Tag: contemporary music

SPACE JUMP – An exhilarating listening leap from NZTrio into firmament-like territories

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FAZIL SAY – Space Jump for Piano Trio (2013)
REENA ESMAIL – Piano Trio (2019)
KEITH MOSS – Field Notes in Autumn (2026 – NZ Trio commisssion)
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No 2 in F Major

NZTrio  (He taonga wairere)
Amalia Hall (violin), Matthias Balzat (cello), Somi Kim (piano)
Wellington Central Library – Te Matapihi te Ao Nui
Sunday 23rd August, 2026

Composers over the course of time have often demonstrated a fondness, and, indeed, a facility, for writing descriptive music representing people, animals, objects or events. As early as the Renaissance, there was a penchant for imitating the sounds and movements of wildlife, with voices mimicking birds and animals, as well as human activity involving both warfare and daily life in large cities. Throughout the Baroque and Classical periods composers such as Vivaldi, Biber, Haydn and Couperin enthusiastically wrote music to tell stories or imitate different sound-worlds in nature and in human society. The Romantic period which followed saw the rise of “programme music” and sparked both debate and conflict between the conservative and progressive elements, each advancing the respective merits of “absolute” and “descriptive” music right into the twentieth century, where modernist techniques further advanced and diversified the music that described all kinds of life-forms and mechanised objects, blurring the absolute/descriptive classifications of music.

With this potted history in mind, it was interesting to encounter in this concert a number of  works by contemporary composers that had been inspired by both modernist and traditional trends and conceived from different physical, national and cultural standpoints, and representing a kind of global interest in and acceptance of regional perspectives of the individual pieces and their respective preoccupations. And binding the whole exploratory process of performing and experiencing these different works was one central to the essences of the instrumental medium – Robert Schumann’s iconic Second Piano Trio of 1847, one representing a kind of apex of joyous expression and fulfilment, and to which each of the preceding works in the concert had aspired in their own ways.

The NZTrio boldly began these intriguing presentations with a remarkably tactile work “Space Jump” written by the Turkish composer/pianist Fazil Say, the result of the composer’s fascination with the daredevil exploits of Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian extreme sports pioneer famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space after being lifted by a helium balloon to a height of almost 40 km, before free-falling for most of his descent, and breaking the sound barrier in the process! Fazil Say was among the 8 million viewers who watched the Jump on You Tube, his music depicting every aspect of the jump including the safe landing on earth. (Baumgartner, incidentally, was killed last year in a paragliding accident in Italy – he was 56 years old.)

The music was nothing if not vertiginous in places, though the life-threatening nature of the exercise was, for much of the music’s length masked by the situation’s “suspended unrealities” as the adventurer seemed almost to “float” for a lot of the downward journey in relative solitude and loneliness. However, in places towards the end the hazardous nature of the undertaking became more and more apparent in the music, leaving behind the initial violin ostinati (which had been borne along by the ‘cello’s counterpointing figures and the ambient piano chordings) and plunging into a sudden jazzy piano irruption of energies  –  the driving trajectories of the stuntman’s “fall”!  Violin and piano ”hewed” at syncopations attempting to turn the trajectories different ways, the instrumental swirlings and impassioned tones conveying the out-and-out physicalities of the free-faller holding his course steady. Then, a sudden cessation of trenchant movement was ”filled in” by more settled and lyrical figures, with occasional scintillating “swirls” augmented by piano glistenings, and a couple of strange, discordant harmonies which sounded and then drifted into silence. Whew! – exhausting stuff!

Then came a work by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, her 2019 Piano Trio, sounds which thankfully kept its trajectories a good deal closer to terra firma, though covering vast distances of a different kind. Here, the composer’s music took us to a world of vibrant fusion between Eastern and Western composition, in which European tonal and harmonic systems could interact with her own heritage’s rather more ancient North Indian (Hindustani) traditions. Esmail had studied as a student at the Juilliard and Yale Schools of Music, but then won a scholarship through a Fulbright/Nehru grant to enable her to undertake explorations of Hindustani (north Indian) classical music.

As a student pianist she had become enamoured of the piano trio tradition begun by Josef Haydn and further advanced by figures such as Mendelssohn, Shostakovich and Ravel, the latter having a particular influence upon her penchant for colour and texture in her own music. Thus her own 2019 Piano Trio reflects such early Western music influences as well as drawing from the storehouse of musical tradition found in the complex patterns and pitches organised around the ancient patterns and constructions known as raga, or raags found in traditional Hindustani music.

Straightaway, in the Trio’s opening movement, a shimmering, repeated-note pattern appeared, led by the piano and echoed by the violin and ‘cello, echoing the spirit of Ravel in the evocative piano figurations,  the strings later quoting an ancient Monsoon season raag Megh, violin and ‘cello harmonising the melodic lines, then decorating the piano’s reiteration of the melody,  and building the melody’s intensities in canonic fashion. The second movement opened with the strings repeating single-note and slow-trilled gestures against a beautiful choral-like piano melody, violin and ‘cello exchanging dialogue-like phrases, evocatively “bending” the occasional note in sitar-like fashion, as the piano gently and softly voiced a shimmering accompaniment, incorporating a raag Des (the latter word meaning “country” or “land”). For the listener this sounded like a retold or shared reminiscence or description of a particular place, one whose reiterations brought forth a surge of intensity, a deeply-felt sequence of expressive emotion.

The third, Scherzo-movement was all nervous intensity, the strings’s rapidly-exchanged tremolandi passages dancing to an ostinato  piano accompaniment, then building in excitement, with spectacular piano glissandi shooting across the soundscapes like meteorities, before the trio returns to the opening dance, repeating those electrifying piano glissandi to scintillating effect before the energies died down, brought to a droll conclusion by a single piano note!

Beseeching piano chords and lament-like cries from the strings began the finale, the music seeming to be ensnared in its own trance-like evocations, tremolando strings and rhapsodic arpeggiations from the piano leading to a heartfelt, song-like section with a filigree piano accompaniment – beautiful and almost tragic-sounding! The music became almost Rachmaninov-like, with passionate piano chordings and full-voiced string unisons reaching a point where some great thought, emotion or realisation was uncovered or confronted and squared up to – the mood was savoured and elevated to a point of great release and resolution, so that all that were left were haunting piano chords and ever-diminishing string harmonics, fading away to silence. At the end, the departing tones remained an indelible, lingering memory…….

In the wake of such high-impact presentations, South African-born, Wellington-based Keith Moss’s Field Notes in Autumn provided some welcome relief! – we were charmed to find the composer was actually present, and spoke briefly about his work, a piece which was derived from an earlier work for flugelhorn and piano, one presumably written almost exactly a year previously, if the title was to be taken literally!

A fresh, open piano sound began the work, establishing a “New World” kind of ambience, with the ensuing violin solo (repeated by the ‘cello) richly-wrought and nostalgic. The music’s ongoing, almost supercharged nostalgic quality put me in mind of those English pastoral works by Vaughan Williams and Butterworth in feeling, with, as the composer put it, “explorations of place, people and memory”. I sat listening and thinking how gratifying such music would be for performers, giving back such beauties to their efforts, and enjoying, as here, the appreciative audience response both during and at the end of the piece.

In concluding this delightfully singular foray into piano-trio possibilities this gifted ensemble gave us what surely counted as a cornerstone of the repertoire – Robert Schumann’s Second Piano Trio in F Major, for once a work by this composer whose opening would have kept the listener guessing as to its provenance for a few more bars longer than usual, as so much of his output almost immediately does! Here, in contrast to his G Minor Trio whose opening straightway proclaimed its “time of gloomy moods”, was, in the NZTrio’s hands music of joyous and energetic vigour right from the outset, inspired as Schumann was by his love for Clara, and the feelings her devotion to him awakened. It was actually the tenth anniversary of the couple’s secret engagement, which accounts for the music’s frequent allusions to Clara – the first two movements of the work here quoted the song “in the depths of my heart I keep a radiant image of you” from Schumann’s own song-cycle Liederkreis, and the third movement contains a quote from another song-cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, a work influenced by  Schumann’s courtship of Clara at the time.

A sinuous melody shared between the strings began the second movement, which coursed between this and various impulse-driven episodes – soulful recitative-like exchanges given all the room needed for the players to fill out the phrase-turns, and wistful minor-key asides which surprise with impulsive, spontaneous-sounding irruptions that just as suddenly fall back to treasurable moments of exquisite dovetailing of detail – memorable music-making! The third movement was a piquant waltz, violin and piano in canon with the melody, with the cello a dark-browed accompanist, the three players elaborating their lines in the graceful Trio, then returning to the dance, and nudging the harmonies into and out of the major key during the coda.

Nowhere is Schumann more beguiling in this work than in the finale – energetic, whimsical and good-humoured, the music and its performance readily teased and delighted us, building towards the end to what seemed like a near-euphoric state of elation, enabling us all to share in the effervescent-sounding exclamations of pleasure in the playing.  Small wonder that Clara Schumann’s verdict on the work – “(it) delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end” resonated in our responses at the concert’s conclusion!

 

A feast of classic and contemporary Finnish music – from Pietari Inkinen and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra  – Myths and Legends 2026

Pietari Inkinen conducts the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra  – Photo, Phoebe Cassidy, NZSO

SIBELIUS _ Pohjola’s Daughter
MAGNUS LINDBERG – Violin Concerto No.2
Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin)
SIBELIUS – Four Legends (Lemminkäinen Suite)

  1. Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari
  2. Lemminkäinen in Tuonela
  3. The Swan of Tuonela
  4. Lemminkäinen’s Return

Pietari Inkinen – conductor
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, 15th August, 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

I’d already become reacquainted with Pietari Inkinen’s rostrum presence in front of the NZSO the previous evening in the orchestra’s spectacularly-delivered  Wagner concert “Radiance” –  so this evening’s “Myths and Legends” concert was certainly an added pleasure. It was heightened by Inkinen choosing a programme which featured the music of perhaps his most illustrious countryman, Jean Sibelius, as, during the conductor’s earlier, seven-year tenure with the NZSO ( from2008 to 2015) he had programmed in concert and recorded all seven of the composer’s symphonies, as well as also presenting in that concert series tonight’s Lemminkäinen Suite, (though, sadly, I wasn’t the Middle C reviewer for THAT concert!). So, learning that Inkinen was proposing to repeat these Four Legends  (as they’re also often called)  was an added fillip to the occasion for me this time round!

There was more! – along with the Legends another of the composer’s tone-poems, one which hardly ever gets performed here in Wellington, was promised, the atmospheric, superbly-crafted “Pohjola’s Daughter” long a favourite work of mine due to its presence as an “extra” on the first recording I ever owned of a Sibelius Symphony, the magnificent Fifth. So as far as this composer was concerned it was a case for me of a cup that “runneth over”, making the occasion unmissable!

I could have, of course, lamented the choice of an ostensibly unrelated work to “fill out” this concert’s contents – I would of course have opted, had I been given the power to choose, for some of the incidental music the composer had written for either  “Festivo” or “The Tempest”, both of which suites contain some fabulous and rarely-performed music.  However, it seemed apposite for all sorts of reasons for Inkinen to opt on this occasion not for more Sibelius, but for a violin concerto by a well-known contemporary Finnish composer, Magnus Lindberg, and to employ the services as a soloist of another countryman, the wonderful Vesa-Matti Leppänen, long-time Finnish-born concertmaster of the NZSO, and one who had of course previously worked with Inkinen during the latter’s tenure as the orchestra’s principal conductor.

So it was decreed – and many of us thus found ourselves attending the Michael Fowler Centre on two nights running, here filled with expectations already fuelled by the previous evening’s musical riches ( see https://middle-c.org/2026/08/radiance-from-the-nzso-with-simon-oneill-tenor-and-pietari-inkinen-conductor-two-glimpses-of-richard-wagners-youth-to-maturity-journey-as-an-innovative-opera-com/)  and more than ready for further pleasures.

Inkinen was warmly welcomed to the platform to begin the concert – straightaway I liked the sense of “purpose” that seemed to emanate from the figure on the podium, highlighted by his patient, immobile stance before a note of the music was played – when it came, its darkly-focused tones created a world at once removed from time and place but at the same time “present” in the hall’s ambiences as the music filled the spaces. This was the world of a Finnish hero, Väinämöinen, he of the Finnish national epic the Kalevala, an adventurer advanced in years but still attracted to female beauty, one who on his travels encounters the beautiful “daughter of the North” a region known as “Pohjola”. We heard Väinämöinen’s steadfast and determined “adventuring” theme on the orchestral brasses, and then, suddenly came the beautiful theme associated with “Pohjola’s Daughter”, who in the story was depicted sitting on a rainbow weaving a cloth of gold. Her charms attracted Väinämöinen, who invited her to join him in his travels homeward – however she told him that he needed to perform certain magical tasks before she would agree to accompany him, so he set to work to perform his part of the bargain. We were drawn by focused, evocative instrumental lines into the interplay of Väinämöinen’s and the Maiden’s dialogues as the venerable hero steadfastly undertook his labours – however with the final task ( that of using his magic to build a boat from the distaff of the maiden’s spinning-wheel), Väinämöinen faltered and sustained an injury, causing him to renounce his quest (to the sounds of the maiden’s mocking laughter!) and sadly continue his homeward journey. The playing-out of this tale’s retelling was brilliantly graphic, the instrumental evocations palpable and moving, especially those regarding the sense of failure and ultimate resignation of the hero towards the end of this, possibly (with the exception of Tapiola)  the composer’s most accomplished single orchestral work outside the great symphonies.

We next welcomed a popular audience favourite to the platform, violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen, normally the orchestra’s Concertmaster, to perform a work described by one critic as “a romantic violin concerto in disguise”.  Magnus Lindberg’s Second Violin Concerto came across as a thickly-woven, luscious-sounding work which has hyper-charged energy fields connecting order out of seeming cross-referencing chaos to produce various impressive focal points which I found could inspire, excite and disconcert simultaneously. The composer wrote the work for Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of the foremost German violinists of today, who gave the work’s premiere in 2015 – in a talk Lindberg gave about the work before a New York performance he aptly described the concerto as “a lot of things boiling”, and this performance by Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Pietari Inkenen bore out that notion of several simultaneously-percolating elements during the work, confusingly so throughout this performance for a reviewer new to the work!

Beginning with a three-note phrase from the soloist that recurred in various elongated form throughout the work, this  theme found its way via various instrumental echoings and developments to an exciting, full-toned orchestra sonority. Then, to the accompaniment of a dancing violin solo the orchestra traced a rich panoply of sounds, in places trading dance-trajectories with the soloist while in others giving different voices tongue, as with some delighted/irascible swirls from the piccolo along with the other winds in one frisson-dominated moment! Whether dancing or soaring, soloist and orchestra complemented one another’s preoccupations (including some interactions between soloist and the orchestral first violin!) and afterwards there were beautiful stratospheric notes from Vesa-Matti’s violin mingling with harp arpeggios, and then leading  to the orchestral vaults being grandly thrown open as if some stupendous visitation was being heralded by the music.

The solo cadenza, towards the end of the slow movement, followed some Korngold-like gestures from the orchestra. Vesa-Matti mixed arco and pizzicato notes among other explorations, including some spectacularly high harmonic-like sounds, almost a string-playing fireworks display, with occasional three-note motif-references thrown in for effect! Near the movement’s end the luscious late-romantic sound-world was again evoked, with another, briefer solo cadenza – we heard due pomp and ceremony in some concluding orchestral phrases, with the solo violin in places almost beside itself with excitement, allowing the orchestra its “grand peroration” before unexpectedly handing the work’s ending back to the soloist for a wry three-note concluding gesture! It was a work whose complexities of detailing both fascinated and overwhelmed this listener! – for me a definitely candidate for a wish-list of further listening opportunities!

After the interval, we were returned to Sibelius’s world of myth and legend by way of the composer’s “Lemminkäinen Suite”, with the eponymous hero’s adventures drawn, like Väinämöinen’s in the earlier Pohjola’s Daughter, from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. The hero, Lemminkäinen, is something of a Maui-like character, described variously in the Kalevala epic as young, good-looking, heroic and reckless, but with numerous other folk-lore versions of his exploits. Sibelius’s sequence of events in the story doesn’t follow the Kalevala’s – in the epic his return home at the end was not from Tuonela, but from a reprisal against the people from Pohjola, who had burnt his village to the ground while he was carousing with the Maidens on Saari. Consequently the suite is more absolute music than narrative, and whose separate evocations can be equally enjoyed as such.

Sibelius here has him firstly travelling to the island of Saari (Lemminkainen and the Maidens of Saari), where he seduces as many women as he can before fleeing to escape the vengeance of the men of the island. The music, built around two groups of themes presents firstly the young man’s longing for the excitement of adventure, and his journeying to the island, and his encounters with various women  – “Then, the minstrel, Lemminkainen/ roamed throughout the island hamlets/ to the joy of all the virgins/all the maids of braided tresses”  (Kalevala – Rune 15). There’s an almost Tristanesque Wagnerian quality expressed by the seduction music as it builds towards a suggestively orgasmic kind of release at the end, the brass signalling a final consummation of desire in returning to the home key as the energies of the piece subside. Inkinen and his players capture it all, at a tempo which enables the detailing of both the hero’s journeyings and his carousings to be fully savoured.

The composer changed the order of the two middle movements at various times, resulting in differences in recorded versions – my first recording (Thomas Jensen and the Danish Radio Orchestra) put “The Swan of Tuonela” first but others have since reversed the order, as did Inkinen on this occasion. Either seemed to fit the story (which we’re told doesn’t follow the Kalevala anyway!) – here we were plunged eerily and scarily into the “Land of the Dead” with music that was malevolent in character and obsessive in its repetitions. Such was the playing’s  concentration and focus we were irrevocably gripped and held by the spectral tones and harsh textures, though respite eventually came from a sudden and transformative episode of unearthly calm, strings and winds magically and uncannily countering the evil with some kind of strangely “healing” textures, representing the mother of the hero in search of her son, entering Tuonela, retrieving his dismembered body and sewing the different parts together as per the Kalevala’s story.

As if proclaiming the dominion of Tuonela’s embodiment of death, the following movement featured the suite’s easily most celebrated section, The Swan of Tuonela, here given the most sublime performance I could ever imagine hearing from all concerned, and especially from the orchestra’s cor anglais player, Michael Austin. Inkinen got his strings in the latter stages to “dig into” the phrasings in classic Barbirolli-style (the conductor of my long-time favourite recording of this work!), steadily and patiently maintaining the macabrely beautiful ambiences right through to the piece’s resounding silences at the end.

After this, some sort of deliverance was urgently needed as a “return to life”  metamorphosis, and duly provided in surgings of renewed energies with the work’s concluding movement, Lemminkainen’s Homecoming, the playing replete with feelings of both release and anticipation, as well returning to life our own beleagued sensibilities in the wake of such gruesome adventurings into and through a Finnish version of a dismal Underworld, from which emancipation was a truly joyous experience.  Indeed, such it also was in general terms for me with the reappearance here in Wellington of Pietari Inkinen, whose music making seemed for this listener to have a new surety of confidence that brought an extra dimension of the music’s “release” to his ever-vigilant “control” – he seemed well-pleased to have made his return as did his warmly-appreciative audience.

New Zealand String Quartet bring to us music with “the beauty of loneliness, pain, strength and freedom”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet – Storytellers

Music by Henry Purcell, Anthony Ritchie, Fanny Mendelssohn, Salina Fisher and Benjamin Britten

Prefab Hall, Jessie St., Mt.Cook, Wellington

Wednesday 12th August

Review by Leila Lois, for “Middle C”

We are seated in the glowing wooden wood panelled warehouse structure of Prefab Hall, ensconced down a laneway in Wellington’s Mt.Cook, a full audience for the New Zealand’s String Quartet’s second chapter of their Storytellers tour. The night promises to showcase both classical masterworks and contemporary commissions, each piece to guide and delight through sonic narrative.

The night is introduced by an address from Martin Smith on cello, who reminds us of the fateful words of the classical poster-boy of the series, Benjamin Britten: . He wrote, “It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness, of pain: of strength and freedom.” A perfect epigraph to an evening of music with such a breadth of emotional registers and composition styles.

First up is Chacony in G minor Z.730 by Henry Purcell, (c. 1680) (arranged by Britten in 1947). The piece, as the quartet accentuates, encapsulates the seventeenth century Baroque style of Purcell, with the expressive reimagining of Purcell. The Chacony is a glittering celebration of admiration of one composer for another, alive with playfulness and colour. The repetition and transformation and vibrant way the quartet plays really delights the ears and embraces us with warmth. It is, as Smith tells us, the 50 year anniversary of Britten’s death, and as such a marvellous moment to hear the piece. Various amusing asides are given relating to Britten and his unyielding genius, himself professing that he was “an arrogant and impatient listener” to other masters’ work. These are welcome and uplifting, and remind us of the strength of obsession and devotion in classical music.

The second piece for the evening is New Zealand composer, Anthony Ritchie’s String Quartet No.3, ‘In Time’ Op. 221 (2023). The programme notes describe the work as “a meditation on the passing of time” and exploring “the temporal nature of our existence”. It certainly feels like a journey through the two movements, Perpetual Motion and Last Dance, which have a giddying tarrantism to them, and demonstrate the toil of the quartet’s artistry, as the bow of Peter Clark’s violin loses quite a few strings by the end. It’s mesmerising and rather frenetic, in contrast to the rest of the programme, a necessary tonal shift perhaps.

Next, a too rarely celebrated work by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, forever in her time behind her renowned composer brother’s shadow.

The String Quartet in E flat major, H.277 (1834) is a perfect antidote to the tempo of the previous piece, with a lyrical slow build and an ephemeral scherzo, building into a vivacious finale. It is so refreshing to see these historical female composers at last getting their dues in contemporary bills.

Interval, and then a rare treat from young Kiwi composer, Salina Fisher, who wrote the piece Heal during the internationally fateful year of 2020, when the world was reeling from the shock of COVID-19 lockdowns. It is a hugely tender piece, really resonating in the body through the yearning of the cello and overlapping notes. A gorgeous experience to hear this live in Fisher’s hometown, Wellington.

The final piece for the evening was  Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No. 2, in C major, Op. 36 (1945) which was written as part of the 250th anniversary commemorations of Henry Purcell’s death. The piece truly  reflects Britten’s deep admiration for the composer he adored, and the quartet perform this to a breathtaking degree.

The work was composed after Britten returned from Germany, where he accompanied Yehudi Menuhin in concerts for survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and it bears the mark of deep emotional intensity. The quartet held audiences in rapture with this final piece.

A wonderful meditation on peace and healing (Britten having been famously a pacifist and conscientious objector). This lyrical programme, with some excellent storytelling by the quartet members themselves is surely a highlight of the New Zealand chamber music calendar for this year, an extraordinary tour of timely works, played with nothing but devotion.

 

Classics and commemoratives from the splendid Aroha Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents the Aroha String Quartet

The Aroha Quartet: Eli Vincent (viola), Konstanze Artmann (violin), Haihong Liu (leader), Robert Ibell (‘cello)  – photo, Wellington Chamber Music

HAYDN – String Quartet Op. 64 No,6
BARBER – String Quartet Op.11
ROSS CAREY – Toccatina (Elegy – 2010)
BEETHOVEN – String Quartet No. 10 “Harp” Op.74

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday 2nd August

This was a beautiful and revelatory concert from the Aroha String Quartet,as near to a “something for everybody” presentation as one might reasonably wish for!

First of all, there was a String Quartet by Josef Haydn, as delightfully self-explanatory and satisfying as any work from the string quartet repertoire could be to as wide a range of tastes as might be imagined. Following this we heard a work by American composer Samuel Barber, his single most well-known piece of music, popularly known as Barber’s Adagio for Strings, but here brought to us in its original context as part of a three-movement string quartet.

After the interval the focus was shifted to some “closer to home” music, not as indigenous in origin as might have been possible, but whose human interest connection resonated sufficiently for us to register its proximity and relevance to our part of the world.   This was music by Lower-Hutt-born Ross Carey, written in 2010 to commemorate the death of Ruby Hunter (1955-2010), the indigenous Australian singer-songwriter, Carey having been inspired by what he considered as “the profound personal struggles and triumphs of the dedicatee”, one of Australia’s “Stolen Generation” who was taken from her birth family and placed in foster care from the age of eight. She became the first indigenous Australian woman to record and release a solo rock album. Carey in his  work Toccatina – Elegy wanted to reflect something of that eventful journey.

A different and no less eventful kind of life-journey was that of the composer of the concert’s concluding work, Ludwig van Beethoven, whose String Quartet No.10 in E-flat Major, Op.74.has long become identified with its nickname, “The Harp” (given not by the composer, incidentally, but by a publisher!), and earning the sobriquet through its opening movement’s passages of plucked arpeggiated notes .Beethoven dedicated this work to the Archduke Rudolf, one of his most loyal supporters in Vienna. Written against the background of battles in and all around Vienna between the Austrian and French armies, the quartet was able to be premiered towards the end of 1809 after the French had left!

So to the music and its performance – and, to begin, we heard the last of Haydn’s six Quartets Op, 64, in E-flat , a group dedicated to Johann Tost, a virtuoso violinist of the composer’s acquaintance. What a glorious E-flat opening of the work we enjoyed! – with the refulgent warmth of the tones spreading through the ambient spaces of St.Andrew’s, a combination of elegance and playfulness with the sonorous opening set against those filigree impulses of playfulness. The development was treated as a kind of “fantasia” on the opening, before the second violinist presided over a kind of “triologue” between the other three players, a delightful sequence of conversational exchanges, each with a personable kind of opinionated quality, and seeming to come to concerted agreement before returning to the opening – the revisitations added enrichments and feelings of increased satisfaction to the exchanges in their sense of a shared, and obviously relished experience. The slow movement had its own surprise in store – after a serenely lullabic, beautifully “arching-over” melodic opening, the  music\.s central section abruptly changes, depicting what the programme note calls a ”tantrum” from the first violinist (terrific playing from Haihong Liu, here!) – one wonders how “personal” an utterance this episode depicted, as the composer’s marriage was reputedly not a happy one! On the other hand, its volatility could be nothing more than an instance of “gypsy-like” character Haydn had frequent recourse to in his music.

I adored the Menuet’s performance – here, lively and somewhat pesante in character, with the aristocracy depicted as “kicking up its heels” in places, stepping outside the traditionally “courtly” nature of such interactions. The Trio is a gentler “landler” which employs occasional glissandi figurations – a mannerism deemed too “vulgar” by nineteenth-century editors, “smoothing out” the scoops in the lines, but here restored, giving the music an engaging folkish character! And what a joy was the finale! – real “Keystone Cops” stuff which a later composer given also to such headlong dashings, Dmitri Shostakovich, would have relished all the more had he been a violinist!  The whirling, almost vertiginous figurations enacted a stop/start manner whose theatricality added to the pleasures of the entertainment, complete with teasing tempo variants towards the end, and capped off with a furious presto finish that had us on the edges of our seats for the final flourish.

Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings has long been the American equivalent of Elgar’s “Nimrod”, taken from the latter’s “Enigma Variations”, music whose strands in both cases readily conjure up a sense of shared emotion involving either commemoration or loss on the part of a whole nation and in many cases across boundaries. Both pieces are parts of larger works, in Barber’s case a string quartet Op.11 from 1936, one whose second movement Adagio the composer quickly made into an arrangement for string orchestra, one which has virtually gone around the world, leaving the remainder of the hapless parent work languishing in the wings of largely unheralded appreciation!

Now was our chance to hear the actual “source” from which the work was drawn. It was the first time I had heard the string quartet version of the work, and, in fact, my first experience of the complete quartet! Barber was content with completing three movements, the familiar Adagio here flanked by an opening  “molto allegro e appassionato” movement, and a concluding “molto allegro (come prima)” sequence, He began work on the piece in 1935 while living in Austria with his partner, Gian Carlo Menotti, intending to have the work finished for performance by the Curtis Quartet – however, the finale gave Barber a good deal of trouble, and after the first, delayed, performance of the work, Berber rewrote the movement several times, eventually settling for a kind of reprise of the beginning movement, music of spiky textures featuring colourful contrasts of mood, much shorter than the two movements preceeding it.

The first movement  opened intensely and passionately – music that seemed in a hurry to take us somewhere. A dramatic pause introduced a more lyrical second theme, refreshingly open and song-like, until the tempo was impulsively switched back to the opening urgencies, though retreating again for a gorgeous violin solo, prompting the ensemble to take up the lyrical lines, the cello enjoying a moment of rapturous expression as well – the players then remembered their allegiances to the opening urgencies once again, but couldn’t resist the nostalgic beauties of the more lyrical sequences, which they returned to most affectingly – the music seemed to want to have its cake and eat it too, reminding the players of the music’s need for further fervent gesturings before enigmatically concluding the movement with a few abruptly dismissive shrugs.

The Adagio which followed needed no detailed description, except that its long lines of expression engulfed our  sensibilities in a timeless world, seemingly endless “stretches of sound” which created their own breathing-patterns and impulses, out of normal time, and reminiscent of something like an ancient chant drawing inexhaustible energies from some kind of life-force, and prompting those listening to attune their own biorhythms accordingly – the viola in the ensemble held what seemed like a central note, while the surrounding instruments both stratospherically and metamorphically harmonised to mesmerising effect.  in the midst of the silences that followed, the heartfelt epilogue brought violin and viola together to sound the opening theme’s concluding voice – a superb, deeply affecting performance!

Was a finale necessary after such an utterance? I think so – some kind of “closure” was actually welcomed after the rawness of the Adagio’s conclusion, and the sense of continuation from the first movement brought us back to a world from which we had escaped, and perhaps needed to be re-reminded of, however enriched by the revelations of the Adagio’s other-worldliness. The famous stand-alone Adagio wasn’t at all diminished by its quartet companions, but its impact was sharpened and  made more  multi-dimensional in its original context.

The interval’s breathing-space prepared us for something different, a work whose composer was present in the audience! This was New Zealand-born Ross Carey’s work Toccatina (Elegy), though its subject was more Trans-Tasman than home-grown, and was written while Carey was in Australia. The composer talked with us briefly about the work’s subject-matter before we got down to grips with the actual music – here in three sections, the first an energetically restless “perpetuum mobile” with the lower strings providing rock-steady “hocket” accompaniment to the violins’ soaring and swooping overhead lines, the first violin at first taking the lead with some heart-stopping stratospheric lines, but increasingly joined by the second violin, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in counterpoint!  In the second section the ‘cello took the lead with a poignant-sounding repeatedly descending figure (lovely voicings from the ‘cello!), supported by a tapestried networking of triplet-like lines from the other instruments, handing over to the violin in places, with the figurations from both instruments seeming to dance to their own music in places….before we knew what was happening the first movement’s ostinato-like movement had crept back, this time with more resolve in the music’s sights, the rhythms giving way gradually to what became increasingly self-affirming statements of quiet fruition at the end – in its way, profound and moving.

And so we reached the concert’s last item – I remember the distinctive first-movement concluding “motif” of Beethoven’s “Harp” string quartet being used as the theme of a televised programme series about famous works of art, long before I started getting to know the quartets properly. Having been television-less now for nigh-on forty years, the aural spaces that were created in my life by such a blessed liberation left room for music of all kinds, and inevitably brought those remarkable works swimming into my ken – so that the reappearance of the aforementioned motif, with its genesis long since identified, continued to give special pleasure!

So it was, naturally, that the Aroha’s voyage through this quartet’s opening, truly venturesome movement enabled me to enjoy that sense of returning from afar all over again, though of course the intermittent journeyings between the aural milestones were as rewarding in their own way, and especially in this intensely committed performance – the opening poco adagio took us into a world of wonderment with those occasional sforzandi chordings reminding us not to tarry overmuch amid incidental beauties, but to keep our intents and purposes on the journey! With the allegro came those delicately-placed pizzicati notes which earned the quartet the sobriquet of “Harp”, along with amazing will-o-the-wisp figurations whose vertiginous quality (here, brilliantly executed) whirled through our sensibilities up to the moment of my “great works of art” revisitation passage, forever fresh and nostalgic at one and the same time! The work’s middle section varied between amazingly “busy’ variants of  the movement’s first allegro subject, and rapid-fire pizzicato exchanges, taking us on a whirlwind kind of ride to the recapitulation, in which all the movement’s elements returned in “same-but-different” guises, and an extended kind of “coda” which managed to integrate those same elements in a spirited confrontation-like summation AND re-echo my “motif” of  cherished memory!

The programme note mentioned the second movement’s ”tender love aria” description, which the performance straightaway brought out, possibly a reflection of an “amour” of the composer’s, though one which perhaps didn’t work as planned due to the near-despair of the minor key mood that suddenly clouded the music, and the almost palpable “hesitancy” which takes over the exchanges! The violin determinedly took the initiative, supported by the cello, before the mood darkened once again (and with the violin dropping into a register that resembled a viola or even a ’cello while its violin partner took the higher ground! Again the instruments mused between hope and despair, though one sensed as much a feeling of resignation in the softly-whispered concluding chords.

What a startling difference wrought by the vigorously-propelled Scherzo, here! Bitingly-precise ensembled attack depicted a fierce kind of exultation, the playing part exhilarating, part fearsome in its physicality, quite overwhelming in its impact, its four-note repetitive phrase modelled on the opening of the Fifth Symphony, premiered just a few months before. The “Trio” sections didn’t let up, but whirled like dervishes around and about chant-like figures, ostensibly used by the composer as counterpoint exercises for his pupils. The scherzo’s “third-time round” was then delivered in increasingly whispered tones, coming to an unresolved halt, and allowing the first strains of the finale to sound from the exhausted silences – an engagingly repeated three-note Allegretto theme!

The first of the variations on this theme, a dancing, canonic celebration of gaiety providing further welcome relief from the scherzo’s punishingly relentless drive. was led by the ‘cello, as was the following graceful triplet variation. Then came a contrasting running variant of the theme, followed variously by a slower, wistful sequence, a sprightlier violin-led dance, and a chugging ’cello triplet accompaniment a cross-rhythmed song – this grew in intensity and pace until it changed to an allegro stretto with all the instruments excitingly in unison, and racing towards the work’s end, finishing, somewhat disconcertingly, on two soft chords!

What a finish, and what a performance, as evidenced by warm appreciation from all parts of the auditorium!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NSZO’S Let There Be Light illuminates Saariaho, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Shan Liu (piano) with Jaime Martín and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra – photo, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

KALJA SAARIAHO (1952-2023) – Lumiere et Pesanteur
SERGE PROKOFIEV (1891-1953 – Piano Concerto No. 3 In C Major Op.26
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893 – Symphony No. 4 in F Minor Op.36

Shan Liu (piano)
Jaime Martín (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington (Te Whanganui-a-Tara)
Friday, 24th July 2026

Review by Peter Mechen (Middle C / Seen and Heard International)

This concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was given the title “Let There Be Light”, a quotation from Genesis 1:3 in the Bible, depicting the creation of light upon the earth and its division from darkness – a theme which took different manifestations in the three works given in this evening’s concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and its guest conductor Jaime Martín, along with a major contribution in one of the items from the remarkable sixteen year-old New Zealand pianist Shan Liu, here making his mainstage debut with the orchestra.

Beginning the concert was a piece by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Lumière et Pesanteur  (Light and Gravity) – the composer’s own notes regarding this work referred to it as a ”gift” from her to fellow Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to honour his advocacy as an interpreter of an earlier work by Saariaho, the oratorio La Passion de Simone, which was inspired by the works of 20th Century philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). The music of Lumière et Pesanteur  was reworked by the composer from part of that same oratorio, the “Eighth Station”, described by one commentator as the piece’s “most orchestral and least-defined“ section.

Saariaho’s work here  began with the merest murmur of a percussion twinkle from celeste and strings, an evocation of space into which joined a lone trumpeter, sounding a fantastical line with the utmost freedom – this gave way to various wind instruments whose floating tones spontaneously interacted, forming delightfully speculative colouristic and textural ambiences, with brasses playing ever so softly! Over the top of these iridescences piped a piccolo, a foil for the occasional subterranean growlings welling up from beneath, but countered by the continued effusions of wind tone supported by the harp and the softest and most mysterious of brass sonorities.

One could have supposed some kind of narrative at work – my feeling, being new to this music,  was a fairytale-like scenario, one in what seemed in a constant state of sublime and seamless coalescence.  It felt for me as if existence itself here was portrayed in the act of emitting hugely all-embracing sighs of pleasure from the various instrumental groups, occasionally led or spearheaded by specific lines.

Throughout, these tones seemed poly-harmonic, giving us hardly any consciousness of specific keys or modes – instead, opening our imaginations to scenarios of sonorities, textures and timbres engaged in some kind of cosmic interaction, and at which we were spectators mesmerised by the phenomenon’s inception, its growing to various stages of fruition and its equally enigmatic departure! – one in which the sounds didn’t cease as such but seemed to play on at the end beyond what we could actually hear……

After this came the Prokofiev Concerto, a different kind of journey, with its volatility and “take-it-as-it-comes” attitudes towards darkness and light, bestowing insights upon both players and listeners via an experience akin to something of a roller-coaster ride! Such a process seemed all the more Herculean a scenario here through the work in question being undertaken in our presence by such a youthful soloist! Of course Shan Liu had by this time demonstrated his exceptional qualities as a pianist on both the home and international pianistic arenas, even though he was here tackling repertoire that one would think was the preserve of the super-virtuosi (I had, for instance, seen none other than Martha Argerich play this concerto – so I was hedging my bets as to how this young man would in my mind fare against that memory!)…..

Anyway, what a concerto! The opening Andante featured  firstly a clarinet, and a second soon joining in, with the strings then sounding that characteristic sweet-and-sour quality of Prokofiev’s in the opening melody – then in came the strings again with the Allegro – such terrific energy and momentum announcing the pianist’s first entry – could Shan Liu do it? My goodness, could he what! – straightaway, such sparkling, clear and brilliantly fluent fingerwork – and then he really opened up the pianistic throttle for the toccata-like exchanges with swirling winds and slashing strings and tremendous orchestral support in general!  And so it went on – the military-like dotted march rhythms shared between the piano and mischievous instrumental detailing brought out humour aplenty – the march rhythms turned to scampering ones, with each upward-thrusting  gesture eliciting cataclysmic cries from the orchestra, the last of which featured  a return of the opening theme as a full-throated kind of “hymn-tune” – Shan Liu took up the cantabile mood, interacting with the waves of orchestral sound and producing a kind of ethereal, almost mystical sea-change in the music, until the return of the urgent allegro rhythms which recommenced the argument.  And so it went on, through various succeeding episodes too numerous to describe, except to say that the last sortie set the seal on the movement, with the pianist’s running two handed unisons gathering up the orchestral forces in the tremendous and excitingly irresistible propulsions that took the music to a triumphal final chord – at which point the Michael Fowler audience simply exploded with delight and pent-up exhilaration, deservedly giving the musicians their due!

The slow movement was all wistfulness and charm at the outset, the soloist completely at one with conductor and orchestra in the music’s bitter-sweet lyricism, until a sudden outburst brought a wild dance, which the cellos and basses helped along, giving plenty of “hoof to the swing” – as they also did with the succeeding triplet rhythms. By contrast a sequence of pure magic then meandered into and over the sound-vistas, everybody in a kind of drifting dream -a moment of fantastic, other-worldly music-making!  And how spontaneously the rhythmic impulses seemed to come to life again, with dancing impulses sprouting from all about the orchestra – those amazingly jaunty passages then fused their energies with the return of the wistful melody that began the movement – what seemed like opposites enjoying a perfect partnership!

The winds had done a superb job of introducing most of this work’s themes thus far – and the finale was no exception, with the bassoon setting a wry, insouciant opening tone for the movement’s beginning, the piano joining in the fun with big-boned dance measures and playful competition with the orchestra via several glissandi-like skirling phrases added to the “quick-march” exchanges.  There was so much to enjoy, with the winds (again) initiating a plaintive, bitter-sweet melody,  the piano nonchalantly replying with a “walking” theme, taken up by the winds, and a full-blooded return to the bitter-sweet theme on the strings – this was both voiced and embellished until the theme here got the gloriously “full Rachmaninov” treatment from soloist and orchestra (though I’m certain that neither composer would thank me for THAT heartfelt observation!). Those ubiquitous winds then bumptiously reintroduced the opening theme – by now sounding positively turbo-charged! – and with soloist, conductor and players working up to full stretch in alternating the music’s heightened momentums, the concerto by the end had simply overwhelmed us with its power and brilliance!

We couldn’t let Shan Liu go for a while after this! – not until conductor Jaime Martín visibly INSISTED the young pianist play an encore! – most appropriately we were given Schumann’s Traumerei from Kinderszenen, an appropriate antidote to the concerto performance’s intoxication in its simplicity and naturalness of utterance – even though it inhibited not a whit of animated discussion throughout the interval regarding what we’d heard!

Surprisingly, and as it turned out, delightfully, conductor Jaime Martín made a gracious and entertaining “guest’s speech” for us at the second half’s beginning, firstly praising Shan Liu’s remarkable performance, and then properly introducing himself, by way of amusingly recounting his first interactions upon his arrival with various New Zealanders who, upon learning that he was Spanish, acceded, to his utter amazement, fulsome congratulations upon him in relation to the recent Football World Cup Spanish victory!  –  “..almost as if” he said “I myself had played in the final!”. He then talked about his own impressions of the Tchaikovsky Symphony he and the orchestra were about to play,  actually getting the players to sound a few of the work’s themes and motifs by way of highlighting them for us – all this was done in a perfectly straightforward and unpatronising way – a further amusing moment was when the conductor mentioned the word “fate” in his description of the symphony’s main recurring motif, and paused for dramatic effect – in the silence one of the cellists dropped their bow on the floor!

All such byplays done with, Martín began the symphony, getting truly spine-tingling brass-playing and dramatic whiplash-chordings from the full orchestra in the work’s introduction. The strings expressively and plaintively took up their own “first subject”, handing over to the winds and helping to further build up the tensions which became a kind of “pitched battle’ between the “fate” theme and the orchestra’s lamentations! It was a properly dramatic and sonorous journey throughout, the eloquent orchestral detailing in every section by turns confronting (the “fate” music and its insistent accompanying theme) and consoling (the folksy second subject theme and its major-key variant) right to the tumultuous conclusion of the first movement.)

Martín had asked his strings beforehand to play the accompaniments alone to the long oboe solo that distinguishes the second movement, encouraging his audience to “register” the simplicity and loneliness of these pizzicato passages, adding to the beauty of oboist Robert Orr’s actual performance – listening to this movement I was freshly taken aback by the qppeql of Tchaikovsky’s orchestrations, especially the many interactions between strings and winds so gorgeously and heartfeltly realised in this performance. Likewise in the famous pizzicato-led third movement the impact of the instrumental contrasts between strings, winds and brass were positively flavoursome (Johanna Gruskin’s piccolo in particular picturing a superbly loquacious “beastie”!).

Martín then introduced the finale almost as attacca (not marked in the score), conveying the music’s tremendous urgency, the playing marked by fierce exchanges and great brilliance – similarly, the conductor brought the contrasting “Birch tree” melody in almost in tempo. maintaining the music’s delicacy but enhancing the excitement! Later in the movement this melody led with increasing intensity to the final, tumultuous statement of the “fate” motif, momentarily halting the music’s headlong flow, but leading to a quiet reiteration of the festive-like music which represented the composer’s words “If you cannot discover the reasons for happiness in yourself, look to others…” The orchestral frenzy unleashed for us at the conclusion of this movement tonight embodied that fatalism with the utmost euphoria and excitement. Since then, my memory has been wandering back to my first encounter with this work via the legendary Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati, whom I saw give what seemed like a cataclysmic-sounding performance with the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra here in Wellington in 1973 – his shade would, I think, have relished tonight’s equally memorable presentation.

 

 

 

Music that unfurls the Colours of Karori’s splendid Futuna Chapel

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

“Something old, something new…”  – the Elementi Trio at Futuna Chapel, July 2026Monica Verburg, Nicholas Hancox and Pepe Becker

ELEMENTI TRIO –
Monica Verburg – flute, alto flute
Nicholas Hancox – viola
Pepe Becker – soprano, thumb piano (mbira)

Futuna Chapel, Karori, Wellington
Sunday, 5th July 2026

Sitting in Futuna Chapel, in Karori, on a recent Sunday afternoon, listening to a concert of music given by a trio of extremely talented performers (flutist, violist and soprano vocalist), I found myself thinking at various stages of the concert about the sheer beauty of the sounds being brought forth by these musicians. I’m sure that, given the singular beauty of the venue’s overall atmosphere, ambience and amalgam of design and colour, I was allowing those qualities to infuse the music’s impact beyond the realms of a simple auditory response and into a kind of totality of experience that transcended “normal” listening. Be that as it may, the effect of these different factors conspired to produce a level of enjoyment of this concert’s music-making that has stayed with me right up to this moment.

Interestingly, the very first item of the concert seemed to me as much a “test run” by the performers, almost a “getting the pitch of the hall” kind of run-through with an audience present for the musicians to be able to sound out things like the balances between the instruments and the voice, and the degree to which the sounds “come back” from the peopled ambient spaces. I did find this first item (Thomas Morley’s madrigal “Arise, get up, my dear” a trifle chaotic in its full-blooded amalgam of sounds – and yet the music is actually about incidental chaos, being Morley’s musical description of the hustle and bustle of a new bride’s wedding day. More spacious and wide-ranging was Pepe Becker’s singing of Hildegarde of Bingen’s “O Euchari” which followed, the singer enabling her voice to “ring down the ages” from Hildegard’s time, with Nicholas Hancox’s viola steadily recreating the age-old drone accompaniment. A third item completed an opening “triumvirate” of the concert’s range and scope, featuring a home-grown work, Pepe Becker’s own setting of a sixteenth-century poem “T’amo mia vita” (I love you, my life) by Giovanni Battista Guarini, originally written for three voices and mbira “thumb piano” but here recast by Becker for soprano, viola and mbira – the latter is an African instrument and was played here by Becker herself, its sound creating a kind of timeless, tonally transcendent “voice”. The words of the poem have a universality which here seemed to fit the composer’s revised setting as much as it must have her all-vocal original!

We heard three more of Pepe Becker’s by turns playful, declamatory and darkly visionary pieces placed separately throughout the concert, the delightful “Two Tui” a work for flute premiered by Bridget Douglas in 2010, and essayed here most viscerally by Monica Verburg, the music based on two separate calls associated with different places in Wellington, and brought together as a kind of dialogue, with a petulant dismissive squawk of one bird at the other’s expense at the end! Becker’s more expansive, almost ritualistic piece, “Scorpio II – From the far point of the Rising Sun” featured her soprano voice enacting a kind of ritual exchange with the solo flute. Long, sonorous lines alternating with stately roulade-like flourishes before the dialogues become intricate and earnest (though no words were provided – I presumed the singer’s phrases were in Latin), the lines occasionally mirroring one another before concluding the piece with some brief mirror-image shared phrasings. Most suggestive for me was her darkly resonant tribute to Sagittarius, a setting of William Blake’s “The Tyger” a work Becker dedicated to her father, along with her “many Sagittarius friends” – something of a “Do not go gentle into that good night” work of darkness and angst, the sombre tone set by Nicholas Hancox’s opening viola chord, though the trio fetched up more incisive and trenchant tones for the poem’s “fearful symmetries” (it was a work composed for this concert, in fact!).

Bringing her own creative talents to this cornucopian assemblage was flutist Monica Verburg, who contributed no less than two recently-completed pieces for premiering at this concert, the first one a heartwarming and environmentally topical work titled “To the Hills” (Ki ngā puke), being inspired by a recent campaign of conservation of Otago’s Dunstan Mountains. Verburg drew our attention to the piece’s influences, a certain “Celtic flavour” in accord with early European settlement of this area, and which the trio of musicians made much of in performance throughout the piece’s three sections, The other recent work of Verburg’s was  “In the Slipstream” a delight for the ear in its interplay between two instruments, flute and viola (the flutist often swapping between flute and alto flute in her performances, which variation, to my shame, I seem to have neglected to draw any attention to in my notes – mea culpa!) Here, the two instrumental  lines  imitated, shadowed and mimicked one another constantly, with (I thought) occasionally bluesy inflections spicing the sounds ever so slightly, as the music, by turns teased and blended its two strands before drifting into a pensive ending.

Monica Verburg was as well responsible in full or in part for four other items, two of them original works and two arrangements, the first original work “Turn Your Eyes”, originally composed in 2024 for soprano and alto recorder, and then rewritten for soprano, flute and viola – the words were based on the text from Proverbs 4:25 “Let your eyes look straight ahead….” Though the combination of tones made it impossible for me to decipher any of the actual text, the sounds in tandem, though brief, were themselves glorious! We then heard a song “Ocean Breeze” (aha! – in my notes is a mention of the ALTO flute!) – here, Pepe Becker’s soprano and Monica Verburg’s instrument were wistful companions at the song’s opening, one whose melody readily caught the ear in balladic fashion! The two arrangements made by Verburg were for larger-scale forces as one might have expected in her grand setting of Giovanni Gabrieli’s “Jubilate Deo” with its splendidly ceremonial trappings, not to mention the fulsomeness of the text – “Shout joyfully to God, all of the earth!” – what attention-grabbing gesturings (suggesting, of course, antiphonal voices) and declamatory utterances, complete with brief, wistful occasional minor-key harmonic turns, just for variety! Great stuff!

Before I mention in conclusion the concert’s final item (Verburg’s second “arrangement”) I need to recap with still more “gems” which came up in passing  – one was non-vocal, Jack Body’s “Aeolian Harp”, here most evocatively realised by Nicholas Hancox’s viola, capturing the piece’s extraordinary and irresistible frisson of intensities gleaned from nature’s random impulses. Then there were three medieval “pop” numbers from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the earliest of which was Guillaume de Machaut’s “Douce Dame Jolie”  (Sweet. Lovely lady)  – performed here with the viola as the drone instrument and the flute as a companion for the voice – what an uncanny sense of time and place, here, with music making its way to us centuries later! Of the two other later works, one (“Quel fronte signorille” (That noble brow) by Guillaume Dufay) had a similar “courtly love” sentiment no less resonant and focused than de Machaut’s, while the other (a motet “Quam pulchra es” by John Dunstable) was by contrast an unashamedly erotic setting of words from the Biblical “Song of Songs”, its performance here suggesting a parallel musical “enchantment by beauty”.

By the time we reached the programme’s final item everything seemed suffused with a spirit of complete capitulation towards the music and its making, one suitably enhanced by Monica Verburg’s inspired arrangement of this concluding music. Flute and viola began the “thistledown on the wind” introduction, the former extempore and the latter holding a firm foundation line. The scene having been set, the voice then entered with the famous melody “Hine e Hine”, one written famously by Princess Te Rangi Pai (the stage-name of Fanny Rose Poata – b.1868 d.1916), composed in or around 1907. It felt like a kind of “homecoming”, one returning to something deeper than the present, and with enveloping tendrils of belonging, easier to “feel” than to explain. But in tandem with the glories of the venue in which we had enjoyed these sounds it “rounded off” for me (and for others I spoke to at the time) a most agreeable afternoon’s music-listening!

Papaioea Piano Trio offers exotic out-of-town flavourings for St.Andrew’s lunchtime fare

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Papaioea Trio – Elizabeth Patchett (violin), Guy Donaldson (piano), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – Piano Trio No.45 in E-flat Major Hob.XV;29
PYOTR  TCHAIKOVSKY (arr. Alexander Goedicke) Six pieces from “The Seasons” Op.37a
ELENA KATZ-CHERNIN – Calliope Dreaming (2009)

The Papaioea Trio
Elizabeth Patchett (violin), Robert Ibell (‘cello), Guy Donaldson (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday Ist July 2026

For those Wellingtonians and others who may not know, the name Papaioea refers to a particular location in the city of Palmerston North – in fact I grew up there being told that it was a Maori name for the city’s once-beautiful but now sadly-besmirched Square, situated right in the centre of things. Translated, the name was popularly rendered as  “How beautiful it is”, and I was given to understand at first that it was the name for a clearing in the original bush which had covered the area. Later, my understanding of the situation’s history had evolved to relocating the name Papaioea as a description of a lagoon-like lake in the Hokowhitu area of the city, a long way from the actual Square, and that same name bringing with it colourful and even sightly macabre associations with warlike activities of the local Rangitane people. Whatever the actuality of the case – and who can resist a good story?! – the name itself obviously resounded sufficiently in its own right to be considered an appropriate title for a trio of Palmerston North-associated musicians, who have thereupon proudly called themselves “The Papaioea Trio”.

Hearing that this ensemble was Wellington-bound I eagerly took myself to St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace on the appointed day for what promised to be yet another from a series of remarkable lunchtime concerts whose quality has reaped musical riches and fostered agreeable companionship for countless people. And given that the venue is regularly used by local music groups for their own prestigious concert series (often involving fully professional musicians), there’s obviously no diminution in the quality of the sonics enjoyed by these lunchtime performers.

Of the three musicians who made up the Trio, I’d most frequently heard ‘cellist Robert Ibell as a member variously of the NZSO and of the Aroha String Quartet. While I had encountered Guy Donaldson as a collaborative pianist on several occasions I’d had as much experience of him as a conductor while I played for a few precious and enjoyable  seasons some years ago in the Manawatu Sinfonia. And, as well, I can recall hearing violinist Elizabeth Patchett on a number of occasions as a member of the vibrant Nevine String Quartet. Buoyed by such previous encounters I was greatly looking forward to the group’s coming together, and to the delights of the proposed programme.

While Haydn was perhaps an obvious choice in this repertoire I’d long since been converted to the inexhaustible pleasures given by the composer’s inventiveness in this music, every moment warmly relished by the Trio in this performance – though commentators tend to emphasise the dominance of the piano in these works, there was plenty of stimulating interaction in evidence today, as witness the violin and ‘cello counterpoints to the piano’s lines, often in Svengali-like hide-and-seek guises colouring the mood in the first movement’s development. After this one couldn’t help feeling the recapitulation had an almost Beechamesque amalgam of “regret and safisfaction” evident in the playing, with those determinedly characterful variants in the themes – but the subsequent Beethoven-like plunge into “other realms” leading to the coda was especially evocative and delightful.

The Andante opened for us a different harmonic world, almost Schumannesque in its whimsy – again the players deftly fashioned whole orbits out of simple gesturings, sudden dynamic contrasts, marvellously deep pedal points  and, after a couple of “expect the unexpected” modulations, fresh-as-daisies returnings to the sunshine, with the trajectories of the finale’s entry whirling our spirits aloft, with stimulating touches of trenchant phrasing vying with delicacies of impish delight! A minor-key development sequence again pre-echoed Haydn’s pupil Beethoven with great gusto, all three instruments  bending their backs to the task as the music vaulted all around and over the vistas, the composer seemingly enjoying the improvisatory-like helter-skelter before returning us to recognisable harmonic territories via a coda whose exhilarating upward rush lifted our spirits skyward at the end.

Having enjoyed various of Tchaikovsky’s pieces for solo piano, written for each separate month of the year, I was intrigued to learn of the existence of a version of the work arranged for Piano Trio by a later Russian composer, Alexander Goedicke (born, incidentally AFTER Tchaikovsky had written his original solo pieces!) – I found myself wondering while listening to these beautiful arrangements why it was that Tchaikovsky hadn’t used the Piano Trio format himself for this absolutely charming music as presented here – I soon discovered that the composer actually had a strong early dislike for the trio combination, telling his patroness, Nadezhda Von Meck, that it had “no tonal blend” as the instruments were “incompatible”; and yet when his friend Nikolai Rubinstein died the following year in 1881 his tribute to his late friend was a spectacularly-wrought Piano Trio! (As well, of course, he had already tried his hand at the combination with the celebrated “piano trio” section of his Second Piano Concerto, written the year before! – curiouser and curiouser!)

Still. all of this seemed beside the point at the time of listening – the Papaioea Trio presented six of Goedicke’s arrangements, publishing for our edification a translation of the poetic epigraphs that had accompanied the original solo piano versions. The opening April Snowdrop was a bitter-sweet waltz earnestly expressing a longing for the spring, while the June Barcarolle, a well-known melody, brought out the string players’ different characteristics, with Elizabeth Pachett’s violin’s phrasings precise and contained, compared with Robert Ibell’s ‘cello’s, more flowing and expansive gestures, and with pianist Guy Donaldson the fulcrum around which the different personalities interacted, making for ear-catching results! The October Autumn song was a more melancholy affair, violin and ‘cello by turns quietly expressive and eloquent, while the pianist made every note resonate with purpose in a beautiful solo reprise, echoed by the strings in both imitation and descant, and in a way which compelled us to await every turn of phrase with warm expectation.

The November Troika, a favourite recital item of pianist Sergei Rachmaninov’s, gave us the piece’s heart-warming melody at the start, at first simply, then flowing more expansively and descriptively, followed by a central section brimful with mischief and gaiety, and combining song and dance as the fun and laughter faded into the distance. The December Christmas sequence was a suave waltz, more Viennese drawing-room than Russian, though with moments of longing, almost aching rubato in between the Tempo I dance sequences. For the final February Carnival, all the festive stops were pulled out for the opening with not a moment’s gaiety wasted! – a rather more quixotic middle section could have depicted some kind of party game, one which spilled back over and into the return of the opening music – at the end, after a brief moment of reflection, of inwardness, the Carnival itself delivered the final “Come on!” gesture.  I remember wondering at that point how I would feel about going back to the solo piano version for a listen after such an enjoyable ensembled musical experience!

The programme’s final item was new to me ,and probably to most other people in the hall – its composer, Elena Katz-Chernin  was Uzbekistan-born (1957) and Moscow-educated, but, when still a teenager emigrated to Australia, continuing her musical studies at the Sydney Conservatorium. After her graduation, she moved to Germany for further study before returning to Australia in 1994, since then pursuing an active and successful composing career.  Her 2009 piece presented today, Calliope Dreaming, was written as part of a D2H (dedicated to Haydn) festival marking the latter’s death bicentenary – she was one of eighteen composers worldwide commissioned to write a work for the festival, and which was accordingly premiered that same year in Eisenstadt, Austria, by the Haydn Esterhazy Trio.

The concert’s informative programme notes told us some of the story – Katz-Chernin was inspired by a biographical detail concerning Haydn’s own reported wish that the slow movement of his own Symphony No. 44 (“Trauer”) be played at his funeral, though she was compelled by the symphony’s overall beauty to draw from other parts of the work as well when composing her own tribute. And, in a kind of Haydnesque way, she conceived the idea of giving the piece more of an “upbeat” than a mournful flavour, by writing the music as if it were to be played by a Calliope, a keyboard instrument constructed to activate the sounds of steam whistles! (truly, how more Haydnesque could you get?) – the fact that Calliope was also one of the Nine Muses in Greek mythology, whose credentials included  being “the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence, and the mother of Orpheus” to boot seemed naturally to somewhat mitigate the “circus” aspect of the actual instrument and give the “Haydn connection” irrefutable status.

After we in situ listeners-to-be had digested these delightfully incontrovertible vagaries of detail (admittedly with a few added afterthoughts!), the Trio plunged into “Calliope Dreaming”, Katz-Chernin’s wondrous caprice-fantasy upon themes by a composer given himself to such occasional flights of fancy! – the “dreaming” aspect of the title was given ample notice by what the composer called “calmer moments” amid the more “edgy rhythmic material”, though, as  Katz-Chernin herself acknowledged, the end result of her own fantasisings seemed “more in line with the finale of the symphony”. Which was fair enough, as it was HER piece, really, and not actually Haydn’s!

The end result was invigorating, the sleeve note suggesting for listeners an experience similar to that of “a rapidly-moving steam train”, with moments of calm, but also with singing lines in places soaring over the motoric rhythms. I confess that, as an out-and-out train-buff, the “ride” was for me something of an escapist joy! – though of course every listener would have had their own story to tell, after the “exhilarating downhill ride” of the concluding sequence of “Calliope Dreaming” had brought us all home!

Perhaps a local composer – from anywhere along the way! – might enlist the services of these engaging musicians to be the flagbearers of a work celebrating our own present “Capital Connection” rail-link between Papaioea  (Palmerston North) and  Pōneke (Wellington). It would be by way of strengthening and properly institutionalising what has been a somewhat haphazard recent history of a much-loved and -needed connection for people – one  showing the way between the two cities!  Having already set “Calliope Dreaming” in motion, the Papaioea Trio has demonstrated it can truly go places!

 

 

A world-encircling winter solstice concert compendium – from the Wellington City Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra with Virginie Pacheco, Sam Zhu and Ewan Clark

CLAIRE COWAN* ( Aotearoa New Zealand) – Legend of the Trojan Bird (2008)
EDWARD GREGSON (England) – Concerto for Tuba (1978)
AMY BEACH (United States) – Symphony in E Minor “Gaelic” (1896)

Sam Zhu (tuba)
Virginie Pacheco* (assistant conductor)
Ewan Clark (conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 21st June 2026

Winter Solstice day in Wellington! and with it a venturesome programme of music from the Wellington City Orchestra! True, there was little or no ostensible relationship as regards the pieces’ content to the Solstice date and its marking of the venue’s furthermost separation from the sun – but as the concert featured three pieces new to the orchestra’s schedules, the musical territories we were taken to today seemed to have an appropriate sense of something out of the ordinary. This was further underlined by the cosmopolitean nature of the works and their origins, almost as if the music-making was putting a kind of Shakespearean girdle about the earth, beginning very properly with homegrown sounds and straightaway circumventing the globe before returning to our south seas via the Americas!

I thought it all fell excitingly in line with the general adventurousness of the orchestra’s recent repertoire, in terms of the programme’s relative unfamiliarity, and its attendant technical and interpretative challenges. Each WCO concert over the last couple of seasons has sparked interest in what has seemed to me like an encouraging rejuvenation of Wellington’s concert-going scene – with an increased proportion of both new and less familiar works in concerts a stimulating feature

This concert was no exception, with a trio of works notable for its diversity as such, besides representing different eras of musical history, and a variety of genres, in this case a miniature version of an orchestral tone-poem (Claire Cowan’s 2008 ”Legend of the Trojan Bird”), a 1978 concerto for tuba and orchestra (from Englishman Edward Gregson) and a fully-fledged romantic symphony (1896) by the American composer Amy Cheney Beach. I’ve not been able to find any other instance of this latter work being performed in this country, which possibly gives the occasion the additional distinction of being an Aotearoa New Zealand premiere – though I would have thought the organisers would have made mentioned of such a circumstance had it been the case.

As with previous recent concerts, one of the items was assigned to the orchestra’s Assistant Conductor, Virginie Pacheco, in this case Claire Cowan’s concise and evocative work “Legend of the Trojan Bird”, one dating from Cowan’s student years, during which she wrote the piece for the Auckland Youth Orchestra in 2008. Though not printed in the programme, a poem, presumably written by the composer, outlines the music’s trajectories, the music in effect elaborating what the poem’s words describe – the coming of the bird to “the ancient city” bringing a “moving shadow” of darkness along with the visitor’s  “dangerous beauty”. The music by turns depicted both the bird’s obvious mechanical attributes  – “wooden wings flapping, squeaking, lurching and shuddering”  along with more transformative modes, resulting in trajectories of soaring flight. Here, the rhythmic mechanical aspects become more vertiginous as the sounds “swoop, hover, soar”, before achieving, in its song a lovely “conversation with the neighbourhood of stars”- after which it disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived. In every sense the scoring was magically ambient and ear-catching, holding one’s attention right to the mystical “stellar conversation” at the piece’s end. Conductor and orchestra achieved, I thought, miracles of evocation throughout every moment of the piece – a wondrous experience.

A different, more down-to-earth encounter was enacted by the performers in the next item, bringing both tuba soloist Sam Zhu and conductor Ewan Clark to the platform.  This was English composer Edward Gregson’s 1978 concerto for tuba, a piece obviously indebted to the latter’s historic compatriot Ralph Vaughan Williams with his similarly-wrought work for the instrument – Gregson at one point in the first movement unashamedly quotes the earlier work in an appropriate act of tongue-in-cheek homage, bringing a smile to the faces of those “in the know”, though there were many more felicities to be enjoyed, such as the wondrously cavernous notes Sam Zhu coaxed out of the ambient depths slumbering within his instrument!

A second movement demonstrated in places the expressive range of the instrument, its lyrical, and, in places, somewhat anguished tones far removed from the humour and rumbustions of the opening, partnered by some haunting wind playing sequences, and featuring a great percussion-capped climax at one point before the music drew up its folds of sound and returned to its dark silences. We were given a “return to life” by the finale, with marching pizzicato at the outset accompanying some jolly “tuba-triplets” and which then morphed into a festive dance! Sam Zhu’s instrument then gave us an almost lullabic moment with some pendulous winds as well as a briefly-philosophical like cadenza, before being marched off triumphantly at the end by the band as if “spoils from a day’s successful tuba-watching” – a great success!

So to the concert’s much-awaited second half and a symphony by the remarkable Amy Beach,a work which, at the time caused quite a stir with its first performance in Boston in1896, as it was the first symphony composed by an American woman to be performed by a major orchestra. Beach  had begun her musical career primarily as a pianist, and had already appeared as a soloist with the Boston Symphony when just seventeen years of age. However her marriage shortly afterwards resulted in her giving up her performing career for a number of years and concentrating upon composition. Largely self-taught, she drew her inspiration from both the “classics” and from the music that was still new in the 1880s, Brahms, Wagner. Liszt and Dvorak. Her compositions beside the Symphony included a Piano Concerto, a Mass and many chamber works and songs, which, after a period of neglect, are finding their way back into recent concert schedules everywhere.

Beach was a member of a group of composers from New England whose goal was to develop a uniquely “American” style of composition through combining traditional classical structures and forms with indigenous melodies and rhythms (such as Afro-American spirituals and folk melodies (Antonin Dvorak, who lived and worked for a period in New York was a passionate advocate of this principle in his composition teaching at the American National Music Conservatory).  Beach’s contemporaries included George Whitfield Chadwick,  Horatio Parker, John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote and Edward MacDowell  – despite the esteem she was held in, she still had to overcome prevailing attitudes towards her “women composer” status, even when positively expressed – it was Chadwick who, when congratulating Beach on the success of her Symphony, described his “thrill of pride” that such a fine work had been produced by someone whom he considered had become “one of the boys”! However, Beach was determined also to advance women’s composition activities, helping to establish a Society of American Women Composers in 1925 and supporting the compositional careers of several who became known and admired, among them Margaret Ruthven Lang, and  Mabel W. Daniels, as well as the French-born Cecile Chaminade.

Beach’s Symphony in E-flat was given the name “Gaelic” because of her use of the technique of using “music of the people” for thematic and rhythmic inspiration as advocated by Dvorak, though with a significant difference – her “indigenous” affinities were with the folk-song and-dance material brought to America by her English, Scottish and Irish forbears, and the predominately ”irish” origins of the songs and dances quoted in the Symphony resulted in the work’s subtitle. She quoted the idea of the folk-themes expressing “the laments of a primitive people – their hopes and their dreams”.

Written between 1894 and 1896 this was Beach’s only Symphony, and fully expresses her determination to capture the flavour of the “music of the people” she knew best – the “Allegro con fuoco” opening of the work immediately expresses a rich, dark chromatic Romanticism, reminiscent of some of Liszt’s and Wagner’s music, mysterious swirlings punctuated by great calls and declamatory gestures. Solo winds then quoted from both Beach’s own music, a song “Dark is the Night” and from a Gaelic dance-tune, with solo clarinet, oboe, flute and horn splendidly doing the thematic honours, their traditional exposition, development and recapitulation roles coming to the fore throughout the movement, and with remarkably assured support from strings, brass and percussion in various sequences.

The second movement charmingly began “Alla Siciliana” before transforming itself into an Allegro vivace – lovely work at the outset from the solo horn, followed by the oboe quoting a beguiling Irish tune “The little field of barley” (along with other winds), after which the strings magically ushered in dancing, scampering and rumbusting textures to captivating effect! – a sudden  luftpause then brought horn, clarinet and flute as harbingers of a gorgeous cor anglais rendition of the “Little field” melody, to which the strings and brass addeed their voices, and the various winds “paired up” with fragments of the melody, until the scampering strings returned to round off the movement’s fairytale enchantment!!

The brasses announced the opening of the third movement’s “Lento”, which the winds carried on, before the solo violin presented a kind of recitative, joined by the solo cello – we then got an evocative  melody called “Cushlamachree” led by the ‘cello and joined by the oboe, and strings. This led to an epic, almost “Smetana/Ma Vlast-like” section featuring a series of “great views” from the whole orchestra, the solo horn leading the way in a series of wind and brass solos cycled about the orchestra! soundscape, with beautiful solos aplenty! The solo violin adroitly introduced a major-key melody – presumably one called “Which way did she go?” –  which built up to an almost angst-flavoured climax, before restating the first melody, Beach here displaying her compositional mastery with variants of the themes in major and minor, and with the interchanges brought to a particularly piquant conclusion.

I had found the symphony’s finale something of a protracted puzzle on first hearing a recording, but this performance held the structure together steadfastly and seemed to make everything work, right from its vigorous and declamatory “ready! – set!” introduction, indicating the onset of an adventurous journey – after this vigorous opening came a lyrical counter-subject in a major key, not unlike that in the finale of Sergei Rachmaninov’s E Minor Symphony, written a decade or so later. A strange, moodily restless passage followed, which took some time to build back the energies of the opening, the players keeping their heads and fiercely concentrating upon the music’s “search for redemption” which came with the horns sounding the alarm and rousing the brass and the rest of the orchestra to readiness! With that, and the major-key second subject’s return, the skies suddenly cleared, and the music raced to its close as jubilantly and decisively as might have been expected.

I thought, at the end of the work, that Ewan Clark and the WCO players had completed something of a major achievement, here   – such an enthusiastic and spankingly capable performance! We were left to all babble our way homewards at the joy of such a discovery, and of experiencing a whole afternoon’s feisty and absorbing listening!

Aotearoa and China – a musical dialogue presented by Jian Liu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Concert Series 2026

Jian Liu (piano) presents “Aotearoa and China – a musical  dialogue”
Works for solo piano  by New Zealand and Chinese composers
– the first of four concerts as part of a CMNZ tour)

St Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 14 th June 2026

Review for Middle C by Gary Wilby

What a thoughtfully curated concert by Associate Professor Jian Liu of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music Victoria University of Wellington. This was a brilliant piano journey through both the place and the culture of New Zealand and China. The programme – Aotearoa & China: A Musical Dialogue  –  cleverly paired piano solos by composers from the two places which are Jian Liu’s home.

In his introductory comments he mentioned that the programme was not the big works from the romantic period – which he had recently been playing as
member of a Quintet at the Chamber Music section of the Michael Hill International Violin Competition Semi Finals in Auckland – but rather smaller piano works from the two countries which complement and contrast place, land, and its inhabitants.

Jian Liu, who has lived in NZ for some 16 years spoke of live performance as having an energy and connection  which he wished to share with us. The programme began with Lilburn’s 1951 “From the Port Hills” one of Five Bagatelles. This  the most evocative and embedded of piano works relating to the landscape of NZ – the vista, the walking, cycling, running, the backdrop to every Cantabrians day – was played with spacious crafted phrases and dynamic range, the bass notes played with a heft to perhaps even suggest the crater’s volcanic origins.

This was immediately followed without a break by “Pictures from Bashu” by Huang Hu Wei,  referencing the cultural richness of Sichuan in a selection of four pieces from that work. Immediately the delicacy of morning, the lyricism, the dynamic virtuosity, the festivity, the sound with Chinese characteristics was
apparent.

“Three Short Pieces” by Salina Fisher, who was present in the audience, moved us to a more abstract view – amazing for a work by a school student at the time – of “Raindrops on a Misty Pond”, “Moths in the light” and then “Galaxy”, giving us a sense of vastness. Each of these Jian gave us with great clarity – delicate echoes, where every note had its place creating an almost different piano sound. And, we were made aware of that by the performer.

Salina was paired with probably the most well-known Chinese composer to New Zealanders in this programme – Tan Dun. If not for the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” maybe because of his many concertos. His “Water Concerto” has been performed in NZ as has his opera “Tea” performed at the NZ International Festival of the Arts. He also visited NZ a number of times and worked at VUW, facilitated by Jack Body and connections through the Asian Composers League Festivals. Again, only a selection of movements from this longer piece – “Eight Memories in Watercolours” – were heard  – the exciting “Staccato Beans”, the
pastoral “Herdboy”, and the evocative “Floating Clouds” almost French floating away to nothing.

Tan Dun’s work was more motivic than we had heard thus far. Dynamic with strong rhythms, tempo and beat. The “Herdboy” evoked isolation and Chinese instrumentation. I would love to have heard Jian playing the last in this suite – the very exciting “Sun Rain”

The programme then moved into love and affection – lyricism. Gareth Farr’s beautiful, sensitive “Love Songs” for three friends – subtle and beautiful melodic lines with arpeggiated left hand accompaniment. Immediately appealing but also requiring reflection. Of course, Jian played these very sensitively,  gifting us the simplicity and emotion of these pieces.

Jian then played “Three Songs from the Mountains of Southern Yunnan” by Zhang Zhao. The folk aesthetic moved though dance like activities involving children, hills, Mountain Moons and mountain Fire which sparked under Jian’s fingers and almost felt slightly dangerous.

After the Interval we had two Lullabies – “For Matthew” by Gillian Whitehead and a work by He Lu Ting. The intimacy of interacting with a child, the soothing of a child – Gillian’s rocking motion with Jian bringing out the bass part and then a work with a Chinese taste where the pianist “rang out” the melodic line. A universal act.

The children are presumably slightly older in Anthony Ritchie’s “Carolina Bay Suite” and Ding Shan De’s “Children Suite – Happy Holidays”. The former evokes a sunrise then children excitedly playing and running on one of the South Island’s most well-known beaches and carnivals. Having fun in the sun at the beach. The Chinese child getting out of the city, skipping with ropes and playing hide and seek. The perfect day for children – here and there.

The programme concluded with two early works by senior composers of the two countries’ earlier times – more formal and traditionally structured.  David Farquhar’s “Sonatina” is a work which should be played more as it reflects on and is part of a time when NZ composers were finding their own feet as part of this country, as part of this land. The programme finished with Wang Li San’s “Sonatina”. Unlike Farquhar’s typical music tempo markings (eg .Andante) for each movement, the latter has the more typical Chinese “titles” describing nature’s sunshine, new rain and “Dance of the Mountain Men” evoking dance and nature.

What an interesting programme –  so well curated and so well presented to the large audience by the performer and by Wellington Chamber Music. As one woman said leaving the venue “That was so exciting –  I didn’t know any of the pieces”. But she was converted and enthralled. Jian Liu’s playing is in its self worth hearing but in this concert he did more by creating links and dialogue for us. He brought us to the lands and the people of two countries’ cultures – especially the children.

It is worth noting that the music is available through Sounz Centre for NZ Music and also through the NZ Music Trust who published “Chinese Piano Music for Children” and also “NZ Piano Works in Two Volumes”. Jian Liu is, during the next week, presenting the programme through Chamber Music NZ to Whanganui, Upper Hutt and New Plymouth

NZTrio’s sensational Dreamscape Concert sweet relief for Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

NZTrio He Taonga Wairere performing at Nga Pou Ruahine – Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, Wellington

NZTrio He Taonga Wairere – Dreamscape
ROXANNA PANUFNIK – Around Three Corners (1995)
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No.1 in D Minor Op.63 (1847)
CLAIRE COWAN – wood: strings: hammers: flesh (2008)
CHARLES IVES – Piano Trio (1911-15)

NZTrio He Taonga Wairere – Amalia Hall (violin) / Matthias Balzat (‘cello) / Jian Liu (piano)

Nga Pou Ruahine – Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui (Wellington Public Library)
Saturday, May 23rd, 2026

Oh, to be in Wellington! – annus mirabilis 2026! How ironic that, when we’re in the throes of  an unprecedentedly savage institutionalised attack by the Coalition Government on our city’s lifeblood of productive public employment activity, we’re still able, in almost Jekyll-and-Hyde fashion, to continue to enjoy, courtesy of our classical music organisations, a wondrous – under the circumstances, little short of escapist! – level of artistic excellence in concerts given by our (mostly locally-based) performers.

I write this, having experienced over the course of two consecutive weekend days a pair of chamber music presentations of performances which, quite literally, bowled me over, Both ensembles were piano trios, whose players demonstrated a breathtaking mastery of intent, understanding and execution throughout each of the concerts – as well, we heard not only established masterpieces recognised worldwide as such, but a couple of uniquely treasurable instances of homegrown composition which would have graced any such programme anywhere

These concerts came with a number of attendant pleasures relating to factors such as venue and personnel – enough for me to give each occasion sufficient “raison d’etre” to warrant a separate review. However, their combined pleasures and inspirations certainly gave extra hope and strength to my feeling that (as has happened in the past) humanity both in this part of the world and at large will actively respond to these resonating artistic expressions with sufficient will and determination to overcome aforememtioned troubles and go on.

As outlined above, the superb NZTrio He Taonga Wairere, performing at the capital’s magnificently refurbished Public Library (Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui) began for me this memorable two-staged feast, and with the “other” newly-formed Korimako Trio continuing the weekend’s pleasures at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, also in Wellington, the following day – the two events were not “linked” as such in any way except in terms of their remarkable “shared”  qualities. A particular feature of the earlier NZ Trio concert was the presence of guest pianist Dr.Jian Liu, Associate Professor of Piano from Te Koki/New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, who has been at the keyboard for the Trio’s “Dreamscape” series of concerts, along with regulars violinist Amalia Hall and ‘cellist Matthias Balzat.

Besides the music we were able to enjoy the surroundings of the Library’s new music-performing space, Nga Pou Ruahine, spectacularly appointed with various artworks depicting most prominently a rawa by Darcy Nicholas of the Feminine Pillars of Life,  Earth Mothers HIneahuone, Hinetitama and Hinenuitepo, one whose resonances stretch right across the ceiling, and which cast vivid impressions of the goddesses’ all-pervading influence. Earlier today I glanced through writer Elizabeth Kerr’s useful thoughts upon performance spaces for music available in Wellington and their acoustical suitability for music, a compendium to which this striking environment can be added with enthusiasm, even though I wondered about the effect of having significant walled areas on each side of glass surfaces upon the acoustics. Every venue has its own particular sound-character, and in this case I did initially prefer, I must admit, the slightly crisper St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace “sound” the following day for the Korimako Trio. Still, the ear does adjust quickly to all but the most intractable of acoustics at most concerts I’ve attended, though I have to say I agree with my colleague’s views over the distinct “lack of bloom” in the ever-problematic Michael Fowler Centre, awaiting as I am the return of the near-matchless sweetness of the sounds of music in the city’s Town Hall auditorium (a building mercifully spared the wrecker’s ball!).

One characteristic that Nga Pou Ruahine readily allowed us to enjoy was the “shared” aspect of the listening-space, mercifully freed from any restrictive boundary between performers and listeners (several other local venues also have this warmly-communicative quality, making music-listening such a joy!) – so it was when Amalia Hall, Matthias Balzat and Jian Liu appeared, with any initial aural “opaqueness” I’ve hinted at soon relegated to normality as the concert proceeded.

NZTrio “Dreamscape” members – Amalia Hall (violin), Jian Liu (piano), Matthias Balzat (cello)

What a programme it was!  beginning with Roxanna Panufnik’s haunting “Around Three Corners” a palindromic-like piece with a theme as its centrepiece flanked by variations on either side! I thought the piece a real “adventure” one framed by opening and closing sequences with the strings repetitively “decorating” the piano’s beautifully meditative, fanciful line, and with the sounds at the end returning to the mists out of which everything had first emerged. Along the journey were adventures aplenty – sequences of true, breath-catching wonderment from both piano and violin, each living “for the moment” and the ‘cello seemingly earth-bound while looking upwards in mild bemusement – and Jian Liu directly “activating” the piano strings by reaching into the instrument’s body, bringing into play what could only be described as “interior” worlds, as the violin and ‘cello voiced pleasure/concern with “dying fall” phrases and equivocal moments of note-bending. I loved the “harrumphing” piano rumbustifications and the scintillatingly “shivery” tremolandi from both strings as the trajectories rumbled along (“Are we dreaming you or are you dreaming us?” I could imagine as thoughts were made into words!) – with a “held” violin note echoed by the ‘cello, I imagined the dream beckoning to its participants that its hour had passed for the moment, with beautiful violin tones drawing empathetic responses from the ‘cello, and deferring once more to the piano, a kind of envoi as the sounds took their leave….

It seemed a perfect scenario into which to introduce the music of Robert Schumann, surely the most instantly recognisable of any composer’s music, with its “poetically serious” energies constantly striving to break through and into the light. The players here instantly “got” the restless ebb-and-flow of emotion, its evanescent quality which spontaneously varied in intensity mid-phrase, or even sometimes, mid-note! Were they playing harmonics in the ethereal middle section of the first movement? – such an other-worldly, almost visionary aspect to the music! I loved how Jian’s playing was so attuned to the strings, as if the piano was often at times another stringed instrument! A lovely lead-back to the opening teased our expectations right to the moment of re-recognition – and a beautifully-voiced coda underlined Schumann’s reluctance to let the music go!

Schumann’s mania for near-endless rhythmic repetition in his scherzo movements (surely having an influence upon Bruckner?) generated tremendous momentums here, like “a galloping horse” in places – breathlessly exhilarating! The Trio was, in contrast, like a kind of “wafting” over the same ground, but with an entirely different kind of trajectory! The contrastingly deep piano chords which began the  “Slowly, with intensity” third movement had a beautiful austerity here, which the ‘cello’s entry softened as the dialogue came beautifully together – the increased flow was nicely paced, with the piano joining the thematic ranks – how spellbinding these players then made the introduction to the finale, whose initial sighs of relief were here given an ebb-and-flow kind of physicality, in places quixotic, in others full-blooded – it had a feeling of joyous culmination, even abandonment, reminding me of the finale to the Piano Concerto!

I mean no disrespect to anybody or anything, composer, music, or performer, by declaring that the concert seemed to get even better as it went along – and not due to anything in particular, but the result of a cumulative effect of a constant stream of wonderful music and its astonishing execution! The concert’s final two items were, in a sense, incomparable with both the rest and with each other – each was a kind of idiosyncratic singularity of creativity, conceived in its own isolated surroundings, and brimming with its own time-and-place energies and purposes! First we were drawn into Auckland composer Claire Cowan’s work, wood: strings: hammers: flesh (2008) – one which the composer herself described at the time in a Schumannesque kind of poem –
and you will wear my heart on your bow
you will speak my words
music like flowers will blossom from your fingertips
and they will see right through me
Violinist Amalia Hall told us, by way of introducing the work, that she played in the ensemble which gave  the first performance of Cowan’s piece. I loved its sense of shared discovery  – the opening emphasised the sheer physicality of music-making, with the composer’s performers here using knuckles knocking, fingertips drumming and tapping, and hand-palms slapping and resonating upon the wood, fibres and metal objects and surfaces normally employed as conduits for conventional musical expression. Here the dimensions were enlarged, resonated and given basic, instinct-like impulse, spotlighting the frameworks and interactive relationships between performers and their instruments in an almost primitive, state-of-origin way. From this plethora of sounds came ideas using basic processes to “grow” music before our very eyes, combinations of timbres, rhythms and tones as the players and their instruments interacted, creating moments of magic (the piano strings directly activated by the pianist) and rhapsodic expression (violin and cello strings bowed and plucked) with, by turns, both startling and haunting results. As the unfolding soundscape took us through the various episodes everything became more physical and almost epic in its imaginative reach, to the point where my senses seemed overwhelmed by a kind of ferment of discovery! A final, decisive “clunk” from the players at the end broke the spell, from which I awoke to a kind of silence that hummed with a memory of having shared something of a composer’s journey, or at the very least, a brief immersion into realms (Schumann, again!) of infinite possibilities.

The evening’s final work approached the idea of music-making from the other end of the process – American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) believed that life itself was the source for music, reflecting as many kinds of creative activities as could be discovered, and disdaining any kind of “hierarchy” that put “art-music” at the top of the pyramid and more populist styles below. An excellent programme note for the concert written by Charlotte Wilson underlined the debt owed by Ives to his father, George, himself a bandleader, and “clearly a force of nature, like his son, innately inquisitive and enquiring” and who bequeathed to Charles his own fascination for music, its essences and its different sources.

Ives’s Trio for Violin, ’Cello and Piano, completed in 1911and revised in 1915, drew much of its inspiration from his student days at Yale University, from where he graduated in 1898. Pianist Jian Liu remarked on the work’s in places riotous nature, drawing our attention to the second movement’s “TSIAJ” title (This scherzo is a joke”), and referring to its somewhat chaotic amalgam of tunes therein, emphasising that we were thus warned! Ives himself made reference to his inspirations for the work, citing a “short but serious talk” by “an old philosophy professor” as the first movement’s source of origin, then characterising the somewhat chaotic second movement as “the games and antics by the students on a holiday afternoon” – he then described the final movement as “a remembrance of a Sunday service on the campus”.

I’d heard a recording of the piece before going to the concert, so was “prepared” better than I would have been had I encountered the music as a novice listener – nevertheless I couldn’t believe the extent that the NZ Trio’s playing “made sense” of what had seemed almost like total chaos during my first listen! Here, the first movement distinctly characterised the different dialogues between, firstly, the ‘cello, and then the violin, with the piano – the first measured and circumspect, the second, more animated and even quixotic in places, as if real personalities! The second movement’s “onslaught” of themes also seemed less “randomly disorganised” here, more purposeful and driven, enabling one to really “swing along” as a listener, rather than feeling as if endlessly floundering in a sea of random ditties! Not that spontaneity was lacking – one felt driven less by desperation here and more by “good-old” riotous remembrance!

As for the finale, Moderato con moto, the musicians sounded the “perfect fifths” sequence fanfare-style, before  performing (and repeating) what seemed increasingly like various enigmatic “nostalgia-rituals” – duetting soulful sequences, surviving near-dissonant encounters, tripping through brief, syncopated dance-sequences whose trajectories allowed moments of skitterish excitement, before returning to the soulfulness of the opening “duet” and revisitng the other sequences theme – until, almost out of nowhere came (incredibly moving!) the “Rock of Ages” theme, firstly on the ‘cello then the violin, and lastly (minus its concluding note) on the cello once again, the piano continuing to muse broke off before sounding the phrase’s final B-flat! Enigmatic to the end though it all seemed, the Trio allowed us to drift back into our recognisable lives by playing part of a Brahms Trio – the Andante grazioso from Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor. – before sending us all home!