Tag: concerto

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

MAHLER 7 – Mysteries of the Night

JS BACH – Double Violin Concerto in D Minor

MAHLER – Symphony No.7

Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Pietari Inkinen (violins)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 10th November, 2012

Guest review by Ben Booker

There is something distinctly summery about Bach’s D-minor Concerto for Two Violins, and the fairly full audience suggested that this particular programme was not at all disagreeable to Wellingtonians following one of the city’s rare but sparkling summery days.

Bach’s music seems to have fallen into comparative orchestral disuse in recent times, so it was refreshing to hear it live, by a condensed edition of the NZSO. And what spectacle it provided! Such beauty! Such elegance!

While the very opening of the Vivace may not have been quite as metrically precise as rehearsed, the orchestra quickly showed itself to be a force not of accompaniment, but of thoughtful and involved musical collaboration with the soloists. Orchestral cohesion thereafter was remarkable, and despite the use of less rubato than many historically-informed performances (something this writer’s Romantic tastes have a weakness for around internal cadences!), the soloists’ micro-changes to tempo made such unity of movement impressive, especially in the absence of a conductor.

The regular conductor, of course, was playing first violin. Pietari Inkinen demonstrated an incredibly expressive tone quality – clear and bell-like, but with a certain hint of melancholy and loneliness that is quite impossible to adequately describe here. The usual concertmaster, Vesa-Matti Leppänen, was the other soloist, and the effortlessly broad sounds in his superb playing provided a great contrast with Inkinen, really demonstrating the contrapuntal and conversational design of the concerto.

The famous Largo ma non troppo was introduced by a wonderfully timeless piece of internal musical ponderment from Leppänen, and the entire movement demonstrated such a clarity of texture, such deep concentration upon the unfurling melodic lines, that at times, it seemed as if Bach’s harmony was just an exquisitely happy coincidence amongst the matchless counterpoint and dialogue of the two players and amongst the orchestra.

Following that, the bustling Allegro provided much in the way of contrast to the preceding movement, though I could not help but wish for a touch more industriousness and volatility in the orchestral parts. The soloists’ articulation and dialogue, again, was excellent, and both made wonderful use of vibrato; it was used sparingly – less as a general seasoning, and more as a special spice, which made its expressive effect enormously more powerful.

The orchestra certainly found this elusive industrious sound in then opening of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, however. The brass, as throughout, was dark and clear, and the rather Enid Blytonesque sense of mischief and the unfamiliar was portrayed very well in the opening movement. During most of the movement, there was a sense of a solid sonic foundation, yet a more whimsical and explosive surface, which suited the music perfectly.

A common problem in performing Austro-German music of the later Romantic period is the temptation to lapse into ‘parade syndrome’ – where the music disintegrates into a passing parade of shallow effects. At times in the first movement, I was worried that this was about to occur, as there seemed to be a slight lack of hierarchy in the passagework: every passage was being treated as a very important section, and this was a little too much to digest easily.

Nevertheless, changes to momentum were handled well by conductor and orchestra, with sudden variations in colour and style bringing in other-worldly characters, leaving the listener only to wonder what might have happened had Mahler been a cinematic composer in the more recent past.

This all built up to a dreadfully thrilling climax before recapitulation. While I sometimes found Inkinen’s string-dominated textures a little too pretty for the music, there were excellent moments of brass interjections, including a very flatulent low F sharp from the tuba! A sense of despondency and internal struggle in the coda was captured well, making the slightly troubled march to conclude the movement all the more memorable.

The second movement began with a very expressive horn conversation, and Inkinen’s rock-solid tempos proved to be a real asset in this movement. The creepy eccentricities of the part writing were brought out hilariously well – isolated accents, portamento, sudden changes in dynamic, exaggerated entrances, and sarcastic ritenutos abounded, creating a personified atmosphere.  Creepy and unsettled strings really pulled the spooky Scherzo off well, its title not referring so much to a literal ‘joke’ than to the post-Beethovenian connotations of dark amusement and fright. The solos were all first rate, as they had been the entire evening – my favourite had to be Julia Joyce’s precarious and eerie additions on the viola, played with exaggerated vibrato and dynamic mastery.

The second Nachtmusik movement had its share of quiet scherzo-like mutterings, but offered a complete change of aural scenery, quite in concordance with the amoroso instruction! Tension was nicely regulated by the returns to pastoral F-major sections, and the guitar and mandolin offered a nice touch, played by Doug de Vries and Dylan Lardelli respectively. While the concluding interjections were slightly too active for the nocturnal feel, the very end was as magical a moment as any.

And then the Rondo finale brought a celebratory awakening! Majestic in most places rather than overly extroverted, I could not decide whether the wonderfully-timed crescendos back to the main tune were satiric or if they were eccentric; either way, it was amusing and interesting. The movement provided much in the way of pandemonium and industry, and was just a jolly good time. Tubular bells rang bravely and wonderfully loud, and the finale just roared. I cannot recall seeing Inkinen so completely involved and immersed in the music, and his second bouquet of flowers for the evening was richly deserved. Bravo, NZSO!

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Another view: from Peter Mechen

One would immediately think that the only possible reasons for coupling Bach’s Double Violin Concerto with Mahler’s Seventh Symphony are, firstly, that each work is an absolutely wonderful piece of music, and, secondly, that because they are so different each piece acts as a kind of foil for the other – two very different worlds of sensibility, there to enjoy in splendid isolation, but to appreciate all the more when juxtaposed in the course of a single evening.

Considering further, one could regard the bringing-together of these two works as an extension of philosophies, both of the individual composers and of their respective eras. Bach’s music belongs to that inexhaustibly rich world of the Baroque, a world of inclusion and great flexibility, of gathering-together, of elaboration and increased complexity and extension of new techniques of playing, and the development of new modes of expression such as opera.

Mahler’s music, in the form of his symphonies and song-cycles, has a similar philosophy of inclusion and great flexibility, of a gathering-together, of elaboration and increasing complexity, of enormous scale and great drama, qualities that one associates with the theatre more than the abstract world of instrumental music. Mahler once described his symphonic philosophy in the words “Symphony is like the world – it should contain everything.” In a sense it’s a very “baroque-like” attitude, and one responsible for that fantastic diversity one finds in the composer’s output.

Beginning with the Bach work, this particular performance was a treat indeed, one of the violinists being the orchestra’s Music Director, Pietari Inkinen, here in partnership with his Concertmaster and fellow-Finn, Vesa-Matti Leppänen. Any suggestion of gimmickry in having one’s Music Director step into a soloist’s role in front of his or her own orchestra was here blown away by the sheer quality of the playing. What I noticed immediately was the sweetness of Inkinen’s tone as a violinist, quite different a sound to the more austere, grainier tones of his concertmaster, a difference which made for a fascinating dialogue between the two.

In terms of bowing and articulation they were a well-matched pair, with Vesa-Matti a trifle stronger and with more control when it came to keeping the bow on the strings for held notes in the midst of frenetic passages – undoubtedly one of the factors contributing to the difference in tone-quality between the two. But in most other respects they seemed to think and move as one in pursuit of the same ends, so that their separate characters met at the point of musical exchange – what one could call a creative partnership, here producing something unique and satisfying.

For the first two movements the focus seemed to be firmly upon the soloists, especially during the divine slow movement, where the “echoed” exchanges between their voices resulted in a truly affecting intensification of beauty, and the precisely “terraced” dynamics built up sequences of the figurations into beautifully-arched structures at once pure in their serenity and suffused with surrounding ambient feeling.

The finale brought the orchestra more obviously into the picture, the playing dynamic, detailed and sharply-etched; and sounding like a true partnership with the soloists rather than mere accompanying – the figurations were given terrific emphasis and point in places, and the lines seemed to really “speak” to one another and be responded to in a wonderful three-way interchange that had me on the edge of my seat throughout.

My “benchmark” for this concerto has always been the Oistrakhs, pere and fils, in a recorded performance that has come to sound increasingly romantic over the years with the rise of “authentic” string-playing. There’s a gorgeousness about it all which still melts my heart on the occasion of every “listen”, but apart from some unashamedly saturated string-tones in the finale, the orchestra does tend to stay in the background, seemingly to leave the two stellar soloists to “get on with it”, and be content with some dutiful accompanying. This NZSO partnership made more of things than that, to our great delight.

After a short interval we were back in the hall for Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, the latest in what one hopes will prove to be a complete traversal of the composer’s works by these particular forces. With memories of last year’s stellar NZSO/Inkinen performance of the Sixth Symphony continuing to resonate in our memories, this performance from the orchestra of one of the most complex and enigmatic of Mahler’s works was awaited with great excitement.

My most recent “live” experience of the symphony was in this same Michael Fowler Centre in 2009, when guest conductor Paul Daniel led the NZSO National Youth Orchestra through an almost scarily vivid performance of the work. The young players (as is usually the case with the NYO ) rose magnificently to the occasion, coping even with the conductor’s almost manic tempi throughout much of the finale. There was certainly no chance of the work “sprawling” with such a high-octane approach, even if one felt that there was more light-and-shade in some of the music’s places than was realised.

That light-and-shade was given full dues on this occasion by Pietari Inkinen and his players, as part of taking their not-quite-capacity-audience on a fantastical and far-flung symphonic journey. As is well-known, Mahler had enormous trouble with this work’s first movement, getting inspiration for its main idea only after the two middle “Nightpiece” movements had been completed, and while being rowed across a lake on his way home, his imagination stirred by the rhythm of the oars in the water. What the composer came up with could be clearly heard in the work’s portentous opening bars, the euphonium solo most expressively played here by David Bremner (“Here nature roars” as Mahler told his wife, Alma). – incidentally, Mahler specified a “tenor horn” here, which, perhaps for reasons of unavailability, wasn’t used.

After the opening, Inkinen encouraged more momentum but avoided rushing things, allowing the music time and space in which to move – and even when feelings of urgency irrupted and the march began to flail and grimace, those distinctive Leviathan-like steps whose downward lurch recurs throughout the movement served as steadying ballast, keeping feelings of panic at bay.

Here one could register Mahler’s increasingly “unmoulded” orchestral style, instruments and instrumental blocks not so much “blended” as contrasted, as the composer increasingly sought to express a sense of life’s disillusionment and dissolution. But this was a journey of startling contrasts – and how beautifully conductor and players led us into the lyrical mid-movement interlude, harp glissandi drawing back a magic curtain of nostalgia and dream-like imaginings. And then, how disturbingly the radiant climax plunged downward into darkness! – taking everything right back to the leviathan’s lair, the tread as portentous and as baleful as at the work’s opening.

From here until the movement’s end there were further irruptions of energy, regretful backward glances at happier times and a no-nonsense concluding march, Inkinen and the players risking orchestral poise in rightly stressing the music’s somewhat manic excitement and desperation. And if not every instrumental detailing was perfectly dovetailed with its neighbour, what mattered far more was the real sense conveyed of great territories traversed and different emotions registered and explored.

The first of the two Nachtmusik movements was ushered in by beautiful horn-playing, and some initial instrumental flurries, before falling in with a dark and richly mysterious processional, its “tempo giusto” allowing sufficient momentum as well as room for things to blossom. By contrast, the Scherzo evoked a volatile set of impulses, its sinuous, half-lit world poised between mockery and unease, spectral lines alternating with moments of rumbustious glee, its spookiness creating a kind of “All Hallows’ Eve” for orchestra – great fun! As for the second Nachtmusik movement , it featured the evening’s most beautiful and heartwarming orchestral playing, the detailing from solo instruments (violin, mandolin, horn, harp) simply exquisite in places – and the ending of the movement was nothing short of celestial in its effect.

And so to the finale, a movement which continues to divide critical opinion and polarize interpretation – as befits a Symphony subtitled “Song of the NIght”, the last movement is thought of by some as a return to day, especially in the wake of those two “Nachtstücke”, and the spooky Scherzo. However, the music’s extreme volatility is interpreted by others as suggesting that the day is the real culprit regarding life, that the music’s colour, energy and celebration turns into something over-wrought and oppressive, something that, by the end of the movement, has turned into a kind of nightmare of its own, a portrayal of the sickness of the society in which Mahler lived at the time, and a precursor of the horrors of the century to come. In my view, one pays one’s money and one takes from the music what one wants to take.

When I heard the NYO’s performance with Paul Daniel I thought the finale on the edge of being a madcap scramble, the players having little or no space to do more than get their fingers around the notes. While I would still prefer to hear the greater amplitude and richer detailing that Inkinen and the NZSO gave us, I think more of Daniels’ approach now, having heard other recordings; and in fact wish that I could go back and hear and enjoy the performance again. How fascinating to have had two recent “live” experiences of this work, and each strongly and differently characterized!

Interpretatively, Inkinen’s was a riskier approach in its way than Daniels’ was, because of the music’s far-flung, episodic nature, but for me it worked – and this could be attributed to both the conductor’s overall grasp of where each detail fitted into the whole, and to the concentration and skill of his players in maintaining their playing-focus over such long spans. I thought the concert in overall terms a triumph for everybody concerned, and heartily recommend to people in both Auckland and in Christchurch that they make a priority out getting themselves to hear it when the concert comes to them.