Tag: contemporary music

Towards a musical cross-fertilisation at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Exchange: compositions of Jeremy Hantler for contemporary and indigenous instruments

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 28 April, 12.15pm

An unusual concert took place at St Andrew’s in the usual Wednesday lunchtime slot. What lay behind it was the notion, perhaps inspired by the experiments in European music from the late 19th century, that mixing conventional forms of music and conventional instruments with the music of other, often less sophisticated, cultures could lead to a new and more vital music. Think of the influence of the exhibitions of Asian art and music in Paris on Debussy and others.

The instruments included several drums, violin, guitar, banjo, trombone (Nick van Dijk), saxophone (Blair Clarke), double bass (Scott Maynard), and three players of ‘taongo puoro’ (why don’t musicians give us the names of the individual flutes? It’s a failing of percussionists too: a chance missed to refine audience knowledge).

There was to have been a didgeridoo, but Styefan Sarten didn’t appear. 

I arrived during the performance of a piece entitled Duet, which used a tenor saxophone, a Maori flute, to the accompaniment of what is known as a bull-roarer (Maori name?). It struck me as a work in progress, neither particularly well organised as a composition nor as a performance. Jeremy Hantler, spoke about the music with animation, but without much care for voice projection or clarity of diction so that, sitting towards the back, I caught little.

However, his leadership was clearly sufficient to motivate the other players; and while some phases seemed somewhat tentative, even incoherent, there were also moments when something of genuine musical value happened, with a sequence of harmonies, a tune or the blending of instruments in an unlikely but ear-catching way.

Watchful Eye featured three players of the taongo puoro, that recreated the voices of tui and ruru (morepork) rather effectively, but was otherwise flavoured by jazz sounds from saxophone and trombone, with less conspicuous offerings from violin, but with Hantler very conspicuous on drums. Again, passages sounded less than finished and thoroughly rehearsed, but there was attractive duetting between trombone ansd saxophone.

The piece after which the concert was named, Exchange, was largely driven by side drums and later, Cook Islands log drum played by Andreas Lepper, both skilled and gently exciting. There were striking signs of careful preparation here, with more attention to musical patterns familiar in western music.

The last piece was called Quicksand: resolute drum rhythms and the trombone and saxophone again, though less clear purpose in the playing of violin and guitar. The contribution of the Maori flutes seemed less fully realised, a somewhat arbitrary addition that had not found a comfortable role: the words I jotted down were ‘pasted on’. Yet the chorus that these instruments created towards the end, backed by plucked bass with soft voiced violin and guitar, was one of the most attractive, as they set up a moving lament.

The concert was an interesting and worthwhile experiment, though more attention needs to be paid to conventional modes of presentation, stage management, voice projection, and more thorough documentation of instruments and their characteristics – for the many potential listeners not familiar with nomenclature, but prepared to listen with open minds and ears.

There were acknowledgements in the programme to Richard Nunns, Brian Flintoff, James Webster, Warren Warbrick, Hirini Melbourne and Steph.

New Zealand String Quartet: Lower Hutt

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schubert: String Quartet no 1 in G minor/B flat major, D.18; Helen Fisher: String Quartet; Tan Dun: Eight Colours; Beethoven: Duet for viola & cello, WoO 32; Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, Op 74 no 3 “The Rider”

St. James’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 14 April, 8pm

As the excellent programme note for the opening work said, “there is enough musical meat here for us to enjoy the work on its own terms” despite the lack of subtlety employed by its composer in his extreme youth: he was only thirteen when he wrote it.

It was played with the usual NZSQ care, commitment and attention to detail. The players illuminated all the felicities in this delightful quartet.

The opening andante was followed by presto vivace, yet the movement remained largely sombre. The second movement minuet was ländler-like; quite enchanting. The andante third movement was like a slow waltz: most attractive. As the note said, the drama was particularly in the two outer movements. The presto finale featured more modulation than in the earlier movements, and thus more drama.

Helen Fisher’s quartet was premiered by NZSQ in this very venue, 15½ years ago. It opens with the members of the quartet vocalising the Maori word “Aue!” Gradually the instruments enter, with glissandi at the end of notes and phrases similar to those employed in traditional style at the end of the word “Aue”.

Helen Fisher addressed the audience, and told of her inspiration from the karanga sung by women on the marae. There were indeed many inspiring moments on this 15-minute journey from grief and pain to hope (as described by Fisher), along with discordant phrases depicting pain. It all made sense in the sensitive hands of the New Zealand String Quartet, though the pain and grief threatened to overwhelm at times.

Even the dance section seemed subdued, despite its complexity of cross-rhythms and intersecting tonalities. An underlying agitated accompaniment gave coherence to the song sequence that concluded the work, which ended with a hopeful upwards glissando.

Eight Colours, by Tan Dun, was as colourful as the name suggests. Written as a sort of drama derived from Peking Opera (as described by the composer), the sections are titled: Peking Opera; Shadows; Pink Actress; Black Dance; Zen; Drum and Gong (in which the players rhythmically slap the hands onto the strings and finger-board); Cloudiness; Red Sona.

The alternating slow and fast movements use a variety of string techniques (including some that are a ‘no-no’ in Western music). The work is extremely demanding technically and rhythmically. The New Zealand String Quartet has played it before, and it’s New Zealand premier was in Wellington in 1998 (by other New Zealanders).

Tan Dun has written ‘I found a danger in later atonal writing to be that it is too easy to leave yourself out of the music. We can therefore assume that this is expressive of himself and his approach to life.

The very percussive music employs numbers of intriguing sounds, including those of birds. The music is not totally unemotive, but full of effects for the listener to interpret. Some of the effects are not easy on the Western ear. It is a tribute to the players that they could coax such a variety of timbres from their instruments and use so many different techniques.

The work ends abruptly and amusingly.

The amusement continued after the interval, with Gillian Ansell and Rolf Gjelsten playing a short duo by Beethoven, written for himself and his friend Baron Nicolaus Zmeskall von Domanowecz, a talented amateur cellist, to play. Its subtitle ‘with obbligato eyeglasses’ was obeyed literally by the performers: both sported spectacles, and not a little ‘hamming up’ was employed here and there.

A jolly piece, it is nevertheless virtuosic in places, and as Rolf Gjelsten said in his introduction, used some techniques that were advanced for the time of the work’s composition (though paling beside those used by Tan Dun). This was a delightful cameo to throw into a concert programme.

Haydn’s “Rider” quartet, probably named for the galloping, high-spirited finale, gave rich enjoyment as always with a Haydn chamber word, revealing the cheerful character and inexhaustible invention of the composer. While at times the structure seems classically formal, at others, apparent spontaneity and exuberance take over, the more so in the lively yet nuanced playing of the New Zealand String Quartet.

The sublime rising intervals of the largo assai movement, following the interesting opening allegro, give an almost Romantic cast to the movement, as well as epitomising the positive nature of Haydn’s musical mind. It was richly and warmly played.

The minuet was certainly no predictable classical movement; it had a lively character in both musical language and rhythm.

The finale featured great animation and a fine singing quality.

This was a concert of a range of music that demonstrated the sheer accomplishment of this, New Zealand’s premier chamber ensemble. The players’ consummate skill and artistry never came between the music and the listener.

 

Netherlands and New Zealand music from SMP Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The SMP Ensemble conducted by Lucas Vis

VISTAS — music by Karlo Margetic, Louis Andriessen, Jack Body, Dylan Lardelli, Anton Killin, Yannis Kyriakidis  

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University

Friday 26 March 2010

The recent St Andrew’s series during the Festival included a concert by the SMP (Summer Music Project) Ensemble; that comprised music by Polish and New Zealand composers. This concert was entirely of New Zealand and Dutch music. Michael Norris introduced the concert Caprice Arts Trust director . They included the Caprice Arts Trust, the New Zealand School of Music, both universities, the Netherlands-New Zealand Association, KLM and Creative New Zealand. There was one premiere; some pieces were quite new and others as much as 40 years old.  

The title of the concert was Vistas: I suppose honouring Dutch conductor, Lucas Vis, a prominent figure in the promotion of new music. Most of the music in this programme was written for unconventional instrumental combinations and most eschewed the kinds of sounds that have been embraced by the generality of music lovers. Composers of this turn of mind seem comfortable carving a isolating niche, largely rejecting the standard musical formations and forms, such as the symphony orchestra or the string quartet, most kinds of tonal music and even the strains of contemporary music that have found more general acceptance.  

The first piece, written for a probably unique combination, was Karlo Margetic’s Hommage à WL: that is, Witold Lutoslawski. It opened, and closed, with Yoshiko Tsuruta playing with soft mallets on a wood block, soon supported by a dense bed of winds and strings: clarinets and horn; violin, viola, cello and double bass; piano and percussion, and it evolved into an aleatoric exercise (for which Lutoslawski was noted) each instrument playing according to his/her own instinct, but launching afresh at the end of each phase; those points were about the extent of the conductor, Lucas Vis’s, role. Occasionally a definite punctuation point arrived, e.g. with piano and cello; the mood became increasingly disturbed, even frenzied, before subsiding.  

Louis Andriessen’s Zilver was written in 1994. The prevailing character was vivid contrasts of pitch, setting flute against piano, vibraphone and marimba, all of which played identical or closely related lines. While the effect was distinctive, one lost a sense of the individual instruments; this was the effect of much of the music in the concert, for while the ensemble was smallish, several pieces were scored extensively for all together, in this case seven voices that the ear is not accustomed to hearing all sounding at once.

The music, nevertheless, gained in coherence as repeated motifs – gestures rather – were handled, at slowly increased speed and changing rhythms, at one point seeming to make wry allusions to the Viennese waltz. It drew to a close by dismantling the tighter framework that had evolved.

Jack Body’s Turtle Time dates from 1968 – a setting of surrealist poems by Russell Haley. Dated? well, perhaps, but it successfully maintains its character: witty, eccentric, the poems brilliantly articulated by Karlo Margetic, with huge gestures, likewise surreal, that reached out insistently to the audience. The music and its performance by piano Sam Jury), harpsichord (Jonathan Berkahn), organ (Matt Oswin)and harp (Natalia Mann), imposed a sort of irony of very traditional sound sources handled with drollerie and wit.  The words might have been a useful addition to the programme note.

Then came the ‘World premiere’ (I do wish we could just settle for ‘first performance’; I do doubt that even the composer expects a rush of breathless music publishers and promoters wanting performance rights in Buenos Aires and St Petersburg). Dominating the stage was the contrabass clarinet of Justus Rozemond, reaching two meters high, along with piccolo, piano, viola and cello.  

Noh theatrical precepts lay behind Dylan Lardelli’s piece, entitled Aspects of Theatre; where each performer rehearses alone, and the eventual performance is the first time the players have got together. The resulting spontaneous spirit was palpable; the musical experience was of extreme dynamic variety, of seemingly random, widely spaced pitches, whose relationships were irrelevant.  Though I have to plead failure to get Noh theatre, in spite of first hearing 40 years ago at the Athens Festival, and subsequent exposures.

Anton Killin’s Two Moments were approximately that; when its end seemed unexpectedly close to its start, Vis led a second performance there and then. In spite of its brevity, the composer had taken pains to score it carefully for seven strings, winds and an accordion carefully arrayed on stage. Interesting, though the purported depiction of the life of Denisovich and the death of Solzhenitsyn failed to register with me, and I had to wonder about the sort of audience envisaged by the composer.

The last piece, Tinkling, was for a much larger ensemble, ten players. Eshen Teo – flute, Andrzej Nowicki – clarinet, Peter Maunder – trombone, Dylan Lardelli – guitar, Dorothy Raphael – percussion, Yoshiko Tsuruta – marimba, Vivian Stephens – violin, Charley Davenport – cello, Simon Eastwood – double bass, Sam Jury – piano. A reworking, shortening of an earlier piece, based on a riff by Thelonius Monk, there was more for the mind to adhere to than with some of the other pieces.  More familiar musical patterns and procedures were suggested; subtle dramatic moments occurred, and arresting little accelerations; attractive hints of rubato in repeated phrases. Again however, I found the busyness of the scoring prevented distinguishing many individual instruments a lot of the time; why bother then with such detailed instrumentation? Pianist Sam Jury had been particularly notable and conductor Vis singled him out.

There was no question about the accomplishment of the players who devoted themselves with commitment to some pretty challenging music that clearly appealed to this audience. The concert was well-attended and there was long applause for the ensemble and for the conductor in particular.