Tag: choral

Challenging and enterprising concert “Freedom and Captivity” and the like, from Nota Bene

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Nota Bene conducted by Peter Walls
Organ: James Tibbles
NZSM Baroque Ensemble (Samantha Owens – oboe, Fleur Jackson – violin, Grant Baker and Sophie Acheson – violas, Rebecca Warnes and Corrina Connor – cellos)
Percussion: Sam Rich
Kapa haka: Fruen Samoa and Te Whanau Tahi; Kuia: Erina Daniels

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 1 October, 7:30 pm

This concert was entitled Freedom and Captivity, reflecting, in music and words, on the experience and problems faced in wars, in colonisation, in racism and other forms of oppression. A good example of what might still be to some, an improper mixing of art and politics (recall sport and politics a generation ago).

It is a worthy and fruitful topic which has inspired a lot of music and other arts, which can be discerned in all eras, particularly our own.

While all branches of the arts, especially literature, have always been intimately concerned with politics, and the visual arts only a little less so, music can easily exist, oblivious to politics.

Here, to make the point, music and readings were interspersed, handling many of the trials and tragedies of mankind: war, imprisonment, exile, cruelty, refugees…

Forced migration, from Biblical times
Forced migration has a long history, none more legendary than the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, and Psalm 113 was a fitting way to open the programme, assuming a universal approach to Biblical stories; this was presented in calm plainchant form sung by the women of the choir.

The readings were mixed, some, like the address of Volumnia from Coriolanus perhaps Shakespeare’s most profoundly political play with deep resonance for today, was an unfamiliar (to most) piece. Rebecca Blundell, a good soprano, came very close to capturing the full dramatic force of the mother’s plea to her son to desist from Assad-like killing of his own people.

Though amplification was evidently available, it was either not used or was inadequate and some of this and other readings were missed. An important part of any rehearsal is surely to test levels of audibility.

After the reading from Coriolanus, Arvo Pärt’s De Profundis (Psalm 130) was sung, a less specific but profound account of human persecution, which has been a rich source of inspiration by many composers and writers throughout European history. (A look at the Wikipedia entry on De Profundis is insightful, highly interesting; inter alia, there’s Shostakovich’s use in his song-cycle-like 14th Symphony of Garcia Lorca’s Spanish version of the Psalm, among many other poems dealing with mortality).

Pärt’s complex, tortured De Profundis is set in Latin for men’s choir, percussion and organ and was first performed in Kassel in 1981. His setting is far from the well-known, lucid pieces like Fratres or Spiegel im Spiegel or the Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten.  It was a challenge to the choir and indeed it was not altogether defeated; the percussion in the shape of a big bass drum, and the increasingly prominent organ, with some fine bass voices left quite an impression.

The second reading was an extract from a Department of Labour report on the 4500 post-WW2 refugees arriving at Pahiatua, taken from Anne Beaglehole’s study, Refugee New Zealand: A Nation’s Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers. Jenny Gould’s voice, with its normal New Zealand character, was well adapted to the subject. I guess the message was: for a population about a third of today’s, we took about six times the number of refugees in a year.

David Morriss is a more experienced speaker and his reading from magistrate John Gorst’s important, almost classic account of the wars in the Waikato: The Maori King; or, the story of our quarrel with the natives of New Zealand of 1864 was an interesting revelation of tolerant balance. It reported, in a tone that was distinctly critical of Government handling of the causes and course of the wars, on refugees from Maori villages near Auckland. It too was extracted from Anne Beaglehole’s Refugee New Zealand.

Virginia Earle read with unpretentious simplicity a touching, imaginative piece from Short Stories by Young Refugees in New Zealand (2008). (It was taken from a collection of such material edited by Fiona Kidman and Jeff Thomas).

It struck me at about this point that dimmer lighting would have been in the interest of the small-scale dramas told in both words and music.

There were two further readings, in the second half. First, Martin Luther King’s famous speech of 23 August 1963 urging pacifism, tolerance, turning-the-other-cheek, in the face of White abuse. Ray Coats, from the pulpit, made a splendid oratorical impact.

James Bertram: poet, journalist, scholar
Poet and university English lecturer, James Bertram was a 1930s correspondent in China and wartime prisoner in Japan; With admirable clarity and almost excess ‘expression’, John Chote read Bertram’s poem Home Thoughts from Abroad – Tokyo working party 1945 offered another view of displacement, alienation, violence and inhumanity.

(I reflect gratefully on Bertram’s lectures throughout my university years: he was one of the few who could make enlivening references to music, and all the arts, while discussing, for example, Milton; charismatic perhaps not, but a wondrously elegant and articulate lecturer with a phenomenal flair for springing a telling and picturesque quotation on his happy students).
Apologies for that self-indulgence.

After Oxford, (as a Rhodes Scholar, and where he was one of the James McNeish’s Peacocks – Dance of the Peacocks, with Dan Davin, Geoffrey Cox, Ian Milner and John Mulgan) Bertram was a journalist on an Oxford scholarship to China and Japan from 1936, and he became deeply involved in China in the war years: he was taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1941 and was lucky to survive. After the war he returned to Japan as adviser to the New Zealand delegation to the Far Eastern Commission; and this was the source of his poem. He came to the English Department of Victoria University College in 1947.

To return to the music, which was just as varied.
Samuel Sebastian Wesley was a grandson of hymn-writer Charles Wesley whose brother was Methodist Church founder John Wesley. A respected composer in his day, his work, The Wilderness, pitched a quartet of voices against the full choir, demonstrating how the weaknesses of individual voices are obscured when singing en masse. But though I tried to be open-minded I did not find the performance revelatory or the music other than rather insipid.

An excerpt from an opera-in-progress, Kia tu tonu; Tohu tells us by Gillian Karawe Whitehead on Parihaka was semi-staged. But its dramatic impact could only be guessed at from an excerpt where there was no chance for an audience to understand the thrust of the story or to form an impression of characters. Just who was who in the crowd in front of us eluded me, as did the significance of spreading the choir members around the side aisles and the rear of the church, or Thomas Nikora in the gallery.

And one can only form a view of the musical force of a large-scale work like this from a fuller performance where it’s possible to hear things twice, and in the proper context.

Mendelssohn’s late-in-life motet on the Nunc Dimittis (Herr, nun lässet du), proved an interesting and attractive find, employing again a quartet of soloists contrasted with the full choir; it might have been conventional, both musically and liturgically, but this performance did it justice.

If that was almost Mendelssohn’s last work, the next was said to be Bach’s first known cantata, Aus der Tiefe, rufe dich (BWV 131), the German version of De Profundis, written at Mühlhausen; though I have been under the impression that Christ lag in Todes Banden (BWV 4) also written in Mühlhausen, where he worked immediately before his first major position at Weimar, was his first cantata. Anyway, now in the company of a baroque oboe, prominent right at the start, this was an interesting performance revealing an already mature composer, with recognisable Bachian melodic characteristics and harmonic finger-prints. The second movement gave bass David Morriss a rewarding opportunity in a typical Bach arioso. A peaceful aria and chorale, Meine Seele wartet auf, in triple time, gave tenor Patrick Geddes, in good voice, solo exposure nicely accompanied by cello. This movement was particularly charming as the choir, very quietly and unobtrusively beneath the solo voice, sang a reflective text lamenting the poet’s sins. The cantata ended with a beautifully balanced chorus with alternate fast and slow passages, with more attractive oboe exposure.

After that, the Spirituals from Tippett’s A Child of our Time, seemed perhaps uncalled for. I confess to remaining rather indifferent to even these examples of Tippett arrangements and will refrain from comment; in any case it started to seem a long concert.

And I suppose it was inevitable that the most famous composition involving an exiled people, ‘Va pensiero’ from Nabucco, would be included. Given the size of the choir, they did justice to this great heavyweight chorus describing the horrible experiences of a nation, experiences suffered today by a different population, oppressed now by the victims of 2500 years before.

So there had been enough unusual and rewarding music, touching on many of the crises that proliferate today. In fact, director Peter Walls and the choir are to be congratulated for their courage in presenting material that might be troubling for some, bringing the light of humanity to some of today’s most intractable problems.

 

Sombre Music of the Low Countries from the Bach Choir

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach Choir of Wellington, conducted by Peter de Blois, with Douglas Mews (organ), Laura Barton (violin), Vivian Stephens (violin), Aidan Verity (viola), Lucy Gijsbers (cello), Michelle Velvin (harp), Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion)

Music by Belgian and Dutch composers

St. Teresa’s Church, Karori

Sunday, 11 September 2016, 2pm

Most of this music made me feel low, like the countries.  Only Sweelinck (1562-1621) seemed to sparkle with life, and he was much the oldest of the composers performed, the others being all from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  I decided that I liked soulful music – but not doleful music.  After hearing two sombre works (first movement from Mahler’s 10th symphony and Berg’s violin concerto) the previous evening  from Orchestra Wellington, I was not in a receptive mood for music such as the choir sang, in a concert of over two hours’ length.

It was an ambitious programme of unfamiliar, and often difficult, works in modern idiom.  The relatively modern, large church has good acoustics, and the sound came over well, without undue reverberation from both choir and instruments.  The disadvantage was that all the performing took place in the organ gallery at the back of the church, behind the audience.  This meant we did not have the interest and stimulation of seeing the performers, which adds quite a lot to the enjoyment of music, especially when instrumentalists are involved.  Peter de Blois explained in his preliminary remarks that this was necessary because of the impossibility of moving the altar at the front of the church; thus there was not adequate space for the choir.

De Blois pointed out that the day was the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the US, thus the first part of the concert was about death, while the second dealt with resurrection.  Images, varying from statues to flowers to skies, were shown on a screen at the front of the church, but their relationship to the music being tenuous.  I did not find them a good substitute for seeing animated performers at their tasks.

The first composer we heard was Wietse Stuurman, born 1976; his Miserere mei Deus.  This involved, in addition to the choir, organ and strings, tubular bells.  The choir made a marvellous sound, and the effect of discords in the music was clear.  The organ part had splendid tunes, with a continuous pedal note.  The bell and organ became loud and insistent, but there was little variety of tonality in the piece, because of that note and bell.  The piece was mournful.  Although the words were reasonably clear, it was good to have the Latin words and translations for the whole programme, in addition to excellent notes.  The work was well performed, but didn’t ‘grab’ me, despite some interesting shifting harmonies.

Variations on ‘Mein junges Leben hat ein End’ by Sweelinck was a bright organ interlude, despite its title, especially after the second variation when a 2-foot stop was added.  More sounds and textures were added in other variations, before a return to quiet contemplation in the last one.  This was a most satisfying performance.

The next choral piece, a seven-movement Requiem, was by Huub de Lange (born 1955) and was set for choir and string quartet.  This would not have been easy to sing, but one or two voices tended to stand out at times, and top notes were not always hit squarely.  Otherwise, the choir produced lovely velvety tone.

I could not help thinking that Mozart, Schubert, Verdi and others knew how to make a Requiem Mass that was gorgeous, even animated, as well as solemn.  This one was monotonous; it needed more changes of tonality and mood.  However, there were some excellent dynamic effects, such as a fading pianissimo at the end of the Sanctus.  It was an innovative work and the choir and quartet made a good job of it, but the minimalist influences (remarked on in the programme note for the Stuurman work) made it boring to my ear.

Even the In Paridisum had a rather slow tempo and a minor modality, as did the unusually added Te Deum, which is a hymn of praise.  Yet it had doleful intervals of diminished and augmented seconds.  Its final Sanctus revealed a full choral sound, but it was not remotely jubilant.  The varying close intervals made great demands on the singers.

Sweelinck brought back some jollity, with variations on ‘Onder een Linde groen’ (Under a green linden tree), a secular piece.  It was delightful and uplifting, played with great contrasts of stops and between runs and detached chords. Use of reed stops in the finale reiterated the melody with different sounds.

Evert van Merode (born 1980) wrote his Stabat Mater dolorosa in 2013.  The men’s sound was good, but the women’s pitch was not always accurate; it was probably difficult to maintain it in this sort of tonality.  The harp had a dramatic part to play, but it didn’t always seem to fit with the other instruments (violin and cello).  For me, the best part musically was the concluding ‘Quando corpus…’ (When my body dies, grant that my soul is given the glory of paradise).

After the interval, the music was entirely by Flor Peeters (1903-1986), a Belgian organist and composer.  I still have the programme from his visit to New Zealand in the 1970s.  The Kyrie of his Missa Festiva had the men opening in sombre tones.  Despite the good acoustics, it was a drawback to clarity that they did not all pronounce the vowels in the same way.  Some of the choir tone sounded strained; there was a lot of difficult singing.  After the Kyrie, Mews played Peeters’s chorale prelude on ‘O Gott du Frommer Gott’, with a mellow tone and mood.

The splendid tenor introits to both the Gloria and the Credo were, I suspect, sung by de Blois himself.  At last, there was a bright mood in the declamatory Gloria.  Singing in the latter part of was without instruments, and the writing was not so taxing.  It came off well, especially the jubilant ‘Amen’.  It was interesting to hear the composer’s ‘Jesu meine freude’ chorale prelude which followed on the organ, since Bach’s settings as a motet and for organ are familiar.  It was more appealing than the mass, though there was little variation of volume or tone.

The first part of the Credo was appropriately loud, while the quieter section, Et incarnatus est, sounded splendid, apart from too many misplaced s’s from the choir.  The final section of the Credo was suitably exultant.  The Sanctus began a little flat, as did the Benedictus, and both continued that way intermittently, with less clear words and vowels.  I’m sure the singers were tired by this time.  An interposed chorale prelude ‘Ach bleib’ mit deiner gnade’ was played with gorgeous flute stops, and flowed in a Bach-like way.  The programme ended with the mass’s Agnus Dei.  This made a very pleasing finish, dying away at the end.

The concert was rather too long, but a tour de force from a good choir.  However, the choice of programme was challenging for both choir and audience, and the former was not consistent in its performance.  The instrumentalists were all strong, and Douglas Mews’s organ-playing was magnificent both in solo pieces and with the choir, where he was no mere accompanist.

 

 

Promising new choir premieres with varied, courageous programme

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Convergence’

Music from all the continents

Inspirare ‘Wellington’s newest choral ensemble’ conducted by Mark Stamper, with Catherine Norton (piano), Jeremy Fitzsimons and Ben Fullbrook (percussion)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 4 September 2016, 3pm

Described in advance publicity as ‘a new professional choir’ and that ‘The concert will consist of music from all the continents and will explore our basic needs to commune with nature, spirituality and our love of community and family’, there were high expectations.  Caution recalls that some years ago Professor Peter Godfrey set up a choir that he hoped would be professional, but it did not last.  Such a venture needs engagements, sponsors.  We shall see…

American Mark Stamper came to live in Wellington last year, with both qualifications and experience in choral music in the USA.  Among the names listed in the printed programme were many that I recognised; people very experienced in choral singing and some who conduct choirs themselves.  Many of the items performed were unaccompanied, but those that required the piano were in the safe musical hands of Catherine Norton.  Spoken introductions were interesting, but perhaps a little excessive, given the good programme notes, and not always audible despite the use of a microphone.

The concert did not have a good beginning; i.e. seven minutes late.  However, the choir certainly made its presence felt as soon as it began singing, although it did not impress me that the members were dressed entirely in black, like every other choir.  What happened to colour?  The opening item, ‘At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners’ was a setting of one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets by Williametta Spencer, an American composer born in 1932.  It began at full volume; this revealed the capacity of the singers at such a dynamic level to produce splendid tone, and also the marvellous acoustic of St. Andrew’s.  It was a fine piece, with flair (rather than the ‘flare’ of the programme note), ‘excitement and driving energy’.

It was followed with virtually no break by Handel’s well-known ‘Zadok the Priest’, accompanied on the piano – which sound somewhat incongruous since we are accustomed to hearing a chamber orchestra, or at least organ in this jubilant Coronation Anthem.  The words were clear and the voices well-projected.

It was very sensible, in a shortish programme with a lot of different items, to perform two or even three items without space for applause in between.  The next coupling had the exquisite ‘Bogorodiste Devo’ from Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil usually known in English as his Vespers) first.  The choir had good balance and lovely blended tone, particularly in the pianissimo sections.  After two loud items, this was welcome, but the piece featured great dynamic contrasts – not all quiet.  The choir almost achieved a Russian tone – but we don’t breed quite the same sort of basses

Pärt was the other part of the pair: his Magnificat.  This is probably one of his more frequently performed works, and while characterised by the tintinnabuli style, with its apparent simplicity and repetition, it was nevertheless of considerable musical interest.  However, since he has had many imitators, I have to disagree with the programme note that the presence of a drone in many phrases is a unique feature; it may have been when he wrote it.  A pupil of St. Mark’s School, Bella Martin, conveyed these repeated notes.  Her voice was perhaps a little thin, but against the basses singing below, it was very effective. and a boy from the same school, Zach Newton, sang  his solo well.  Before that, the piece had two sopranos singing together.  The spare writing contrasted with denser passages

Moving to South Africa, we heard Chariots, by Péter Louis van Dijk, a contemporary composer.  His was a most telling setting, especially in the repetition throughout of the syllable ‘char’ from the title.  There was plenty of punch, although the performance was not perfect, with a few singers starting ahead of the beat several times.  But that is a mere quibble against the high quality, gorgeous tone of most of the singing.

Ola Gjeilo is a Norwegian-born composer and pianist, living in the United States.   His Ubi Caritas was a quiet, contemplative piece of harmonic charm.  It was followed by another African item: Vamuvmba, in which Jeremy Fitzsimons played an African instrument like large maraca, and Ben Fullbrook on drum featured largely.  The singers made a joyful, highly rhythmic noise.

Ginastera’s ‘O vos Omnes’ from his Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet was very much ‘in your face’, or rather, ‘in your ears’.  The beginning was very loud; as the programme note stated ‘…diverse textures that are very percussive and at times “raw”.’  It contains ‘vocal pyrotechnics’.

New Zealander (but US resident) David Childs wrote ‘The New Moon’, also had a loud opening; it was a striking setting of the words of a poem by Sara Teasdale, an American poet (1884 – 1933).  This was an accompanied piece, with modal shifts and interesting harmonies in both voice and instrument parts.

Sandra Milliken is a contemporary Australian composer.  ‘The Dawn Wind’ was another piece with great word setting.  The chordal movement was very affecting, as the music painted pictures of nature at dawn beautifully.  The following ‘The Sounding Sea’ by Eric William Barnum, another American, was, like its predecessor, unaccompanied.  Sounds of the sea were repeated, while harmonic clashes gave a marvellous effect, and were handled with aplomb.  Special effects including stamping, like crashing waves, and noisy breathing, hissing like the last vestiges of smooth waves on the shore.

A piece not listed in the programme I gathered was by Mark Stamper himself: ‘Remembrance’  It featured lovely legato singing.  The setting included some lovely word-painting.  The words were ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’, a poem frequently read at funerals; it came over clearly in this stunning performance of unaccompanied singing.

The mood changed completely in ‘The Battle of Jericho’ by Moses Hogan.  The very rhythmic setting was lively, busy and striking.  There was notable unanimity between the singers.  Each part was absolutely together.

The final item was specially commissioned.  ‘Hutia te rito’: the title refers to the growing stem of harakeke (New Zealand flax).  The translation of the traditional chant which provided the basis for the composition by American Zachary J. Moore, is ‘If you remove the central shoot of the flaxbush, where will the bellbird find rest?    If you were to ask me, “What is the most important thing in the world?” I would reply “It is people, it is people, it is people.”

Before the performance, the Maori woman who gave the words to be used spoke, and also a gentleman from the Maori Language Commission.  The latter described the words of the chant as being used frequently in Maori speech-making.

A largely youthful audience attended, and gave enthusiastic response to the performance.  However, I got the impression it was made up to a large extent of friends and families; the church was well-filled but not full (downstairs only).  This was a good launch of a new choir.

“Since singing is so good a thing I wish all men would learn to sing” sixteenth-century composer William Byrd said these words.  He might be astonished to see how many choirs there are in Wellington now.  Therein lies the problem – how to get audiences for all the concerts.  Singing is good for its own sake, but to sustain all the choirs financially, and to spread the pleasure, audiences are needed.

In addition to a record amount of opera over the same period, I find that between 20 August and 15 October (i.e. eight weeks) there have been/will be 13 choral concerts, mostly on Sundays.  Two choirs are competing for attention on 2 October.  I can think of half-a dozen other choirs that are not performing during this period.  Surely more co-ordination is needed?  And pity the poor reviewers!

 

 

 

 

Orchestra Wellington, Orpheus Choir, clarinet in brilliant Mozartian form

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington and Orpheus Choir of Wellington, under Marc Taddei
Andrew Simon – clarinet; Emma Fraser – soprano, Elisabeth Harris – alto, Henry Choo – tenor, James Clayton – baritone

Mozart 1791
Ave Verum Corpus, K 618
Clarinet Concerto in A, K 622
Requiem in D minor, K 626

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 20 August 7:30 pm

To put together programmes celebrating periods in a composer’s life has been made pretty easy by the conscientious compilers of catalogues, either by musicologists or by the composers themselves. Some have been catalogued in more sophisticated ways, by genre of composition which leads to an elaborate system like that of Haydn by Hoboken (not the suburb of Antwerp).  But it’s not hard to list the ‘last words’ of Mozart.

There’s always a tendency to exaggerate composers’ troubles and tragedies, and Mozart’s last year is a favourite topic. But, as explained by conductor Taddei, in the months before his death Mozart was almost overwhelmed by commissions, and his prospects were looking very good.

Fruits of Mozart’s last months
The three works played at this concert were only some of the great music of his last six months. There was of course, The Magic Flute, and then the commission in July, when the Flute was well advanced, of La clemenza di Tito for the celebration of the coronation of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in Prague in September. The Flute was listed by Koechel as 620 and Clemenza, 621, which includes a wonderful aria with an obbligato basset clarinet part, ‘Parto, ma tu ben mio’, for the same clarinetist as was to play the concerto, Anton Stadler. So there are a couple of evenings’ music; and there’s some other bits and pieces like the last string quintet, and pieces for mechanical organ and for the ethereal glass harmonica.

The concert began with the lovely, and very short, Ave verum corpus. It was brilliantly performed, the choir disciplined so keenly that it gave the impression of a skilled chamber choir of around 30 singers that had somehow acquired huge power and depth of tone, which has to be credited to their conductor Brent Stewart.

The same characteristics were clear throughout the Requiem: remarkable pianissimi alternating with magnificent, powerful outbursts as at the Dies Irae and the Rex Tremendae; and the Sanctus, accompanied by chilling timpani, seemed to leave no room for doubting Mozart’s religious convictions.

While the soloists were individually well equipped with attractive voices, soprano Emma Fraser’s voice was more penetrating than the others, exhibiting a silvery strength, at so many points, in the Recordare and the Benedictus, so that it was hard to escape the feeling that the alto part, taken by mezzo Elisabeth Harris, which was simply not in the same decibel class. It lacked something in terms of weight in, for example, the sonorous Tuba Mirum exposed her, between tenor Henry Choo and Fraser, as a bit uncommitted. Yet there were times when Harris’s lovely voice could be heard to advantage.

Though neither of the men possessed voices that had quite the power of Fraser’s, their distinct tessiturae masked the difference. That was certainly the case in the Recordare where the bass line lies fairly low and James Clayton’s voice injected a degree of drama, to be expected from a singer who has made valuable contributions to opera since he has come here from Australia. Tenor Choo, on a return visit from Australia, after singing in Orchestra Wellington’s Choral Symphony in their first 2016 concert (there too, with Elisabeth Harris at his side), was an asset; an attractive, lightish, quintessentially lyric tenor whose voice sat comfortably in the vocal quartet.

In the Requiem, the choir wavered, not for a minute, in the brilliance, clarity and energy exhibited in the Ave Verum, which could all have contributed, if one was so minded, to religious fervor; deserving further mention of music director Brent Stewart. There was discipline which never got in the way of a sense of spontaneity; the opportunities for distinct sections of the choir demonstrated the strength of each, with no sign of any weakness from tenors which have tended to be a choral problem over the years. In the Confutatis, men were as dramatic as the women in their separate phrases. And the dynamic shifts in the Lacrymosa, inter alia, were highly arresting.

Though the choral scene is perhaps not as robust now as it was in the late 1980s and 90s, when it was energized by the revival of early music practice and the presence of Simon Ravens and the Tudor Consort, the best choirs are in excellent shape; Orpheus continues to lead in Wellington.

The orchestra, stripped back to what was probably the size of such an orchestra of 1792, normal strings running down from ten first violins, with pairs of clarinets, bassoons, horns and three trombones, plus timpani. Interestingly in the context of the clarinet concerto, Mozart’s scoring in the Requiem was for basset horns in F (the instrument’s bottom note, at the bottom of the bass stave).

Concerto for basset clarinet
Then there’s the oddball clarinet employed in the concerto, which Andrew Simon explained came and went with Anton Stadler, the work’s inspirer and first performer: the basset clarinet. Though another lower version of the clarinet, called a basset horn, had become a fairly familiar instrument and survived into the 19th century (see the entry in Wikipedia), Stadler wanted to use a new instrument called the basset clarinet instead of the basset horn. (the latter is bigger, with a curve near the mouth-piece). There is a fragment of a Mozart concerto (K 621b) for basset horn which evidently contains hints of the music for the clarinet concerto. Both the basset horn and the basset clarinet have attracted composers since the early 20th century.

But in the absence of an autograph score, there are unanswered questions. Today, the clarinet concerto is played on either the normal, A clarinet or the basset clarinet.

Interestingly, the concerto is not scored for orchestral clarinets: only for strings, plus pairs of flutes, bassoons and horns. Though it’s always partly a matter of one’s position, the orchestra created a feeling of spaciousness in the interesting MFC acoustic. If one expects to hear touches of sadness in music composed only a month or so before his death, Mozart and no pre-Beethoven composer was really an introspective, believing that music should express something of himself or reflect the troubles of his times. (That was left to the Romantics and of course is a condition that afflicts most of today’s composers). Accordingly, the first and third movements expressed positive characteristics, and the Taddei’s orchestra left no doubt about their grasp of the classical aesthetic.

And I don’t know why it came to mind during the performance, that here I was hearing the descendants of New Zealand’s first, and very fine, professional string orchestra, that Alex Lindsay had formed in 1948, just a year after the National Orchestra itself. It was reputed to be a finer ensemble of string players at the time than its big brother. It survived till 1963, after which its bones were reassembled in various reincarnations of a Wellington city orchestra, more or less continuously to the present time.

Andrew Simon proved an admirably adroit and exuberant player, master of tasteful ornaments, and in wonderful control of varied dynamics. Not least of course were the extra low notes of the basset clarinet and it was very interesting to hear the way Mozart seemed to have framed them particularly, drawing attention to them, and how Simon exploited these opportunities.

Having claimed that an 18th century composer refrained from injecting personal emotion into music, one had to hear a touch of suppressed sadness in the Adagio, though such a change of tone, rather than real emotion, is simply what is intrinsic to slow music: it’s hard to think of much music of the 19th century, depicting tragedy, that goes quicker than, say, Andante.

So this 99.9% full house heard a rather delicious concert, the third in Orchestra Wellington’s season, with the Orpheus Choir in stunning form, the orchestra in excellent condition, with a fine international soloist. In great music.

Music Futures diverting showcase for rising young musicians

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music Futures: The Sound of Wellington Youth Music 2016

Blue Notes (Tawa College Chamber Choir, conductor: Isaac Stone, accompanist: Martin Burdan)
Mendelssohn and Daughters; Zephyr Wills (violin), Vanessa O’Neill (piano) and Emily Paterson (cello)
Guest artists: Malavika Gopal and Anna van der Zee (violins), Thomas Guldborg (percussion)
Lavinnia Rae (cello) and Hugh McMillan (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 31 July, 3 pm

Music Futures is an independent enterprise set up by a group of people who felt there was a need for something more to help talented young musicians through financial awards, performance, opportunities, workshops and masterclasses, mentoring, and lending and hiring instruments. This was their first public performance this year. Members of the NZSO are among the tutors and mentors.

This concert set out in part to illustrate the range of musical genres: a chamber choir, a cut-down concerto, a chamber group and an arrangement of an Indian raga from some of the grown-up participants.

The Tawa College’s small choir, Blue Notes, demonstrated a quality that would, for any average listener, demand top place in any choral competition, such as the Big Sing in Dunedin, where they have been nominated as finalists later this month. Three small pieces, one by their suburban mentor Craig Utting (Monument), slow, clear harmonies and, like all their items a display of admirably sensitive dynamics. Their other offerings were from almost the extremes of western music, from the ‘Agnus Dei’ from Palestrina’s Missa Brevis to Stephen Sondheim’s The Miracle Song. They also contributed at the end of the concert with a careful studied a cappella choral piece by Brahms: ‘Dem dunkeln Schloss der heil’gen Erde’ and Karimatanu Kuicha by Ko Matsushita, that involved tricky intonation and rhythms: all from memory.

The first movement of Mendelssohn’s piano trio in D minor, Op 49 was played by three players from Kapiti and Wellington Girls’ colleges, two girls and a boy, named as if they were Mendel’s son and daughter. Though it’s such a gorgeous work and I know it so well, I can’t remember when last heard it. They played it with a certain languorousness, not altogether inappropriate; but an excellent way to prolong the delicious experience of that rapturous second theme.

Three NZSO players then recreated an arrangement by violinist Malavika Gopal of a raga by Ravi Shankar, entitled La Danse, for two violins and tabla. That offered an attractive contrast to the rest of the concert.

Then we had a foretaste of the concerto that NZSM student Lavinnia Rae was to play the coming Wednesday at the combined concert between the NZSM orchestra and the Wellington Youth Orchestra: Shostakovich’s first cello concerto (first two movements), the orchestra’s part played by Hugh McMillan. Played without the score, this was a remarkably mature and accomplished performance that revealed a real dramatic awareness, as well as brilliant handling of false harmonics in the second movement.

I regretted the likelihood of missing that concert.

There will be two further concerts from Music Futures: on 18 September and 13 November. They too are bound to be highly rewarding experiences for the audience.

 

 

Excellent performance by Nota Bene of Rossini’s marvellous Petite Messe solennelle

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Petite Messe solennelle by Rossini
Nota Bene conducted by Peter Walls

Soloists: Georgia Jamieson Emms, Maaike Christie-Beekman, Patrick Geddes, Simon Christie
Piano: Fiona McCabe; harmonium: Thomas Nikora

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Saturday 9 July, 8 pm

Rossini’s end-of-life setting of the Mass has a somewhat special place in the repertoire – secular or sacred? serious or ironic? Thus, some more humourless music lovers have difficulty in enjoying it as some of the music is a bit unusual in tone, remote from the way a ‘proper’ sacred or liturgical work should be.

I think it would be hard to perform it in a way that suggested any lack of sincerity or seriousness however. For a work on this scale and in the knowledge that it was his last composition, it would be a remarkably shallow, not to say stupid, composer who would have devoted so many of his last days to something that was not a little bit important to him. It was clearly important to him both as music and as an expression of his Christian faith.

In any case, Rossini’s well-known words in his last rites, asking God to bear in mind his Stabat Mater and this mass setting as evidence of his faith, are rather persuasive.

For the audience, seated in the front of the nave, the sound was uncluttered and diction clear. A spirit of delight reigned from the very first staccato motif on the piano which in this performance sounded distinctly more brilliant and life-affirming than some performances with orchestra I’ve heard. They might succeed in creating a more liturgical, more grand atmosphere, but not so special. As it progresses the tone does become more serious, as at the ‘Et Resurrexit’, for example, which climbs to a distinctly more triumphant tone in keeping with its subject.

One of the most distinctive, and perhaps unorthodox aspects, is the accompaniment by piano, and by a piano part in which one can easily hear Rossini himself playing (for he was a splendid pianist).

Rossini originally scored it for two pianos and a harmonium but a couple of years later, he orchestrated it, knowing that if he didn’t others would; that too shows how well he regarded his late masterpiece. Here we had only one piano and a harmonium though the harmonium, played by Thomas Nikora, on the right was generally not very audible to me, sitting on the left.

Fiona McCabe did a wonderful job in the composer’s possible role (we know that he only acted as page turner for the first piano at its first performance). It succeeded in being brilliant, witty, marvellously adapted to its role as support for the singers whether a solo or the full choir. The piano lent the entire work a singularity of tone and spirituality, an ever-present lightness and ebullience, bringing a remarkable immediacy to its spiritual qualities. In fact, I suspect for most listeners the piano is one of its most engaging and individual characteristics throughout, nowhere more conspicuously than in the ‘Credo’ where its colour and clarity gave it something that a big orchestra couldn’t really equal.

Rossini apparently intended it to be sung by just eight choir members and four soloists; there were 23 choristers at this performance, plus the four soloists, which was fully justified here, as the premiere was in a private mansion in Paris where small forces would have been enough.

A memorable hearing
It was certainly the piano sound that made an impact at my first live hearing which I will plead forgiveness for reminiscing on. In Paris in 1992, after I’d spent a week with the NZSO at the Seville EXPO, I ran into the late Gary Brain (former NZSO timpanist and after a wrist injury, an orchestral conductor in Europe) in a street near the New Zealand Embassy. He was full of excitement, about to go to his first professional conducting engagement after his studies in Paris; would I like to come? Where? At a small festival at St-Florent-le-Vieil on the Loire, between Angers and Nantes.

I took the train down there next morning, found at the first hotel out of the railway station and across the river, that Gary had booked me a room; then I found my way to the small church where the festival was held. The church was full (about 300) that evening for Gary’s performance of the Petite messe solennelle, with the choir and four soloists from the Opéra-Comique in Paris, with a piano and a harmonium (memory a little uncertain – maybe two pianos). I think it was a very good performance, in my memory very much like what I heard on Saturday evening.

Next evening, back in Paris, I dictated a purple-prosed review to the nice copy-taker in The Evening Post where it was printed next day.

In such a setting, and witnessing Gary’s professional debut, the music had a very special significance and excitement. Any new performance brings up enchanting memories of that one on the Loire.

Composers of mass settings often vary the divisions between the sections, and Rossini divides his into 14. There is no separate section for the ‘Benedictus’, for example, which simply flows as part of the ‘Sanctus’.

The mass has attracted composers over the centuries for the varied, dramatic possibilities offered by its summary of Christian ritual and stories, in its varied purposes; Rossini identified the possibilities for engaging with a secular audience as much as with a religious congregation. And Peter Walls inspired the choir to find as much entertainment and religious feeling too, from the words and from the character of the music at every stage.

The soloists
We heard all four in the ‘Kyrie’ and the ‘Gloria’, some a cappella moments in the ‘Kyrie’ offering a taste of their excellent balance and verbal clarity. The first soloist to stand out was Simon Christie, in the ‘Gloria’, wonderfully robust and strongly projecting as it was later in the ‘Quoniam’ where again he shone with his steady descents below the stave, with an operatic, dotted rhythm; elsewhere his voice had an imposing prominence that was never out of place.

Tenor Patrick Geddes had his solo turn in the ‘Domine Deus’, and on his own his pleasant voice created a feeling of enjoyment that quite overcame a touch of insecurity.

After a charming piano introduction, the two women sang unaccompanied in the ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’, most excellently, as one after the other caught a penitential note; but not for long, as there is also a distinctly lyrical, operatic quality. Each also had her place in the sun elsewhere: Georgia in the ‘Crucifixus’ where her voice soared with a sort of happiness that might seem out of keeping with the marking of Christ’s crucifixion. Maaike had solo moments with two other soloists in the ‘Gratias’; the warmth and polish of her voice was most engaging. But her big solo came in the ‘Agnus Dei’ where she used her voice movingly, weaving around the voices of the choir.

Four soloists from the choir sang at certain points, notably in the ‘Credo’, where the ecstatic quality of ‘Cum spirit sanctu’ suddenly changes to something serious, a statement of belief. They reappeared in the ‘Sanctus’, where a more sombre tone is also required.

The centre point of the mass might well be the ‘Cum sancto spiritu’ and here I can be forgiven for thinking that its tremendous youthful verve and melodic glory, striking with piano, actually does sound even more impressive and thrilling with orchestral accompaniment. Nevertheless, Peter Walls’s vigorous gestures here helped create a rising excitement, ending with the ecstatic ‘Gloria in excelsis’.

Just about everything in this performance of a marvelous work was admirably judged and accomplished, once more demonstrating the choir’s musical gifts, as well as the apparently happy relationship with Peter Walls who took over the choir at the end of last year.

The audience, not quite as big as the performance deserved, was highly appreciative.

Triumphant concert from Orchestra Wellington and Orpheus Choir: Beethoven and Haydn

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington, Orpheus Choir, conducted by Marc Taddei with Rusem Khamidullin (cello)

Haydn: Cello Concerto in C, Hob. VII-1
Beethoven: Symphony No 9 in D minor, Op 125 ‘Choral’ (soloists: Jenny Wollerman, Elisabeth Harris, Henry Choo, Warwick Fyfe)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 11 June, 7:30 pm

First of all.
What’s happening to Wellington’s orchestra? In the last five or six years the orchestra, now known as Orchestra Wellington, has built a quite extraordinary record of successful concerts with pretty full houses, which seem to have gained their popularity through attractive prices; and imaginative thematic programmes, usually the entire series adhering to a common theme of some kind; plus the choice of soloists, whose concertos have often been related to the theme.

Ticket prices have been kept surprisingly low, vindicating the belief that any feared loss is more than compensated by the sheer number of seats sold; so as well as achieving a perhaps better financial result, there have often been sold-out concerts which must indicate that many non-regular concert goers have been enticed to come. And many of them are seduced by the power of great music.

I must also mention free programmes; such an intelligent policy, as it ensures people know about things like the number of movements (and so, when to clap), but more importantly offers a bit of basic information for newcomers to classical music. It is disturbing to note the numbers who turn away from programme sellers at other musical events when the price is mentioned: how absurd to waste all the effort and expense on a booklet that not very many read, when there is a glaring need to take every chance to enlarge musical knowledge in audiences that have been left ill-educated by our education system.

In 2015 and this year, a new policy has been adopted: selling the six-concert series, sight unseen in terms of programmes and soloists, for a really low price. This year, as information has been drip-fed, the season price has increased, to a level rather beyond the impecunious.
It works!

This year’s series is called Last Words, and the first five concerts include works written shortly before the composers’ deaths. Perhaps no more than five presented great orchestral works in their last years, though Franck, Bruckner, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich would seem to be candidates (one can think of several who wrote beautiful piano, chamber or choral music or opera in their last years, but didn’t produce orchestral music that made it).

Haydn from cellist Khamidullin
The Russian cellist Rustem Khamidullin won first prize in the 2014 Gisborne International Music Competition; this concerto date was presumably part of the prize. He was born in Ufa in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan (Chaliapin, Nureyev, and the distinguished bass Ildar Abdrazakov were born there too); his name suggests Volga Tartar origin, the same ethnic origin as the eminent composer Gubaidulina.

Anyone who was inclined to think that the early Haydn concerto was just a filler, would have had a big surprise, as Khamidullin delivered a performance of the first of the two concertos, in C major, that carried us far from any predictable expectations. Haydn’s fame is not founded on his concertos, though there are four for violin, the famous trumpet one, several for other wind instruments, perhaps about 10 for keyboard, and the other cello concerto written about ten years after the first.

Khamidullin immediately established an atmosphere that was quite entrancing: refined, of the utmost delicacy, almost spiritual in character, which Taddei’s direction implanted with the orchestra in absolute sympathy with the soloist. His playing was fluid, indulged sometimes in ‘scoops’ (portamenti) that no one of any sensibility could have criticised, as they were in perfect accord with the musical canvas that he was painting. And though the occasional bravura flourishes were brilliant, they too were much more an aspect of the dreamy and graceful interpretation, not only of the Adagio, but also of the more extravert outer movements.

He delighted in producing a warm intimacy on his lower strings, alternating, in the Allegro molto last movement, with exciting staccato phrases, crisp and lyrical. It was a flawless performance, accompanied by a suitably pared-down orchestra whose playing had the same light-footed and finely-spun quality.

Without a great deal of urging, though his reception was exuberant, Khamidullin sat down and charged through the violin show-piece, Hora Staccato (Grigoraş Dinicu), as if it been written for his own instrument.

The Choral Symphony
Beethoven, and certain other composers, seem to attract the critical ear of many critics (that’s their job, sadly), in respect of use of authentic instruments, employing the ‘right numbers’ of orchestral players, delivering ornaments in keeping with the aesthetic tastes of the music’s era, and adhering to the speeds suggested by the composer (if these are credible), or by those musicologists currently in fashion, who allow themselves to pronounce on those things.

The first thing that struck me with this Choral Symphony, was its fervent, ebullient character, part of which was tempi. The first words in my notes, in fact, included, ‘fast’, ‘secure’, ‘excitement’, which represented my response to a feeling of huge exhilaration. Taddei did not have the score before him, and while that must not be regarded as clear evidence of absolute mastery or musical superiority, it often suggests that a conductor doesn’t want to find his eyes wandering needlessly away from the faces of the players and singers, with whom a conductor’s first priority should rest.

Orchestra Wellington is of course fortunate in being able to borrow players from the NZSO (in a few key positions in the basses, one or two winds and timpanist Larry Reese) and having a few former NZSO players in its ranks. But the orchestra’s manpower consists almost entirely of native Orchestra Wellington players.  Trumpets, horns, woodwinds made impacts that were exciting, there was clarity and warmth in the strings, and the entire orchestra sounded as if the speeds demanded were well within their abilities.

The contrasts between the big thematic statements and the more meditative, evolving passages in between were dramatically captured, the tension sustained, though the music was quieter and elegantly crisp.

The Scherzo, Molto vivace, held no terrors for the orchestra, as replica, 18th century timpani, with hard sticks, inspired the orchestra to ever more exertion, with triplet quavers and the impact of incessant dotted rhythms, through momentary accelerations. Here were repeated displays of beautiful woodwind playing, Merran Cooke’s oboe distinctively, that often determined the movement’s character.

The third movement is long and beautiful, and it was only here that I had slight misgivings about the pace; not that it was too quick, but whether it quite sustained the transfiguring spirituality that has to dominate it. But the second theme, in the hands of the strings, took firm hold and later, horns, soon proved that Taddei remained in command of the propulsion and momentum of the movement, drawing attention to Beethoven’s imaginative command of orchestration, in spite of total deafness by this time.

Singers enter for An die Freude
The half-hour long last movement opened with the overwhelming confidence of a bigger and more famous orchestra, hard timpani and a cacophony of wind instruments, soon followed by cellos and basses presaging the baritone’s recitative-like opening, ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne’. Any earlier wondering about the weight of the cellos and basses after their commanding pronouncements, dissipated at once; yet where the big theme, later to take charge as ‘Freude schöne Götterfunken…’, was announced by cellos and basses, all the hushed spirituality was there.

The baritone’s lone entry, calling things to order, is probably scary even for the most experienced singer, but Warwick Fyfe was firm and confident, as if the first notes were comfortably within his range, every word clear. As well as the timpani, the bass drum, on the left, also made a stunning impact. Finally the choir arrived, very large, and clearly responding to a command to ‘give it all they’ve got’; not only was the force of Schiller’s words thrilling, but somehow their numbers made the fortissimo singing, perhaps not nice in a small choir, totally arresting. The words were remarkably clear and delivered as if the future of mankind really was in their hands. It was one of those inspirational occasions when one dreams of imprisoning the world’s worst criminals and terrorists in a mighty concert hall to hear this, and watching their evil character fall away as the spiritual power of words and music delivered an ecstatic message that none could withstand (as long as the Alla marcia didn’t have the opposite effect).

The soloists for the fourth movement were placed behind the orchestra, at the front of the choir, a position that is sometimes felt to diminish their impact. I was sitting on the left (facing the orchestra) and so was not able to tell whether there was any problem in the body of the auditorium; but when the soloists entered with ‘Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen’, it came with a reassurance that their sounds were undiminished.

Tenor Henry Choo and Fyfe found themselves alone with their ‘Freude trinken alle Wesen’ (Schiller’s third stanza); a happy pairing. And after the Alla Marcia, tenor Henry Choo was conspicuous in his solo with words from the fourth stanza, ‘Froh, froh wie seine Sonne’.

Certain parts are intensely moving: the return of the first chorus after the long, 6/8, Alla marcia episode, and the descent to the hymn-like ‘Seid umschlungen, Millionen’ for tenor and bass soloists, with its octave parts.  The women’s voices alone provided one of the most glorious passages, both through their dynamic impulse and their expression of such passion through the words. And though neither soprano nor mezzo soloists, Jenny Wollerman and Elisabeth Harris, had the exposure that tenor and baritone enjoyed, their singing in the quartet was always vivid , spiritual in its message, in perfect accord and interestingly, a bit apart from the tenor and bass singing with them.

All soloists singing alone, particularly their last passage with ‘Freude, Tochter aus Elisium’, contributed a particular ecstatic emotion, The chief glory of the performance was the power and almost unbridled ecstasy of the choir, partly a result of its sheer size, even more, the conspicuous care taken with diction and admirably scrupulous ensemble. And that energy never diminished till the choir’s final pages, their fortissimo clamour finally taken up by the orchestra, which sustained it with total excitement right to the final spacious chords.

The applause was tumultuous and it encompassed everyone from Mark Taddei, through the orchestra, the choir and all the soloists.

 

English anthems straddling 1600 offer rich and satisfying concert from voices and viols

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘This is the Record of John’
English Verse Anthems for voices and viols
Music by William Byrd, Peter Philips, Thomas Campion, Thomas Tomkins, John Amner, Orlando Gibbons, John Ward

Baroque Voices (leader: Pepe Becker; and Anna Sedcole, Katherine Hodge, Jeffrey Chang, Phillip Collins, David Houston)
Palliser Viols (leader: Robert Oliver; and Lisa Beech, Sophia Acheson, Jane Brown, Sue Alexander, Kevin Wilkinson)
Douglas Mews (harpsichord)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 29 May, 7:30 pm

Verse anthems are the English equivalents of the Latin or French motet or Lutheran cantata.

They were not just an early music genre, but continued to be composed till modern times. The Bach Choir recently sang an English verse anthem, in Parry’s Hear my Words, Ye People. In Tudor times they were particularly prolific. All of the anthems and harpsichord pieces in this concert came from the Elizabethan and Stuart periods, though Tomkins survived into the time of Cromwell’s Protestant Commonwealth.

The concert began with compositions of a couple of less familiar composers whose music has barely escaped disappearance: John Ward and John Amner. Each opened with the gorgeous sound of the viol ensemble of two trebles, three tenors and Robert Oliver himself on the bass viol, followed by the entry of voices, their numbers varying between five and six. Both pieces could have been written by the same composer; perhaps designed for singing by amateurs, to create a cheerful, harmonious atmosphere in a salon where cultivated people could enjoy themselves. Some of the pieces could have been as part of the church liturgy.

One can imagine different settings for the various pieces presented, according to the subject, whether distinctly religious or not. If not for liturgical purpose, did listeners have to be silent during the performance? Did they clap after each piece ended?

Ward’s piece was slow and meditative and apparently not drawn from a Biblical source while Amner used words from a Psalm, I am for peace. Robert Oliver’s programme note provided interesting background to the likely settings and purposes of anthems over the years.

The concert was punctuated by three non-vocal pieces. The first of them, Passamezzo Pavan à 6, was by Peter Philips, for viols; it was more spirited than the preceding vocal pieces. Another anthem, probably by Ward, followed: Mount up my Soul, where the tenor had a prominent part. A further piece by Ward came after the interval: How long wilt thou forgive me, set at a steady tempo to charmingly fluent music, for the usual two sopranos and one each of the other three voices.

There was a set of three pieces by Thomas Campion, songs to his own words (he was an admired poet as well as composer), rather than anthems, though the first two had religious subjects, of a kind: Never the weather-beaten sail and Author of Light. One had to admit that the words were strikingly more poetic, imaginative and picturesque than one finds in 99% of routine Protestant hymns. The third song, Jack and Joan, was clearly for two single voices, Pepe Becker and Philip Collins (I assume), and displaying much more of a popular, folk song spirit.

The first of two anthems by Orlando Gibbons supplied the title given to the concert: ‘This is the record of John’. The notes did not reveal the source of the words; they presumably refer to John the Baptist. Though I am no Biblical scholar, the reference to the voice crying in the wilderness is from either Isaiah or John’s gospel; in the latter: “John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet: ‘I am a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.'”. Thus it was probably intended for church use. Here, I had thought more could have been made of its narrative character, enlivening the direct speech quotations by a pause and change of tone between question and answer.

Gibbons’s second item was See, See the World Incarnate. Its musical character indeed supported Oliver’s rating it as a masterpiece; the alto’s voice was very distinct and the several vocal lines interwove engagingly. Although the musical invention continually held my attention, I was struck by what I felt was an odd, even inappropriate, relationship sometimes between the words and the music to which they were set, as if Gibbons was pursuing a musical idea regardless of the words’ meaning.

Thomas Tomkins was a near contemporary of Campion. His verse anthem, ‘Above the stars my savior dwells’, is a charmingly simple text, though richly set with soprano and tenor prominent through most of it, and employing a second tenor voice in the last couplet.

It was preceded by a Pavan and galliard à 6 by Tomkins, which, I might note here included all six viols plus the harpsichord of Douglas Mews, whose unobtrusive, carefully idiomatic playing was probably more important than that of any one of the viols. The pavan is a stately dance, the galliard somewhat quicker, and here was an opportunity to hear the generally impressive skills of each player.

The third instrumental piece was an organ Fantasy by Byrd which Mews played on the chamber organ. Though it began with only a pure flute stop, it became more complex in terms of registrations, harmony and canonical devices, ornaments and flamboyant scalic flourishes through its considerable length.

Finally, voices and viols joined for Byrd’s Christ is rising again – Christ is risen. But unfortunately, I had great difficulty in facing the need to leave before it, to catch a train, or have an hour’s wait for the next. It was especially painful in the light of the notes’ description of it as a “magnificent pair of verse anthems …a superb example of Byrd’s transcendent and unexcelled art”.

This was a most satisfying concert, confined, to be sure, to just one genre and one national school during hardly more than a half century, but bearing such evidence of the richness of English music, not to be seen again (apart from the momentary brilliance of Purcell) till the 20th century.

 

Bach Choir offers rewarding looks into Purcell, Mozart and later English music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Choir of Wellington conducted by Peter de Blois, with Douglas Mews – organ

Soloists: Sharon Yearsley, Maaike Christie-Beekman, James Young (replaced by the conductor), Simon Christie and Chris Buckland – soprano saxophone

Purcell: Te Deum Laudamus and Jubilate Deo, Mozart: Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339; James Whitbourn: Son of God Mass; Parry: Hear my words, ye people

Church of St Peter, Willis Street

Sunday 15 May, 3 pm

This concert had been scheduled for Saturday 16 April but, as explained by conductor Peter de Blois, there was an organ problem which required an organ transplant (probably a hoary one for organists).

De Blois also announced another change; the tenor was indisposed and so his place was taken by the conductor who happened, fortuitously, to be vocally equipped in a suitable way.

Purcell’s Te Deum Laudamus and Jubilate Deo
The earlier music came in the first half: two of Purcell’s last church compositions, written a year before his death in 1795, at the ripe Mozart and Bizet age of 35 or 36 (depending on what dates you observe for Purcell). The Te Deum Laudate and Jubilate Deo are often linked: Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate follow the same model.

The Te Deum was composed with orchestral accompaniment and, though I didn’t know that at the concert, I made unappreciative comments about the organ registrations in my notes; though I conceded that the contrast with the choral singing was ‘interesting’. Oh for accompaniment by brilliant trumpets and strings, something that one yearned for in the Mozart too!

Bass Simon Christie opened the singing strongly and confidently and mezzo (listed as ‘alto’) Maaike Christie-Beekman followed with rather impressive handling of the highly decorated melismatas from the verse ‘ The glorious company…’. Though the choir’s singing was generally well integrated and accurate, the entry of three soloists at ‘To thee all angels cry aloud’ introduced a rather more polished element; particular musical were the soprano-alto duet episodes, and the solo contributions from soprano Sharon Yearsley, and when De Blois’s tenor parts arrived they were perfectly comfortable.

One of the most affecting episodes was Christie-Beekman’s ‘Vouchsafe O Lord…’.

The Jubilate Deo is set to more lively music, with well-balanced choral singing; Douglas Mews’s organ playing was sympathetic. Again, Maaike Christie-Beekman’s voice proved splendidly appropriate to the music, tripping through the quick dotted rhythms, and again there was charming soprano-alto duetting. Another interesting duet was between the alto and bass where the bass had the melody much of the time, though pitched lower.

Vesperae solennes de confessore, K 339
Mozart’s Solemn Vespers fulfilled my linguistic preference for Latin (Purcell’s setting was in English). It’s some time since I heard the entire work, his last for Salzburg Cathedral; though the ‘Laudate Dominum’ has the familiarity of a popular opera aria. The soloists are not such a constant presence as in the Purcell, so one paid greater attention to the chorus. After a moment of uncertainty early in the ‘Dixit Dominus’, the choir performed well, with plenty of energy with the momentum of the triple rhythm. It quickly served to remind me of the greatness of this music that seems somehow to be ranked below the Mass in C Minor or the Coronation Mass or of course the Requiem; with little justification.

The ‘Confitebor’ offered fine opportunities for the soloists, with short episodes for the two men which sounded very well. The four soloists in the ‘Beatus Vir’ enjoyed a striking moment, from ‘Gloria et divitiae..’ and again at ‘Jucundus homo’, singing through the verse one by one, sort of in canon. And the soprano here sounded especially practised and polished.

They did well in the fugal ‘Laudate Pueri’, with inflections that seemed to show meaning of the words. And the drop in dynamics as they entered the final verses, ‘Gloria patri et filio..’ found dramatic qualities in the language of the Psalm (113), which always raises Mozart’s liturgical music above the merely religious. The ‘Laudate Dominum’, of course, offered Yearsley an arresting solo opportunity; and it’s not without lovely choral episodes. Heard in the context of the six parts of the Vespers service, the ‘Laudate Dominum’ does not really stand out in isolation from the marvellous music in all parts of the work.

The last section, the ‘Magnificat’, ranks with other great settings of that text and the choir did it energetic justice, with a final gathering of splendid solo forces; and bold choral singing, though once again, high trumpets and pulsing strings were missed, in spite of Douglas Mews’s very creditable efforts on the organ.

James Whitbourn: Son of God Mass
It was a good idea to separate Parry from Mozart with a piece written in the 21st century. Whitbourn’s Son of God Mass, written in 2001 for a BBC documentary, employed an obbligato soprano saxophone, in the hands of Chris Buckland, and it’s actually scored for organ accompaniment. So the organ part, presumably with detailed registrations, was interesting in the fabric of the singing. Much of the organ part was comfortably low pitched, better integrated with the voices. As a quote from the review of a recording remarks, comparisons with Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble are inevitable, though not invidious. Not all the Mass is used.

It’s melodic in an unapologetic way, the music is varied in articulation and dynamics, speed and rhythms, and the saxophone does unusual, somewhat spiritual things. It uttered a loud cry at ‘Domine fili unigenite’ and remained at hand through the start of the ‘Credo’, where the words were pronounced slowly and deliberately.

The choral parts are not too challenging, yet there were plenty of opportunities for dramatic outbursts: the ‘Hosanna in excelsis’ provided an obvious occasion for a bit of ecstasy. The final Amen ended with voices and saxophone way up high. An attractive and successful piece.

Parry’s Verse Anthem
Returning to Parry, Hear my words, ye people was written in 1894 for a diocesan choral festival at Salisbury Cathedral, to be sung by combined parish church choirs, so it’s not too hard. But the parts for soprano bass, and the organ are more taxing. It might be for that reason that I had the feeling that the organ was not always on the same page (excuse the popular cliché) as the choir.

I also felt that this music, conceived for the huge space of an English cathedral, called for a generous acoustic that would wind the sounds around the side aisles and up into the vaulted ceiling before returning to human ears in the nave in careful confusion. Minor choral weaknesses could be disguised and the impact enhanced, to suggest more of a colourful and grand religious, even spiritual, ritual. All four soloists had happy moments in the limelight; the bass enjoyed quite a dramatic experience, though it went a bit low for his comfort at one point.

The main weakness for me was the descent in the last phase, to a very ordinary hymn, O praise ye the Lord, that sounds just like the thousand other hymns sung in Anglican and other protestant churches around the world.

Yet in many ways, this work represents much that was excellent in English 19th century music, and from the 21st century perspective, it can be judged more generously than ‘Parry and Stanford’ were by many critics and audiences of the mid 20th century. We are probably seeing a timely revision of these attitudes.

Forty years celebrated by Wainuiomata Choir, in excellent spirits with fine choral music

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Celebration Concert – singing in the valley for 40 years

Music by Bruckner, Handel, Stainer, Clausen, Mendelssohn, Fauré, Seiber, Purcell, Praetorius, Tavener, Rheinberger, Te Rangi Pai and Leonard Cohen

Wainuiomata Choir, Musical Director Sue Robinson, accompanist Elizabeth Marrison, with string ensemble and Fiona McCabe (piano)

St. Mark’s Church, Woburn, Lower Hutt

Sunday, 8 May 2015, 3.30pm

The concert, first performed in Wainuiomata a week earlier, consisted mainly of items performed at significant concerts during the choir’s history, such as the ten-years anniversary. The choir was formed by John Knox soon after his return from several years working in London, where he sang in the Bach Choir, conducted by the famous Sir David Willcocks. John’s collaborator was Bill McCabe, Fiona’s father. John Knox conducted the choir for many years; others have followed.

Not only but also, Knox was chair of the Orpheus Choir of Wellington for a considerable period, where he facilitated a number of important events, not least bringing Sir David to New Zealand to conduct it and other choirs, including the Wainuiomata Choir This started a pattern of frequent visits here by Sir David. John started the annual choral workshops in Wellington, run by the Wellington Region of the New Zealand Choral Federation, which are still going. There were other initiatives too.

The choir still boasts two original members, one of whom gave brief historical notes at the conclusion of the performance. Their fine accompanist has been with them for 15 years, and Fiona McCabe was accompanist in the past; she told us of the encouragement she received from John Knox, and that she first accompanied at the age of ten!

Several items were sung a cappella, including the first, ‘Locus Iste’ by Bruckner. This sublime motet is treacherous; while beautiful and evocative (‘This place was made by God, a priceless sacrament, it is without reproach’), it presents intonation difficulties. Here, there was a strong bass line and good tenors who did not fall into the traps that are there for them, but the women’s tuning dropped a little at times. The choir sang with pleasing tone, enunciation and vitality.

‘Let God arise’ is from one of Handel’s Chandos Anthems. The performance with strings and Fiona McCabe playing the piano was commendable. The level of piano tone was just right for choir and strings not to be overwhelmed. The piano lid was on neither long stick nor short stick, but resting on a hymn-book, so it was just slightly open. Timing and rhythm were excellent, as was the handling of florid passages – so important to making baroque music live. Through all the items attacks and cut-offs were precise.

‘God so loved the world’ from Stainer’s Crucifixion is another a cappella item that can so easily go flat. The phrasing and dynamics were paid more than adequate attention, but falling notes sometimes fell a little far. Nevertheless, it was a worthy performance. ‘Set me as a seal’ by René Clausen was not quite so successful. Repeated notes were sometimes flat, but otherwise the performance was satisfactory. Words came over well.

Mendelssohn’s lovely ‘He watching over Israel’ from Elijah fared better. A good pace was maintained, and the choir sang with verve. Mendelssohn’s soaring melodies came through thoughtfully and joyously. Another highlight in the choral repertoire is Fauré’s Requiem. The ‘In Paradisum’ movement is demanding to sing (and pitch suffered here, too), but it is ecstatic music of an elevated quality that is utterly uplifting.

There followed a sequence of dances (tango, foxtrot, habanera etc. – about 12 in all) for piano duet by Mátyás Seiber, played by Elizabeth Marrison and Sue Robinson. The pieces were quite delightful, and the duetists played very well together, always spot on. The music was fun, but with due credit to the pianists, the concert would have stood on its own without these, coming as they did just before the interval, when the choristers would get a break anyway.

The ‘Sailors’ Chorus’ and ‘Sailors’ Dance’ from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas were given vivacious, characterful rendition, facial expression and a certain amount of physical movement adding to the animated nature of the music, much enhanced by the playing of the strings and piano.

Animation remained for the chorus ‘And the glory of the Lord’ from Messiah. As in other places, Sue Robinson made brief comments, sometimes humorous, about the pieces as well as mentioning the occasions on which the choir had previously sung them. All parts were accurate here, although the fine tenor section was a little too loud sometimes.

Next up was ‘Jubilate Deo’ by Praetorius. Sue Robinson taught the audience to sing this brief utterance as a 6-part round, and very successfully, too. The choir were distributed around the audience to assist. There’s an innovation other choirs could follow!

While the attacks in Tavener’s ‘Mother of God here I stand’ were excellent, some drop in intonation crept in again, and high notes were a bit shrill. These things are, of course, more obvious in a cappella items. Rheinberger’s ‘Abendlied’ followed, then an arrangement by Dorothy Buchanan of ‘Hine e hine’. It began with English words, with the chorus in Maori followed by a verse in Maori. I did not particularly like the elaborate piano accompaniment (though no reflection on the accompanist); the simple but effective melodies seemed compromised by the former.

The final song was ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen, in an arrangement by Roger Emerson. Here again, the audience was invited to join in, in the chorus.

It was an ambitious programme, particularly with the number of a cappella items. The choir is fortunate to have many good singers, particularly in the male departments, where choirs are often deficient. The audience was treated to a sampler of very fine choral music, and the choir could feel confident in looking forward to another forty years of enjoyable music-making.