Tag: choral

Songs My Mother Taught Me – Mother’s Day Music from Nota Bene

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Music for Mother’s Day

Music by Grieg, Bruckner, Pärt, Tavener, Holst, Gounod, Biebl, Gorecki, Dvorak, Haydn, Vautor, Hely-Hutchinson, Hrušovskŷ, Richard Puanaki, David Childs, David Hamilton, Carol Shortis

Nota Bene Choir

Frances Moore (soprano) / Julie Coulson (piano)

Christine Argyle (director)

Lyndee-Jane Rutherford (presenter)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Sunday 9th May

Christine Argyle’s “Nota Bene” Choir got the mix right for their Mother’s Day concert,  with a programme of music whose first half did strong, sonorous homage to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, before paying tribute after the interval to ordinary, everyday mothers, with songs of affection, remembrance, and wry humour – and finishing with “Rytmus”, Ivan Hrušovsky’s well-known “choral etude” in praise of Eve, the first human mother, as a brief, but exciting finale. With a waiata-like guitar-accompanied opening (actually called “Ka Waiata” and written by Richard Puanaki), and featuring greetings and spoken commentaries by theatre and television personality Lyndee-Jane Rutherford, the event kept an appropriately light touch throughout, the music expressing an attractive amalgam of fun, energy, sentiment, nostalgia and profundity in nicely-gauged doses.

The programme skilfully rang the contrasts throughout, so that we had juxtapositionings such as solemn, Wagnerian Bruckner leavened by excitable, energetic Aarvo Pärt, and then David Hamilton’s West Indian rhythms next to Henryk Gorecki’s rapt, richly-harmonised mesmeric lines. The choir’s configuration would often change between items (womens’ voices only for Gustav Holst’s “Ave Maria”, for example), and soprano Frances Moore contributed several solo items accompanied by pianist Julie Coulson, which were interspersed throughout the concert.

After the opening preliminaries,  Grieg’s “Ave Maris Stella” demonstrated the choir’s finely-nuanced control of tone and texture, not over-moulded, so that those piquant harmonies of the composer’s sounded as fresh as ever – a far cry from the rich upholstery of Bruckner’s very Wagnerian writing for voices (like something out of “Lohengrin”) in his “Ave Maria” setting, featuring some testing top-of-the-stave lines for the sopranos, who emerged from the encounter with credit. All the more excitable, then, seemed Aarvo Pärt’s hymn to the Virgin “Bogoroditse Djevo”, very “Slavic” in its energy and love of contrast.

I equally enjoyed the work of another “holy minimalist”, John Tavener, whose conversion to Russian Orthodoxy inspired works such as the chant-like “Hymn to the Mother of God” (the narrator touched briefly on the importance of Mary in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy), here delivered with wonderfully suffused resonances, the choir relishing the clustered harmonies and glowing evocations of worshipful prayer. The sparer textures of Gustav Holst’s music (sung by womens’ voices) exposed a touch of stridency during the more “striving” lines of the opening, but the withdrawn ambiences at “Et benedictus fructus tui Jesu” readily captured the setting’s beauty.

Frances Moore’s turn was next, with Julie Coulson providing admirable support for her soprano partner in Gounod’s perennial favourite “Ave Maria” – a lovely performance by both musicians, the singer having plenty of upward heft and true tone on the high notes, though her breath-taking was a bit obtrusive in places. Still more changes were rung by the next item, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria” setting, in this performance for men’s voices only, the singers arranged with a trio of voices set apart, and soloists within the choir, giving the textures a degree of spaciousness and making for lovely antiphonal effects. Each exchange between the voices had a slightly different character, varying dynamics and colours in a perfectly delicious-sounding way. The trio of voices (tenors Nick McDougal and Andrew Dunford, with baritone Isaac Stone) got a rich ground-sound, while the higher-voiced group had more plaintive, almost reedy tones which emphasised their placement and their different lines.

Music by two New Zealanders and two “Davids” followed, firstly David Childs’ “Salve Regina”, an attractive minor-key setting with a soprano soloist, Gilian Bruce, from the choir, some momentary ensemble imprecisions of little moment when set against the heartfeltness of the singing. The last few utterances  were notable for the terracings of the words “O clemens, o pia” and “dulcis virgo”, the descriptions nicely differentiated.The work made a good pairing with the “other” David’s piece that followed, the “Carol of the Mother and Child” by David Hamilton, the Caribbean rhythms fetching up some delicious syncopations from out of the setting’s infectious gait.

Concluding the concert’s first half was Henryk Gorecki’s sublime “Totus Tuus”, a hymn of devotion to the Virgin Mary, written to commemorate Pope John Paul’s third visit to his homeland of Poland in 1987. “Totus Tuus” translated from the Latin means “totally yours”, and was the Pope’s apostolic motto, the opening words of a prayer declaring utter devotion to the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity. Declamatory and arresting at the beginning, with cries of “Maria”, much of the work was rapt and devotional, using conventional but extremely rich harmonies which varied in colour and intensity as the piece progressed. The contrast was marked between the work’s forthright opening and utterly mesmeric conclusion, the word “Maria” at the end repeated more and more softly, like the conclusion of “Neptune” from Holst’s “The Planets, with the womens’ voices disappearing gradually into the ether. The effect was of having undertaken a significant journey through realms of timelessness, thanks to the strength of the voices’ response to Christine Argyle’s confident, patient direction throughout.

Not surprisingly, the concert’s second half had a rather more secular feel, with the focus directed firmly towards earthly mothers, beginning with a song written by David Hamilton “When My Mother Sings To Me”, featuring a unison opening verse, whose words were then given canonic, and then harmonic treatment in subsequent verses. A natural ally for this item was, of course, Dvorak’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me”, here sung by Frances Moore, tremulous, and with some breathless phrase-ends, but sweet-toned and with wonderfully secure high notes. Her two other solo items, a folk-song by Josef Haydn and a somewhat quirkily theatrical setting of the “Old Mother Hubbard” nursery rhyme by Victor Hely-Hutchinson, were brought off with aplomb, the Haydn song-birdish and radiant, and the Hely-Hutchinson setting mock-Handelian with a dash of dramatic rhetoric, singer and pianist relishing the fun of it all. A pity the quintet of voices which came together to perform 17th-century composer Thomas Vautor’s “Mother I will have a Husband” didn’t bring more temperament, more “spunk” to their otherwise nicely-sung performance – it all needed to be a bit more boldly characterised.

But the highlight of the second half of the concert was a piece composed by Carol Shortis, in response to a commission from one of the Nota Bene choir members, Judy McKay. This was for a work dedicated to her mother, Dulcie Reeve/Coutts, described as a “pianist, piano geacher, gardener, mother, grandmother, homemaker and friend to to many – generous of Spirit, loving of Heart”. The music was to a text by the Bengali poet and author Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), a poem called “My Song”. Pianist Julie Coulson’s arabesque-like figurations made for an atmospheric, almost bardic beginning to the music, the voices exploring a wide range of expression, from whispered to full-throated tones, colourings subtly changing as the composer gently drew together the choir’s cluster-harmonies (with a particularly telling harmonic “shift” towards the end). The whole work was suffused with glowing feeling, by turns radiant with the soprano soloist soaring aloft, before gliding gently downwards, and a softer tranquility of remembrance and wonderment which lingered after the sounds had ceased to be.

Cantoris explores the motet literature, from Bach to Rubbra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Cantoris: Motet Perpetuem, directed by Rachel Hyde 

Bach: Lobet den Herrn and Jesu meine Freude; Brahms: O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, Op 74 No 2; Bruckner: Ave Maria, Op 6, Os justi, Op 10; Poulenc: 4 motets pour le temps de Noël, Op 152; Rubbra: Tenebrae Motets, Op 72, Nocturne 3

St Peter’s church, Willis Street

Saturday 1 May, 7.30pm

It must be about a year since I heard Cantoris, which was one of Wellington’s leading choirs under he direction of Robert Oliver; like most musical bodies it has had its ups and downs since then. Under Robert Oliver the choir gained distinction by presenting complete performances of Handel oratorios; it is no longer possible to excite large audiences with such things, and concerts of late have been more eclectic. In the five years that Rachel Hyde has been in command, Cantoris has largely regained its former standing.

This was eclectic, though it consisted of music called motets.

The motet is not a very precisely defined class of choral composition, generally described as a choral composition to Latin words that are not a part of the Mass, but used in other church offices; its texts are usually from the Bible.

Bach’s six motets, written probably in his early years at Leipzig, are the most famous and provide models for most subsequent so-called motets. That was the theme of the concert; each of the later motets in the programme were directly or indirectly influenced by Bach’s.

So it was interesting that the singing of the two Bach motets was less polished than several of the later ones. That is undoubtedly because they present greater challenges, largely attributable to Bach’s musical erudition and his fascination with the mathematics of music.

I was a minute late and had the charming experience of hearing the choir in full flight as I entered: the urgent sounds of Lobet den Herrn, brisk, supported by clean staccato singing, with organ accompaniment (a debatable addition). Balance among the women’s voices was excellent but the men’s voices were less homogeneous, and there were moments of suspect ensemble. These flaws were most evident in the two Bach motets (in the sixth stanza of Jesu meine Freude the tenors, opening alone, drew attention to their fragility); in the Brahms motet, too, vocal quality was uneven among the tenors.

Bach’s largest and most imposing motet is Jesu meine Freude which demands singing of some dramatic quality because of the varied character of each of the 11 stanzas, that create such an elaborate and satisfying architectural structure.

Brahms modeled his German motet, O Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf, on Bach’s, though he did depart from one formal norm of the motet – Latin words, and the complexities of the opening section were handled bravely if not perfectly. The last, ‘Du wollen wir…’ allowed a purer, cleaner sound to emerge, particularly the women’s voices that were quite admirable.

Two of Bruckner’s motets followed, again accompanied by the organ (borrowed from the New Zealand School of Music). Gentler, more submissive than Brahms, they allowed all sections of the choir to be heard to better advantage; I realized that the problems of obtrusive individual male voices was overcome by softer singing: the Ave Maria was gorgeous. Voices blended beautifully in Os Justi too, and there were subtle fluctuations of dynamics.

Poulenc’s four a cappella Christmas motets were charming examples of the composers cheerful piety. Again, the choir’s strengths were more evident than its weaknesses, coping well enough with the testing rhythms, though I found the emphases on certain words rather at odds with the meaning: for example on ‘jacentem’ in the first motet. Striking a sort of news-reader’s tone made Hodie Christus natus est rather interesting.

The Tenebrae motets by Rubbra, to words that to a non-catholic, are shockingly brutal, were not familiar to me, all seemed set to music that dealt succinctly and exactly with the subject, and the choir excelled themselves in the Third Nocturne, handling it with a deliberate, serious tone yet very musically.

It was a worthy revival of music by a gifted but neglected composer, whose music was more familiar when I was young, to end an admirably devised programme.

The concert was a benefit for the restoration of the church’s organ.

New Zealand Youth Choir – the Wellington Connection

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Members of the NZ Youth Choir

Fundraising Concert for Asia/Australia Tour

Music by Tallis, Stanford, Brahms, R.Strauss, Mendelssohn, Shearing, Rachmaninov, Penderecki, Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Britten, Carter, David Farquhar, Wehi Whanau

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Wellington

23rd April 2010

At the end of June the New Zealand Youth Choir heads off to Asia for an international tour that will include concerts in Singapore, South Korea and China, before returning to Australasia via further performance dates in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney. During April, the Wellington members of the Choir gave a fundraising concert at St.Mary of the Angels’ Church, one which readily demonstrated not only the group’s corporate abilities, but individual choir members’ variety of musical skills. If the other “chapters” of the choir possess comparable abilities, the assembled group will, under their artistic director Karen Grylls, a musical force to be reckoned with.

Throughout the concert one had to “bend one’s ears” to pick up the microphoned voice-announcements in between each item, some of which were almost impossible to decipher in the reverberant acoustic of the venue. Fortunately the musical performances were unaffected, even if the placement of the singers in one or two instances didn’t do the performances complete justice. Generally the church’s ample acoustic served the singers and instrumentalists well, in both solo and ensemble items.

The concert began with a group of two English anthems, the well-known  If Ye Love Me by Thomas Tallis, and the setting by Charles Stanford of Psalm 119 Verse 1 Beati Quorum Via, the choir conducted by Ruth Kirkwood.Immediately one registered the soprano lines in the Tallis work as clear, beautifully-defined strands with a rich, full quality. With the Stanford motet the mens’ voices had more chance to shine, particularly the tenors, whose singing featured long-breathed lines and lovely pianissimi. Throughout the six parts the tuning was good and the tones both delicately and richly-sustained equally by the smaller groups and the full choir.

Following this was the Brahms Quartet Der Gang zum Liebchen (Way to the Beloved) Op.31 No.3. I would have brought the voices further forward for this, as Belinda Maclean’s excellent piano-playing was given too much physical prominence by the placement of the instrument, in places obscuring the close-knit vocal lines. Nevertheless, the group’s lovely singing gave pleasure, with only the softer, more delicately pointed harmonies failing to register as they ought, due to the balance. Strauss’s song Morgen worked better, with its more open textures and soprano Amanda Barclay’s clear, focused tones, sensitively accompanied, again by Belinda Maclean. The performers took us into the song’s heart, capturing all of the setting’s awareness, expectation and rapture – a lovely performance. Belinda Maclean was to demonstrate further talents with two harp solos later in the programme, her playing of what sounded like a “Willow Song” bringing out such beguiling qualities as a pliability of touch and phrasing that made every note a pleasure to listen to.

The choir’s delivery of Mendelssohn’s Drei Volkslieder did the music proud, with the first song’s gentle pastoral lilt set against the slightly sinister tread of the following piece’s minor-key mood, all tensions resolved with the carol-like finale. Imogen Thirwell’s wonderfully capricious performance of David Farquhar’s Princess Alice was another whose effect would have been more telling had the singer been placed further forward – as it was, her bright, eager voice and clear-as-a-bell diction delighted, as did her use of facial gesture to “flesh out” and punctuate the words. More word-pointing, this time from the whole choir, enlivened the George Searing number Lullaby of Birdland, with some lovely harmonisings and echoings of the lines throughout. At the other end of the “entertainment” scale were the performances of both Rachmaninov’s Bogoroditse Devo, the Hymn to the Virgin from the composer’s Vespers (All-Night Vigil”), and the Sanctus from Penderecki’s Requiem, the Rachmaninov bringing out the voices’ deepest and richest tones, casting a dark and ruminative spell, and the Penderecki filled with tensions and strained beauties, the lines constantly fractured or broken for expression’s sake.

More individual performaces included baritone Josh Kidd’s bright, energetic and attractively Italienate singing of Bellini’s Vaga Luna, Isaac Stone’s droll, nicely folkish rendering of Britten’s setting of the English folksong The Foggy Foggy Dew , and Jessica Lightfoot’s rapt, dusky-toned playing of the slow movement Canzonetta from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, beautifully partnered on the piano by Evie Reiney. When one thinks about it, it stands to reason that a person’s musicality would more than likely manifest itself in a number of ways, though such demonstrations of multi-faceted technical proficiency still seemed remarkable. The focus appropriately returned to the choir for the last bracket of items, including a rhythmically-alert and glorious-toned rendition of the Negro Spiritual I‘m Gonna Sing, and a beautifully-grounded final number, the Wehi Whanau’s  Wairua Tapu, complete with body actions, music that gives one the feeling of belonging to a very specific part of the world, one that the members of this choir will undoubtedly play their part in representing with great honour and distinction.

New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir astonish in competition sampler

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Taste of the NZSSC’s programme for British Columbia choral competition in July  

Musical Director: Andrew Withington; accompanist: Grant Bartley

Pataka Museum, Porirua

Friday 16 April, 7.30pm

Listening to a choir of young singers is always exhilarating; to hear the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir is more than that.  These young people, from secondary schools throughout the country sing well, and their discipline, balance and consistency of tone and pronunciation are exemplary.

What is even more astonishing is that the whole of their programme that was well over an hour long, was sung from memory.  This included everything from Schütz, Mendelssohn and David Childs to Swedish folksongs, to ‘Kua Rongo’ (performed with poi, including one young woman using long poi) to a Samoan item with drumming and exuberant action.

This choir is to travel to a competition in British Columbia, Canada, fairly soon.  They are certain to wow the audiences there, as did the 2003-04 NZSS choir; at the same competition it won three choral categories, more than any choir in the history of the competition.

These young women and men have an adult sound, yet without losing the freshness of youth.  They are well-trained by their young conductor, Andrew Withington, their vocal coaches Kate Spence and Morag Atchison, and doubtless by several language coaches also.

Most of the programme consisted of unaccompanied singing, but some items were ably accompanied by Grant Bartley on piano, and a few had the addition of double bass and drums.  There were few solos, but tenor Benson Wilson was notable in ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’ as arranged by British choral conductor and composer, Bob Chilcott.

There was variety in tonal colour different levels of sound for  the varying moods and characters of the songs, including some lovely pianissimo singing.  However, the main problem was that the choir’s robust sound was often too much in the acoustic of the main concourse at Pataka.  The space is quite narrow, and this meant a lot of reverberation that had not much room to get away (as it does in a cathedral).  To the right of the men (left from the audience’s viewpoint) was a large wooden sliding door that closes the entrance to the galleries.  The sound bounced off this, making the men’s sound seem strident at times.

The choir’s musical director needs to be aware of the need to adjust to each auditorium the choir sings in.  Similarly, the piano sounded unnecessarily loud and percussive at times, the effect of the narrowness of the space and the wooden floor.  At the concert I attended on Sunday afternoon in St Andrew’s on The Terrace in Wellington, it was notable that a velvet rug had been placed under the piano, to absorb some of the sound.

It was marvellous to see as many tenors as basses in the choir; surely the envy of every other choir!  It is to be hoped that these young men will all graduate to community choirs who are desperate for tenors!

From a very interesting and varied programme it is only possible to mention some items, without writing an extended essay.  The two Swedish Folksongs (arr. Hugo Alfvén) were lilting yet lively, and to my untutored ear (though I have been to Sweden), the pronunciation sounded authentic; at any rate, everyone pronounced the vowels in the same way.  David Hamilton’s ‘Caliban’s Song’ was a most beautiful setting of Shakespeare’s words.

Visually, there was variety from the placing of the singers depending on whether the work was for single SATB or double choir (all movements were efficiently and gracefully made); in the second half the singers wore diagonal sashes.  Then there were the actions, including poi, in ‘Kua Rongo’ and much vociferous actifity in ‘Mauga e ole Atuolo’.  ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ and ‘I got Rhythm’ were accompanied by appropriate swing movement.

The choir has excellent choral technique, and intonation was perfect.  Songs were sung in German, Latin, English, Swedish, Maori and Samoan  eleven songs in all, plus encore.  Through all of this memorised programme, with its difficulties, the choir members appeared relaxed and confident.

Go well in Canada!  You deserve to win your classes.  New Zealanders should be proud of you  if only the news media would inform them of your existence and your excellence!

The Tudor Consort – Holy Week Lamentations

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae – Music for Holy Week

Works by ANON (Gregorian Chant), THOMAS TALLIS, ERNST KRENEK, GIOVANNI DA  PALESTRINA and ROBERT WHITE

The Tudor Consort

Michael Stewart, director

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Good Friday, 2nd April 2010

Thanks to Vaughan Williams’ well-known Fantasia for String Orchestra, the musical language of Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) has a familiar ring for many concert-goers. The composer’s intensely melancholy minor modes with their “dying fall”, were quoted by Vaughan Williams from the work Archbishop Parker’s Psalter, and were also very much in evidence throughout what we heard of Tallis’s during this concert. The music seems to speak directly across the centuries, evoking at once both a timelessness and the atmosphere of the troubled times in which the music was composed.  Tallis’s settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, taken from the Old Testament and describing the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., were part of a Good Friday presentation given by the Tudor Consort, featuring various settings of these Lamentations, among them one from the twentieth century by Ernst Krenek (1900-91), and others by Palestrina and a lesser-known English Renaissance composer, Robert White. Two liturgical responses from Gregorian plainchant provided both framework and context for Tallis’s and Krenek’s settings in the concert’s first half.

For me, the Tudor Consort’s presentation in Sacred Heart Cathedral on Good Friday evening was magnificent, but also risky. I thought the repertoire chosen was possibly too consistently meditative, lacking the context of an on-going ritual or any marked contrast with different music. Of course, one suspects that, as with the case of the music-lover who compiles concert-hall-length presentations of slow movements only, there will be various staunch ideas regarding how best to present this repertoire in public. On Friday evening the insertion of two pieces of plainchant between the first-half settings of the Lamentations provided a little of the foil against which these pieces could have individually shone and glowed, not to say placed as part of a service – I liked the juxtapositioning of voices in the first Gregorian Chant exerpt , the Responsary In monte Oliveti shared between Michael Stewart singing the verse “Vigilate…..” and the choir’s wonderfully sinuous unison lines in response. But I felt less comfortable during the somewhat disembodied rendition by Stewart of the plainchant Lesson In coena Domini from the pulpit as the prelude to Krenek’s Lamentations setting – less to do with the singer’s own voice than his seeming abandonment of the choir, left standing in place as though it had been suddenly decommissioned.

Individually, the items were difficult to fault as regards singing, pacing and shaping – in every case the message of the text was projected with expression appropriate to the words’ meaning, Michael Stewart’s control of the ebb and flow of the singers’ delivery ensuring a constant connection on the part of the singers between words, phrases, paragraphs and whole works, and their message. But I wondered whether, by the time we had reached Robert White’s second-half Lamentations setting, a “less-is-more” situation was starting to develop. Given that the settings did use different texts in most instances, the almost wall-to-wall complaint and beseechment did begin to weigh upon the spirit of at least one listener, especially as the second half had no leavening plainchant or contrasting interlude between the two sets (Palestrina and White).

What was evident was that, with Palestrina after the interval, Vaughan Williams completely disappeared! The textures of the Italian’s writing seemed richer, and certainly different harmonically – perhaps something to do with a “certainty” or “centering” of spiritual identity, unencumbered by the travails of Protestant upheaval. Certainly, his work is regarded as having, in the words of one critic, “an austere serenity almost unique in post-medieval Christian art” – and the work of the choir brought out this beauty in places like the sopranos’ “Pupilli facti sumus” (all of this beautiful music, here and elsewhere, depicting despair and abandonment!), and tellingly-attenuated lines throughout the concluding “Jerusalem”, a beautifully-voiced supplication.

Following Palestrina’s setting, Robert White’s Lamentations sounded very “English”, a return some of the way to the sound-world of Thomas Tallis. Whether it was because the evening was wearing on and the singers were tiring, I didn’t really know; but I thought the choir’s lines not as “moulded” as earlier, with the tenors especially likely to ever-so-slightly obtrude, – though I must say that, for me this stimulated the ear and enlivened the textures in places, and dispelled any hint of bland homogeneity. As with Tallis, there seems to me an underlying melancholy about the harmonies, one that permeates English choral music – perhaps the influence of folksong? Some lovely moments in this work were nicely brought off by the choir – one I noted at the conclusion of “Sordes ejus…” in which the spaces between low men’s and high women’s voices suggested to me the breadth and depth of mankind’s affliction. As well a beautifully osmotic impetus was generated by the first “Jerusalem, Jerusalem”, beginning with the tenderness of the tenors’ supplication, and gathering girth and intensity with “..convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum” right through the descending repetitions.

A brief word on Ernst Krenek’s setting, which, despite one or two strained moments, was brought off quite magnificently by the Consort – sounds filled with light and air at the beginning, out of which spaces grew harmonies nicely piquant and kaleidoscopic. Again, evocative realms were generated between lower and higher voices, even if the harmonies at each end were often tightly-worked – and I liked a long, rolling section during which women’s voices soared above the lines of momentum with single high notes, before descending to continue the flow. The sinuous lines of the “Jerusalem” section explored far-flung paths, Michael Stewart keeping the voices in touch with considerable skill and sensitivity. An unexpected delight!

SMP Ensemble: Nexus – Poles Apart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SMP Ensemble

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

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

Henryk Gorecki, Richard Robertshawe, Andrzej Nowicki, Carol Shortis

The SMP Ensemble

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

Wednesday 10th March

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A truly festive “Symphony of a Thousand”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MAHLER – Symphony No.8

(“Symphony of a Thousand”)

Twyla Robinson (sop.) / Marina Shaguch (sop.) / Sara Macliver (sop.) / Dagmar Peckova (m-sop.) / Bernadette Cullen (m-sop.) / Simon O’Neill (tenor) / Markus Eiche (baritone) / Martin Snell (bass)

New Zealand Youth Choir / Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir / Christchurch City Choir / Orpheus Choir of Wellington / Choristers of Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)

New Zealand International Festival of the Arts Opening Concert Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 26th February, 2010

No, it wasn’t opera, but it was in its own way as spectacular, and as an occasion did give a “festive” kind of thrill for all concerned, which was exactly what was wanted. This most flamboyant of all of Mahler’s works (its nickname “Symphony of a Thousand” stemming from the first public performance in Munich in 1910, conducted by the composer, in which 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists took part) is perhaps the most perfect festival offering that symphonic music can provide. Of course the work can be performed quite satisfactorily with somewhat lesser numbers, as it was on this occasion (three hundred choral voices, eight soloists and a hundred-and-twenty instrumentalists) all of whom when singing and playing together made a wonderful noise in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre!

Spectacle was certainly one of the ingredients of the proceedings, to which was added the lustrous glow of the presence on the podium of one of the world’s most renowned musicians, Vladimir Ashkenazy. Originally finding fame and honour as one of the great interpreters of the romantic keyboard classics, Ashkenazy has for the past thirty years consolidated a “second career” as a conductor, though he continues to perform and record as a pianist. In the past I’d not associated him greatly with the music of Mahler, although he’s conducted the symphonies with various orchestras in different parts of the world, coming to them through his involvement with the music of Shostakovich, the latter a professed admirer of the older composer’s music. Ashkenazy has recorded several of the Mahler Symphonies with the Czech Philharmonic already, but over the next two years there are plans to both perform and record all of the symphonies with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, of which he’s Principal Conductor.

Along with Ashkenazy, the performance boasted an impressive lineup of soloists, one which included two New Zealanders presently building successful career portfolios as performers overseas, tenor Simon O’Neill and bass Martin Snell. With German baritone Markus Eiche the men made a formidable trio of voices, their strength and consistency overshadowing the women’s quartet, in which soprano Marina Shaguch alone seemed completely at home with her part, delivering her soaring lines with an ease and freedom that her colleagues couldn’t quite match. Fellow soprano Twyla Robinson approached her in fervour, even if her highest notes occasionally showed strain; while both mezzos, Dagmar Peckova and Bernadettte Cullen kept their lines secure and reliable throughout. If they seemed relatively underpowered in places when singing solo, they made up for it through their sterling ensemble work, especially amid the feverish energies of the Symphony’s first, and largely vocal part. Soprano Sara McLiver’s brief but mellifluous contribution to Part Two as Mater Gloriosa was another strength of the performance, her voice placed further back than the other soloists for an other-worldly effect, even if her all-too-workmanlike entrance and exit through the choral ranks somehow didn’t go with the ethereal quality of her singing.

Mahler’s intention with this work was to give the impression of “the whole universe beginning to sing and resound…..no longer human voices, but coursing planets and suns”. Ashkenazy very quickly set the music on its course at the start, galvanising his forces into action, almost before the audience had finished welcoming the great man onto the platform, and was settling itself down once again in preparation for the work’s beginning. The music was more fire and volatile energy in Ashkenazy’s hands than cosmic majesty, his precise beat keeping things moving, with the sound-surges erupting like geysers and blowholes, but without ever tipping over into stridency or incoherent noise. During Part One the few orchestra-only passages were packed with beautifully-articulated detail, the sheer effervescence of the string-playing more than compensating for a slight moment of imprecision at the final surge forward in tempo towards the end, where the build-up of overlapping voices and instrumental tones did indeed give the impression of the universe itself bursting into full-throated song.

By contrast with the “music of the spheres” aspect of the symphony’s opening, the second part takes us to the very heart of German Romanticism, Mahler’s setting of the final part of Goethe’s Faust. Here the orchestra paints a stark, rugged landscape representing a world of direct contact between nature and the human spirit – Goethe’s directions, reproduced with the text, speak of “Mountain, gorge, forest, cliff, desert”, with “Holy Anchorites…sheltering in rocky clefts”. Ashkenazy and the orchestra seemed to underline the contrasts within the instrumental prelude between the starker, more jagged and elemental writing, and passages of smoother, warmer legato harmonies, as if representing human aspiration and feeling seeking communion with these wild, rugged natural places. I felt the dry-ish aspect of the MFC robbed the hushed choral entries of much of their resonance and atmosphere, so that the musicians had to work that extra bit harder to convey the depth and fullness of Mahler’s vision – fortunately the performers possessed the necessary skill, concentration and focus to bring out the music’s raw power and sense of awe. Both Markus Eiche as Pater Ecstaticus and Martin Snell as Pater Profundus made the most of their wonderful declamations, the former energetic and passionate, the latter rich and sonorous, if ever-so-slightly troubled by the highest of his notes. As for Simon O’Neill, singing the part of Doctor Marianus, once one accepted a slightly “pinched” quality to his highest tones, his whole-hearted, engagingly radiant acclamation of the Mater Gloriosa, accompanied by the children’s and women’s choruses, readily evoked the presence of the “Eternal Feminine”, and even managed to transcend the incredibly cheesiness of the euphonium-accompanied string passage which Mahler wrote to depict Goethe’s directive “Mater Gloriosa soars into view”.

Throughout, the choruses gave their all, including the children’s choir whose singing made up in charm and point what it lacked in sheer volume, in places. After the magnificently energetic and all-encompassing fervour of Part One, the different choirs girded their loins and with Ashkenazy’s encouragement gave us exactly what the more diffuse Part Two demanded – long-breathed utterances interspersed with episodes of transcendent delight. What Mahler said about symphony – “It is like the world – it should contain everything!” was brought to triumphant fruition by the final “Chorus Mysticus”, whose gigantic paean of acclamation must have rumbled and shaken every fibre of being in the auditorium. Ashkenazy responded charmingly to the enthusiastic applause of the audience at the end by insisting upon repeated bows from the soloists, to further applause, and so on.

It’s well worth recording that, as if these goings-on within the Michael Fowler Centre weren’t enough to proclaim “festive occasion”, there were worlds wrought outside worlds for a wider audience, courtesy of good will and technological wizardry. The performance of the symphony was relayed “live” via big screen and speaker colonnades to a crowded Civic Square, an absolutely splendid gesture on the part of the festival organisers, the orchestra and, one supposes, Ashkenazy himself, as the concert itself had been sold out for many days beforehand. Happily, the weather was kind that evening, and the music-making was, according to my spies, conveyed vividly and truthfully enough to make for a memorable out-of-doors Mahlerian experience. So whether one was outside or within the hall, that sense of the spectacular and extraordinary was all around, which for an Arts Festival is, of course, just how it should have been.

The Tudor Consort sings Byrd

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Motets from the two volumes of William Byrd’s Gradualia; two organ fantasias; Motet: ‘Domine quis habitabit’

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart, with Douglas Mews (organ)

Sopranos Jane McKinlay, Anna Sedcole, Erin King; alto Andrea Cochrane; counter-tenor Dimitrios Theodoridis; tenors Philip Roderick and Richard Taylor; basses Brian Hesketh, Matthew Painter, Richard Walley.

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart; Saturday 13 February 2010

The Tudor Consort’s first concert of 2010 was wholly devoted to vocal liturgical music by William Byrd, apart from the inclusion of two of his keyboard fantasias played by Douglas Mews.

The choir’s director, Michael Stewart, spoke before the concert about Byrd’s two volumes of Gradualia, a term used sometimes used for the settings of the ‘Proper’ of the Mass – the part that varies according to the festivals of the church calendar – as well as for one section within the ‘Proper’; and he distinguished the ‘Proper’ from the ‘Ordinary’ of the mass whose six parts are unvarying: the usual content of musical mass settings. He also spoke of Byrd’s difficult times as a Catholic in the reign of Protestant monarchs Elizabeth I and James I, and the effect it had on his musical settings; and touched on the textual difficulties of Byrd’s publications, particularly of the first Volume of Gradualia.

Though ten members of the choir were on hand, most of the pieces were sung one voice to a part, varying between four and six voices; the final motet, ‘Domine quis habitabit’, demanded nine voices.

Though this was undoubtedly authentic in terms of the forces Byrd was probably limited to in Protestant England, we have no way of knowing whether, if his Catholic liturgical music had been written in times when performances did not have to be very private and small scale, he would not have expected a larger choir. Does it really serve the music well to pursue authenticity in such a literal way?

One voice to a part is undoubtedly a more challenging matter than singing in a larger choir where a good blend is probably easier to achieve and the experience for each singer is no doubt less nerve-wracking; and where the enjoyment of the audience might just be increased.

For the most part rehearsals seemed to have produced reasonable confidence in the singers. These are talented and well-schooled singers, but throughout the concert I was never unaware that the very distinct voices did not blend particularly well to create an illusion of real homogeneity.

The voices that stood out tended to be the high ones: the three sopranos and counter-tenor Dimitrios Theodoridis. In the pieces from the first volume of Gradualia, the strong and penetrating voices of Theodoridis and Anna Sedcole were conspicuous while mezzo Andrea Cochrane’s warm voice seemed rather better adapted to creating a successful blend. She, and the lower men’s voices, created an attractive liturgical ambience.

The ten singers took turns singing in each group of motets, adhering strictly to one voice to a part. The concert took examples of the 109 motets that comprise the two books, for various feasts or festivals: for the Virgin Mary in Advent, for Corpus Christi, for Pentecost, for the Assumption and for Saints Peter and Paul.

Jane McKinlay took over the soprano role in the next group, for Corpus Christi, her voice a little more readily blending, in the calm Offertory and the following ‘Ave verum corpus‘ where hers was the only female voice, supported by the two tenors Philip Roderick and Richard Taylor and bass Matthew Painter; something of a real choral sound was produced. The singing succeeded in reflecting the gruesome nature of the words contemplating Christ’s mutilated body.

Though the range of vocal styles is limited, the subtle differences emerge as the ear and mind become acclimatized; the Sequence from the Pentacost Propers, ‘Veni sancta spiritus’ expressed through lively dotted rhythms, was an interesting case.

I detected some uncertainty in the next motet, ‘Factus est repente’ and raggedness in the Assumption Introit, ‘Gaudeamus omnes’. But the general precision and the scrupulous attention that had been paid to dynamics and intonation were far more noteworthy.

Douglas Mews played two fantasias on the chamber organ; the first, Byrd’s own arrangement of one of his fantasias for viol consort, the other an original organ fantasia. The first, in C, struck me as rather overcome by its subdued character, its interest lying in its slowly evolving textures; the second, in A minor, was probably an early piece, not very sophisticated though technically accomplished; the playing suggested some hesitancy.

The final motet, ‘Domine quis habitabit’, came as something of a welcome change, partly because it uses more voices and offered a wider sonic palette, with less tendency for individual voices to dominate. It too was an early work, as the programme note points out, thus closer in spirit and technique to Tallis, and perhaps not as representative of the mature Byrd as are the Gradualia. Nevertheless the constant, elaborate counterpoint was an impressive statement of the composer’s genius. It was a happy conclusion to the concert, allowing us finally to enjoy the essential strength and skill of the choir.

There is another question that I’m prompted to raise here.

In a time when Christian belief and practice are at a historic low, and familiarity with the terminology of the liturgy and church practice are only vaguely understood by the majority and probably not even very well by many Catholic adherents, is it time that the presumption of understanding of the arcane references to the liturgy and church ritual, without elucidation, was reconsidered? Short glossary notes should be routinely offered whenever such expressions are used.

While Stewart did explain the significance of the Ordinary and the Proper of the Mass, such pains were not routine. To take a few examples of terms for which no explanation was offered. First: the meaning and significance and place in the service of the Gradual, Antiphon, Introit, Offertory, Responsory, Eucharist; and what is ‘a votive mass’? And it should be routine to set down the dates and meanings of the various Christian feasts – Assumption, Pentecost, Advent, Annunciation, etc. There is a great deal more.

As with so much else in the realm of ‘classical’ music, the use of such terms, without simple explanation, is very likely one of the reasons this music is considered ‘elitist’, beyond the reach of the un-trained, the un-lettered: in fact, the great majority of people who are no longer exposed by their families, at any point in their school lives, or subsequently through the media, to religious liturgy or classical music of any kind.

 

Rites of Exultation – The Bach Choir of Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

PURCELL – Come, Ye Sons of Art

HANDEL – Coronation Anthems

Pepe Becker (soprano)

Andrea Cochrane and Katherine Hodge (altos)

Kieran Rayner (bass)

The Chiesa Ensemble (Leader, Rebecca Struthers)

The Bach Choir

Stephen Rowley (conductor)

St Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 13th December 2009

What a tonic after reading the Sunday newspapers to go to such a concert! Here we had music by two of the greatest of all composers bent on celebrating all that’s gracious, noble and glorious about the idea of royal rule, transcending all the all-too-human preoccupation with aspects of human foible, such as scandal, gossip and intrigue, and setting the monarchy itself upon high with tones whose beauty, energy and magnificence ennoble the state of kings and queens. In each composer’s case the music that was produced spoke for the ordinary person, giving tongue to his or her feelings concerning the pride and righteousness of being a much-loved monarch’s subject.

The concert began with Henry Purcell’s Birthday Ode for Queen Mary of 1694, the last of six odes he wrote for a popular monarch, who was to tragically die of smallpox within eight months of the composer writing this final paean of praise for her – Purcell could not have forseen at the time that he would shortly be writing the Funeral Music for his Queen, or that the same music would be performed less than a year later at his own funeral. The words, whose authorship is doubtful (though some think it could be Nahum Tate, who wrote the libretto for Purcell’s most famous opera “Dido and Aeneas”, and the previous year’s birthday ode for the Queen), evoke the spirits of music to celebrate the queen’s birthday – her fondness for music would presumably have inspired Purcell and his librettist to couch their praises for her in the most metaphorically musical ways, a wide range of  instruments giving tongue to joy, celebration and praise – “Strike the viol, touch the lute, wake the harp, inspire the flute!”

Purcell was able to transcend the somewhat earthbound quality of the verses with energising phrasings and rhythms that lift the commonplace up into the realms of great art: The words “Come, ye sons of art, away, tune all your voices and instruments play, to celebrate this triumphant day” when set by Purcell, become a mellifluously-constructed ode to a friend and patroness of music, immortalising her in the process. Before the verses appear, the composer gives us a full Italian-styled three-part sinfonia, concluding with a grave adagio that serves to highlight the solemnity of the occasion and throw into relief the joyousness of the invocations to Art and Music to follow. Purcell’s librettists for these works were not great poets, apart from Sir Charles Sedley, who wrote the verses for the fourth Ode of 1692, Love’s goddess sure was blind. The satirist Thomas Brown, recognising this, wrote the perceptive lines “For where the author’s scanty words have fail’d / Your Happier Graces, Purcell, have prevail’d”.

The playing of the Chiesa Ensemble, led by Rebecca Struthers, was splendid at the outset – strings and trumpets set the scene with bright, shining tones and energised phrasings that brought the music nicely to life – conductor Stephen Rowley chose tempi that allowed phrases to be savoured by the players, whose momentum was generated by dint of accent and phrasing rather than merely speed. After the solemn adagio alto Andrea Cochrane surprisingly took the pulpit for “Come Ye Sons of Art”, placing her alongside the back rows of the choir – a miscalculation, I thought, as she should have been far further forward (in the front, next to the conductor) and more immediate-sounding. She sang very beautifully, but her invocation to the “Sons of Art” had insufficient power and persuasion, due to her backward placement. Similarly, both she and Katherine Hodge were further disadvantaged in “Sound the Trumpet”, not only backwardly-placed, but distanced from the continuo instruments (Eleanor Carter’s ‘cello and Douglas Mews’ harpsichord) who were providing the rhythmic trajectories of the music with such buoyancy. Both singers sang beautifully, blending and dovetailing their tones nicely, and keeping nicely in touch with their instrumentalists; but both of their rather soft-grained voices needed all the forward projection that was available to them, in order to sound the clarion calls that Purcell surely intended.

Having more brightly-focused and strongly-projected tones, both soprano Pepe Becker and bass Kieran Rayner were able to realise more successfully  the more “public” aspect of the Ode.  Kieran Rayner’s declamations sonorously encompassed all but the highest notes without a hint of strain – the  words “Grant, oh grant, and let it have the honour of a jubilee” in particular were clearly and splendidly hurled forth. And the aria “These are the Sacred Charms” was marked by more mellifluous singing from the bass, a momentary voice-slip towards the end apart.  Pepe Becker’s singing of “Bid the Virtues”, in duet with the oboe, while paying less attention, I thought, to word-painting than to the production of beautiful tones, realised some lovely moments, among them a beautifully-arched “Blessing with returns of prayer, their great defender’s care”. Again, I think the backward placement of the singers robbed the words of some of their expression, rather generalising the solo voices’ effect (not that the poetry was anything to write home about, but even the most banal words can be transformed by settings of genius, as here). Soprano and bass shared the festive splendour of the final verse-settings “Thus Nature, rejoicing” with rich and noble tones from all concerned, the timpani flourishes at the end capping off the celebratory effect in fine style.

Handel’s Coronation Anthems, written for the Coronation of King George II and his Queen Caroline in 1727, have proven among the most durable of his works, used in coronation ceremonies of monarchs since then, and regarded as epitomising the composer’s most public and grandiloquent manner. Of course, the music was written for performing in Westminister Abbey, and as such deals in broad brush-strokes of sound, written for maximum public effect. With a choir of fifty voices and instrumentalists numbering in excess of a hundred and fifty, that first performance must have made a splendid noise! St.Andrew’s in Wellington is certainly no Westminster Abbey, but the effect when the Bach Choir’s voices took up the opening words of “Zadok the Priest’ was scalp-prickling. There was a nice sense of processional about the instrumental introduction, Stephen Rowley’s tempi both here, and in the more vigorous “God Save the King” section which concludes the anthem, I thought perfectly judged to bring out the music’s spacious grandeur, allowing the players to put real point and “girth” in their phrasing.

The second anthem, “Let Thy Hand be Strengthened” saw oboe and strings bring a pleasing variation of colour to the music, the singing nicely “rounded” in effect, not perhaps especially pointed, but entirely lacking any mannerism of emphasis or articulation. The minor-key mood of “Let justice and judgement” was allowed all its deep-hued gravity, unfolding and breathing naturally, while the “Alleluias” at the end had plenty of spring and energy. In the next anthem “My Heart is Inditing” I wanted a bit more “spring” from the voices in their opening passagework, something of the kind that was readily provided by the oboes in similar passages throughout. I liked the sopranos’ emphasis on the word “inditing” in their vocal line, something which energised and personalised the words’ delivery. Again, Stephen Rowley managed a tempo at “Kings daughters” which allowed the phrasings of the music to set the rhythmic trajectory of the whole, and again brought out the loveliness of the soprano voices, an effect that was also noticeable, in tandem with the oboes, at “Upon thy right hand”. With the final “Kings shall be thy nursing fathers”, the brass and timpani again came into their own, as they did in the final anthem “The King Shall Rejoice”. Perhaps the concluding “alleluias” were a shade too fast for the choir’s comfort, the voices striving to keep with the conductor’s beat and with the playing of the orchestra – but the effect overall was of great exhilaration and a marvellous sense of occasion, which is what we got, and was, surely, what the composer intended!

Messiah from Kapiti Chamber Choir

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Messiah by Handel. Conducted by Guy Jansen with Kapiti Chamber Choir, members of the former Bel Canto and friends, and an orchestra  

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday 29 November 2009  

It looked as if this would be the first year, in living memory, that none of our choirs had scheduled a Messiah, when news came of a performance by the Kapiti Chamber Choir, one of Peter Godfrey’s former choirs. Conducted by Guy Jansen, it was likely to be as fine a performance as any we have heard, and so it has transpired.

There were two performances: the first on Sunday 22 November at Paraparaumu and the second in Wellington on the 29th. Today, it is more common to use rather smaller choral forces than a few decades ago when huge Victorian choirs were favoured. The performances in Handel’s time didn’t exceed 40 or so. On Sunday there were 40 singers.

The result was one of the most splendid performances I’ve heard.

Part of the secret was the addition of members of the former Bel Canto choir and friends: that was an ensemble of mainly professional solo voices, founded by Jansen in 1987 and disbanded in 1998 after he left to teach at the University of Queensland (what a shame no New Zealand university grabbed him).

They added to the strength and spirit of the entire ensemble, sharpening attack, dramatizing dynamics and expression, and generating an exciting, vivid sound; the distinct choral groups allowed the music to be passed from one to another in an electrifying, dramatic way; and each group took certain choruses on its own. With Jansen’s inspiring leadership, they produced sounds ranging from magical calm to awful fury. I used to feel at times that Bel Canto’s drawback lay in the strength and individuality of many of the voices, not properly merged in a uniform sound. It was not evident here.

All the solo roles were taken by eight Bel Canto (and friends) singers, almost all in fine voice; they happen to be still among Wellington’s best singers.

One of the things he drew attention to in his pre-concert talk, was the belief that success lay in rooting the singing in the meaning of the words, their sounds and rhythms. And that became very clear in the performance; it lent every number, every line, its particular character; clarity of diction too benefitted from this attention. It struck me first during the chorus’s singing of ‘Every Valley’. Care with sense and dynamics, word colours, rhythms and ornaments were all gained from the attention paid to this aspect.  

Particularly striking were sopranos Janey MacKenzie (‘How beautiful are the feet’: ethereal high notes) and Barbara Graham whose bracket was confined to those following the Pastoral symphony ending emotionally in quite operatic character in ‘Rejoice greatly’.

However, I dare not make distinctions between the others, basses Roger Wilson (fearsome in ‘Thus saith the Lord’ and clarion high notes in ‘The trumpet shall sound’) and Rodney Macann (who joined Alison Hodge in ‘But who may abide…’, alternating benevolence and wrath, and his own ‘Why do the nations’, all outrage); and tenors Ed Hintz (pure high notes in the opening ‘Comfort Ye’) and John Beaglehole who sang ‘Thy rebuke hath broken his heart’ with real anguish. Soprano Lesley Graham sang two major arias in Part 3, ‘I know that my redeemer liveth’ and ‘If God be for us’; the two altos: Alison Hodge’s ardent ‘O thou that tellest’ was embellished with a fine violin obbligato, while Denise Wilson shared ‘He shall feed his flock’ capably with Janey MacKenzie.

The small orchestra played like professionals; strings were polished, confident and energetic, oboes lovely, trumpets commanding; and Jonathan Berkahn’s contribution to continuo was often marked, and though I was not aware at the time because his name was not in the programme, it was Douglas Mews who opened up the main organ to add to the excitement of the final numbers, creating an ecstasy of religious triumphalism.  There was a standing ovation.

(An expansion of the review in The Dominion Post)