Tag: guitar

Gunter Herbig at Old St.Paul’s – the next best thing to a siesta……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

OLD ST.PAUL’S LUNCHTIME CONCERT SERIES presents:
Gunter Herbig (guitar)

Music for guitar from South America
Works by Reis, Piazzolla, Fleury, Barrios and Pernambuco

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon,

Tuesday, July 8th, 2014

Gunter Herbig strode into the performing-space of Old St.Paul’s radiating waves of energy and purpose, as if he was about to perform some kind of feat considerably more spectacularly death-defying than give a guitar recital of music from South America. He thanked us all for “braving the elements” in coming to the church to see and hear him play, and hoped that we would, by the end of the concert have thought it all worthwhile.

Herbig is a native of Brazil, born of German parents, who spent much of his childhood in Portugal and Germany. Having such a cosmopolitan cultural background, has, he reckoned, given his music-making an interesting and personalized mixture of influences which he treasures. He certainly gave every indication throughout  the concert of “owning” the music he played, communicating to us his regard for the sounds as having a living value.

By way of telling us both about the music on the programme and the circumstances of his getting to know it, Herbig made the works come alive both as sounds and as evocations of places and moods and ideas. His anecdotes, filled with information and spiced with droll humor, gave each work a richer context  that enhanced our understanding of the pieces. And his playing had all the character and virtuoso skill that the music required to “speak” to us.

Herbig began with two works by Dilermando Reis, perhaps the most well-known Brazilian guitarist of modern times, one who performed the compositions of JS Bach, Barrios and Tárrega, as well as his own and other works by Brazilian composers. Reis recorded many of his own works, among them the second of the pair of waltzes that Gunter Herbig played today, Se Ela Perguntar. 

First up, however, was Ternura, a lovely, quixotic work, filled with insinuation and sensuous figuration, having a kind of spontaneous, almost unpredictable course. The second work I thought rather Chopinesque, or perhaps a Latin American version of the same, alternating between physical and emotional, purpose and reflection. Both were winningly-voiced, the player always responsive to the variety between ebb and flow, movement and stasis.

Astor Piazzolla’s music, little-known outside the South American continent until the last decade of the twentieth century, has become synonymous with the distinctive voice and infinite variety of the once-infamous dance, the tango – Piazzolla’s nuevo tango was scorned at first by traditionalists, who objected to his fusion of the dance with both classical and jazz elements, but his radical style eventually won acceptance. Gunter Herbig briefly entertained us with a story of how he encountered Piazzolla’s music for the first time, before demonstrating via his playing of two of the composer’s tangos the extent to which he had been “grabbed” by this music.

First came Adios Noniño (translated, “Farewell, Father”), written in 1959 shortly after the death of the composer’s father. Percussive and timbre-driven at the work’s beginning, free and flexible in rhythm and harmony, the piece seemed to present a sensibility filled with changing emotions, a kind of continuum of instability, but one on an inevitable course towards some kind of awareness as a result of experience. The visceral aspect of the music I found compelling and in places exciting, even unsettling, though I wasn’t sure why on this first hearing, not knowing the work’s circumstances. As a piece of “pure” music it certainly made an effect in Herbig’s hands.

I thought the second tango, Verano Porteño,  a more “road music” kind of work, less inward and circumspect, more “out there” with a stronger rhythmic trajectory that seemed to cover plenty of physical ground. Again the music had a percussive element, the player required, as before, to strike the instrument in different ways, by way of underlining the pulse of things, the music’s heartbeat. Not all of the music was thus enslaved – recitative-like passages and incidental glissandi and other kinds of timbral slides punctuated the flow, the guitar used like a kind of all-purpose folk-orchestra, especially towards the piece’s end, with all kinds of deft percussive touches.

By way of contrast, Gunter Herbig played three more “conventional” tangoes, two by the eminent and much-travelled Argentinian guitar virtuoso Abel Fleury, and one by Paraguyan-born Agustin Barrios. Fleury’s two pieces sounded so “clean” and straight after Piazzolla’s far more discursive worlds of experience, a contrast perhaps akin to hearing music by almost any of Beethoven’s contemporaries next to the former;s late quartets!  However, Barrios’s work Don Perez Freire had a more personalized aspect, the listener imagining some kind of portrait of a kind of Latin American “Beckus the Dandiprat”, somebody worldly-wise and energetic, and perhaps a little garrulous but with real charm to boot – a man, one suspects, well acquainted with the pleasures of dance and movement.

A second piece by Barrios, Julia Florida (Julia Blossoming), a work dedicated to one of his students, Julia Martinez de Rodriguez, was a different kind of portrait, by turns graceful and impulsive, quickilvery and lyrical. Subtitled “Barcarola” it had moments reminiscent of the music of Faure, with a wistfully beautiful melodic line. The program was , in a sense, rounded off by the final programmed piece, written by Joao Pernambuco, a founder of the Brazilian choro style. Pernambuco’s output was virtually salvaged  by people like fellow composers Heitor Villa-Lobos, who transcribed many of the pieces, and later Dilermando Reis, who performed many and recorded several of Pernambuco’s works. We heard the latter’s Sons de carrilhoes (Song of the Bells), an attractively lyrical toe-tapper of a piece, a happy and joyous conclusion to the recital.

However, Gunter Herbig then played for us an encore, by way of sympathizing with the realities of many of us having to return to work from the concert, rather than, as he put it, “taking a siesta”! Of course, our sensibilities had been having a great time cavorting around and about imagined realms where such practices as siesta were part of the daily routine. So we were given Leo Brouwer’s Berceuse (Cradle Song) as an extra moment of magic, a gentle kind of farewelling to this gorgeous array of music.

 

 

Remembering David – a Farquhar tribute from the NZSM

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REMEMBERING DAVID
A concert of music by David Farquhar (1928-2007)

Presentation curated by Jack Body
Music performed by staff of
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Jenny Wollerman (soprano) / Martin Riseley (violin)
Jane Curry (guitar) / Jian Liu (piano)

Works:
Sonatina for piano (1950) / Three PIeces for Violin and Piano (1967)
Eleven Pieces from Black, White and Coloured for piano (1999-2002)
Swan Songs for voice and guitar (1983)
Six Movements from Ring Round the Moon for violin and piano (1953 arr. 1992)

Adam Concert Room, Victoria University, Kelburn

Thursday 8th May

This extremely timely concert was organized by Jack Body as a tribute to one of his former teaching and composing colleagues, David Farquhar, on the seventh anniversary of the latter’s death.

Born in Cambridge in 1928, David Farquhar was one of a group of fledgling composers which included Larry Pruden, Edwin Carr, Dorothea Franchi and Robert Burch who studied composition with Douglas Lilburn at the renowned Cambridge Summer Music School during the late 1940s. Afterwards, on completing his degree in Wellington at Victoria University, Farquhar then took himself to England, joining Burch, Carr and Pruden for two years of further composition studies at the Guildhall School of Music in London under the tutelage of Benjamin Frankel.

Returning to New Zealand in 1953, Farquhar joined Professor Frederick Page’s Music Department at Victoria University, managing to balance teaching duties with composition, and producing at least one landmark piece of home-grown music along the way – the Dance Suite for small orchestra, “RIng Round the Moon” written to accompany a stage production by the New Zealand Players. Another work which achieved something of a public profile, albeit briefly, was the 1962 opera “A Unicorn For Christmas”, performed for Queen Elizabeth during a 1963 Royal Visit.

Of course, “Ring Round the Moon” in its various guises has captured people’s affections like none other of Farquhar’s works – I think partly because it doesn’t have any of the slight austerity that seems to me, rightly or wrongly, to be hung about the neck of much of the composer’s output. Even so, there’s so much more of Farquhar’s music which ought to be better-known, some of which we were able to hear performed in this concert.

Other pieces – the most shamefully-neglected of which I think is the First Symphony – await their turn in the scheme of things. Farquhar wasn’t a self-promoter of his music, unlike his contemporary, Ted Carr, though the music of both has entered that realm of curious neglect which composers Ross Harris and Jack Body touched upon in a radio interview prior to the Farquhar concert.

There’s grown up a kind of “lost generation” of New Zealand music, being the work of composers who came immediately after Douglas Lilburn, a list including, of course, David Farquhar, and (as Jack Body pointed out) that of HIS teacher, Ronald Tremain.  Yes, one or two works by these people did “cut through” the Sleeping-Beauty-like thicket and get themselves established – besides “Ring Round the Moon” one thinks of Larry Pruden’s “Harbour Nocturne” as a kind of “Kiwi classic”. And one remembers both Farquhar’s Third Symphony and Pruden’s String Trio being performed in Wellington, well, relatively recently.

But apart from these good deeds shining out like candlelight in a naughty world, the gloom that’s here overtaken the compositional output of people such as the aforementioned Ted Carr and Ronald Tremain, as well as that of Robert Burch and Dorothea Franchi, not to mention slightly later figures like John Rimmer and Kit Powell, has been pretty London-foggish. Another figure whom I’d include is Christchurch’s John Ritchie, whose music seems to get little more than parochial attention, when there are pieces by him which should be well established in our regular concert programs.

Perhaps, as Ross Harris seemed to me to suggest, this process of neglect has a kind of inevitability – like T.S. Eliot’s cat, “The Rum Tum Tugger”, who ” will do what he do do, and there’s no doing anything about it!” In which case, the same process obviously creates in time a kind of need to fill the void, which in turn propagates concerts like the present one – thanks, of course, here, to that “nurseryman extraordinaire”, Jack Body.

As well, there’s a current crop of performers who are ready, willing and certainly able to assist with whatever rehabilitation process is mooted, as was demonstrated to us in the Adam Concert Room on this occasion. After Jack Body’s welcoming speech, the concert proper began with a Sonatina for piano, dating from 1950, written by Farquhar after he’d left New Zealand to take up studies in the UK at Cambridge University. A note in the program told us the the work was published only in 2009 by Waiteata Music Press!

In this three-movement work, pianist Jian Liu revelled in the first part’s explorations of keyboard timbres – at first, brief phrases created a somewhat restless feeling, though the colourings held the angularities together. Then the music gravitated towards the lower piano registers, less agitated in effect, but deeper and slower, almost leviathan-like – not menacing, but sombre and sonorous, with upward irruptions of impulse keeping a kind of spatial awareness of things alive. These bright, glint-like sequences led to a quiet, enigmatic coda.

The second movement, marked Andante, I found almost ritual-like in its step-wise aspect, with an accompanying flourish, the latter following the melody as a train follows a bride’s dress – counterpointing voices played hide-and-seek, the pursuers then throwing their victims in the air to sparkle and scintillate before coming to earth and taking up the stepwise gait again, the flourish somehow detaching itself and leaving us with a piquant impression. The finale’s running, angular figurations were brilliantly activated by Liu, whose energies exuberantly realized the toccata-like middle section, and, after a breath-holding pause, signalled the end with a grand flourish.

I scribbled lots of notes during the next item, the 1967 Three Pieces for Violin and Piano – however, the marking for the first movement, “Improvisando”, says it all, really. I was reminded here of my own youthful, awkwardly shy attempts to engage girls I fancied in conversation, by the piano’s fitful, broken fanfare-like figurations, to which the violin responded with edgy, distant held notes, frequently with harmonics and occasionally punctuating its iciness with impatient, dismissive gestures.

I’m not sure whether the second movement’s “Pizzicato” represented a kind of thawing-out of relations, but the pianist’s plucking of the strings in the piano’s body and activating the lowest ones with a timpanist’s stick seemed to accord more readily with the violinist’s pizzicato notes at first, the increased engagement continuing with the violinist’s fly-buzzing sonorities enjoying the pianist’s strumming of the instrument’s strings. The final piece, “Risoluto” had fanfares (violin) and strumming harps (piano) each player demonstrating a kind of determination suggested by the music’s title, the pianist at one point knocking on the instrument’s body with his knuckles, and the violinist amplifying the fanfare figures before skittishly delivering an abrupt payoff.

Then came the first of two exerpted brackets from a piano solo collection called “Black, White and Coloured” – a typical Farquhar-ish exploration of the different characteristics of music written using either white or black piano keys and their treble/bass/inverted combinations. The first “bracket” was dominated by song, realizations of Negro Spirituals and of songs by Gershwin amongst the items. While finding the idea interesting, I thought some of the pieces too skeletal and bloodless compared with the originals, especially the Negro Spirituals – had I not known the pieces’ origins, I wouldn’t have missed those bluesy intensities put across by various great singers I could recall in my memory, and perhaps given the composer more credit for his relative austerities.

Similarly in the second set I thought the idea worked better the more obscure the music – so while I thought the opening “Silver-grey moonlight” too simplistic in its treatment of Clair de lune, the famous folk-melody, some of the others worked well, though there seemed a reluctance on the composer’s part to do very much with the basic thematic material. I thought the most successful realizations in the second set were “Chorale Prelude” and “Clouds”, in particular, the latter, which brought from Farquhar’s sensitivity to detail some timeless, floating ambiences of beauty and nostalgia.

More successful – in fact, spell-binding in effect – was the song-cycle “Swan Songs”, a 1983 work for voice and guitar, performed here by soprano Jenny Wollerman and guitarist Jane Curry. Framing the cycle at its beginning, middle and end were quotations from Orlando Gibbons’ well-known madrigal “The Silver Swan”, hand-in-glove with traditional song, and texts from Carmina Burana as well as by the composer. On the face of things, a kind of hotchpotch, but in performance, a magical evocation of worlds within worlds, bringing together instances of creative impulses leapfrogging over centuries to make heartfelt connections, one I found delightful, piquant and extremely moving.

With sonorous and evocative guitar-playing from Jane Curry setting the scene, Orlando Gibbons’ evocation of beauty brought forth spoken exclamation at first from the singer, and then, briefly, melody. Together with limpid guitar notes  the singer continued through through a section of the traditional “Swan swam”, evoking stillness and grave beauty. The third section, “Anxieties and Hopes” used the composer’s own text, a setting urgent and anxious, with darting impulses and broken figurations, guitar and voice overlapping, breaking off for a sequence of soaring, impassioned beauty before returning to the previous agitated state of things.

Gibbons’ music returned as a kind of “quiet centre” of things, before the work took a somewhat bizarre turn, quoting the “roasted swan” text from Carmina Burana (also famously used by Carl Orff in you-know-which-work!) – a droll lament for the sweetness of times past, affectingly sung and played by Jenny Wollerman and Jane Curry. After a brief reprise of the singer’s call to the swan, over a guitar ostinato, Gibbons’ music made its concluding appearance, the singer arching the voice over a lovely guitar solo with the words “Farewell, joy……” – brief, and ambient, and beautiful.

Before the programme’s final music item, composer Ross Harris contributed a brief but moving reminiscence of David Farquhar, constructing an engaging picture of a colleague with a number of distinctive traits – a concise and ordered thinker and creative spirit, responsive to challenges, (fiercely competitive especially when playing tennis, which was a great love – in fact the end of tennis for Farquhar seemed to symbolize the end of life…..). Ross Harris talked about a composing legacy of finely crafted music, describing its composer as “ultimately modest”.

The evening’s final, appropriately-chosen item (how COULD it have been left out?) was the violin-and-piano transcription of “Ring Round the Moon”, an arrangement made by the composer for the concertmaster of the NZSO, Isador Saslav, in 1992. I remember, a goodly number of  years ago, introducing myself to David Farquhar as an “admirer” of the work, and the composer graciously acknowledging the gesture by way of seizing his then wife Raydia D’Elsa around the waist and dancing a few steps with her in front of me, explaining that they would dance their way through the music he composed at the time to “try it out”. I’m sure the composer would, had he been present, have relished the playing of violinist Martin Riesley and pianist Jian Liu, despite his well-documented frustration at what he considered the piece’s disproportionate popularity.

Somehow, the immediacy of the violin-and-piano textures brought this memory of our meeting back to me more readily than did any of the orchestral versions of the dances – everything came across as more flavoursome than I ever before remembered, the violin’s piquant re-echoings of the linking motif at the conclusions of some of the pieces, the crunchy harmonies of the Galop, the bar-room atmosphere of the Tango, complete with exhausted-on-their-feet couples, the contrariwise harmonies in the Trio of the Polka, and the alterations between instruments in the Two-Step, complete with the link-motif’s lovely “falling-down-the-slope” effect. To finish, the Finale was encored, the music in this performance as angular, chunky, exuberant and wonderful as ever.

For those people who’ve read to this point, my humble apologies for the lengthy review! – but I hope you’ll conclude from all of this that Jack Body’s and the musicians’ efforts on behalf of David Farquhar’s music were eminently worthwhile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Highly attractive lunchtime guitar recital at St Andrew’s

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Owen Moriarty, solo guitar

Villanesca (Spanish Dance No.4) arr: Owen Moriarty, by Enrique Granados
Sevilla (from Suite Espanola Op.47) arr: Owen Moriarty, Isaac Albeniz
Staendchen  arr: J.K.Mertz, by Schubert 
Sonata in A minor, Op. 1, No. 4 (HWV 362) arr: D. Russell by Handel
Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tarrega
Laments, Dances and Lullabies, by Miroslav Tadic  

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 7 May 2014, 12:15 pm

This was a most attractive programme, offering a selection from some of the best original music and arrangements for classical guitar. The Villanesca by Granados opened with an almost inaudible pianissimo that built up gradually in volume with astonishing control as Owen Moriarty revealed the intricate, opposing melodic  lines of the writing, then allowed them to recede gradually into breathless silence at the conclusion.

The Albeniz Sevilla, one of the best known works in the repertoire, was by contrast given a very straightforward, almost pedestrian reading in which  it would have been good to hear more of the inner melodies in the outer sections of the piece.

In the arrangement of Schubert’s well known Ständchen (Serenade), Mertz draws on both the original song and Liszt’s solo piano version. Owen Moriarty played the work on a smaller C19th guitar  that evoked a very intimate performance in some private setting for the loved one alone. He crafted the delicacy of the vocal melody with exquisite tenderness, and the interplay of upper and lower voices was quite beautiful in the second section.

The Handel Sonata in A Minor was originally written for recorder and continuo, and was presented here in a very satisfying transcription  by renowned guitarist David Russell. As the programme noted, “this excellent arrangement helps to highlight some of the beautiful melodic lines and ..…harmonic and
rhythmic complexities contained within the piece”. Opposing voices within the texture were always beautifully and clearly enunciated, particularly in the opening Larghetto and the two Allegro movements, with the lively and attractive finale rounding off a most rewarding performance.

Tarrega’s Recuerdos (Memories) de la Alhambra may well be the most famous and well loved piece in the solo guitar repertoire, and Owen Moriarty’s playing showed why. His delicate phrasing, and beautifully balanced interplay of melody and “accompaniment” were exquisite, and one sensed the profound appreciation of every listener in the audience.

The Tadic works were a complete contrast, and full of creative colour and artistry. The opening Makenonsko Devojce (Macedonian Woman) was in rather modal tonalities, and its haunting lines, so expressively played, evoked all the longing and heartache of lost love. The Rustemul  burst into life  with the swirling melodies that are typical of this lively Romanian village dance form, and Owen Moriarty made most effective play on the instrument’s different timbres as the piece moved through its varied repetitions. The final Walk Dance was anything but a walk: it catapulted into frenetic 11/8 rhythms “based on a traditional Macedonian dance called Kalajdzisko oro (coppersmith’s dance)” (Programme Notes). It was the perfect choice to showcase Owen Moriarty’s astonishing technical agility on the instrument, and rounded off the programme with great panache.

This was a most rewarding recital from an artist who consistently opens up the joys of the guitar repertoire to appreciative audiences around the country and abroad. My only reservation was the fact that he made no concessions to the volume of the space, performing always at levels consistent with the intimate settings for which much of the music was originally written. While this is doubtless true to some of the music’s intentions, it can make a performance less than satisfying for a modern audience in larger spaces. Some of the exquisite pianissimi were virtually inaudible even in the third row back – is there an argument here for discreet and thoughtful amplification in the larger settings of twenty first century venues??

 

Gunter Herbig and his Brazilian-German guitar at St Andrew’s lunchtime recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Gunter Herbig – guitar

Music by Dilermando Reis, J S Bach and Villa-Lobos

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 5 March, 12:15 pm

Gunther Herbig has been a distinguished figure in Wellington music for some years and was for a time head of classical guitar at the New Zealand School of Music; he remains in Wellington though now teaching at Auckland University. His background – born in Brazil and growing up in Portugal and Germany – gives him a unique background as a musician and guitarist, obviously in both linguistic and musical terms.

His first two pieces were by Brazilian composer, Dilermando Reis (1916-1977), whose music was unashamedly sentimental and romantic. It was clear from the start that Herbig felt a strong affinity with him, as he created the feeling that he was playing spontaneously, embraced by the unaffected character of the music. Perhaps not strong in a memorable sense, Ternura and Se ela perguntar suggested to me the retiring sadness of the Portuguese popular fado song tradition, which I happen to be addicted to. One of the characteristics was a beguiling tendency to pause, to hesitate in mid-phrase, in the fashion of 19th century salon music that filled the piano albums found in our grand-parents’ piano stools.

And he finished the recital with the more famous Brazilian, Villa-Lobos: three pieces called ‘chôro’ (I noted his pronunciation: ‘sho’ru’) which, he explained, were not really in that genre. These were pieces from his Suíte popular brasileira written in 1928, based, as their names indicated, on European dances: Mazurka chôro, Schottish chôro and Valsa chôro. The ‘real’ chôros were about 15 in number, written through the 1920s for orchestra or a great variety of instruments.

The mazurka and the waltz bore some signs of their rhythmic inspiration, though I wondered where the composer had picked up his impressions of the schottish. They all offered Herbig the chance to reveal the range of subtle articulation available on the guitar, through plucking with the finger nails or the finger-tips, plucking close to the bridge or over the finger-board, forming the same notes with the left hand high on the fingerboard or near the nut. They were most charming if light-weight pieces by this prolific composer.

(It’s always interesting to be side-tracked when exploring Internet resources. I had not been aware that Villa-Lobos had damaged his reputation in the late 30s by becoming an acolyte of President Getulio Vargas in his third, dictatorial period from 1937 to 1945, writing ‘patriotic’ music after the pattern of other dictators of that time).

The serious, classical piece in the programme was Bach’s first Lute Suite, BWV 996. As with the previous pieces, Herbig spoke about its provenance, though without using the microphone and he was hard to hear, even eight or so rows back. Bach was apparently inspired to write these, though not a lutenist himself, by the great lute composer and player Sylvius Leopold Weiss, who was almost exactly Bach’s contemporary. It sounded fine on the guitar for Herbig had the taste and skill to adorn the music with enlivening variety, in dynamics and rubato, in articulation and pacing, capturing the charming meandering character of the Präludium, lending interest to the Allemande by seeming to disguise its rhythm and giving the Courante a very deliberate pace so that it seemed to be jogging rather than running; it allowed the sophisticated melodic line to be properly enjoyed. Herbig’s skill in employing all the refined techniques at his command, as well as all sorts of appropriate ornaments, was best displayed in leisurely paced Sarabande; the two last movements, Bourrée and Gigue, captured a lively spirit in dancing rhythms. Was Bach (or Herbig) teasing us by bringing his gigue to what seemed a somewhat unannounced end?

In all, music that was very skilled, balanced and highly suitable for the digestion of empadas or bratwurst.

 

 

 

Baroque guitarist Hopkinson Smith reveals a little known era of Spanish music in exquisite recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Hopkinson Smith playing a five-course baroque Spanish guitar

Music by Gaspar Sanz, Francisco Guerau, Antonio de Santa Cruz

Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, Wellington

Monday 24 February, 6:30 pm

This was Hopkinson Smith’s second performance in Wellington; the previous day he had played at Pataka, the museum and cultural centre in Porirua. I gather there was a full house, and a highly appreciative one.

His rather memorable name has been around for many decades: I confess to thinking he was English (he was born in New York, was educated at Harvard, and long resident in Switzerland) and so there were several surprises and even more delights to be found at this recital by a refined, quietly witty, unpretentious American who seems to command every kind of plucked string instrument (apart from the harp): his extraordinary discography on the Internet is worth a look.

Though he opened the recital without making any comments  about the music or the instrument he was playing,  he did speak at the end of the first bracket of three pieces by Gaspar Sanz  (1640-1710, from Aragon), thus a contemporary of such composers as Lully, Buxtehude, Stradella, Charpentier and Biber.  In terms of Spanish history, the 17th century had seen the decline of its military and political greatness, having squandered the superficial wealth that gold from the Americas had brought them.  But great empires in decline often continue to produce art of lasting quality.

These ‘Three Spanish themes’ which came from a collection published in Zaragossa in 1674, Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra española, suggested a refinement of taste, somehow in contradiction to the grandeur and pomposity still exhibited by the Spanish court and the nobility. There was little chordal writing or employment of rich harmonies; rather, a hesitant quality in the Pavanas with variations, colouring by lots of runs, subtle decoration and rhythm changes. Folias displayed a sort of flamenco character, with strumming across the finger-board.

Before playing the next group, entitled ‘Europe in Miniature’, Smith spoke about his guitar, a replica of a 17th century Spanish guitar with five courses (that is, pairs of strings tuned to the same pitch or at the octave); he noted that his instrument was tuned according to Sanz’s directions, with the two lowest courses tuned an octave higher so that no bass notes could be produced. The result is ethereal, transparent and, in the artist’s own words, the instrument was ‘liberated from the bass, thus the tonality has a unique poetic aura which in its best moments creates a magic of its own’.

It is perhaps more attuned to a venue rather smaller than the church; the space somewhat reduced the feeling of the refined character of this small instrument as well as making Smith’s words hard to hear. But a smaller venue would have meant turning many away.  While the guitar might have been minimally amplified, his voice was not.

There were six pieces in the bracket ‘Europe in miniature’. The first impression was of a certain lack of variety, particularly of key, though they may have been closely related keys; until the final piece, Tarantela which shifted dramatically with much more vigorous strumming, occasional hitting the body of the guitar, creating a very lively musical fabric. The earlier pieces were drawn from various parts of Spain and Europe in general, though always infused with a character that seemed essentially Spanish; varied in rhythm, duple to triple back and forth, lively dotted rhythms that were sometimes difficult to distinguish from quaver triplets. The delicacy and refined taste of the music steadily made itself familiar to me as the concert proceeded.

The two pieces by Francisco Guerau (1649 – 1717/1722, from Majorca) came from a famous publication of 20 years later (Poema harmonico, 1694). The Passacalles del primer tono, one of some 30 passacalles in the volume, proved a longish work, perhaps the most substantial and characteristic in the programme . There was a subtlety of invention and expression, a variety of rhythms and tempi, of unobtrusive counterpoint where, in its central part, its melodic evolution became increasingly intriguing and difficult to follow and appreciate. Towards the end, a meandering, fluid character emerged, in a more marked triple time, that was neither a minuet, a sarabande nor any kind of German Ländler.  Smith’s own notes described Guerau’s music as ‘some of the most sophisticated  writing for the guitar from the entire baroque era’.  Further exploration will be rewarding.

His Canarios (from the Canary Islands), less elaborate but more sparkling and delightful, involved a lot of strumming  that suggested the flamenco style of Andalusia.
The first half ended with a Jácaras, a lively dance by Antonio de Santa Cruz who seems to be a more obscure figure, comparable with Guerau in style, and dated around 1700.

The second half was devoted to five pieces by Sanz: a flowing Preludio based around scales and arpeggios. Then a Marizápalos which emerged as the source of the slow movement from Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, a lovely set of variations.  A jig followed, and then another Passacalles, this time ‘del segundo tono’: bold strumming  and more dense clusters of chords, creating a more ‘modern’ impression than many of the other pieces.

Finally Sanz’s Canarios which proved to be the source of the last movement of Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre; as expected, it was delightfully lively and attractive.

The entire recital, exquisitely and brilliantly executed by Hopkinson Smith,  opened a window for me to a period of music that I was fairly unfamilar with. From a period that is contemporary with the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution in England, of Purcell and Blow, Jeremiah Clarke and Eccles; or Louis XIV’s France of Lully, Charpentier, Campra and Couperin, it evokes a society of perhaps greater refinement and sophistication, though it is pertinent to recall that this was also the era in Spain of the emergence of the baroque Zarzuela, the early form of comic opera that re-emerged strongly in the 19th century.

 

Owen Moriarty – challenging but rewarding guitar recital

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Owen Moriarty solo guitar recital
St. Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series

Carlos Rivera Whirler of the Dance(1970)
Schubert Lob der Thranen arr. Johann Kaspar Mertz (1797-1828)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Nocturnal Op.70
Manuel Ponce (1882-1948) Sonatina Meridional

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 30th October 2013.

This was a rare and welcome opportunity to hear classical guitarist Owen Moriarty in solo performance, as the majority of his Wellington concert appearances are in ensembles. To open the programme he chose two movements from Rivera’s suite Whirler of the Dance. The initial Evocation is a “solemn, personal prayer” (Rivera) whose ambience Moriarty expressed in a reverential and contemplative mood. The following Dance is a complete change, being based on vigorous African dance rhythms, and using tense contrasts between Pizzicato and Ordinario playing. Moriarty did justice to the whole gamut of expression embodied in the two selected movements, but they were not particularly easy listening. Their structure, especially that of the Evocation, was not easy to grasp, and at first listening their wandering tonalities never seemed to be quite adequately established.

The second item was a Schubert song Lob der Thranen (In Praise of Tears) arranged by Mertz, a C19th guitarist and composer.  Its melancholy mood, artistic melodic writing and subtle chromaticism were given a beautifully poetic reading, with a real sense of authenticity. This was enhanced by the smaller period guitar that Moriarty used for this number – apparently a fortuitous discovery in Alistair’s Music in Upper Cuba St!

2013 is the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, and the next item was his Nocturnal Op.70, the only work he wrote for the instrument, and now a bulwark of the classical guitar repertoire. It comprises eight short movements in which Britten uses as the main theme Dowland’s song “Come, heavy Sleep”. Each is a variation which develops a unique character, representing a different phase of sleep. It is a very evocative work which tellingly expresses the elusive and ambiguous sensations of human sleep – the melodies often incomplete, the tonalities barely defined, often with wide contrasts from one mood to the next. This is not a work that the listener can readily “grasp” as a musical experience, and that is doubtless its genius, given the theme and nature of its founding document.

The final work was Manuel Ponce’s Sonatina Meridional, written at the prompting of his friend Andres Segovia. It embodies a variety of Spanish idioms in the composer’s characteristic way, and comprises three movements: Campo (country), Copla (a popular Spanish song) and Fiesta (festival or party). The idioms were a little more accessible and the tonalities more familiar than in the other modern works played earlier: its two outer movements are vigorous and energetic, the central one a gentle contrast, with the character of each being clearly captured in this performance.

Moriarty gave some relaxed and interesting commentary about the works he had chosen, their context and background, and made one particularly interesting observation – that he preferred to avoid playing works that others frequently performed. It’s not hard to see why a creative and innovative musician like Owen Moriarty might feel this way, but the performer is only half the equation in a concert. Particularly in solo recitals, there needs to develop a close rapport between audience and player which is key to an enjoyable musical experience. That can be promoted by apposite commentary, but of equal importance is the programme selection. It is not an accident that even the most avant garde concerts often include at least one familiar and well loved work.

Wellington has enjoyed all too few guitar concerts till recent times, and players like Owen Moriarty and his various ensemble groups have done wonders in redressing the imbalance. But there is still a way to go in attracting a healthy following, and there is no shame in re-playing some of the great classics that most educated listeners would recognize. The aim of music making is surely to broaden the experience of listeners by leading them to discover a new area of musical enjoyment, but I suspect the content of this recital was somewhat uncompromising for many. The classical guitar repertoire is so rich that it deserves wider acceptance, and a little give-and-take in the selection of works can only assist that process.

That said, it was a privilege to be at this recital, and to have one’s mind prised open by the musicianship and technical command that Owen Moriarty brings to all his work. I hope there will be more opportunities in future to hear him in solo mode.

All the guitar students from NZSM prove more is more

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Classical Guitar Concert

Music by Jorge Cardoso, Maximo Pujol, Stephen Goss, Peter Warlock, Antonio Ruis-Pipó and Vivaldi

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 October, 12:15 pm

Three weeks ago I heard some of these student guitarists at Old St Paul’s (17 September). This time all twelve students in the classical guitar department of the school contributed to a mainly different programme that was, if anything, even more interesting and more accomplished.

The Suite of Latin American pieces by Cardoso that had me a bit confused last time was the last work in the earlier programme; here it was first. Perhaps because of that, the trio (Jamie Garrick, Christian Huenuqueo and George Wills) sounded more practised than before. Nevertheless, Samba d’Ouro (Ouro is evidently Portuguese for Gold, as well as being a place name in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Caterina) might have been lifted by a little more rhythmic sensuality.  Camino de Chacarera (which is a folk dance typical of north-western Argentina), was sensitive and nicely articulated. From the next piece, Zamba de Plata, much longer than the first two, there was more movement, along with charm and delicacy in its syncopated rhythms.

And the last two pieces, both evidently from across the Andes, built on the players’ growing confidence: Polca Peruano, elusive but quite melodious, and Vals Peruano, in a triple time slightly disguised by cross rhythms which made it teasing and delightful.

Fin de Siglo (‘End of the century’) by Maximo Pujol, from Buenos Aires, seemed less concerned with visceral pleasures and more with drawing attention to interesting textures and moderately complex shapes: the first part, Andante Tranquillo, and the second, Allegro, a post-Piazzolla, tangoish rhythm. In the middle of the Allegro there’s a nice contrasting, melancholy section which the players captured with grace and feeling.

The same selection as in the last concert from Satie’s Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, arranged by American guitarist Stephen Goss repaid a second hearing. These were for guitar quartet (Jake Church,, Cormac Harrington, Emmett Sweet and Cameron Sloan). While the two Gymnopédies are the more familiar, the Gnossiennes, forming an entity so successfully, lent themselves to more interesting colourings and a hint of mystery. The main impression of the playing was care, thoughtfulness and writing that was beautifully adapted to the guitars.

Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite might have seemed an unlikely case for guitar adaptation, but then it’s based on Renaissance musical ideas which were naturally disposed to the lute and the quartet handled their dance rhythms firmly and gracefully.

The last two pieces involved the full guitar orchestra, twelve in all, with Owen Moriarty conducting. Ensemble was admirable and the variety of sounds and dynamics made these thoroughly entertaining, even if the price was some lack of spontaneous rhythmic lift. The first was Américas by Antonio Ruis-Pipó, actually written for eight guitars, with contributions in the form of clapping and finger-clicking, all generating a convincing orchestral feel.

The last work was an arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso, Op 3 No 8, the set entitled ‘L’estro harmonico’. Here the concertino, for two guitars, was shared by two players taking each of the two parts: Christian Huenuqueo and Cameron Sloan in the first, and George Wills and Nick Price in the second part. Vivaldi survives almost any sort of arrangement and here the disposition of the parts through the several groups created a really full orchestral sound, with varied dynamics and changes of plucking techniques between each section. Maybe they didn’t take the word ‘spiritoso’ in the second movement quite seriously enough, but there was little to carp about in the entire, most delightful performance.

 

Engaging guitar performances from mainly junior NZSM students

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Classical Guitar Concert

Music by Stephen Goss, Fernando Sor, Astor Piazzolla, Sylvius Leopold Weissm Carlo Domeniconi,  Julián Arcas, Jorge Cardoso

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 17 September, 12:15 pm

This concert was one of a series presented in collaboration with the New Zealand School of Music, to give students opportunities to perform before an audience other than fellow students and teachers. All but one of the players were first or second year students. What impressed here was not, perhaps, impeccable playing or mature insight into the music, but an ability to find their way through music that was often complex and sophisticated. The music was introduced by Jane Curry, lecturer and head of classical guitar studies at the school.

The concert opened with a quartet consisting of Jake Church, Cormac Harrington, Emmett Sweet and Cameron Sloan playing three pieces from a five-movement ‘re-working’ of familiar pieces by Erik Satie, from the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. The latter word may derive from an early Greek religious belief, gnosticism, while it has also been linked with the myth based in the ancient Cretan city of Knossos, of King Minor, the story of the Minotaur involving Ariadne and Theseus. Satie’s intended meaning or connotation remins obscure.

The same applies to ‘Gymnopédies’, which hints at gymnastics, or dance (gymnos means ‘nude’ in Greek, since in Sparta, at least, gymnastics were performed naked; while paedia, or ‘pedia’, means boys). So both words have a classical association with movement or dance, and have in common the rejection of late 19th century salon music; they are, in Wikipedia‘s words, “gentle yet somewhat eccentric pieces which, when composed, defied the classical tradition”.

These arrangements were certainly taxing, not only in the finding and maintaining of good ensemble, but also in expressing a gentle melancholy through enigmatic dissonances and unusual harmony.  In their original versions, or in Debussy’s orchestration of the Gymnopédies, they have become extremely popular.

These re-workings proceed without breaks, offering the kind of contrast that Satie was, clearly, not seeking to make, as both groups of three have a striking unity of tone, harmony, tempo. The stronger tune of the Gymnopédie set betwen the two Gnossiennes changed the character of the pieces.

But the players did not quite achieve the fluidity and the disembodied feeling that is the character of the originals.

Sor’s Sonata, Op 22, a piece that probably owed someting of its shape to Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, was played by George Wills. I suppose because he only had his own instrument to attend to, he produced a more fluent line, in handling the tricky rhythms, than the quartet had in the Satie pieces; the perfectly understandable slips and a certain hesitancy, however, did not detract from his general grasp of the style.

The first of a couple of South American pieces was Verano Porteno by Piazzolla. First year student Dylan Solomon’s approach to the elusive tango rhythm was cautious, quiet and a bit tentative. Playing from memory as did all the solo players; after a couple of minutes he handled capably, a change of tempo and  mood.  The music returns to its quiet opening phase, brushing strings with the finger tips, slowly gaining momentum towards the end. A charmingly played piece.

Royden Smith, another first year, played a Passacaglia by the famous lutanist, and contemporary of J S Bach, Sylvius Leopold Weiss. He captured the music’s melancholy tone as well as exhibiting considerable feeling for its rhythm and for the baroque style which would have been derived from some understanding (I suppose) of the nature of lute performance.

Carlo Domeniconi is a contemporary Italian composer who has written much for the guitar. Jake Church played his Variations on an Anatolian Folksong. Its opening was a little insecure, for its texture and rhythm were complex, calling for a fluency that might hardly be expected in a second year student. There were five variations in which Church managed to exhibit changes of character, though in truth, they did not quite compensate a certain monotony that the unchanging tonality and dynamics induced. It sounded particularly hard, in the third variation, to bring melody and rhythm into a synthesis. And in the last variation, I had the not uncommon experience of feeling lost for a moment, and then found, in time for a nice ending.

Then came a Fanasy on Themes from La traviata by 19th century Spanish composer Julián Arcas. Cristian Huenuqueo tended to exaggerate he exprssive features to begin with and I did have misgivings about the likely success in adapting vocal  music of this kind for such a very different vehicle. Whether his playing slowly became more persuasive or my sensors were becoming acclimatised, the several tunes took on something of their character in the opera. It seemed a technically demanding piece and, allowing for occasional smudges, this 4th year student negotiated its changes, its lyrical character, verfy effectively.

The last piece was a suite of five pieces by Jorge Cardoso, a contemporary Argentinian guitarist and composer, and played by a trio of Jamie Garrick, Huenuqueo and Wills. They were derived from the folk styles of various South American countries, entitled as follows: Samba d’orou, Camino de chacarera, Polca paraguaya, Zamba de plata and Vals Peruano.

While Samba d’ouro was a gently syncopated piece in which the trio created a rather sweet atmosphere, Camino de chacarera which is a rural counterpart of the cosmopolitan Argentinian imagery of the tango, but was without the brittle sensuality of the tango proper. Ensemble here proved a little elusive.

Polca Paraguaya was a considerable challenge though the ensemble seemed to gather itself up as it progressed, with a treble line carrying well. Zamba de plata alternated between 6/8 and 3/4 rhythm, sounding a little like a waltz, with competing rhythms, that caused momentary slips; but a charming piece.  The audience clapped at this point, thinking, because the way the programme notes were set out, that it was the end.

Vals Peruano had me fooled as it didn’t sound much like a waltz; Jamie Garrick later clarified the order of the pieces for me, pointing out that this last piece ‘uses syncopated, dotted rhythms which really muddy the feel’. The rhythms were curious and ever-changing.

The music was not chosen for its simplicity or audience familiarity, yet the players, most of whom were at the early stages of their studies, coped well enough technically, but more importantly, found the appropriate idiomatic style, from both a period and geographical point of view.

 

Brief but rewarding guitar recital at Wesley Church

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Winter at Wesley Lunchtime Concert Series presents:

Guitarists Cameron Sloan and Jamie Garrick

Music by Johann Mertz, Giulio Regondi, and anon (Irish and Spanish folk-pieces)

Wesley Church, Taranaki St., Wellington

Thursday 8 August 2013

Cameron and Jamie are graduate students in the NZSM Guitar Programme. They presented a short half-hour recital of solo guitar works, starting with Jamie playing a Poetic Miniature by the Hungarian  Johann Mertz, one of the leading virtuoso guitarists and composers of the mid-nineteenth century. It was indeed a poetic interpretation, with sensitive phrasing and appropriate rubato, underpinned by a sound technique. He followed with Giulio Regondi’s Introduction and Caprice Op.23 which features two sharply contrasting movements – an elaborately embellished Adagio followed by a light-hearted Allegretto scherzando with many virtuostic effects like rapid chromatic scales, octaves, etc. These were all competently accomplished but one felt that they were uppermost in the player’s mind, whilst the shaping and structure of the two movements seemed almost forgotten, hanging somewhere in an unresolved limbo that did not grip or engage the listener.

Cameron then presented a wonderfully gentle, traditional Irish melody with sensitivity and elegance, where the only other possible enhancement would have been a wider dynamic range. He then followed with three Spanish flamenco-style pieces, all showing a very sound technical grasp. But the two outer movements needed a considerably more gutsy, less genteel rendition to fully reflect their folk origins, and the appealing melodies of the middle movement would have been even more lovely with a wider dynamic range.

The large volume of the church really called for a more projected sound on a number of occasions from both players, and this is a not uncommon situation with classical guitar student recitals. Doubtless such projection develops with greater experience and technical confidence, but it is also sound practice to do an acoustic “try-out” with feedback from an experienced ear before any concert.

Despite such minor reservations, it is hugely encouraging to see the wealth of classical guitar talent that is currently being fostered in the NZ School of Music programme. Wellington now enjoys a rich variety of recitals in this area both by professional performers like the NZ Guitar Quartet, and by the students who are learning and benefitting from them. This emerging talent needs to be fostered and encouraged, so it was disappointing to see such a small audience at this concert.

Diverting and highly accomplished lunchtime guitar quartet concert at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Guitar Quartet (Owen Moriarty, Tim Watanabe, Christopher Hill, Jane Curry)

Music by Paulo Bellinati, Manuel de Falla, J S Bach, Almer Imamovich, Rimsky-Korsakov, Inti-Illimani

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 August, 12:15 pm

Whether it was quasi-musical competition from construction work outside, or a quick assessment of the likely tastes of the audience, there were changes to the programme. We did not hear Craig Utting’s Onslow College Suite. (Lyell Cresswell hasn’t so honoured my old secondary school).

Baião de Gude by Paulo Bellinati finds a surprising number of entries through Google, with numerous You-Tube performances. However, live performance is the thing; it began with the most beguiling, whispered sounds that seemed hardly possible from guitars, but it was the chorus of four guitars, I suspect, that removed the more obvious articulation sounds that usually accompany a single guitar. Though melody seemed unnecessary in the context of the impressionist washes of colour and graphic patterns, what hints of melody there were, were clearly secondary to the swift, rushing effects that most characterized the piece.

In place of the Utting piece were three pieces by de Falla, from El amor brujo: ‘Cancion del amor dolido’ (Song of suffering love), ‘Danza del terror’ (obvious) and ‘Danza ritual del Fuego’ (Ritual fire dance), offered a wonderful display of the finesse and virtuosity of the quartet, its precision and its exact positioning of rhythmic patterns.  Though the ensemble was always something to admire, the line of each guitar was always audible too. Each was skilfully arranged from the orchestral original, by Owen Moriarty, and they came across in the most idiomatic, authentic manner.

The arrangement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto was just as successful, again sounding as if Bach was writing for guitars; for there seems indeed to be a disposition in much of Bach’s music for performance on the guitar (not to mention on almost any instrument you’d like); although later in the first movement an alternating 2-note motif became a bit persistent.   Owen Moriarty here played his 7-stringed guitar, which allows an extension of a fourth (I think) below the guitar’s bottom E string; its contribution was often conspicuous, in providing richer bass sonority. The second movement (there really isn’t a middle movement) was excellently fast, its rhythms and dynamics undulating elegantly, and the expectation of closure beautifully cultivated in a diminuendo.

Almar Imamovich is a Bosnian friend of both Owen and Jane stemming from their days at the University of Southern California; he arranged Sarajevo Nights, originally for flute and guitar, specifically for and dedicated to the New Zealand Guitar Quartet. Very lively, complex rhythmically, it seemed to hold no terrors for the quartet which brought it to life, whether or not it concealed reflections on the terrible experiences of the 1990s, with obvious affection and total conviction.

It was probably no surprise that Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol proved such a success in this arrangement by W Kanengiser for guitar quartet. The 7-string guitar, here in Jane’s hands, looked after the important harp parts in this colourful and tuneful work, capturing the essence of Spain without sentimentality, or any sort of expressionist excess; their perfect ensemble was exposed for all to hear. The cadenzas that suggest the guitar, were of course particularly effective, especially in the fourth
movement, Scena e canto Gitano.  And the excitement of the end of the last movement that is generated in the orchestral original was palpable.

There was an encore, of a Tarantella by Chilean composer Inti-Illimani, transcribed by Christopher Hill, offering another fine display of fleet fingering, syncopated rhythms and a melodious central section.

This mix of arrangements of well-loved music and attractive contemporary pieces specially composed for guitar quartet makes a very satisfactory concert programme, and offers a fine opportunity to enjoy this highly accomplished, world-class ensemble, a matter that I trust New Zealand audiences understand.