Tag: concerto

Warm response for an innovative “Seen-and-Heard” Kristallnacht Concert at Wellington’s Public Trust Hall

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Holocaust Centre of New Zealand presents:
Kristallnacht Concert 2020

Music – Korngold, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Waxman, Weinberg, Toch, Rozsa, Bechet, Zorn

Excerpts from films with music  – “Robin Hood” 1938 (Korngold), “Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” 1941 (Castelnuovo-Tedesco), “Rebecca” 1940, and “Bride of Frankenstein” 1935 (Waxman),  “The Cranes are Flying” 1957 (Weinberg), “None Shall Escape” 1944 (Toch), “Ben-Hur” 1959 (Rozsa), “It Must Schwing!” (The “Blue Note” Story) 2018 – various composers and artists

Musicians: Inbal Megiddo (‘cello), Jian Liu (piano), Jenny Wollerman (soprano), David Barnard (piano)
Martin Riseley (violin), Yury Gezentsvey (violin), The New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins violins, Gillian Ansell viola, Rolf Gjelsten ‘cello), Dave Wilson (clarinet), Callum Allardice (guitar), Phoebe Johnson (double-bass), Hikurangi Schaverein-Kaa (drums), Daniel Hayles (keyboards)

Concert presenter: Donald Maurice
Speaker, Holocaust Centre of NZ Chair: Deborah Hart

Public Trust Hall, Wellington

Monday, November 9th, 2020

I was surprised to find, upon arriving at the Public Trust Hall a good quarter-of-an-hour before the concert’s scheduled starting time, at least three-quarters of the seats already filled, and the queues still bringing people in – by the time I got my ticket sorted I found myself almost at the back of the hall, and was left wondering how I could possibly get from such a position a reasonably “filled-out” sound that would do justice to the performances.

I need not have worried, because the acoustic of the hall (a place where I’d never previously attended a concert) seemed by some alchemic means able to convey enough brightness, body and clarity of detail, even at a distance, to bring the musicmaking well-and truly to life. It was partly that the performers were such a stellar bunch whose “business” as performers was obviously the expert conveyance of the essence of whatever they were currently playing – but I simply had no qualms throughout the evening regarding any perceived lack of projection, character and personality on the part of any of the musicians. How lucky were both the concert organisers and we, the audience, to be able to enjoy such a “line-up” – and in such a venue!

We had been promised an out-of-the-ordinary kind of presentation this evening, along with the live music-making, one involving both the medium of soundtracked film, and the participation of a jazz combo paying its own tribute to a US record label called Blue Note, founded by two Jewish refugees in 1939, for which many of the great black jazz musicians recorded in the 1940s and 50s after being shunned by the more ‘establishment” record labels – we were able to enjoy a 2018 documentary film called “It must Schwing!” along with those clips from films whose soundtracks featured music written by those among the concert’s “composer roll-call”.

Concert host Donald Maurice began the proceedings by welcoming us to the hall, before introducing the chairperson of the Holocaust Centre of NZ, Deborah Hart. She spoke of the original Kristallnacht events and their commemoration by this concert, her words serving the purpose of reminding us afresh of the on-going nature of oppression fuelled by racial prejudice and cultural bigotry world-wide. She then thanked everybody, musicians and audience members, for their attendance and participation in this evening’s event.

Opening the presentation part of the concert was the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, firstly via an excerpt from the 1938 film “Robin Hood” for which he wrote the music (we were treated to the scene where Robin and his adversary, Guy of Gisborne, fight to the death, in tandem with the followers of both men similarly battling it to the end – the “separated” conflicts rather like contrasting individual instrumental lines in an orchestral work with tutti passages!) What a film! – still with the power to engage a good sixty years since my last viewing of it!

We then welcomed ‘cellist Inbal Megiddo and pianist Jian Liu to the platform to perform Korngold’s ‘Cello Concerto” a thirteen-minute long work itself written for a film “Deception”, and a piece that packs a lot of incident into its brief span. It was made the most of by Megiddo and Liu, who most surely characterised all of the piece’s contrasting episodes, the work’s “singing” quality being as well-rounded as the spikier, more agitated episodes were made sharp-edged and impactful. In a piece so condensed one felt almost cheated when the end came, so glorious here was the music and its making!

Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “classic horror” contribution to the 1941 film “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” was then highlighted, followed by a performance by soprano Jenny Wollerman and pianist David Barnard of music in an entirely different vein, the same composer’s “Three Sephardic Songs”, whose text was Labino, an old form of Spanish. The poetic declamations of the first song betrayed its origins, with strongly-focused vocal lines and  ambient support from the piano, while the second song was gentler, expressed with a gentle, folkish walking-gait, and a beguilingly light touch. It was music that seemed to “entice” us into the countryside, the characterisations from singer and pianist creating a distinctively ambient world of expression.

Next we saw two contributions to film from German composer Franz Waxman, who famously wrote the music for the first full-length German film in the 1930s, “The Blue Angel”, but, on leaving Germany went to the US where he wrote many film scores, among them “Rebecca” (1940) and “Bride of Frankenstein” (1945) – the excerpts featured a range of musical evocations, from the romantic to menacing (Rebecca) to downright blood-curdling (Frankenstein)! An entirely different matter was his “Carmen Fantasy” for solo violin, here played with jaw-dropping virtuosity (what can a listener do but desperately cling to cliches when one is stunned?) by violinist Martin Riseley, with pianist Jian Liu hair-raisingly hanging onto the violinist’s coat-tails throughout!

Polish-born Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s music began the second half of the concert, beginning with excerpts from the 1957 Soviet film “The Cranes are Flying”, set at the time of the Second World War, the clips showing sequences with hugely contrasting emotions of love and despair, each conveying a different kind of compelling intensity. We then heard, courtesy of the New Zealand String Quartet, two movements from Weinberg’s Fifth String Quartet Op.27, written in 1945 in the Soviet Union, to where Weinberg had escaped (and remained) after the Germans invaded Poland. First came the opening “Melodia”, music which not surprisingly seemed to express uncertaintly and discord, a ‘cello solo towards the end leading to a kind of concourse of quiet despair. The Scherzo movement was, by contrast, a wild dance integrating quixotic and fiercely desperate passages with fraught unison passages sorely seeking a kind of liberation – very exciting playing from the ensemble, with an “over-the-top” solo violin part fearlessly presented by the Quartet’s leader, Helene Pohl.

Like most of the composers mentioned, Austrian Jew Ernst Toch left Nazi-controlled Europe for the US during the 1930s. He found some work as a film composer, though he also maintained his academic career as a teacher of Philosophy and Music in California, and as a composer of concert music. The 1944 film “None shall Escape” was a projection of the post-war trials of individuals responsible for wartime atrocities, Toch’s opening music there suitably authoritative, but a later excerpt was warmer-sounding, and more reminiscent of Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo. Pianist Jian Liu then played Toch’s Tanz und Spielstücke Op.40, the opening gentle and lyrical, the lines floating, and alternating as if “looking” for one another – the music gradually convinced itself it was allowed to “animate”, though it all remained very spare and unadorned, strange, gnomic music, the occasional impulse apart, appearing to “sit upon” its own character and not give anything away.

All of this was in stark contrast to the music of Hungarian composer Miklós Rózsa, whose fame has up until recently rested on his many film scores, but whose concert music is now achieving more frequent hearings – particularly renowned are his scores for the films “Ben Hur” (1959) and “El Cid” (1961).  We saw the well-remembered opening of the legendary chariot race from “Ben Hur” (suitably Respighi-ish in effect) as well as the dramatically-underlined confrontation scene between Ben-Hur and his boyhood friend Messala, when politics put an end to their friendship!  After all of this, violinist Yuri Gezentsvey and pianist David Barnard played a transcription of Rózsa’s music for the “Love-Scene” from “El Cid”, its sweetness and romance beautifully held in check at first, then allowed to expand and unfold with the utmost feeling – a beautiful piece of concerted playing!

Being  somebody whose knowledge of jazz could be summed up on the back of a postage stamp, I somewhat nervously approached the final segment of the concert, a tribute to the German Jewish refugee pair of Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, who developed a jazz label called Blue Note Records, a company dedicated to furthering the careers of non-establishment (usually black) musicians, such as Sidney Bechet, Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk, and later signing up and  working with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Quincy Jones.  Wayne Shorter called the “Blue Note” pair “The Lion and the Wolf”, bent on realising their vision of creating a platform for musical talent to express itself without prejudice of any kind getting in the way.

A film made in 2018 “It must SCHWING”, reputedly the motto of Alfred Lion, directed by Eric Friedler, made clear, in the excerpts we were shown, the positive feelings of people who were associated with these “glory days” concerning the leadership of Lion and Wolff, the family atmosphere they created, and the fairness with which the musicians were treated. Following this the jazz musicians came together to perform a 1993 work by American composer John Zorn “Shtetl” (Ghetto Life) taken from an album entitled “Kristellnacht”, succeeding it with a tribute to clarinettist, saxophonist and composer Sidney Bechet, playing his 1939 work “Blues for Tommy”.

To my uncultured ears, the playing of the members of the jazz combo was above reproach, the lament-like opening of the music they began with coloured by the character of each of the instruments, the clarinet mournful, the piano philosophising, the double bass dark and resonant, the guitar anecdotal and chatty – the clarinet sounded like a cantor calling the prayers while the drummer at the back jazzed and spiked the rhythms.  Together, the instruments generated a processional quality that I related to Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony (in particular, the “Frere Jacques” movement), before the clarinet suddenly skipped into “swing” which sounded not unike “Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider”! At its swingin’ height the music suddenly dissolved into more and more abstracted realms, with the guitar playing a chiming kind of ostinato, supported by the drums “kicking into” the same repeated pattern, and the clarinet taking up a kind of valediction…….for some listeners I imagined it would have been a truly sentimental journey……

It was left to Deborah Hart to thank us once again for attending the concert, and thanking also the musicians who contributed their services, besides paying tribute to the owners of the Public Trust Building, Kay and Maurice Clark, for their generosity in making the venue available to the Holocaust Centre – appreciative words which were readily supported by all in attendance at this remarkable and heart-warming event.

 

 

Remarkable NZSO concert of Bach family music inspired by Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Diedre Irons and Andrew Joyce

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Vesa-Matti Leppänen – director and violin
‘Bach Extended’

Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: Duet for two flutes, F 57
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Concerto for harpsichord and fortepiano, Wq 43/4 (Diedre Irons – fortepiano)
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080, Contrapunctus XIV (the last, unfinished fugue)
Cello Suite No 6 in D, BWV 1012, Gavottes and Gigue (Andrew Joyce)
Orchestral Suite No 3 in D, BWV 1068
Chorale Vor deinen Thron. BWV 668

Wellington College, Alan Gibbs Centre

Saturday 31 October, 7:30 pm

This was a very novel and interesting enterprise by the orchestra, partly on account of the venue, the surprisingly spacious hall at Wellington College. In the light of the lack in Wellington of a suitable auditorium that seats between 300 and 2000, apart from St Mary of the Angels and the Anglican cathedral, this space, presumably able to seat around 1500, could be useful for large musical events.

W F Bach from Bridget Douglas and Kristin Eade
While properly dominated by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the concert opened with a touch of novelty – a piece for two flutes by the oldest of J S Bach’s surviving sons: Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. The Duet in F, F 57 (F stands for the acknowledged authority Falck). It was introduced with lively comments about the wooden flutes that would have been used in the mid 18th century, by Principal flute Bridget Douglas, with associate principal Kristin Eade; though I didn’t catch and could see clearly whether they were in fact playing early flutes.

It’s in three movements: Allegro moderato, Lamentabile and Presto (based on a Naxos recording by Patrick Gallois and Kazunori Seo).

C P E Bach and Diedre Irons 
Their playing of the first movement was beautifully soft and warm in tone, reflecting J S Bach rather more than do the younger sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian. The playing was engaging and rhythmically attractive, and though not particularly marked melodically. Then a meandering, unostentatious second movement, showing a thoughtful and perhaps popular character, and the third conventionally brisk.

CPE Bach’s music is more prolific than WF’s and it became widely popular through his long employment in Berlin at the court of Frederick the Great and in Hamburg; but virtually disappeared after his death. However, it has become pretty familiar since the mid 20th century.

The orchestra, with Diedre Irons at the fortepiano, played his Concerto No 4 (his modern authority and cataloguer is Alfred Wotquenne – Wq). Its movements are Allegro assai, Poco adagio and tempo di menuetto, Allegro assai.

The fortepiano was positioned conventionally, with strings, the two flutes again, and two horns (Samuel Jacobs and Euan Harvey). The quiet of the fortepiano among the strings and the brevity of the first movement may have surprised some in the audience, as well as the Haydnesque character of the music though, alongside that (Haydn was about 20 years younger) it was certainly not as remarkable and entertaining as a Haydn concerto. There was a surprising quality in the slow pace of the second movement which without warning shifted to the triple, minuet rhythm. The last movement seemed to be the longest, again with curious rhythm shifts towards the end (my note during the last movement was ‘polite but hardly memorable’), but there were enough little surprises and a broad sense of interesting invention to hold attention.

The rest of the concert consisted of J S Bach.

Contrapunctus XIV
What a singular choice to focus on two of Bach’s last works, the final ‘Contrapunctus’ of The Art of Fugue and the Chorale Vor deinen Thron!

The choice of these Bach pieces seems to have been driven by the idea of death or finality.

The Art of Fugue was itself his last major work, left with no clear indication of what instruments should be employed, and also left unfinished before the end of the 14th fugue, or Contrapunctus, as Bach named them. The instrumentation chosen here was that by Ralph Sauer for brass instruments which created very imaginatively its funereal sense of finality. And it proved interesting in highlighting the singular talents of the orchestra’s brass section, including often strikingly, Andrew Jarvis’s tuba. The players seemed to place singular emphasis on the last unresolved note, avoiding the temptation that one occasionally encounters, to graft a legitimate cadence onto it.

Sixth Cello Suite 
After the interval came two of the most familiar Bach works – the two Gavottes and the Gigue from the last of the six cello suites in the remarkably gifted hands of Andrew Joyce. Though it might have been additionally revelatory if he had also played the Prelude or the Sarabande, this was a superb experience from a sensitive and perceptive cellist.

Suite No 3 
And then the third orchestral suite , BWV 1068: chosen no doubt on account of its Aria  or ‘Air on the G String’ (No 74 in this year’s ‘Settling the Score’ from Concert FM on Labour Day).

However, this was the suite in its entirety, with scrupulous playing not only by strings, but by trumpets and oboes, timpani and bassoon, horns and tuba. The varied overture, showing early signs of its later evolution in the form of the symphony, was quite as rewarding to hear as was the Air that follows. And it’s been a long time since I heard a live performance of the entire suite: including gavottes, bourée and gigue. This was an entirely enriching experience.

‘Vor deinen Thron’ – chorale prelude
It was reputedly Bach’s chorale prelude ‘Vor deinen Thron’, and not the unfinished 14th ‘Contrapunctus’ from The Art of Fugue that was Bach’s “deathbed composition”; reputedly dictated by the now blind composer. It is normally played on the organ but here was an arrangement involving the brass instruments. This performance captured the kind of pensive, neutral character that can be heard in Bach’s music, seeming hardly to seek any kind of tragic, funereal quality. Once again, it was the immaculate performance of these players that was so arresting, perhaps calling on the listener to decide how to feel about its purpose. And so it could have been heard, and seen, as a very different kind of conclusion to a very unusual selection of music by JS Bach and two of his sons.

This was the first of six performances of this programme – the rest are in the South Island:
Invercargill’s Civic Theatre on Tuesday 3 November
Dunedin’s Glenroy Auditorium in the Town Hall on Wednesday 4 November
Oamaru’s Opera House on Thursday 5 November
Christchurch’s auditorium, The Piano, on Friday 6 November
Nelson’s Centre of Musical Arts (formerly the Nelson School of Music) on Saturday 7 November.

I hope the citizens of these South Island cities take advantage of this unique chance to hear this rare and fascinating concert.

 

I came across a nicely literate, unpretentious description of these two last works by Bach (http://youyouidiot.blogspot.com/2013/11/js-bach-vor-deinen-thron-tret-ich-bwv.html)  

“’Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich’ (Before your throne I now appear), BWV 668, has an interesting story behind it …

“BWV 668 is a chorale prelude, meaning that it is a piece of instrumental music which takes as its main thematic material an existing song. In this case the original music that the piece is based upon is a hymn entitled ‘Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein’, which was originally written by Paul Eber in the 16th century. The source melody (or cantus firmus) was composed by Louis Bourgeois, also in the 16th century. Bach had previously arranged this hymn as BWV 431.  …early in his career, Bach created an organ chorale prelude from this piece, BWV 641, under the original title ‘Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein’….

“What Bach does with BWV 641 is create an accompaniment which is based upon the melodies of the original hymn, but then adds an ornate cantabile melodic line over the top, which I’m sure you’ll agree is rather exquisite.

“’Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich’ actually exists in two different versions. BWV668 is included in the 18 Great Chorale Preludes, and actually consists of a fragment (about two thirds) of the entire composition, copied out by someone other than Bach. BWV668a is the same piece, complete, with slight differences, which was included (under the title ‘Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein’) in the original publication of Art of Fugue, published after Bach’s death in 1751.

“There is a story that was perpetuated by Bach’s son CPE Bach, that his father dictated the chorale directly from his deathbed. This is now considered to be rather flamboyant myth-making, which gave the piece the nickname ‘The Deathbed Chorale’. What is actually now understood to be the case is that BWV668a was a piece that was just lying around (Bach was an inveterate re-worker of old material), which Bach decided to put more work into as he lay dying, meaning that although it was not composed out of nowhere, it was still the very last thing that he worked on, and thus a significant artistic statement.”

 

Orchestra Wellington and Sistema Orchestra Hutt Valley in varied and colourful concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Jian Liu (piano), plus Arohanui Strings – Sistema Hutt Valley

Josef Suk; Serenade for Strings in E flat, Op 6
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No 1 in D flat, Op 10
Rachmaninov: Symphony No 3 in A minor, Op 44

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 17 October, 7:30 pm

This concert was one of Orchestra Wellington’s rather special events, not only in parallel with a rather singular election day that tended to absorb the animated attention of most of the audience before the concert and during the interval, but also sharing the platform of the MFC with another orchestra: the Arohanui Strings. That band was founded in 2010 on the model of the Sistema Youth Orchestra in Venezuela, and is directed by violist Alison Eldredge. It involves about 300 young string players, mainly from the Hutt Valley. Naturally, by no means all participated on Saturday evening.  I guessed there were about thirty promising Arohanui Strings – Sistema Hutt Valley players, eleven first violins and down to two double basses, plus around 20 very small players who found their way across the front of the stage for the later pieces.

Arohanui Strings
The first piece was the commissioned premiere of Alissa Long’s Domino Effect, which involved both wind and percussion players of Orchestra Wellington, plus a few OW players to give body to the string sections. One of the several curiosities was a three-metre long wind instrument that I thought was a kind of didgeridoo; I’m informed: a ‘Rainstick’.

This more advanced group also played an arrangement of Poor Wayfaring Stranger; then the littlies, some around 5 years old I’d guess, formed a long line across the front, some on special, small cello chairs, to join the orchestra playing, and singing, Ode to Joy, Square Dance and Lean On Me.

Audience delight rested with the simple spectacle of very young children evidently thrilled, and a bit overwhelmed, at the experience of playing with grown-up professionals to an audience approaching 2000.

The result of this preliminary episode was to prolong the concert; it didn’t end till about 10.15pm, a mere 45 minutes more than usual; very few left early – even to catch up on the excitement of the election result!

Suk’s Serenade for Strings
The first piece played by the host orchestra was the lovely Serenade for Strings by Josef Suk, who was a pupil of Dvořák at the Prague Conservatorium. It’s his earliest published piece (1892) and today probably his best loved. (I have some recollection of Suk’s Asrael Symphony played by the NZSO a fair while ago; it didn’t overwhelm me).

In the Serenade, Suk picked up Dvořák’s suggestion for something happier and more charming than what he had previously composed; he was probably inspired by Dvořák’s own Serenade for Strings of 1875; though there were several good earlier examples of the string suite or serenade.

I knew Suk’s early work well enough and this experience only enhanced admiration for its touching, ingenious orchestration; the first movement is immediately enchanting with its tuneful richness and warmth as well as its rhythmic variety and individuality, which the orchestra explored so well. The second movement is in changeable triple time, and soon takes root according to the ‘grazioso’ description. I was particularly captivated by the playing of the long and lovely third movement, Adagio, scored interestingly and subtly, moving about with charming thematic and rhythmic variety. It’s been compared with the ‘Dumka’ style that Dvořák had made famous, rhythmically and emotionally various. The last movement is characteristically brusque, with each group particularly firm and clear.

If, like me, you are often led to explore a class or type of music that is presented itself in a concert, there’s a lot of comparably delightful music: some of Mozart’s divertimenti, to start with; Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C, Op 48 (1880), which happened to be one of my early teenage experiences from the then 2YC radio (now RNZ Concert), when nothing but entire works were played, presenting no problems for its then large audiences. Then there’s Dvořák’s in E major (1875); Nielsen’s Little Suite for Strings, Op 1 – particularly charming); Elgar’s Serenade for Strings in E minor, Op 20 (once it was second in popularity only to the Enigma Variations); and Holst’s St Paul’s Suite (and the Brook Green Suite is only a little behind it). There’s Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Op 40, echoing the Baroque period of Norwegian dramatist Holberg [born 1684, making him a contemporary of Dryden and Pope, Voltaire and Prévost (writer of the Manon Lescaut story)]. A discovery as I put this list together was the charming, seven-movement Idyll, Suite for string orchestra (you wouldn’t recognise its composer, Janáček!). Even later, there’s Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances for string orchestra.

Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 1 
The most successful work in the programme might have been Prokofiev’s first piano concerto with Jian Liu, Head of Piano Studies at Victoria University’s school of music, as soloist. Like Suk’s piece, this too was a teenage masterpiece. Prokofiev had played it first in Moscow in 1912, again playing it himself and winning at the St Petersburg Conservatorium piano competition in 1914; to the shock and disapproval of many faculty members on account of its originality, invention and flamboyance. I got the full measure of those Prokofiev characteristics in Vienna in 2014 hearing Russian pianists playing all five concertos at the Konzerthaus with the Marjinski Orchestra under Gergiev. Alexei Volodin played No 1.

After brief blasts from horns, shrill flutes and cracking timpani, Jian Liu opened the piano part at once with brilliant, startling sounds; it might have astonished Prokofiev himself. A singular piece for 1911, before The Rite of Spring, it still catches the ear, as much by its rhythmic and harmonic adventurism as by its unconventional shape. The programme named its three normal-sounding movements but in reality there are many quite distinct parts – eleven have been listed by some authorities. It’s taxing enough for the orchestra and there were indeed slight missteps between piano and others but the general impact was of startling bravura and accuracy, not only from the pianist, and a keen awareness of the virtues of pushing the boundaries of musical composition.

Rachmaninov’s 3rd symphony has not the same popularity or scholarly respect as the second, partly a result of his need to concentrate on piano performance after leaving Russia following the overthrow of the Empire in 1917. It was written in the mid-1930s, after the Rhapsodie on a theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra; in some ways it’s more radical than might have been expected in the light of the composer’s earlier works. There were moments of ensemble imperfection, but the overall impression was of energy and liveliness, and considerable flamboyance by brass and percussion. I might have exaggerated my feeling that lead to my notes remarking, in the Allegro vivace section of the second movement, that some of the orchestral passages lacked refinement and discretion; were too flamboyant.

In all however, Rachmaninov’s works, like Sibelius’s symphonies and Strauss’s last operas, remained true to his own integrity, imagination and inspiration, and they steadily gain popularity, ignoring dismissal by the more extreme elements of the Darmstadt/Donaueschingen school.

And so, a work like this, that is certainly a masterpiece by one of the early 20th century’s greatest composers, is steadily regaining favour; in spite of perceived structural weaknesses, it generates compelling interest and pleasure, and we were lucky to have heard it under Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington in such an enthusiastic and committed performance.

The other event of the concert was Taddei’s announcement of the general theme of the orchestra’s 2021 concert series: “Virtuoso”, with cheap tickets as usual, for those booking early.

 

A programme of brilliantly scored Romantic era music from Wellington Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Mark Carter

Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre, Op 40
Weber: Clarinet Concerto No 2 in E flat, Op 74 (clarinet: Ben van Leuven)
Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol, Op 34
Mussorgsky, orchestrated by Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 4 October, 3 pm

The listing in Middle C’s Coming Events had misread details about this concert; the conductor was identified as Miguel Harth-Bedoya. In fact, he had conducted a rehearsal of the orchestra  a few weeks before.

But there would be no need to attribute the splendid performances on Sunday directed by Mark Carter to anyone but Mark Carter. To begin, it was a colourful programme of music that would have excited any young players (and plenty of old ones, speaking for myself) to which they responded vigorously.

The only one of the four works in the programme likely to have been played recently might have been the Mussorgsky; though the Weber clarinet concerto may be somewhat unfamiliar, both the Saint-Saëns and the Rimsky-Korsakov would surely have been known. I’m not at all sure however, being aware of the declining condition of the Concert Programme and the domination of young people by pops. All four works on the programme deserve to be played by major orchestras to today’s audiences.

Danse macabre 
Both were familiar to any 2YC listener when I was young; the symphonic poem, Danse macabre, though it was not always in its authentic orchestral version (1874); nor is it today. It was an excellent choice for the Youth Orchestra since it’s full of gripping melody and convincing mood music. Here there was no introductory harp but a bold solo violin (Lukas Baker), a nice flute solo (Samantha Sweeney), proceeding with macabre triple time that portrayed the spirit of the Victor Hugo poem so well. The brass might have been a bit overly exuberant, but the whole worked as an excellent, overture-length piece.

Weber Clarinet concerto 
Weber’s second clarinet concerto is one of his not-much-played works. These days Weber is represented mainly by excerpts from Der Freischütz and The Invitation to the Dance (though it’s Berlioz’s orchestration that’s mostly heard). Weber was a friend of notable clarinettist, Heinrich Baermann, and he wrote two concertos, a concertino and a clarinet quintet for him. Among Weber’s other music that should be familiar are two symphonies, two piano concertos and a Konzertstück in F minor (which I have recordings of), a lot of other attractive orchestral and chamber music and several operas other than Freischütz that made Weber an important inspiration for Wagner twenty years later.

The second clarinet concerto is colourful and attractive, and there were successful instrumental episodes before Benedict van Leuven’s delightful clarinet part entered, with a number of challenging leaps from top to bottom of its range. Though there are nice passages for bassoons, oboe, horns as well as the strings, it was the clarinet that led the way with confidence and distinction. It was the second movement however, A Romanze, Andante con moto, where the clarinet demonstrated not merely his dexterity, but also in the pensive episodes, his feeling for the warm, emotional and subtle colours of Weber’s orchestration.

The last movement, Alla Polacca, revived the joyousness of the first movement, with its bars-full of virtuosic semi-quavers, with amusing chirpy phrases that all too soon brought it to the end.

Capriccio Espagnol 
Another once familiar symphonic poem was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol (my early love of is evidenced by a set of 78 rpm shellac discs by the Liverpool Philharmonic under Sir Malcolm Sargent, bought in the mid 1950s!). The opening was rowdy with dominant timpani, that offered little room for discretion, but plenty of opportunities for displays of orchestral skill. Rimsky was one of the most celebrated orchestrators (his Principles of Orchestration is, along with Berlioz’s Grand Treatise on Instrumentation, among the classic texts on the subject), offering many opportunities for individual talent and prowess to be admired: a flute solo, oboes, the five horns and three trombones, as well as general orchestral colour.

Pictures at an Exhibition
Finally, yet another masterpiece of orchestration – Ravel’s translation of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. He wrote it for piano (an overwhelmingly challenging composition it is), and as with several of Mussorgsky’s other works, it was subjected to editing and ‘refinement’ by his friends, particularly Rimsky-Korsakov.

It wasn’t long after Mussorgsky’s early death in 1881 that orchestrations of Pictures began to appear. There have been several orchestral versions, some taking liberties with the music and omitting certain sections. Ravel’s, in 1922, has become universally admired.

The orchestration is wonderfully rich and though not all of the instruments that Ravel called for were employed (harps were missing for example), there were tubular bells, celeste, alto saxophone and (I think) glockenspiel and euphonium. And the lively, high spirited way Mark Carter guided the orchestra was distinguished by its clarity and ebullience.

The performance of such exuberant, noisy orchestration in St Andrew’s has in the past been rather overwhelming, especially from brass and percussion. However, the fact that I was sitting near the back of the gallery may have helped the balance between the more discreet and the noisier instruments. In any case, orchestral balance was successfully managed throughout, and both players and audience (there was virtually a full house) would have had a great time.

 

NZSO’s “Eroica” programme title lives up to its name at Wellington’s MFC

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
EROICA – Music by Anthony Ritchie, Jean Sibelius and Ludwig van Beethoven

RITCHIE – Remembering Parihaka (1994)
SIBELIUS – Violin Concerto Op.47
BEETHOVEN – Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Op. 55 “Eroica”

Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin)
Miguel Harth-Bedoya (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellingto

Sunday 27th September 2020

CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Peter Biggs, summed it up in his foreword in the printed programme for the orchestra’s most recent presentation initiative – named after one of the three works presented, Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony – when he referred to 2020 as “what continues to be a challenging year for us all.” Biggs and his staff rose to that challenge admirably in enabling  Peruvian-born conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, presently resident in the United States where he is Music Director of the Forth Worth Symphony Orchestra, to travel to New Zealand and isolate for two weeks, so he could conduct the NZSO in this series.

One would perhaps expect that, in the case of every professional orchestra of quality, its concertmaster could, at short notice, assume the responsibility of performing as a soloist in a repertory violin concerto, as has the orchestra’s current leader, Vesa-Matti Leppänen, in the same series. I’m not able to say whether the violinist Augustin Hadelich who was unable to come to this country to take up his original engagement had intended to programme the same concerto, or whether Vesa-Matti had chosen a different work to play; but the Sibelius Violin Concerto seemed, not surprisingly, a natural fit for its performer, and proved a great success.

Repertory-wise, conductor Harth-Bedoya’s tenure as Music Director of the Auckland Philharmonia from 1998 to 2005 would presumably have given him exposure to a range of New Zealand-composed works, among them, perhaps, the work presented today,  Anthony Ritchie’s Remember Parihaka, which was the first item of the concert. Before the music began, however, one of the orchestra players, Andrew Thomson (principal second violinist) in welcoming the audience to the Michael Fowler, made mention of the impending retirement from the orchestra at the concert’s end, of a long-serving member of the second violins, Lucien Rizos, in response to which announcement the player was warmly acknowledged by both his colleagues and this evening’s audience – a nice touch!

And so we began our listening with the aforementioned work by Anthony Ritchie, Remember Parihaka, one which I had heard on a recording some time ago without remembering too much about it, except that it was atmospheric and impactful, and seemed in accord with what I already knew about the disgraceful and brutal happenings associated with the “armed takeover” by Government forces of the Taranaki village where the Maori spiritual leader Te Whiti o Rongomai lived with his followers, implementing their policy of non-aggressive resistance to the white settlers’ push to acquire Maori land. I had read author Dick Scott’s book “Ask that Mountain” some years ago, and was interested to learn of Te Whiti’s methods being known and adopted by Mohandas Ghandi in later years, both in South Africa and in India.

The music began spaciously and ambiently, lower strings and air-borne wind figures conveying both peace and foreboding. The string lines rose like the morning sun, the sounds punctuated by louring chords from horns and winds, violins sounding a tense affirmation of the oncoming day, with the violas singing a more tender, caring line as the flutes repeated their birdsong. Pizzicati and scampering string movement joined with winds in suggested people running and gathering, as a field drum conveyed a kind of march-like purpose, energising the rest of the orchestra and giving rise to repeated warnings from the birdsong. As the tensions mounted and the warning cries became more frequent the bass drum gave voice to purpose, brutal and direct at first, then with deeper, more menacing ostinato underpinning the strings and winds, leading to a cataclysmic cymbal scintillation, signalling a culmination, a general violation, a triumph of might, leaving desolation in its wake – all that remained were sounds of deep lamentation. It was all rather less graphic a musical experience than I’d remembered, somewhat subtler in effect – and perhaps more enduring for that.

We then turned our attentions to the Sibelius Violin Concerto, performed by the orchestra’s regular concertmaster, Vesa-Matti Leppänen (whose place today in the leader’s seat was ably filled by his deputy, Donald Armstrong). I’d heard Vesa-Matti perform in a solo capacity before (most memorably, Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending) but he surpassed even that achingly lovely performance with this one in terms of sweetness of tone and clarity of texture. At first I thought his tone a tad small to do full justice to the heroic gestures which flex their muscles and soar aloft in various places, but as the music proceeded it became obvious that the focused intensity of his playing was actually carrying every note to our ears, if in a way that didn’t rely so much on grand gesturing as absolute clarity of articulation. Conductor and orchestra seemed to understand this implicitly, in places such as where the solo viola richly “counterpointed” the violin or the clarinets murmured an ambient backdrop. There were places where orchestral muscle was flexed most excitingly, a tutti leading up to brass and timpani “letting rip” sounding overwhelming in such a context. Vesa-Matti was disinclined to “attack” the notes in an obviously virtuosic way, but instead play them simply and expressively – his fingerwork in passages which called for extreme dexterity was astonishing, as towards the conclusion of the first movement cadenza.

Harth-Bedoya got some beautiful wind-playing at the slow-movement’s beginning, the clarinets pure and liquid, the oboes pastoral and engaging, and the flutes and timpani defining in the space of a few notes touches of open-air brilliance contrasted with deep shadow – a memorable piece of tone-painting. The soloist then took up his rich, glowing line, matching the horns in the playing’s warmth, and with hushed tones echoed by the orchestral strings setting in dramatic contrast the following orchestral tutti, big and black-browed, the brass and winds particularly arresting! But what magically sotto voce octave passagework from Vesa-Matti we heard, with everybody else in accord, building the tones in a dignified way towards the movement’s big concerted statement, leading to more enchantingly soft playing from everybody, the mood reminding me suddenly of the end of the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, no less – a similar sense of “coming through”…..

The programme notes quoted most aptly the famous description of the work’s finale as “a polonaise for polar bears” (from writer and musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey – 1875-1940), summing up both the strength and weight of the music’s rhythms, though Vesa-Matti’s violin seemed to lightly skip across the snowy vistas in comparison to the accompaniments. I particularly liked his lightness of touch in the passages where Sibelius seems to “crowd in” the notes to the extent of distorting the rhythms, except that here the soloist’s nimble-fingered momentums seemed  easily to encompass the figurations, avoiding the trenchant angularities of some performances at this point. I relished the waspish buzzings of the muted horns and the bouncing accompaniments from the double basses, especially in tandem with the soloist during the latter’s high violin harmonics, which were thrillingly, eerily played! I hadn’t previously seen passages in the work where the soloist was accompanied by first-desk strings alone, which here added to the variety of textural incident. In the work’s coda the intensities were screwed tightly up, the soloist singing high, bright and breezy, and the orchestra gathering its forces to match the violin’s outpourings – a totally exhilarating experience!

It seemed as if, at the music’s conclusion, the audience didn’t want to let their concertmaster-turned-concerto-soloist go, calling him back repeatedly, along with the conductor, for further ovations. A nice touch was Vesa-Matti’s presenting of his bouquet to the retiring violinist Lucien Rizos before leaving the stage for the last time. Then it was the interval; and after we’d waxed lyrical concerning the concerto and its performance in every which way to anybody else who would listen, it was time to return to the auditorium for the “Eroica”.

Two extremely smartish E-flat chords, and we were off! With brisk, driven passagework, bright and eager detailings, and the phrasing sharply and urgently delivered, with that slightly “clipped”, authentic-performance manner, it seemed we were in for a thrillingly front-on Beethoven experience from the beginning (complete with the first-movement repeat!) – I thought here of the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini’s words when asked to describe what he thought of the “Eroica’s” first movement, his reply being, “Is not “Eroica”! – is not Napoleon! – is Allegro con brio!”. Here, conductor Harth-Bedoya seemed to encourage his wind-players (and who wouldn’t, with such talent, here?) to “play out” so that, not only in their solos, but in the “middle voices” of the orchestral texture, it all seemed uncommonly rich and detailed. Together with the energies of the playing, this made for a real sense of something vibrant and living, the strings digging into their syncopated accents when building up to the massive central-movement climax underpinned excitingly by the timpani and capped off gloriously by the brass!

Harth-Bedoya brought out the work’s dramatic and exhilarating qualities as much as a sense of something epic – and there were two moments in particular which I thought so brilliantly illustrated these qualities in turn, aided by superb playing in each case. First was the drama of the horn’s wonderful “false entry” just before the music’s recapitulation, a moment that reputedly took some listeners at the work’s first performance by surprise, to the composer’s annoyance! – here sounded to perfection before the rest of the band “crashed in”! Then, as the music surged towards the end, and the theme was played by horns, then strings, then winds and finally the brass, with ever-growing intensities, Beethoven unaccountably allows the brass only a few notes of the theme before getting his trumpet to break off in favour of letting stuttering winds finish the phrase! However, many older recordings (including the one I was “raised” on) allowed the trumpet line to continue playing the theme right through, as Harth-Bedoya did here, to my admittedly guilty satisfaction (I still prefer it, and on first hearing the “authentic” version on record had to be convinced by someone whose knowledge I respected that the trumpet hadn’t been removed through a tape-edit error, or something!)

The renowned “Funeral March” was just that, a loaded, purple-and-black experience, the beautiful string-playing capped off by Robert Orr’s glorious oboe solo. Harth-Bedoya again brought out the music’s drama, getting sharply-delivered contrasts in dynamics and textures from his players, the more military major-key sections blazing with momentary triumph before succumbing to the grief and anger of the episodes which followed, Bridget Douglas’s sonorous flute-playing as pivotal to the range of emotions as the oboe’s at the beginning. The strings here simply “nailed” the fugal sections of the movement, giving the music’s trajectories incredible power, picked up by the winds and brasses (and Laurence Reese’s timpani speaking volumes as always), with the double basses attacking their post-fugue “moment” with spine-tingling weight and edge. And the “ticking away” of life and breath towards the end made for a kind of sublimity in the silence that followed the music’s brief but telling final exhalation.

“Is not “Eroica”! – Is not Napoleon! – is Allegro vivace!“ Toscanini might also have exclaimed at this life-enhancing point in the Symphony – for here, indeed, was a scherzo, a quicker, more dynamic replacement for the classical symphony’s usual minuet, a change Beethoven had already made in each of his first two symphonies. Beginning with feathery playing from the strings and perkily-delivered themes  from the winds, the music then seemed to explode in joyful energy, the verve and physicality of the playing a heady delight! The NZSO horns also delighted with their playing of the Trio, Harth-Bedoya getting the players to begin the final rendition of their fanfare in startlingly assertive fashion, a gesture that I’m willing to bet Beethoven would have loved!

As he would have the attacca, which here plunged us into the ferment of the Finale’s opening before we had time to draw breath at the scherzo’s end! – Harth-Bedoya and the players made much of the dynamic contrasts between Beethoven’s use of the seemingly innocuous bass-line tune from the “Prometheus” music and several violent “knocking at the door” irruptions at the end of each of the measures. And the conductor would have none of the reversion to solo string lines which had so entranced us on a previous occasion when Orchestra Wellington performed the symphony for the following string passages, up to the appearance of the actual “”Prometheus” theme on the oboe. But what playfulness, what spirit and what character was engendered by the players in their treatment of Beethoven’s fugal explorations – the lines by turns sang, teased, shouted and giggled, and Harth-Bedoya got everybody to pull out all the stops for the “Russian Dance” variation, which was almost a show-stopper!

These and other episodes were silenced by the oboe and accompanying winds, giving the “tune” a decorative warmth and fullness of heart which the horns and other instruments acclaimed most heartily – some residue angst (hopes and dreams dashed?) from the struggles and tribulations of the journey was given its respectful due, before all such was swept away, Harth-Bedoya and his players going with and contributing to the flow, a veritable tidal wave of joyful release which filled the Michael Fowler Centre’s precincts to bursting, and gladdened the hearts of all present – great stuff!

Orchestra Wellington delivers spectacular concert of two great classics and a major New Zealand work

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei, with Michael Houstoun (piano)

Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings, Op 48
John Psathas: Three Psalms
Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances, Op 45

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 26 September, 7:30 pm 

This was not the first concert by Orchestra Wellington: that was on 27 July and featured Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony and Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, played by Michael Houstoun.

This also featured Houstoun, playing what would be called a concerto in some contexts, but here, it was a three movement work by John Psathas called Three Psalms, with an important piano part, but also drawing on various musical and other artistic sources.

The other two works were, strangely, less familiar pieces by famous composers.

A long time ago, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings was a work that I came to know quite well through broadcasts by the then 2YC station (now Radio New Zealand Concert).

It has four movements (not named in the programme booklet):
Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo — Allegro moderato,
Valse: Moderato — Tempo di valse
Élégie: Larghetto elegiac
Finale (Tema russo): Andante — Allegro con spirito

When I first heard it, probably in my late teens, I found it richly melodic, simply gorgeous and moving. Even then, it made me wonder whether such a beautiful work could really be regarded as a proper, serious piece of classical music. The Waltz was the most popular movement and was often played on its own, a practice that I probably accepted then, not having heard the complete work. Though of course, I deplore that it’s now RNZ Concert’s standard practice to truncate most multi-movement works when even casual listeners today are surely familiar with far more classical music than was even recorded in the 1950s. Surely most grown-ups are now more responsive to and knowledgeable of classical music that I was in my teens!

This performance was so full of warmth and opulence that I asked myself why it was necessary to have other than string players in an orchestra at all. String groups numbered 12, 10, 8, 7, 6: very adequate.  The contrast between movements was vivid: the throbbing rhythms of the first movement, the rapturous waltz, the accurately named Elegy third movement, with its illuminating pizzicato. The multi-facetted finale might have opened with a beautiful calmness, but it launches into the Allegro that moved slowly to energetic passages that alternated with calm, towards a beautiful conclusion. A splendid performance.

Though Psathas’s Three Psalms could be regarded as some kind of piano concerto, neither its title nor its scoring pointed that way. And though I might have missed something, I didn’t understand how the three movements: Aria, Inferno and Sergei Bk.3 Ch.1, could been related to Psalms. Nevertheless, the role of the piano was prominent and important and it was very clear that Houstoun admired the work and his performance was arresting and illuminating.

Yet it was less prominent than incessant timpani and two marimbas which drove rhythms that characterised most of the first movement. The second movement began in near silence, with long slow figures by piano and strings; the piano sounds were translucent, while the emotion created by strings increased mysteriously, and tubular bells and marimbas again contributed a brief, distinct episode. I remained unsure about the alleged inspiration of the movement by the “disturbing images in James Nachtwey’s photographic elegy, Inferno”. Without pictorial examples of a rather obscure name the revelation seemed to contribute nothing to the appreciation of the movement. However, the sense of peace created a feeling of calm unease that generated an emotional force.

The title of the third movement refers to Prokofiev’s 3rd piano concerto which Psathas relates to his own musical character and aspirations. That source did not diminish the originality and individual inspiration as well as the hypnotic, incessant and energetic spirit of this typical Psathas movement.

After the two works of the first half which demanded only strings and, in the case of Psathas, timpani, marimbas, tubular bells, the stage was now filled with a large orchestra, totalling about 80. Though string numbers were slightly fewer than the NZSO would have employed for the Rachmaninov, the volume and splendid dynamism of the entire orchestra did a wonderful job with this final, spectacular composition by Rachmaninov, that he wrote in 1940 in the United States; he died in 1943.

I doubt that Orchestra Wellington has played it before. Nor can I remember my last hearing of a live performance (I didn’t hear the NZSO’s performance in 2017). A few years ago the NZSO used to record the dates of its last performance of each of the pieces being played. It’s a pity that has ceased.

Though I know it well, this live performance was utterly illuminating, creating a variety of passionate episodes that seemed to far outclass any performance that I’ve heard on recordings or on radio. All the wind players had conspicuous episodes, individually or in sometimes unusual ensemble, made more colourful by the presence of an alto saxophone (Simon Brew, who played it with the NZSO in 2017), bass clarinet along with other triple or quadruple winds, a piano and six percussionists.

All of which created highly colourful, stunning orchestral sound patterns. I was struck by the remarkable, ‘spectral’ sounds that emerged in the second movement that ends with such uncanny quiet. The programme notes commented that it shows signs of Prokofiev in its muscular and spiky orchestration: I agree. And there were numerous surprising and unusual fanfares the led in odd directions, as in the middle of the last movement, Allegro assai; and uncanny little fanfares led to the plain-song Dies Irae that Rachmaninov and others in the late Romantic era often quoted. Such unique orchestral characteristics however, were the distinguishing mark of the entire performance, that made it hard to recognise dance rhythms, or music that would have been very easy for a choreographer to be inspired by. Yet there have been a number of ballet performances, both in the United States and by the Royal Ballet in London.

Given the addition of extra players (about a dozen from the NZSO), partly as a result of the sudden busyness of many musicians being engaged in a variety of other musical groups and activities, the orchestra delivered a performance of the Symphonic Dances that was quite spectacular, both in it emotional variety and its sheer exuberance.

 

 

 

Prominent in the second movement was contributions by two marimbas but the rhythm with throbbing piano.

 

was vivid with a lot of fortissimo performance have been It really e three-movement Psathas work was   The size of the

 

 

NZSM Orchestra with conductor Hamish McKeich showcases achievements by 2020 award-winning composer and instrumentalist at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
Music by Mica Thompson, Carl Reinecke and Johannes Brahms

THOMPSON  – Song
REINECKE – Flute Concerto In D Major Op.283
BRAHMS – Symphony No. 2 in D Major Op.73

Isabella Gregory (flute)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Saturday, 26th September, 2020

Pandemic restrictions having been relaxed of late (though judiciously more “on hold” than entirely done away with), we were allowed more-or-less regularly-spaced seating at St. Andrew’s to hear the most recent of the NZSM Orchestra’s public concerts, one featuring the recent winner of the School’s Concerto Competition, flutist Isabella Gregory (see the review at https://middle-c.org/2020/07/nzsm-concerto-competition-an-evening-of-elegance-frisson-and-feeling/), playing the Reinecke concerto with which she won the prize, though on this occasion with a full and proper orchestral accompaniment! Flanking her polished, sparkling efforts were two other items, the concert beginning with a work for orchestra  entitled “Song” by Hawkes Bay-born composer Micah Thompson, and concluding with the well-known Second Symphony by Brahms.

Thanks to the aforementioned ravages of Covid-19 upon the present year in respect of public music-making and -presentation, this was, I think, the first 2020 NZSM orchestral concert I’d attended , though I had seen a few of the individual players in other orchestral and chamber presentations at various times. It was certainly one worth the wait for, and promised much beforehand, with the NZSO’s principal Conductor-in-Residence Hamish McKeich due to rehearse and direct the performances. Also, one of the NZSO’s recent Guest Conductors, Miguel Harth-Bedoya apparently worked with the orchestra during this period – though it’s not clear whether the latter had any direct involvement with the orchestra’s preparation for this concert.

The evening began with “thanks and praise” from the director of the School, Prof. Sally Jane Norman, thanks for the efforts of people in staging the concert in the face of near-insuperable difficulties, and praise for the efforts of the musicians and their tutors – mixed in with all of this was warm appreciation for people’s actual attendance at the concert, supporting the school’s activities in fostering the careers of young composers/musicians.

First we heard a work by composer Micah Thompson, called “Song”, and inspired in part by the poetry of British poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998), specifically in this case a 1957 poem “The Hawk in the Rain”. Thompson explained, both in a progamme note and by means of an internet post (https://www.facebook.com/NZSMusic/videos/1186964995018168) how the poet’s interest in the “identity, history and mythologies of particular animals” had informed his own approach to exploring musical instruments’ characteristics and their use – he used Hughes’s “wild, sometimes brutal, but always expressive and melancholic” verses as a kind of counterpoint to his own creative impulses. As the programme printed the text of Hughes’ verses, I couldn’t help comparing his earthier, more confrontational expressiveness to that of an earlier poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins, in the latter’s comparatively rarefied (but just as dramatic and musical) poem from 1877, “The Windhover”, describing the flight of another bird of prey, a falcon.

Thompson’s work also took a number of previously-composed solo pieces, for piano, clarinet and flute, and “collaged” them into what he called “an orchestral space”. This space coalesced into life, the ambient beginnings featuring slivers of percussion, mingled with taonga-puoro-like calls, creating an atmosphere of wildness and vast resonances of possibility – long string lines were punctuated with birdsong and wild gesturings, the sounds suggesting flight both with impulses of wing-beatings and the stillnesses of soaring. Long-held notes for cello, winds, brass and violins accentuated the spaces while various scintillations suggested light-changes, both osmotic and sharp-edged. The celeste brought an almost cow-bell nostalgia into play, contrasting with the increasing combatative-edged intrusions from both clarinet and horn solos, the implicit violence of the poem’s words here suggested abstractedly, one of a number of “perceptions” hinted at by the music. Returning to whisperings, the sounds took on a kind of “mystic” feeling, the flute playing a fanfare-like birdcall, a cadenza-like passage which seemed to awaken the surrounds more markedly, the strings rustling, the percussions tinkling, the basses gently rumbling, the piano chirruping, everything freely modulating before drifting into a silence coloured only by the flute’s gentle call. I like the “assuredness” of it all, its focus supporting tangible imagery and feeling amid all the ambient suggestiveness.

Carl Reinecke’s Flute Concert has long been regarded as the instrument’s principal Romantic flagbearer, given that the composer was of the Romantic persuasion  along the lines of Mendelssohn and Schumann, rather than of Liszt or Wagner – though befriended by Liszt and given introductions by the latter to contacts in Paris, Reinecke remained a firm adherent of the more conservative 19thCentury school. The work’s gentle, Brahmsian opening was essayed beautifully by the players, here, with some lovely horn playing, and beautiful phrasing from the flute at the player’s entrance. The soloist’s “big tune” was answered by the brasses the exchanges taking us into a melancholic, romantic world of feeling, rounded off by a stirring orchestral tutti. I thought Gregory’s playing even more astonishing than when encountering her in the competition’s final, the orchestral accompaniment perhaps giving the soloist more variety to react to and establish a personality very much her own.

The slow movement took on the character of a kind of “Romantic legend”, a gift for a skilled storyteller, dramatic brass and timpani preparing the way for the flute’s narrative, which was here developed with a real sense of occasion and adventure, the ensemble seizing its chances to dramatize the music at every opportunity, an impulse somewhat tamed by the flute’s bringing the ending of the movement into the major key, as an antidote to the relative darkness! Horns and wind threw out a jaunty aspect at the finale’s opening, the flute taking up the polonaise rhythm with gusto, throughout the movement steadfastedly steering the music back to the dance whenever different episodes sought to diversify the expression – a charmingly winsome game of dominance, in which the flute was triumphant, the work’s coda featuring exciting exchanges between Gregory and the musicians, Hamish McKeich keeping the momentums simmering, right to the work’s festive conclusion.

Concluding the programme was a quintessential conservative-Romantic work, the Brahms Second Symphony, one which gave  the composer opportunity for some impish fun in describing the music beforehand to his friends – his tongue-in-cheek characterisations of parts of the work were reproduced in the excellent programme notes, comments such as the words “so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it – I have never written anything so sad, and the score itself will have to come out in mourning”. If at times gruffly expressed, Brahms certainly didn’t lack a sense of humour!

I enjoyed the performance enormously, in the first movement right from the near-perfect horn-playing at the work’s beginning, with its answering winds and floating string responses, through the “lilt” of the playing of the second subject theme by all concerned, and the stirring brass response to the increasing ferment of the development’s exchanges, to the lovely “spent” character of the climbing strings and the glowing wind replies when the opening was recapitulated (I loved the confidently-produced “zinging” quality of the strings’ playing of the dotted-rhythm fanfares shortly afterwards!). And though not absolutely note-perfect, the solo horn’s valedictory passage towards the movement’s end was so beautifully shaped and sounded, the string-playing that followed couldn’t help but sound ravishing (ravished, perhaps?) in reply.

The strings dug into the second movement’s opening as if the players really meant it, the top note of the succeeding upward phrase a bit shaky first time round, but more secure on its repetition – again the horn-playing shone, with the strings, and the winds following, and similarly shining   in succession. As the music floated over graceful pizzzicati both winds and strings sang full-throatedly, confidently leading from this into the music’s darker-browed sequences and holding their ground amid the storms and stresses, the winds eventually coming to the rescue, encouraging the strings to pick their way through the wreckage, putting the crooked straight and making the rough places plain as they went……the return of the opening sequence by strings and winds here made such a heart-warming  impression, even if  the horizons were again darkened and the brasses and timpani held sway for a few anxious moments – amid the uncertainties, winds and strings registered a further brief moment of apprehension with the timpani, before squaring up with a “let’s get on” gesture that brought the sounds to rest.

The third movement, an Allegretto grazioso featured a perky oboe supported by clarinets and followed by flutes  – lovely! The strings delicately danced into the picture, the tempi amazingly swift, the playing precise! – fabulous playing and skilful dovetailing when the oboe rejoined the mix with the opening theme – the lovely “flowering” of the wind textures was then matched  by the strings’ “darkening” of the same, after which the dancing resumed with earnest and energy – and I loved the re-delivery of the opening wind tune by the strings, the downward part of the phrase played with what sounded like a satisfied sigh! – very heartfelt!

The finale was, by contrast, all stealth and mystery at the start, creating great expectation before bursting forth, McKeich and his players creating an invigorating “togetherness” of ensemble, the winds gurgling with excitement when given their turn! The strings gave their all with their “big tune”, the tempo kept steady, the tutti blazing forth with excitement, the syncopations flying past at a tempo, and the sotto voce of the opening’s return maintained. Another excitable tutti was relished, before the triplet-led episode allowed a hint of melancholy to descend upon the textures before the movement’s opening sequence returned with a few ear-catching variants – a bit of scrawny playing here and there simply added to the excitement and abandonment, the brass heaving to with some elephantine comments, and the rest of the orchestra girding its loins for the work’s cataclysmic coda – noisy, but joyful and exuberant! It was a performance which got at the end a well-deserved accolade, doing the composer, as well as the conductor and players, proud!

NZSM Concerto Competition – an evening of elegance, frisson and feeling

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Concerto Competition 2020 – Final

Finalists

Lucas Baker (violin) – BARBER: Violin Concerto
Isabella Gregory (flute) – REINECKE: Flute Concerto in D Major, Op.283
Otis Prescott-Mason (piano) – SAINT-SAENS – Piano Concerto No.2

Collaborative Pianist: David Barnard
Adjudicators: Catherine Gibson (CMNZ)
Vincent Hardaker (APO)

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn Campus
Victoria University of Wellington

Thursday, 30th July 2020

This year’s final of the NZSM Concerto Competition provided something of a musical feast, even if one of the concertos performed (Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto) was presented with a somewhat truncated finale, for whatever reason. With three promising and extremely accomplished performers playing their respective hearts out (and admirably supported by the efforts of collaborative pianist David Barnard, whose playing of the orchestral part of the Samuel Barber Concerto was a treat in itself to experience), it made for an absorbing listening experience, one to rate at least equally with the actual result of the contest, at least for this listener, with no “affiliations” connected with the outcome!

First up was violinist Lucas Baker, whose chosen work (Samuel Barber’s beautiful Violin Concerto) brought out the young player’s seemingly instinctive feel for the “shape” of the composer’s largely rhapsodic phrases and larger paragraphs – throughout, I was convinced by Baker’s heartfelt approach to both the work’s lyrical and more heroic sequences, his instantly characterful tones enabling us to quickly enter the “world” of the music, despite some untidiness of rhythm and intonation in some of the transitions. The player then confidently attacked the angularities of the second movement, and nicely brought out the fervour of the lyrical writing and the silveriness of the contrasting stratospheric section, concluding with beautifully withdrawn tones at the movement’s end.

The finale’s technical difficulties were also most excitingly squared up to by Baker, his fingers flying over his instrument’s fingerboard to exhilarating effect, with his pianist an equally committed and involved participant in the composer’s vortices of note-spinning – the spills were as exciting and involving as the thrills, both players capturing the devil-may-care spirit which abounds throughout this final movement. Whatever niceties of detail were smudged or approximated, Baker readily conveyed to us an engaging sense of “knowing how it should go”, which carried the day as a performance.

No greater contrast could have been afforded by both the player to next appear and the work chosen! – this was flutist Isabella Gregory, and the work Carl Reinecke’s D Major Flute Concerto, written (somewhat surprisingly, I thought, upon hearing the piece) in 1908, the composer hardly deviating from his early enthusiasms for the music of Mendelssohn and Schumann. In effect, the work is that rarity, a romantic flute concerto – here, it was given a sparklingly lyrical performance by its gifted performer, obviously in complete command of both the piece’s overall shape, and the mellifluous detailings that gave the music such a unique character – complete with a surprisingly abrupt conclusion to the first movement! The sombre nature of the second movement’s opening accompaniment contrasted with the solo instrument’s more carefree manner, played here by Gregory as a somewhat easy-going accomplice to rather more stealthy mischief-making, though I found the Moderato finale a wee bit under-characterised – I thought the rhythms could have a bit more “kick” in places, though this was something which the more energetic concluding sequence in due course suitably enlivened, the virtuosity of the soloist making a breathlessly exciting impression to finish! Altogether, a delightful and suitably brilliant performance!

The evening’s final contestant was pianist Otis Prescott-Mason, who had chosen Saint-Saens’s wonderful Second Piano Concerto – a work whose character I recall once described as “beginning like Bach and ending like Offenbach”! Throughout the first movement I found myself riveted by the young musician’s spell-binding command of the music’s ebb-and-flow, the “spontaneous” element of the opening improvisation as finely-judged as I had ever heard it played, Prescott-Mason truly “making the music his own” and working hand-in-glove with his collaborator to create the sense of Baroque-like splendour that informs the music – what I particularly liked was the spaciousness of it all, allied to the clear direction of the underlying pulse of the music, to the point where the sounds had an inevitability of utterance which perfectly fused freedom and structure, Saint-Saens at his most potent as a creator. What a pity, then that such poised, and finely-tuned focus seemed to me to be then somewhat impatiently cast aside, the second movement’s playfulness over-rushed and the rhythmic deliciousness and delicacy of it all to my ears duly lost – Saint-Saens’s humour is always po-faced and elegant, and the playing in this movement I thought unfortunately failed to realise that “insouciance” which keeps the music’s character intact. I then hoped that the whirlwind brilliance of the finale might have restored some of the impression created by the pianist in that superbly-crafted first movement – but the work was unexpectedly and severely shortened, allowing little opportunity for a “renaissance” of identification with the music’s world on the young player’s part.

All in all, the result of the competition very justly, I thought accorded the laurels to flutist Isabella Gregory, whose performance indicated an impressive totality of identification with the music she played, as regards both execution and interpretation. Both her rivals, Lucas Baker and Otis Prescott-Mason, I thought, turned out most engaging performances of their pieces, without quite rivalling the winner’s consistency and strength of purpose. But what things all three achieved in their different ways!  And how richly and gratefully we all relished their talent and musicality in entertaining us us so royally during the evening!

“Emperor of Composers” – an eponymous Piano Concerto and a lovely Symphony, “live” from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No. 5 “Emperor”
–  Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”
Diedre Irons (piano)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Wednesday, 8th July 2020

Following its hugely successful inaugural post-lockdown concert Ngū Kīoro… Harikoa Ake (Celebrating Togetherness), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has refocused its concert activities on rather more conventional repertoire with this all-Beethoven presentation, a sure-fire audience drawcard which certainly worked its magic in that respect, the result being a sold-out Michael Fowler Centre for the concert. An additional attraction was the presence of Diedre Irons, one of the country’s finest pianists, as the soloist. Most enterprisingly, the orchestra made arrangements for the concert to be streamed “live” on both radio (RNZ Concert) and on “Facebook” by RNZ Concert’s recording team and camera operators. My experience of hearing previous concerts I’d attended in the Michael Fowler Centre via recordings by RNZ Concert had already disposed me positively towards the results achieved by the latter, often securing a finer, better-balanced sound than I’d had when attending the actual concert – so people who had recourse to viewing and/or listening to the broadcasts were, in my opinion assured of an excellent musical experience sound-wise!

In addition, the “live-stream” audience was advantaged by an informative commentary from the Concert FM announcer, as opposed to the complete lack of documentation available in either written or spoken form for the concert-hall audience – I was surprised no programme was printed for distribution, the ticket-holders having been “informed” that “a printable programme was available on-line”. To my way of thinking, this situation was a poor advertisement for the orchestra and especially when one of the items performed, Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, had a definite and informative “programmatic” aspect which, had it been printed and distributed, would have helped people new to concerts to enjoy the experience more deeply (the usually-eschewed audience-clapping between movements which took place on this occasion suggested that there were a number of people present unfamiliar with the music and with concert-hall conventions.

Nevertheless, the crowd was a cheery one, and the buzz of excitement beforehand was palpable, no doubt partly a reflection of people’s delight at having a real, “live” concert to attend once more, and partly a response to the programme’s undoubted appeal – it was something that altogether seemed to reflect and revitalise the world of live music-making as it existed before the pandemic’s ravages. What better composer than Beethoven could be chosen to reflect in his music this “revitalisation”? Of course, with so many great works to choose from, the concert organiser could hardly go wrong – easier, though to choose the “Emperor” Piano Concerto as the stand-out work among Beethoven’s compositions in that genre than to suggest a Symphony, where there are so many equally great ones! As it turned out, the “Pastoral” was an inspired choice – though what more arresting way might there be to begin a concert than with a piano concerto whose “title” is “The Emperor”?

True to its nickname, the work was here grandly begun, with each of the three opening orchestral chords bedecked by answering solo flourishes from the pianist, Diedre Irons, resonating from these arresting gestures in differing ways and setting the tone for an intriguing interplay of interpretative energies from orchestra and piano throughout the movement. Conductor Hamish McKeich and the orchestra then set off as they meant to go on, gathering the music’s detail up and into a trajectory of sure-footed, finely-graded purpose, each statement beautifully “terraced’, flowing from one another with its own character shining forth (some wonderful horn-playing) but keeping both ebb and flow subject to the overall rhythm’s driving energies. Irons’ piano-playing was straightaway more expansive in reply, savouring her phrases with characteristic point and focus, but opening up the poetic vistas and ensuring that every note, it seemed, was given its proper weight, reaffirming its place in the scheme of things.  This slight duality of purpose between orchestra and piano was evident with every orchestral tutti,  McKeich and his players pushing the basic pulse ahead by a notch or two, followed by Irons’ slight expansion of those same pulses as if responding to the beat of a slightly different drum. One couldn’t fault Irons’ eloquence in what she did, though in one or two places I thought the left-hand passagework seemed slightly too emphatic at the expense of forward movement. Still, the music’s line was always engagingly maintained on both “sides”, nowhere more so than in the exchanges leading up to the recapitulation of the work’s opening, begun with orchestra and piano hammering chords at one another at point-blank range with great gusto!

Conductor and players got a lovely “colour” at the slow movement’s beginning, capped off beautifully by the flute’s  voice joining the strings. The piano’s entry instantly enchanted, with the winds seeming almost loath to properly dove-tail their utterances with the soloist’s opening phrases for fear of breaking the spell, but unhesitatingly joining in later, horns contributing a kind of “dreamy fanfare” carried on by the winds over the pianist’s poetic musings. Later, flute, clarinet and bassoon exquisitely took up the music’s lines with the piano in tow, right to the movement’s precipitous edge, with the sounds teetering on the points of the music’s far-flung pre-echoes, and “the horns of elfland” softly beckoning, the piano then plunging into that exhilarating hurly-burly of the finale’s beginning, daring the orchestra to do likewise! Again, Irons’ manner was grand and expansive, obviously the fruit of her deep love of and familiarity with the music, a warm and rich response to Beethovenian energies, as much glowing and retrospective a viewpoint as immediate and spontaneously-wrought. McKeich and his players matched her every impulse, gesture and outpouring with sounds that rounded off the colour, variety and wholeheartedness of the music and its performance.

The concert’s second half wrought for us a different kind of sublimity, perhaps a more solitary and personal outpouring of emotion on the part of the composer, in the form of the “Pastoral” Symphony, written  a year or so before the “Emperor” Concerto. Famously described by Beethoven as “more an expression of feeling than painting” the work nevertheless has enough pictorial elements to constitute a seriously-regarded “programmatic work”, the three middle movements in particular depicting specifically-described natural and human-generated phenomena, such as a brook’s rippling water, various bird calls, a village band, and a violent thunderstorm.

I so relished the first movement’s performance, here – I thought McKeich and his players straightaway caught that “first, fine careless rapture” of experiencing nature at first hand, a true “awakening of pleasant feelings” as described by the composer. I loved how the playing suggested the rusticity of the sounds, through the ever-so-slight “chunkiness” of the rhythms, avoiding any sense of glibness or picture-postcarding. The famous “walking rhythms” of the first movements development section were deliciously realised, the crescendo in each case having a “glowing” quality, a true “expression of feeling” which overwhelmingly suffused the senses. All the instruments involved covered themselves with glory, here, with the rhythmic gait of the strings, the singing quality of the winds and the sonorous glow of the brass producing a memorable evocation of contentment.

For me the “Scene by the Brook” wasn’t quite so effusive at first, the string figurations not given the “room” for the stream waters to gurgle and babble as I would have liked – but the winds were, by way of compensation, encouraged by McKeich to play out and generate a scenario of exquisite beauty, with beautiful exchanges of timbre and colour among the various instruments. The conductor’s encouragement of whispered tones from the strings throughout placed the emphasis on the winds and created something of a Beethovenian “chaos of delight” through the birdsong – and the nightingale, quail and cuckoo imitations at the movement’s end were sublime!

The scherzo, styled by the composer as “Peasants’ Merrymaking”, involved me the least of all the movements, save for the wind-playing – oboe, clarinet and horn played their parts to perfection as “not very confident” village musicians doing their best! Despite the efforts of the players I thought McKeich’s tempi here produced a somewhat bland effect, not rumbustious and “hearty” enough at the beginning, and with too extreme a tempo change for the more vigorous sections, certainly one beyond the capabilities of a rustic village band! The storm, however, was sensational, with the timpanist using hard sticks (and possibly “authentic” drums – what articulate skins!), all of which imparted real menace to the thunderclaps, augmented by the screaming winds and baleful brass – a terrific onslaught!

Came the finale, introduced by gorgeous wind and horn solos, and sublimity returned, the balances beautifully judged, the tempo allowing a radiance sufficient room to flourish and suffuse the ambiences, and the playing filling out the ample spaces with a heartwarming generosity. I liked, as with the first movement, how McKeich again got a certain chunkiness of articulation in places, maintaining a rustic kind of feeling and entirely avoiding any slickness or unwanted glossiness to the end result – the work’s rapt conclusion rounded off a singular and rewarding concert experience.

 

 

 

 

A beautiful “Mozart hat-trick” from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

AMALIA AND FRIENDS PLAY MOZART
Violin Concerto No, 3 in G Major K.216
Symphony No. 36 in C Major K.425

Amalia Hall (violin and director)
Members of Orchestra Wellington

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

Saturday 20th June 2020

This was the third and final of the three programmes of Mozart presented on consecutive Saturdays in June 2020 by Amalia Hall and members of Orchestra Wellington, of which ensemble she is the concertmaster. Intended to be a kind of celebration of the nation’s lifting of “lockdown” conditions originally imposed by the Government to counter the presence of the Covid-19 virus, the concerts, though still limiting audience numbers to a hundred per event brought forth an enthusiastic and appreciative response to the ensemble’s return to “live” music-making in the capital.

My Middle-C colleagues, firstly Janice Potter and then Lindis Taylor, enthusiastically wrote about the previous couple of weeks’ performances by the same musicians, sentiments I was more than happy to echo this third time round. Here, I was firstly charmed and delighted with the direction and solo playing of Amalia Hall in the third of Mozart’s delectable series of Violin Concertos, before being thoroughly invigorated by the spirited response of the Orchestra Wellington players (again directed by Hall, this time from her concertmaster’s seat) to the same composer’s “Linz” Symphony, named after the place where Mozart wrote the music – in the space of a four-day sojourn there, no less!

While enjoying the St.Andrew’s venue as a near-ideal place for chamber and solo instrumental performance I’ve always had reservations about its suitability for orchestral performance – however, as we all know, the capital’s capacity for providing such venues has been more-than-usually under siege of late with strictures involving earthquake risk involving the temporary closure of halls, theatres and churches, necessitating places such as St.Andrew’s being brought in as a welcome stopgap for the time being. Here, with a smaller-than-usual ensemble, and a professional standard of performance, my usual concerns regarding sounds over-burgeoned thru players being crammed into insufficient spaces were happily put aside.

Particularly felicitous was the Violin Concerto’s performance, here, the music’s delight engaging the eye as well as the ear – firstly came the cheering sight of the leader/soloist joining in with the work’s opening tutti, playing the first violin part, and integrating her instrument’s sound with her fellows, and then of a sudden beaming her soloist’s single line (reinforced by frequent double-stopping) upwards and outwards as an independent spirit, and clearing the orchestral sound as a bird clears the treetops! Hers was not a “big” instrumental sound on this occasion, but an intensely focused one, whose detailings were etched and drawn like fine gold, as were the accompaniments from strings and winds – not that vigour and energy were at all lacking when required, of course, with the joyousness of Mozart’s writing given full vent at appropriate moments.

Something of the work’s extraordinary range of colour owed a great deal to its unusual scoring, Mozart substituting two flutes in the slow movement for the pair of oboes that had so characterfully contributed to the first-movement’s textures. Along with the violin’s “floating” line, the whole of the movement took on a kind of airborne quality, the muted strings enhancing the flutes’ suggestion of something not quite of this world. Equally remarkable was Hall’s playing of the cadenza, the lines bedecked with echoes and resonances, counter-voices and harmonies, all creating a remarkable multi-layered manifestation of sublimity

Contrasting with such rarefied beauties was the rumbustious, back-to-earth finale which “bounced” its way engagingly around and about, circumventing a couple of quirky contrasting episodes, before  briefly reappearing, and somewhat insouciantly bidding us farewell with a gentle, un-upholstered statement from the winds! Earlier, I had pricked up my ears at hearing Amalia Hall play what I call a “turn” at the end of each of her phrases after the opening tutti, instead of the “accustomed” trill – the first recording I ever owned of this work was David Oistrakh’s, who also played a “turn” (for want of the correct term, as I’m not a “proper” musician!) and it was nice to be “returned” to the memory of that, for me, so-o-o formative performance of this music after hearing “most” other violinists playing (a tad inconsequentially?) a trill….. either would have been a delight in such a context of fruitfulness as was ours in St.Andrew’s that afternoon….

More was to come, of course, if somewhat different in character to the concerto – a symphony, no less, one which Mozart wrote in the space of four days while sojourning at the city of Linz, the name by which the work has been known ever since. I still have the renowned conductor Bruno Walter’s once-popular “rehearsal recording” of this symphony somewhere on my shelves, and therefore can no longer hear the work’s opening without also hearing Walter’s voice exhorting his players to “come off” the note at the end of each measure at the beginning – “Bahm! – OFF! Ba-bahm! – OFF! Ba-bahm! – OFF!” – and so on! Happily the ghost of that memory wasn’t evoked on this occasion, partly because Amelia Hall’s tempi were quicker and the sounds more resonant – and partly because I was too taken by her slightly elevated “podium seat” which enabled her to more visibly perform the function of “leader” and “conductor” of the orchestra at the same time!

Hall and her players brought out the work’s definite “festive”quality at the beginning with those “Bruno Walter” notes, but also made good the sequences imbued with strains of melancholy (yearning lines from both strings and wind during that same introduction, set against the opening call to attention) and also touches of humour (some droll, quasi-furtive passages predating Leoporello’s music in the yet-to-be-written opera “Don Giovanni”) contrasting with the more assertive “joie de vivre” that drove the music forward. I enjoyed, too, the bringing out of those sinuous lines in the development which wreathed up and over the music, casting a new light on what had transpired, and making us listen afresh to the recapitulation, attended at the conclusion by those “lines of experience”.

The poise and grace of the slow movement’s opening fell gratefully on the ear, with drums and brass making splendid counterweighting points to the lyricism – I thought the different lines “swam” a bit in relation to each other in places, the rhythms a tad soft-edged at some of the different voices’ exchange-points, though one could conclude that the performance in general eschewed a kind of vertical precision as an end in itself and favoured singing lines instead. (I was merely looking for something to criticise, I must confess!) A swift Minuet with a lively “kick” made a gorgeous “rustic impression – or aft the very least, the illusion of gentility being “rusticated”, to pleasing effect! The trio’s seamless flow allowed the oboe a magical couple of moments, nicely taken.

At the outset the finale was a real “scamperer”, the first “sotto voce” phrase brimming with expectation, if the tiniest bit frayed at the edges the first time round – though I liked the phrase ends here being played for all they were worth right to their full length, instead of being given what sounds to my ears a self-conscious, somewhat “mannered” tapering off at the ends by ensembles purporting to be “authentic”. I loved the performance’s energy and sense of fun in the exposition, and the cut and thrust of the more “sturm und drang” parts of the development – Hall got a terrific response from her players throughout, the strings working hard, the winds and brass rock-steady for the most part, apart from a few bars where they lagged fractionally behind the strings (albeit together!), everything building up most satisfyingly to a grandstand finish, the heavyweights (brass and timpani) ringing out with the joy of it all, to great and well-deserved acclaim.