Tag: contemporary music

Stroma – Iconic Sonics at the City Gallery, Wellington…..revisiting the new, along with the new

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma presents:
ICONIC SONICS – Music by Reuben Jellyman, Iannis Xenakis, Kaija Saariaho,
Witold Lutoslawski and Gyorgy Ligeti

SAARIAHO – New Gates (1996)
LIGETI – Ramifications (1968-9)
JELLEYMAN – Designs (2018 – world premiere)
XENAKIS – Aroura (1971)
LUTOSLAWSKI – Chain 1 (1983)

Stroma, conducted by Hamish McKeich

City Gallery, Civic Square, Wellington

Wednesday 29th August 2018

Eighteen years into the 21st Century a lot of music-lovers are still coming to grips with the innovators and radical figures of twentieth-century music.

It’s a process which was in some ways mirrored a century ago by the fin de siècle attitude of many people to the works of Berlioz, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Bruckner and Mahler, all of whom had to wait for a “later time”, at which stage their creative achievements were able to be given a fairer, more contextual hearing. Each of these composers achieved some degree of early success based on less challenging, more populist aspects of their output at the time, but all as well produced significant music that underwent neglect and/or earned them hostility, some of which “fallout” continues in certain cases to this day.

Each one of the offshore composers represented in this concert emulates those 19th century figures in their music of a century later, wanting to change the existing order of rules and conventions in order to discover hitherto unexplored worlds and renew human creativity. Though there continues to be something of a “divide” between traditionalists and supporters of the new, it’s by no means as pronounced or indeed as “character-assassination-like” in intent as of yore – and in fact there’s plenty more coming-and-going between the two “sides” than there used to be in the good/bad old days!

It’s possible that the music of Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006)  is the most widely-disseminated of that of the group, having, of course, been given a “head-start” by Stanley Kubrick in his iconic film 2001 – a Space Odyssey (albeit without the composer’s consent at first).  Ligeti’s music evokes the cosmos like no other, with no sounds conceivably more unearthly or far-flung than his Atmospheres, enthralling a whole generation of film-goers with his micro-polyphonic clusters piled up and intertwined like a great city’s communication-centre’s wires and cables. But he was never content to repeat himself, and though he was continually fascinated by polyphonies he strove to formulate new ways of arranging, or even “de-arranging” (deranging?) them. His Ramifications, for twelve solo strings, which we heard tonight, and which date from the end of the decade of Atmospheres, already show the composer employing “destabilising” techniques – diversifying the polyphonies by having half the ensemble tune higher than the other half, thereby heightening his writing’s tensions with built-in-dissonances.

The piece opened with “nature-sounds”, gently undulating textures pursuing separate patternings, like distant individual conversations, whose resonances seemed to gradually fuse as if organically linked, a kind of naturally-wrought beauty burgeoning towards the stratospheres and growing in intensity. The sounds clustered around and fused with a single note, before others magically “turned on” as if they were glow-worms in a dark cave. Lower instruments began their own patterned journeyings but with more volatile results, irruptions, re-stratifications, everything pursuing its own rhythmic and pitch courses – what frenzy! – what abandonment! – what devastations, as everything played itself out and tumbled down to the depths in a kind of private Gotterdammerung.

But with that, was the work finished? No, Ligeti’s fine wisps of skeletal light then quietly reactivated the “survivors” across a spectrum that reached down to things that went “bump” in the night, all of whom enigmatically withdrew, whispering ethereal blandishments into the composer’s eternities.

At this point I ought to confess that I’ve jumped ahead, as, for housekeeping reasons, the first piece Stroma presented was not Ligeti’s but one written by Kaija Saariaho (b.1952).  This work, titled New Gates was written in 1996, and was derived from a ballet called Maa, from five years earlier. The concert’s excellently-notated printed programme informed us that this ballet is constructed not around a plot as such but built out of “thematic archetypes” representing passing through into something new – gates, doors, journeyings, new worlds. Saariaho’s  sound-world here was accordingly made up of lucid, minimal gestures and figures, allowing we listeners time and space in which to connect with both finely-wrought timbral detail and larger, further-reaching ambiences and movements.

Written for just three instruments, flute, harp and viola, the music sounded a single note out of the silence of its beginning, whose pitch was bent upwards in a way that suggested a striving of impulse towards the heavens.  Throughout the music’s course the flute and violin breathed, bent and stretched their lines as the harp “texturised” the spaces and/or circumlocuted the portals of passage, often “bardic-sounding” as if accompanying a sequence of storytelling, or “fleshing out” an ongoing pulse. Those “fine timbral details” mentioned in the programme note were very much in evidence throughout, the timeless process of progressive change taking on varying forms, the most prevalent being a series of on-going exhalations which for a while gathered up energy and focus and threatened to burgeon without actually doing so, the light and movement of the impulses turning increasingly inward and gradually becoming infinitesimal.

Amid these and other compositional “heavies” stood steadfastedly the music of Reuben Jelleyman, here a world premiere of a work called Designs, written for the Stroma ensemble earlier this year. I thought the programme note, written by the composer, nicely “of a piece” with his music (which, of course, should go without saying, but at times doesn’t always seem to), having a freshness and candour regarding his youthful impressions. The music’s quiet opening belied the soundings of energies that followed from the eight instrumentalists, extremely visceral bendings, burgeonings, swayings, slidings, creakings and slippings, all very kinetic, and uncannily fluid and jagged all at once. The work unhesitatingly reacted with itself along its course, blending repetition with its composer’s reinvention of remembered things, the more extreme sonorities (an agonised screeching whose origin I couldn’t identify through sitting too far back, for example) becoming more integrated dynamically and rhythmically, as if the process of recollection had “shaken them down”. Things reached the point of tonelessness with thrummed strings, and breathed-through winds and brasses resembling ambient sighings as the ghosts drifted back to their places of origin, the harp uncannily playing what sounded like a brief reminiscence of Ravel’s “Introduction and Allegro” from the midst of the sonic debris, the remaining fragments becoming as things forgotten but still forever imprinted. I enjoyed this work due to its accessibility and its thoughtful exploration of the relationship between memory and recreation.

Having always previously trod cautiously around and about the music of Greek composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), I was interested to encounter an autobiography of sorts on an internet post (words which will probably already be familiar to the composer’s fans, of course), in which he talks about the uniqueness of individual human response to music, and specifically to his own creations: – “….Whatever I place there, consciously and probably also unconsciously, is perceived by the listener in a way that is perhaps not completely different, but sufficiently different in any case that you can never immediately draw conclusions about the meaning or value of a piece of music.” Along with Stroma’s programme note for Xenakis’s piece Aroura (1971) which was also written by the composer, the two statements in their different ways emboldened me to throw caution to the winds and “think inside” the sounds that I heard throughout the piece.

Xenakis’s opening observation regarding the title being the Homeric word for “earth” itself spoke volumes, as did the “word-made-flesh” textures of the piece’s sounds, a “virtual recreation” of the earth itself as we perceive it. My notes recorded as many of the multifarious realisations by the instruments as I could (my shortcomings in this exercise obviously akin to one’s limited conscious perceptions of the world – as with life, one does what one can with music!). So this piece marked, for me, an encounter with sounds which I could not only equate at least to some degree with their composer’s avowed intentions, but also allow myself my own impressions of, with hitherto unrealised confidence.

Too many to dwell upon all in detail, here, I’ve retained, firstly, a memory of a particularly haunting sequence of glissandi that opened up most disconcertingly what seemed an ever-widening chasm between lower and upper strings, exposing mysterious and suddenly vulnerable spaces between extremes in which it seemed we lived most of our lives. Then, at the piece’s conclusion, I registered a quiet, sardonic gesture of finality which silenced the “danse macabre” bouncing of bows upon strings (difficult to distinguish between hair and wood from a distance) with a single instrument’s whisperings.

Lastly came the work of Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) whose music I was introduced to in the 1970s via the composer’s Concerto for Orchestra. This was a work entitled Chain I, written in 1983, and one of a trio of works similarly-titled, though  otherwise unconnected. As with Xenakis’s work, the composer’s comments regarding the music were reproduced in what I thought was a model of its kind for a concert’s printed programme.

Lutoslawski was quoted as saying that he thought the act of composing was a search for listeners who thought and felt the same way he did—he once called it “fishing for souls”.  He wrote his work Chain I in something of that spirit, as a “gift” for the musicians of the London Sinfonietta, whom he had enjoyed working with – he called the work a “souvenir of……common music-making”.

The form of Chains I divided the music into two strands, with sections along the strand overlapped or “staggered” in terms of their beginnings and ends, and forming the greater part of the piece, with things increasing in complexity towards the end and allowing for individual figurations played “ad libitum” forming what Lutoslawski described as a “network of melodies”.

In effect, the sounds were impactful from the word go, with opening bursts of colour and energy reinforced by reverberant brass, then contrasted with cheeky winds flecked by harpsichord and percussion sonorities. The music developed into a dream-like dance, various instruments crossing the spaces as if entranced, the ambiences ghostly or crepuscular, depending on the listener’s predilections. A series of instrumental games featured several solos dovetailed as to produce ever-changing textures containing ravishing moments, whose freely-concerted strands of lyrical expression burgeoned in intensity and energy. Things took on an increasingly martial air until the gong and cymbals sounded us all up with a round turn, the winds flurrying like frightened birds! Having briefly tasted freedom, the ensemble was then reined in, the textures dissolving hue-by-hue and strand-by-strand into the silences.

Mention must be made of the concert’s surroundings, the City Gallery’s walls featuring parts of an exhibition entitled “Iconography of Revolt”, and visually expressing something of the determined individuality and uncompromising impact of new art found in abundance throughout Stroma’s skilled and whole-hearted musical presentations.

 

 

 

 

 

East and West mingle at Wellington Youth Orchestra Concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:
LOVE AND FREEDOM

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Leonore Overture No.2 Op.72a / Symphony No. 7 in A Major Op. 92
MICHAEL VINTEN – Six Korean Love Poems (arr. Anne French)

Sarah Court  (mezzo-soprano)
Wellington Youth Orchestra
Michael Vinten (conductor)

St.James’ Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Sunday, 19th August, 2018

A most striking frontispiece on the programme cover (uncredited) for this enterprising concert seemed to alert us to the presence of something out-of-the-ordinary – an illustration something along the lines of those disconcerting front-and-profile images of one and the same person. It wasn’t exactly that, in this case, but the effect certainly caused a double-take on my part, which I presume was the idea! – here, a youthful portrait of Beethoven was set literally cheek-by jowl with a young woman’s image similarly iconic (if somewhat Westernised) in exotic effect.

All that it was signifying was the programme’s setting of a pair of “classic” orchestral pieces next to an almost brand-new New Zealand work, a premiere of sorts, in fact – more about this circumstance below. The venue wasn’t the orchestra’s usual performing-place, with Wellington’s still-recent spate of earthquake activity continuing to exert its toll by putting pressure on performing groups seeking appropriate spaces in which to do their thing, as various buildings normally used for this purpose get ear-marked for “strengthening”, a process which takes time and considerable expense.

Here, it was St.James’ Church in Woburn which served the purpose, a place in which I’d previously heard vocal ensemble music, but not an orchestra. I thought the sound lively (too much so, it seemed to me, in the case of the timpani), and with an audience present to soak up some of the reverberation, allowing plenty of detail to register. Best of all sound-wise was the set of songs, with the singer’s forward placement enabling her superb diction to give the words that inner life which concert situations so often blur or impede in an unhelpful acoustic. The orchestral detail, too, bloomed in those spaces, the sounds working beautifully with the singer to convey the composer’s desired effect.

First up, though, and very properly, was an overture (I invariably think, at a concert’s beginning, of Michael Flanders, of “At the Drop of a Hat” fame in partnership with Donald Swann, telling his audience that they always considered their opening song important, because, as he remarked, “it helps us to get the pitch of the hall”) – and so it was, here, with the very opening chord of Beethoven’s Leonore No.2 Overture (written for the composer’s one and only opera) generating a sound which, thanks to conductor Michael Vinten’s expert direction and the players’ sharpness of response, nicely “defined” the spaces, and set the ambient tone for what was to follow.

The winds had a lovely colour throughout the work’s opening, with supportive work by the horns creating a sense of expectancy, and leading to some strong and sure chording whose aftermath gave rise to the work’s principal melody, the radiance eventually breaking through the darkness – the strings managed their tricky syncopations throughout, while the winds brought forth a lovely “glow” with Leonore’s lover Florestan’s lyrical theme, the exchanges allowed time and elbow-space to phrase their figurations. The ‘cellos enjoyed their playing of the main allegro theme, counterpointed by the winds and leading up to the stormy sequences which preceded the famous trumpet fanfare – here played with breathtaking skill on both occasions by the orchestra’s principal player Vincent Brzozowski. More expert playing from the winds brought back the music’s lyricism and expectancy of light triumphing over darkness, the strings playing the notes with a kind of breathless caution at first before gaining in confidence and activating themselves and one another to cascade outwards in all directions, excitingly sounding the theme in a kind of gabble, and bringing forth the brasses in glorious C Major with an energised, victorious version of Florestan’s “Leonore” tune. Vinten got his players to work up a “real” presto-like tumult here, skin and hair flying and no prisoners taken, a truly joyous conclusion to a well-fought musical campaign.

I was curious enough originally at Michael Vinten’s choice of Korean texts for his song-cycle “Six Korean Love-Poems”, but things became “curiouser and curiouser” when I discovered that the English words from the poems were in fact “transliterations” by the New Zealand poet Anne French – the programme note elaborates further by saying, re the original texts, “Anne has taken their ideas and images and refashioned them, whilst retaining a flavour of the originals”. Any disquiet I might have had regarding such a practice was effectively quashed when remembering that Gustav Mahler’s purportedly translated Chinese texts in his song-cycle “Das Lied von der Erde” were similarly “adapted” by Hans Bethge from material which itself had been in places “expanded” by earlier European sinologists. In fact Mahler himself in places revised Bethge’s wording to fit his musical lines, further distancing his work from the original “letter”, even if retaining the “spirit”. Well, I reasoned, if it was good enough for Gustav Mahler……….

Vinten set French’s versions of these poems during 2015/16 for voice and piano, and they were premiered in Brisbane in 2016 by today’s singer, Sarah Court, and pianist Therese Milanovic. Today’s performance was thus the world premiere of the songs’ orchestral version, and the first time they had been performed in New Zealand in any form. I’m not sure whether the composer’s original intention was to eventually orchestrate them, or whether it became obvious over time that they cried out for orchestral colour and variation – but whatever the case, and, of course, not having heard the voice-and-piano version of the songs, I thought the realisations remarkably “at one” with the texts.

Anne French used verses by poets writing as early as 1560 (Hwang  Chin-i, a sixteenth-century gisaeng, or courtesan, famous for her beauty and intellect), and more recently, Kim So-wol (1903-1934, considered the “founder” of modern Korean poetry, despite his tragically short life) and Han Yong-Un (1879-1944, a Buddhist monk, reformer and poet). Each of the poems in the collection had a different kind of intensity of shade, texture, or colour of utterance, which I thought Vinten’s writing reflected in each case. Thus, the music of the first poem connected with the words’ evocations of natural phenomena, the leaves falling, the scent of flowers, the babble of a stream, all of which were heard in both figurations and their accompanying stillnesses, the vocal line mirroring the “natural dance” of these things. The second song seemed like a series of sighs, with long singing lines and warm, luscious textures, delineating a period of waiting for the arrival of a lover. By contrast, the third poem was a tightly-woven mind-game interaction, quixotic and angular in effect with exotic tinges coloured by percussion in places, and yielding at the end in accordance with the words “softened just a little by love”.

How different the evocations for the following “The sweet briar rose”, diaphanous textures and repeated patternings creating an ethereal effect over which the vocal line rhapsodised, while a flute solo joined in with an exquisite effect of tremulous wonderment – the voice soared, swayed, teased, enticed and reflected, before resigning to waiting, with a brief orchestral postlude for company. The fifth poem was a soliloquy on deprivation following the loved one’s departure, the opening agitated figures supporting the singer’s description of the “treading red and gold leaves under his feet”, almost like a running commentary, with strings and timpani pushing the music forwards. With a memory of a first meeting the music became rhapsodical, and then as the singer voiced a strategy “let my grief kindle my hope”, the sounds threw open the picture, suggesting distance and emptiness spanned by the vocal line’s confident tones. In stark contrast, the final song generated no such comfort or confidence, the piccolo and other winds evoking loneliness and abandonment, the vocal line angry – “Let that name be broken into pieces”, anguished – “Let that name be scattered on the air”, and despairing – “There is no answer to it yet”. The instrumental writing adroitly suggested full, rich textures yet remained curiously open, almost feeling cut adrift, as the sounds evoked that “great space between earth and sky” and generated brief moments of grandeur before dissolving, leaving behind the desolation of a solo violin and dark percussion sounds underpinned by low piano notes as the singer intoned “I call your name in sadness”. A brief frisson of energy accompanied the words “I shall be calling your name all my life”, before a final plaintive statement from the piccolo signalled the end of the piece.

An interval allowed time and space for what we’d heard to settle and take hold within, though the performance had from the outset already begun to carve a niche of enduring memory, thanks to Sarah Court’s rich and varied mezzo tones and her heartfelt rendering of the texts, augmented by an incredibly inventive panoply of orchestral sounds gotten from the players by the composer himself on the podium. I found myself marvelling at the human empathies of those words, poet Anne French triumphantly forging a link here with expressions of feeling one might consider on the face of things intractably rooted to far-removed worlds, mere curiosities from an alien culture – what came through, of course, was a shared and binding humanity, though I wouldn’t have been surprised had the “thought-police” of cultural appropriation gotten wind of the occasion and chimed in at some stage, PC spurs and medallions jangling!

Refreshed, we settled back to listen to what would be made of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the work famously styled by Wagner as “the apotheosis of the dance” (in contrast with the view of one of Beethoven’s contemporaries, Carl Maria von Weber, who remarked on hearing the work that its composer was ‘fit for the madhouse!”).  Michael Vinten seemed to take Wagner at his word regarding his approach to Beethoven’s music, which was athletic and sprightly rather than grand and monumental. The opening chord, though slightly fallible, had considerable “punch”, and though the scales were played tentatively at first, the strings got more of a “swing” as the music went along. Both winds and timpani kept the rhythms sprightly, the timpanist (whose work I always admire) playing a shade too emphatically for me occasionally in this context, though always exciting and reliable (a moment of concerted confusion apart, later in the movement). The allegro stumbled a bit at its outset, but was finally launched, Vinten driving the dotted rhythms at a great rate, the effect somewhat raucous, but also very “Beethoven”, vibrant and unbuttoned!

It was this energy of Beethoven’s writing that was consistently conveyed by the performance, and which I relished, despite the occasional hit-and-miss element with the notes. It’s always seemed to me more important for players in youth and amateur ensembles to be encouraged to “get the rhythms right”, and, past a certain point, let the notes take care of themselves – if the rhythms are strong and confident, then the music will sound right despite any mis-hits, but if the rhythms are untidy, then no amount of correctly-sounded notes are going to be of much use! With brisk speeds and strongly-wrought rhythmic direction,  Vinten seemed to me to be achieving plenty of coherent excitement with these players. There was the occasional mixup, most notably near the first movement’s end with the music emerging from the grinding bass vortices, and some voices coming in a measure too early; but in general, the dance and its irrepressible rhythms triumphed!

The symphony’s most renowned for its “slow” movement, and here, the processional-like figures received well-wrought and full-throated treatment from all concerned, the lower strings especially good at the outset, the cellos eloquent and soulful. The contrasting major sequences  sounded properly easeful, with nicely-articulated canonic work between winds and horn, and the great cascading return to the processional rhythm was impressively managed. The strings held their rhythmic patternings beautifully throughout the fugato, and integrated superbly with the rest of the orchestra at the grand, ceremonial refrain of the hymn-tune – a great moment!

What an orchestral difficulty the scherzo must be to launch! Untidy at the very beginning, the ensemble rallied itself, once again finding the rhythm’s “swing” and managing the whiplash szforzandi with great elan! Vinten kept the Trio moving, encouraging the players to plunge into the full tutti, boots and all – very exciting! – and afterwards, perhaps emboldened by what they’d just achieved, the reprise of the scherzo’s opening was much tidier.

Despite my “connecting” with Vinten’s way of keeping the ensemble rhythmically tight, I still wasn’t prepared for the “Vienna Philharmonic” speed with which the finale began, here! – though occasionally starved of tonal weight, the sounds leapt forwards with each accented downstroke, the players keeping things together as if their lives depended on the outcome! I occasionally thought more weight could have been applied to some phrases, such as the lower strings’ reply to the oft-repeated dotted figure hurled at them by the upper strings – but this was a small point compared with the energy generated by the whole. At the end we certainly felt as though we had been immersed in a kind of maelstrom, the conductor and players sharing with us an accompanying sense of satisfaction at re-emerging with exhaustion and invigoration triumphantly hand-in-hand!

 

 

One piano, six hands and a programme of highly unfamiliar, surprising music by composers in unorthodox mode

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZ Six Hands Trio: Hamish Robb, Nicole Chao, Beth Chen

Rasim Ramazanov: Salsa Rhythm and Small Rhapsody (trio)
Rachmaninov:  Barcarolle and Scherzo, from Six Morceaux, Op. 11 (Hamish Robb & Beth Chen)
Johann Strauss (arr. Greg Anderson): Blue Danube Fantasy (Nicole Chao & Beth Chen)
Mike Cornick: Bénodet Breeze, from Three Pieces for Six Hands (trio)
Gershwin, arr. Manfred Schmitz, ‘I Got Rhythm’ (trio)
Lidia Kalendareva and Alin Cristian Oprea: Russian Dance for Six Hands (trio)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 August , 12:15 pm

Though this three-pianist ensemble has evidently been around for a while, I hadn’t encountered them. All three were masters students together at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University nearly 20 years ago.

They operate at one keyboard, in case you have the impression that even the piano duet format is a bit crowded and might be uncomfortable; their places at the keyboard varied with each piece.

Clearly there was neither discomfort nor embarrassment here, for they emanated a feeling of considerable enjoyment.

The first two pieces were by Rasim Ramazanov. I am always interested in composers’ identity but there were no notes and the material that the trio sent to me later did not offer any information about him. Nor did the Internet help initially as there are scores of people with the name, but eventually I spotted a composer-pianist whose name fitted, evidently from Crimea or Ukraine, with a Tartar connection; there were several others of the name in Azerbaijan.

Anyway, the first of his two pieces, Salsa Rhythm, was vigorously rhythmic, jazzy, suggested Gershwin influence and involved ‘prepared piano’ technique, creating dampened string sounds, while the second, Small Rhapsody, was calmer and more melodic, again involving strumming deadened strings inside the piano; there was a third piece, not mentioned in the notes: perhaps one of the two named was in two parts.

Beth Chen and Hamish Robb played two pieces from Rachmaninov’s Six morceaux, Op 11. The Baracrolle sounded Prokofievish rather than Chopinesque while the Scherzo was playful, even frenzied in character with dotted rhythms, sounding very uncharacteristically Rachmaninov. But there was no question about the pianists’ command of the notes and their idiom.

A highly unorthodox yet entertaining fantasy version of The Blue Danube followed, possibly still recognisable by Johann II had he stopped by, as it could, at a pinch, have been a particularly adventurous Lisztian paraphrase.

Mike Cornick’s Bénodet Breeze, from his Three Pieces for Six Hands again had hints of Gershwin or perhaps Poulenc; extremely dense, as if all 30 available fingers were involved at times.

Gershwin himself, arranged by Manfred Schmitz, arrived next, with ‘I got rhythm’, with sequences of heavy, rising chords exaggerating the basic rhythm.

And finally Russian Dance for Six Hands by Lidia Kalendareva and Alin Cristian Oprea. Lidia is from Saint Petersburg and Alin was born in Bucharest; both were educated partly in Germany; both studied at Rostock, a famous university city in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, north-east Germany. They are involved in many styles of music, prominently film, judging by websites. They operate as LA Music. One could well wonder how the composing partnership worked – perhaps each contributed one player’s part while the third was a compromise. This again revealed echoes of Prokofiev, pausing after a while to resume in a more relaxed manner, now dropping hints of Bartók, mining his huge collection of Balkan folk music.

I found this on their website: “Lidia Kalendareva & Alin Cristian Oprea founded LA Music in 2005. They perform and create international award winning custom made music for a variety of different purposes: reaching from music and arrangements for media, movies, games, commercials, to ballet shows and concert music.” Try it out: https://www.la-music.com/ – quite beguiling.

It was a high energy recital, the main object seeming to be to strip away orthodox expectations of the nature of piano music, and listeners’ prejudices, that might be limited to Chopin and Brahms.

Admirable, stimulating programme of piano trios from Te Koki Trio

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Te Koki Trio: Martin Riseley (violin), Inbal Megiddo (cello), Jian Liu (piano) – senior lecturers in Victoria University School of Music
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Brahms: Piano Trio in C minor Op. 101
Avner Dorman: Piano Trio No. 2
Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67

St. Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 20 May 3 pm

Gale-force winds outside might have been an appropriate accompaniment to Shostakovich’s frightful war-time masterpiece. But it was not necessarily a fitting way to characterise Brahms’s third piano trio. In spite of the remarks in the programme notes (in general, illuminating), and even though it’s in a minor key, I have never found the opening pages devoid of melody, or revealing an ‘unsettled nature’; though later movements might be so characterised.

However, Jian Liu’s reading of the opening chords might for a moment have supported the sense of the programme note. His first chords were so heavy that they dominated the violin and cello and I rather wished the lid had been down, as well perhaps as having the piano on a carpet. But the music soon shifts to the much more sustained, warm and heart-felt second subject that in fact seemed to characterise most of the movement, in spite of momentary returns of the more emphatic first theme. The imbalance between piano and strings didn’t recur.

The notes might have somewhat exaggerated the restless and haunted nature of the second movement which is considered the Scherzo, though not marked so. The minor key colours the entire work and even this ‘scherzo’ movement hardly produces a feeling of ecstasy or contentment. Much of it is staccato in character, permitting neither buoyancy nor delight. The singular feature of the work as a whole is the shortness of each movement – the second movement lasts only about four minutes. And the first was only about twice as long.

The Brahms we’ve waited for arrives in the third movement, and here Martin Riseley’s violin and Inbal Megiddo’s cello play alone for half a minute and they do so again after the piano had a brief contribution. The movement seemed all too short, as I couldn’t help feeling that the players longed for its prolonging and I even wondered whether there was actually a repeat that they were ignoring. There is not of course. Here was the quintessential Brahms writing the most expressive and alluring music, and the programme note’s ‘unsettled material’ and ‘irregular phrases’ were not very audible to me.

Even though the last movement remains in the minor key and there’s a seriousness of mind which the players showed their full awareness of, there’s no lack of melody, even if the tunes are sometimes stretched over a wide range, and the occasional staccato irruptions hardly encouraged the listener to drift into a feeling of contentment. The gentle rising and falling theme which becomes the heart of the movement was all too short.

Avner Dorman
The novelty of the concert was a 2002 trio by Jewish-American composer Avner Dorman. When I looked at YouTube, I was surprised to find scores of performances of a great variety of music by Dorman, though none of this piano trio. He has clearly attracted a large following for music that is distinctive and genuinely imaginative. His music seems often to begin in a comfortable, familiar manner, sometimes, like the present trio, with the utmost simplicity. It began with a simple four-note chorale-like motif, repeated in subtly changing ways, creating at least the impression of each instrument playing distinct phrases in different keys, while one became aware of the original motif continuing repetitiously below the evolving sounds above.

Dissonances slowly became more and more arresting and complex, curiously, not in a way that aroused frustration or irritation. Perhaps no dissonance can today really sound barbarous or outrageous because profligate use of it has diminished its impact, its capacity to offend. Just as swearing in public, on television and film no longer has the power to shock though I suppose there are still some who find it offensive just as some still find gross dissonance offensive. To me these passages were simply counterpoints or foils to the more conventional. The players gave every sign of commitment, persuaded that here was music that had something to say, music that was not imitative but which did not seek to be ‘original’ just to win academic brownie-points.

These situations are always interesting as some in the audience reacted with at least a little reserve, even disapproval. The second movement was faster, no less free with unorthodox harmony and darting, reckless rhythms. Sudden passages of meditative music, violin and cello bowing their way in adagio sequences; then rushing torrents, from high to low registers. One always searches for influences and these were hard to perceive; perhaps certain hints of Vasks or Pelecis came to mind, absurdly perhaps.

Shostakovich’s Piano Trio Op 67
Few pieces of chamber music in the 20th century pack the punch that Shostakovich’s 1944 piano trio does (unless it’s his Eighth String Quartet). I first came to know it through performances by the Turnovsky Trio (Sam Konise, Christopher Kane and Eugene Albulescu) in the 90s. The famous opening, starting with uncanny, false (or artificial) harmonics by using (with the cello) the thumb to shorten the length of sounding string, presaged an extraordinarily sensitive and expressive performance. One could dwell on the range of ‘effects’ employed by the piece, but it is better to consider the plain emotional impact of the music – a matter that should always come before academic consideration of the means by which it’s achieved.

Traditional descriptive musical language, Allegro con brio, hardly captures the real nature of the music, any more than the neutral moderato and poco piu mosso does of the first movement. Its brio isn’t altogether a mistake, but there’s a manic quality here, and with all the bite and energy these players adopt makes you sit bolt upright. It’s the third movement in which Shostakovich expresses the grief that war has plunged his country into, a sustained threnody which fades with dying piano notes to the piano’s grief-stricken staccato start of the last movement.

Though written presumably after the Siege of Leningrad had been lifted (January 1944; the composer had been evacuated from the city in October 1941) this movement remains one of the most graphic, emotional descriptions of war imaginable. And the playing varied from despairing to terrifying, to repetitive, violent passages interspersed with sudden pauses to reflect and regain one’s balance and equilibrium.

I found the whole programme, the choice of works and their committed and accomplished performance by these three senior lecturers in the School of Music totally engrossing. As I seem to say often, it deserved a far bigger audience; a few short years ago these concerts in the Ilott Theatre in the “How long must we wait?’ Town Hall used to attract a couple of hundred people, even in blizzard conditions.

 

Jason Bae – an enterprising, exploratory and heroic performer

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School Of Music

A recital by Jason Bae

Debussy – Images oubliées
Esa-Pekka Salonen – Dichotomie (NZ Premiere)
Grieg – Ballade Op.24
Medtner – Piano Sonata No.11 Sonata tragica Op.39 No.5

Jason Bae (piano)

Adam Concert Room,
Te Kōkī New Zealand School Of Music,
Victoria University of Wellington

Friday, 13th April 2018

Korean-born NZ-adopted pianist Jason Bae made a welcome return a week ago to the Wellington region for a lunchtime recital at the School of Music’s Adam Concert Room, Victoria University. He brought with him a programme he’s taken to a number of venues around the country, one whose content suggested that there would be no compromises on an artistic level, despite the degree of informality and relaxation often associated with a “lunchtime concert”. This was a programme deserving of serious, five-star attention from start to finish, and received playing that fully realised the “serious” intent of the pianist’s enterprising choice of repertoire.

Bae has already made his mark in the world of piano-playing with many prize-giving performances and awards in various places around the world – according to his web-site, his recent activities include performing recitals in Helsinki, Finland and in Seoul, Korea, as well as currently in New Zealand.  The young pianist is also turning his attention to orchestral conducting, making his New Zealand conducting debut with the Westlake Symphony Orchestra in Auckland. He’s obviously one of those multi-talented musicians who has the aptitude to succeed at whatever he turns his hand to.

Judging from the programme we heard Bae perform at the Music School on Friday, there’s no ‘resting on his laurels”, no trotting out well-consolidated warhorses with which to impress audiences. These pieces required his listeners to come some of the way themselves towards the music, itself extremely varied in content and character, rather than simply let it all “wash over” the sensibilities in a generalised way. Perhaps the best-known of these works, albeit in a roundabout fashion, was that of Debussy’s “Images oubliées” (an earlier work than each of the two, better-known sets of “Images”, but one which, for some reason, wasn’t published in the composer’s lifetime). Recently,  though, there has been some recorded attention given both to Medtner’s solo piano works and to Grieg’s hitherto neglected output outside the “Lyric Pieces”. Certainly the remainder of Bae’s programme indicated there were treasures aplenty awaiting more widespread awareness and approval.

The opening of the Debussy work (Lent) brought forth exquisitely-voiced tones from the young pianist, the sounds resembling some kind of ethereal recitative, accompanied by the softest, most velvety of arpeggiations. This accorded with the composer’s own description of the pieces as “not for brilliantly-lit salons…..but rather, conversations between the piano and oneself”. Bae allowed a beautifully-appointed ebb-and-flow of colours and contours, a kind of nature-benediction in sound, allowing the tones at the end to breathtakingly mingle with the silences.

The second piece “Souvenir du Louvre” bore a close relationship with a movement from the composer’s later “Pour le piano”, a rather more fulsome version of what became the Sarabande from the latter work. Again, the pianist’s evocations were meticulously directed towards detailings of wondrous delicacy, with dialogues throughout sounded between the piano’s different registers, sculpted strength set against liquid movement. Debussy’s original was actually written for Yvonne Lerolle, the girl both Degas and Renoir painted at the piano, and for whom the composer described the piece with the words “slow and solemn, even a bit like an old portrait” (hence the title).

The title of the third piece betrays its inspiration even more candidly than does the later work it (only) occasionally resembles – “Jardins sous la pluie” from “Estampes” with its well-known folk-song quotations. Here it is somewhat teasingly called by the composer “Quelques aspects de ‘Nous n’irons plus au bois'” (Aspects of the song “We will not go to the woods”), with the added afterthought, for the benefit of his young dedicatee, “…because the weather is dreadful”…….Bae’s fleet-fingered playing evoked a game of chase through the woods, by turns lightly-brushed and hard-hitting, with some tolling bells sounding towards the end, the piece then disappearing literally into thin air.

By way of introducing the next work on the programme, Bae spent some time talking with us about his relationship with a composer who’s better known as a conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, after which the pianist performed Salonen’s work for solo piano “Dichotomy”. One of a select few of brilliant contemporary performing musicians who significantly compose, Salonen has a number of important works to his credit, for orchestra, two concerti (piano and violin), and a large-scale work for orchestra and chorus, “Karawane”, which premiered in 2014 in Zurich.

Salonen’s work isn’t exactly “hot off the press”, Dichotomie having received its premiere as far back as 2000, in Los Angeles. The composer wanted a short, encore-type piece as a present for a favourite soloist, Gloria Cheng, but, as he discovered, the material he wrote seemed to take on a life of its own,  and expand to proportions bearing little relation to its actual conception. Jason Bae explained to us, along with his account of a serendipitous encounter with Salonen that led to his espousal of the composer’s work, how the music came to be, its two-movement structure representing a relationship between the two “kinds” of music that Salonen seemed to create almost involuntarily. Thus the first movement of this work, Mechanisme, represented machine-like processes, while the second, Organisme, had a more naturalistic way of developing and extending created material. Salonen wanted to explore how these very different styles might, by dint of juxtaposition, “borrow” qualities from one another which could affect their development.

I confess to being fascinated by what I heard, which is a way of paying tribute to Jason Bae’s playing of it as well. The opening of Mechanisme was indeed motoric and Prokofiev-like, the rhythms growing and developing in dynamically varied ways, with different sequences taking on different and unpredictable characters, variously syncopated, symmetrical or angular. Bae’s playing built to almost frighteningly orchestral levels of volume and intensity, before abruptly adopting flowing, legato phrasing that suggested some kind of counter-impulse had been mysteriously, even covertly activated within the work’s being. It preluded a mercurial section where one sensed the creative process was in a kind of ferment of crisis (the machine, perhaps, trying to be human?), with the musical argument appearing to fragment under scrutiny, almost to the point of stasis. A final counter-burst of incendiary energy, notes swirling and figurations exploding in every direction, left the music almost insensible, with only a few legato-phrased, wider-spaced chords holding the centre, and pronouncing the “new order”.

The following Organisme brought forth shimmering, exploratory textures containing reiterating figurations attempting to secure their tentative foot-and finger-holds in the music’s fabric. I thought it Debussy-like in places in a textured sense, the basic materials gradually coalescing and producing a kind of ambient glow, with beautifully voiced fragments of melody floating by on wings of air. The trajectories were passed from hand to hand, thereby suggesting a kind of osmotic continuity of flow, one which inevitably built up tensions of a kind that saw the tones take on increasingly rhythmic and thrustful expression, becoming tumultuous in the sense of a storm, the pianist sending great arabesques of tone shooting upwards and into the ether. Having resisted the temptation to inhabit “the dark side” the music made a flourish of quiet triumph, and the piece ended enigmatically – all told, an enthralling listening experience, thanks in part to Bae’s brilliant advocacy.

Further explorations were furnished by the pianist with his programming of Edvard Grieg’s rarely-heard Ballade Op.24, in my view one of the composer’s greatest works. It was one of the pieces that the tragically short-lived New Zealand pianist Richard Farrell recorded (as part of an all-Grieg recital disc), but has yet to claim a regular place in the concert repertoire. Though part of this is due to the piece’s technical difficulty, my feeling is that Grieg is still regarded by many people as a “miniaturist”, able to turn out  pretty Scandivavian picture-postcards in the form of his numerous “Lyric Pieces”, but lacking the ability to handle larger forms (despite his magnificent Piano Concerto!). Debussy’s well-known swipe at Grieg (“a pink bonbon filled with snow” was his description of one of the latter’s “Elegiec Melodies”) hasn’t helped the latter’s cause – but less well-known is the remark made by Frederick Delius to Maurice Ravel, that “modern French music is simply Grieg, plus the third act of Tristan”, to which Ravel replied, “That is true – we are always unjust to Grieg.”

Justice was certainly done to Grieg by Jason Bae, here a rather more turbo-charged reading in places than that of Richard Farrell’s poetic soundscapings, one underlining the music’s virtuoso aspect, while giving the more ruminative passages enough space in which to breathe Grieg’s bracing air. The work is basically a theme-and-variations treatment of a Norwegian folk-song melody,  “Den Nordlanske Bondestand” (The Northland Peasantry), and ranges from extremely simple elaborations of the theme to full-scale, almost orchestral outbursts of expression, including some forward-looking, even daring excursions into harmonic conflict, particularly during the work’s final cataclysmic section, before the music suddenly dissolves all such conflicts and returns to the melancholy of the original theme. In general, I thought Bae most successfully brought out the music’s brilliance and sharply-etched contrasts, underlining in places the music’s debt towards and kinship with that of Liszt (Variations 11 and 12 are here particularly overwhelming in an orchestral sense!) but also paying ample tribute to Grieg’s own originality. The pianist’s playing of No.9 allowed the composer’s singular gift for melodic piquancy its full effect, while No.10 here vividly captured the music’s characteristic rustic charm and feeling for grass-roots expressions of energy. In the wake of this performance I’m sure Bae would have garnered in many listeners’ minds fresh respect for Grieg as a composer.

The recital concluded with a work from a figure whose music has only recently received the kind of mainstream espousal needed for it to flourish. Russian-born Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951), a younger contemporary of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, received much the same acclaim as a result of his musical studies in Moscow, but then elected to devote himself entirely to composition rather than pursue a career as a pianist. However (and perhaps not surprisingly) the piano figured in practically all of his major compositions, both prior to and after leaving Russia in 1921. Altogether, Medtner completed fourteen piano sonatas, Jason Bae performing for us the eleventh (which the composer subtitled Sonata Tragica, possibly as a reaction to the aftermath of the Russian Revolution) The sonata, incidentally, was one of a set of pieces separately entitled “Forgotten Melodies” (Second Cycle) by the composer. Those who have a taste for idiosyncratic numbering methods of musical compositions will find much to enjoy in Medtner’s own various enumerations of these works.

None of which is relevant to Jason Bae’s performance of the music, which seemed to me to front up squarely to the piece’s overall character, with its big-boned, declamatory  aspect at the beginning and the war-like march that follows proclaiming a Slavic temperament, with the swirling textures obviously breathing the same air as did Rachmaninov’s music. Bae gave the flowing lyricism which followed plenty of “soul”, allowing the deeper textures to make their mark amid the frequent exchanges between the hands, then gradually building the excitement to almost fever pitch, before strongly arresting the flow of the music with a portentous left-hand, almost fugue-like version of the opening declamation – all very exciting! The pianist’s beautifully wrought filigree finger-work introduced further agitations, the music building inexorably towards a kind of breaking-point (Bae’s left hand performing miracles of transcendent articulation) at the apex of which the sonata’s main theme thundered out at us most resplendently and defiantly! It was music that, in this player’s expert hands, punched well above its own weight, with a bigness of utterance which belied its brief duration!

Very great acclaim greeted the young pianist, at the conclusion of this challenging, and in the event splendidly-achieved presentation of some monumental music.

Brilliance and feeling from the Mazzoli Trio at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:

MAZZOLI STRING TRIO

Julie Park (viola), Sally Kim (‘cello), Shauno Isomura (violin)

SCHUBERT –  Trio in B-flat Major D.471
A. RITCHIE – Spring String Trio (2013)
FRANCAIX – String Trio (1933)
MISSY MAZZOLI – Lies You Can Believe In (2006)
HAYDN – Trio in G Major Op.53/1
DOHNANYI – Serenade Op.10

Lower Hutt Little Theatre,

Monday, 26th March 2018

Formed in 2015 by students from the University of Auckland and the Pettman National Junior Academy of Music, the Mazzoli Trio, so the story goes, took its name from that of a composer of a piece of music which was one of the first the trio of musicians had prepared. They had fallen in love with the piece, one called “Lies You Can Believe In”, written by up-and-coming New York composer Missy Mazzoli, and thereupon contacted her to ask if she would allow the Trio to use her name, as well as perform her music. And so a new and vital ensemble was born, with its first major assignment in public an invitation to perform at a concert at the 2nd International Pacific Alliance of Music Schools’ Summit in Beijing, China, an occasion which brought them much acclaim regarding both their playing and the repertoire chosen.

Monday evening’s concert at the Lower Hutt Little Theatre was one of a number of appearances by the Trio throughout the North Island organised by Chamber Music New Zealand. The programme seemed a judiciously chosen selection of works both familiar and intriguing, with the Trio’s “signature work”, by Missy Mazzoli, promising to be one of the evening’s particular fascinations. Interestingly, both halves of the concert had their order as per programme changed, which left me to wonder whether there had been a simple misunderstanding between the musicians and the printers, or, alternatively represented a significant rethink by the musicians of a previously existing order. Whatever the case, it made not the slightest difference to our anticipated enjoyment and receptivity of the concert.

So, instead of beginning the evening’s music with Anthony Ritchie’s “Spring String Trio”, we heard instead Schubert’s B-flat Major Trio D.471, a work in a single movement, which was played with such freshness and simplicity of wide-eyed wonderment that our hearts were instantly captured. What struck me instantly about the playing was that, despite the Trio’s obvious youth the music-making was imbued with such character. Part of this came from the players’ awareness of the interactiveness of the different instruments, each ready to assert and then give way, beautifully dovetailing the various musical arguments, and delighting the ear in doing so. We enjoyed the “shape” of the piece, its vivid contourings through the opening’s lyricism and contrasting dynamism, and the music’s intensification throughout the development, before the eventual “unravelling” of these tensions, instigated by the opening’s reprise via its warmth and familiarity. I thought the playing most importantly caught that unique Schubertian mix of charm, sunniness and tension which characterises his music.

I must admit to being intrigued at Anthony Ritchie’s work having been, according to the programme, the result of a commission concerning none other than (Sir) Robert Jones, somebody about whom I have very few positive feelings – however, I suppose composers have to earn a living! Banishing all thoughts of the association from my mind I settled down to enjoy the music, and was straightaway drawn into a dark-browed world of almost Shostakovich-like angst, a kind of “charged calmness”, out of which grew structured, contrapuntal exchanges almost baroque-like in their ordering, with everything creating a real sense of expectation, both in a formal and emotional sense.

This feeling bore fruit with the players’ energetic launching of vigorous, almost hoe-down-like passages, which in places either “took to the road” or drew from the irresistible momentum of a steam train (the music’s motoric quality not surprising in a composer with avowed admiration for Shostakovich’s music), a sequence which, after taking us places most exhilaratingly suddenly ceased its physicalities and became thoughtful and even melancholic. By this time, I was completely at the mercy of the music-making, drawn in by these musicians’ concentration and focus, the instrumental tones here given increasing weight and strength as to achieve a splendid kind of apotheosis, with the composer seemingly bringing the work’s essential elements triumphantly together at the conclusion, before cheekily throwing the last bars to the four winds! – great stuff!

Even cheekier entertainment was provided by French composer Jean Francaix (1912-1997), whose music was described most aptly in the programme as having “wit, lightness and a conversational interplay”. Writing his first pieces at the age of six, he once remarked that he was “constantly composing” and over the course of his long life wrote over two hundred pieces in a variety of styles and genres. His String Trio of 1933 began with hide-and-seek scamperings expressed in largely will-o’the-wisp tones, the instruments occasionally showing their faces and striking attitudes in mock-seriousness, before grinning impudently and skipping out of reach once more, the movement finishing on a po-faced pizzicato note.

The Scherzo presented itself as a wild, lurching waltz, replete with impish mischief and surprising orchestral-like effects, such as sharp-edged pizzicati that made one jump! The musicians entered into the music’s spirit with great relish, bringing out both the contrasting episodes of melancholy hand-in-glove with their humorous undersides – at one stage the sounds resembled instruments duelling with pizzicato notes – “Take that! – and that! – and THAT!”. The Andante which followed made a wistful, melancholic impression, with the violinist’s instrument singing disconsolately, while being rocked and comforted by the viola and ‘cello.  The melody was taken over by the cello and counterpointed by the viola, giving rise to sounds and feelings of a great loveliness – for whatever reason I was put in mind of Vaughan Williams’ music, by way of imagining the music written with the viola as the leading voice.

The Rondo finale, marked “Vivo”, wasted no time in making its presence felt, with great dynamics at the outset, and the composer’s singular invention regarding the accompanying rhythms leaving us wondering what to expect and where to be taken next! A bout of upper-register exploration left the music momentarily frightened by its own angsts, before emerging, albeit a little cautiously, from its own melt-down, the viola taking the initiative and restoring control and morale, leading the music into and through a mock-march of triumph, with (one senses) no prisoners being taken!

After the interval, we were told of another “running order” change to the programme, the last being made first this time round, with the piece written by the Trio’s namesake, Missy Mazzoli, divertingly called “Lies You Can Believe In”, beginning the concert’s second half. Called by its composer “An improvisatory tale”, the music draws from what the composer calls “the violence, energy and rare calm one finds in a city”. Written in 2006 for a Milwaukee-based ensemble, Present Music, the piece seems to throw everything within reach at the listener by way of introduction, the rhythms fierce, driving and syncopated, the lines both focusing and blurring the laser-like unisons, which disconcert by unexpectedly melting into warm and fruity expressions of melancholy. The Trio’s total involvement with this material swept our sensibilities up into its maelstrom of variety, with all the aforementioned characteristics the composer required of the piece’s presentation.

In tandem with the driving rhythms and spiky accents come lyrical instrumental solos – one for the ‘cello at first and then another for the viola – contributing to the music’s volatility and echoing the ambiguities of the piece’s title. There’s even a “twilight-zone” sequence of eerie, other-worldly harmonics, as the instruments move the music through a kind of wasteland, one which suddenly explodes into life with “Grosse Fugue-like” driving syncopations, the cello playing a sinuously exotic, decadently sliding theme as its companions push the repeated notes along. In characteristic fashion it all comes to an end as the rhythms become disjointed and break up, taking their leave of us with a rhythmically curt unison gesture. Whether we’d made sense of what we’d been through suddenly seemed less to matter than the experience itself, as Alan Jay Lerner put it in “My Fair Lady”, a heady sample of “humanity’s mad, inhuman noise”.

Perhaps some eighteenth-century sensibilities thought much the same of some of Josef Haydn’s more original manifestations of creativity, such as with his String Trio Op.53 No.1 (actually a transcription of the Piano Sonata Hob.XV1:40/1). At the outset the music breathes out-of-doors country pleasures, the aristocracy amusing themselves at play, though the music’s minor-key change midway the first movement readily suggests “trouble at mill”, with its range of outward emotion, the players here making the most of the contrast between whole-hearted expressiveness and near-furtive withdrawal of tones. When the graceful dance returned I thought the cellist so very expressive in her music-making gestures, bringing it all so vividly to life, as did her companions during the music’s precipitious return to the previous agitations, and the gentle gathering-up of fraught sensibilities – wonderfully soft playing from all concerned!

The second movement’s scampering presto immediately reminded me of the finale of the composer’s C-Major ‘Cello Concerto, the musicians’ soft, rapid playing a tantalising joy! Of course these would have been brilliantly effective on the keyboard as well, but the extra colour and textural contrasts afforded by the trio brought special delight, with the rhythmic syncopations deliciously underlined. In this way, the work was brought to a rousing conclusion which we in the audience thoroughly relished.

There remained of this well-stocked programme a work by Ernst von Dohnanyi, best-known to an earlier generation by his work for piano and orchestra “Variations on a Nursery Theme”, but more recently for his chamber music. Feted as a virtuoso pianist in his youth, Dohnanyi soon took up composition, influenced mostly by the work of Brahms and the German romantics, though he was to promote the music and activities of his fellow Hungarian composers, Bartok and Kodaly while teaching at the Budapest Academy. Differences with both pre- and post-War regimes in Hungary forced him into exile, firstly in Argentina, and then in the United States, where he took out citizenship and remained for the rest of his life.

His five-movement Serenade for String Trio, dating from 1902/3, was one of the first works in which Dohnanyi felt his own voice had properly sounded, rather less in thrall to late-Romantic models, and with touches of the “real” Hungarian folk-music influence that Bartok and Kodaly would soon begin to explore in earnest. Right at the beginning of the opening March, the music sounded like a Hungarian Brahms, with rather more of the former than the latter, flavoursome folk-fiddle treatment of the material from violin and ‘cello, and a drone-accompaniment from the viola. A soft pizzicato dance accompanied a beautifully folkish, Kodaly-like melody from the viola, the instrument then accompanying its companions’ heartfelt dialogues with evocative arpeggio-like figurations  resembling those of the solo viola in Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy”.

Mischievous fugal-like scurryings of different lines from all three instruments began the scherzo, which occasionally brought the voices together in fierce unisons. The trio section’s graceful, song-like measures, reminiscent of Schubert’s music for “Rosamunde” in places featured some affectionately-sounded dovetailings, reflecting the music-making’s warmly co-operative aspect.

In the slow movement’s Theme and Variations, the opening was presented to us as “a special moment gone somehow wrong”, the melody attempting to keep its poise and grace, but darkening in mood at its end. The variations exhibited plenty of character and differently-focused purpose, seemingly running the emotional gamut from agitation and fright to tremulous melancholy. After these angsts we needed the jollity of the finale’s opening to return us to our lives – and here the playing brought out both the girth and the grace of the dancers, as well as excitingly varying the pulse and pace of the music. Eventually the sounds cycled all the way back to the work’s richly Magyar opening, thus binding the work and its singular ambiences of unique expression together. What playing from these people! – so very youthful and energetic, while commanding responses to the music of such warmth and understanding and character.

 

Remarkable integration of musical cultures in spite of documentation and presentation shortcomings

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Festival
‘Te Ao Hou; This New World’

New Zealand String Quartet (Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins violins; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rolf Gjelsten, cello); Rob Thorne (taonga pūoro)

Works by Rob Thorne, Selina Fisher, Gillian Whitehead, Gareth Farr

St. Mary of the Angels Church

Tuesday, 6 March 2018, 6pm

Of the skill manifest in this unusual concert there can be no doubt.  Regarding the audience’s involvement there are regrets: there were no notes about individual works in the brief three pages in the composite programme booklet; most of the information was about the players.  No spoken introductions were given, and no explanation of the taonga pūoro, as Richard Nunns gave at a Festival concert years ago.  I am sure this was to maintain a spiritual, non-material atmosphere, which was enhanced by the attractive greenery on the platform, that included an ponga..  (Wikipedia has an excellent article on taonga pūoro, with photographs.)

I beg leave for a little special pleading: I had had eye-drops administered at hospital a couple of hours prior to the concert, which in the dim lighting made it impossible to identify most of the instruments employed, and added to the confusion caused by there not being apparent breaks between works and thus no opportunity for the audience to applaud until the end of the concert.

The effect was of a continuous work, although individual styles could be detected.  It seemed that possible pauses were filled with improvisations by Rob Thorne on a great variety of instruments.

The programme gave the opening item as Rob Thorne’s ‘Improvisations for Taonga Pūoro’; it seems that these were interspersed throughout the concert, that began with the audience being greeted by extensive sounding of the conch shell and by a member of the flute family of taonga pūoro, the one into which the players blow into the middle of the instrument.  (There may have been others that I didn’t pick.  Most of this could not be seen from where I was seated.  This was a problem later, too, as the performances took place rather to the right of the platform; I was seated left.)

What was amply demonstrated already was the variety of tones and pitches that could be played; the conch shell particularly was hugely variable in pitch and timbre.

Poetry in English was read: Te Ao Hou; This New World.  Next came loud and emphatic Maori chants, from the rear of the church.  The instrument faded away and then returned.  The sounds varied from that of a cow bellowing to quieter tones like a French horn being stopped by the hand.  Squeaks, whistles and quieter notes were produced, and then one became aware that Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins were slowly approaching the platform from different sides, making notes on their instruments very similar in sound to the quieter notes of the conch.  They were soon followed by Gillian Ansell and Rolf Gjelsten.

This was a remarkable feature of the concert: how the strings could imitate the sounds of taonga pūoro, whether loud or soft, strident or sweet.  Throughout, the string players did not employ vibrato; the effect of this technique would have been foreign to the sound-world featured.

The more formal part of the programme began with Salina Fisher’s Tōrino: Echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne, premiered by NZSQ in 2016.  Notes interweaving sounded like karakia and other chants put together.  Bird songs were another feature, as were mournful tones.  The use of drone notes in the bass were effective, yet gave a sameness to some of the music.  Slurring between pitches was an interesting technique.

Among the taonga pūoro used was a long wooden wind instrument with a trumpet-like sound.  Dynamics varied, and the sound was focused   The instruments played a variety of pure notes, presumably pitched with the mouth, as with the natural brass trumpet.  The strings played repetitive notes, and then they were joined by another instrument, not so long, with less focused tone.  This was followed by a higher pitched instrument, then by the conch shell, playing solo.  Its doleful sounds were followed by whistled bird sounds from two different small instruments.

A stick tapping on a small wooden box contributed complex rhythms, and the strings joined in, making a sound almost identical to that of the conch shell.  The same happened with the violins making an almost identical sound to the whistle-like flutes.

Scoop web-site has this to say about Rob Thorne’s Tomokanga: ‘This was music that segued seamlessly between the various composers, imbued with the same sort of shimmering luminosity and glistening iridescence as a rain forest after thunderstorm. The interweaving of disparate sonorities created limpid, mesmerizing, and hypnotic motifs that lingered on the margins of the transcendental.’

Then came another repeat work from 2016: Dame Gillian Whitehead’s Poroporoaki.  An effective technique used in her work was the strings playing spiccato.

Gareth Farr’s He Poroporoaki followed, beginning with Helene Pohl playing little finger cymbals most effectively.  A tiny flute played, while the cello sounded a drone below varied string harmonies and lovely sonorities.  This work had more elements of European classical music in it than did the other pieces in the programme.  It includes the tune of the song we know in English as ‘Now is the Hour’.  (The Google note under Promethean Editions says the piece, written for Gallipoli commemorations in 2008, is a ‘deconstructed Now is the Hour’, significant of course for soldiers departing to war, and the families and friends on the wharf to see them off).  Rob Thorne was kept busy swapping between instruments: conch, flute, hammer on wood, whistles.  Gillian Ansell tapped the stones while Thorne was busy.

The final work was Gillian Whitehead’s Puhake ki te Rangi.  It was written in 2006.  It was amazing to hear Rob Thorne producing a variety of tones from the same instrument.

It was  remarkable concert that nevertheless left some in the a good-sized audience confused as to whether the concert was actually over at the end, since it was not easy to trace where we were in the programme at any point, and because the performance ended earlier than expected.  The quality of performance was astonishingly good.

 

 

Two resounding recordings from Rattle – classics and a feisty newcomer

Posted on by Peter Mechen


DAVID FARQUHAR – RING ROUND THE MOON
Sonatina – piano (1960) / Three Pieces – violin and piano (1967)
Black, White and Coloured – solo piano (selections – 1999/2002)
Swan Songs for voice and guitar (1983)
Dance Suite from “Ring Round the Moon” (1957 arr. 2002)
Jian Liu (piano) / Martin Riseley (violin)
Jenny Wollerman (soprano) / Jane Curry (guitar)
Rattle RAT-D062 2015

PICTURES
MODEST MUSSORGSKY – Pictures at an Exhibition
EVE De CASTRO ROBINSON – A Zigzagged Gaze
Henry Wong Doe (piano)
Rattle RAT-D072 2017

How best does one describe a “classic” in art, and specifically in music?

Taking the contents of both CDs listed above, one might argue that there are two “classic” compositions to be found among these works, one recognised internationally and the other locally, each defined as such by its popularity and general recognition as a notable piece of work. If this suggests a kind of facile populist judgement, one might reflect that posterity does eventually take over, either continuing to further enhance or consigning to relative neglect and near-oblivion the pieces’ existence in the scheme of things.

Though hardly rivalling the reputation and impact in global terms of Modest Mussorgsky’s remarkable Pictures at an Exhibition on the sensibilities of listeners and concert-goers, it could safely be said that New Zealand composer David Farquhar’ s 1957 incidental music for the play Ring Round the Moon has caught the imagination of local classical music-lovers to an extent unrivalled by any of the composer’s other works, and, indeed by many other New Zealand compositions. I would guess that, at present, only certain pieces by Farquhar’s colleague Douglas Lilburn would match Ring Round the Moon in popularity in this country, amongst classical music aficionados.

The presence of each of these works on these recordings undoubtedly gives the latter added general interest of a kind which I think surely benefits the lesser-known pieces making up each of the programmes. In both cases the combinations are beautifully thought-out and judiciously placed to show everything to its best possible advantage. And visually, there’s similar accord on show, the art-work and general layout of each of the two discs having its own delight and distinction, in the best tradition previously established by the Rattle label.

So enamoured am I still with Farquhar’s original RIng Round the Moon for small orchestra (that first recording featuring the Alex Lindsay Orchestra can be found by intrepid collectors on Kiwi-Pacific Records CD SLD-107), I thought I would give myself more time to get used to the idea of a violin-and-piano version (arranged by the composer in 1992). I therefore began my listening with the more recent disc, Pictures, featuring pianist Henry Wong Doe’s enterprising coupling of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and a 2016 work by Auckland composer Eve de Castro-Robinson, A zigzagged gaze, one which similarly presents a series of musical responses to a group of visual artworks.

Mussorgsky’s collection of pieces commemorated the work of a single artist, Victor Hartmann, a close friend of the composer, whereas de Castro-Robinson’s series of pieces, commissioned by the pianist, were inspired by work from different artists in a single collection, that of the Wallace Arts Trust. In the booklet notes accompanying the CD the composer describes the process of selecting artworks from the collection as “a gleeful trawling through riches”. And not only does she offer a series of brief but illuminating commentaries regarding the inspirational effect of each of the pictures, but includes for each one a self-written haiku, so that we get a series of delightfully-wrought responses in music, poetry and prose.

Henry Wong Doe premiered de Castro Robinson’s work, along with the Mussorgsky, at a “Music on Madison Series” concert in New York on March 5th 2017, and a month later repeated the combination for the New Zealand premiere in Auckland at the School of Music Theatre. His experience of playing this music “live” would have almost certainly informed the sharpness of his characterisations of the individual pieces, and their almost theatrical contrasts. For the most part, everything lives and breathes, especially the de Castro Robinson pieces, which, of course, carry no interpretative “baggage” for listeners, unlike in the Mussorgsky work, which has become a staple of the virtuoso pianist repertoire.

While not effacing memories of some of the stellar recorded performances of the latter work I’ve encountered throughout the years, Wong Doe creates his own distinctive views of many of the music’s sequences. He begins strongly, the opening “Promenade” bright, forthright, optimistic and forward-looking, evoking the composer’s excitement and determination to get to grips with the business of paying tribute to his artist friend, Viktor Hartmann whose untimely death was commemorated by an exhibition of his work.

The pianist relishes the contrasts afforded by the cycle, such as between the charm of the Tuileries scene with the children, and the momentously lumbering and crunching “Bydlo” which immediately follows. He also characterises the interactive subjects beautifully – the accents of the gossipping women in “The Market-Place at Limoges” tumble over one another frenetically, while the piteous cries of the poor Jew in “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle” are sternly rebuffed by his well-heeled, uncaring contemporary.

I liked Wong Doe’s sense of spaciousness in many places, such as in the spectral “Catacombs”, and in the following “Con Mortuis in lingua mortua” (the composer’s schoolboy Latin still manages to convey a sense of the transcendence he wanted) – the first, imposing part delineating darkness and deathly finality, while the second part creating a communion of spirits between the composer and his dead artist friend – Wong Doe’s playing throughout the latter properly evoked breathless beauty and an almost Lisztian transcendence generated by the right hand’s figurations.)

Only in a couple of places I wanted him to further sustain this spaciousness – steadying a few slightly rushed repeated notes at the opening of the middle section of “Baba Yaga”, and holding for a heartbeat or so longer onto what seemed to me a slightly truncated final tremolando cadence right at the end of “The Great Gate of Kiev”. But the rest was pure delight, with the fearful witch’s ride generating both properly razor-sharp cries and eerie chromatic mutterings along its course, and the imposing “Great Gate” creating as magnificent and atmospheric a structure of fanciful intent as one would wish for.

Following Mussorgsky’s classic depiction of diverse works of art in music with another such creation might seem to many a foolhardy venture, one destined to be overshadowed. However, after listening to Wong Doe’s playing of Auckland composer Eve de Castro Robinson’s 2016 work, A Zigzagged Gaze, I’m bound to say that, between them, composer and pianist have brought into being something that can, I think, stand upright, both on its own terms and in such company. I listened without a break to all ten pieces first time up, and, like Mussorgsky at Viktor Hartmann’s exhibition, found myself in a tantalising network of connection and diversity between objects and sounds all wanting to tell their stories.

The work and its performance here seems to me to be a kind of celebration of the place of things in existence – the ordinary and the fabulous, the everyday and the special, the surface of things and the inner workings or constituents. As with Mussorgsky’s reactions to his artist friend Hartmann’s creations, there’s both a “possessing” of each work’s essence on de Castro-Robinson’s part and a leap into the kind of transcendence that music gives to things, be they objects, actions or emotions, allowing we listeners to participate in our own flights of fancy and push out our own limits of awareness.

As I live with this music I’m sure I’ll develop each of the composer’s explorations within my own capabilities, and still be surprised where and how far some of them take me. On first hearing I’m struck by the range of responses, and mightily diverted by the whimsy of some of the visual/musical combinations – the “gargantual millefiori paperweight” response to artist Rohan Wealleans’ “Tingler” in sound, for example. I’m entertained by the persistent refrains of Philip Trusttum’s “The Troubadour”, the vital drollery of Miranda Parkes’ “Trick-or-Treater” and the rousing strains of Jacqueline Fahey’s “The Passion Flower”. But in other moods I’ll relish the gentle whimsicalities inspired by Josephine Cachemaille’s “Diviner and Minder” with its delight in human reaction to small, inert things, and the warm/cool beauties of Jim Speers’ “White Interior”, a study of simply being.

Most haunting for me, on first acquaintance, however, are “Return”, with Vincent Ward’s psychic interior depiction beautifully reflected in de Castro Robinson’s deep resonances and cosmos-like spaces between light and darkness, and the concluding tranquilities of the initially riotous and unequivocal rendering of Judy Miller’s “Big Pink Shimmering One”, where the composer allows the listener at the end space alone with oneself to ponder imponderables, the moment almost Rimbaud-like in its powerful “Après le déluge, c’est moi!” realisation.

Henry Wong Doe’s playing is, here, beyond reproach to my ears – it all seems to me a captivating fusion of recreativity and execution, the whole beautifully realised by producer Kenneth Young and the Rattle engineers. I can’t recommend the disc more highly on the score of Eve de Castro-Robinson’s work alone, though Wong Doe’s performance of the Mussorgsky is an enticing bonus.

Turning to the other disc for review, one featuring David Farquhar’s music (as one might expect of a production entitled “Ring Round the Moon”) I noted with some pleasure that the album’s title work was placed last in the programme, as a kind of “all roads lead to” gesture, perhaps to encourage in listeners the thought that, on the face of things, the journey through a diverse range of Farquhar’s music would bring sure-fire pleasure at the traversal’s end.

Interestingly, the programme replicates a “Remembering David Farquhar” concert on the latter’s seventh anniversary in 2014, at Wellington’s NZSM, curated by Jack Body and featuring the same performers – so wonderful to have that occasion replicated here in preserved form. The disc is packaged in one of Rattle’s sumptuously-presented booklet gatefold containers, which also features details from one of artist Toss Woolaston’s well-known Erua series of works, and a biography of the artist.

Beginning the disc is Sonatina, a work for solo piano from 1950, which gives the listener an absorbing encounter with a young (and extremely promising) composer’s music. Three strongly characterised movements give ample notice of an exciting talent already exploring his creativity in depth. Seventeen years later, Farquhar could confidently venture into experimental territory with a Sonata for violin and piano which from the outset challenged his listeners to make something of opposing forces within a work struggling to connect in diverse ways. A second movement dealt in unconventionalities such as manipulating piano strings with both fingers and percussion sticks, after which a final movement again set the instruments as much as combatants as voices in easy accord.

The Black, White and Coloured pieces for piano, from 1999-2002, are represented in two selections on the disc – they represent a fascination Farquhar expressed concerning the layout of the piano keyboard, that of two modal sets of keys, five black and seven white. By limiting each hand to one mode Farquhar created a kind of “double” keyboard, with many opportunities for colour through interaction between the two “modes”. Altogether, Farquhar had twenty-five such pieces published in 2003.

I remember at the NZSM concert being less than enamoured of these works, thinking then that some of the pieces seemed too skeletal and bloodless compared with the originals, especially the settings of Negro Spirituals – but this time round I thought them enchanting, the “double harmonied” effect producing an effect not unlike Benjamin Britten’s treatment of various English folk-songs. A second bracket of these pieces were inspired by diverse sources, among them a Chopin Mazurka, a Landler from a Mahler Symphony, and a theme from a Schubert piano sonata, among others. Again I thought more highly of these evocations this time round, especially enjoying “Clouds”, a Debussy-like recreation of stillness, stunningly effective in its freedom and sense of far-flung purpose.

Swan Songs is a collection of settings which examines feelings and attitudes relating to existence and death, ranging from fear and anxiety through bitter irony to philosophical acceptance, using texts from various sources. Written originally for baritone voice and guitar in 1983, the performances I’ve been able to document have been mostly by women, with only David Griffiths raising his voice for the baritonal record. Here, as in the NZSM Memorial concert, the singer is Jenny Wollerman, as dignified and eloquent in speech as she is in song when delivering the opening “The Silver Swan” by Orlando Gibbons (it’s unclear whether Gibbons himself wrote the song’s words or if they were penned by someone else). Throughout the cycle, Jane Curry’s beautiful guitar-playing provides the “other half” of a mellifluous partnership with both voice and guitar gorgeously captured by producer Wayne Laird’s microphones.

Along with reiterations of parts of Gibbons’ work and a kind of “Swan swan” tongue-twister, we’re treated to a setting by Farquhar of his own text “Anxieties and Hopes”, with guitarist and singer interspersing terse and urgent phrases of knotted-up fears and forebodings regarding the imminence of death. As well, we’re served up a setting of the well-known “Roasted Swan” sequence from “Carmina Burana”, Jenny Wollerman poignantly delineating the unfortunate bird’s fate on the roasting spit. As in the concert presentation I found the effect of these songs strangely moving, and beautifully realised by both musicians.

As for the “Ring Round the Moon” set of dances, I suspect that, if I had the chance, I would want to hear this music played on almost any combination of instruments, so very life-enhancing and instantly renewable are its energies and ambiences. I’m therefore delighted to have its beauties, charms and exhilarations served up via the combination of violin and piano, which, as I remember, brought the live concert to a high old state of excitement at the end! And there’s a lot to be said for the process of reinventing something in an unfamiliar format which one thinks one already knows well.

What comes across even more flavoursomely in this version are the music’s angularities – though popular dance-forms at the time, Farquhar’s genius was to impart the familiar rhythms and the easily accessible tunes with something individual and distinctive – and the many touches of piquant harmony, idiosyncratic trajectory and impish dovetailing of figuration between the two instruments mean that nothing is taken for granted. Martin Riseley and Jian Liu give masterly performances in this respect – listen, for example, to the ticking of the clock leading into the penultimate Waltz for a taste of these musicians’ strength of evocation! Only a slight rhythmic hesitation at a point midway through the finale denies this performance absolutely unreserved acclaim, but I’m still going to shout about it all from the rooftops, and challenge those people who think they “know” this music to try it in this guise and prepare to be astounded and delighted afresh.

A polished and scrupulously studied recital by male vocal quartet, Aurora IV

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aurora IV: singing Renaissance to 20th century music
Toby Gee (alto counter-tenor), Richard Taylor (tenor), Julian Chu-Tan (tenor, Simon Christie (bass)

Music by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, Byrd, Jean Mouton, Richard Lloyd, Lasso, Ludovico da Viadano, Poulenc, Tallis, Andrew Smith

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 22 November 2017, 12:15 pm

I’m fairly sure that this was my first hearing of Aurora IV, a male vocal quartet whose repertoire stretches from the 16th to the 21st century, though I have long been familiar with Simon Christie’s voice and recall hearing Richard Taylor in other groups, particularly The Tudor Consort.

One of the characteristics of the recital was the choice of words and music from widely separate eras. Thus the opening piece was a two-year-old setting of a hymn by 13th century Icelandic poet Kolbeinn Tumason. The programme took the trouble of spelling the Icelandic names using authentic letters, using the voiced ‘þ’ and unvoiced ‘ð’ which in English, of course, are left undistinguished by ‘th’.*

The modern setting of Kolbeinn Tumason’s Heyr himna smiður by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson made strong references to early Renaissance music, which these musically literate singers captured very convincingly; it provided, for me, a chance to be highly impressed by the effective blending and dynamic uniformity of their voices, without in the least avoiding illuminating particular voices where called for.

The first, ‘Kyrie eleison’, of three parts of Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices followed. Here bass Simon Christie as well as male alto Toby Gee, emerged prominently, though the two tenors were obviously important in filling the rich polyphony. Neither ‘Gloria’ nor ‘Credo’ were performed here, and the ‘Sanctus’ and ‘Benedictus’ followed later: the former an interesting contrapuntal piece in which, again, the quality of each voice was conspicuous.

Tenor Richard Taylor seemed to take the lead at the start of the calmer, devotional ‘Benedictus’. The recital ended with the quartet singing the ‘Agnus Dei’, full of pain; till then I had not been particularly aware of second tenor, Julian Chu-Tan, as I was on the right while he faced left. But here I became more aware of him, slightly less robust that Taylor, but perhaps even more finely attuned to the character of the quartet as a whole which presented such a finely nuanced and spiritually persuasive presentation that it’s quite unreasonable to attempt to characterise individual voices.

To resume the order of the programme: Jean Mouton, one of the leading French composers of the 15th-16th centuries, his ‘Quis dabit oculis nostris’; in spite of my hesitation above, here were prominent and moving offerings by Taylor and Gee, in this beautiful lament on the death of his patron Anna of Brittany in 1514. It captured a uniquely idiomatic French style with integrity.

Then a modern English setting of a lyric by 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas, ‘Adoro te devote’. The composer is Richard Lloyd, composed, as with the Icelandic piece, in 2013, and similarly embracing an authentic Renaissance sound, though with a melodic and harmonic character that rather gives away it more recent origin.

The variety of spellings of Lassus’s name (Orlande de Lassus, Roland de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Orlandus Lassus and many others) arises partly from his peripatetic earlier life, born in the Netherlands – in Hainaut, now in Belgium – travelled and worked in France and Italy, but eventually settled in Munich; contemporary of Palestina, Tallis, Byrd….

His ‘Matona, mia caro’ lends itself to a variety of approaches, sometimes by women, sometimes by mixed voices, and by large choirs; these singers adopted a lively, crisp rendition that stressed its exuberance and light-heartedness, even music to dance to. I’ve heard it sung in very differently ways, sometimes like a religious motet; Aurora IV carried the folk, onomatopoeic character ‘don don don…’ excellently.

Ludovico da Viadano who composed ‘Exultate iusti in Domino’, the words from Psalm 33, might be a relatively obscure composer, but his motet seems to be widely popular judging by the number of performances to be found on YouTube. It’s spirited, almost dancing in its energy, starting and ending in triple time, while the main central part is in solid common time. Here was another delightful late Renaissance song that should be popular with young choirs.

Poulenc seemed an abnormal phenomenon in the midst of Renaissance or pseudo-Renaissance song. Two of his ‘Four Prayers’ (Quatre petites prières de Saint François d’Assise) served to sharpen musical receptivity, though presenting a spirit that seemed ambivalent, outside the mainstream. Toby Gee introduced them. They were composed at Poulenc’s Loire Valley refuge, Noizay, in 1948. ‘Tout puisant’ (‘All Powerful’), the second of them, in somewhat ardent, laudatory spirit, was in a distinctively 20th century idiom, faintly coloured by an earlier style, vaguely Renaissance     not easily definable     . The third Prayer is Seigneur, je vous en prie (‘Lord, I implore you’); it presented itself with more sobriety, in a minor key, with a striking passage from Richard Taylor towards the end.

One had been waiting for Tallis in this company. ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments’ fulfilled the Tallis need, with its restraint, its sombre, exquisite tone, seeming to suggest that Tallis had found a balance between the religious conflicts of the age (it was published in 1560, just after Elizabeth had come to the throne, meaning an abrupt shift from the ruthless Catholicism of Mary).  A beautiful performance of a beautiful motet.

Another recent Biblical setting by Norwegian composer Andrew Smith (born in Liverpool, moved to Norway in his teens) picked up on a pattern common in the recital. I didn’t record remarks about the version sung here, which was based on an anonymous 13th century English motet, of words from Isaiah. Presumably, the striking, spare harmonies, infusing the recent arrangement, reflected the original setting (or was it wholly recomposed, in a sympathetic style?).

And it ended with the Byrd’s Agnus Dei which I touched on above, concluding an intelligent, seriously well-studied and polished recital of four-part polyphony.

 

* I was familiar with these Icelandic letters since they were used for the same sounds in Anglo-Saxon, which was a compulsory element in university English language and literature studies in my day. A paper in Icelandic, including readings in the sagas, some originating in the 9th century, but recorded from the 13th century, was an optional paper at master’s level. Further trivia: the Sagas, e.g the Saga of the Volsungs, and the Poetic Edda, were important sources for Wagner in the Ring cycle.

Stroma’s “Spectral Electric” concert at City Art Gallery

Posted on by Alan Wells

STROMA: “SPECTRAL ELECTRIC” CONCERT

Jonny Marks (throatsinger), Ed Allen (horn), Bridget Douglas (flutes), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Shannon Pittaway (bass trombone), Leonard Sakofsky and Thomas Guldborg (percussion), Michelle Velvin (harp), Catherine Norton (piano), Anna van der See and Alan Molina (violin), Andrew Thomson (viola), Ken Ichinose and Robert Ibell (cello), Matthew Cave (contrabass): conductor Mark Carter

Luigi Ceccarelli: Respiri (1999)
Kaija Saariaho: Ciel Etiole (1999)
Salvatore Sciarrino: Fauno che fischia a un Merlo (1980)
Kaija Saariaho: Cendres (1998)
Annea Lockwood: Immersion (2001)
Michael Norris: Sygyt (2017)

City Art Gallery, Wellington, 16 November 2017

Large and flexible contemporary music ensemble Stroma subdivided into smaller units for most of their “Spectral Electric” concert. Founder member Ed Allen, using a mechanically and electrically modified horn, got to demonstrate aspects of virtuosity not typically heard in his work with the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington. In Luigi Ceccarelli’s Respiri, there were raindrop staccatos, deep pedal notes and plaintive keening. Horn calls were echoed and blended, acoustic sounds extended and processed in a manner similar to “granular synthesis”. Moment to moment the performance was very well paced, but in the end I did not feel that the moments – intriguing as they were – coalesced to form a coherent piece.

No such problem with fellow Italian Salvatore Sciarrino’s Fauno che fischia a un Merlo. Bridget Douglas’ flute and Michelle Velvin’s harp created a consistent sound world of high register trills and tremolos, like a dialogue between two birds, punctuated by occasional glissandos and palm-slaps on the harp.

New Zealand born, U. S. resident composer Annea Lockwood is known for her installations featuring recordings of natural sounds (as in Sound Map of the Hudson River), and for activities involving the burning, burying or drowning of pianos. A title like Immersion, then, had to be a bit of a worry. As it turned out, duo percussionists Leonard Sakofsky and Thomas Guldborg showed it to be a well made, almost conventionally structured piece, exploiting two different kinds of sustain: bowed or rubbed metal (bowl, cymbals and tam-tam), and rapid marimba tremolandos. It built up to a powerful climax on mysterious deep marimba and roaring tam-tam, before returning to its rarefied beginning.

Finland’s Kaija Saariaho also utilised the delicate effects of bowed metal (cymbals, crotales). In her Ciel Etoile (“Starry Sky”), percussionists Sakofsky and Guldborg were joined by contrabassist Matthew Cave, who provided dark low notes and high harmonics. Pizzicatos marked a more rhythmic section, before the piece evaporated into the stillness with which it began.

Saariaho’s Cendres was more varied and driven. Subtle effects, such as Catherine Norton’s inside-piano, the fusing a piano tremolo with Ken Ichinose’s cello harmonics and with Bridget Douglas’ flute, were contrasted with more conventional instrumental flourishes. These made beautiful intrusions, but also diluted the work’ stylistic integrity a little.

Saariaho was somewhat on the edge of the Spectralist movement, which began in 1970s France. Ironically then, the most spectral work in the concert was composed in 2017 Wellington. The full Stroma ensemble under conductor Mark Carter joined the remarkable throatsinger Jonny Marks for Sygyt by Michael Norris. Wellingtonian Marks studied in China/Mongolia, and performs with the All Seeing Hand, and at the Pyramid Club.

As a score with wordless voice, Sygyt joins a select list of vocalises that includes concertos by Gliere, New Zealand’s Lyell Cresswell, and English quarter-tone pioneer John Foulds (Lyra Celtica), and the small-group Preludio a Colon by Mexican microtonalist Julian Carrillo. These all used the female voice. Sygyt requires Marks to traverse his commanding range, from the gravelly, visceral, sub-bass kargyraa style, to the exquisitely ethereal harmonics (all the way up to the fourteenth) of the eponymous sygyt. Norris (and Marks) seamlessly integrated these ethnically Mongolian and Tuvan ways of singing into the language of Western music – or perhaps what Western music might have been like if it had followed the trajectory implied by Renaissance just intonation and meantone, instead of reverting to the modified form of mediaeval Pythagorean tuning that is Equal Temperament. Rich, resonant chords are built from the harmonic series (a preoccupation of the Spectralists), and the series itself is employed as a melody on instruments and on the voice. In the last section melodic lines are created from selected disjunct notes of the series.

Marks used a microphone to achieve balance with the ensemble. But he didn’t need it to produce the sounds, as he demonstrated dramatically at the end, leaving the room to sing in the echoing, reverberant spaces of the City Gallery.

Stroma will be performing in the New Zealand Festival (Mechanical Ballet, 16 and 17 March 2018), and taking part in the 2018 Chamber Music New Zealand series with The Rest Is Noise author Alex Ross (Wellington, 26 May).