Tag: guitar

Young Musicians enliven lunchtime at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Frances Robinson

New Zealand School of Music presents:
Young Musicians’ Concert

St. Andrews on the Terrace

Wednesday, 3rd July 2013

This concert featured members of the N.Z. School of Music Young Musicians Programme, which provides opportunities for gifted young people to work with the cream of New Zealand performers, composers and music educators, as well as overseas visitors, faculty staff and gifted post-graduate NZSM students. Seven performers contributed to a well rounded programme which demonstrated that there is no shortage of well trained, able younger musicians coming up the ranks.

Firstly Harry Di Somma sang Brahms’ Leibestreu and Schubert’s An Sylvia, in a sensitive, musical presentation, with promising cantabile, good dynamics and phrasing, and sound intonation. His love of the works was obvious from his face, but he needs to release his whole body to express more fully the feelings he wants to convey.

Next Sophie Smith sang Brahms’ An Ein Veilchen in a remarkably well rounded, mature voice with a sure cantabile, good dynamic control and artistic phrasing. Her overall musicianship, mature voice and accomplished singing quite belied the petite figure that stood before us in her school tunic, and I believe we will see her go far with her talents.

Nino Raphael then sang Schumann’s Im Walde and Purcell’s Music for a While in a warm expressive performance with a quality of vocal timbre, phrasing and dynamics that supported a sure cantabile line throughout. He has yet to develop strength at the outer limits of his range, but he has plentiful talents to build on.

The singers were accompanied at the piano by John Broadbent, whose sure technical support and musicianship greatly enhanced the three partnerships. His crafting and balance of piano dynamics  with each voice was exemplary, easily the best piano ensemble work I have heard in the challenging acoustics that musicians must now grapple with since alterations were completed at St.Andrews.

John Tan was the first of the instrumental students, playing a Scarlatti Sonata and two piano works by Albeniz. It was a musical, expressive performance supported by a thoroughly competent technique. He can well afford to rely upon it, and need not have succumbed to the nerves that caused him to rush in the technically demanding final section of the Malaguena.

Next was an arrangement of Erroll Garner’s classic ballad Misty in a charming, sensitive rendition by guitarist Amber Madriaga. It was a perfect gem but was very difficult to hear back in the hall. Amber needs to project her lovely sound much more when playing in spaces this size.

Pianist Prin Keerasuntonpong followed with Granados’ Quejas o la Maja y el Ruisenor. He amply captured the shifting moods of its rich melodies and textures and demonstrated the skill and sensitivity that have doubtless earned him the scholarship he has secured to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

The final performer was Jamie Garrick, a fourth year guitar student at NZSM. He played Mertz’ Romanze from Bardenklange, and the Introduction and Caprice from Regondi’s Op.23. His sure technique supported musical phrasing and dynamics. However, a somewhat aimless approach did little to clarify the musical form of the Introduction, though this improved with the clearer melodic writing of the Caprice section.

Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable concert that amply demonstrated the talents of New Zealand’s younger musicians.  It deserved a better audience.

(550 words)

Delightful concert by guitar quartet at Lower Hutt

Posted on by Frances Robinson

New Zealand Guitar Quartet (Chris Hill, Jane Curry, Tim Watanabe, Owen Moriarty)
Chamber Music Hutt Valley
Music by Paulo Bellinati, J S Bach, Craig Utting, De Falla, Carlos Rafael Rivera, Leo Brouwer, Rimsky-Korsakov

St Mark’s Church, Woburn Road

Wednesday 24 April, 7.30pm

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt, was a venue perfectly suited to a delightful concert by an ensemble such as the New Zealand Guitar Quartet. The warm, yet clear, acoustics showcased the players’ complete technical mastery of their instruments, and enhanced the musical sensitivity of the recital. The relatively intimate scale of the space supported the informal rapport with the audience that the players developed by their commentary on the various works.

They selected a varied and colourful repertoire for the event: the South American, Cuban and Spanish works were all played with a brilliance that conveyed the passion of their folk-music origins, while still exploiting a wide dynamic range that could drop to the most evocative pianissimo of a single raindrop (Cuban Landscape with Rain). Rivera’s colourful Cumba-Quin highlighted the guitars in percussive mode, imitating such instruments as claves, palitos and conga drums, in Rumba forms played with great gusto.

The New Zealand work by Craig Utting was a perfect gem, where two beautifully played melodic outer sections contrasted with a strident middle one. If this movement is typical of the composer’s output he is sadly under-represented in the usual concert repertoire, and it is to the Quartet’s credit that they are giving it some exposure.

In Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol the composer asked various instruments to imitate the guitar in some sections of the work. This would suggest that the suite is ideally suited to transcription for four guitars, yet it proved less than satisfactory, simply because guitars alone cannot capture the amazing range of colours tailored to each instrument in the original. The composer was annoyed by the narrow critical focus on the “quasi guitara” marking, and fired back a lengthy riposte including the comment that “The Capriccio is a brilliant composition for the orchestra. The change of timbres, the felicitous choice of melodic designs and figuration patterns, exactly suiting each kind of instrument, brief virtuoso cadenzas for instruments solo, the rhythm of the percussion instruments, etc., constitute here the very essence of the composition”.

The Bach Brandenburg no.3 was originally written for three each of violins, violas and cellos, with basso continuo. It proved, however, to be the least satisfactory item in this outstanding recital, for two reasons. Firstly, guitar timbres simply cannot offer the same range and complexity as the original string ensemble version. Secondly, the tempi selected were frankly a disservice to an opus which is widely regarded as among the finest musical compositions of the Baroque era.

The hectic gallop of the first movement was upped to breakneck speed in a frantic finale. This ensemble does not need to prove its technical competence and mastery. It could have allowed the intricate Bach polyphony to speak as it should at appropriate tempi. In a less clean acoustic than St. Marks the result would have been a distressing muddle of indistinguishable lines.

These drawbacks, however, did not dim the audience’s enthusiasm and appreciation. At the finish they applauded till they were granted a fiery Tarentella encore, composed by an exiled Chilean group after the Pinochet coup. It was a fitting end to a wonderful evening’s music making by and ensemble that is a huge asset to the Kiwi music scene.

Duo mosaica – violin and guitar – in first-class recital to end St Mark’s series

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Francis-Paul Demillac: Petite Suite Medievale
Piazzolla: Café 30, from Histoire du Tango
Ravel: Pièce en forme de habanera
Monti: Csárdás
Cheryl Grice: Mi Alma
Martin Jaenecke: Shade and Light; The Many Shades of Me

Duo Mosaica: Cheryl Grice, guitar, Martin Jaenecke, violin and saxophone

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 31 October 2012, 12.15pm

This was the last for this year of the Hutt City lunchtime concert series.  Since early June, numerous worthwhile concerts have taken place, and the organisers are to be commended for their efforts in putting the series together.

Both the performers in the duo migrated to New Zealand – one from England; one from Germany – to teach in Nelson.  They now contribute to the musical life of Wellington, with frequent returns to Nelson for Jaenecke, who has also toured for Chamber Music New Zealand.

The varied programme was introduced by the performers – using a microphone, I’m glad to say.  The fashion for spoken introductions is fine with me as long as what is said is cogent, well-thought-out, brief and audible – as today.  Too often it is none, or only some of these things, in which case it is a waste of time, and annoying to the audience.  The dynamics and tempo of speech needs to be increased (in the first feature) and decreased (in the second) depending on the size and acoustics of the venue.  It is amazing the number of people who do not realise that in an auditorium they need to speak more slowly and loudly than in a mere room; instead, they speak as if to a small group of friends in their living room.

Speaking of dynamics; the red and black combo of the performers’ outfits added to the brightness of the event.

The duo began with an absolutely gorgeous work by Francis-Paul Demillac, a composer I had not heard of before.  The acoustic seemed to allow both instruments to speak clearly – coupled, of course, with the musicians’ impeccable techniques.

The suite opened with a calm and peaceful ‘Sicilienne’, followed by a short, lively and bouncy ‘Sonnerie’.  Next was ‘Après une page de Ronsard’ (A une jeune morte), which was much more contemplative, as suited the subject.  The final movement was entitled ‘Ronde’; a sprightly dance, with the guitar using a variety of techniques.

Piazzolla is famous for his tangoes; this one was most appealing music, more thoughtful than I imagined it would be, but full of diversity too.  These two performers are so accustomed to playing together (Martin said it was ten years) that what they produce is a unified whole, with great tone from both of them.

Ravel’s ‘Habanera’ is well-known.  Originally it was written for voice and guitar, as a vocalise – a wordless melody with accompaniment.  The players performed a transcription from Ravel’s own version for cello and piano.  The piece seemed to have less flair than usual – perhaps it was a little slow.

Cheryl Grice had to retune her guitar several times to ccommodate the requirements of the composers; I noticed that she had a cunning device (presumably electronic) attached to the top of her guitar’s fingerboard, above the tuning pegs, that she consults.  I imagine it tells her when she has precisely tuned to the required pitch.

Vittorio Monti’s famous piece has been played by all manner of instruments, but was originally written for violin.  This item was played with plenty of life – and it was obvious from the facial expressions of both performers that Martin varied things a little as the mood took him, to liven the piece up.

Then we came to the duo’s own compositions.  Cheryl said that hers was the first she had ever written, and she wrote it in 5 days.  ‘Mi Alma’ means ‘My Soul’ (why do pieces by English speakers so often get titled in another language?), and used harmonics extensively.  A gentle opening was wistful, even regretful at times, but led to more forceful passages.  It was played superbly, and ended with gentle harmonics again.

Martin’s two pieces were for guitar and saxophone; he played the soprano saxophone with aplomb.  As he said, this was a demanding combination in terms of dynamics.   After an introduction on guitar, there was a haunting, rising melody for the saxophone; after discords, the music was brought to a beautiful resolution, before darting off onto sunny slopes for the ‘Light’ part of the piece.  Altogether very attractive music.

The second piece portrayed shades of the composer’s character – introverted, extraverted, angry etc.  Parts were improvised, as he humorously explained in his introduction.  Both instruments had solo passages, the saxophone revealing its variety of tones and ability to be brazen but also subtle, though not quite as subtle as the guitar.  The piece became exciting and vigorous, then sank into a reverie, with a delicious ending.

These are two first-class musicians who play so well in combination.

 

Notable Brazilian guitarist presented by the embassy and the NZSM

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aliéskey Vianna (guitar)

Presented by the New Zealand School of Music and the Embassy of Brazil

Massey University Theatrette, Wellington

Thursday 18 October, 6.30pm

The Embassy of Brazil has been hosting regular cultural events for a few years, and these are often of music, featuring Brazilian musicians. We have been aware of them but it has taken us till now to get to attend and to write about them.

The recital by Aliéskey Vianna was particularly drawn to our notice through that excellent daily radio programme, Upbeat, on RNZ Concert at midday. Eva Radich seemed to establish a delightful rapport with him and he proved articulate, indeed remarkably fluent in English, and well-informed and not just about his own instrument, but about music in general – classical, popular, Latin, jazz, anything…

He was born in Brazil’s third largest metropolis, Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, about 400km north of Rio. He graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The visit was evidently initiated by Dr Jane Curry, head of classical guitar performance at the School of Music, who attended the University of Arizona at Tucson a few years after Vianna had been there and the two had become friends.  The Massey theatrette was almost full when we arrived, of guitar students and members of the Brazilian community and a few other diplomats who, from personal experience, are not in general as interested or as cultivated in the arts as is often imagined. However, some were there, though the majority of the audience judging by the talk during the interval and at the supper later, were from the Brazilian community.

It was a mixture of classical and other music – the ‘other’ being pieces by a couple of famous Brazilian composers.

Inevitably, he began with two pieces by Villa-Lobos – the familiar first Prelude and the less familiar Study No 11.  Suggesting that he was approaching the acoustic diffidently, for a space full of people sounds very different from an empty one during an earlier test-run, his playing in the Prelude was soft, unassuming and discreet, which offered a very attractive view of it; though its middle section took on a more confident character.

I could not discern the particular technical aspects that Estudo 11 might have been been intended to offer work. It began deliberately, soon moving through a series of disparate harmonies, tremolo effects using fast repeated notes, then a theme that seemed derived from chords rather than the other way round: determined by the colour and flavour of the melody.

The next two pieces came from the late and early 18th century: Fernando Sor’s Fantasia Op 18, a prelude and set of variations on a theme by Paisiello. The prelude was a brief affair that seemed to lead without much change of mood into the statement of the theme in question, which was a thoroughly typical, melodious piece from the time of Haydn and Mozart. The composer put it through a conventional routine which offered plenty of opportunity to show the guitar’s lyrical strengths, some of great delicacy, others of fleetness, one using odd muted strings, and one employing only the left hand in both stopping and plucking the strings; it could hardly have been played without a very occasional fluff.

Bach’s Chaconne has, as Vianna remarked, been adapted by a great many musicians for a great many instruments from its original for solo violin. In Vianna’s own arrangement, it seemed particularly well adapted to the guitar, and it emerged from the treatment in an illuminating, tasteful performance.  It was strongly driven by a feeling of forward motion; at the same time the playing conveyed the underlying grief the Bach no doubt felt at the sudden death of his first wife. The last few minutes of the movement in which quite an emotional punch is created, especially in Busoni’s famous piano arrangement, also had a singular impact on the guitar.

The second half began with a couple of improvisations in jazz style, on themes by jazz composer Ralph Towner. Improvisation is a mysterious art, and one hard to judge in the absence of a knowledge of a performer’s entire oeuvre; for there’s always the lurking question, how much is the exercise of a good memory, following sequences that have been thought out in the mind and on your instrument perhaps many times before. The old game of improvising on a theme offered by audience members provides a more transparent test, though even here, well-practised passages, decorative effects, chord sequences that lie readily to the hands of the improviser but are unfamiliar to an audience, make it a problematic process. All one can say is that Vianna displayed most impressive fluency and versatility, commanded easy-sounding harmonic changes, a wonderful range of ornaments and fleet passage-work. And the two pieces, Toledo and The Juggler’s Etude, seemed to evolve in an organic manner, enabling you to gauge where the playing was heading and how far off was its conclusion.

Vanna told us that Anibal Augusto Sardinha, better known as ‘Garôto’ (his nick-name sounds menacing, but means ‘The Boy’) had emerged from the streets of São Paulo where he was born in 1915, playing the banjo, in popular music, especially the samba. After he went to Rio de Janeiro in 1938 he soon met Laurinda Almeida and Carmen Miranda who took him to the United States with her. His music turned towards jazz and Duke Ellington and Art Tatum were among those in his concerts; but the sounds of the bossa nova are not too remote.  He died in 1955.

His Inspiracão seemed like an exercise in slithering chord changes below scraps of charming if slightly sentimental melody; while Lamentos do morro expressed its lament in hard chords and plucking that would approximate staccato playing on other instruments, in very lively, extravert bossa nova rhythm.

Sergio Assad (presumably no relation), born in 1952, is an important Brazilian composer/guitarist, famous in a duo with his brother Odair. You will find a formidable list of his compositions in Wikipedia.

His three movement suite, Aquarelle, opened with Divertimento where a partly obscured theme was underpinned by bossa nova rhythms and a dazzling array of notes that suggested a fastidious musical personality. Valseana was what its name suggested, as disguised and subverted as Ravel’s orchestral essay, was adorned by decorative flourishes and arpeggio flights. The closing Prelúdio é Toccatina somewhat mirrored the Sor Fantasie, with its short Prelude forsaking Brazil for the sobriety of Bach, while the Toccata handled its material as any devoted disciple of Villa-Lobos would have learned to do through the example of the sequence of the Bachianas Brasileiras.

Apart from the exemplary, if not utterly flawless, performances, there were Vianna’s well-chosen and intelligently expressed remarks about the composers and the pieces, touching on the influences that contributed to their style and handling. The rather slight programme notes and spoken remarks that have often accompanied other guitar recitals has been a matter that I have previously had the effrontery to lament. Here was an example of a performer presuming no less musical background that would a pianist talking to an audience that was about to hear Bach or Liszt or a string quartet on Haydn or Beethoven

 

School of Music guitar students delight Lower Hutt lunchtime audience

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Guitar Ensemble, conducted by Jane Curry

Music by Gibbons, Dowland, Bach, Andrew York, Piazzolla, Brouwer, Carulli

Church of St Mark, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 10 October, 12.15pm

Two distinct ensembles took part in this delightful recital, some of which was to contribute to the final semester assessments of senior students. Eight players formed the ‘ensemble’ while four of them – the more senior students – formed the quartet. The Ensemble started and finished the programme.

Two pieces by Elizabethan/Jacobean composers opened it. Orlando Gibbons Fantasie for keyboard was very short but demonstrated, in this most accomplished arrangement by one of the guitarists, how effective it could be made to sound in another medium that involved the creation of far more notes.

John Dowland’s The Frog Galliard was written for the lute and arranged for an ensemble by his contemporary Thomas Morley; a more elaborate, courtly affair, in slow ¾ rhythm, it was played fluently with only a few missed notes, leaving an excellent impression of the musical talent within the ensemble.

The fourth of the Preludes and Fugues (in F major) from Bach’s Eight Preludes and Fugues, BWV 553-560, followed (it is now believed they were written for pedal clavichord, not organ); I don’t think that, knowing of the earlier doubts about its being by Bach, affected my impression that it did not display a very typically Bachian character. The Prelude moved along fluently and interestingly with its nods at different keys while the Fugue made use of rocking series of thirds that did rather call for a bit more elaboration.

These three pieces and the later ones played by the Ensemble were conducted by Jane Curry.

The next two pieces were played by the Quartet (Nick Price, Jamie Garrick and Cameron Sloan and Mike Stoop). Andrew York is a prominent American composer for guitar, and his Quiccam sounded a very formidable challenge for the players, required to produce a considerable variety of awkward effects that were rather better than mere devices for idle bravura display, and they handled its complex, varied parts with skill and a good sense of where the music was going.

A rather gruesome piece by Argentinian tango exponent Piazzolla was La muerte del Angel, about the death of an angel in a typical Buenos Aires knife fight. The slashing of the knives was audible as were various unusual effects and articulations. Again, this was a credit to the accomplishment of the students and the adventurous guidance by their teachers.

In Cuban Landscape with Rain the full ensemble took over again. By Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, it was accompanied by a sudden rain squall that descended on the church, to general wonderment. The piece featured impressionistic effects such as very fast repeated notes simulating tremolo, and chaotic, percussive effects that rattled like the rain.

There were two famous guitarists at the turn of the 19th century: Ferdinando Carulli and Mauro Giuliani. Carulli was born in the same year as Beethoven (and Wordsworth); he settled in Paris and it may well have been his playing that prompted Chopin, who was also in Paris during the last decade of Carulli’s life there, to remark that there was no more beautiful instrument in the world than the guitar, save perhaps two guitars.

This Quartett, Op 22, would readily support that opinion, with its formal opening, as if for a concerto, and its tuneful, operatic style that sounded very much of its time, the opéras-comiques of Grétry or Boïeldieu. So ended a concert before a moderate sized audience who would have been unlikely to have been very familiar either with the classical guitar or with its repertoire. The School of Music is doing an admirable job with its sustained policy of getting talented students out into the community, with great mutual benefits.

 

Australian guitarist Alex Tsiboulski seduces audience with beautiful playing

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

J.S. Bach: Suite no.1 for unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007), arr. Stephen Snook
Fernando Sor: Variations on a theme of Mozart, Op.10
Hans Werner Henze: Drei Tentos from Kammermusik
Alfred Uhl: Sonata classica
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Valsa Chôro from Suite populaire brésilienne
Isaac Albeniz: Sevilla from Suite Española
Pixinguinha (Alfredo da Rocha Viana Jr.): Carinhoso, arr. Roland Dyens

Adam Concert Room, New Zealand School of Music

Thursday 20 September 2012, 7pm

Jane Curry, the New Zealand School of Music tutor in guitar, introduced the performer, his visit being enabled by sponsorship from the Australian High Commission in Wellington (though Ukrainian-born, Tsiboulski has lived in Australia since his early teens.)  We in the audience were the beneficiaries, not least in that this was a free concert.  It was a bonus to have the concert in the relative intimacy of the Adam Concert Room, where the guitar could be easily heard, and the player easily seen.  The sound was clear; even the quietest notes could be heard.

The Bach Suite’s Prelude was played in so gentle and lovely a manner that I formed the opinion, not changed through the six movements, that I actually preferred this version to the cello original (sacrilege, maybe).  Tsiboulski spoke after the first two items, and said that this was not an ‘authentic’ arrangement, in that it did not stick solely to the notes written for cello in the original, but took into account the capabilities of the guitar.

There was considerable use of rubato, but the playing could not be called romantic – yet the music perhaps had more emotional impact than it would in the original version.  The delicacy was just enchanting.  The Allemande was most appealing (my note says ‘fab.’), while the Courante was a very fast version.  Throughout the movements there were subtle gradations of dynamics, and a little vibrato.  Tsiboulski made this music truly enthralling.  The last movement, Gigue, was very robust.  At the end of the Suite, the guitarist retuned his instrument; he did not break up the music by doing so between movements – if there was a slight drop in pitch on one or two strings – so what?

How different a mood we encountered with Sor’s Variations!  There was much more passion in this well-known work.  The varying timbres and volumes Tsiboulski extracted from his instrument by the placement of the right hand were delightful.  He played these variations with more subtlety and variety than I’ve heard them played before.  When playing quietly, he achieved a pianissimo I don’t think I’ve ever experienced from this instrument – and that’s saying something, since it is a quiet instrument – and Tsiboulski explained that among the unusual features of his Australian-made instrument was the fact that it was louder than average with guitars.

The last variation was very robust, by contrast.  Unlike the Bach, the work was played from memory.

Henze’s pieces were three excerpts from a suite of 9 pieces, inspired by poetry by the German poet Hölderlin.  Tsiboulski emphasised that these three were just interludes in the longer work.   There was a lot of fingering in very high positions in these pieces, which were otherwise deceptively simple, yet full of expression.  The second one, which translates as ‘In life the eye often finds’ gave the guitarist much more work to do, while the third was quieter again, but with running motifs, interesting chords and an inconclusive ending.

The next piece, Alfred Uhl’s Sonata classica (1937), was introduced in an entertaining way, with a story about Segovia’s penchant for adding his own gloss to composers’ work; Uhl didn’t like that.   His piece is a ‘take’ on the late 1700s – jokey and German.  Its four movements feature unexpected key changes and accidentals.  The andante second movement was quite idyllic, while the third was fast, with some strumming, which we had not heard so far.  There were reprises of earlier material; the whole featured superb writing for the guitar.

Villa-Lobos’s ‘Valsa Chôro’ from Suite populaire brésilienne was apparently about the composer looking back to his childhood, and writing a European waltz with a Brazilian flavour.  He wrote many Chôros; this was one of the early ones.  It was a charming, very melodic piece.   The guitarist created great feeling with this piece, which had that wistful, regretful tinge that much Brazilian music has.

Albeniz followed; Tsiboulski explained that like Granados and others, Albeniz wrote for the piano music that is frequently played on the guitar, including this suite.  They wrote repertoire for salon performers.  Nevertheless, it is authentic Spanish music.  This piece is particularly well-known.

The final piece was by ‘Little Penguin’ (it being customary in Brazil for popular musicians to be known by nicknames).  Like the Villa-Lobos, there was a touch of that Portuguese melancholy, as in Fado.  The arrangement of the song Carinhoso was very effective, and ended the recital on a lighter note.

It is a long time since I heard a solo guitarist that I enjoyed so much as I did the playing of Alex Tsiboulski.  His playing, choice of programme, and spoken introductions were of a very high order.

 

 

Strumming and fretting en masse at Old St.Paul’s – the N.Z.Guitar Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Old St.Paul’s Church -Lunchtime Concerts

New Zealand Guitar Quartet

(Owen Moriarty, Tim Wanatabe, Jane Curry and Chris Hill)

Old St.Paul’s Church, Thorndon

Tuesday 21st August 2012

Perhaps it would have all been double the pleasure at Old St. Paul’s for Frederic Chopin, who was reputed to have said “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar – save, perhaps two!” – no less than the New Zealand Guitar Quartet was here to put the aphorism to the test. A quartet’s worth of guitar players certainly makes a lovely, rich sound, with plenty of opportunities for all of those individual voices, both leading and in the middle, to interact with one another and create such richly-woven tapestries, in fact, small orchestras of sound.

The concert’s venue – Old St.Paul’s – exerted its customary spell over the proceedings, the beauty of the surroundings making up for the lack of adequate sight-lines for any audience member sitting more than a dozen pews back. Some elevation for the performers (as was constructed not so long ago in St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Church) would certainly help more people to SEE the musicians, and perhaps enhance the sound-projection (the latter, however, seems perfectly adequate for all but the most distant spectators). A few of the softer passages for solo guitar seemed very quiet, but the sound in tutti made, as I’ve already said, a pretty solid, if finely constituted, instrumental ensemble sound.

Attendance at these Old St.Paul’s lunchtime concerts of late (at least the ones I’ve been to) have been surprisingly good, considering (perhaps, because of! ) the inclement weather – and today’s concert was no exception (the attendance AND the weather!). There’s obviously a loyal following for the venture, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, and in this case the music and the music-making would have contributed greatly to the delight of it all.

The ensemble describes itself in a program note bio as “exciting, dynamic and engaging” – and I’m happy to say that the concert certainly reflected these things. I’ve heard the group play before, and this time around found myself entirely caught up in what was going on, as if everybody’s focus was freshly sharpened and their energies centered right at the music’s heart. Take the opening item, for example, Luigi Boccherini’s Introduction et Fandango, a pleasant though fairly conventional evocation of Spain – or at least one might have previously thought so, until hearing the Quartet’s  full-blooded rendition of the Fandango, digging into the rhythms and accentuating the music’s light-and-dark contrasts. Boccherini? – really?

Jane Curry introduced the next item,a transcription by Owen Moriarty of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto, drawing listeners’ attention to one of the players’ use of a 7-string guitar, the instrument making for a greater range and sonority. Whatever the difference, the reworking of the music (in true Baroque style) was a great success, the music’s bubbling energy carrying all before it in both the first and third movements (a pity the opportunity wasn’t taken in between these episodes for a bit of extempore “sounding” of things suggested both by what had just happened and what was to come, as sometimes happens in this music’s performance). But particularly in the last movement, the counterpoints joyously tumbled over one another in away that would probably have had old Sebastian Bach tapping his feet in approval.

New Zealand composer Craig Utting drew some of his inspiration from the Baroque world for part of a composition called Onslow Suite, using a kind of passacaglia-form underlining a kind of lyrical exchange. The music provides the contrast of a middle section that spontaneously modulates asymmetrically and somewhat remotely, before returning to the passagcaglia figurations with increased rapture, finishing with a final chord of benediction – a lovely work, originally written for two pianos, but here most satisfyingly reworked for guitars.

The group then turned its attention to a work by Andrew York, former player-member of the American Guitar Quartet, the group for whom the music was written. This was called Quiccan, a closely-knit etude for four guitars, allowing each player to explore melody, harmony, and accompaniment. The piece started jazzily, resembling the sounds of a distant festival, one redolent with Latin American rhythms and textures. A slower section allowed the players some breathing-space and a contrasted vantage-point, towards which the ensemble redirected its energies, with the help of some “percussive” effects -all very engaging and attractive. A sudden “break-off” point resulted in a chord whose single chime froze the gestural actions of the musicians and allowed the sounds to resonate briefly and depart – a kind of musical metaphor for human existence.

More familiar territories were the items by Manuel de Falla, to finish the program – two exerpts, arranged by Owen Moriarty, from Falla’s El amor brujo ballet, firstly, the Danza del Terror, plenty of repeated notes, driving rhythms and strutting flourishes, followed by the even better-known Danza ritual del fuego, a performance which brought out something of the music’s dark, primitive side at the beginning, and gave plenty of point to the cross-rhythmed accents in the piece’s middle section. Only at the end did I feel the need for a bit more abandonment on the part of the players, something slightly more animal and physical. I wonder, too, whether the emphasis on tuning the instruments is entirely appropriate during the course of these two pieces – to my way of thinking, far better to keep the impetus and atmosphere on-going between the two dances and let whatever pitch vagaries occur be part of the sweep and drive, of this primitive, elemental aspect of the music.

But, nevertheless, a great concert, nicely presented and vividly projected.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Zealand School of Music guitar students’ interesting recital at Old St Paul’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Guitar students: Jamie Garrick, Nick Price, Cameron Sloan, Mike Stoop

Music by Bizet, Bach, L K Mertz, Daniel Bacheler and Adnrew York

Old Saint Paul’s, Mulgrave Street

Tuesday 5 June, 12.15pm

These students, plus one other, had played at St Andrew’s on The Terrace in the previous week, with a largely different programme. I missed it, as did my Middle C colleagues. I gather that they played mainly as a quartet then; at Old Saint Paul’s they played two ensemble pieces, and four solos.

A suite from Carmen opened the concert. The programme note remarked that the opera had had a rough beginning (actually, the nature of its reception has been rather distorted; it had about 30 performances in the three months between its premiere and Bizet’s death – more than any other opera at the Opéra-Comique that year, 1875; there was a great deal of popular and critical acclamation – just one or two churlish reviews; and already the Vienna Court Opera had made an approach for it to be produced there).

The performance by the quartet here began well, carefully, capturing the Spanish air that pervades it from the start, and the attractive arrangement gave each player bright solo opportunities while the others provided nicely contrasted accompaniments, rhythmically and dynamically acute, and placed on the lower strings of the instruments. However, some of the later dances did not capture quite the same charm or character, and by the time of the Toreador’s song slips occurred more often. But the Entr’acte was well done and the Gypsy Dance  was quite a delight.

The audience seemed unfamiliar with applauding customs, clapping after every section of the Carmen suite, and even more surprising between the two parts of the Prelude and fugue from Bach’s Lute Suite, BWV 997, which was played without the score by Michael Stoop. His dynamics were nicely judged and phrasing expressive. The fugue is quite long and it was no small achievement to have got through it without noticeable mishap.

Cameron Sloan played two pieces, again from memory, by one Johann Kaspar Mertz, a 19th century composer: Fantaisie originale and Le gondolier, from his Op 65; they sounded influenced by the piano music of his age – of Weber, Schubert and Schumann. Though he played these two attractive pieces very well, his spoken introduction had been inaudible. Given a composer probably unknown to most, as it was to me, a few words would have been interesting. New Grove does not list him, but Wikipedia does: named as Hungarian guitarist and composer, born in Bratislava (Pressburg or Pozsony when the city was in Austria or Hungary respectively).

Later players decided against introducing themselves or commenting on their pieces. A little coaching in the art of speaking in a medium size auditorium would be a good idea.

Equally attractive was a piece called Monsieur Almaine by Daniel Bacheler, a theme and variations. Again, I had not heard of him; moderate-sized dictionaries were of no help, though I found him in New Grove, and of course the Internet never fails. It appears that recent scholarship has brought some 50 lute pieces to light and some have been recorded.  He was born in 1572, the same year as Ben Jonson and Thomas Tomkins, around the dates of John Bull, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi. Dowland, Weelkes … With the confidence afforded by using the score, Nick Price played with a good ear for style, phrased and articulated a clearly difficult piece very well, with only minor slips.

The last soloist was Jamie Garrick who played another Bach Lute piece, the Prelude and Fugue from BWV 998; he played thoughtfully, maintaining fluent rhythms in both parts, though with occasional hesitations. The Fugue, with an attractive melody, starts slowly which demanded considerable care in its meandering passages, and in the fast passagework as it accelerated towards the end.

Finally the quartet reassembled to play a rather delightful piece by contemporary American composer, Andrew York, Quiccan. It was fast and rhythmically lively in a gently Latin-American manner. Judging by the adroit fingerwork evident in all players, it was well rehearsed and well liked.

I had not noticed that the concert was running over time, which suggests that, in all, it had proved most enjoyable.

Duo Tapas return for more violin and guitar music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Krouse, Anthony Ritchie, Lilburn, Imamovic, Piazzolla, and Bartók

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 March, 12.15pm

Duo Tapas has become a fairly familiar presence on Wellington’s chamber music circuit over the past couple of years, even though the combination of violin and guitar has not been a major musical genre, or one that has drawn scores of composers to write major works.

Nevertheless, the music that this attractive duo turns up is always attractive, serving to dispel the notion that classical music consists entirely of great masterpieces by great geniuses all of whom are dead.

These musicians show that very listenable programmes can be built with music written by living composers from all over the world, including some who are their friends.  (All of it has been arranged for this combination from other originals). The names Krouse and Imamovic, as well as Ritchie, and some of the same music – Da Chara for example – have appeared in their earlier concerts.

The latter piece, by Ian Krouse, began with a deliberate or accidental hesitation, but it seemed altogether in keeping with its subdued Irish accents, with hesitant rhythms, the slight fragility in the violinist’s playing, evolving towards the end into a faster dance.

The New Zealand department of the recital consisted of an arrangement by Anthony Ritchie of one his own Five Dunedin Songs of 1996: Stone Woman. It had a bluesy, ‘country’ character , the guitar injecting curious figures alongside the violin’s flowing line. And Lilburn’s Canzona (not Canzonetta) No 1 followed: it seems belatedly to have become a genuinely popular piece (I think it made the RNZ Concert New Year’s Day Count-down), perhaps in a similar class to Farquhar’s Ring Round the Moon music, and similarly perhaps, not highly rated by the composer, misled during those benighted years in which melodies were scorned as a mark of non-seriousness or commercialism. The guitar part seemed the perfect accompaniment, while the violin’s velvety bowing was quite enchanting.

In a recital last year the duo played music by Bosnia-born Almar Imamovic, whom Moriarty met while studying in Los Angeles.  Hints of a modal scale could be detected in Jamilla’s Dance (played in their 2010 recital at Old St Paul’s), and a characteristic Balkan, perhaps Greek touch was present as the dance slowed. It was a slight piece, though effective, given a spirited and careful performance.  A second scheduled piece by Imamovic was omitted for reasons of time.

The two pieces by Piazzolla were in marked contrast. (Incidentally, try looking him up in any music dictionary more than 15 years old, even New Grove: he’s only recently been promoted into the ranks of ‘classical’ music). The first, Oblivión, was a slow tango whose tension was probably as hard to sustain as it would have been to dance to (the emotional state called up makes me think of the evocation of the tango in Kapka Kassabova’s recent memoir/novel on the subject). It’s a condition comparable to a slow elegiac aria, in long phrases, calling for extraordinary breath control. The violin remained on its upper strings while the guitar carefully picked out supporting motifs.

Libertango was a more conventional exemplar of the Argentinian dance in speed and rhythm, the player tapping the guitar body as he picked out the tune around which the violin weaved a counter-melody.

To end, the duo played Bartók’s six Romanian Dances, all quite short but in vivid contrast one with another. Bartók wrote them for publication as piano pieces; Székely arranged them for violin and piano and they in turn were arranged for guitar and violin by Arthur Levering.

The instrumentation brought them back closer to their peasant origins, arresting and strong-minded or languid, sometimes complex in rhythm, sometimes calling for a harsh bow on the strings. All very striking and an excellent way to end a very agreeable recital by excellent, skilled musicians.

 

Classical guitar lecturer gives fine, varied recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music by Barrios, Vivaldi, Ian Krouse and Walton

Jane Curry – classical guitar

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 December, 12.15pm

Jane Curry joined the faculty of the New Zealand School of Music at the beginning of 2011; although she’s given public recitals before this was my introduction to her playing.

I was a minute late and she was part-way through Caazapa by famous Paraguayan composer/guitarist Augustine Barrios; the sounds she was producing were limpid, relaxed , with an air of improvisation that spoke of her confidence and thorough command of the music. Her second piece was called Maxixe, faster, fluent, again with a relaxed manner that produced the most natural dynamic and rhythmic subtleties.

Jane’s biographical note in the programme didn’t tell me of her New Zealand background, but the school’s website did. She’s been very peripatetic: a B.A. from Waikato University, a B.Mus. from Massey followed by an honours degree at Auckland University. Then, following work at both the Royal College of Music in London and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, she went to study with Scott Tennant at the University of Southern California. She then took a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Arizona. (What an amazing contrast with the normal qualifications of university teachers in my day when a master’s with first class honours, and an occasional doctorate, from rarely more than two different universities, usually afforded plentiful depth as well as breadth of learning and skills, in the days when the emphasis was teaching rather than today’s obsession with ‘research’).

Her CV also mentions theatre studies and an interest in ‘collaborative and cross-disciplinary work in musicology and ethnomusicology’, with focus on the music of the Balkans. It will be interesting to watch her impact in those areas, already well developed, at the New Zealand School of Music.

Jane Curry’s second piece was an arrangement by David Russell of Vivaldi’s 6th cello sonata, in B flat (RV 46). (I think she remarked that it was transposed). Russell, with whom she worked in Arizona, has published a CD of his recordings of his arrangements for guitar of a number of keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, ones by Handel and Loeillet, plus this one.  The opening Largo was gracious and unhurried, as she relished the pensive, cantabile melody that transferred very comfortably to the guitar. If the technical challenges were not overwhelming in that, they emerged more dramatically in the Allegro, showing that the writing lies no more easily with the guitar than it would with the cello, especially as the arrangement involved carrying the essentials of the continuo part, often played by a second cello, by means of a left hand whose agile fingering involved the most astonishing contortions. Here Curry demonstrated a range of nuances that were no less beguiling than a cello would have done. The third movement was another Largo in which the rhythm suggested careful picking one’s way across stepping stones in a stream; what variety of harmony and dynamics are available to a skilled guitarist!

Curry expressed her admiration for composer Ian Krouse with whom she worked in Los Angeles. His interest in Balkan music yielded his Variations on a Moldavian Hora (a word cognate with the Greek ‘Choros’ from which ‘choreography’ is derived). The piece involved, to start, sounds emanating from the extremes of the guitar’s range, sometimes provocative, sometimes seeming to resolve. But the technical difficulties soon faded from view – for the listener at least – as Curry’s handling of the dancing theme emerged so musically. I’m sure it was one of those pieces in which the overcoming of difficulties was continuously accompanied by real musical rewards.

Finally Curry played four of Walton’s five Bagatelles. The first is a hypnotic riot of virtuosity which seems to demand the most awkward-looking, fast and tortuous fingering, which produced racing and irregular phrases. The second piece, Lento, limited in its expressive range and musical material, seemed to convey a suppressed unease, or at least an absence of overt emotion.

Alla Cubana is perhaps the most lyrical of the Bagatelles; it begins and remains for the most part on the lower strings, soon developing a Caribbean character, with only a rare leap up the E string. The last, Con Slancio, expresses a nervous, distinctly Latin flavoured quality, short-winded and quite pithy, but she infused it with spirit and energy that brought the recital to a close in a confident temper.

The School of Music is fortunate to have secured such an accomplished performer and so versatile a musician to teach guitar after the departure of Matthew Marshall.