Tag: contemporary music

Sounds of Home from man and guitar transcend wet and gloom

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SOUNDS OF HOME – Guitar Music from Aotearoa New Zealand

Works by Michael Stoop, John Ritchie, Amanda Riddell,
Kenneth Young, David Farquhar, and Bruce Paine

Christopher Everest (guitar)
at St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 4th June 2023

(Event sponsored by Jack C. Richards, and SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music)

The most obvious thing to say about Christopher Everest’s guitar recital at St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace on a wet and windswept Sunday afternoon on a recent King’s Birthday Weekend would be that so many factors contributed to its sparse audience attendance – arriving as I did with ten minutes to spare, and surveying the half-dozen or so people already in attendance I immediately felt sorry for the artist, who would have obviously put a lot of work into the presentation, for what at first  seemed sparse reward regarding his efforts.

However, two things then occurred to me, one at the point when the guitarist made his entrance, and the other at some unspecified time when a particular ambience involving both the music-making and its reception brought the thought into my head………

Firstly, I became conscious from the volume of applause that greeted the artist that the audience had at least tripled, if not quadrupled, in the time since I entered the church – and however small the number remained there was definitely a mini-buzz of excitement, one which Christopher Everest most positively responded to upon appearing to play, complimenting all of us upon our forbearance in braving such inclement weather conditions.

Then, at some stage after Everest had begun playing – perhaps it was as early as during the first item that the thought visited me – I was struck by the memory of something that, long ago, a visiting pianist, Frederic Rzewski, whom I’d heard give a recital – again, I think, in St. Andrew’s, and to a similarly sparse audience on that occasion – told a radio interviewer, when asked afterwards whether small numbers of audience members at concerts he gave bothered or annoyed him. Rzewski replied that he thought there was, at every concert, always the “right” number of people in the audience.

I presumed he meant that, whether ten or two hundred people were in an audience, he always made sure that he played “for everybody present”, so that no-one was disadvantaged, least of all the artist, who was, after all, there to communicate with the audience, whether they were few or many.  And there in St.Andrew’s was Everest, playing, it seemed, for us all, a few who seemed at that moment  the “right” number of people……..

A word about the artist, whom I hadn’t before encountered – beginning his studies as a pupil of Dr. Jane Curry at the NZSM, Everest received a grant to study with the eminent guitarist and pedagogue, Paul Cesarzyck, at Mahidol College of Music in Bangkok, Thailand. Returning to New Zealand, he graduated with First-Class Honours in 2022 from Victoria University, and plans to take up various Masters programmes in various institutions worldwide, while continuing to concertise when he can back in New Zealand as both a soloist and an ensemble member with the New Baroque Generation and the Kowhaiwhai Duo.

So to the concert – whose title “Sounds of Home” suggested a musician suitably well-grounded in music that reflected his place of origin. Everest began with an excerpt from a work by Michael Stoop, who had been one of his composition lecturers at Victoria – the Allegretto movement from Stoop’s Sonatina No. 1. I enjoyed Everest’s voicing of the questioning rise towards the repeated top-of-the-phrase note, a sequence whimsically contrasted with more flowing interludes – making the whole a beautifully reflective piece, touched here-and-there with contrasting timbres.

Next came John Ritchie’s “Whimsies”, three meditations inspired by Shakespeare. The first, “Full Fathom Five” began with slowly rocking rhythmic patternings, suggesting the sea’s action, repetitive notes and chords resonating the “rich and strange” subaqueous atmosphere. “The second “Where is Fancy Bred” features music turning in upon itself, proffering no answer to the question, but implying more fancy, resonating the repetitive melody in different registers towards the piece’s end, with a touch of “Dies Irae” further deepening the mystery. A more energetic “Blow, blow, thou Winter Wind” wasn’t especially “wintry”, more bracingly-textured than bleak and shivery, and of lighter substance, with widely-spaced ritual-like ”knockings” and vigorous strummings – a positive response to seasonal duress, which ends reflectively and philosophically (Shakespeare nay-sayers, take note!).

Further girdles were put around the earth by Amanda Riddell’s work “Vanya’s Lament”, inspired by Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya”, the pieces reflecting an essential mood from each of the four acts of the play – presented as a continuous span, it seemed to me as if the music would work on each listener individually, the titles a “starting-point” rather than an out-and-out description, the sounds by turns quixotic, rhapsodic, wistful and energetic, but seeming to return to a general overall sobriety.  The theme of melancholy persisted with the next item, Kenneth Young’s “Three Sad Waltzes”,  again allowing the listener free rein in characterising emotions by giving the music plenty of contrast. As with Amanda Riddell’s work, Everest brought out the music’s quixotic nature, contrasting more strictly-organised running passages with improvisatory-sounding sequences, very much the “plan” of the first Waltz. By contrast the other two Waltzes expressed their dance-forms more self-consciously, the second’s gentle melancholy the perfect foil for the third’s rather more “insinuating” progressions of rhythm and melodic shaping, such as a deliciously droll bass line.

Everest described David Farquhar’s Suite as the first big “hit” in the New Zealand classical guitar world . It was written in 1966 for Ronald Burt, whose influence as a teacher pioneered classical guitar composition in this country. Farquhar became especially fond of writing for the instrument, his output including more solo guitar and several ensemble pieces, including a guitar concerto (1992).

A work in five sections, the Suite began with a stately opening Prelude, a kind of ritual processional at the outset, though with the sounds taking on a sensuous element, contrasted with a kind of ”tumble down the hill” middle section, before echoing some of the opening’s more haunting sounds.  The following Capriccio, at first restless and exploratory, then took on an almost balladic quality, a strummed accompaniment to a song (with high, harmonic-like sounds in places), before returning to the restless opening.

The Ostinato third movement set repeated notes against discursive, wayward harmonies, creating relationships both combatative and complementary – a “friendly rival” relationship; while the following Rondino seemed to take us some of the way towards the world of Manuel de Falla’s “Three-Cornered Hat” Ballet, Everest excitingly bringing  out the percussive element in a piece where rhythm was all-important. Just as telling in an entirely different way was the piece’s Epilogue, a valediction with a sounding gong marking time in between the musings, not unlike a dialogue between reality and fantasy, or reason and imagination – thoughtful and moving…….

Christopher Everest concluded his recital with a work “Seringapatam” (misspelled on the programme cover as “Seringapatum”) by another New Zealand guitarist, Bruce Paine. The piece was written with an historic Auckland homestead in mind, one that came into being through both Scottish and Indian influences, in the latter case from a town of the same name in the Mandya district in the Indian state of Karnataka, the place where the house’s founder, the son of a British Army Lieutenant-Colonel originally from Scotland, was born. The music thus contains both Scottish folk-song and Indian sitar music influences.

The music began in what seemed minstrel-like ways, but with the melody played as if it was “sounded” on an Indian sitar, with the notes having characteristic microtonal “shifts”, giving the folk-song (”The Blue Bells of Scotland”) an additional exotic quality. A more energetic central section evoked something of the exhilarating drive of a characteristic Indian “raga”. The folk-tune then briefly reappeared, and the undulations of the accompaniment gradually faded.

We had, by this time, become totally accustomed to our listening-spaces, and our musician and his instrument, so much so that the concert’s end came as a surprise! In short this presentation had transcended the state of the world outside, so involved we seemed to have become with the music and Christopher Everest’s compelling realisations of it all. Frederic Rzewski had obviously been right all along – “it was, you might say, satisfactory………”

 

Myth and Ritual in everyday life – from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RICHARD STRAUSS – “Dance of the Seven Veils” from “Salome”
ARJUNA OAKES – “Safe Way to Fall”
JOHN PSATHAS – Zahara
BELA BARTOK – “The Miraculous Mandarin”  Ballet

Orchestra Wellington
with……..
Arjuna Oakes (singer)
John Psathas (piano)
Valentina Michaud (saxophone)
Orpheus Choir, Wellington
BalletCollective Aotearoa
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei  (conductor)
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday June 3rd, 2023

“Myth and Ritual” was something of a concept-bending title, to my initial way of thinking, as a description of the programme Marc Taddei and his musicians put together on Saturday evening (June 3rd). Myth brings to mind legendary figures and events, while ritual suggests some kind of rite to do with religion or culture.

However, with the boundaries pushed out wider, as here, we saw that the concert’s range and scope took in both individual and societal aspects of the human condition, involving both transgressors and victims.

Bookending the evening’s presentation were portrayals of obsession matching that of any mythical hero – while the two central items presented conflict of diametrically opposed kinds, one in terms of individual resolution, and the other in epic, broad brush-stroke happenings putting groups of people at risk.

Not only was the evening‘s content far-flung, but the means by which the performances worked their magic were varied, which was part of sustaining our interest through spectacular orchestral, solo vocal, instrumental, choral and theatrical means.  Perhaps it wasn’t everybody’s “cup of tea” in toto, but it did have a readily-welcomed “different strokes for different folks” sense.

Things began spectacular with the famous “Dance of the Seven Veils” written by Richard Strauss for an episode in his opera “Salome”, which was a setting of Oscar Wilde’s play (written in French) whose subject was the eponymous Biblical character, the beautiful step-daughter of Herod, the Judean king of around the time of Jesus Christ.  Strauss’s set both French and German texts of Oscar Wilde’s play “Salome” which makes mention for the first time of the “Seven Veils” (in Matthew 14 she merely “danced for the guests”).

Wilde designated for Salome a kind of growing sexual obsession with John the Baptist (Jokaanan, in the opera), one which, along with the erotic nature of the Dance Strauss readily took on for the entirety of the character, presenting her as no less an obsessive figure than any mythical hero or heroine bent upon achieving great deeds.

An extraordinary tour de force of composition, the Dance brought forth from Marc Taddei and his players a brilliant response in both corporate orchestral and individual soloistic terms. From the frenetic opening, through the most languid sequences and right up to the final whiplash chords, the playing caught every mood, superbly voicing the chameleon-like progressions with that unique combination of sensuousness and “edge” to themes, rhythms and textures.

What particularly held my attention was the spaciousness of the phrasings in the early stages of the dance by both solo players and sections,  Taddei and his musicians enabling the music’s essential bitter-sweet character to emerge, setting the strings’ almost decadent voluptuousness against the winds’ piquant flavourings, the latter pungently activating the dancer’s growing excitement and urgencies, leading to the unbridled excitement of the concluding section’s abandoned flourishes, the knife-edge wind arabesques, and the cataclysmic whiplash chords at the end – stunning!

Nothing could have been further from these excesses than the concert’s second item, a song for voice, piano and orchestra called “Safe Way To Fall”. Written as a collaboration between singer/songwriter Arjuna Oakes and composer/performer John Psathas, the work grew from a “springboard” award from the NZ Arts Foundation which enabled Oakes to choose Psathas as a mentor, and led to a creative partnership between the two. The pair shared a desire to explore ideas that would “make musical ideas hit home emotionally”, and the song was one of four tracks that emerged from this initial collaboration.

With Psathas himself as the pianist (his debut as a performing pianist in public, he told us afterwards) and the orchestra providing backing of what seemed a “filmic” kind of orchestral texture, Oakes delivered his song via a microphone, words expressing the idea of feelings of vulnerability giving rise to strength in relationships. Psathas’s most telling comment afterwards. I thought, was that collaboration seemed a way for an individual to grow stronger, or in other words, a “Safe Way to Fall”, considering that any creative journey will involve occasional failings and fallings. What I got from the item and its presentation was an insight into creative process that’s outside popular perception of that process, but nevertheless produces a result, whatever one might think of the same as heard here.

John Psathas’s other (somewhat more substantial) contribution to the concert was in a more traditional “inspired by various stimuli” kind of mode, in this case a two-part synthesis of other people’s literary and musical skills. The composer was entranced by author Dean King’s “Skeletons on the Zahara” outlining the historical shipwreck of a group of American sailors off the western coast of Africa in 1815, and their subsequent travails in a hostile desert landscape and at the hands of nomadic tribesmen – so when saxophonist Federico Mondelci, who in turn had been inspired by an earlier concerto for the instrument by Psathas, approached him to write another concerto, it was Zahara which came into being.

Saxophone soloist for the concerto’s performance Valentine Michaud provided considerable visual as well as musical stimulus, appearing on the platform in a stunningly voluminous (social-distancing-style?) orange-crimson dress whose undulating folds seemed to become as desert sands as she launched into the first of the concerto’s four movements,  her instrument straightaway “possessing” the ambience created by the long lines of the ambient orchestral accompaniments, denoting rituals of both physical and spiritual identification.

The concerto moved through these exotic realms with considerable variety, a second movement establishing ostinato-like rhythms as the soloist’s playing gradually “enlivened” the music, the exchanges massively and dramatically irrupting and falling away almost to nothing in attention-riveting ways; and a third movement prayerful and ethereal, the music’s haunting aspect enhanced by the soloist’s playing of multiphonics (two notes played at once) above what seemed to me like enormous blocks of air, as if one was a bird soaring over a landscape far below, before the ostinato rhythm was re-engaged and the soloist rhapsodised with the orchestral winds, oboe, bassoon, and clarinet.

The final movement straightaway re-invoked the whole scenario, creating in my mind a desert environment through winds and brass, over which the strings soared as the sky and beneath which the percussion rumbled as of the deep earth. Valentine Michaud used a soprano sax to scintillate through the movement’s first part, then returned to her tenor instrument to deepen the “earth-connection”, the orchestra keeping the ostinato thread going throughout, and lifting the ambiences into a “cheek-by-jowl” fusion of excitement and oneness with the soloist, all scintillation and coalescence to finish!

Michaud returned us to our lives at Zahara’s conclusion with an encore, playing a fun work which she told us was called “cuku” (a chicken), and further demonstrating her virtuosity with multiphonics, as if two birds were simultaneously calling to one another – a very “rustic farmyard” piece which entertained us most delightfully!

And so, after the interval, we entered the very different world of Bela Bartok’s ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin”, having, incidentally, been warned at the beginning by a “voice-over” announcement that the work we were about to hear contained scenes of rape and sexual violence (one might imagine the present-day general cultural entertainment scene well-versed in such antics, though of course government health warnings are still bandied about, and “live” performances might still shock the unsuspecting with the unexpected!)

Musically, I found the performance as enthralling and satisfying as was the Strauss work in the concert’s first half. The opening vortex of bedlam-like sounds – “humanity’s mad, inhuman noise” (as Alan Jay Lerner wrote in “My Fair Lady” in a somewhat different context) – was superbly and sonorously delivered, though it was disconcerting how, for me, the advent of the dancers (members of “Ballet Collective Aotearoa”) radically changed the focus of my attention to the visual drama (the result of having previously “immersed” myself in the music via recordings).

Each of the clarinet solos depicting the girl’s “luring” of prospective clients to be robbed by her cohorts was superbly wrought as was the orchestral support, given that the visual aspect constantly took one’s focus away from what one was “hearing” to that which was being “watched”. Bartok’s evocation of relative “innocence” in the case of the young boy was touching, as was the girl’s response to him, a situation brusquely ended by the ruffians (who, at one stage seemed to morph as a group into a quartet rather than the original trio).

The dancers conveyed what they could of the different scenarios, hampered as they were by the lack of space which a proper stage would have otherwise afforded. Dramatically, the most effective moment  was the appearance of the Mandarin, who emerged from a trapdoor centre-stage, dressed in a red robe and bathed in bright light. That, and the impact of  the sickly green light which illuminated the Mandarin’s transfixed form after his stabbing by the ruffians were theatrical highlights of the presentation – I only wish someone had thought of deploying an additional light upon the mandarin after he had “embraced” the girl and “satisfied” his desires, at which point his wounds begin to bleed, and he dies – a blood-red spotlight would have provided an apt contrast to the colours that had been previously used.

In all, I thought the presentation was a great success, and especially from the orchestral point of view, in which the flow of the story, the drama and the tension never let up. The Orpheus Choir, too, sonorously and atmospherically played its part, beautifully accompanied by the orchestral violas as the voices gathered intensity, helping to breathe life back into the Mandarin so as to fulfil his destiny with the girl – musically, a scalp-pricking moment, even if hardly the visual embodiment of erotic consummation of desire we had been “threatened with” at the outset.

A definite “feather in the cap” of Orchestra Wellington, then – and the success of “The Miraculous Mandarin” left me longing for the point at which Marc Taddei and his players might again enlist some dancers and give us Ravel’s complete “Daphnis et Chloe” – just a thought, but meant as a compliment for all concerned.

 

 

Les Voisins – delicious distortions, with swing

Posted on by Anne French

Les Voisins

Justine Cormack, violin
James Bush, cello
Simon Martyn-Ellis, theorbo and guitar

Works by Robert de Visée, Jean Marie Leclair, and Marin Marais

Alex Taylor, Onwhatgrounds (for violin, cello, and theorbo)
Maurice Ravel, Sonata for violin and cello
Stephane Grappelli and the Hot Club de France, Nuages, SweetGeorgiaBrown, MinorSwing

St Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 7 May, 3 pm

This was the first concert of Wellington Chamber Music’s 2023 season, and it promises a great season to come. Les Voisins were scheduled to play this concert two years ago, but the performance was interrupted by a Covid-19 lockdown, which prevented the talented Australian theorbo player Simon Martyn-Ellis from travelling to New Zealand.

The theorbo is a kind of giant lute and is plucked or strummed. It was invented in the 1580s when players wanted an extra bass instrument for accompanying singers in the first operas, so they took a bass lute and extended the neck, adding seven additional strings to extend the bass register. Its bottom note is lower than that of the cello. Whereas the seven higher strings  are fretted and tuned like a guitar, the lower ones are tuned diatonically, like a harp. The low strings are deep and resonant, and the instrument is said to have been much in demand as a continuo instrument. As for a harpsichord, the theorbo player reads the bass line and improvises over the top.

The first work on the programme was by Robert de Visée (1650-1725), a prelude and passacaglia in D minor for solo theorbo. The composer was a musician in the court of Louis XIV, and his works for guitar, lute, and theorbo were written down by others. The prelude sounded tentative, but the passacaglia more assured. Still, it took me a few minutes to get used to its restrained sound.

Next, a sonata for violin and continuo in E minor by Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764), a work which my companion plays often. Leclair is well known to violinists as the founder of the French school of violin playing, and is still a popular composer for violin. This work had both theorbo and cello on continuo, which helpfully reinforced the theorbo against the brilliance of Justine Cormack’s mid-nineteenth century French violin. The first and third movements had their heart in the dance (Leclair was also known as a dancing master), with lively and rhythmic playing, while the middle movement was a sarabande, played gently by theorbo with violin. It is easy to see why so many of Leclair’s compositions have survived.

The second work by de Visée was a suite in C minor for solo theorbo, comprising a prelude, an allemande, and a ‘plainte au tombeau des Mesdemoiselles de Visée, filles de l’Auteur’. This beautiful and melancholy work was written for the souls of the composer’s two daughters. It was followed by a work by Marin Marais (1656-1728) played by all three instruments. The Bells of St Geneviève is much better known than the works that preceded it  in the programme (I’m sure I have heard it on RNZ Concert more than once) and is lively and jazzy, with exciting fortes and idiomatic playing by the excellent Justine Cormack.

Finally, the last work of the first half of the concert: Alex Taylor’s On what grounds. This was commissioned by Les Voisins for this tour, with support from Creative NZ, who certainly got value for their money. It is a set of six movements in the style of a Baroque suite. Justine Cormack introduced the work by quoting the composer, who described it as ‘a series of musical games with an emotional core’ in the chaconne. Taylor wanted to explore the potential of the fretted theorbo alongside the flexibility of the violin and cello, which can glissando between notes via the quartertones between them (whereas the theorbo can only play semitones).

Cormack mentioned the distortions created as the intervals are sometimes stretched or compressed. Taylor, she said, saw the work in terms of patterns of stress and release, with the tension of the quartertones built up in the chaconne section and released in the epilogue. The programme note said that the work explores the notion of a ground: literally, in the case of the ground bass in the chaconne, but also in the sense of ‘returning to a fixed point, collections of harmonies derived from a single pitch, or variations on a specific musical interval’.

This was a delicious work to listen to in the context of the pieces that went before. It was ear candy, with unexpected and interesting sonorities one after another. The chaconne was my favourite movement. (My notes say ‘weird – but very interesting’.) The composer had responded intelligently to the Baroque works in the programme and his work sounded as poised and stylish as they did, evoking Baroque forms within a completely contemporary soundworld. We were disappointed not to hear it twice.

After the interval, the theorbist took a break whilst Cormack and Bush played Ravel’s less well-known sonata for violin and cello in A minor. The players grew up living next door to each other as children, and performed with each other from an early age. Cellist James Bush often performs with some of Europe’s best Baroque musicians, such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, and Concerto Köln, and that Baroque flexibility was on show.

The Ravel work was written between 1920 and 1922 and is dedicated to Debussy, who had recently died. This work follows Ravel’s principal composition of the First World War, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and was written at about the same time as his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel had recently heard Kodaly’s sonata for violin and cello, and the second and fourth movements are said to be influenced by it (though my Hungarian companion heard more Bartók than Kodaly in them). I enjoyed the rustic, lively dances, but my favourite movement was the third movement, a slow and beautiful chorale. The first movement had that characteristic Ravel quality of always moving and never quite arriving.  Irrespective of what influenced whom, this is a gorgeous work and deserves to be heard more often.

Finally, since we were almost at the point when Ravel discovered jazz, we were treated to three transcriptions of Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt at the Hot Club de France: Reinhardt’s versions of Sweet Georgia Brown, Nuages, and Minor Swing. Simon the Theorbist was revealed to be an excellent guitarist as well, and Cormack did a lovely Grappelli. These were terrific (although it always sounds a bit odd to my ears when classically trained musicians faithfully reproduce a transcription of a work that would have had considerable improvisation). A swinging end to a delightful concert, and a great start to WCM’s 2023 season.

 

Magnificent Endurance

Posted on by Anne French

NZSO – Enduring Spirit: Bloch and Shostakovich

Aaron Jay KERNIS (1960–), Musica Celestis
Ernest BLOCH – Schelomo
Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony NO 10 in E Minor, Op. 93

Nicolas Altstaedt, cello
Sir Donald Runnicles, Conductor
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 28 April 2023

This was always going to be a big concert, with Shostakovich 10 programmed alongside Bloch’s remarkable work Schelomo. It was also contrabassoonist David Angus’s last concert with the NZSO, after 42 years with the orchestra, so it was fortunate that he had plenty to do.

The Kernis work was unknown to me. The affable Runnicles, who spent several minutes briefing us in, was surprised that Kernis and his music were unknown to most of us.  Musica Celestis means ‘music of heaven’, and the programme notes made references to the music of the mystical Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and to Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Runnicles described it as ‘mystical, medieval, magical, and modern’. It’s an attractive work, which began life as the slow second movement of Kernis’s String Quartet (1990), and was later re-scored for string orchestra. We got the full-fruit string orchestra version (eight desks of first violins, including Co-Concertmaster Giulia Brinckmeier, who took Vesa-Matti Leppanen’s chair for the first half of the programme).

Having sung some of Hildegard’s works, I’d have to say that, despite its grace, it did not remind me of her or her soundworld. It opened with the faintest hint of modal tonality and long, slow chords with a rather glittering tone, but apart from a very slow start that builds to a passionate, flowing crescendo, with a full-throated, warm orchestral sound, I failed to spot Hildegard or indeed anything remotely medieval. The next section was based on a single low note from the basses (‘almost RVW’, say my notes), via tremolo strings, and then silence, from which ultimately emerges a beautiful melody on the viola. The melody is passed to the first violin to complete, and the work draws to a graceful close.

The second work on the programme was Bloch’s remarkable Schelomo, for solo cello and orchestra. Before the concert started, Runnicles passed the microphone to the cello soloist, Nicolas Altstaedt, who told us something about the circumstances of composition of the work, the last movement of Bloch’s Jewish Cycle. He originally conceived the work as a setting of texts from Ecclesiastes for voice, but after meeting the cellist Alexandre Barjansky, Bloch decided to use the cello to represent the voice of King Solomon. Barjansky’s cello, Alstaedt told us with some excitement, was now in the possession of a local musician, Rolf Gjelsten, from the New Zealand String Quartet – something he had learned only the day before. (I understand that Gjelster and Altstaedt met backstage during the interval, so that the soloist could make the acquaintance of the very instrument that had inspired the composer.)

The work is scored for a large orchestra: three flutes, two oboes, cor anglais, two B flat clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam tam, celesta, two harps, and full strings. In this case, there were 8 desks of first violins, 7 desks of seconds, 6 desks of violas (including Guest Section Principal Caroline Henbest), 5 desks of cellos (led by Pei-Jee Ng, Guest Section Principal and an old friend of the cello soloist, and Pei-Sian Ng, Guest Associate Principal), and no fewer than 8 basses. Bloch would have been delighted with these forces.

I have heard the Bloch work before, and it is always deeply moving, but I have never heard it played as Nicolas Altstaedt played it. It was as though he had a direct connection to the composer. There was no sense of ‘performing’; rather, it was as though these painful, moving passages of music were being drawn directly from Bloch, through the cello, directly to our ears.  Bloch said that in composing it he ‘listened to an inner voice, deep, secret, insistent, ardent…’, and that is exactly how we received it.  It was a privilege to listen to such a powerful work so well played.

And after all the applause, there was an encore. I am no lover of encores. I would rather hold the work in my heart for a little longer than have it over-written by some short crowd-pleaser. In this case, I wasn’t too perturbed. Nicolas Altstaedt decided to give us a movement from a sonata by Jean-Baptiste Barrière (1707-1747), a renowned French Baroque cellist, which he played as a duet with Pei-Jee Ng, the Guest First Chair of the cello section. It was delightful.

The last work on the programme was Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. After the emotional depth of the Bloch, I hardly felt fit enough to listen to it. It is a monumental work at 52 minutes. There is a huge first movement; a terrifying second movement (the demonic portrait of Stalin, who had died only months before it was premièred); the beautiful and hopeful third movement, featuring the D-E flat-C-B motif that indicates Shostakovich’s name (D  SCH, in German notation), a waltz, and a beautiful horn motif; and the dancing and ultimately triumphant final movement.

The orchestra rose magnificently to the challenge of the music. At times Runnicles stopped conducting, simply allowing the solos to unfold. There were wonderful solos from Robert Orr (oboe), Michael Austin (cor anglais), Sam Jacobs (horn), Bridget Douglas (flute), Johanna Gruskin (piccolo), Rachel Vernon (bass clarinet) – and, of course, the estimable David Angus on contrabassoon.  This was the perfect repertoire to round off his NZSO career.  The percussionists were terrific, notably the sinister side drum, which adds such menace to the mirthless Stalin music, and there was some truly memorable tam tam playing. At other times, especially in the 3/4 passages, the conductor nearly jumped off the podium as he danced along with the music.

I had the feeling that the orchestra was enjoying working with Sir Donald Runnicles. He is an understated conductor (compared with, say, Gemma New, who has directions to give for every bar, and gives them in a very expressive manner). But he achieved some wonderful effects.  This was a magnificent and very moving concert.

As a footnote, there is a charming interview with David Angus on RNZ Concert. Bryan Crump (the Afternoons presenter) visits him in the workshop in which he machines parts for his motorcycles as well as fettling various bassoons and contrabassoons. The interview ends with Angus riding off into the sunset. It can be found here: https://www.rnz.co.nz/concert/programmes/three-to-seven/audio/2018887086/the-lowdown-on-dave-angus

 

TAIORO

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Taioro ki te Ao

Text by Sharn Maree, music by Anthony Ritchie

Sharn Maree, poet and narrator

Sherry Grant, piano

Donald Maurice, viola

Bats Theatre

26 February 2023

 

Colonialism was the subject of this musical performance. Colonialism is a much debated historical concept, but Sharn Maree focused on its impact on a Wahine Maori. She described ‘life forces’, and the meaning of ‘Maoriness’, and being Maori in the past, the present and in the future. These found expression in the music,  The piece started with a brief introduction in Maori about past destruction and the viola responds with a haunting theme, capturing the mournful sound of a Maori trumpet, a putatara while the piano played a repeated two note plucking phrase. The further historical account of colonial wars and conflict, land confiscation is echoed in harsh military music on the viola with  disturbing base notes on the piano which represented the clash between Maori and the European Pakeha colonizers. But this was followed by a revival of Maori awareness, and this was depicted by a beautiful passage on the viola, which to me sounded Scottish or Irish, rather than Pacific. The intergenerational trauma was reflected by a sad melody, again more Celtic than Pacific. But the voice, the Maori voice which cannot be silenced, was reflected in the music by a triumphal passage on viola and piano. In the end the positive message of the putatara returned, it was about life’s long journey regardless of race.

Anthony Ritchie’s music encapsulates the complex message of the text. He made superb use of the limited instrumental resources available to him.  One might think of this as occasional music. This event was first performed at the National Gallery, Ottawa on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Nation. and was attended by First Nation leaders, MPs and Diplomats.as guests of the NZ High Commissioner Canada, Martin Harvey. 

It was unfortunate that there were no programme notes available, so those of us in the audience who understood no Maori missed some of the substance of the text. Nonetheless great credit to Sharn Maree who wrote the text and delivered it beautifully, with great clarity and violist Donald Maurice with pianist Sherry Grant who realised the musical rendering of the impact of colonization

NZ Chamber Soloists add lustre to final 2022 Waikanae Concert

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Waikanae Music Society presents:
New Zealand Chamber Soloists
Katherine Austin (piano) ; James Tennant (‘cello)
Lara Hall(violin/viola) : Dimitri Atanassov (violin/viola)

MOZART – Piano Quartet No, 2 in E Major K.493
HELEN BOWATER – Fekete Folyó (Black River)
SCHUMANN – Piano Quartet in E-flat Major Op.47

Memorial Hall, Waikanae,

Sunday, 30th October 2022

Waikanae is a 40 minute drive from Wellington, it has its own musical community, and the concerts that the Waikanae Music Society presents complement the concerts in Wellington. I don’t recall hearing the NZ Chamber Soloists in Wellington, which is a great pity, because you wouldn’t find a better ensemble anywhere. Three of its members teach at the Waikato Conservatorium of Music, Hamilton, and for this concert they were joined by  Dimitri Atanassov, former concertmaster of the Auckland Philharmonia.

The repertoire for piano quartets is, compared with string quartets and piano trios, limited. This concert featured two contrasting landmark works, Mozart’s and Schumann’s and a recent New Zealand work, Helen Bowater’s Fekete Folyó, the latter spanning the narrative of the Danube and the people of its basin from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania.

Mozart: Piano Quartet No.2 in E Major, K 493

This is the second of Mozart’s Piano Quartets, completed in the year of his set of six String Quartets, dedicated to Haydn, three of his piano concertos, and also  while Mozart was working on his opera, The Marriage of Figaro, which was completed in the following year. There is a profusion of ideas, themes and lively contrasts in this quartet, and operatic snippets pervade the work. It has dramatic contrasts and suspense in the first movement, a beautiful aria in the second Larghetto movement and a suggestion of opera buffa in the last movement. It was impeccably played, with a lovely interaction between the violin and viola above the  firm base of the cello.  Their  lovely tone, allied to a natural ease and fluency, was particularly notable.

Helen Bowater: Fekete Folyó (Black River)

The Fekete  Folyó (in English the Danube), flows from the Black Forest to the Black Sea and on its way it traverses many lands of many people each with their unique and tragic histories. This is narrative music, with no evident formal structure, and the more engaging for that. We hear the wild rhapsodic music of gypsies, exuberant sounds of folk bands, and dark melancholic themes reflecting the tragic histories of the lands, moving Jewish themes echoing the terrible fate of the Jews of Hungary (at one point a sad cello solo taken up by the violin and viola). There is a lot of drama packed into this short interesting work, and it concludes with a most effective ending, the music petering out as the river disappears in the sea. Composer Helen Bowater was in the audience to acknowledge the applause.

Schumann: Piano Quartet Eb Major, Op. 47

For the second half of the concert Lara Hall and Dimitri Atanassov exchanged roles, Dimitri Atanassov played violin and Lara Hall viola. Schumann’s Piano Quartet was written some 60 years after Mozart’s K.493., and in that time the musical landscape, as indeed the entire world, had vastly changed. Although Schumann struggled with depression and bi-polar symptoms all his life, this work has an upbeat prevailing mood.  It starts with a dark opening that resolves into a lively allegro. The second movement Scherzo is playful, recalling Schumann’s childlike spirit that was reflected in his earlier Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) for piano. The third movement is a love song, passionate, and lyrical. The last movement, Vivace, has at its centre a Fugue, joyous, and energetic, and  reflecting Schumann’s lifelong interest in the music of Bach. This is a work full of joy and a happy outlook. Three years later Schumann tried to commit suicide and was institutionalised for the remainder of his life.

This was a memorable concert, a great credit to the team of the Waikanae Music Society for bringing this outstanding group to the Wellington region.

The River of Youth – Arohanui Strings and Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Anne French

Orchestra Wellington  – The River 

Glen Downie (b. 1991) – Well Within the Madding Crowd
(with Arohanui Strings)

Joseph Joachim – Violin Concerto No 2 (‘Hungarian’)
Soloist: Amalia Hall

Julian Kirgan-Baez (b. 1992) – Reflection

 Robert Schumann – Symphony No 3 (‘Rhenish’)

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 15th October, 2022

There are two rivers in this programme: the Rhine, for which Schumann’s symphony was named, having been written after the Schumanns moved to Düsseldorf, and the Waimapihi Stream, which runs down Aro Valley (albeit mostly underground). Three of the works were written by young men: Joseph Joachim was the youngest, at 27, and Glen Downie the oldest, at 31.  Even Schumann was only 40.

There is consequently a sense of possibility, of a sunlit progress towards a happy future, about all of them. The tangible evidence of such possibility was provided by the Arohanui Strings, a Sistema-inspired orchestra led by Alison Eldredge, based in Taita, now with groups in Stokes Valley, Mt Cook, and Miramar. The Glen Downie work was commissioned for them by Orchestra Wellington, supported by SOUNZ, and Arohanui players joined OW on stage to perform it, plus a few other short favourites. It was striking that the Arohanui players took all the outside player chairs, and played with confidence and enjoyment.

Glen Downie had cunningly written a work with easy string parts – most of the interest was provided by the wind, brass, and percussion. It began with a spooky theme on the lower strings, with the broad, appealing main theme influenced by Henry Mancini. Downie’s programme note wished the Arohanui players ‘the same sort of fun … that I had whilst playing his music’. If it was Mancini crossed with film and television music, so much the better.

Marc Taddei’s showmanship was, naturally, evident. After they finished playing their last piece, a Scottish reel, he said encouragingly, ‘That went pretty well, didn’t it? Can we play it faster?’ and swung into a much faster tempo which almost everyone kept up with. Then, as the stage was cleared for the next work, he told the audience exactly how to donate (see arohanuistrings.org).

Joseph Joachim is known best these days as one of the famous violin soloists of the nineteenth century. Brahms wrote for him, as did Schumann. Born in Budapest, he was for several years the principal violinist of the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Mendelssohn, teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory. He moved to Weimar in 1848, where Liszt was establishing his cultural influence, then on to the court at Hanover where he was principal violin, and eventually to Berlin, where he founded a department of music performance at the Royal Conservatory.

As a composer, he was a protégé of Schumann and Mendelssohn. This work is a big virtuosic concerto, lasting 35-40 minutes – and is consequently described by violinists as ‘like running a marathon’. It is not often performed. My Hungarian colleague Steven Sedley commented quietly beforehand that he was a bit surprised that Amalia Hall had agreed to put in the time and effort to learn it. He described it as ‘a showy piece’, designed to show off the virtuosity of the performer. I could immediately see what he meant. It is a challenging work, with a huge first movement and lots of very fast playing required by the soloist. The players from the Arohanui Strings who had crept in to watch were delighted. There was general applause at the end of the movement.

The second movement is a tender and beautiful rhapsody in the style of a Romany ballad, featuring lots of small duets between the soloist and flute (Karen Batten), clarinet (Nick Walshe), and horn (William Loveless), with a long duet with the cello (Inbal Megiddo). The third movement is full of fiery Hungarian themes, as though it was about to launch into a Hungarian dance at any moment. My knowledgeable colleague noted afterwards that the concept of Hungarian nationality was a development of the Hungarian national movement of 1848 and afterwards; and also that gipsy music, emphasising bravura, scintillating music, a strong beat, and rich melodies, was the music played in well-off homes. It is refined music, not raw peasant music.

Amalia Hall played brilliantly by any standard. She captured the rhythmic subtleties and the heart-warming melodic passages. Further, she looked as fresh when she finished as when she started, so she has extraordinary stamina as well as technical virtuosity.

And then the interval. I felt as though I had sat through a whole concert already, but there were still two works to go.  That is the nature of an Orchestra Wellington concert.

The next work, Reflection, was by Julian Kirgan Baez, known mainly as an orchestral and jazz trombonist (playing with the Royal New Zealand Air Force Band and the Richter City Rebels as well as Orchestra Wellington and the NZSO). He has also been OW’s ‘Emerging Composer in Residence’ for the past year, working with John Psathas. This work, Marc Taddei told us, ‘embraces the harmonic language of Mahler, Strauss, and early Schoenberg’.

It begins with percussion instruments making sounds like water running over stones, with wind and brass, and then an entry from the strings in the big Mahler/Strauss late romantic style, with a brass underlay. The brass section was big: four horns, three trombones, and a tuba as well as two trumpets – all put to excellent use. The brass and wind writing was, I thought, very assured (although when the principal clarinet switched to bass clarinet I found the sound was swamped by everything else that was going on). Then the spirit of Schoenberg seemed to take over (the programme notes spoke of ‘angular harmonic and melodic gestures’) before a big announcement by the trombones and trumpets, and a final climax. This was an interesting work I would have liked to hear twice. There was excellent playing by percussionist Naoto Segawa and timpanists Brent Stewart and Ben Whitton, as well as trumpets Matt Stein and Toby Pringle and the trombones and tuba.

Finally, the Schumann symphony. The Third is very well known, but for Marc Taddei it was a teachable moment. He explained to the audience how the themes of the four outer movements use the interval of the perfect fourth, but the intermezzo at the heart of the work does not. For people not very familiar with the perfect fourth, the strings’ demonstration of how Schumann conjures beautiful tunes out of such an angular interval (to modern ears) would have sounded like a kind of magic. Taddei also told us that Mahler studied Schumann’s symphonies assiduously – as well as reorchestrating them to suit his own taste.  Nor was Mahler the only one – a film composer called James Horner stole the theme from the first movement, turned it from Schuman’s flowing 3/4 into 4/4, and added a shakuhachi (a Japanese flute). There was a burst of music over the PA system to illustrate the point.

This time the music examples were shorter but provided some structure to the listening experience for anyone unfamiliar with the work. The orchestra played well, with great solos from flute (Karen Batten), oboe (Merran Cooke), and great playing by all five horns. I especially loved the Bach-like chorale played by the brass in the solemn fourth movement, Cologne Cathedral, succeeded by the sunny and dancing final movement.

This was a complete musical experience, from the Arohanui kids to the glamour of Amalia Hall’s playing. And Taddei being the salesman he is, there was a pitch for the orchestra’s 2023 season, which includes Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Psathas’s Planet Damnation (for timpani and orchestra), and Alban Berg’s Wozzek.  It is a great overstuffed rich plum pudding of a programme, and I can’t wait.

 

DUO ENHARMONICS Piano Duo – a Blockbuster of a Concert!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concert Series 2022 presents:

Duo Enharmonics – Nicole Chao and Beth Chen (piano duo)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – Piano Sonata in D, K.381 (`1772)
FELIX MENDELSSOHN – Andante & Allegro Brilliante Op.92 (1841)
JOHN PSATHAS – Motet (1997)
FAZIL SAY – Night (2017)
HANNA KULENTY – VAN…. (2014)
IGOR STRAVINSKY – The Rite of Spring (1913)

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

Sunday, 2nd October

A quick look at Middle C on my part brought forth some previous “other” enthusiastic opinions regarding the music-making of Duo Enharmonics, made up of the piano duo of Nicole Chao and Beth Chen (formed in 2017, and whose names are here alphabetically ordered) – to my surprise, I hadn’t actually heard them play before, perhaps confusing my somewhat over-vicarious enjoyment of the reviews of their performances by my colleague Steven Sedley with the “real thing”, and especially in the case of a concert featuring a presentation for four hands of Ravel’s “La Valse”, along with the Mozart Sonata we heard today. (The memory is obviously not what it was…..)

Matters of familiarity with the pair’s playing were put right for me with a vengeance today – I confess the concert’s main drawcard was hearing the Stravinsky work performed on a single piano four-hands! – how, I had asked myself when looking at the concert programme a few days before, could that be possible, or more of anything but academic interest?  Of course I should have consulted the Middle C record earlier and been reminded of the duo’s performance of “La Valse” (another piece I would have thought well-nigh impossible to bring off satisfactorily, before reading my colleague’s enthusiastic review….)

By way of preparing for the music’s onslaught in this particular form (of course I’ve known – and gradually gotten to love – the original orchestral “Le Sacre du Printemps” (The Rite of Spring) ever since my first open-mouthed teenaged encounter with the work on record in the 1960s), I had the bright idea of finding an existing performance for piano duo on You Tube beforehand, simply to get an idea of how it would all translate in pianistic terms. What surprised me on doing so was the extent to which everything suddenly sounded more “harmonic” than I’d ever previously heard, the music’s harmonies, tones and colours actually competing with the piece’s rhythms for my ear’s attentions! It made me look forward all the more to what Chao and Chen would do with this iconic score.

However, there seemed almost another concert’s-worth of other music to be got through beforehand, here! – with each scheduled item having its own intrinsic interest either by association or repute – the one blank I drew was with the name Hanna Kulenty, and upon investigation was suitably mortified to find a catalogue of completed works any composer would be proud to own, thus furthering my education in yet another direction, that of contemporary Polish composition!

Partly because the piano was still in its infancy, there are surprisingly few works for keyboard four- hands from the time before Mozart, the most prominent being a handful of sonatas by Johann Christian Bach, who, of course was the former’s only acknowledged composition teacher. This work, in D Major K.381, dates from the time when Mozart’s regular performing partner was his sister, Nannerl, a child prodigy like her brother, their father touring them around Europe as wunderkind – at that time their chosen instrument was probably still the harpsichord, rather than the newfangled fortepiano (the forerunner of the modern pianoforte).

The duo‘s spirited attack at the Sonata’s beginning soon gives way here to expertly-nuanced dynamic contrast as the music announces its “orchestral” quality of loud/soft and staccato/legato passages. The music has all the character one might expect from such a living, breathing organism, including a telling minor-key shift at one point before the jovial mood reasserts itself, though I liked the way the movement’s end was gracefully, almost enigmatically voiced, rather than merely hammered for brilliances’s sake.

Richly-wrought, beautifully-rounded tones characterise the slow movement’s opening, the gentle dying fall at the exposition’s end “leans” us eagerly into the following sections, markedly highlighting the work of each player, primo and secondo (Chao the former, and Chen the latter, incidentally)…… then the finale’s fanfare-like opening and contrasting exchanges of leading voices make for an almost operatic scenario of “give-and-take” throughout, complete with contrasting trajectories alternated between tumbling triplets and snappy dotted rhythms – such a joy!

From here we leapfrogged into a new century of sentiment and sensibility with the music of another youthful prodigy, Felix Mendelssohn, in the form of his Andante & Allegro Brilliante Op. 92, a piece he wrote to perform with the young Clara Schumann. The piece’s layout strongly reflects, both physically and musically the idea of partnership and harmonious balance, qualities emphasised by both players in their spoken introduction to the work. Strange as it might seem to anybody upon hearing the work’s exquisitely contrasting parts, it was first published with the opening Andante omitted – but fortunately a new age has restored the composer’s original concept of a coming-together of contrasting impulse in friendship.

Chen and Chao straightaway establish a mood of seamless flow of concerted lyricism, beginning with the secondo player alone, and then handing over to the primo as if it all came from a single pianist. The Allegro suddenly and impishly irrupts from the lower registers, spreading its joyful energies over the whole spectrum, the players here combining delicacy with sparkle and brilliance, all the while literally and delightfully playing into one another’s hands – towards the end comes a lonely luftpause, a couple of tentative impulses, and then an explosion of whirlwind elfin energies bringing to us the conclusion.

Came a further shift both forwards in time and here to these shores with John Psathas’s 1997 work Motet – and here we were given the treasurable bonus of not only having the composer present but (unexpectedly for him!) brought to the platform to introduce the work, which he did, presumably to honour the efforts of these, his former students at the School of Music! Psathas held us spellbound as he described both aspects of the work’s character and its actual premiere in this same venue, given by pianists Michael Houstoun and Diedre Irons. He also recounted to our merriment the incident of a hapless audience member attempting to noisily extricate a cough lozenge from its plastic wrapping during a quieter sequence in the music, and being silenced by a hissed admonition from Houstoun!

Beth Chen took the primo here, for this remarkable work, a kind of “ritual” in four parts, the music beginning with the duo opening up vast, nebulous vistas, a wandering treble picking its way over bardic-like spread bass chords, the effect almost aleatoric, as if enacting the discovery of a new land. A third voice intones a long-breathed melody, chant-like at first, but gradually becoming more rugged and jagged in effect, the sounds gathering weight and the harmonies clashing acrimoniously – such flavoursome volatility conjured up here! – with the ensuing chaos dissolving into silence.

Twice more the music rises from its own embers, firstly with a chordal theme hoisting a beacon which sparks off a toccata-like irruption from the textures, buoyed by rallying shouts and vigorous scintillations of dancing figures! When this also spectacularly implodes, the musicians again bring their energies to bear on the work’s repeatedly-checked trajectories, which once again revive and begin to pulsate with renewed life as they plunge towards the liberating resolution of a single chord,  completing the ritual! – all that’s left at the end is an ambience of wonderment, and a welcome reassurance that life and our world are worth preserving……

Virtuoso Turkish pianist Fazil Say appeared next on the programme as a composer, with his 2017 work Night (commissioned by the Dutch Piano Duo Lucas and Arthur Jusson). Say had previously (2013) gotten into trouble with Turkish authorities over remarks which he had “tweeted” being considered disrespectful to the Islam religion , to the point where he was convicted and given a suspended jail sentence, and his music banned from performance – as a gesture of support the dedicatees of Night actually played the work on tour in Ankera as an encore after it had been officially removed from the original programme. Ostensibly the piece is about contrasting qualities associated with the night and its mysteries, both sinister and enticing, though each of the contrasting moods might well readily lend themselves to subversive interpretation regarding repressions which could be exerted on individuals by an authoritative government.

Say’s piece opens with a shadowy, careering juggernaut-like propulsive character, somewhat reminiscent of the manner of Prokofiev in his earlier piano works, when at his most percussive and relentlessly rhythmic. Chen (primo) and Chao (secondo) build the excitement unerringly and remorselessly until the trajectories break off, and the players transform the ambiences with subtle manipulations of the piano strings inside the lid (evocations of the “alluring siren call” mentioned in the programme note). It’s as much music of “flight” and danger as of mystery and allurement, and its ending packs an almost self-destructing punch!

Polish Composer Hanna Kulenty’s work “VAN…” was next, after the interval. Originally written for a concert during the state visit to Poland by the King and Queen of the Netherlands in 2014, it wasn’t performed on that occasion for whatever reason, and was instead premiered later in the year by the aforementioned Dutch Piano Duo, Lucas and Arthur Jusson. The piece opens gently and spaciously with ascending/descending repeated chords in both the middle and higher registers of the piano, before the secondo player (Chao) abruptly beginning a toccata-like figure, soon taken up by the primo player, both of whom then enact an extended kaleidoscopic exchange of repeated impulses which constantly interact through exchange, reflection and alternation. The harmonies are tonal, and most wonderfully resonate both unto themselves and relative to their progressions, the effect being a kind of perception of a reality that’s constantly made to change, not unlike the effect in some minimalist works I’ve encountered. The players suddenly and abruptly stop the toccata figure upon a held chord, one whose resonant decay poignantly colours the return of the opening chordal figures into and through an amazing silence…..beautifully done…..

I couldn’t help feeling that the concert was become one of two distinct halves at this point, if not weighted quite as I was expecting, thanks to the outstanding musicianship of Beth Chen and Nicole Chao in making the diverse characters of the different works we’d so far heard really come to life – as someone whose prime purpose in attending the concert was to experience the final scheduled item “live” I found myself already replete with musical stimulation, and wondered as well how Chen and Chao would physically and mentally shape up to the Stravinsky work “The RIte of Spring” that we were about to hear, and  especially after despatching the first part of the programme so vigorously and convincingly.

As it turned out I had absolutely no cause to worry, though I confess the subsequent effect of both the performance of “The Rite” and its character as a piece of music surprised me, particularly so in the wake of my having heard that other piano duo performance on You Tube. My first impression upon watching the latter was that the piano version for me had radically changed the whole character of the piece from one whose primarily nature was rhythmic to one which at the very least stressed the equal importance of harmony. Having grown up exclusively hearing orchestral versions of  the piece, I’ve found, particularly in the more heavily-scored passages, the rhythmic complexities of the music to my ears have dominated and indeed often submerged things like harmony, colour and (in places) actual pitch of notes! For this reason it was like unexpectedly listening to a new work for me, one far less insistent and subjected to a hegemony of percussion and heavy scoring, as in most recordings I’d heard. I made no judgement of either in qualitative or quantitative terms, regarding both versions as equally valid, and especially after having read somewhere that the composer worked concurrently on both a piano and an orchestral score at the time of composition.

My second surprise, however, came at this point in the concert with the incredible playing in the same work of the wonderful Duo Enharmonics pair, which (unlike the You Tube version I’d watched and listened to) bore out the statements made by the programme’s note-writer relating to the piano as a “percussive instrument”, and the “heightened brutality” of the piano version – made, according to the writer, “on an instrument that is capable of becoming a machine”. And all because, unlike the on-line piano version I’d encountered and listened to, Beth Chen and Nicole Chao seemed to literally “take no prisoners” with the work, bringing to its presentation an attack, an edge, a richness of tone, a strength and an energy that for me rivalled many orchestral versions of the ballet I’d heard.  I’d actually go so far as to say that, for me, it all seemed at times even a bit too much of a good thing, with Chen and Chao pushing hard in places (such as in some of the detailings of the Introduction to Part One, where more light-and-shade of touch might have afforded some welcome variety; as could have parts of the Ritual of the Rival Tribes,  where I found the hammered tones now and then over-insistent).

It might seem as if I’m contradicting myself, here, but I did wonder to what extent Chen and Chao might have made themselves familiar with the work’s orchestral versions, so as to get such sounds as a kind of “reference” in their heads. In fact they may even have thought such a course was unnecessary, given that they were playing the composer’s own piano version with its own tailor-made dynamics. Having said all of this, I must emphasise  the fact that I was truly stunned by the Duo’s playing of the work, lost in admiration of what they were actually achieving, however much in places I might have wanted slightly more varied and transparent tones. It’s important to pay proper attention to what is actually done in order to convey as fully as possible one’s appreciation of it all – and therefore to what Duo Enharmonics achieved overall with this concert I take my hat off in sheer admiration and wonderment – “Sacre bleu!”

 

A concert of “music from then and now” with the NZSO

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Legacy – The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Stephen de Pledge (Piano)
Alexander Shelley (Conductor)

Gillian Whitehead retrieving the fragility of peace
Mozart Piano Concerto No, 20 in D Minor, K466
Brahms Symphony No, 1 in C Minor Op. 68

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 1 October 2022

This was a concert that spanned almost two and a half centuries, from Gillian Whitehead’s work commissioned by the NZSO and receiving its first performance during this series of concerts, through Mozart’s most popular piano concerto written in 1785, and culminating with Brahms’ First S ymphony of 1876. I found it a collection of works that asked questions about the nature of music, and what this music meant to people of their time and also to audiences at present.

Gillian Whitehead retrieving the fragility of peace

Gillian Whitehead is one of the doyens of New Zealand composers. Over her long and distinguished career she has drawn on the European Modernist tradition, but she has also mined her Maori heritage. Three years ago the NZSO commissioned her to write a piece, Turanga Nui, commemorating Cook’s landing on these shores in 1769. Now, a new work,  Retrieving the fragility of peace, commissioned by the NZSO for this tour, uses a similar soundscape, using the resources of a large orchestra to capture the sounds of the forest, its bird songs, and perhaps the thumping rhythms that suggest haka, war dance.

Forget conventions such as extended melodies and themes – this piece is about the basic ingredients of music, sound, tones, beat and silences. It challenges the listener, steeped in a European classical musical tradition to sit up and listen. There are instrumental interludes of sheer beauty – an extended cor anglais solo, for example, and  a cello solo – flute, winds, brass and a wide range of percussion and string sounds add colour, but significantly, it is silences that define the piece. It ends in silence, a pause over a few bars, a few seconds. The war dance resolves into peace. It has a distinctive beauty of its own.

Mozart Piano Concerto No, 20 in D Minor, K466

Over a period of two years Mozart wrote 11 concertos, most for his series of subscription concerts in Vienna, making use of the new developments of the piano. Of these, only two are in a minor key, D Minor K466, No. 20 and C Minor K491, No. 24, written in the following year. The D Minor concerto was, and probably still is, the most popular of Mozart’s concertos, foreshadowing the later romantic concertos of Beethoven and other composers. It starts with a haunting phrase repeated, calling to mind the final scene of Don Giovanni, an opera that was written two years later.

The soloist who was expected to play at this concert was the Venezuelan pianist, Gabriela Montero, but in the event she was unavailable, isolating after contracting Covid. At short notice the Auckland pianist, Stephen de Pledge was called upon to replace her. In no way did this seem to disadvantage Wellington. Stephen de Pledge played at a relaxed, expansive tempo which let the music breath. The dramatic first movement was followed by a lyrical extended song of the second movement that his sensitive playing did justice to. The unhurried last movement was a fitting climax to the concert, its dark shadow already there in Mozart’s imagination. A notable feature of this performance was de Pledge’s use of additional ornamentation, which seemed very appropriate to the piece. He also improvised his own cadenzas, with echoes of Mozart’s operas and even of Beethoven, who wrote a cadenza that is widely used. The orchestra supported the soloist with precise yet sensitive responses. For an encore de Pledge played Schumann’s Traumerei,  a very personal, romantic reading of which Schumann would have approved.

Brahms Symphony No, 1 in C Minor Op. 68

Brahms had written a number of large scale orchestral works before writing his first symphony. The shadow of Beethoven loomed large and he had to write something that followed Beethoven’s tradition, yet was different and uniquely his. This symphony is, like the Mozart Concerto, in a minor key. Brahms had a grand vision, a work with a confluence, a mosaic, of short themes that developed into overarching subjects to fill out symphonic sonata form. His musical language was that of the North German choral tradition. The coalescence of these themes created a rich many-layered sound, and in a less clearly-focused performance these individual themes could have got lost, overwhelmed by the main theme, – however, the mark of this performance was that every little nuance came through clearly, the competing themes carefully balanced. The first movement is a dialogue between an overtly military theme and a tranquil subject. The second movement is an extended chorale embellished by a beautiful flute solo, then a plaintive melody played by the strings. This movement is one of the most exquisite pieces of music in the symphonic repertoire. The third movement has the feel of a dark German song on which the rest of the movement elaborates. It is all a long way from the cheerful, lighthearted third movements, Minuet and Trios, of earlier symphonies. The final movement is the conclusion, the summation of the previous movements. The horns, winds, call to mind the Wagnerian sound. Then the Allegro con brio introduces the triumphal final theme, a theme that brings to mind Beethoven’s Ninth. And there, in the horns, there is a synergy with the trumpet calls of Gillian Whitehead’s piece that the concert started with.

It was a beautiful, clear, measured performance. If there were some slight inaccuracies that some picked up, these were completely lost amid the overpowering beautiful playing. The audience responded with a spontaneous ovation that you seldom hear at the end of the symphony. There was a general sense of elation, with people walking out at the end of the concert on a high, with the music ringing in their ears.

Music to celebrate an anniversary of international friendship

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Chinese Arts and Entertainment Group presents
East / West: A Symphonic Celebration

XILIN WANG The Torch from ‘Symphonic Poem from Yunnan’
DOUGLAS LIBURN Drysdale Overture
YUANKAI BAO Chinese Sights and Sounds
Happy Sunrise
Green Willow
Lan Huahua
Song of Riddles
Dialogue on Flowers
TIAN ZHOU – Gift (Commissioned work of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra)
TRADITIONAL Pokarekara Ana|
SHIGUANG WANG The song of the Yangtze River
PIANO CONCERTO ‘Yellow River’

Orchestra Wellington
Conductor: Brent Stewart
Soloists: Jian Liu, piano
Joanna Foot, soprano
Bo Jiang, tenor

Wellington Opera House

Tuesday, 20th September 2022

This concert, presented by the Chinese Arts & Entertainment Group, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and New Zealand. What a lovely way of celebrating this anniversary, with a full symphony orchestra, distinguished soloists and appealing music, Chinese and New Zealand.

Xilin Wang is one of the most remarkable older Chinese composers. The Torch Festival conjures up images of the traditional Yunnan province festival. Energetic wild  rhythmic celebratory passages are interspersed gentle melodious sections.

This Chinese landmark composition was followed by a work of New Zealand’s senior composer, Douglas Lilburn. Drysdale Overture was his first major composition. He wrote it while he was still a student at the Royal College of Music. It is a tribute to his father and the farm on which he grew up. It sounds a little like the music of his teacher, Vaughan Williams, but there are also echoes of Copland.

Pokarekare Ana is a popular traditional New Zealand love song probably originating during World War 1. It has been widely recorded, notably by Kiri Te Kanawa, with orchestral accompaniment, but it is also moving with only a simple guitar accompaniment. On this occasion, it was sung by the well known New Zealand operatic soprano, Joanna Foote. Lovely voice, impressive stage presence.

To balance the New Zealand item the next item was the popular Chinese song, The Song of the Yangtze by Shinguang Wang, President of the Chinese Opera. It was sung as a duet by Joanna Foote and the tenor, Bo Jiang, both well known opera singer.  Bo Jiang enhanced the performance not only with his fine light tenor voice, but also with his engaging smile and his dramatic gestures. The song was clearly very meaningful to the young Chinese woman sitting next to me, her eyes lit up, this was something she was very familiar with.

The Yellow River Concerto is a piano concerto arranged by a collaboration between Chinese composers, including Yin Chengzong and Chu Wanghua, and based on the Yellow River Cantata by composer, Xian Xinghai. This was done by order of Jiang Qing, wife of Chairman Mao. It has been popular around the world ever since. It is rousing music with vigorous dramatic virtuoso passages alternating with simple folk song like interludes. It was played with brilliance by Jian Liu, Head of Piano Studies and Director of Classical Performance at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University.

As an encore Joanna Foote and Bo Jiang sang the popular Chinese song, No Sleep Tonight, much liked by the Chinese members of the audience.

This was an interesting concert of  music, largely unknown to a local audience, but it was more than that. It was a gesture of friendship, a statement that music is international with no barriers.