klint concert. It’s a Norwegian
wedding song, and required audience participation (clicking or clapping on the off beats). It is
a sunny work and it was sung with gusto. The last work in a very full concert was another
Gawthrop work, ‘Sing me to Heaven’. Whilst it was well sung, I greatly disliked the text,
which is pretentious (‘In my heart’s sequestered chambers/lie truths stripped of poet’s gloss’)
and bathetic (‘and my soul finds primal eloquence’). Save me! The sentimental nonsense of
the work certainly established the low-brow end of NB’s repertoire. What a shame, I thought,
to wallow in tosh at the end of an otherwise lovely concert. If only they had done a reprise of
the Billy Joel to take the sickly taste away. But I may have been alone in this thought.

Congratulations, Nota Bene, on a great first twenty years. Onward!

Flavoursome Janáček and Dvořák from the Bach Choir

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Bach Choir of Wellington presents:
JANÁČEK – Otče náš (Our Father)
DVOŘÁK – Mass in D Major, Op.86

Laura Dawson (soprano), Sinéad Keane (alto),
Theo Moolenaar (tenor). Simon Christie (bass)
Michelle Velvin (harp), Douglas Mews (organ)
Bach Choir of Wellington
Musical Director – Shawn Michael Condon

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

Saturday, 13th April 2024

I couldn’t recall a previous time I’d walked into St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church in Wellington and straightaway been confronted by an audience of faces rather than heads entirely – well in most cases! – of hair – as if in a dream I had suddenly and bewilderingly been thrust into the role of a performer or celebrant in what was to follow, instead of an accustomedly passive onlooker!

Of course this audience volte-face was arranged so that singers and instrumentalists in both works could be more closely arrayed than was often the case in works requiring the services of the splendid pipe organ and a choir of reasonable size, not to mention a quartet of solo singers and a harpist with her instrument to boot! It resulted in a different kind of “spaciousness” to that end-to-end kind normally afforded by the church for choral concert music accompanied by an organ.

Actually, the relative “novelty” of the arrangement further intensified the stimulation I’d previously noted in listening to recordings of these works which were entirely new to me! I put a lot of it down to the music’s distinctive “Czech” quality, present in spadefuls throughout Leos Janáček’s Otče náš (the setting of the prayer ”Our Father”) by dint of so many characteristic composer-fingerprints in the music’s making.

But even in the more conventionally-presented Dvořák Mass there were numerous aspects which proclaimed a kind of expression which, though influenced by, was nevertheless apart from most of the familiar stylistic formalities of the Austro-German tradition of church music, drawing instead from the composer’s folk-influenced roots with a plaintiveness and simplicity of utterance that readily evoked an awareness of and a feeling for the natural world and an ordinary, simple being’s place in it.

First up, however, was the Janáček work, opened by the organ and harp, and joined by the voices, firstly the basses, and then in canonic imitation, the altos, a strong, simple and beautiful effect, with both vocal strands drawing resonances, it seemed, from one another, as with the lighter and no less beautiful exchanges between tenors and sopranos which followed. Tenor soloist Theo Moolenaar brought a wonderful fervour to his first solo, his ringing top notes creating a frisson which was carried forward by the entry of the choir in reply. A rhapsodic instrumental interlude for organ and harp paved the way for another solo from the tenor, beautifully echoed by the choir and by the organ, joined by the harp for further rhapsodising (delightful playing, as throughout, from both Douglas Mews and Michelle Velvin!)

What a contrast, then, came with the choir’s tumultuous entry imploring our “daily bread”, with particular insistence upon dnes, the word for bread, flung upwards and outwards into the spaces overhead! – and how readily the tenor then implored the choir’s responses to his plea for forgiveness of humankind’s trespasses, with organ hand harp adding their own heartfelt contributions. Finally, a particularly “grunty” organ passage heralded a vigorous and even biting response from the voices in matters pertaining to temptation and evil before assenting the prayer’s plea further and finally with a number of ringing and rousing “Amens!”

My delight in recent discovery concerning the Dvořák Mass which followed was happily taken further by this performance, complete with the “togetherness” of the entire ensemble crowded into the St.Andrew’s organ-loft doubtless reflecting the circumstances of the work’s premiere. Dvořák’s original commission for the work had come from one of his patrons, the architect Josef Hlavka, and involved the inauguration of a small chapel in the Bohemian village of Lužany, the place which gave the Mass its nickname.

I was able to savour all over again those sweet opening phrases of the work in the “Kyrie”, here beautifully floated by the choir, with conductor Shawn Michael Condon beautifully controlling the “ebb-and-flow’ dynamics of the lines, creating an almost lullabic sound around a crescendo of tones and associated emotions. The “Christe” passages made a telling contrasted effect, especially when the Kyrie refrain returned at the end, plus some briefly reiterated “Christe christe” murmurings.

A vigorously-begun, declamatory “Gloria” took us to a stately and lyrical “Et in terra pax hominibus”, which grew back the music’s jubilation through the following “Laudamus te”, before reaching a splendid choral climax at “Glorificamus te”. The most moving sequences for me came with the interplay of the soloists and choir throughout the “Domine Deus” sections where first the choir, and then the soloists brought out the beauty of the exchanges, the choir then excitingly bringing out the music’s energies at “Suscipe deprecationem nostrum”, and continuing with a robust “Cum Sancto Spiritu’ followed by resoundingly satisfying “Amens”.

Another moment to savour was the surprisingly lyrical and serenade-like opening to the “Credo”, the women’s voices sweetly alternating with the rest of the choir – by contrast, the “Deum de Deo” sections brought forth some unexpectedly explosive interjections, with the organ’s chording in places bordering on the discordant. A pause gave us breathing-space for the contrast at the soloists’ taking up of the “Et incarnatus est” with beautiful work from all concerned, beginning with alto Sinéad Keane and bass Simon Christie, and followed just as effulgently by soprano Laura Dawson and tenor Theo Moolenaar, who, together with the choir, brought about a palpable sense of peace with the gently-breathed “Et homo factus est”.

Dvořák doesn’t disappoint with the contrasting force of his setting of “Crucifixus etiam pro nobis” – the voices unsparingly produced fierce and harrowing tones, while the following “Passus et sepultus est” expressed the grief in a vastly different way, with hushed tones and ever-increasing resignation. How appropriate, then was the different kind of contrast again wrought by “Et resurrexit tertia die”, one expressed with lilting rhythms and ascending lines blossoming with the help of the organ. The rest of the setting seemed to me to emulate a pealing of church bells expressed in vocal terms, an effect accentuated by the “swinging” trajectories of the music and the “folksiness” of the organ’s squeeze-box-like timbres, leading inevitably to the joyously-voiced “Amens” at the end.

Bells were again brought to mind by the opening of the Sanctus, the voices enchanting us with a well-nigh irresistible carillion of sounds and resonating “HJosannas” at the end. Came the “Benedictus” with its piquant organ solo at the beginning and “entranced” vocal entries, producing slow-moving near-oceanic waves of sound – a wonderful sequence, broken by the joyous return of the Sanctus.
It was left to the “Agnus Dei’ to conclude the work, simply and sonorously sung by the soloists in turn, beginning with the tenor, and then the alto, soprano and bass. After repeated and affecting soundings of the words “Miserere nobis” from the choir, the tenor then introduced the words “Dona nobis pacem”, echoed with most affecting beauty by the choir, the word “pacem” seeming to ring in our ears as a haunting message, indeed, even a directive, for our time……

Very great credit to all concerned with the Bach Choir of Wellington for a well-planned and engagingly-delivered concert, eminently worthy of ongoing memory…….

Handel’s “Messiah” – stimulation and distinction for 2023 in Wellington from the Orpheus Choir and Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Photo credit "Latitude Creative"

Photo credit “Latitude Creative”

Orpheus Choir of Wellington and Orchestra Wellington present:
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL – MESSIAH HMV 56
Madeleine Pierard (soprano), Margaret Medlyn ONZM (alto), Frederick Jones (tenor), Paul Whelan (bass)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Brent Stewart, director)
Orchestra Wellington (Amalia Hall, concertmaster)
Jonathan Berkahn (continuo)
Brent Stewart (conductor)

MIchael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, December 2nd, 2023

At the Interval, during the Orpheus Choir’s recent “Messiah” performance at the Michael Fowler Centre, I took stock – all very thought-provoking so far, the concert having begun promisingly by conductor Brent Stewart with a soberly-delivered but well-rounded orchestral Overture, grave, but not too solemn, and jaunty without being too punchily “born-again-authentic”, and the orchestra proceeding to confidently work its way through the chameleon-like contrasts of  character required to support each of the oratorio’s items.

We heard several distinctive soloists’ turns that conveyed the spirit and essence of the notes and texts, balancing the requirements of the score with the theatricality of the subject-matter, and in almost every case rising splendidly to the challenges suggested by the texts, braving a couple of low-octane moments with enough resolve to hold words and music together. And there were the choruses which explored their own heights and depths of situation and emotion, the voices seeming to me to “sing themselves in” more surely as the sequences proceeded, as did the players with their instruments in like manner.

Highlights of the first half included tenor Frederick Jones’s persuasively prophetic declamation in his opening recitative “Comfort Ye”, pleasingly emphasised by his continuo-only accompaniment for “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness”, with only the long runs in “Ev’ry Valley” which involved the word “exalted” and “plain” seeming to affect his powers somewhat. Bass Paul Whelan seemed to have limitless reserves of strength, pinning back our ears with his “Thus Saith the Lord” and his near seismic runs on the word “shake” later in the recitative. I thought his response at “For Behold” curiously neutral at first, eschewing a growing intensity of tone leading up to the words “light” and “glory”, but admittedly making amends in the aria that followed with his sonorous utterance of the words “have seen a great light”.

Margaret Medlyn in the mezzo part made the most of her word-pointing with “Behold, a virgin shall conceive”, and then in the aria “O Thou that tellest” coped with a cracking pace, investing the words “Arise” and “Shine” with suitable radiance as an incentive for the chorus to follow with their even more vigorous incitements of “Arise!” and “Behold!”. And with her colleague, Madeleine Pierard, Medlyn contrived to charm us with the lullabic tones of “He shall feed his flock”, preparing the way for the soprano’s transcending upward-lifting entry with the same melody – always a beautiful moment! Early, the justly famous “Pastoral Symphony” had paved the beguiling way for the soprano, Pierard’s voice as angelic as I previously remembered in this music,  making her words tell in announcing the heavenly hosts’ presence, the chorus’s celestial “Glory to God in the Highest” underpinned by some superb trumpet playing!

Here, the chorus work was enchanting – earlier I’d thought that Brent Stewart’s tempi for his forces were too rushed to allow “And the Glory of the Lord” its proper “glory”, and “And He shall purify” its captivating deliciousness in the lines’ effervescent intersecting, like strands of impulse in a bubbling brook! What I admit then bewitched my ear was the first half’s concluding item, the chorus “His yoke is easy”, with Stewart’s tempo quick enough to challenge his voices, but spacious enough to allow the phrases to both bloom and catchily syncopate on the word “easy”.  Handel had devised a kind of fugue which plays beautifully with the phrase, before mercilessly subjecting the word “light” to a state of sudden ambivalence – is it a reference to Christ’s teachings and their liberation for all peoples from the laws and strictures of the Pharisees? Or is it an ironic comment upon Jesus’s intention to suffer and die for our sins so that we may be redeemed? The performance illustrated the salient characteristics of the setting in all its contradictory splendour.

I should say at this point that the sum total of what I had heard thus far was disposing me towards looking forward to the second half! – and my expectations were set alight by the opening chorus of the Second Part of the work, “Behold the Lamb of God” the effect of which was hypnotic and compelling to a degree I hadn’t previously registered. Then it suddenly struck me that all the chorus members had closed their scores, and were obviously singing from memory! – it was such a focused “moment” of both sight and sound, and was somehow signalling to us that what we were about to hear was worthy of every skerrick of our attention from this moment on.

And so it proved – Margaret Medlyn again seemed to “own” the words in “He was despised” – no morbidity or sentimentality, here, but somehow pure emotion, expressed by a storyteller in real human terms for another human being – the added force of her articulation of the words “despised” and “rejected” (the latter here almost “sprechgesang”) was a moment of unique feeling, powerful in its conveyed spontaneity.

Then came another of the work’s great sequential sections, one which for me lifted conductor Brent Stewart and his voices “up on high” for a few exalted moments – the chorus “Surely He hath borne our griefs” expressed with such shock and anger as to its significance, with the orchestral support here almost percussive in its attack by way of reinforcing the notes’ jagged angularity – incredible emotion! From this “full frontal” assault sprang the similarly austere “And With His Stripes” whose rigour and severity seemed to bind the music’s course with strong, impenetrable bonds, before Handel suddenly disarmed the exactitude of such sounds at a stroke, with “All We like sheep”, the voices suddenly freed from constraint and revelling in their dynamic contrasts and energies. Handel again here makes inspired and mercurial use of the words’ seeming caprice as a ploy to suddenly plunging our short-lived exuberances into a state of shame and sadness, with the words “…has laid on him the iniquity of us all”, a moment almost stupefying in its effect….

The music’s inexorable ebb-and-flow strength continued with Frederick Jones’s stentorian “All they who have seen him” provoking a derisive “He trusted in God” response from the choir, one then eloquently lamented with Jones’s “Thy rebuke hath broken his heart”, and the accompanying “Behold and see”, with Christ’s sufferings and punishment on humankind’s behalf further emphasised by the singer in a remarkable and well-sustained sequence. And a slight rhythmic stumble along the way didn’t deter Jones in his defiant “Thou shalt break them”, the power of God sustaining the music’s and the singer’s determination.

Margaret Medlyn’s “How Beautiful are the Feet” made an appropriately meditative contrast to the travails of Christ’s trials and sufferings, with its intimately–focused solo string accompaniments, a moment of meditation then swept away by the whole orchestra’s whirlwind introduction to Paul Whelan’s rousing “Why Do the Nations”, and with the choir goaded into a kind of similar frenzy in its frantic “Let us break their bonds asunder”, the flailing lines spectacularly dovetailed! The redemption to all of this came surely and squarely with the deservedly beloved “Halleluiah” chorus – of course, we all leapt to our feet (isn’t it, by this time, in our DNA to do so?)! Terrific stuff from all concerned, voices and instruments, and especially the brass and timpani – though a friend of mine afterwards complained that conductor Brent Stewart seemed to “play” with the dynamics too much instead of really “letting ‘er rip!”. You simply can’t please some people, no matter what!

It was left to Madeleine Pierard’s supremely confident and appropriately celestially-bound “I know that my Redeemer liveth”, Paul Whelan’s authoritative “The trumpet shall sound” (supported to the hilt by his trumpeter!), and the Orpheus Choir’s by this time almost transcendental range of articulations, tones and dynamics in taking us through the well-wrought certainties of both “Since by man came death” and “Worthy is the Lamb”, to reach the work’s final “Amen” chorus. I loved the latter’s  “building blocks” aspect, rising inexorably from the opening phrase with the voices, and being drawn skywards by the orchestral instruments before the clouds rolled back to reveal its completed grandeur. Great honour and praise are due to conductor/choir director Brent Stewart for his work in enabling and then taking us through such an inspired and far-reaching journey.

Robert Wiremu’s REIMAGINING MOZART – a mind-enlarging expression of human tragedy in music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Robert Wiremu’s REIMAGINING MOZART
(dedicated to Helen Acheson)

Presented by Chamber Music New Zealand

Karanga to the Composer – Melissa Absolum (Voices Chamber Choir)
Composer – Robert Wiremu
Instrumental Ensemble – Liu-Yi Retallick. Joelia Pinto (violins), Johnny Chang, Helen Lee (violas)
James Bush, Sarah Spence (‘cellos), Eric Renick (vibraphone)
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Music Director – Karen Grylls

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

3:00pm Sunday, October 29th, 2023

 

Apart from it all having  a superlatives-exhausting effect from a critical point of view, I found as an audience member, composer Robert Wiremu’s “reimagining” of sequences from Mozart’s final work, his “Requiem”, a profoundly engaging and deeply moving experience. It was thus on so many levels, though naturally the presentation exerted its fullest and deepest effect with all things considered – the atmosphere of the venue (the beautiful St.Mary of the Angels Church in Wellington), the cultural merging of ritualistic procedures, European and Maori, the idea of a “requiem” in the presence of karanga (call), kaupapa (matter for discussion) and poroporoaki (leave-taking) relating to and delivered by the composer in relation to  his subject matter, the use of both specific and “re-presented” parts of the Mozart work, both the overall and specific parts of the presentation’s “narrative”, the technical prowess of the performers, the beauty of their singing and playing, and, of course the skills and complete authority of Music Director Karen Grylls. All of these things interacted to present a work whose range and scope was breathtaking, both when experienced in situ and in subsequent resonant reflection.

Earlier this same month (October) Wiremu had outlined in a radio interview certain aspects of the presentation which conveyed a real sense of what we would subsequently hear in its performance – and to the production’s credit the printed programme available at the venue further enabled the listener to clearly follow the general organisation of the work. Wiremu recalled that the idea of using Mozart’s Requiem as a kind of “starting-point” was part of the commission given to him by CMNZ’s chief executive at the time, Gretchen la Roche, and that he was able to then sublimate the kind of universal human grief for the dead in Mozart’s work as a statement focusing on a more specific and immediate tragedy involving this country, the Mt.Erebus plane crash which claimed 257 lives late in 1979.

Wiremu was given certain specific directives regarding the commission. because the piece was going to go “on tour” – his resources were limited accordingly, thus  the use of a chamber choir and a limited-sized instrumental ensemble . Along with a small group of strings Wiremu chose the vibraphone as an ideal instrument of evocation particularly as the thought of the Erebus happening took shape in his mind.  Though he himself remembered the news of the actual incident (he was nine years old at that time), Wiremu decided he would make no reference in the work to any specific person or organisation involved in the incident in any way, his purpose being to emphasise the idea of sorrow and grief in universal human terms of loss connecting the Mozart work and the Erebus disaster. He also resolved that he would not change the actual notes of Mozart’s that he used,  instead adapting different instrumentations from those of the original.

Interestingly Wiremu developed in his mind a tenuous link between Mozart’s work and the Erebus accident via a tape cassette player called a “Walkman” (available in 1979) and the Requiem thereby being recorded on a cassette and becoming part of the event of the plane’s destruction and the deaths of the plane’s occupants – all of which regarding the player and its cassette being pure conjecture on the composer’s part, with no ACTUAL evidence of a tape of any of Mozart’s music on the plane. However Wiremu imagined the notes of the music on the mythical tape carried into and through the same “fractured, scattered, broken, distorted, twisted (and) disfigured” process as all else on the aircraft, and in places the notes are thus subjected to similar kinds of treatment. At the beginning and end of the piece there is birdsong reproduced by the instruments and by the choir members actually whistling some of Mozart’s own notes from the work as they walk to and from their places – in Wiremu’s schema the piece also features a dedication, remembering a singer in the group, Helen Acheson, who was involved with this project but who died earlier this year – this was Mozart’s last completed work, and Wiremu introduces its performance by the choir with 43 bell-notes played by the vibraphone and accompanied by major-minor chordal undulations from the strings, a note for every year of the dedicatee’s all-too-short life.

Each of the seven movements of Robert Wiremu’s  piece was given a Maori name, the opening KARANGA here performed arrestingly and sonorously by alto Melissa Absolum from the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, welcoming the composer to the place of performance and inviting him to speak about what we were going to hear this afternoon. Wiremu then greeted us, explaining something of the grieving ethos of human loss in Mozart’s work as being redirected and reimagined to reflect a tragedy in the South Pacific in similarly non-specific terms.

The instrumentalists began the work, creating eerie harmonies from “bowing” the keys on the vibraphone, the sounds of birdsong realised in a variety of ways, from glissando notes on the string instruments to vocalisings (whistlings) from as the singers as they entered down each of the side-aisles and congregatged with the instrumentalists at the front, followed by Music Director Karen Grylls. Amidst these ambiences the strings and vibraphone began the instrumental introduction to the Requiem, joined by the choir, the singing sonorous and clearly-lined, with the Kyrie Eleison fugue gloriously articulated, those treacherously dramatic ascents thrown off with great elan, leading to the powerfully dramatic concluding ELEI-SON!

The opening having captured the growing excitement of the plane nearing Antarctica, the following RERENGA (flight) features the driving rhythms of Confutatis Maledictis depicting the aircraft’s propulsion, with contrasting emotions represented by the interspersed, gentler Voca me cum benedictis from the choir. A culmination came with the ecstatic response of the voices in their great, unaccompanied cries of Sanctus! as the icebergs were glimpsed from the aircraft, along with the breathless exultation of the unaccompanied Hosanna fugue. By contrast the HINGA (descent) which followed used part of the Recordare in a blurred, unclear way as the flight entered a clouded-over unknown world, the strings expressing confused, discordant progressions, with downward glissandi depiction a descent into the gloom. The vibraphone briefly evoked dislocation and confused suspension before the strings plunged the scenario into darkness and confusion, unisons attacking and blurring each other’s lines, the sounds strained, stretched, stressed and tortured until the process gradually abated, the punishing clashes and dissonances drawing  back, and leaving only confused silence – TE KORE, the emptiness, is all that is left…..

Into the silence burst the Dies Irae, here fantastically realised, the lines at once powerful and knife-edged, with both instruments and voices throwing themselves at the notes Mozart wrote! The vibraphone’s sudden interspersed moment of terrible nothingness and emptiness compressed and eventually fractured the Dies Irae utterances, the words broken up into whisperings and single word gesturings, the chant then reduced to ghostly, spectral whisperings of both the Dies Irae and Quantus tremor verses. It is over – there are no survivors of the crash.

In the ensuing silence the vibraphone played the Lacrymosa, joined by the voices only, the strings silent, the voices rising in grief and sorrow and anger – the vibraphone took us to strange tonal realms as if the music was denying its own home key and annihilating its own essence, the voices sounding similarly estranged, with individual notes stuttering and halting, and the vibraphone having to reinvent harmonies for the voices’ melody. As for the choir’s singing of the “Amen” – such a cathartic moment, sounding a kind of run-through realisation of an awful finality.

MUTUNGA stands for completion, here accompanied by anguished string chords and bell-chiming descants from the vibraphone as the chorus sang the Agnus Dei, alternating forthright opening phrases with gentler replying Dona eis Requiem utterances, to which the instruments played a gentle contrapuntal accompaniment. We were led back to the beginning, with strings and bowed vibraphone notes joined by the choir, the plaintive vocal lines turning vigorous as the words Requiem and Dona eis Domine were repeated, all so very wondrously and ardently realised. The awful inevitability of nature’s processings of the tragedy were duly acknowledged by Wiremu as Mozart’s response to the words in the Requiem seek to console all those who suffer the anguish of loss in all its forms.

As if bringing into individual human focus these archetypal processes of grief, Wiremu concluded his work with a Dedication given the title MARAMA (light), with a performance of Mozart’s last “finished” work, his “Ave Verum Corpus”, one integrated into the earlier-expressed, more collective consciousness of tragedy through a kind of “summons” via bell sounds, here given no less than the 43 strokes in commemoration of the life of Helen Acheson, a friend and colleague of Wiremu’s who as previously mentioned died earlier this year. Strings and vibraphone played a contrapuntal accompaniment of some glorious singing from Voices New Zealand under Karen Grylls’ inspirational direction, leaving all of us in no doubt that we had witnessed something unique and special, and to be remembered and appreciated for a long time to come.

Anton Webern steals the show! – Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei with “Pharaoh”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ORCHESTRA WELLINGTON presents “PHARAOH”
GEMMA PEACOCKE – Manta
(with Arohanui Strings)
ANTON WEBERN – Passacaglia Op.1
JOHN PSATHAS – Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra  “Pharaoh”
(with Tomoni Nozaki – timpani)
BRIAR PRASTINI (vocalist) – White, Red, Black
WOLFGANG MOZART – Incidental Music to “Thamos , King of Egypt”
(with the Orpheus Choir of Wellington – Brent Stewart, Director)

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 7th October, 2023

Programme-holding audience members at Orchestra Wellington’s Saturday evening concert “Pharaoh” at the Michael Fowler Centre might have been a little confused upon turning to the opening page of a publication to find the heading “Prophecy” at the top of the page containing the evening’s listed items – hang on! – wasn’t “Prophecy” the title of the previous concert? There was also some disagreement in print regarding John Psathas’s scheduled Timpani Concerto – was it called “Planet Damnation” as on that introductory page with the programme listing? Or was the work’s name actually “Pharaoh”, which stood at the top of the section in the booklet devoted to each individual item, and which gave “Planet Damnation” as the name of the concerto’s third movement?

These things were, of course, minor hiccups which distracted little from the concert’s overall impact, which was considerable, and, thanks to Music Director Marc Taddei’s extraordinary empathy with young musicians demonstrated a heart-warming variety of delights throughout the presentation’s opening segment of music-making. Wellington’s long-established youth programme for aspiring string players, Arohanui Strings, were there in force, from tiny tots to teens, and obviously bursting to play their part in the concert’s opening item, Kiwi composer Gemma Peacocke’s beautiful, multi-stranded instrumental response to the subaqueous world of manta rays who populate the waters of the Outer Hauraki Gulf Tikapa Moana, as characterised in a story by Wiremu Grace, called Whaitere, the Enchanted Stingray.

Peacocke’s piece seemed wrought from sounds at once pulsating with movement and endlessly regenerating, beginning with attention-grabbing soaring and descending lines, a seascape with something of the quality of Sibelius in “The Oceanides”. The supporting winds and brasses sounded repeated figures and long-held pedal notes, with the youthful string-players steadfastedly holding their own lines as the creatures of the deep in the music reaffirmed possession of their world. A solo violin characterised for a moment something of a single creature’s adventure and undertaking, as the oceanic frisson with which the piece began rose and fell impressively once more before the waters resumed their preordained rituals of ceaseless movement.

Marc Taddei then took the opportunity to allow the youngsters their moment of glory, encouraging them to join in with a simplified version of Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”. After starting them all off, the conductor stood motionless, leaving them to it,  exclaiming to us “Don’t they all sound better when I stop conducting them?” to great amusement all round! Then it was the “Tiny Tots” turn to impress (with even more than their obvious cuteness!), coming on stage with their tiny instruments and playing a folk-tune, then playing it again much faster, to breathless effect! After a lullaby restored composure, Taddei proceeded to give all of us a hint regarding one of the pieces of music scheduled for the as yet unannounced 2024 programme for Orchestra Wellington, telling us the Arohanui Strings will play a tune that “will give the show away!: – which it certainly did! And with that the youthful players took their leave……

What then was wondrous was how such heartwarming vignettes of youthful musicians playing what might in some cases have been their first-ever concert notes then “morphed” into the spectacle of the full Orchestra Wellington on the platform with their conductor tackling a score which truly represented a kind of acme of orchestral execution and epoch-making-and-breaking composition – this was the 1908 Op. 1 Passacaglia of Anton Webern, the composer’s simultaneous tribute and farewell to Romanticism in music, his only composition to be performed in public that was written under the tutelage of his teacher at that time, Arnold Schoenberg.

The 20-plus variations of this work (a Passacaglia traditionally consists of a short theme in the bass which becomes a foundation for a set of variations on that theme) use a brilliantly-worked array of sounds, often lush in the manner of Mahler but at times hushed and sparse, with brilliantly inventive combinations of instruments – Webern organises his variations into an almost symphony-like plan of movements, with a central slow section and contrasting scherzo-like textures, all concluding with a ghostly epilogue. Listening to the players negotiating this tightly-worked scheme with what seemed like absolute confidence and conviction, I found myself simply taking off my mythical hat to both conductor and players – I knew the work reasonably well, but couldn’t remember hearing on record or seeing on film a more exciting and involving performance!

I must confess to finding John Psathas’s Timpani Concerto which followed a bit perplexing in contrast to what I’d just heard – and unfortunately my seat was in a place where my view of the timpanist was obscured by the conductor, so I missed some of the visual excitement of the soloist’s obviously virtuosic command of the instruments. As it wasn’t a work I’d heard before I figured earlier I might find a You-Tube performance with which to familiarise myself regarding the piece – and I found a clip which bore the title “Planet Damnation”, featuring a most exciting performance by Larry Reese, the NZSO timpanist. I didn’t know I was hearing and getting to know only the final movement at that stage, so the onset of the first movement nonplussed me for a while, as did what seemed like an over-insistence of the percussionist playing the woodblocks! The slow movement, when it came, was something of a blessed relief.

Though it was just as unfamiliar, I really enjoyed the slow movement, as it gave the timpanist, Tomoni Nozaki, a beautiful young Japanese woman, a chance to demonstrate the skill and variety of her touch and her ear for all kinds of sonority, instead of her being often drowned out by the rest of the orchestra (I found the woodblock part for one far too insistent!). Then came the movement I’d already heard, and I was able to better relate to the plethora of percussive irruption that the first movement had seemed to unfetter upon our sensibilities. I don’t think it’s a work I shall ever love, but the skills on display by the soloist were sufficiently interesting to make the piece work throughout those two latter movements.

We had a different running-order to that of the printed programme, so we got Briar Prastiti’s “White, Red, Black” after the interval. I liked this work a lot, admiring the composer’s orchestrations of her material, the wind-blown ambiences of the opening carrying my sensibilities along with the music’s trajectories, sharpening my interest more with bird-song-like figurations suggesting in places things coming into focus. What I found slightly disappointing was not being able to hear a single word of the vocalist’s line (despite a microphone being used) from where I was sitting (and my companion similarly reported that he could not hear the singer, and nor could somebody else I spoke to afterwards)….the accompaniment was invariably beautiful, but whenever the song’s intensities sharpened or  grew in body, so did the accompaniments! For this reason, the most telling vocal moments for me were towards the end, when the voice became as an orchestral instrument, the wordless vocalising as haunting as any other of the sounds we were hearing.

Before the final item of the evening, Marc Taddei announced certain salient details of the Orchestra’s 2024 programme, certainly whetting our appetites with some of the detailings – it seems to be a kind of survey of masterpieces representing different eras of artistic creativity, beginning (if I remember correctly) with the Baroque era, and finishing with a contemporary work (I didn’t write all the “clues” down, but Taddei assured us that full details would be released at the Orchestra[‘s final programme for the year, “Red Moon”, on November 11th.

And so to the evening’s final item, which, though splendidly performed and presented, with resplendent singing from Brent Stewart’s Orpheus Choir, and, by turns, stirring and meltingly beautiful orchestral playing, either in support or leading the way, I thought it all essentially lacked the last modicum of focus and interest to be truly engaging. Perhaps if we had had the words, the extra focus would have enlivened the undoubtedly “Game of Thrones” like scenario for which Mozart produced this music. Or, perhaps we needed a narrator with a suitably theatrical “presence” to knit the scenario together more readily –  In reality, everybody – choir and orchestra – did their best with the material, but for me it never really caught fire! I found myself wishing at times that the orchestra was instead giving us the G Minor Symphony K.183, which was what the music occasionally sounded a bit like. And, as I walked to my car after the concert, the thing I found myself wanting to do the most was to get home and play that sensational Webern work again! It was , for me, the evening’s indisputable highlight, and I remain grateful to Marc Taddei and his players for THAT most of all – a truly remarkable experience!