Polished recital from Steel and Irons of flute and piano masterpieces at St Andrew’s

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Rebecca Steel (flute) and Diedre Irons (piano)

Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Prokofiev: Flute sonata in D, Op 94

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 September, 12:15 pm

While the series of concerts from students that occupies St Andrew’s lunchtime series regularly around this time of the year, are always a delight and sometimes expose unusual and interesting music, it’s nice to get back to the mainstream, with truly accomplished professional musicians.

The concert’s pun-prone title (Steel and Iron{s}} did announce a couple of New Zealand’s finest artists in their fields.

Though I tend to be wary of arrangements-of-convenience, the treatment of Debussy’s ground-breaking masterpiece, is a natural for such treatment (though its arranger was not mentioned), as the flute occupies such a central place in the work. And even though the rest of the orchestral parts are there in the mind, their transmutation at the hands of such an accomplished pianist seemed to meet all the expectations. Undulating piano sounds others depicting the heavy hooves of the faun (spelling in English looks wrong we’ve become more used to Debussy’s, French faune). From the flute, meandering sounds, rippling arpeggios, moments of lazy voluptuousness and dappled shade; and it was hard to think that most of the writing for both flute and piano was transcription from a rich orchestral tapestry. I thought it all lost very little in translation.

Prokofiev’s 1943 flute sonata is the music he later transcribed at David Oistrakh’s suggestion, for violin and piano, which is the form that’s more familiar to me. However, the original, in the hands of this duo, emerged as a ever-slightly more idiomatic and made to measure, flute-inspired. For one thing, there were hints of the world of a flute-playing faun, in certain melodic turns of phrase.

It holds an important place in the flute repertoire which seems to include few formal sonatas: on thinks of Poulenc’s, Hindemith’s, and there’s apparently one by Reinecke which was originally included in this programme, and a few by Bach and other baroque composers. But only miscellaneous (some very fine) flute pieces by most of the ‘great’ composers.

This is a four-movement work that meets all the normal classical sonata criteria. It contains no suggestion of wartime, partly I suppose because Prokofiev was among the Soviet artists evacuated to pleasant sanctuary in the Caucasus or Urals. Certainly, the first movement breathes quietude between passages of busyness, and the second, Scherzo, Allegro, bustles with cheerfulness and high spirits, where the duo captured it all, including the pensive moment in the middle; and where their playing became almost reckless before coming to a halt – one of those that announces clearly that it’s not the end of the piece.

There was an airiness in the playing of the Andante: typical Prokofiev, excluding any hint of emotion, any revealing of personal feelings. That is also the nature of the longish Finale, Allegro con brio, in which piano and flute often seemed to inhabit different spaces, the flute fluttering brightly, up high, while the piano goes its independent way with heavier chordal diversions. One is strung along, expecting the end some time before it actually arrives, and it did strike me either that the composer was filling it out to meet certain dimensions, or that the players here were secretly waiting for the last page to be turned.

That may have been an unkind thought for a recital all of which I had thoroughly enjoyed.

Talents and skills of university woodwind students in St Andrew’s lunchtime recital

NZSM Wind Students

Music by Fauré, Francisco Mignone, Lowell Liebermann, Gareth Farr. Krysztof Penderecki and Debussy

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 23 May 2018, 12.15 pm

It is interesting to hear music students at different levels of their courses, and of ability and achievement.  All these students, though, performed well and provided engaging music.  In most cases they were accompanied on the piano, although two students played unaccompanied pieces.  It was pleasing to see a number of school students in the audience; perhaps they are studying wind instruments. Simon Brew, acting head of winds at the New Zealand School of Music, briefly introduced the programme.  Nearly all the students introduced themselves and their music more than adequately, using the microphone.

Fauré was represented by Fantasie for Flute, Op.79, played as the opening piece by Samantha McSweeny, accompanied by Kirsten Robertson.  French composers wrote prolifically for the flute, and this was a lovely example of their work, which for me carried over nicely from the Fauré songs I heard in Waikanae on Sunday.  The piece was inventive and graceful, with a languid opening section.  It changed to sprightly and playful passages.  It was written for a Paris Conservatoire competition, so it aimed to have the students demonstrate a range of techniques, tempi and dynamics.  As well as our player doing this more than adequately, the accompaniment was full of character.

I had never heard of the Brazilian composer Francisco Mignone.  His dates were 1897 to 1986.  (It would have been useful to have the composers’ dates printed in the programme.)   Improvised Waltz no.7  was the title of the piece for solo bassoon, played by Breanna Abbott.    It was quite a jaunty piece to start with, but the deep-toned instrument made it harder to get over a light-hearted mood.  It was short, and very competently played.

Lowell Liebermann is a contemporary American composer (born in 1961) who is a prolific composer as well as a performer.  His Movement 1 from Sonata for Flute and Piano, Op.23 was played by Isabella Gregory, accompanied by Kirsten Robertson.  A leisurely opening was followed by an allegro that brought a rush of notes before falling back to gentle utterances.  In places the piano doubled the part of the flute.  A new section was slow, but both flute and piano jumped around the staves, especially the latter.  Both played angular phrases, the flute employing particularly the lower register of the instrument.  A return to slower, gentler phrases brought the piece to a smooth, mellifluous end.

The only New Zealand composer represented was Gareth Farr; Peter Liley, alto saxophone, accompanied by Catherine Norton on the piano, played Farr’s Meditation very confidently, following an excellent spoken introduction.  The piece opened with notes on the piano, followed by chords, then a slow, pensive melody.  This gradually developed and built to a high climax – most effective.  More climbing motifs – then an abrupt end.

Solo clarinet was played by Harim Hey Oh, performing Penderecki’s Prelude for solo clarinet.  Slow, quiet single notes opened the short piece.  Then the music became quite gymnastic, with quick notes darting here and there, including very high notes and very loud ones (hard on the ears!).  Then it was back to slow, quiet notes, widely spaced – and it was all over.

The other great French composer represented was Debussy, by his Première Rhapsodie for clarinet, played by Frank Talbot with Catherine Norton accompanying.  The piece was written for graduate students at the Paris Conservatoire, so was constructed to test them.  Later, the composer orchestrated it.  This was a highly competent performance, employing a lot of different techniques and idioms. The full range of the instrument’s notes and dynamics were used.  It was most enjoyable music, not only for the clarinet’s role; the piano had a very varied part also.

This was a very satisfactory demonstration of the skills of wind students at the New Zealand School of Music at Victoria University of Wellington.

 

 

 

 

Diverting Debussy-inspired trio charm a responsive audience at Lower Hutt

Toru Trio: Karen Batten (flute), Sophia Acheson (viola), Ingrid Bauer (harp)
(Chamber Music Hutt Valley)

Debussy: Sonate pour flûte, alto et harpe (1915)
Bax: Fantasy Sonata (viola and harp, 1927)
Tabea Squire: Impressions (2018)
Wendelin Bitzan: Zoologischer Garten for flute and viola (2011)
William Mathias: Zodiac Trio (1976)

Lower Hut Little Theatre

Wednesday 16 May, 7:30 pm

Te reo Maori for the numeral 3 is toru; thus ‘Toru Trio’ is a redundancy. This instrumental trio comprises harp, viola and flute, modelled on Debussy’s war-time piece; all are players in Orchestra Wellington. All the pieces were composed in the last 100 years (though the Debussy himself was a couple of years outside that frame).

Their arrival on stage made a striking impression: Karen Batten in a dramatic gold dress, Ingrid Bauer a dress of more coppery gold, and Sophia Acheson wore a near luminous, black dress. And while the Little Theatre is an intimate space with a dry acoustic that leaves performances quite exposed, a distinct compensation is the players closeness. That means the audience could be diverted by three attractive, personable and versatile musicians who use their instruments to produce often unfamiliar sounds and visual experiences; in particular, the harpist’s manipulations of hands and feet on her formidable instrument were always intriguing.

Three of the five pieces engaged all three players while the Bax and Bitzen were scored for only two of them. The way the cards fell resulted in the omnipresence of Sophia Acheson’s viola in all five works.

The concert presented several unusual aspects: the uncommon instrumental combination, that only one piece was by a composer whose name would have been familiar to all the audience, that the trio had invited a young New Zealand composer to compose a piece for them, and that they were in the middle of a Chamber Music New Zealand tour to eight smaller towns and cities from Warkworth via Gisborne, Motueka, etc to Gore in the south.

Debussy creates a new musical form
Debussy started it all. At the beginning of the First World War, Debussy decided to write six sonatas, for different combinations of instruments referencing eighteenth century French musical traditions. Just as Ravel had done with his Tombeau de Couperin, Debussy wanted to make a patriotic French gesture in support of French soldiers facing the horrors of the war. He wrote only three of the six – for cello and piano, this one, and one for violin and piano: he died too soon. The other three were planned: Debussy had written in the manuscript of his violin sonata that the fourth sonata should be written for oboe, horn and harpsichord, the fifth for trumpet, clarinet, bassoon and piano, and the sixth for all the preceding instrument plus others.

For the sixth and final sonata, Debussy envisaged: “a concerto where the sonorites of the ‘various instruments’ combine, with the gracious assistance of the double bass”, making the instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, harp, piano, harpsichord, violin, viola, cello, double bass; it would have been a masterpiece. Debussy’s three non-existent works would, like this trio, have inspired scores of works for those new combinations.

In some ways it’s a risky business to combine three such disparate instruments, and to play in such an exposed acoustic as the Lower Hutt Little Theatre, poses an even greater challenge; it’s one thing to be able to hear with such clarity the distinct sounds of each instrument, but it’s something else to deal with the challenge of achieving real blending; and that might be a minor criticism of their playing. Debussy makes a feature of their utterly different sounds by asking each player to introduce her part in its characteristic way, exploiting quite interestingly the differences in compass and tone.

It creates striking effects, viola and flute pursuing very different ranges; early on the harp plays very high while the viola plays repeatedly a very low note. The sonorities are most curious at times; we are not very used, for example, to the viola playing alone over such long passages. The programme note usefully described each theme and their instrumental treatment, and drew attention to their repetition in a different order.

The minuet second movement, primarily in triple, minuet time imperceptibly changes to common time, at times misleading the listener, while the Finale returns to 4/4, and employ the harp at the start in a low register, rather murmuring. For the most part the playing was so sensitive and each player clearly paid such attention to what others were doing that the music began to sound inevitable. While I am familiar enough with it, I remember many years ago finding it elusive and tonally rather disparate. It’s one of those pieces – many of Debussy’s are – that slowly, deeply takes root, more in the instinctive mind than the intellect.

A Bax Fantasy
The Bax piece, for viola and harp, called a Fantasy Sonata, which had become a fashion after English musicologist and a notable compiler of a great encyclopaedia of chamber music, W W Cobbett (it’s near my desk), established a competition that seeking to revive the 16th century English musical form. Numbers of works were produced (Armstrong Gibbs, Bridge, Howells, Ireland, Britten).

Bax’s was perhaps more straight-forward melodically than Debussy’s trio; I didn’t know it, but it’s an attractive piece, and presenting less of an instrumental challenge. And again the players revealed a happy rapport handling dynamics sympathetically, idiomatically.

Tabea Squire is a young Wellington composer whose composing gifts have led to several commissions. This piece, for all three instruments, was not on a large scale and the task was to simulate sounds in nature: the contrasting colours of the kowhai, the image of children dancing in the rain, and a fantail fluttering among trees in the sunlight. While this kind of inspiration for music generally usually doesn’t seem very fruitful (to me); in fact I think it’s more likely to succeed as music without visual or literary or some intellectual construct. Its variety and the handling of parts for each instrument, individually or in ensemble, and the evidence of plain musical invention are enough.

Flute and viola then played a piece by a young (at my age, ‘young’ seems to refer more and more to anyone under 40) German composer, Wendelin Bitzan. This time, zoo animals in curious situations, but stimulating the composer to devise often amusing sonic imagery. Occasionally, the sounds were evocative enough, not to create pictures of the creatures named, but to be engaging nevertheless; moments that were amusing, even bizarre, both in concept and actualisation.

Astrology in music
Then a third piece that had an extra-musical origin: William Mathias’s Zodiac Trio which again presented a scenario that seemed to demand a lot from the imagination, if one sought useful characterisations from Mathias’s impressions of that nature of Pisces, Aries and Taurus. One of the players (I think, violist Sophia Acheson) claimed a Zodiac association with one of the three signs employed by Mathias; I can claim none, so I was able to listen without prejudice to the musical interpretations of these forces.

These three pieces might have been obscure astrologically, but as I wrote above, that was irrelevant; they were attractive musical creations, sometimes beguiling, occasionally droll and often musically inventive. Taurus did indeed suggest the force, energy and danger of a loose bull, as there were moments where these very disparate instruments truly came together in an integrated way.

Debussy’s trio has given rise to an impressive body of musical descendants and to as many threesomes devoted to their performance (look in Wikipedia). There is a rich and every-so-often very rewarding field for Toru to cultivate.

Given that this Hutt Valley concert was Toru’s only appearance in the Wellington region in the course of an eight-concert tour, its excellence deserved a bigger audience.

Steel and McCabe, flute and piano in delightful recital at St Andrew’s

Rebecca Steel (flute) and Fiona McCabe (piano)

Taktakishvili; Sonata for flute and piano
Bach: Sonata for flute and keyboard in E minor, BWV1034
Debussy: Flute Sonata, arrangement of the Sonata for violin and piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 July, 12:15 pm

A fortnight ago at St Andrew’s we heard Rebecca Steel as a member of a quintet of flutes from the RNZAF Band in a splendidly diverting programme of music (mostly) arranged for five flutes. So I had hesitated about coming to hear more flute music in a particularly busy week for me. But squeezing it in proved an excellent decision.

Rebecca was back this time with her piano partner, Fiona McCabe to play an equally interesting and perhaps slightly more musically mainstream music.

Otar Taktakishvili lived in Georgia from 1924 to 1989. He was one of the republic’s leading composers/conductors and a recipient of the Stalin Prize. This flute sonata seems to have been his best known work, though there are symphonies, concertos, symphonic poems, operas, songs, much of which has been performed and recorded in the Soviet Union/Russia and some in the West.  Judging by the character of the flute sonata, there are likely to be quite a few rewarding discoveries to be made.

When the dust settles and Soviet atrocities take their place among many violent regimes that nevertheless nurtured great art, we’ll find a huge amount of approachable music in Russian and Ukrainian (and other) archives.

Taktakishvili’s sonata lives in the sonic sphere of Debussy and/or Françaix, Ibert, and is certainly a descendant of the Jean-Pierre Rampal flute revival. Lightish in tone, but not trivial or sentimental without the hard-edged melodic shape of Prokofiev or much direct Shostakovich influence, though he was a friend of Shostakovich. Not conspicuously folk music influenced either.

But it lay happily and idiomatically for the two instruments and their uniformity of feeling reflected the players long-standing musical friendship.

J S Bach’s flute sonatas are not as familiar as his many suites and partitas for keyboard, violin and cello, but this performance of the E minor, BWV 1034, awakened, at least my, interest in them. There is a group of six, plus one outlier.  Most of Bach’s instrumental works seem to be perfectly comfortable in arrangements for other instruments, and one can easily imagine the violin taken by the flute, or the oboe, or the viola, and vice-versa.

This one, in E minor, somewhat sombre in tone, would be interesting on the cello for it weaves an emotional scene in the slowish first movement that is somewhat complex, suggestive of a beautiful vocal piece; and the second movement, an Allegro that’s not too boisterous, features endless rippling arpeggios that our flutist managed breathwise most skilfully (she’d remarked on Bach’s thoughtlessness regarding the player’s breathing needs). The third movement is again dominated by a long vocal style melody, that caused me to be surprised that I didn’t know this and, perhaps, the other flute sonatas. The final Allegro might have been some kind of ‘Badinerie’ but refrained from unbridled speed and gaiety, to be merely a delight.

Debussy
Finally, an actual arrangement, of Debussy’s last work, his violin sonata. As I reflected above, it showed how some music for flute or violin moves easily from one instrument to the other without offence. In fact it sounded as if written for the flute, its ornaments translating exquisitely (I couldn’t recall with confidence whether they were exactly as written for the violin). It was arranged by the player, though I see that there have been other arrangements. There are long, slow notes that lie in the alto flute range, in between flutters high into the treble, and it all sounds perfectly natural.

Debussy gives a rather specific indication to the second movement: ‘Fantasque et léger’, and it was an awakening to hear those phrases in the middle where the piano beats repeated notes and the flute echoes and decorates the ideas. All the fantastic touches reproduce in exactly the spirit of the original. At one point I scribbled that the accompaniment actually sounded more interesting with the flute as companion.

The last movement is flighty, with little trills and accelerating scales, spiky series of four flute notes that are so idiomatic, and fill one with wonder not only at Debussy’s ever-evolving musical imagination, but his unique feeling for the sounds of individual instruments which in cases like this encompass more than one. If you have doubts, just listen more lovingly.

Flute and piano duo feature composers languishing in the shadows of the greats

St Andrew’s lunchtime recital

Christy and Nick Hunter – flute and piano

Johann Joachim Quantz: a flute concerto in G
Rachmaninov: Prelude in E flat, Op 23/6
Nick Hunter: …and the mountain looms in the falling light
Jules Mouquet: La flute de Pan

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 30 November, 12:15 pm

Here were two names that were slightly familiar to me but which I couldn’t really offer biographical information about. Both studied in Wellington: Nick at the Conservatorium of Music at Massey University, Christy at Victoria University. Palmerston North has featured in the lives of both, but the birth-place of neither was disclosed. They are married and have quite a range of performance history both together and separately.

It was a varied programme with nothing that was there to arrest or challenge the audience. Both the first and the last were composers who hovered in the shadows of much more famous figures: J S Bach and the Debussy-Ravel impressionist scene.

Johann Quantz’s claim to fame tends to be through his working around J S Bach and his son C P E; for Quantz was a favrouite musician in the court of Frederick the Great in the mid 18th century where C P E became court chamber musician. When, late in life, Bach went to Berlin through his son’s intermediation, it was clear that the King suffered J S with some indifference if not discourtesy (yet Bach responded by composing the Musical Offering for Frederick, based on the inhospitable tune that he was offered on which to improvise fugally). C P E Bach felt in the shadow of Quantz whose advantage was as a fine player of the king’s favourite instrument; he became court composer, ahead of Bach.

You don’t hear much of his music these days, unless you’re a flutist or flute groupie. Here, however was a nice chance. This, one of around 300 flute concertos, began with a chirpy tune on the piano (and you could sense its better fit with the harpsichord); the flute part was much embellished, light in spirit and enjoyed a cadenza towards the end. The same spirit really ruled the calmer middle movement where one became aware of Quantz’s pleasure in using widely spaced pitches in his tunes. The final movement, Allegro Vivace, certainly afforded Christy Hunter excellent opportunity to demonstrate her prowess and dexterity; here a melodic kinship with Handel rather than Bach struck me.

Nick then played one of Rachmaninov’s Preludes, from the first set, Op 23; though the programme note described it as almost contrapuntal, it’s character as essentially a set of variations was perhaps more evident. It was a polished and idiomatic performance.

Then he played his own solo piano piece inspired by twilight on Mount Ruapehu. It put me in mind of the famous passage in Lilburn’s essay A Search for Tradition (or was it the Search for a Language?) where he describes the experience of looking at the mountain as the night express from Wellington to Auckland passed in the moonlight (I have deep, nostalgic memories of that and many other evocative train journeys, now all gone, in our impoverished country), and he was awakened to the awareness of the remoteness of the European cultural world from New Zealand, and the need to create our own (though I have long felt the concern with cultural nationalism to be unhelpful).

However this was a most effective, impressionistic piece, suggesting not merely the jagged mountain peak but possibly an eruption.

Finally the two players returned to play one of those pieces that define the ‘one-hit-wonder’ composer: Jules Mouquet’s La flute de Pan. Born about half way between Debussy and Ravel he was winner of the Prix de Rome a couple of years after Debussy. Mouquet’s music is cast in a language in which those sounds are pretty inescapable, but it doesn’t diminish the effectiveness and originality of this three movement piece – a mini flute concerto. The refinement and colour of the playing by both flute and piano placed it clearly in the warm and luxuriant turn of the century era, unsullied as yet by Schoenbergian disturbances or world war a decade later. Both instruments exploited interesting ideas, moving about each other, always in balance and affording space for every detail be heard.

It was not a big audience but an appreciative one, and I hope the pair will accept another invitation to play in this splendid series.

Big lunchtime audience for interesting programme from professional musicians

Kiwa String Quartet: Malavika Gopal (violin), Alan Molina (violin), Sophia Acheson (viola), Ken Ichinose (cello),
And friends: Carolyn Mills (harp), Bridget Douglas (flute), Yuka Eguchi (violin), Victoria Jaenecke (viola)

Ginastera: Impresiones de la Puna
Celtic pieces for solo harp
Beethoven: String quartet in B flat Op.18 no.6 (2 movts.)
John Adams: ‘Toot nipple’ from John’s Book of Alleged Dances
Arnold Bax: Quintet for harp and strings

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 23 November 2016, 12.15 pm

A large audience greeted a wonderfully varied line-up of professional musicians – and of music.  The opening work immediately grabbed one’s attention; Ginastera’s work was delightful and full of subtle animation.  Especially notable was the floating, uprising flute part.  The programme note describing its ‘gentle, romantic, quasi-impressionist harmonies’ was apt indeed.  Which leads me to comment how excellent was the acknowledgement at the end of the printed programme of the sources, including those to be found on the internet.  How rare this is, even for those, unlike the writers of these notes, who take theirs word-for-word from such sources.

The three sections of this work for flute and strings provided lovely contrasts, but each was felicitous in its musical language.

Just as the previous work had traditional Argentinean links, so the next two pieces were of folk music character or origin: Farewell to music by Tulough O’Carolan (1670-1738, arr. A. O’Farrell), and the traditional She moved through the fair, arranged by Carolyn Mills.  Though played on the orchestral harp, these Celtic pieces were performed in a simple manner befitting their origins.  They were both gracious and mournful.  The second, based on an Irish folk-song, was familiar to me with different words (the Scottish ballad Lord Randal).

A big change again, to the first and second movements of Beethoven’s quartet.  It was wonderful to hear this great work played at a lunchtime concert. It was a spirited performance, with much subtlety as well as elan.  The quartet overflows with wonderful melodic motifs.  The slow movement was serene and graceful with sonorous harmonic changes.  Each instrument spoke its part clearly and unostentatiously, always as a part of the whole.  The audience sat soundlessly attentive.  How fortunate we are to hear such timeless music from skilled professional musicians at a free lunchtime concert!  This was a superb performance.

The next surprise was the Adams piece: a short jokey piece from a set for string quartet and ‘recorded prepared piano’ (which I could not hear).  The programme notes stated that the composer said the dances were alleged because “the steps for them had yet to be invented”.

Finally we heard an unfamiliar but major work by Arnold Bax; his quintet for harp and strings,  returning to the Irish theme of earlier in the concert.  I found it full of mellow enjoyment; it was a pleasurable discovery.  The plucked sound of the harp was beautifully set off by the smooth legato of the other strings.   A quiet section of the one-movement work had a dreamy character.  Then lilting phrases alternated with curious agitations below, followed by minor key utterances and an excited swelling of sound with harp arpeggios and flourishes, over muted violins.  Finally, there was a meditative ending.

The harp was an integral part of the whole quintet, not an add-on for occasional solos or special effects.

It was good to hear a concert combining some music that was familiar with some that was not.  The enthusiastic audience response was more than fully deserved.

 

 

Beautifully balanced programme of perfectly judged music for lunchtime

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Music for flute (Hannah Darroch), oboe ( Calvin Scott), piano (Robyn Jaquiery) and organ (Charles Sullivan)

Telemann; Krebs, Rhené-Baton; Bartók; Piazzolla; Madeleine Dring

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 June, 12:15 pm

Most of the lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s offer interesting music, either familiar or unusual, played by fine musicians. Students are worth hearing as they almost always exceed one’s expectations for the enterprise of their programmes and professionals delight with their artistry and maturity.

This one had the enterprise of the best student recitals, in performances by very polished professional players, in the mix of moderately familiar and totally unfamiliar music. Just before the players began, a small group of children came and sat in the front, listened with evident attention and appeared to hear the music in the same way as adults did; Suzuki method pupils I gathered. I’m sure their attention was in large part a tribute to the players’ musical charisma.

Telemann is no longer the rarity that he might have been 50 years ago; and this Trio Sonata in A revealed the composer at his best, writing for winds, blending them in the most beguiling way and finding melodies that were fresh and attractive. Though the piano wasn’t treated as a solo performer, flute and oboe wove lovingly about each other, the melodies passed back and forth. The thought came to me that Telemann sounded, in his handling of the two woodwinds, like the very quintessence of early 18th century music, more authentic, representative and true to its spirit in a certain way, than Bach in Germany or Vivaldi in Italy.

Krebs was about 30 years younger than Telemann (or Bach), and the Fantasia in F minor for oboe and organ, Charles Sullivan on the pipe organ, with oboist Cavin Scott alongside the console in the organ gallery, hardly exhibited the learning of complexity of Bach. Improvisatory yet carefully composed, the oboe sounded more comfortable and idiomatic than the organ which seemed to have met an unequal competitor in the very human quality that a beautifully played oboe can create.

Emmanuel Rhené-Baton, born 1879, was roughly a contemporary of Ravel or Stravinsky but didn’t quite make such a mark. Nevertheless, looking at material on the Internet, it’s clear that he only barely escaped being a well-known conductor and a gifted, if minor, composer. He was born and lived much of his life near or in Brittany and loved the sea. His Passacaille, speaks in the accents of the French school of flute music – Paul Tafanel, Fauré, Lili Boulanger, Henri Büsset, Philippe Gaubert…even Debussy, and this was a charming performance of what seems to be the only flute piece that he wrote, or at least, that seems to be played. Hannah Darroch spoke about it, as she did about the Piazzolla Tango Etude, rather too quickly and a bit much specialist listener expectation, but her playing, tenderly supported by Jaquiery, was a nice revelation of a composer I didn’t know.

Piazzolla’s Tango Etude No 2 (one of six) was actually written for flute and piano, not an arrangement, though he apparently (through the player on a YouTube performance) made a remark to the effect that the accents should be exaggerated to imitate the sound of the bandoneon. That was how it was played and Darroch achieved a fine idiomatic feeling.

Calvin Scott also spoke, pitched at an appropriate level of assumed knowledge, about Bartók’s Four Hungarian Folksongs, for oboe and piano, interestingly identifying their origins. They might have been the most meaty and individual pieces in the recital; evidently from territory now part of Romania (because Romanians were the dominant population when boundaries were set in the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles). The playing was careful, unhurried, giving varied weight to certain phrases, and though Scott’s playing was beautiful, it also captured enough of Bartók’s pains to preserve a peasant authenticity; and here the piano part was very much an important partner.

And the trio came together again to play a Trio written by Madeleine Dring (1923-1977; I hadn’t come across her either). Jaquiery told us that she was an English actress as well as composer and much of her music was for the theatre. This delightful trio, in three conventional movements, avoided any sign that she worried too much about writing music for academia, to impress the avant-garde. Yet there was distinctive character, here and there a real melody, set in a generalized contemporary idiom. I tended to think of French rather than English composer influences – like Ibert or Poulenc and there was a sense of delight, a confidence, in the way she pursued the course of her musical ideas.

So the entire concert was a wonderful anthology for the middle of the day, in this sort of context: variety of eras and styles, nationalities and intents. Among the many delightful, spirit-lifting recitals one hears at St Andrew’s, I rated this one of the very best.

Beautiful lunchtime with a flute and piano at St Andrew’s

Rebecca Steel – flute and Diedre Irons – piano

Poulenc: Flute Sonata
Franck: Flute Sonata in A (transcription of the violin sonata)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 6 April, 12:45 pm

I’ve heard Rebecca Steel at least three times over the past year, playing with a pianist or as part of a trio, in interesting music, often adapted from music for other instruments: Debussy piano pieces, Piazzolla, Chopin, or authentic flute works such as by Bach or Villa-Lobos or Persichetti.

This time we heard what is perhaps the most famous and attractive flute sonata of the 20th century: Poulenc’s; and one of the several adaptations of César Franck’s Violin Sonata which is so lovely that everyone wants a piece of it. And here, with her partner, one of New Zealand’s finest pianists, we heard a version that proved just how universal is its pertinence.

Both performances were world-class; a reminder that St Andrew’s had gained such a reputation that the country‘s top musicians find it worthwhile (not in a pecuniary sense) to play there. There was an audience of nearing 100, and I could sense that their applause recognized that they knew they were hearing music both memorable and splendidly played.

Poulenc, though nearing the end of his life, produced here a piece that, though its first movement is marked Allegro malinconico, is a little slower than ‘allegro’ and not all that melancholy. It was full of vitality and melodic piquancy, and the dynamic attack and variety of articulation and colour had the audience sitting upright, with smiles on their faces. The second movement begins with a slowly rising arpeggio, and like most of Poulenc’s music, blessedly tonal, its face turned away from the strictures of the avant-garde. Nevertheless, its idiom could be of no time but the mid 20th century. Then the third movement, Presto giocoso, presents a sudden, almost shocking attack delivered equally by the two instruments. But it doesn’t persist, reverting for a moment to the calmer spirit of the first movement, with reference to what is somewhere referred to as ‘Poulenc’s trade-mark motif’, only to plunge back into the boisterousness of the first part to bring it to an end.

Franck’s sonata always raises the question in the minds of listeners, why didn’t he write lots of music in this gorgeous, melodic vein? Well, of course there is other music that supports his claim to be among the 20 greatest composers (make your own lists).

And it’s one of the pieces that seems to survive rearrangement for other instruments with no damage. I don’t think I’d heard a flute arrangement before, and was immediately won over, partly because of the strength of the music in melodic and structural terms, and partly through the brilliant and tasteful performance, by both flutist and pianist. The flute spun a lovely, lyrical line that banished any feelings I might have had about the ability of the flute to create the kind of legato phrases that come naturally to the violin. The duo allowed a subtle rubato to emerge, accelerating and slowing along with the rise and fall of the music. I feared that with the sparkling climax at the end of the second movement, applause might break out, but we had an audience that was sensitive to what the music was saying.

The following Recitativo movement was calm and beautiful, allowing the melody slowly to find its way, making us listen. I even had the inadmissable feeling that the flute was creating a more memorable impact, capturing the music’s essence more successfully that a violin would; it was so calm and peaceful.

The melody of the last movement is so sublime – it has stuck with me since I first heard it, played by a fellow student one sunny afternoon at a famous University Congress at Curious Cove in Queen Charlotte Sound long ago. The soft, velvety sound of the flute, immaculately matched by the piano, might have sounded, for a moment, a bit off-hand as the end approached, but the spell was nevertheless sustained.

It brought an unexpectedly beautiful recital to an artless, heartfelt conclusion.

 

 

 

Enchanting, polished recital by Rebecca Steel, flute and Ingrid Bauer, harp

Rebecca Steel (flute) and Ingrid Bauer (harp)

Music by Debussy (En bateau and La plus que lente), Persichetti (Serenade No 10 for flute and harp), Bach (Flute sonata in G minor, BWV 1020), Piazzolla (Bordello and Café from Histoire du tango)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 21 October, 12:15 pm

I last heard Rebecca Steel in a recital with Simon Brew and Jane Curry, as the Amistad Trio, in May, when I commented that it was the third concert involving the flute in a month. I wasn’t complaining.

Here she was, a confident, conspicuous figure, contrasting with the commonly perceived view of the flute as an instrument of ethereal delicacy. With Ingrid Bauer’s harp, it proved a combination made in heaven even though there was little in their playing that could be dismissed as delicate or transcendental.

They opened with a transcription of Debussy’s En bateau. It is the first part of the Petite Suite which the Amistad Trio played in May.

I think this version worked better. Here, the thought of a marriage of true minds came to me, as the transcription of the original for piano, four hands, called up a spirit that seemed to capture even more than Debussy’s own version did what the composer might really have been seeking; and it’s well known that he tended to avoid orchestrating his music, often leaving it to others. (Yes, I know there are many wonderful exceptions to that observation).

To begin, I thought the flute had a little too much presence, and could imagine a more subtle, languid sound, but the two players soon bewitched me; I’d prefer it to the orchestration by Henri Büsser.

And it so happened that as I was finishing this review I heard Elric Hooper in one of his classic discussions with Des Wilson on Concert FM; talking about his own life, after years of their delightful, insightful discussions on a wide variety of musical, dance, theatrical and generally artistic subjects. Elric’s last words, about music that touched him deeply, that calmed his soul; he said: “En bateau; it always fills me with joy”. Yes, I think so.

At its end Rebecca made a remark about Mallarmé: a poem? Or what? I think En bateau was based on a poem of Verlaine; there’s also Rimbaud’s Bateau Ivre which might also have had a connection.

La plus que lente (‘the more than slow [waltz]’) is in rather a similar vein, written for solo piano; the performance was based on an arrangement for violin and piano. Though it doesn’t purport to suggest water or clouds or anything insubstantial, an expectation of dreaminess and other-worldliness might well be met by these instruments, and they approached that spirit. In fact, as has been observed by others, it can be compared, in its ironic, satirical intention, to Ravel’s in La Valse, reflecting the immense social significance of the waltz in 19th century Europe.

The useful website AllMusic, records: “It represented Debussy’s laconic reaction to the pervasive influence of the slow waltz in France’s coffee-houses, dance-halls, and salons. But, writes Frank Howes, ‘La plus que lente is, in Debussy’s wryly humorous way, the valse lente to outdo all others.’ Apparently Debussy handed the manuscript of this piece to the gypsy fiddler Leoni, whose Romany band played to great popular acclaim in the ballroom of the New Carlton Hotel in Paris. It was almost certainly here that Debussy got the idea for the work in the first place.”

It was a delightful partner to En bateau.

I’ve heard Persichetti’s Serenade No 10 before, most recently in a 2012 performance, by Michelle Velvin, harp, and Monique Vossen, flute; it was reviewed in Middle C. In 2009, I heard, and reviewed, a performance by flutist Lucy Anderson and Ingrid Bauer, as members of the then National Youth Orchestra.

Persichetti is a strangely under-exposed composer, ignored probably for not writing in idioms that impress the academic music industry. Indeed, its eight short movements don’t allow much chance for the material to evolve in clever, complex ways. But Ingrid Bauer had briefly demonstrated a few of the harp techniques that Persichetti used to create an unpretentious work that would not tax too greatly, yet entertain an audience with visual surprises, with its tonal variety and colour as well as finding melodic ideas that were piquant, never hackneyed or sentimental. The movements ranged from triple time, dance rhythms, through many moods and soundscapes: meditative, joyous, dreamy, boisterous, always diverting. It was a performance of elegance, wit and skill.

The Bach flute sonata in G minor is one that invites a certain amount of scholarly scrutiny; it’s the seventh of his flute sonatas – the other six are authentic J S Bach – but this might be by C P E Bach, as Rebecca Steel told us, and I was easy to persuade to hear a ‘galant’ flavour in it rather than heartland J S Bach. It lies beautifully for the harp which plays alone for the entire opening ritornello, but when the flute arrived its lines were so charming that it was hard to sense its minor key modality. One had to search for that flattened ‘mi’. The two players together made wonderfully congenial sounds, especially in the middle Adagio movement, which indeed sounded too Romantic for Bach père. At times I was reminded of the melodic flavour of Telemann.

The first two movements of Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango ended the recital; Bordello and Café. It’s fair to recall that Rebecca, with her Trio Amistad, had played it in a Wellington Chamber Music concert back in May. There was nothing raunchy or unseemly about the music Piazzolla imagined for his Buenos Aires brothel (bordello is a friendlier word?) It is an engaging exploration of the latent musical potential of the tango, the variety of subtle rhythms and melodic shapes that can evolve under fertile conditions. And it was played with such verve and delight.

The Café scene was very different; I’d heard it played a few days before by Donald Maurice on his viola d’amore and guitarist Jane Curry; while that was very attractive, this offered another, perfectly tasteful approach, the harp acting like the guitar to paint a decorous scene. Without a strong rhythm, dreamily, it soon becomes more lively but after a while tricks the listener to feeling that the subsiding energy is rambling to the end. After a pause it resumes with renewed firmness and a more definite melody which is elaborated and brightens.

It was one of the most charming recitals I’ve heard this year from the very strong competition at the St Andrew’s lunchtime series.

Nikau Ensemble at St Mark’s Lower Hutt with Mozart and Dohnányi

Nikau Chamber Ensemble (Konstanze Artmann, violin; Karen Batten, flute; Christiaan van der Zee, viola; Margaret Guldborg, cello)

Mozart: Quartet in C, KA [i.e. Appendix to Koechel’s catalogue] 171
Dohnányi: Serenade in C, Op.10 (Marcia, Romanza, Scherzo, Tema con variazoni, Rondo) for string trio

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 21 October 2015, 12.15pm

I had gone to St. Mark’s expecting to hear Arohanui Strings, young string players of primary school age who have free tuition in a Sistema-style programme in the Hutt Valley. Instead, as I entered the church, I heard a flute being warmed up in the vestry.

On came the Nikau Ensemble, minus their oboist Madeline Sakofsky, who was indisposed. They were scheduled to appear next week. Not that the ensemble disappointed, but it was not until an announcement at the end of the concert that I learned the two had swapped places, and the Arohanui Strings will perform next week.   Maybe the regular members of St. Mark’s audience were aware earlier of this change, but the occasional attender did not know of it.

The Mozart work immediately made me sit up – the flute quartet made such a lovely sound. The excellent articulation of the notes in all parts was a delight. I recently read a book that consisted of interviews with leading sopranos and mezzos of the 1950s – 1990s (including Dame Kiri te Kanawa), and most of them said that Mozart was one of the hardest composers to sing – everything had to be clean and clear, and there was nowhere to hide: the line was very exposed. It is the same with the chamber music. These players were clear and accurate, yet expressive.

The variations consisted of some in major mode and others in minor, which added to their interest. The last one featured pizzicato in the lower parts, with the melody above. This gave a cheerful effect, to end a gracious work.

The Serenade of Hungarian composer Dohnányi was for string trio. Mozart’s work was written when he was 21, Dohnányi’s when he was 26. It began with a March which was jolly rather than pompous or solemn. The players produced great warmth of tone, and it was noticeable that for this music of 1904 they ‘dug deeper’ into the strings than with the Classical-era Mozart piece. The Romance began with a long-breathed melody on viola, over pizzicato on the other strings. Then the two upper strings continued the melodic line over cello pizzicato, the latter often on two strings at the same time.

The third movement was an excited yet genial Scherzo. The instruments entered one at a time, from the highest to the lowest.   Their sonority was very fine. Then theme and variations again, Dohnányi’s version beginning with a chorale-like theme. The tonality moved into minor harmonies, becoming more sombre and wistful; the movement ended on that note.

The Rondo that ended the work was brisk and cheerful. It was a busy movement for all the players. Towards the end, long chords depicted a folk-like melody, or perhaps a dance. A quiet ending received the full-stop of a loud final chord. The musicians showed real rapport in their playing together, and the audience of 40+ gave the ensemble appreciative applause.