Tag: concerto

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted Rachel Hyde with Helene Pohl (violin) and Rolf Gjelsten (cello)

Overture to Der Freischütz by Weber
Concerto for violin and cello in A minor, Op 102 by Brahms
Symphony No 3 in F, Op 90 by Brahms

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 29 March, 2:30 pm

One could argue that the first concert in Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s 2015 season was devoted to the very centre of the classical music repertoire: the blending and conjunction of the classical and romantic eras.

Orchestral performances between the hard surfaces of the typical church are not easy to bring off; and over the years I have often commented on the delicate matter of positioning timpani and brass so that their impact is not too distressing. Conductor Rachel Hyde arrayed the orchestra forward in the church, placing timpani at the side near the chamber organ, and the brass out from the sanctuary which tends to amplify the sound.

Nevertheless, in the gallery, where I sat in the first half of the concert, the four horns, at that stage exhibiting a degree of unsteadiness, were loud. The typical opera orchestra which, even in Germany, might not be as polished as one might imagine, is modified by being in a pit so that rough patches are obscured. Here, the splendid overture to Der Freischütz had to survive full exposure. It was taken fairly slowly which probably improved accuracy but, on the other hand, offered more time to perceive weaknesses. Its dramatic character, and its supernatural touches did not suffer through the slow tempo, and the surprisingly long pause before the attack of the Coda gave it real impact.

A great idea to programme Brahms’s not very often played Double Concerto, giving Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten, first violin and cello in the New Zealand String Quartet, an opportunity to shine individually (they told me that they’d recently played the same piece with New Plymouth’s Civic Orchestra). I was still reeling from the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto by Janine Jansen the previous evening; yet the utterly different Brahms concerto in the hands of two gifted chamber musicians created a most satisfactory experience. Perfection in the orchestral playing was neither expected nor delivered, but the whole, especially in the second movement’s lyrical passages, was no disappointment.

Performances by amateur orchestras can be an excellent way for those without wide or deep musical experience to make discoveries, and all three works in this programme might well have been overlooked by the professional orchestras, which tend to deprecate the old pattern of overture – concerto – symphony that used to be the staple orchestral pattern. Its abandonment now means that the novice concert-goer never hears the scores of wonderful overtures, both opera and stand-alone, that the tyro of my generation came to love.

Finally, the symphony – neither the more played first or fourth of Brahms – but perhaps the most sanguine of the four, came off better than the earlier pieces on the programme. That may have been partly the result of my moving downstairs to the back seats where the sound is filtered somewhat, kinder to amateurs. The brass sounded in better control, the essential beauty of the lyrical second movement was captured, and the strings produced an almost Wagnerian silkiness (hints of Siegfried’s Rhine Journey from Götterdämmerung), though tricky cross rhythms in the last movement sounded a bit awkward. The tempi were admirable, calm and unhurried, yet energetic where that was required.

I hope that this performance will have won a few more friends for Brahms, for it was a worthy achievement by a non-professional ensemble. In all, in spite of the reservations mentioned, inevitable for such an orchestra which inevitably spends more rehearsal time on certain works than on others, this was a satisfying concert.

 

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
OPULENCE – Music by Tchaikovsky, Ravel and R.Strauss

Eldar Nebolsin (piano)
Michael Stern (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

TCHAIKOVSKY – Piano Concerto No.2 in G Major Op.44
RAVEL – Ballet Suite from “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose)
R.STRAUSS (arr. Rodzinski) – Orchestral Suite from “Der Rosenkavalier”

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 8th November, 2014

Happily, the days of accepting “as Tchaikovsky’s work” the long-established truncated version made by Alexander Siloti of the G Major Piano Concerto – such grievous cuts in the second movement! –  seem to be at an end. Here, at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s “Opulence” concert at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday evening last, we had, in all of its undiluted glory, the original work as Tchaikovsky conceived it. Those extended solo string lines of the Andante were allowed their full expressive voice, maximizing the movement’s dramatic contrast with the energy and vigour of the outer sections of the concerto.

This done, the rest was up to the musicians – and we got a performance from pianist, conductor and orchestra that, to my ears, simply got better and better as it progressed – perhaps a shade four-square and pompous throughout the opening exchanges (partly the fault of Tchaikovsky’s writing), but with every entry made by pianist Eldar Nebolsin creating sparks and flashes of impulse which eventually built up to the point of open conflagration. Here was, I thought, a demonstration of keyboard virtuosity which seemed to grow from right out of the music’s heart – it possessed a kind of compulsive playfulness that exuded total involvement, far removed from brilliance for its own sake.

Nebolsin seemed to take nothing he played for granted, voicing his lines exquisitely in quieter places, in dialogue with the orchestral winds, then just as spontaneously bubbling his textures up and over with delight in his more rapid passagework. Yes, that odd-sounding “ready-steady-GO!” orchestral entry (not terribly convincing at the best of times!) at about nine or ten minutes into the first movement didn’t “come off” here with any great conviction, but the orchestral winds then played like souls possessed with their concerted triplet figurations that buoyed along the string lines which followed. From then on I thought the playing really took wing, with a grandly-sprung orchestral entry immediately after the pianist’s astonishingly volatile first-movement cadenza, and some riotous exchanges leading up to the movement’s end.

It seems tiresomely cliched to say so, but the Andante’s opening conjured up an entirely different world of sensibility – firstly Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin, and then Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello gave us moments of aching lyrical beauty, the players’ lines mingling ease with intensity in a way that might well have caused the pianist to exclaim in rehearsal “What a pity to come in and spoil that!”…….however, Nebolsin’s real-time response was to add to the melody’s beauty with phrasings that actually brought to my mind in places the Brahms of some of the latter’s Intermezzi  – Tchaikovsky, who was ambivalent about the German composer and his music, would possibly be spinning in his grave at the audacity of such a comparison!

But there was more to it than lyrical expression – the exchanges took on a passionately operatic air in places, the piano building “Swan-Lake” climaxes with the orchestral strings, and violin and ‘cello “crossing bows” with a vengeance, before returning things to a state of equilibrium, save for that uneasy sequence shared by the lower strings and brass over tremolando violins – some remnant of a painful and poignant memory of its composer’s, perhaps?

How we all delighted at the whiplash crack of the finale’s opening! – again, Nebolsoin’s playing had such a sense of fun accompanying the brilliance! We got a superb horn-solo as a counterpoint to the second theme, and an exciting, soaring, conflagration of strings in their brief but telling flourish which followed. I thought, in fact, the whole performance seemed to be alight, with plenty of “sting” in the exchanges between soloist and strings – an example was that tricky-run-up to yet another whiplash chord at the beginning of the coda – real panache, a wonderful amalgam of impetuosity and confidence!

Had the Michael Fowler Centre been more generously peopled that evening (was that reprobate Guy Fawkes to blame on this occasion?), the response at the concerto’s end would have been simply overwhelming! We did our best, calling the pianist back for more and richly-deserved acclaim, until we could put hands together no more – Eldar Nebolsin’s was playing which made me long for the days when such a soloist’s appearance with the orchestra would usually be followed up  by a solo recital – alas, as civilizations progress, so, it seems, do they also decline……..

We had been told in an announcement before the concert that the interval would be spaced so as to allow patrons the opportunity to observe the Wellington City Council’s annual fireworks display – so, at 9pm most of us had arrayed ourselves either at a convenient window or vantage-point just alongside the building, ready for the visual scintillations and batteries of percussive retorts accompanying such happenings. It all seemed in perfect accord with what we had just heard, actually – so everybody was in a high old humour when the concert’s second half began.

Certainly, after the “double-whammy” effect of Tchaikovsky at his most extroverted and brilliant, and the full-on battery of fireworks over the harbour, we were all ready for something a shade more subtle and delicate – and Ravel’s music for his Ballet Suite “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose) was just what the doctor ordered. A pity the whole ballet is seldom played in the concert-hall, as there’s more to enjoy – an enchanting introduction plus a series of wonderful linking episodes (rather like the “Promenades” used by Musorgsky in his “Pictures at an Exhibition”). Still, the Suite is the next-best thing, and it brought out ravishing sounds from conductor and players in all instances.

The Suite preserves the work’s original inspiration – five pieces written for piano-duet for the children of friends, each piece characterizing a favourite fairy-tale. Ravel, too kept the structure intact when he first orchestrated the pieces in 1911 – the following year he added the “extras” which introduce and then link the movements. Tonight we began with the “Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty”, the sounds like the play of vapours around the head of a sleeping child, as if guardian spirits were in attendance.  The orchestral winds had a great deal of solo work throughout, and the players performed their own and the more concerted lines with requisite beauty and character, especially in this opening piece.

Next came another delicate evocation, “Petit Poucet” (Tom Thumb), whose principal melody, played on the cor anglais, had such an aching, nostalgic quality, one could readily identify with the composer’s longing to somehow re-enter the world of childhood. The forest birds made an appearance in this tale as well, a solo violin joining various winds to emulate their wild, plaintive voices. What a change of ambience with “Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas”, the pentatonic figurations creating bustling, excitable movement before a gong evoked the splendour of an Oriental Monarch! How the composer must have loved writing this!

One of the most famous of all fairy-tales, “Beauty and the Beast”, got truly graphic treatment from the orchestral instruments, the story’s two characters clearly demarcated at the beginning, bright-eyed, almost questing wind-playing depicting Beauty’s attractiveness and open, enquiring mind, and then louring percussion supporting the hideous tones of the contrabassoon to portray the unfortunate Beast – a wonderful noise! Then when the lighter winds and the deep-throated Beast got together, the synthesis was breathtaking in its audacity and clarity – a kind of “vive la difference” to savour and remember.

In fact, the only, very slight criticism I could find to make of the playing was of places in the final movement, “The Enchanted Garden”, whose episodes I thought unfolded beautifully, but a shade (just a shade, mind you!) too glibly – the sequences could have done with a touch more breathless wonderment at some of the phrase-ends and harmonic turns, as a child might experience when exploring some kind of wonderland – places where the music’s hymn-like progressions could have caught and held the flow for split-seconds of poised, ecstatic delight, a “registering” of certain moments, one might say. Still, the final peroration very satisfyingly gathered all together and opened up the vistas to the oncoming sunshine, a triumph of light and good and happiness over the dark, the orchestral harps properly drenching our sensibilities with warmth and excitement.

I hadn’t read the titles of the items as carefully as I should have, thinking that we were going to get the “Rosenkavalier Waltzes” at the concert’s end – which I do love! But instead I found myself enjoying the opera’s notoriously orgasmic Prelude – perhaps there’s something about an unexpected pleasure! – before the music went  on to explore various episodes of the drama. A quick look at the item’s listing clarified what was happening – this was a proper “Suite” from the opera, with an opus number, no less!

The programme note implied that the Suite had been made by the composer together with the Polish conductor Artur Rodzinski, in 1944. But the conductor was in New York at the time while Strauss was in war-besieged Germany, suggesting that the Suite was actually Rodzinski’s work, as he gave its premiere with the New York Philharmonic that same year. Strauss must have eventually approved the work, because it was published in 1945 with its present Opus number.

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Stern’s conducting and the playing of the orchestra throughout this exercise – I wondered in places whether the work was a couple of sequences too long, but the reaction of the audience at the end certainly dispelled that impression! Parts of it I thought were particularly magical, notably the moments which featured the haunting wind-chord figurations that accompany Octavian’s presentation of the Silver Rose to Sophie at the beginning of Act Two; though I thought some of the opera’s vocal lines lost some of their intensity and focus when played by groups of instruments instead of a single instrumental voice – Sophie’s ecstatically soaring response to Octavian’s presentation here somehow didn’t “tug” the heartstrings as it always does on stage, the impact a bit too generalized from a body of strings or doubled wind lines.

What worked superbly well were the waltzes, particularly the gold-digging Baron Ochs’ lascivious “With me, no night for you too long” tune, which Strauss presents, as here, using, first of all a solo violin (gorgeously played by Vesa-Matti Leppanen) and then, with the orchestral throttle fully open – great moments! But one doesn’t really blame either Rodzinski or Strauss for favouring a kind of good old whizz-bang concert-ending to the suite, instead of going with the prevailing emotions of the opera’s conclusion, and replicating that ambience at the finish.

So, after some heartfelt and beautifully-phrased playing by gorgeous strings (plus some lovely high trumpet work) of the opera’s final “eternal triangle with a difference” Trio, we got the haunting wind arabesques once again along with Octavian’s and Sophie’s final duet – and then the music roared into Ochs’ “Leopold! We’re leaving!” orchestral riot, with great horn whoops sounding above the exuberant rhythms, and a properly-gradated payoff at the end. Everybody seemed to love it! – and as an orchestral showpiece it certainly demonstrated what conductor and players could do, in spadefuls!

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.