Tag: concerto

Masters of whole worlds: Mozart and Mahler with the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
MOZART – Violin Concerto No.4 in D Major K.218
MAHLER – Symphony No.9 in D Major

Simone Lamsma (violin)
Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 8th August, 2014

What to play at a concert along with a Mahler Symphony? It’s a question that has diverted promoters, critics and musicians themselves over the years, and the various possible solutions seem often to complicate further rather than clarify matters.

It isn’t so much the actual music that’s the problem – it’s the awkward length of Mahler’s symphonic conceptions that makes programming with other pieces something of a challenge. At least the composer’s First and Fourth Symphonies aren’t so problematical due to their shorter durations – each can easily accommodate a “normal” first half of, say, an overture followed by a concerto, within a concert.

Not so the other Mahler symphonies, all of which are that bit too lengthy to allow anything pre-interval along the lines of the above, though, apart from the longest of them, the Third Symphony, not quite of the length that normally takes up a whole concert. Having said that, two of the works – the “Resurrection” (No.2) and the “Symphony of a Thousand”(No.8) are such spectacles in themselves that on that count they’re often played “alone” – in each case the sheer “size” of the experience comes from other considerations beside the music’s time-span.

The work featured in tonight’s concert, the Ninth Symphony, though perhaps less viscerally spectacular than either of the above, has the kind of gravitas that can make it a stand-alone piece as well. The conductor of tonight’s performance, Edo de Waart, said in an interview a day or so before the concert that he usually performed the Ninth on its own, as he felt it would overshadow anything else that’s played. If something else was chosen to be performed at the same concert it would have to be “strong”.

Perhaps Mahler himself gave a kind of “guide-line” with a remark he reportedly made to Sibelius when discussing the nature of symphonic form – in response to Sibelius’s professed attraction to the form’s “severity and logic”, Mahler exclaimed that “symphony is like the world – it should embrace everything!”.  I certainly thought that on this occasion the choice of the Mozart Violin Concerto (K.218 in D Major) presented by Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma was appropriate – it seemed to me to fulfill at once that “all-embracing” aspiration valued by the composer, while presenting two uniquely characterful works with their own clearly-defined boundaries.

As it turned out, the Mozart concerto was given a delightful performance by Simone Lamsma, her bright, silvery entry banishing for the remainder of the performance a slightly wiry-sounding beginning to the work from the NZSO strings, and her energy and élan nicely countering an initial impression of petiteness. I thought her passagework most characterful, her accented notes given plenty of emphasis, bringing out a “layered” quality to the music.

The cadenza developed these perspectives further, getting very physical and gutsy playing, the sequence sounding more like Beethoven’s voice in places than Mozart’s! We then got a heavenly “andante cantabile” at the slow movement’s beginning, the soloist’s floated notes exquisite-sounding, her silvery discourse sensitively accompanied by the ensemble, and, in conclusion, capped off by a cadenza for the violin which occasionally broke into what sounded like birdsong.

Not to be outdone in effect, the finale took us through poised, gavotte-like steps by way of introduction, and then whirled us into an allegro, the exchanges between the two sequences continuing throughout the movement. And such an exuberant cadenza! – demonstrating to us the soloist’s brilliant fingerwork, and leavened in places by pure, elevated tones. After this came a lovely, “dying fall” kind of finish to the work of the “that’s all, folks!” variety, not unlike what the composer had also done in his previous violin concerto – all very piquant and charming.

And so to the Mahler – it was true, as Edo de Waart had pointed out, that this work was perfectly capable of standing alone in concert – but having the Mozart concerto first up we felt more “tuned in”, at one by this stage with the ambience of the listening-spaces, and with the throes of our day-to-day existence put well aside, ready to face Mahler’s symphonic retelling of his life’s most profound “dark night of the soul”.

The conductor had said when interviewed that “one needs a top orchestra” for this work, so I think he would have been thrilled with the NZSO’s response to his direction throughout the symphony – certainly his demeanour at the end and his ready acknowledgement of the players indicated his wholehearted appreciation of their efforts. Each of the movements here had a surety of impulse, touch and expression, the structures clearly outlined, the emotions unlocked and ready for we listeners to square up to.

Those enormously cataclysmic first-movement climaxes which characterise the composer’s despair in the face of his all-too-pressing mortal sickness and imminent destruction were here delivered directly and swiftly, growing from the musical textures rather than over-laden, or imposed from outside – obviously the “line”, the shape and coherence of the music was important to de Waart, something not achieved lightly, but integral to the flow. I felt it was more “musical” than “psychological” in the conductor’s hands, concerned less with emotional extremes and more with soundscapes, making the throes of despair more of a human than a personal problem, with its own set of resonances.

In this the conductor was supported by a plethora of superbly-wrought orchestral detail, the occasional brass “blip” like “spots on the sun” (as someone said once about the great pianist Alfred Cortot’s wrong notes!), playing whose richness and variation of colour and texture fully realised Mahler’s love for the world and his agony at the thought of having to relinquish life so peremptorily. The word “leb’wohl” (farewell) readily came to mind in tandem with the two-note theme that dominated the music.

Both middle movements were strong on “attitude”, the Landler/Waltz by turns good-naturedly bucolic and sentimental at the beginning, with the quicker waltz-music taking on an almost manic aspect in places, before everything ground almost to a halt, leaving the rustic tune to run its course, here nicely tossed about the orchestra before cheekily ending with a piccolo phrase.

Set against this drollery was the harsh Rondo-Burleske, here a tightly-coiled set of poses and  rapier-like thrusts, purposeful and almost business-like in its insistence and cruelty. Whatever savage humour could have been lurking around corners and in alcoves, de Waart’s splendidly-maintained focus gave it no chance, though the claustrophobic mood was relieved by a trio-like section featuring a nostalgic, splendidly-played trumpet solo.

The frenetic, abyss-bound final pages of the Rondo, brilliantly delivered, were succeeded by sounds which seemed wrung from tissues of pure emotion by the strings, playing at first in octaves and then generously flooding the textures with warmly-impassioned harmonies – conductor and players here made this moment work as profoundly as I’ve ever heard it presented. But even more impressive were the work’s final few minutes, here played with such rapt beauty and concentration as I’ve rarely experienced anywhere in a concert hall – string phrases and sound-impulses that suggested all too palpably a farewell to life, a leave-taking whose silences continued to sound for what seemed like ages afterwards – for all of us present, very much the stuff of legends.

This performance’s dedication, announced before the concert, to the recently-deceased Franz-Paul Decker, for many years the NZSO’s Music Director, had no more appropriate voice than that final movement of a work that had been one of Decker’s greatest interpretative achievements. The old maestro’s shade would have sighed contentedly in tandem with those beautifully-realised, seemingly-endless silences to which we were all so very privileged to be able to lend our  presence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anniversaries, celebrations and NZ premieres – NZSM Orchestra at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
PASTORAL ELEGY
Music by Gade, Villa-Lobos, Vaughan Williams

NIELS GADE – Overture “Hamlet”
(Vincent Hardaker – conductor)
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS – ‘Cello Concerto No.2
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Symphony No.3 “Pastoral”
Inbal Megiddo (‘cello)
Alicia Cardwgan (soprano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
NZ School of Music Orchestra

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

Wednesday, 6th August, 2014

I thought this an exceptional concert in every way! – innovative repertoire choices were thrillingly and memorably supported by skilled and strongly-focused, committed playing from all concerned.

Each piece as presented had its own world and voiced its own particular character – partly the result of stylistic and contextual differences, but also  indicative of the extent to which these musicians were determined to get to grips with things, and put across the music’s differing flavours, colours and feelings.

I’d never before encountered either the Niels Gade overture or the Villa-Lobos concerto (the performance of the latter by ‘cellist Inbal Megiddo was, in fact, the New Zealand premiere). Gade may have been thought conservative in musical outlook by his contemporaries and by subsequent posterity, but I thought his “Hamlet” Overture fully worthy of Shakespeare, as regards the music’s beauty, dignity, energy and theatricality.

Conductor Vincent Hardaker and his players deftly nailed the “cat-like tread” mood of the opening, preparing the ambiences for the intense, dramatic urgencies that grew, spectre-like, out of the textures. Though not strictly following the play’s action, the music portrayed a good deal of the drama’s significant moods and character interactions.

A telling example of this came with the strings’ very Lisztian melody depicting the beautiful but ill-fated Ophelia’s love for the Prince, and the music’s gradual disintegration as the girl’s madness and death drew near, lyricism undermined and eventually overlaid by repeated turbulence and purposeful strength. A final ‘cello solo then sounded over rich brass chordings, suggesting some kind of valediction being played out, the tragedy grimly resolved. I enjoyed it all, music and playing, immensely.

After this things were somewhat re-aligned – from Shakespearean tragedy the focus morphed into Latin American intensity and exuberance. This was accompanied by a change of conductor and the introduction of a soloist to perform Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Second ‘Cello Concerto. It was Kenneth Young who took the podium, and we also welcomed Inbal Megiddo, Head of ‘Cello Studies at the School of Music, as the concerto player.

To hear Megiddo perform this work was to experience the next best thing to a direct link with its composer, as she had studied the concerto with its first performer, Aldo Parisot, for whom Villa-Lobos actually wrote the work. Megiddo described that experience for her as “exhilarating”, and expressed the hope that she might be able to convey something of that same feeling in her performance for us, by way of dedicating her efforts to her “teacher, mentor, collleague and friend”. I can only report that she certainly made good her intention in spadefuls!

From the work’s first chord, with the music’s upper registers straightaway reaching for the stars, we in the audience were galvanised anew, as much by the playing as by the music itself – the writing seemed to possess a kind of “top echelon” quality, something of an edge which constantly tingled and thrilled. We heard marvellous exchanges between soloist and orchestra, with the former’s rhythmic verve readily communicating itself to the young orchestral players, encouraging them to take up the spirit of the music’s frequent syncopated figures and impulses dancing along the ‘cello-strings.

The folky-sounding second-movement Modinha, a Brazilian love-song genre, featured a beautiful ‘cello melody, with an intensely-laden heart-on-sleeve dance-like accompaniment. Still, the music seemed always to have a slight “edge”, an astringency which put paid to any feeling of its emotion cloying, Hollywood-style. A Scherzo, dance-like and mixing the exotic with the “folky” brought forth more exciting playing – in places intense and gutteral, at other times airborne and melismatic – from Megiddo, with conductor and orchestra splendidly responding to her energies with sharply-syncopated tutti sequences.

What the cellist herself described in the notes as a “virtuosic cadenza” was here excitingly and full-bloodedly played, with wonderful near-the-bridge timbres, triple-stopping and resonant open strings, some spectacular glissandi launching us into the world of the work’s finale. Here, ‘cellist and orchestra had a terrific time with a four-note theme that was tossed about like a straw man in a blanket to exhilarating effect, right up to the sheer abandonment of the coda, complete with its breath-snatchingly abrupt ending!

After the Villa-Lobos work’s ferment of whirlwind energies and arresting sonorities it seemed on paper entirely appropriate for the concert to feature by way of contrast a piece entitled “A Pastoral Symphony”, moreover one written by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer of that quintessential English-landscape piece “The Lark Ascending”. Thinking about the juxtaposition of the two pieces made me recall a conversation some years ago with a friend who had visited London for the first time – he told me that after encountering the overwhelming grandeur and magnificence of St.Paul’s Cathedral he simply had to go back to his lodgings and lie down for a while.

True, the Villa-Lobos concerto, for all its engagingly vigorous and heartfelt qualities, wasn’t exactly grand, stupendous and cathedral-like! – but neither was the Vaughan Williams Symphony a mere exercise in English pastoral evocation (as a fellow-composer of Vaughan Williams’ dismissively remarked, concerning the work – “like a cow looking over a gate”!)  Whatever restorative qualities the symphony possessed applied to its own set of tensions and tragedies embedded within its contexts, those of its composer’s wartime service with the Medical Corps in France, a scenario fraught with death and loss. The composer, in fact referred to the work as a “War Requiem”, the Mahlerian second movement of the work with its bugle calls (played on a natural E-flat trumpet, and echoed by a natural horn) and anguished strings particularly underlining this idea.

Elsewhere, the music sang, danced and echoed with evocations of landscapes and people’s lives darkened by war and stained with blood – each movement wrought its own kind of ravaged beauty, the language and atmosphere one of lament rather than conflict and carnage. Ken Young kept the music’s pulse flowing throughout, to the work’s great advantage in this case, as tensions were made palpable by the playing’s urgency and tightly-wrought figurations. In the first movement, for example, the flowing themes were never allowed to settle, the music’s aspect having an almost haunted air, with memories of what had gone before “charging” the textures with tragedy.

The orchestral playing was, I thought, impressively focused, poised and suitably alert at all times, the textures and colours having the right mix of beauty and astringency. The winds at the beginning had tuning problems most obviously in their ensemble passages, but their individual work was outstanding throughout, with many a beautiful solo turned as the work proceeded. The brass chimed in with rich resonances when required, their ensemble capping the climaxes beautifully in places. And the work of the strings was a joy to experience, from the players’ most sensitive nuances to the most earnest and full-blooded climaxes. Conductor and players caught the ebb and flow of it all, the beauties and the sorrows.

The second movement’s nostalgic brass calls (the trumpet offstage, as indicated) came off splendidly, ably supported by contributions from the solo viola,’cello, and clarinet – but the work from the strings was again wondrous, phrases so sensitively and unerringly delivered, the players obviously right into the music’s world. Young aimed for and got a telling contrast of mood with the swiftly-delivered third movement, the tempi quicker than I’d ever heard previously – but it worked brilliantly, completely avoiding the somewhat heavy-footed quality sometimes encountered in performances of this movement. It also had the effect of sharpening the players’ responses to the movement’s elfin-textured coda, impulses striving for the greatest possible contrast with what had gone before in the bucolic scherzo.

Another off-stage “effect” in this work came with the final movement, the voice of a soprano at the very beginning and at the end. The singer’s disembodied tones have an ethereal effect, her wordless line a part-lament, part-incantation, which the strings repeat fervently at the movement’s climax – a stunning, breath-catching moment, as on this occasion. Soprano Alicia Cadwgan’s voice was ideally placed, not quite pure-toned enough at the outset of the first solo, and rushing a phrase mid-way through – but sounding far more at ease with her return at the end, floating her last few notes beautifully and hauntingly. As far as “capturing” the particular character of the movement mattered, Young’s direction and the orchestral playing was I thought, beyond reproach.

In the silence that followed we sat and allowed the resonances to fade as the tones had done, and pondered the music’s effect. I couldn’t help at that moment recalling various descriptions of the work which I’d read via my first, youthful hearings of recordings, comments which, even at that latter stage seemed to concentrate more upon the composer’s depictions of the “Corot-like landscapes” in France, and scarcely remark upon the music’s darker context of war’s grim realities. Perhaps a certain distancing wrought by time was necessary for people to re-examine the work’s and its composer’s circumstances – appropriately so, of course, as the anniversaries of that particular conflict presently loom disturbingly from out of time’s mists, carrying their warnings!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aspects of nature, life and love, from the NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki New Zealand School of Music presents:
RURAL ROMANCE

LILBURN – Overture “Drysdale”
FAURÉ – Pelléas et Mélisande
BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor
DVORAK – Symphony No.8 in G Major

Jian Liu (piano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Wednesday 4th June, 2014

It was the sort of programme I would have travelled miles and miles, over hill and dale, thru fog and storm, and braving accident and ambush to see and hear – with distance lending enchantment, as is often the case. But even without the distance, the enchantment remained – this was music by turns exciting and evocative, so very typical of each composer’s work, even the relatively early Overture by Lilburn, but still, as were the other pieces, treasure!

To my great delight, the bringing about of it all by these youthful players and their conductor had many magnificent moments, for most of the time triumphing over the difficulties posed by the venue. The chief problem was the “in-your-face” character of the St.Andrew’s acoustic, which gave the performance sounds an insistence which wasn’t altogether the doing of the players.

It underlined and set in bold the importance for Wellington of having the Town Hall restored to its former glory as soon as possible, with both performance venues in that building currently out of circulation and sorely missed. I recall over recent times a number of youth orchestra performances in the main auditorium of the Hall whose qualities were underlined by the acoustic’s warmth and focus, a marked contrast to the somewhat overbearing, almost raucous immediacy of the St.Andrew’s sound.

My thoughts regarding the performance of the engaging Drysdale Overture of Lilburn’s were thus coloured by that acoustical context. I found a lot of the playing in what was otherwise a splendid performance lacked dynamic variation – the “great waves of sound” referred to in my notes regarding the piece’s opening gestures scarcely abated during the more vigorous working-out of the different motifs in the composer’s “sunlit rondo”.

Fortunately, the sounds did give space for the various appearances of  the “nostalgic theme”, and the unanimity and focus of the strings in places such as their sudden reprise of the opening figure, just before the final sequence. But this was due as much, if not more, to conductor Kenneth Young’s control and the skills of his players, the oboist in particular delivering the lovely melody with all the feeling for its context that the composer might have wanted.

Thanks to Fauré’s (or rather, his pupil, Charles Koechlin’s) somewhat gentler scoring, three of the Pelléas et Mélisande exerpts from the composers’ s incidental music for Maeterlinck’s play made a lovely impression throughout – Young and his musicians didn’t hold back the emotion, the string-playing in the Prelude having plenty of juice, and the clarinet work outstanding, really making something of the sequence just before the strings’ final phrases.

Fauré’s music doesn’t have the astringency of Sibelius’s for the same subject, and nothing like Schoenberg’s evocations of unease and darkness in his 1903 symphonic poem, also inspired by the play. This feeling was underlined by the exclusion of the fourth piece from the suite La Mort de Mélisande, leaving the lovely Fileuse (Mélisande at her spinning-wheel), depicted by whirling strings and a charming, winsome oboe solo (a different player to that in the Lilburn Overture), and finally the Sicilienne, a graceful dance composed by Fauré for an earlier, unfinished work, and used here again to beguiling effect, with its piquant oscillations between major  and minor. Here the harpist was able to shine, with a nicely-judged accompaniment of winds and then strings.

The Beethoven concerto featured a much-awaited appearance by that fine pianist Jian Liu, whose recital and chamber work I’ve so enjoyed over previous seasons. He didn’t disappoint with this, Beethoven’s darkest and most austere of the composer’s concertante works. Young and the players gave him an opening tutti which “spelt out” the journey in no uncertain terms, tense of mood and sharply-focused in articulation. Again the acoustic tended to narrow the dynamic range of the playing, but this music could easily deal with whatever sonic vagaries were brought to bear on the performance.

From his very first, commanding entry, Liu caught us up with his overall focus, his feeling for dynamic contrast, and his quicksilver responses to the music’s volatilities – as well as commanding the piano part (as with the cadenza) he was able to play “chamber music” with the orchestra in such passages as the rather misterioso section leading up to the recapitulation, dovetailing his cross-rhythmic triplets beautifully with the orchestra’s wind players, and bringing our the “gothic-like” touches to the writing just before the movement’s end.

The slow movement had a kind of Hellenic beauty at the start, its eloquence in Liu’s hands beautifully matched by the wind-playing that brought about a lovely sea-change to the soundscapes, as well as the beautiful dialogues with which the lower strings engaged the pianist at a later point. Only some slightly hurried turns of phrase in some of the exchanges prevented total pleasure – but the coda reinstalled that sense of rapt beauty which continued right up to a slightly misread wind entry at the end (which probably went swimmingly by comparison, at rehearsal – them’s the breaks!).

The finale’s attaca broke the spell, the pianist launching the argument with a real swing, taking the music at a fair lick and rendering some of his figurations as a whirl of notes – very exciting! But again from Liu was this lovely “accompanying” instinct in places, supporting the winds as they took over the melody. I loved the “fierce dance” character of the music during the tutti just before the clarinet tune, brought out with a will by Young and the players. But the contrast with the clarinet’s entry was also magical – fine playing, here – and the string fugue continued the excitement, leading up to the music’s martial element being hurled across the canvas with gusto.

After this, the coda was just right – a proper release of boisterous high spirits, kept pent-up for so long and here given full expression, by both pianist and orchestra. A pianist friend with whom I sat was also lost in admiration for Liu’s playing – “gossamer”, “agile”, “forthright”, and “energizing” were the words that were bandied about between us during the interval!

The recommencement brought out what seemed like the full band for the Dvorak G Major Symphony, surely one of the most adorable works in the romantic symphonic repertoire – and certainly one of its composer’s sunniest creations. Only in the second movement do the clouds gather for moments of anxiety and doubt – and Dvorak had that ability, shared with Schubert, to smile through tears and keep his essential spirit indomitable. And so it is with this symphony.

The outer movements – particularly the opening one – are both rhythmically tricky beasts, and I thought here in particular, throughout the first movement, that the orchestra didn’t manage to exude quite enough energy to really “kick” the music along. It always seems to me, with student and amateur orchestras, that not enough attention is paid to the rhythmic character of difficult pieces – and if the rhythm is tentative, unsure, or sluggish, then no amount of in-tune or note-accurate playing will save or properly enliven the music.

I once heard Ken Young, when rehearsing a difficult piece of contemporary music with the NZSO, telling the players, “Don’t count the music – FEEL it!” With Dvorak’s music, there’s that constant need to feel the rhythmic “kick”, to activate the dance element that’s in so much of his work. It’s not a question of speed or even tempo – but of “pointing” those rhythms, of stressing both beats and/or off-beats where appropriate. Accurate and eager though the playing was, here, I thought the first movement needed a touch more nervous energy overall, and sharper attack on some of those rhythmic beats. With this composer’s music in particular, a strongly-characterised rhythm beats the hell out of merely playing the right notes.

Still, I did think the performances of the middle movements of the work of a particularly high order, here – Young and his musicians revelled in the multifarious changes of mood in the second movement. bringing out the charm and lyricism and, indeed, romance of the opening, but fronting up to the theatrical darkenings of texture and tone brought by forceful wind,brass and timpani at key points – the timpani, in particular, was spot-on in its many rhythmic underpinnings and textural colourings. And the third movement similarly disarmed, with its bright, eager, slightly tense waltz-tune, put across with gorgeous string-tone (even with a touch of portamento in places!). Both the Trio and the sprightly Coda kept the music’s charm to the fore, nicely underlining the contrast with the finale’s declamatory opening.

Though sounding in places a bit of a raucous riot in this venue, the finale had plenty of thrills augmented by one or two spills. Everybody managed to kick up heels at some point or other during the wild dance-sequences (the horns had a great time with their trills, as did the trombones with their hoe-down-like shouts of encouragement!), and the contrasting lyrical variations featured, once again, lovely clarinet work and flute decorations that got the spirit, if not quite the letter, of the music right. And what a barnstorming finish!

I didn’t have miles and miles to go, nor hill and dale to contend with, when returning home – but this concert’s music and its performance still had just enough magic about it to both enchant and content.

 

 

Passion, poetry and valediction from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
RUSSIAN FIRE

RACHMANINOV – Caprice Bohémien
SCHUMANN – PIano Concerto in A Minor Op.
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.15 in A

Alexander Melnikov (piano)
Alexander Lazarev (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 17th May 2014

It was one of those concerts in which everything seemed to me to come together and go “whizz-bang!” It provided in spadefuls just what can make classical music events such unique experiences. It’s that totality of concentration upon nothing else but the music and music-making generated by musicians whose skill, focus and energy create a kind of frisson of recreative involvement. And into this ferment listeners are drawn, to make of the experience what they will. Whatever the music, however light-hearted or profound, it’s that realization of its essence, of its character, which transcends all other considerations.

Well-worn thoughts, one might think, hardly worth repeating? But it was good to be forcefully reminded (as, indeed, this same orchestra had done a week previously through its stunning performance of Lyell Cresswell’s work “Hear and Far” with singer Jonathan Lemalu, conducted by James MacMillan) how a group of musicians can by dint of skilled and committed playing, and without any extraneous trappings, so completely and utterly engage its listeners. I couldn’t imagine better advocacy for live music-making and its availability and continuance than was provided by this present concert.

The evening’s presentation was called, somewhat spuriously, “Russian Fire” – a description which had nothing whatever to do with the delectable Schumann A Minor Concerto, here performed by pianist Alexander Melnikov, a work which epitomizes German romanticism at its most poetic and winsome; while the last of Shostakovich’s symphonies, the enigmatic Fifteenth, is a philosophical, part tragic, part ironic work whose manner is somewhat removed from most of its composer’s earlier, conflict-ridden symphonic essays. Only the brilliant and volatile Caprice Bohémien, written by the youthful Sergei Rachmaninov in 1894, fulfilled the expectation created by the concert’s banner publicity headline.

One could argue that the phrase referred to the combination of pianist and conductor – both Russian and both noted for their brilliance and volatility as performers. That was largely true of conductor Alexander Lazarev, whose demonstrative and theatrical podium manner brought a sense of fiery commitment  to almost everything he interpreted. As for the “other” Alexander (a friend also at the concert afterwards put it succinctly when she said “Thumbs up for the two Alexanders!), pianist Alexander Melnikov, whom I’d seen and heard play “live” before, brought by turns strength and restraint, poetry and precision to his playing of the first two movements in particular of the concerto –  any “fire” as such would have scorched and withered the delicate tissues of such finely-wrought music.

In fact those first two movements of the concerto gave me such unalloyed delight, I was left feeling a tad disappointed by the finale, whose music here didn’t for me sufficiently “dance”. Melnikov gave us some lovely moments, but he seemed more taken with the movement’s ebb than with its flow – I felt neither his playing nor Lazarev’s direction generated quite enough overall momentum for the phrase-ends to be set tingling and the blood to be stirred. I thought of Schumann’s remark about the Chopin Waltzes needing to be danced by countesses, and felt something of the same need ought to apply to this work’s finale – as much as I appreciated what both pianist and conductor were doing I thought in overall terms, the movement didn’t quite get off the ground.

But ah! – such was the spell cast by Melnikov’s noble and poetic keyboard utterances throughout the earlier parts of the work I found it easy to forgive him – and along with everybody else in the auditorium I was charmed by his playing of one of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives as an encore, one with the most deliciously throwaway ending, which was tossed at us most delightfully and nonchalantly.

It rounded off a first half which had begun in the most spectacular and colourful fashion with a stunning performance by Lazarev and the orchestra of Rachmaninov’s rarely-played orchestral work Caprice Bohémien. This was composed just after the fledgling composer had graduated from the Moscow Concervatory, and it exhibits a confidence and surety in handling his material that’s quite remarkable for somebody writing such an early work.

What’s also interesting about this work besides its depth of feeling is the piece’s exoticism – granted that it’s music depicting Gypsy life, but Rachmaninov was to further intensify this exotic, somewhat oriental-sounding vein of expression in his First Symphony, which was first performed in 1897 and famously ravaged by the critic Cesar Cui, himself a composer, one of “The Five”, though perhaps its least distinguished member.

Had the Symphony’s first performance been better-managed and the work’s reception a more favourable one, Rachmaninov’s style as a composer might well have explored these exotic paths more fully. But as is well known, the young composer was sunk into a deep depression as a result of the Symphony’s failure – and his immediately subsequent works, such as the Second Piano Concerto and the Second Symphony were far less harmonically daring and innovative than the music of both the First Symphony and the earlier Caprice Bohémien.

In Alexander Lazarev the Caprice had the ideal interpreter – Lazarev brought to the fore the music’s excitement and volatility, but also brought out the vein of deep melancholic lyricism which marks Rachmaninov’s work – so those pulsating timpani contourings, throbbing lower strings and brooding winds of the opening created for us a wondrous atmosphere brimming with possibility and ready to explode with bite and energy at a moment’s notice – after briefly doing so, the music returned to smolder-mode, out of which grew the most gorgeous ‘cello tune, reflecting this aforementioned penchant for exotically-coloured expression, as did the solo clarinet melody which followed, and the subsequent interchanges with the flute and horn.

After this had all burst forth and subsided, the dancing began, slowly at first, but gathering in tension and excitement,and culminating in a near-frenzy of abandonment at the end, with players and audience members on the edges of their seats both literally and metaphorically. The conductor (as he’d done in concerts on previous visits) made his notorious “rostrum turn-about” to the audience on the final orchestral chord! – pure showmanship, but in a sense it was what this kind of music-making was about, involving the listeners as palpably as it did the musicians. We loved him for it!

An interval was greatly appreciated in view of the imminent Shostakovich Symphony, just as the business of moving the piano onto the platform  for the Schumann concerto gave us time to readjust our sensibilities after the wild and orgiastic Rachmaninov piece. But unexpectedly, there was more, because the concert happened to be the occasion of veteran NZSO violist Peter van Drimmelen’s final appearance as an orchestra player. So, before the second half got under way, deputy Concertmaster Donald Armstrong stepped up to the microphone to pay a well-modulated tribute to van Drimmelen, highlighting his contribution over the years both to the orchestra and to music in Wellington in general as a player, conductor and organizer.

Then it was ostensibly grimmer business at hand, with the re-entry of conductor Lazarev, ready to set in motion Shostakovich’s final and valedictory Fifteenth Symphony. In point of fact, the Symphony sounded anything but grim to begin with – more like a kind of surrealist entertainment, with a couple of quotations from Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture thrown into the first movement’s somewhat quixotic orchestral mix. Unusually for Shostakovich, this symphony contains several “borrowings” from other composers – apart from the Rossini, most obviously in the final movement from Wagner, but as well from Shostakovich’s fellow-countryman Mikhail Glinka.

Shostakovich wouldn’t be “drawn” regarding any possible “programme” suggested by the symphony, apart from commenting that his intention vis-a-vis the first movement was to depict a kind of open-air toyshop viewed through the eyes of a child – a somewhat misleading description of music that in places palpably depicted more like “something nasty in the nursery”. He was as coy when asked to explain the various quotations from other composers’ works, telling a friend, somewhat obliquely, “I don’t myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could not NOT include them”.

Lazarev and the NZSO players took us into this surreal world in a trice, with snappy, alert playing that nailed the music’s angularities and brought out its piquant melodic lines, the flute and bassoon foremost among the winds at the outset. The “toyshop” aspect was given full rein from all sides at first – a wonderfully antiphonal sound-picture of disparate elements, into which comings and goings jogged, quite unabashed, the “William Tell Overture” quote, rather like a kind of sub-plot or passing theatre of separate activity on one level, yet at the same time “grown” out of the textures in a wholly unselfconscious manner.

The layered, cross-rhythmed string passages, echoed later in manner by the winds, eerily wound up the music’s tensions, and uncovered darker, more anxious purposes which a skittery solo violin and a couple more jaunty appearances of “William Tell” couldn’t entirely keep down – I thought the NZSO’s playing encompassed all the different variants of character in the music with real élan. And live music-making gave the listener visual bonuses as well, such as the use of the whip, held high and played with delicious precision by one of the hard-working percussionists.

The only place in the symphony I had difficulty going entirely with Lazarev’s reading was at the beginning of the second movement, where I thought the dark, sinister brass chorales were given a shade too quickly and smoothly. But what sombre beauties were then conjured up by Andrew Joyce’s wonderful ‘cello solo, the other orchestral strings coming forth in due course with rapt, properly awed responses. Not being Russian players the brasses couldn’t help their chorales sounding more like Bruckner than Shostakovich, so refined were their outpourings. But the winds’ eerie radio-frequency chords were answered by a superbly-done trombone solo with tuba accompaniment which brought our sensibilities into the music’s very heart, prior to a seismic irruption from the whole orchestra that seemed to suddenly open a wound, and lay bare the composer’s inner existential anguish. Afterwards, we found ourselves in the middle of a sound-world bereft of warmth, compassion and any hope for the future – most unsettling was the silence when the music stopped.

As were the ghoulish chords which began the scherzo-movement – grinning gargoyle-like sounds from the winds, suggesting a kind of “danse macabre” – also, wonderful “kitchen” sounds from the percussion, so very readily did they evoke the convolutions of dancing bones! Eerie, too were the flesh-creeping, Psycho-reminiscent responses of the strings to the solo violin, music from a master of the sardonic gesture, surpassing himself in this, his valedictory symphonic statement.

But what to make of the last movement? – along with its direct Wagner quotation (the “Fate” motif, associated with the deaths of both Siegmund and Siegfried, in “The Ring”) there were references to both “Siegfried’s Funeral March” and the “Tristan” Prelude, before disarmingly linking the last with a quote from a Glinka song….. the references to death are inescapable – Shostakovich was a man dying of heart disease when the Symphony was being written – and both the “Tristan” and the Glinka quotes involve aspects of love. Of course “Tristan” epitomizes all-consuming love, whereas the Glinka song is a setting of verses by the poet Baratynsky concerning a renunciation of love, containing the words “To a disillusioned man all seductions are alien…”. So Shostakovich’s choice of other people’s music as quotations was here replete with significance.

My notes say of the performance at this point, “the orchestral detailing is astonishing!” – and it was during this movement that I became aware of the intensity of the audience’s pin-dropping concentration upon the music and the music-making. The playing of the orchestra seemed to realize every ounce of the music’s message at every place along the dynamic spectrum, from the bleak stillnesses to the blackest, most jagged and numbing climaxes. After these, along with the quotations and the eerie “radio-frequency-chord” were done, nothing was left in the music but the bare bones of life tapping out the remaining, failing pulse-beats until only the silences could be heard.

Conductor Lazarev cannily kept his arms upraised and his hands beating time in ever-dimishing movements after the sounds had ceased, holding the audience breath-bated and spell-bound – and when after a minute’s silence had passed he brought his arms down to his sides the applause was thunderous in its response. He then generously (if rather too fulsomely in one particular case) brought every one of the orchestral soloists, as well as whole sections at a time, to their feet to acknowledge the ovation.

With all due respect to Shostakovich, I thought it really was a concert to die for – a most memorable occasion. For which, much thanks to all concerned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Splendour and Strife from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

BORODIN – Overture “Prince Igor” / BRUCH – Violin Concerto No.1 in G Minor
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No.5 in E MInor Op.64

Simeon Broom (violin)
Rachel Hyde (conductor)

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 13th April

There’s something about Russian music which makes for a kind of instant combustion of attraction for the listener – it’s a combination of energy, colour, feeling and fantasy that intoxicates the senses, so that other, more abstract considerations seem irrelevant in the midst of all the excitement. And yet, when you force yourself to stop thinking “wow!” and concentrate on “how?” you find the music possesses its own logic of design and advances its own priorities with the kind of sure-footed certainty and vision that marks out great and distinctive art.

But there’s the case of this particular Russian composer whom I’m thinking about, where he was too preoccupied with his other interests and activities to actually get whole sections of his works properly completed –  what’s remarkable is that his music, as completed by his colleagues after his death, still possessed these aforementioned qualities in abundance, for goodness’s sakes! You’d be right in thinking that it’s Alexander Borodin (1833-1887) whom I’m referring to, though if you hadn’t glanced at the review’s heading you might have spared a thought for Modeste Musorgsky, another Russian composer for whom life even more seriously got in the way of music, with a number of compositions having to be “edited” after he died, a self-ravaged dipsomaniac.

One could say that the music of Borodin shares a lot of characteristics in common with that of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, fellow-composer-colleague, so that the effect of having the latter work on the former’s music for much of the time resembles the “rescue operation” activities of a kind of posthumous “alter ego”. But because Borodin’s music emerges from these rejuvenations sounding practically as much like Borodin as do the original, completed works, it suggests a uniquely-focused creative spirit was at work, one whose music with its distinctive harmonic and lyrical qualities has the mark of a genius.

So it is with the Overture to Borodin’s unfinished opera “Prince Igor” – both Rimsky-Korsakov and another composer-colleague, Alexander Glazunov completed the composer’s unfinished sketches of parts of the opera, with the latter taking on the job of reconstructing the Overture. Glazunov himself recorded that he composed the music “roughly according to Borodin’s plan”, using themes from other parts of the opera and from associated fragments. He modestly admitted that “a few bars at the very end were composed by me”, though, as with the rest of the reconstructions, the spirit of Borodin seems to shine out of every episode.

You could hear that distinctive voice immediately make its presence felt in the opening bars of the Overture which began the Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s first concert of the 2014 season. Conductor Rachel Hyde asked for and got a dark, rich sound from her players at the outset, the strings digging deep and the winds, though not perfectly in accord with their tuning, still bringing out that curious blend of splendor and plangency so characteristic of Russian music. I noticed that, for this concert, the brass and some of the percussion were brought out of the recessed altar area at the top of the steps, and into the more open performing-space, with a much more integrated, rounded-sound effect, to my untutored ears, than in previous orchestral concerts.

Though both winds and strings stumbled at the beginning of that trickily syncopated second subject melody, the playing brought out plenty of the music’s rhythmic excitement throughout – what a fine time the winds had with their “galloping” rhythms in places!  I liked, also, the antiphonal calls of the brass and the sheer “presence” of the tuba at crisis-points, sensationalist that I am!  As well, the horn solo was beautifully managed and the strings replied in kind with appropriate fervour. Despite the occasional spills one had a sense of conductor and players’ properly engaging with the music’s sheer physicality, a quality that’s needed for Russian music in particular to work its magic and properly stir the blood.

The orchestra has enjoyed collaborations with some pretty amazing concerto soloists over the years, and this concert continued in that tradition, with violinist Simeon Broom giving us the evergreen G Minor Concerto by Max Bruch, something of a “calling card” for virtuoso players. Broom has recently returned to New Zealand after ten years of study and performing in Europe to take up a place in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. On this showing he can certainly lay claim to considerable accomplishment as a soloist, bringing to the music here a wonderfully burnished tone and plenty of interpretative imagination – a momentary lapse of concentration during one of the double-stopped descents in the first movement a minor blip in the otherwise fluent performance flow.

I thought the orchestral support for Broom wholehearted and finely-wrought, Rachel Hyde getting on-the-spot attack from all sections and some lovely moments of collaboration with the solo violin line. Detailings such as the winds’ series of descending phrases counterpointing the solo line leading up to the “big” tutti gave particular pleasure.

The soloist’s eloquent playing of the cadenza was superbly capped off by the orchestra’s precise attack leading to the music’s gear-change into the slow movement. Broom’s lovely spinning-out of the lyrical lines here, though not absolutely note-perfect, created a lovely frisson of feeling and  and atmosphere, one which built inexorably towards the movement’s great and glorious outpouring of heart-on-sleeve emotion, a process in which conductor and orchestra played their part lyrical and nobly.

The finale was launched strongly and expectantly by the orchestra, a touch of less-than-perfect ensemble mattering not to the argument, and advanced beautifully by the soloist with some stunning upward runs. Rachel Hyde and the players held the big moments firmly and in focus, while at the same time keeping the ebb and flow of exchange with the solo instrument vibrant. The brief and exciting coda was thrown off by all concerned with great aplomb. Altogether this was a performance which gave considerable delight to we listeners.

What seemed like sterner business was afforded by the Tchaikovsky E Minor Symphony after the interval, a work whose considerable technical and interpretative demands were bravely, if not altogether easefully, tackled by the musicians. I thought the two middle movements the most successful, each featuring some skillful solo playing and some nicely dove-tailed ensemble, as well as tremendous surgings of tone and energy when required. The outer movements each had their moments, but each I felt lacked that last ounce of energy and edge in certain other places which would have suitably invigorated the music’s overall impact.

But details such as the slow movement’s tricky horn solo, and the clarinet figurations in support were beautifully done, as was a lovely “afterglow” effect at the movement’s very end, thanks to some hushed string-playing and (again) some lovely clarinet work. And in the third-movement Waltz I loved the horns’ eerie stopped tones and the wonderfully balletic string “scurryings” and other “Nutcracker-like” gestures from the winds, so characterful and colourful.

The Symphony began well, with those dark, suggestive clarinet tones so characteristic of the composer, and some deep and sonorous lower-strings support – however, despite Rachel Hyde’s suitably “energized” tempo for the allegro, the wind players seemed to let their figurations coagulate, slowing the music’s pulse down in places, to the point of dragging. Away from the step-wise rhythm, things were more animated, the strings’ marvellously expressive tune sung fervently and the brass chiming in and tightening things up when they could. But the overall pulse of the movement for me simply lacked enough underlying forward momentum to make the music work – a question not necessarily of tempo, but as much to do with accent and phrasing, and of things being kept alive and purposeful.

The “attacca” into the last movement was, however, just the job! – and, indeed, the whole of the introduction had both girth and momentum, the conductor holding things together splendidly, though the succeeding Allegro energico’s stuttering figurations and syncopated entries led a few players momentarily astray. Brass and timpani made the most of their big “motto theme” statements, pushinging the rest of the orchestra through the vortex-moments of the development section. Matters concerning ensemble did come to a head with the reprise of those stutterings and syncopations (an extended sequence, this time!), where, in the midst of the ensuing dislocations, Rachel Hyde had to very properly stop the players and start again, most resolutely at the flash-point of the troubles! But the players grasped the nettle and made the sequence work the second time through, so honour was restored.

While the symphony didn’t consistently “fire” it had its worthwhile moments – and the playing from all concerned in the other two items did both the music and the musicians proud.

 

 

“Un spectacle fantastique” from orchestra and fireworks

Posted on by admin

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
“Fireworks and Fantasy”

Britten     The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23
Berlioz     Symphonie Fantastique Op.14

Piano : Plamena Mangova
Conductor : Julian Kuerti

Michael Fowler Centre,

9th November 2013

Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra received its first performance in 1946, when the LSO under Sargent also performed it on film for distribution to British schools. It became one of the best known British works of the C20th, and is certainly one of Britten’s most accessible and appealing compositions. It is based on a resounding theme from Purcell’s incidental music for the play Abdelazer, which Britten used as the basis for a fascinating set of variations. Conductor Kuerti and the entire orchestra launched into the imposing opening statement of the theme with an enthusiasm and breadth that immediately captured the audience, followed by each instrumental section in turn adding fresh richness and colour. The subsequent variations explore an astonishing variety of instrumental mood, timbre and techniques, and each section or soloist took up the baton with great relish for the task. The writing showcased the outstanding skills and musicianship of the NZSO players, and the sheer fun they had playing this brilliantly inventive music was infectious. The closing fugue and final tutti statement of the Purcell theme was awesome and it had the audience bringing the house down.

Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto Op.23 is another well loved work, and the choice of gifted Bulgarian pianist Plamena Mangova was an inspired one. She was in total technical command of the very demanding score, and her musicianship explored an astonishing range of dynamics, moods, and sensitivities in a way that drew the audience into the wonderful intricate conversations that Tchaikovsky creates between pianist and orchestra. Under Kuerti’s unobtrusive baton they together moved seamlessly from contemplative passages of exquisite delicacy to the most dramatic full-bodied tuttis. The climaxes were full of richness, warmth, and riveting bravura while never straying into the overblown or bombastic. The woodwind principals were again a standout feature of the performance.

The following interval was timed to allow patrons to flock out and watch the annual Guy Fawkes’ fireworks display provided by the City Council in the nearby arm of the harbour. Wellington turned on a breathlessly calm, balmy spring evening and crystal clear skies for the event, which fittingly endorsed the festive atmosphere of the music making. An opinion reported earlier in the Dominion Post was that Guy Fawkes celebrations are now outdated baggage from our colonial past, and that the fireworks display would much more appropriately mark some indigenous festival like matariki, the Maori New Year. Quite apart from the difficulty that matariki falls in the depths of winter, when low cloud, drizzle, and freezing southerlies are the norm, it is not clear to me why the pakeha settlers of Aotearoa are expected to truncate their historical references, while the Maori are not. Surely, in another millennium we, and our many local ethnic groups, will seem like a bunch of settlers that stumbled ashore on almost the same day…….

Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique occupied the second half of the concert. Subtitled An episode in the life of an Artist, it is grounded in Berlioz own romantic experience. An intriguing programmatic work, it charts over the course of five movements the angst of a young musician desperately in love with a woman who embodies all he idealises and longs for. His early dreams and passions, and the disturbing images of his beloved that haunt him, are explored by Berlioz in the two initial movements with exquisite artistry, using a recurring idée fixe. Kuerti elicited a wonderfully sympathetic interpretation from the orchestra and again, standout beauty from woodwind principals. The third movement exchanges between first oboe and cor anglais were profoundly moving and breathtakingly accomplished, and set the tone for the dark unravelling of the plot in the last two movements. The expanded brass and percussion came wonderfully into their own, capturing ominous and brutal moods alike with equal intensity, and enriching the power of the maniacal tutti conclusion. The full house was blown away and, undeterred by a long evening’s listening, brought the conductor back repeatedly to express their appreciation.

This programme might be labelled by some as unashamedly populist, but in my view there is every good reason to provide such a chance to enjoy some of the great classics. It is an effective and rewarding  way to showcase the full resources of this wonderful symphony orchestra that our taxes provide, and to enjoy the outstanding musicians we are privileged to hear in our own home town.

 

 

Wellington Chamber Orchestra – after the First Cuckoo……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

DELIUS – On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring / La Calinda (from “Koanga”)
BOTTESINI – Concerto No.2 in B Minor for Double-Bass
BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.7 in A Op.92

Hiroshi Ikematsu (double-bass)
Vincent Hardaker (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday 29th September 2013

A comment from a friend at the interval helped answer my unspoken query “Why isn’t this
gorgeous music more often played?” which I’d been posing to myself while listening
to the two Delius items at the concert, before voicing it out loud to her – “Oh, it’s such
dreary, shapeless, formless stuff! – I can’t bear it!” was her response. It reminded
me that music-lovers world-wide can be readily divided into two groups – those who
like Delius’s music and those who don’t.

For the admirers there was plenty to like about these two performances, once the players
had roused their  instruments’ true “voices” from sleep at the start of each piece. After the
lovely “awakening” chords beginning the “First Cuckoo” piece, the upper strings had some
initial difficulties accurately pitching the rocking notes sounded thoughout their opening
sequence, though they settled down subsequently to give us some lovely playing. The winds
made some delightful contributions, the flute a bit too eager to begin, but still managing a
lovely solo – the strings’ increased confidence showed with a beautifully silvery entry,
answered by secure horns and winds. Of special distinction was the cuckoo itself,
beautifully and hauntingly given voice, the clarinet notes having a properly “recessed”
quality. It’s music that needs the utmost delicacy – and in places such as that lovely
moment of “frisson”between strings and winds just before the reprise of the main
theme, conductor and orchestra achieved that, to our delight (well, to the delight of
half of us, that is…)….

The programme note named Delius’s amanuensis Eric Fenby as the arranger of “La Calinda”
the lovely dance from the opera “Koanga” – however, this was one which was new to me,
beginning with some introductory string chords, presumably lifted from the opera. All I can
say is that there must be as many “arranged Fenbys” as there are recordings of the piece,
because they all seem to be different (some adaptation may have been done by
the conductor or whomever to fit the orchestra’s available players on this occasion)
– still, the essentials of the music were here,  the lovely oboe solo, the beautiful and mellow
flute-sound, and the ever-growing confidence of the strings as the piece unfolded,
despite some occasional spills. I did register a strange counter-melody from the lower
strings towards the end, which wasn’t on any of the recordings I owned – but it was all
part of the “not knowing what to expect next” scenario…..

I did so enjoy the Bottesini Double-bass Concerto, as much for the playing of the star
soloist, Hiroshi Ikematsu, as for the music, which was new to me. How wonderful for
the Chamber Orchestra to be able to draw upon soloists of this calibre for concerto
performances! – one thinks of some splendid instances at various past concerts, and
this one had a similar kind of distinction. HIroshi is, of course the current leader of the
NZSO’s double-bass section – and during his tenure he has noticeably galvanised those
players, whose unanimity of tones and deportment give great pleasure at any orchestra
concert. It was therefore distressing to read that he intends to return to Japan next year –
in a number of ways, our great loss.

Though I was sitting too far to the side to be able to fully enjoy the soloist’s range of
tones, I was assured by people in closer proximity that the experience of listening to
such playing was a kind of feast for the senses. I could register his more vigorous work,
but was able only to guess at the quality of some of the softer passages, all of which he
seemed to play with the agility of a ‘cellist, despite having to stand and hold up what
looked like an extemely cumbersome instrument to manage. We were able to fully enjoy
his technical capabilities in the first movement’s cadenza, which featured plenty of double-
stopping, rapid runs and virtuoso leaps, the orchestra coming in “on the hoof” as it were,
to deliver an excting conclusion to the movement.

Having in mind some of those interminably vapid virtuoso violin concerti which sprang
up like weeds through out the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I rather thought
this music might turn out to be a “contrabass” version of the same kind of thing – but in
fact I found the work a stimulating listening experience with its composer tossing us
some unexpected twists and turns. The slow movement began with some raw tuning from
the wind and brass but soon settled down, the soloist firstly  counterpointing a warmly
romantic string tune, then “swapping roles” with the orchestra later in the piece, and
finishing with a graceful and winsome ascending line.

It all contrasted excitingly with the finale’s opening, the orchestra bursting in with heroic
gesturings, and the soloist setting off on his journeyings with a spirited kind of “road
music” theme. The players found it hard to keep together with some of their interjections,
and some of the exchanges were raucous, but the enthusiasm was evident, and the
soloist’s playing astonishing in its technical and expressive range. At the end of the piece
he got a warm and properly appreciative reception from all of us present.

After the interval it was time for Vince Hardaker and the players to confront Beethoven!
I remember reading, years and years ago, a review in “Gramophone” of a recording of the
Seventh Symphony made by a fairly prestigious orchestra and a well-known conductor.
The reviewer, who had himself conducted the work with amateur groups, commented on
what he called the “orchestra difficulty” posed by the incessant dotted rhythms of the first
movement, noting some lapses in ensemble on the recording.  Although Sir Thomas Beecham’s
well-known rehearsal comment on the music – “What can you do with it? – it’s like a lot of yaks
jumping about!” referred particularly to the work’s scherzo, a similar kind of boisterous spirit
informs much of the other quick music in the work.

True to expectation, it was the first movement which here caused the players the most
difficulty, the strings in particular having to bear the brunt of those obsessive rhythms. As
well, the ascending scale passsages after the opening chords caused some momentary grief
among the strings before the trajectories “found” one another and started to jell between
the players. Set against these purple patches were some splendid sequences, the lyrical lines
nicely handled by the winds and the brass chiming in at climactic points with great gusto,
contributing both thrills and spills.

The lower strings got the second movement processional off to a great start, with the violas’
counter-melody and the violins’ shaping of the main theme brought out nicely by players and
conductor. I liked the warm, reassuring tones of the major-key section – lovely clarinet and
horn solos – and the ensuing string fugato, though a bit seedy at the outset, developed into
something determined and powerful.  As for the Scherzo I thought Vince Hardaker’s tempo
just right for these players, giving them sufficient spaces in which to fill out the rhythms.
The Trio was a highlight, with the strings sustaining the oscillating theme while the winds
and brass notes rang out splendidly.

To my surprise the calls to action at the finale’s beginning were articulated crisply and
excitingly at the outset, with the momentums strongly kept up – a bit later, I liked the
leaping-figure exchanges between upper and lower strings (even if I thought the lower
strings could have “held onto” their final note a bit longer each time), and enjoyed the
wholehearted plunges back into the mainstream of the music’s flow after each divergence.
If the fearsome vortex-like passage towards the movement’s conclusion had an extra hint
of desperation about the playing, then conductor and orchestra’s achievement in pulling
themselves out of it all made the mighty brass-led homecoming all the more exciting,
the horns at the end sounding the triumph with gusto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Round the Horn” – Wellington Chamber Orchestra and Samuel Jacobs

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

Beethoven: Fidelio Overture

Richard Strauss: Horn Concerto no.1

Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E minor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Rachel Hyde; Samuel Jacobs (horn)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 14 April 2013, 2.30pm

It was unfortunate that probably many in the audience beside myself had attended the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s concert in the Michael Fowler Centre the previous night: a close juxtaposition of the playing of a professional orchestra with that of an amateur orchestra is not good for the latter.

Nevertheless, there were high points in this ambitious programme.  It was good to see (and hear) the brass out of the sanctuary this time, so that the instruments could be heard clearly, without undue reverberation.

A splendid opening to Beethoven’s overture was rather soon marred by the horns muffing notes.  There were four horn players, and Beethoven gave them a lot to do, some of which they performed very well – but too often their contribution was less than perfect.  By contrast, the trumpets were excellent – of course, the trumpet is not nearly such a difficult instrument to play.  As a whole, the performance of the overture was a good effort.

It was a sad shock to learn earlier in the week that the English leader of the NZSO horns will be returning to Britain at the end of the year, after less than two years here.  Samuel Jacobs played the Strauss concerto in great style – and some of his professional colleagues were there to hear him play only the second concerto he has performed in this country.

Strauss gave parts to only two horns in the orchestra, so the other horn players could enjoy hearing the solo –  one did it with a smile on his face most of the time.

Jacobs’s playing was true and vital with fine tone and lovely phrasing.  His high notes were refined and controlled.  His playing echoed the programme note description of Strauss’s horn-playing father’s efforts: ‘…almost universally admired in German music circles or his flawless technique and impeccable artistry.’  The solo playing here was always lovely, with a variety of tonal colours.

The first movement of the concerto was extremely lyrical, even Romantic in style.  String intonation wavered at times, but was mainly good.  The orchestra rose to most occasions.  There was a charming episode featuring horn solo with woodwind; the flutes particularly did a great job.

In fact, the whole work, described in the programme note as ‘…a very conservative work… [with] melodic ardour and profligacy’ was superbly played, and was greeted with tumultuous applause such as one doesn’t usually hear at an amateur concert.

The Brahms fourth symphony was a big work to tackle for a chamber orchestra.  While it was given a creditable performance, maybe it was a little beyond these musicians.  As the programme note said, here ‘…Brahms explores a range of emotions as well as sheer orchestral colour beyond anything he had attempted in his earlier symphonies…’ and so the demands on the players were huge.  It is a complex composition – but I do find that towards the end of the finale it becomes somewhat dull and predictable – Brahms was famous for making the most of every scrap of material.

The first movement (allegro non troppo) opens with a slightly sad, lyrical passage – this was played well.  Surging lower strings and strong brass were later features, the thick textures demonstrating the great strength of Brahms’s writing, but also providing difficulties for the orchestra in obtaining clarity.

The andante moderato second movement is characterised by beautiful lyrical phrases and themes, but some of them suffered from a lack of precision in the strings, though the winds continued to be effective.  Richard Strauss apparently told Brahms that the music suggest ‘a funeral procession moving in silence across moonlit heights’; this seemed apt, but the orchestration was quite grand following a most nostalgic section for horn.

The third movement, allegro giocoso, was more jovial, not least for the introduction of the triangle and the piccolo.  Trumpets and horns both played well here.  A long flute solo with two horns intoning repeated notes was very well executed.

In the large-scale finale (allegro energico e passionato) the trombones finally got a chance to play, and they did it with skill and character.  By the end the music, and playing, became a little tedious.  After such a demanding programme I should not be surprised if the players had become tired.

Overall, the orchestra made a good sound, but inevitably in an amateur orchestra there is a range of skills and levels of competency.  The Strauss horn concerto was the outstanding part of the programme, and the excellence of the solo playing made it all the more regrettable that Samuel Jacobs is not staying around.

Rachel Hyde had the flutes stand first after the general applause at the end of the concert, marking their considerable and skilled contribution to the performance.

NZSO’s “Home is where the Heart is….”

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

ECHOES OF HOME

Larry Pruden: Soliloquy for Strings

Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op.104 (allegro; adagio non troppo; allegro moderato

Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances, Op.45

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Daniel Müller-Schott (cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 13 April 2013, 7.30pm

The title alludes to the fact that these works were either devised, or revised, when their composers were a long way from home: Pruden in London, Dvořák in the USA and Rachmaninov in the States also.

Larry Pruden’s work for string orchestra was a fine concert opener.  Its dreamy, unison opening for violins only, led us gently into the concert.  Other strings followed, the minor key giving the work a melancholic air, although there was plenty of passion present.  For a while the music wandered around a rather stark landscape, then became tense and astringent, before a calmer mood overcame the tension, and excitement built up.

A solo violin section led to a gradual resolution of the argument; a slightly uneasy peace settled by the end.  Throughout, the strings played with panache and sensitivity, giving a fine reading of the piece.

Dvořák’s Cello Concerto must be one of the all-time favourite concertos, and it is always gratifying to hear this well-loved work played live in concert – on this occasion by good-looking young German Daniel Müller-Schott.

The minor key opening belies Dvořák’s usual good humour and cheerfulness, with its storm of notes, noble theme and blaring brass.  Dvořák could never keep a good tune down for long, and some significant woodwind passages, and a beautiful melody that emerges on flute, were succeeded by another for the horn, calling across the beloved Bohemian landscape.

Sweeping strings and brass introduce a new subject, leading to the soloist’s incisive entry, taking up the orchestra’s themes.  The following passage-work was indeed demanding of the cellist, but Müller-Schott was its equal, before mellifluously rendering his first major theme.  Lots of orchestral detail emerged, especially from the woodwind and brass sections.  Lovely phrasing graced Müller-Schott’s lyrical playing; bow changes were imperceptible.

The early part of the development did not rise to the level of excitement that I was anticipating.  However, the final pages made up for it, with gorgeous string sound from both orchestra and soloist.

Nevertheless, there were times when I was expecting a fuller and warmer sound from Müller-Schott.  Whether this lack was a function of the Michael Fowler Centre, I couldn’t say.

The delicious opening clarinet of the slow movement followed by the cello soloist’s entry and the orchestral cellos’ pizzicato comprise one of music’s magical moments. The ravishing build-up of passion following this is as dramatic as an aria in opera.  The woodwinds reprise is gentle, only to be shocked by the tutti that follows.  The soloists’ melodies do not quell the ardour, but nevertheless lead the orchestra to calmer waters.

There were moments here when the solo was drowned by the orchestra – surely not the composer’s intention.  The cadenza was enhanced by a flute obbligato from Bridget Douglas.  Some of Dvořák’s most superbly magical writing is here.

Both Tovey and the friend with whom I attended the concert remarked on how the composer seems repeatedly to be bringing the movement to an end, and then carries on.  The positive side of this is that we hear constantly renewed beauty from the music.

The allegro slow movement is an utter contrast. It presents a rollicking band, while the cello solo veritably dances.  The sheer breadth of sound from the entire orchestra was breathtaking.  The cello section of the orchestra had plenty to do.  The ending was superb, thanks to the composer’s lovely writing for winds, while the soloist had much lyrical playing to delight the audience.  His technique is splendid, as was his command of the music, but I had anticipated a bigger, richer sound than we always got.  I am referring to timbre and tone rather than volume.  Nevertheless, this was fine, sensitive playing.

Müller-Schott greeted the continuous enthusiastic applause and cheers by playing an encore: Ravel’s Habanera.  In this I heard the sort of tone I had been seeking in the concerto – without orchestra, it came through strongly and eloquently.

Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances was a work only vaguely familiar to me, but it proved to be full of delights.  The delicate, quirky opening was followed by slow intoning accompanied by woodwind solos, and a discreet piano.  A splendid section for woodwinds followed, including an alto saxophone solo, plus some fine cor anglais playing.  Then grand phrases for strings swept us away.  All very dramatic and very Russian, and punctuated by an insistent three-note figure.  This movement was designated ‘non allegro’ (fast but not too fast?)

A strident brass opening of the second movement (andante con moto – tempos di valse)led to a solo violin passage of eloquent phrases, played by Vesa-Matti Leppänen.  This was followed by solo oboe.  Then we were into the lilting waltz, with its quirky interruptions.  The principal double bass player entered into the waltz, with his swaying instrument, the brass plate behind the tuning pegs reflecting the light as it moved.  The movement was full of good cheer.

The opening of the third movement (lento assai – allegro vivace – lento assai – come prima – allegro vivace) reminded me of Sibelius, but it soon changed to something more insistent.  Splendid percussion was a feature of this movement.  Another Sibelius-like theme emerged on the strings.  Brass flourishes appeared before a return to the slow and sombre temper again, with a lovely cor anglais solo.  The harp was notable.

Tremolando strings along with clarinet created a very spooky atmosphere.  This was such effective writing, full of contrasting dynamics.  Back to waltz rhythm again, and then the music worked up to an allegro, packed with excitement and rollicking brass at full pelt.  Drums and cellos sounded Sibelius-esque again, while off-beat rhythms reminded me of Carl Orff.  A tumultuous ending with gong strokes finished a wonderful and satisfying performance of a work of great variety with marvellous rhythms and luscious orchestration.

The printed programme was graced by Frances Moore’s superb notes, in which unfamiliar material was presented in a refreshing way.

Wellington audiences are having four days of an embarrassment of riches: three Houstoun Beethoven sonata concerts, this NZSO concert, and a Sunday afternoon concert from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra.

Britten, Milhaud and Tchaikovsky from the NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:

NZSM Orchestra – “Pathetique”

BRITTEN – Suite on English Folksongs

MILHAUD – Viola Concerto No.2 Op.340

TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No.6 “Pathetique”

Irina Andreeva (viola)

Kenneth Young (conductor)

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Tuesday 9th April, 2013

This was a whale of a concert from the NZSM Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Young, performing with Auckland-based viola soloist Irina Andreeva. Much of the enjoyment was in our anticipation of the programme, which featured a not too-well-known Folksong Suite by Benjamin Britten, and an even more rarely performed concerto for viola by Darius Milhaud, coupled with one of the best-loved of the Tchaikovsky Symphonies, the “Pathetique”. If not quite “something for everybody” the concert certainly ranged over an impressive and satisfying stretch of stylistic and emotional terrain.

The concert’s centerpiece was the Milhaud Viola Concerto, the composer’s second for the instrument and reputedly one of the most difficult works for viola in the repertoire. Milhaud wrote it during 1954 and 1955 as a dedication to the eminent virtuoso William Primrose, who apparently found it difficult and ungrateful to perform. Upon complaining to the composer, Primrose recalled that Milhaud replied, disarmingly, “Mon Cher, all concertos should be difficult”.

To date there has been no commercial recording made of the concerto, though there are rumours that a tape of Primrose playing the work does exist. The violist was quoted as saying it (the concerto) was “the most outrageously difficult work I ever tackled, and for all the immense labour I devoted to it never appealed to the public”.

For myself, on a first hearing, I thought it lacked the charm and variety and energy of Walton’s only concerto for viola, the first rival twentieth-century work which comes to mind. Though they’re not exactly thick on the ground, other concerti for the instrument by Bartok, Hindemith, Schnittke, Penderecki and Piston do turn up in adventurous orchestral programmes – and one mustn’t forget things like Anthony Ritchie’s 1994 concerto, of which there’s an Atoll recording featuring violist Timothy Deighton. (There are also viola concerti by Alfred Hill and Nigel Keay, further off the beaten home-grown track…..).

But Milhaud it was on this occasion, and the soloist Irina Andreeva bent her back to the task with a will, meeting head-on William Primrose’s assertion regarding the music’s difficulty, and emerging triumphant at the end, though not without playing her way through some nail-biting moments. The first movement is marked “Avec Entrain” which my on-line translator rendered as “with spirit” – and as the solo instrument virtually never stopped playing throughout, spirit was certainly required on the part of the soloist!  The music consisted of a running figure for the viola which sometimes relaxed into a more lyrical mode, accompanied in a disconcertingly pointillistic way by the orchestra, with abrupt squawks in places and lovely squealings in others. And I did enjoy the frequent insouciance of the wind-playing, in marked contrast to the nervous and keeping-on intensities of the violist’s undulating figurations.

Movement 2 was “Avec Charm” which I guess didn’t need translation, though the music’s ambience was, I thought, “small-hours dance-floor” with only a few couples left. The soloist’s lovely tone amply filled out the lyrical figurations, one or two intonation sags aside, especially when under pressure from what seemed like awkward stretches – the “difficult and ungrateful to perform” ghost here hovering about the music. But there were some gorgeous low-lying passages which brought forth plenty of juice from Andreeva’s instrument, accompanied by nostalgic winds and some “last dance” harp phrases, leading up to the crack-of-doom gong-stroke which then sent the phantoms of the small-hours packing into the gloom.

My schoolboy French wasn’t up to “Avec esprit”, and I was put right in conversation afterwards by a friend who explained it was literally “with mind” [it also means ‘wit’: L.T.] – which made more sense of music that seemed extremely controlled in its expression, a tight rhythmic regime which came across like a waltz in a straitjacket – the soloist’s recurring “theme” alternated with orchestra comment whose textures supported the argument with occasional punctuations and deft cross-rhythms. And there was no let-up for anybody in the concluding “Avec gaîtè”, a slowly-lolloping jig, whose stride gathered up the soloist’s strenuous double-stopping and the marvellously detailed orchestra textures, and proceeded to generate a well-nigh unstoppable momentum towards a “fin triomphant”! Accolades all round was the richly-deserved response to a fine performance.

To begin the concert, we had another work rarely encountered in the concert-hall, Benjamin Britten’s Suite on English Folksongs, music which took a somewhat different approach to that accorded traditional airs by composers such as Holst and Vaughan Williams. Britten had written a work for inclusion in the celebrations surrounding the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1966, an arrangement for winds of the folk song Hankin Booby, and so, eight years later, included the work in his new suite. The whole work was given the subtitle “A time there was…..”, which was a quotation from a poem by Thomas Hardy, reflecting upon an age of innocence, and its subsequent corruption, something of a recurring theme in Britten’s own work.

Unlike other folksong treatments, Britten took the traditional folk-themes and developed them in pairs, subjecting the combinations to concise, but nevertheless intense explorations, finding worlds within worlds from these melodies. I noted in the very first one, Cakes and Ale, the rhythmic thrust of the writing from the very first chord – superbly delivered, here! – and the great work by the brass in carrying this forward. Interwoven with the themes were tortured, obsessive figurations, heightening tensions between both tunes and underlying accompaniments.

The second piece, The Bitter Withy, inspired beautiful string playing and support from the harp, the instrumental tones nicely gradated and the intensities well terraced, bringing sharply into relief the rustic angularities of the following Hankin Booby, the work’s “godfather” piece. What wonderful sonorities, and how pungently and wholeheartedly the orchestral winds put across their characteristic tinbres – riveting!

Hunt the Squirrel suggests as a title a quintessential English activity set to music, and the open-sounding strings brought out the essential earthiness of the fun, with some great playing from the orchestral leader, Salina Fisher. The ensemble wasn’t absolutely note-perfect, but put across a corporate verve and energy which underpinned the music’s excitement.

Again, Britten set one piece’s mood against its previous opposite, with the suite’s finale, Lord Melbourne. A tragic note hung around the music’s beginning, with its deep-throated percussion and “wandering” string and wind lines – this continued until the cor anglais solo, when conductor Ken Young suddenly stopped the orchestra and indicated to the players to start again – it had transpired (I was afterwards told) that one of the wind soloists had been ill before the concert, and had at that point gotten somewhat out of time and wasn’t “knitting” with the rest of the ensemble.

The repeat that followed seemed to present a tauter aspect to the music, if less spontaneous-sounding and “dangerous”. The piece built to a climax with the help of some intensely-focused string entries, then ebbed the tension away with birdsong-like winds and all-pervading feelings of nostalgic longing, the music expressing a touching loss and sorrow at the end. Altogether, the music was a discovery for me, and the performance presented it memorably, in an entirely sympathetic light.

I haven’t left much time or space to talk about the performance of the “Pathetique” which took up the second half of the concert, mainly because I thought the orchestra had presented the concert’s first-half items with such distinction, along with the soloist in the Milhaud Concerto. But the Tchaikovsky Symphony was also played magnificently, with a palpable sense of commitment and concentration from the very first gloom-laden notes, the bassoon and violas empowering the basses to “focus” their initial phrases a bit more securely the second time round after what I thought were a somewhat nervous first couple of notes.

Tchaikovsky’s adoration of Mozart was apparent with the violins’ opening phrases, here, the poise and clarity of the playing growing in intensity towards the brass fanfares, then erupting in agitation but called back to a state of relative calm by the lower strings – and how beautifully the violins stole in with the “big tune”, the playing expressive and plaintive-toned, with proper heart-on-sleeve emotion here, from winds as well as strings.

Conductor Young didn’t spare the players with the sudden onset of the allegro, and encouraged a terrific noise at the heart of the conflicting hubbub, timpani especially “charged” and well-focused throughout. With the big tune’s reprise at the end of the tumult, the sound wasn’t especially pure from the violins, but had great character, which I much preferred to a kind of bland homogeneity, the emotion expressed in great waves. Lovely winds and noble brass at the end, with every pizzicato note sounding as though it really meant something.

If I describe the remainder of the symphony’s performance like this I shall be here all night – so suffice to say that the 5/4 Second Movement was expressed by Young and his players with great urgency, or “a fair old lick” as they say in the classics, with the pizzicato passages a forest of plucking noises at that speed! No respite from the Trio, either, the music’s anxiety level kept near the red throughout, and the playing matching the music’s mood in point and focus. Then, the third-movement March was all urgency and angst – music of flight as much as nervous energy – with the antiphonal exchanges between the instruments thrilling. Every now and then an instrumental detail would arrest one’s sensibilities, such as a piccolo-led wind flourish, and a keenly-focused timpani crescendo.

Young gave his strings enough room to really “point” the main theme, and also deal with the syncopated exchanges between instrumental groups. The build-up to the first percussion onslaught was fabulous, even if the bass drum slightly anticipated one of its entries. And the coda was all the more effective through being kept rock-steady, allowing the winds a terrific texture-piercing flourish before the final crunching chords. How the audience restrained itself from breaking into spontaneous applause (a common occurrence with this work in concert) I’ll never know!

Sweet, regretful strings there were at the finale’s beginning, the emotion dignified at this initial stage, the phrasings given plenty of breath, wind and brass steady, apart from the occasional tiny horn burble. As the music slipped into the major, the mood took on a more hopeful aspect, the plea becoming increasingly eloquent – only to flounder against a brass rebuttal and crash to a halt in disarray. I enjoyed the subsequent ghoulish brass raspings and Wagnerian string intensities “sung out” by the players just before the second and final irruption, giving the moment of death-convulsion a truly fatalistic feeling and colour. The trombones intoned their lament superbly, as did the strings, with great, weeping swells of emotion, leading to dark, drained silences at the end.

I confess to being spellbound, throughout, by the playing’s energy and commitment – in short, I thoroughly enjoyed the concert’s two earlier (and less familiar) items, but thought the whole of the symphony was well-and-truly “nailed” by these youngsters and their inspirational conductor. Bravo!