Tag: New Zealand music

The First Smile – 50 years of Gamelan in Aotearoa New Zealand – a celebration!

Posted on by Dan Poynton

The First Smile | Gamelan Ensemble – Rattle Records (2024)
Players: Gerard Crewdson, Chris Francis, Rosalind Jiko, Helen Lowe, Hui Luo, Barbara Lyon, Keith McEwing, Jennifer Shennan

The First Smile is not really a CD, it’s a celebration!
Actually where to start with the celebrations? Nothing less than a list is in order:
*50th anniversary of the heroic role this rustic little orchestra – The First Smile – has played in New Zealand gamelan
*Feast of sensuous and intimate sounds from the rich heritage of Indonesian gamelan
*Carnival of the probing expansion of this tradition by a panoply of Kiwi composers
*Hats-off party to New Zealand’s original gamelan pioneer, patron saint of The First Smile, and all-round lovely man, Allan Thomas
*A marvelling at yet another exquisite artefact from Rattle Records, in an age where such relics have largely been devoured by the rapacious ether.

Allan Thomas – photo by John Casey

Allan Thomas was offered this neglected little village gamelan orchestra (whose origins were at the Sultan’s Palace of Kacirebonan) in exchange for “many bags of rice”, while he was studying traditional music in Cirebon, northwest Java, in 1974. The only condition was that the gamelan would be played, not just displayed. Allan was to treat this promise as a solemn oath and over the last 50 years the ancient engineering of this Cirebon gamelan has been tested way beyond the call of duty – not bad for a taonga thought to be over 300 years old.

As The First Smile was the very first gamelan to ever arrive on these shores, 2024 was the 50th anniversary of gamelan in New Zealand. Jennifer Shennan, the well-known and loved proponent of Baroque dance and all-round powerhouse of the arts in Wellington, is now the adoring and jealous custodian of the gamelan, as Allan passed away in 2010 (Jennifer also happens to be Allan’s wife, and mother of their two daughters). Jennifer decided something special needed to be done for the gamelan’s 50th, and the result is The First Smile – the CD!

Thanks to Allan’s trailblazing, there are a dozen or so other gamelan in New Zealand these days, not the least of which is Gamelan Padhang Moncar (GPM), a grander courtly gamelan from the Central Javanese tradition, which is housed at the School of Music, Victoria University. When Allan established Ethnomusicology at Victoria, the Cirebon gamelan was the star attraction and the gateway for many students to experience a new musical universe away from the Western tradition for the first time. Later, as demand grew, the larger GPM would become the main gamelan, and when I first joined the gamelan in 1984, under Allan’s inimitably understated and just-let-it-happen guru-ship, the Cirebon gamelan was looking a little battered and not being played so much. Over the summer holidays Allan sometimes organised a leaner “commando unit” to play the Cirebon gamelan at Summer City and other events and festivals in and out of Wellington. The mysteriously smiling Jack Body was never far away either – and many other great Wellington characters. They were fun days.

Nowadays, if you snake down a little path next to Roseneath School, past “Allan’s seat”(complete with a plaque to the man himself), you’ll finally arrive at The Long Hall on a windswept promontory overlooking Wellington Harbour. In this old army barracks you will find The First Smile in pride of place. Jennifer transferred it here in 2011, and was also the mover and shaker behind the renovation of The Long Hall, which is now an active community hub. Events such as Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten’s ongoing concert series now take place there, and Helene and Rolf are so delighted with  The First Smile that they have programmed in a live performance of Ostinato and Cantor’s Infinity from the CD, as curtain raiser for one of the upcoming concerts (see Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten ‘s “The Long Hall” Concert Series – https://middle-c.org/?s=The+Long+Hall)

Gambang ( xylophone-type instrument, struck with soft beaters, and with wooden keys unlike other bronze-keyed instruments of The First Smile gamelan )

Based in this little (and long) fortress, The First Smile has had a true renaissance, and the little group practises and performs here dedicatedly. It is not easy to take the old and precious instruments out, but a generous exception was made in October 2024 for Jack!@80, a celebration of the late Jack Body’s 80th birthday at St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington. Featured as entrance music were Lagu Allan by Jennifer and Lagu Jack by Gerard Crewdson, especially written for the occasion (see Jack@80 at https://middle-c.org/?s=Jack+Body).

But enough history! To the CD:

What an artefact! My CDs are now all sadly stored away due to the encroachment of newer, horribly efficient media, but this one has been placed glamorously on my bookshelf, for anything else would be a waste. Such a beautiful thing to hold: The evocative photos by John Casey and contributing artwork from Barbara Lyon…the moving stories about Allan, the composers and others…the ravishing production and design permeated with Indonesian ethos. It’s best described as a mini-coffee table book with a CD – the sort of thing we have come to expect from Steve Garden and Rattle Records, those dauntless promoters of NZ music. And credit must once again go to that most benevolent paternal spirit, The Lilburn Trust, for its grant towards the recording.

Saron — bronze keyed instrument struck with wooden beater ( drawing by Barbara Lyon, photo John Casey )

To play the exacting CD critic for a moment: the one worry is if you open the CD with gusto (probably the case), you are more than likely to witness a UFO as the disc itself catapults across the room. But what a gorgeous orange batik UFO! – so perhaps this was the desired effect from Rattle.

The recording by Warwick Donald is miraculous. The First Smile was transported into my living room, so intimate and whispering are the sounds. Everything speaks as it should, from the piquant and limpid ringing of the bonang and saron to the soul-penetrating gorgeousness of the gong. The sound of the gong obtained here is particularly poignant for, as Allan taught me all those years ago, the large gong is usually only played occasionally at the end of cycles, but contrary to a typical Western hierarchy, it is viewed as the most important instrument, and should only be played by those with the appropriate mana.

The traditional music is the backbone of any gamelan, and for me, this is also the case with this CD. There are only two classical Cirebon pieces on this CD, due to the wealth of NZ composers that had to be packed in, but I was definitely left wanting more.

Dr. Joko Susilo, patron of The First Smile, is a gamelan leader and wayang kulit dhalang (shadow puppet master) and renowned authority on the musics of Indonesia. Joko now lives in Dunedin but is often commissioned to give workshops and performances internationally. On a recent residency at La Musée de la Musique in Paris, working with musicians of the Paris Philharmonic, Joko discovered that the ensemble they play is also from Cirebon, gifted by the Dutch to the French to mark the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, no less. The implication of this is that the gamelan Debussy, Ravel and Satie famously first heard at the 1899 Paris Exhibition was a Cirebon gamelan. They were all utterly enchanted, and the exotic sounds and ethos were to seep subtly into their own music.

“Javanese music obeys laws of counterpoint that make Palestrina seem like child’s play,” Debussy wrote. “One will find a percussive charm that forces one to admit that our own music is not much more than a barbarous kind of noise more fit for a travelling circus.”

A simpler counterpoint than Palestrina’s is felt in the CD’s first traditional piece Sinjang Kirut (‘crumpled sarong’), but its gentle tintinnabulation, so typical of gamelan, beguiles nonetheless. Also typical is the subtle pulsing accelerando (surely the racing heart of the Cirebonese lady as she discovers her prized sarong has been crumpled?), followed by the homecoming ritardando (the lady realising her sarong is salvageable, and forgiving the delinquent boys responsible?).

Kasturun, the disc’s other traditional number, is usually used as accompaniment for female court dancers and evokes an image of angels descending from heaven. The introduction is more upbeat as it reaches into a sky full of angels, and then drops back to the earth of the balungan (backbone melody). Hypnotic and catchy, the balungan is funkily punctuated by the ketuk, with the accelerando/ritardando patterns coming in waves. In the end things are settled by the traditional final gong stroke, which in this piece comes right on top of the second to last note of the balungan –sounding a little premature and eccentric to my ears. Although, as I was informed, this is actually the accurate way to close this piece, I can see Allan giving us one of his little smiles – and certainly not “the first smile” he gave as a gamelan leader. As he always emphasised, gamelan is community music and is famously flexible with such things.

Gong (lt.) Kempul (rt). ( photo John Casey)

The CD begins with the solemnly spacious and courtly Lagu Senyum Pertama (“Inner melody of The First Smile”) by Anton Killin, one of the NZ composers on the disc. Anton studied ethnomusicology with Allan at Victoria and has been prolifically involved with gamelan. Composed in 2017 for The First Smile, this lagu is based on codes using letters from each of its members. I admire the restraint of this piece, which doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is.

The world-famed US composer and gamelan expert, Lou Harrison (who in later years was also a park ranger in California) worked with Allan and Jack Body in 1983 when he came to NZ as a senior Fulbright Fellow. On the disc are two of the pieces he wrote for this very Cirebon gamelan, obviously from the hands of a master gamelan composer. Lou dedicated the pieces to Allan and Jennifer.

Lagu Lagu Thomasan sports a poised strolling balungan of decidedly strong backbone, with softly ironic and offbeat punctuation from the ketuk and kenong. A nice representation of Allan Thomas’ spirit, I’d say.

Lagu Victoria, with its understated funky riff on ketuk, and an utterly catchy balungan, takes the prize for sheer cuteness.

“The Prof”, as we used to secretly call the rather distant David Farquhar when he taught us  composition (extremely dryly!) as professor of music at Victoria University, was not exactly known for the seductive charm of his music, even if he did compose Ring Round The Moon, one of the few “classical” pop hits ever to come out of New Zealand. But with Ostinato, The Prof has produced a gorgeous charmer! It’s definitely one of my favourites on the CD, and shows what an adaptive master craftsman David was. The Prof was an early adopter of Cirebon gamelan, and encouraged his students to play and compose for it soon after Allan first brought it to Victoria. David thought, to be fair, he should have a go himself, and Ostinato is the result. There’s a Spaghetti Western music feel to it – although I’m not sure the movie has been made yet…

Nhemamusasa means “building a temporary shelter from musasa branches for hunters” and Chris Francis has adapted it from mbira (“thumb piano”) music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. Chris, an old colleague from my GPM gamelan days, has truly had a vision in bringing the people of Cirebon and Zimbabwe together through gamelan. The music works so well, it’s as if the Cirebon gamelan did indeed emerge from the savanna of southern Africa, and the somnolent fade-out at the end seems to evoke the hunters dropping off to sleep, dreaming of friendly cheetahs…

Wetonan Cycle was written in 2017 by Alison Isadora, when she was back in NZ as the Lilburn composer-in-residence after decades of living in Holland. The piece involves a story from the childhood of Joko Susilo (see above). Joko’s father was a dhalang (puppet master) in Solo, and through a timetabling mix-up caused by confusion over the Javanese 5-day week and the 7-day Gregorian calendar, Joko’s father got double-booked. As it was considered bad luck to cancel a booking, the 7-year-old Joko was brought in to replace his father for an all-night show. His celebrated success launched Joko on his dhalang and gamelan career. The 35-day cycle of the two combined calendars is called Wetonan, and Alison has created an intricate tapestry of 5- and 7-note motifs. There are also dancers and the choreography of the players as they come and go to their instruments – surely a feast to behold. The piece is composed by someone who really understands gamelan, but one senses it would be a fuller experience if in the presence of the visuals.

This richest of CDs is given the perfect ending by a real gem: Cantor’s Infinity by Gerard Crewdson. Gerard is a long-time player with The First Smile and here he uses Georg Cantor’s Theorem of Infinity to generate a series of rhythmic cycles potentially expanding into infinity. God (or Cantor) knows how Gerard does this, but magic happens here. The cycles finally morph into an ominous tolling, and Gerard himself on a trumpet wails above, thin and sepulchral, as if the Ghost of Miles Davis has been summoned to accompany The First Smile.

The First Smile and Jennifer, we need more!
How about a follow-up Rattle CD of all-Cirebon traditional music?
Or the definitive performance of Lagu Allan and Lagu Jack coupled with music by Jack Body?

Whatever happens in the recording department, Jennifer and The First Smile are busy sowing fecund gamelan seeds among the young with The Young Smile gamelan, made up of Roseneath School pupils, and The Little Smile, featuring preschool gamelaners – including several of Allan and Jennifer’s grandchildren.

Here are just two reviews of The Young Smile by its primary school members:

I feel so privileged to be able to have such an opportunity and when I found out that I was going to be able to play Gamelan I was so happy. I had just seen it and thought it was amazing but playing it is a whole other story. I also love learning about the history and origins of it and I am just so happy that I was able to do it. I also really hope when all of you reach Year Seven and Eight you get to try this magical experience. (Evie)

My favourite thing about gamelan is that every second of it is something really special. Almost no kids my age get to play gamelan not to mention with an amazing teacher.  Also another really cool thing that happens is the geckos that live in the rafters, sometimes we find their shredded skins on the floor, the patterns are amazing and we’re going to make them into puppets for our gamelan story. The instruments make up a beautiful array of sound but also you can actually feel the music. (Sebi)  

The future of New Zealand gamelan appears to be in good hands.

Links to references above:  Jack Body –  https://middle-c.org/?s=Jack+Body
Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten ‘s “The Long Hall” Concert Series – https://middle-c.org/?s=The+Long+Hall

John Psathas’s “Leviathan” – genre-defying and irresistible

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JOHN PSATHAS – Leviathan
Four Percussion Concertos
The All-Seeing Sky (with Fabian Ziegler and Luca Staffelbach)
Call of the Wild (with Adam Page)
Leviathan (with Alexej Gerassimez)
Dijnn (with Yoshiko Tsuruta)

All with Orchestra Wellington and Musical Director Marc Taddei
Orchestra Wellington OW 23CD

Hailed as “genre-defying music”, four of New Zealand/Greek composer John Psathas’s percussion concertos have made a spectacular appearance on Orchestra Wellington’s own label, a release appropriately gathered together under the name of “Leviathan”, the title of one of these concertos. The “genre-defying” aspect reflects Psathas’s intense feelings concerning the role of a contemporary composer, which he feels is a matter of “connection” across all genres and boundaries, one which reaches out to all audiences. For him this “outward” energy conveys that connection, and it has come to inform works such as the four presented on this album. Significantly, Psathas regards Beethoven’s music as an exemplar of such “reaching out” to people, music that embodies, in his words, “that desire to reach another human being”.

All four of these concertos were recorded during Psathas’s “composer-in residency” tenure with Orchestra Wellington, a circumstance that has given him a good deal of joy – “we had these incredible soloists and we had fantastic performances, and we’ve captured them”. As well, the venture is obviously a tribute to the staunch support for Psathas’s music from the orchestra’s Music Director, Marc Taddei.  I’ve not been able to comment on the vinyl format of this release as I’ve only seen the CD format (which, in terms of my own reactionary sensibilities regarding recordings in general, has what I would call the “minimalist” approach to presentation, with no accompanying documentation regarding either the works or their performers, save a QR code which you scan for access to liner notes (“Not I, but some child, born in a marvellous year….” etc.! – however, my own “marvellous child” was able to guide me through these personal “portals of Dis” with nary as much as a backward glance!).

The first of the set’s four percussion concerti, “The All-Seeing Sky” is dedicated to the soloists in the recording, Fabian Ziegler and Luca Staffelbach. A “double concerto”, it has three movements – The Portals of Dis, The Upper World, and the titular The All-Seeing Sky  – and it entrances the listener at the outset with its almost subconsciously-heard impulses, a process characterised by the composer as “a very subdued oh wow, this is actually happening kind of feeling”. Of course, the opening movement’s title “The Portals of Dis” suggests something dismal and dark,  a kind of penetration of an Underworld (as suggested by Psathas’s reference to Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” which he had read, and which characterised for him a sense of antiquity and ancient times, furthered for him by artist Gustav Dore’s nineteenth-century visualisations of the poet’s journeyings through the Inferno – and yet the opening paragraphs of the music evoke more mystery and eeriness than fear and dread as the travellers in the boat in Dante’s poem cross the River Styx, the sounds of the orchestra detailing the almost limitless wonderment of these adventurers amid their surroundings, as the two soloists – Fabian Ziegler and Luca Staffenbach – gradually but inexorably advance the sense of a “journey” with their increasingly compulsive and addictive patternings on, respectively, the marimba and xylophone. Whole sequences of minimalist patternings alternate with newly-wrought material from both the soloists and the orchestral musicians, gradually intensifying the ambiences with extra percussion – timpani and cymbals – and achieving what Psathas describes as a “welcoming fanfare” to the Gates of Dis. It’s one where the traditionally spectral “abandon hope all ye who enter here” mindset of antiquity is leavened by a more modernist view of one’s mind being “its own heaven and hell” (Psathas suggests in so many words a similarly updated view.).

The following movement, “The Upper World” delivers a new kind of eeriness, with the soloists floating and arpeggiating over a series of deeply-voiced slowly-undulating gestures from the orchestra’s lower instruments, striking an occasionally more forceful, and by turns an exquisitely-flowing air with winds and strings, the atmosphere more claustrophobic than free, as if further reminding us that our “Upper World” can take on similar threatening propensities to that of antiquity’s visionary horrors, with the dismissal of a traditional God plus the trappings creating a vacuum filled by any number of entities bent upon dominance of peoples’ minds. This is further explored by the freewheeling third movement “The All-Seeing Sky” – a kind of “juggernaut” through the void, for much of its length, with the kind of energy that freedom brings, along with a price that has to be paid for that “freedom” – it isn’t long before the exhilaration develops an obsessive, hectoring note, breaking off at the climax to sound a warning – the orchestra builds frightening vortices against whose sides the percussionists hammer until the reality of a new kind of imprisonment hits home. In a tremendous crescendo, begun quietly and almost innocently, both soloists define the formidable slopes that have to be climbed and the spaces that must be filled with new resolve, building the sonorities in a do-or-die effort which awakens the entire orchestral forces who play above their weight, reaching a hammering climax of renewed hope – Psathas elaborates here on his idea drawn from his Greek ancestry of a “gladdening sorrow” – in his own words “gratitude for being alive, and sorrow for understanding all that’s ill in the world!”

Following this on the set’s first disc is Psathas’s “Call of the Wild”, a concerto for tenor saxophone and orchestra commissioned jointly by Orchestral Wellington and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, the recording here presenting the work’s actual 2021 premiere given on July 17th by saxophonist Adam Paige and Orchestra Wellington. My “Middle C” colleague, critic Lindis Taylor, reviewed this concert in glowing terms, struck as much by the work’s “vividly individual” nature as by the brilliance of the performance by soloist Adam Page, and of the orchestra under Marc Taddei’s direction. Taylor highlighted the soloist’s “flamboyant confidence” and noted the latter’s use of a “wide range of techniques” as the music unfolded. The instrument itself, while not a standard symphonic orchestral instrument, has long enjoyed imaginative instances of use by various composers – I would have added Vaughan Williams’s name to the list my colleague proffered (for the review see https://middle-c.org/2021/07/orchestra-wellington-under-taddei-with-adam-page-triumphant-in-psathass-saxophone-concerto/).

Solo saxophonist Adam Page describes in his accompanying notes how musical collaboration often has a kind of “jewel in the crown” quality for artists, even though these experiences are sometimes isolated and short-lived – but with the “Psathas/Page” partnership a true friendship (Page calls it “a lifelong connection”) evolved from the pair’s first collaboration in 2012 when co-writing “The Harvest Suite”– consequently Page “jumped/bomb-dived” at the chance of renewing his creative association with Psathas via a new tenor saxophone concerto the composer was formulating.

Psathas’s description of this work’s genesis encompasses a good deal of his family history, dealing with events that left an indelible and continuing mark on both the twentieth and the present century, but more immediately on his own family – his grandparents and great-grandparents were forced to relocate between Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s in what could only be described as devastating and denaturalising circumstances – in the wake of genocidal activities between various racial and religious groups exacerbated by the 1914-18 war in Europe, the governments of both Greece and Turkey deemed it necessary to forcibly relocate ethnic groups whose religious beliefs and cultural mores had become regarded as incompatible with the respective majorities of their citizens, despite the long-established (in many cases) native and indigenous ties these people had created over centuries within what they considered their homelands. There had already been genocidal massacres of non-Turkish Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians both before and after the war and by the time the Governments had signed the 1923 Convention Exchange (called The Asia Minor Catastrophe in Greece), resulting in about one-and-a-quarter million people arriving in Greece from Turkey and over 300,000 Muslims expelled to Turkey by 1923. A Muslim Professor, forced from his home in Crete, to Turkey, expressed in an interview every migrant’s tragedy – “Born in one place, growing old in another place – and feeling a stranger in both places”.

Psathas’s grandparents and great-grandparents experienced the forced marches sustained by people expelled from Turkey during this early 1920s period, resettling in Greece, only to experience a second World War and a subsequent civil war, from which their children (Psathas’s parents) left to emigrate to New Zealand to begin a new life in 1960.. Though he was born in Wellington, most of John’s childhood, along with a sister, was spent in Taumarunui, after which he attended college in Napier. His interest in music developed throughout this time, resulting in his entering University to study piano and composition at Victoria University of Wellington. John’s parents and sister Tania returned to Greece to live in 1988, but apart from trips back to Europe to reconnect, John has remained in Wellington, and he and Carla, his wife, have two children, Emmanuel and Zoe.

Unusual as it is to explore the biographical aspect of a composer to such an extent in a review as here, the works on this CD recording each relate singularly to Psathas’s life experience and familial ties, none more directly that this work “Call of the Wild”. In three movements, Psathas by turns characterises and meditates upon the salient features which define each of his parents, and their heritage and life-experience as embodied in Psathas’s own children and their attitudes and impulses.

Call of the Wild begins with a piece of music dedicated to John Psathas’s mother, Anastasia given the title by the composer “She stands at the edge of the incomprehensible” – a saxophone solo at the beginning, an opening up of a sonic world with which the soloist can play, dominate, integrate, lead or dissolve into. The orchestra becomes the world, giving the energetic impulses of the soloist a sense of direction and unlimited purpose, resonances that seem to have the capacity that resound for all time, in places demonstrating a determination above all else, unquenchable energy of the kind that seems to feed itself – though an almost heart-stopping moment is when the saxophone seems to challenge the limitations of existence itself, sending out a call whose reach is as high as its compass suggests it would allow before pushing even further. Even the surrounding resonances are amazed, perhaps agog at the temerity of this instrument, this single entity pitting its capabilities against the business of being. And then, as if some kind of reassuring synthesis is needed, the saxophone and orchestra come together, surging towards a corelated kind of ecstatic outpouring, then setting an inexorable course towards continuance.

How different is the following, opening with slow, dreamy oscillations of some kind of prenatal nature, Psathas’s father Emmanuel perhaps waiting in the womb to be born, or else meditating the nature of the circumstances of that event in later life. The music suggests a time for reflection upon things that are important to know, feel and conceptualise – in a way it could be characterised as the inner life of the first movement’s outer being, an idea of fusion having different though accessible natures, and each giving to and feeling from the other, Psathas stressing unity of different personalities, spirits, souls. Or it could claim its independence from the outset (Psathas’s title “He can worship it without believing it” suggests this), elaborating upon what the composer considered to be his father’s “staggering force of will” in being “inflexible in his principles of decency and fairness”. Throughout this piece the sounds are unwavering in their constancy and disarming in their quiet persistence and surety. Something of the depth of emotion this piece explores by association is the quoting by a solo violin of a vocal line from the composer’s 2016 work “No Man’s Land”,

From the outset of the third movement (“Tramontane”) there’s a restlessness, both in the setting of different (three-against four) time-signatures for the soloist and the orchestra, which, after a confrontational build-up fuses energies and begins a more concerted exploration – dramatically reducing the pace and the dynamics brings the piece’s elements together, agreeing on the agenda, and setting off again with near-irresistible resolve. This is Psathas’s and his children’s heritage (the name Tramontane literally means “From the other side of the mountains”, and refers to a particular Mediterranean wind which frequently blows up a storm), the composer characterising the energised impulse within his family “to fight for what we needed in life” after his relocation in small-town New Zealand and having to endure being “outsiders” in terms of heritage, custom and religion. What emerges is an incredibly wild ride on the part of the music’s various elements, the soloist’s giving vent to a contemporary “Call of the Wild” in his instrument’s at times frenzied tessitura against the orchestra’s similarly restless soundscapes. In conclusion Psathas comments on the near-inevitability of his children having inherited the same impulsive desire to express what he calls “that nomadic gypsy impulse” and take it to who knows where?

Turning to the set’s second disc, first up is the piece that gives the collection its overall name “Leviathan”. This work, completed by Psathas in 2020, was commissioned as part of an international project with the title “Beethoven Pastoral”, an initiative by the UN Climate Change and BTHVN2020  to promote action on climate change and the environment during the 250th anniversary year of the birth of Beethoven. The Project represented a “determination to be part of the solutions to current planetary challenges’ and the desire “to inspire and be part of that change”. Psathas wrote this work for and dedicated it to Alexej Gerassimez, the soloist in this recording.

“Leviathan” has three movements, summarised as follows – the opening Hightailin’ to Hell crystallises both the composer’s introductory remarks and the feelings generated by the music – “Our planet is in a very bad way, and it seems that we can’t wait to get to the “finish line”. To this end, the human race’s “out-of-control race to environmental disaster” is depicted by the use of “junk-percussion” – The trajectorial impulses are remorseless – the pulsatings never let up as the journey takes the listener through what seems like a thankless and unforgiving, almost lifeless kind of terrain, an experience that gives a feeling of being driven rather than driving – I was put in mind of connections with similarly “driven” music such as Hector Berlioz’s “Ride to the Abyss” from La Damnation de Faust, and (during  the most frantically virtuosic sequences)  parts of the first movement of Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony during which a solo side-drummer is instructed to try and halt the orchestra’s progress at all costs with savage interjections and disruptive counter-rhythms!

The Final Brook , a homage to Beethoven, comes next – a complete contrast, limpid, shimmering, effusions of light and sensation with instruments that suggest the play of light on and through water, a sound-world I to which one can give one’s sensibilities over to entirely and feel refreshed and renewed, while at the back of these instruments the strings are beginning to playing the actual music of Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” in a dream-like, trance-like way – a “fled is that music? – do I wake or sleep?’ kind of sensation, one which puts Beethoven’s hymn of praise to nature to the forefront of the madness of today’s polluted world.

A single plastic water-bottle used as an “instrument” by the soloist centres our attention throughout Soon We’ll All Walk On Water – a movement one cross-furrowed with dippings, splashings and “impingings” on our sensibilities, with an eerie cosmic circle of sound sensation revolving around the dancing plastic object – a symbol of the madness threatening our world with ruin.

Finally, there’s A falcon, a storm or a great song – (a quote from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke) – a determined tattoo-like pulsating over luminous orchestra chordings which come and go like fog lights in the gloom, and a grand brass statement reinforced by percussion and driving  tones – a held chord, and jagged rhythmic slashings indicate that action is being called for and, indeed demonstrated by the vigorous rhythmic patternings and the long-breathed calls across the sound-spectrum. The sounds make a stirring impression, even though they can at times tremulously fall back as if lacking certainty,  but then gather and plunge onwards after a dramatic pause – obstacles appear out of nowhere and are subdued and conquered – it can be done, and human beings, whether falcons, storms or great songs, can be inspired to act with such purpose! – in the composer’s words, “of steel and drums and momentum and drive!” Percussionist Alexej Gerassimez and the orchestra players are heroes, every one, under Marc Taddei’s unswervingly focused direction!

Rather more elusive, mercurial and mysterious as a creation is Djinn, a 2009 work which Psathas first crafted as a marimba concerto for Pedro Carneiro, but which has since appeared in various other guises. The soloist here, Yoshiko Tsuruta, remembered the premiere of this concerto well, and was honoured to be invited to present this work in 2024 – in her words,  “an exciting and deeply-rewarding experience”.

Djinn is a marimba concerto in three movements – 1. Pandora – 2. Labyrinth – 3. Out-dreaming the Genie. The first movement is a meditative dialogue between soloist and orchestra depicting the legend of Pandora, who opened a box containing all the evils of the world, leaving only hope inside for humankind. – though distinctive, the movements are interconnected by a common mythological resonance where consciousness and mystery can interact and colour both our individual and collective imaginings. The second, Labyrinth, is perhaps the most profound as it symbolises a journey of self-discovery and has the capacity to surprise and astonish us, despite our expectations. The final movement, Out-dreaming the Genie offers a kind of interpretation of these previous experiences as
sources of hope, confidence and freedom as one might imagine it could be. The soloist, Yoshiko Tsuruta, gives an extraordinary performance,  never missing a beat or nuance, and Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington lead us through the proverbial maze of exploration, entanglement and eventual realisation with single-minded resolve and a degree of hope bolstered by determination – the music  in both its performance and symbolic power becominga synonym for human perseverance.

So, what feelings am I left with  about what I’ve been listening to? Mainly that, to go into and through these pieces, either separately or together, is to undertake a journey that puts one in touch with things that ebb and flow, and helps one crystallise one’s feelings about music in general and about humanity and ITS relationship with music. After listening to these works by John Psathas on this recording, the most resounding thing I’m feeling is to equate music all the more with being human, and reinforce that quality of sharing something that’s about continuance – as someone put it so succinctly, like ”a journey on an overgrown path”. To be thus presented with such a simple yet profound idea is a wondrous achievement – one that I urge people who haven’t yet done so to try through this splendid set of recordings of John Psathas’s music.

 

 

 

 

Home for the Winter with Hannah Darroch and Liam Wooding

Posted on by Peter Mechen

“Home for the Winter”
Liam Wooding (piano) and Hannah Darroch (flute)
Music by Jasmine Lovell-Smith, Henri Dutilleux, Lachlan Skipworth, Aaron Copland and Lili Boulanger
Bedlam and Squalor – Level 1, 18 Garret St,. Te Aro, Wellington
6:00 pm, Thursday,15th May, 2025

Things were “swinging away” in great end-of-the-day style at “The Rogue and Vagabond”, the watering-place right next to central Wellington’s Glover Park, as I made my way, a little tentatively, just around the corner and further along Garret St, to where there stood, self-assuredly in its own modest way, the entrance to “Bedlam and Squalor” (ah, thought I – a first cousin to “The Rogue and Vagabond!) – but I was straightaway taken by the contrast of the sombre doorway (of the “abandon hope” sort) with the profusion, above and besides this entrance, of coloured-pencil like horizontal stripes one might have correlated to a kind of urban kindergarten or some sort of art-gallery where the Hogarth-like images I’d entertained of “Bedlam and Squalor” were in reality reverse-euphemisms  for “fun and games”, and obviously nothing worse than “madness and merriment”.

Up the stairs I went, leaving those around-the-corner jollities earthbound as I ascended, finding myself in a quiet, comfortable and welcoming space not unlike a bar itself, but with tables and chairs set up in a rounded area at the room’s end, where there was a piano, beside which the two artists, Hannah Darroch and Liam Wooding, were discussing aspects of the music they were about to perform, and greeting us (myself included) as we came in. Pleasantries completed I had just settled down, finding a seat next to an acquaintance whom I’d made at previous concerts and always found most agreeable, when I discovered that, in my haste at leaving home I’d snatched up one of my notebooks, but had forgotten to bring a pen! Help was at hand in the shape and form of a bartender, who was greatly amused by the piquancy of the plight of a music critic who had come without a stylus, but who kindly brought my agony to an end by producing one – I was happy to have thus contributed a “storm-in-a-teacup” strand of incident to the proceedings now that things had been resolved!

So! – here were Hannah Darroch and Liam Wooding, formally welcoming us (we were a small but appreciative audience in that relatively intimate space) and telling us about what they were going to play for us, beginning with a piece which had give the whole recital its name, “Home for the Winter”, a piece written in 2020 for Hannah by Jasmine Lovell-Smith, and whose title was inspired by the “homeward” move made by many New Zealanders in response to the Covid 19 outbreak. The sounds seemed coaxed from out of the air, firstly for the piano, and then for the flute, the lines having a natural, organic kind of flow as if wrought by impulse, a feeling for the actions of wind and water all around – having been brought into being these elements seemed to take human form in song, which became a sort of minstrelsy, a chorus that rose up as the piano intensified the exchanges, before breaking off and leaving the opening resonances as a memory.

Having proclaimed a kind of “this is where we are” introduction, Hannah and Liam took us next to more peopled terrain, with a work by French composer Henri Dutilleux. Though it was one I’d not heard before, I knew and had already been enchanted with pieces by Poulenc, Francaix and Ropartz, and this proved, to my delight, similar kind of territory. I was almost straightaway disarmed by the opening piquancies (mysterious piano octaves echoed and gracefully “danced all about” by the flute) – and I loved the “Peter and the Wolf” opening dialogues of the second movement between the piano’s predatory wolf and the flute’s frightened but intrepid bird, and the following rhapsodic exchanges between the two, suggesting something of a singular “entente cordiale”.

A sudden escalation of energies (brilliant “molto perpetuo” playing from both musicians) seemed to clear the air of menace, entirely, and give the scenario over entirely to the pleasures of tit-for-tat exchange, our sensibilities being given plenty of air and space in places by some soaring lines before being returned to the dance! Towards the end, a cadenza-like episode from Hannah’s flute took us to a Ravel-like place not unlike Daphnis and Chloe’s enchanted grove, before the pair rejoined forces for an ever-accelerating coda, exhilarating for us all in its shared energies and pleasures.

Next was a recently-composed (2022) sonata by Australian Lachlan Skipworth, introduced by Liam, and described by him as “very refreshing” to play, though adding the proviso that the time signatures in the score with their frequent changes – 20/16, 10/16, 18/16 – certainly posed something a “challenge”. From the beginning I found the work a same-but-different experience to that of the Dutilleux, here an almost Gaelic world of exhilaration, with the opening “chaos of delight” morphing into a folk-dance blend of carefree abandon and strongly-pulsed movement.

The piano breaks off to play a solemn, repeated note-pattern to which the flute adds a lovely, rustic song-like sequence, borne along by its own airiness and spaciousness, hymn-like when the piano intensifies the mood, and seemingly tossed into the play of winds and waves when both instruments dance along the hilltops of the melody’s liberated lines – entrancing! Just as spell-binding is the dialogue of voices sequence which follows, like a pair of birds enacting a defining of territories, or a courtship ritual, one which leads back to the exuberance of the folkdance – if the conclusion isn’t quite of the grand finality one might expect, one might say it has an attractively insouciant “well, there it is!” manner at the end.

Our “food for thought” interval was sufficient to process what we’d heard (delightful!) and clear our decks for the next offering, a “different again” experience promised, which Hannah described for us  as “Americana in music” – this was Aaron Copland’s Duo for Flute and Piano, again something I hadn’t heard (oh, the ignorance of some music critics!), and naturally looked forward to an introduction to the piece. The opening movement, marked as “Freely” by the composer, takes us straight into the world of the latter’s ballet “Appalachian Spring” with the flute playing solo, a “voice in the wilderness”, spacious and nostalgic, with the piano’s entry contributing to the characteristic, almost unmistakably “open” sound. The flute begins the dance, strands of movement varying its trajectories, with the piano amusingly “oom-pah” at one point just before the big flute solo! Another pronounced “echo” for me is the similar ambience to the Third Symphony towards the end, a kind of salute to an idealised past…..but, then, what a quirky kind of conclusion! – those sharply-abrupt chordings are almost amusing in their air of dismissiveness!

“Poetic, somewhat mournful”, says the composer at the head of Mvt.II – piano and flute seem to be either looking for or avoiding one another at the start – most of those open harmonies have closed up, and whatever congress the instruments strike, each seems somewhat nonplussed by the other – there’s a moment of accord in a more animated and heartfelt middle section, but compared to the opening, it’s a bit like the difference between a dream and an awakening (whichever suits which!).The piano returns to its lonely furrow, and the flute raises its head for a heartfelt and sonorous single-note look-around!

Both espy a notice saying “Lively, with bounce!”  – so the piano “bounces” and the flute catches on! And what better than a square dance? – lovely, palms-skyward trajectories, with quirky harmonic comings and goings, with the flute occasionally intoning “Where are you?” as the piano rumbles up and down the stairs! – “Back to the dance!” they both chorus, nostalgically smoothing-over the rhythms here and there, but as quickly resuming their “hide-and-seek” – suddenly Hannah’s flute espies an open window and with Liam’s piano in hot pursuit catapaults right through it! – freedom!

Has this been music I’m writing about or some sort of “anything you can do I can do better” kind of game? It just seems that way, at times – but whatever the case, we in the audience were tickled to pieces by it all – and just to show that life bears SOME resemblance to art, we were invited by our stalwart artists to return to our lives with a kind of encore, a piece by Lili Boulanger appropriately entitled “Nocturne”, the flute singing a lullabic song over piano octaves, the tones soaring and settling over gorgeous keyboard undulations, while the harmonies coalesce slowly and beautifully.

Hannah and Liam, you and your instruments brought about such delight and contentment for all of us present this evening – any thoughts of bedlam and squalor were forgotten as I took my leave of my companion (deftly remembering on the way out to return the borrowed pen!) and descended those stairs and met with the open air once again, trying to recall what day it was, where I was, where I was going and what the music was that was playing in my head as I walked through streets that bore no relation, it seemed, to any of those sounds….and I thought it was definitely all part of something well worth remembering……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Trio of International Consequence

Posted on by Anne French

NZ Trio – Magnifique

Schubert – Notturno in E flat major (D897)
Pēteris Vasks – Episodi e canto perpetuo (1985)
Linda Dallimore – Self-portrait (2024)
Saint-Saens – Piano trio No 2 in E minor (Op. 92)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace,
Friday 2 May, 7.30 pm

The night of the concert was cold and wet. The big southerly storm that hit on Wednesday was still in force, so the small audience in St Andrew’s was disappointing but not surprising. This review is dedicated to everyone who let the weather keep them away from a stunning concert. Let me tell you what you missed!

After several years of change, NZ Trio has now reached its new form. Ashley Brown retired from the Trio in February, the last of the founding members to leave. Matthias Balzat was billed as ‘guest cellist’, but the exciting news – announced during the concert – is that he will be taking the position permanently from 2026.

Matthias Balzat is a phenomenal cellist. I first heard him perform as a soloist with Wellington Youth Orchestra when he was 17, just about to head to Germany for advanced study in cello, already with a bachelor’s degree from Waikato and a swag of awards to his name. He was already a commanding musical presence with dazzling technique. Since graduating from the Robert Schumann Hochschule, where he was taught by Pieter Wispelwey, he has been freelancing in Germany. The NZ Trio gig, he told us, gives him an opportunity to return home.

How would he fit in to the Trio? Any fears I may have had were dispelled as soon as the Schubert began. The Nocturne is a familiar work, an exquisite piece that Schubert may have intended as the slow movement for his first piano trio.  The tempo was slow, but never too slow. The effect was of an unfurling of beauty, played with high seriousness. It was as though this was the most important music Schubert ever wrote, and the most poignant. He finished it only months before he died, and never heard it performed. I feel certain he would have loved this performance.

The next work on the programme was a piece by the Latvian composer, Pēteris Vasks, written in 1985. This was its New Zealand première. Vasks trained as a violinist at the Riga Conservatory and played double bass in various Latvian orchestras before moving to Lithuania to study composition with Valentin Utkin. As the son of a Baptist pastor, he wasn’t permitted to do this in Latvia, because Baptists were repressed by the Soviets.

He began to compose after hearing a piano arrangement of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, thanks to his piano teacher at the Vilnius Conservatory. His response was immediate: ‘It was like a lightning flash to me – that music can be like this!’ But his works were unknown outside the Baltics until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when fellow Latvian Gidon Kremer started touring his violin concertos in the West.

The Episodi e canto perpetuo is dedicated to Olivier Messiaen. That provided some kind of emotional preparation. This is a powerful and inventive work. The programme notes suggested a battle between light and dark, but that doesn’t do it justice. It requires virtuosic playing from all three instruments, with two frenzied ‘burlesques’ separated by a ‘monologue’. The whole work is a kind of journey from a dark and scary opening movement, with a bleak wash of sound from the strings, moving higher and higher into a kind of frenzy. The Misterioso that followed uses prepared piano and light glissandi on the strings to suggest a ghostly calm. The Unisono began with strong piano chords and a cantabile theme from the strings, building to confidence, then aggression. The effect is loud and humourless, with frightening crescendi. Vasks described the first Burlesque as ‘ironic, almost grotesque’. I thought he must have been listening to Shostakovich, so sardonic was it – or perhaps that was life under the Soviets. The second burlesque, even more frenzied, Vasks called ‘the black culmination of the opus. Road to nowhere.’

After all the terror, in the seventh movement, the first violin sang like a nightingale in a ruin, trilling over blackened stones and empty spaces. Could there be a resolution, my notes asked? The cello, high and sustained, said yes, the plangent violin whispered that there was hope. A shift to the major, like a shaft of sunlight, high and sweet.

This is an important work. If it is his response to Quartet for the End of Time, the man is a genius, because he has transcended it. But there is more. Over the last 40 years Vasks has written three symphonies, other works for orchestra, concerti for violin, viola, cello, and flute, half a dozen string quartets, many choral and chamber works, and several works for violin, cello, and piano. I very much hope that NZ Trio programmes a couple of those. Soon, please.

After the interval, a small, introspective work by New Zealander Linda Dallimore (‘an award-winning composer, flutist, and teacher’) currently based in Los Angeles, where she is completing a DMA at the University of Southern California. It’s a pleasant enough work, ‘inspired by the composer’s first months in LA’, short and rather slight, but full of interesting effects. Unfortunately, coming after the emotional complexity of the Vasks piece, even separated by the interval, it sounded a bit self-absorbed, clever but trivial.

The last work in the programme showed off all three players to good effect, but especially the glorious Somi Kim. Saint-Saens was a remarkable pianist, a prodigy who performed the complete Beethoven sonatas from memory by the age of 10. He wrote this work as a holiday project, in the spring of 1892, 30 years after his first piano trio, to show what the piano is capable of. It is a masterpiece. Somi Kim was in her element, showing us delicacy and powerful pianism, as required. Saint-Saens’ piano writing is demanding and virtuosic, and Kim played like an angel.

The NZ Trio has been regarded as a national treasure for some time now. I have always enjoyed its programming. With Balzat joining the superb Kim and Hall, it has turned into a trio of international consequence. As well as being intellectually adventurous and musically fearless, the players together have the most glorious sound, warm and perfectly unified.  I am truly sorry that their first concert was heard by an audience of only a hundred or so. But take my word for it: you won’t want to miss the other concerts in their 2025 season.  Now would be a good time to book.

A tantalizing 2025 season’s beginning – from Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JOHN PSATHAS – Kartsigar
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – String Quartet No. 1 in C Major Op.40
EDVARD GRIEG – String Quartet in G Minor Op.27

The New Zealand String Quartet
– Anna van der Zee and Peter Clark (violins), Gillian Ansell (viola), Callum Hall (‘cello)

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

Sunday, 27th April, 2025

Wellington Chamber Music opened its 2025 season with a characteristic blast of fresh musical air, the musicians obliging with an enticing amalgam of pieces whose composers had familiar names but whose music promised anything but familiar, well-worn sounds – though two of the pieces presented in this concert happened to have historic connections with the Society. In chronological order, Dmitri Shostakovich’s First String Quartet was one of the works featured during the Society’s inaugural year (1945); while John Psathas’ 2005 work Kartsigar was actually commissioned by Wellington Chamber Music for its 60th anniversary.

These associations duly noted and tucked under our belts for ready reference, we welcomed to the stage the current New Zealand String Quartet, an organisation that’s had its reorganisations and upheavals over the last little while, but has bounced its presently reconstituted self back ready for action. So, violist Gillian Ansell (a foundation member of the Quartet) and violinist Peter Clark (who had replaced Monique Lapins last year) were joined today by violinist Anna van der Zee and ‘cellist Callum Hall.

I looked up John Psathas’ Kartsigar on the Middle C website for interest’s sake, and discovered that my former colleague Lindis Taylor had reviewed the inaugural performance of the work at that 2005 Wellington Chamber Music concert by the NZSQ of that time, as well as a later 2011 performance by the same players at St.Mary of the Angels Church, a venue whose ample acoustic gave my colleague what he described as “a more enveloping experience” than he’d found on the players’ CD recording they’d made of the piece for Rattle Records. Such observations reflect on different performances to that of the present one, of course, but they’re interesting in further establishing the work’s history and accrued experience on the part of performers and listeners, all of which can help to enrich further encounters and performances.

Kartsigar is a work for string quartet drawn by its composer from traditional Greek music, primarily taximi or free, improvised instrumental solos used as a prelude or introduction associated with a dance or song. In the first movement what sounds like improvised melody from the instruments is the composer’s own transcription of an improvisation from one of Greece’s greatest musicians, the clarino player Manos Acahlinotopoulos, one which “breathes the Voice of Life into Kartsigar”. The cello begins a pizzicato ostinato pedal note, to which the second violin and viola respond with sombre tones of mourning, then expressively added to by the first violin, at once “folksy” and ritual-like, solo lines alternating with shared lines, and instruments going from arco to pizzicato and back to arco – the whole generates a tremendous sense of “occasion” , gradually becoming more and more elaborate, and even more vigorous, until a point is reached when the process seems to disestablish and recede, with tones and impulses growing fainter and fainter to the point of stillness

The second movement begins with an ethereal-sounding pizzicato/harmonic which forms the basis for the whole movement’s trajectory of a kind of mesmerising transferal of impulse – the material shifts from instrument to instrument, the lines and gestures keep us guessing as to where we are going, as if the piece’s “centre” is constantly relocating. I found myself part deliciously, part uneasily “stranded” in scenarios which brought single-note sequences (from the ‘cello, for example) and then sudden “whirling dervish” ecstasies from Peter Clark’s violin! – one’s sensibility became a “loose fragment” tossed all about an ambience, and then just as suddenly left to ponder eerily-held notes with which one “breathes” with the music’s own slow-rhythmed movements, until left only with silence.

In the wake of these colourful immersions in realms awash with improvisation, one couldn’t help feeling taken to a different, more enclosed world with Shostakovich’s First String Quartet, given that the music shows remarkably  little of the intense angst and disturbing dissonances which his later works in this genre would produce. This, after all, was the composer’s first foray into the medium, and about which he was disarmingly frank, as demonstrated by a brief comment he wrote, concerning the  opening as an “original exercise in the quartet form, not thinking about subsequently completing and releasing it”.  Gradually the idea took hold and he finished the work, though still disavowing any particular significance to the exercise, remarking further – “Don’t expect to find any special depth in this – my first quartet opus, In mood it is joyful, merry, lyrical. I would call it ‘spring-like’ ”. It seems that, after the tumultuous years of the composer’s persecution by Stalin and his lackeys over his opera “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” with what was termed its “formalist” tendencies, Shostakovich was taking refuge in a private, relatively untroubled world, even though he was not to revisit the string quartet medium for a further six years.

The work was first performed in 1938, by the Glazunov Quartet – the composer hadn’t yet established the rapport he was to find with the renowned Beethoven Quartet, to whom he entrusted the premieres of all of his subsequent string quartets except the Fifteenth and last, due to the sudden death of the Quartet’s cellist while preparing the first performance. Commentators have repeatedly described the early work in emotionally-detached terms, such as “divertimento-like” or “Haydn-esque”, indicating the “neutral” content of the undertaking, and whose ostensible purpose was to, literally, keep its composer out of trouble!

The opening sounds more like Borodin at the outset, a distinctively “Russian” ambience betrayed only by the occasional note suggesting a more acerbic strain – there’s a lovely, singing second subject on the first violin sounded over ‘cello glissandi, one which the ‘cello itself “grabs” for a moment of glory! The interchanges wear an almost self-conscious “carefree” air, the development insouciantly augmenting the harmonies and the recapitulation allowing the second violin and viola a “second-subject” variant, before the music poignantly turns for home, having spied out the land and found it ostensibly non-threatening!

A theme-and-variations slow movement in A minor was next, begun by Gillian Ansell’s smokily-toned  viola with a simple folk-tune, ‘cello pizzicati joining in, and then the violins taking up the melody a daintily-astringent half-a-tone higher – the viola’s “Wot’s all this, then?” return sparked a moment of angst before peace was restored by the violin’s open-hearted switch to an E-major rendition of the theme – I liked the players’ handling of the “same again but different” theme variants, and especially warmed to the limpid pizzicato accompaniments to the viola’s return, rather like meek lambs gathered up by their shepherd! Perhaps they could sense the third-movement arrival of some kind of wolf, though it’s really more spectre than substance, here, a spooky ride in constant motion, in the midst of which comes a kind of “lullaby” trio, followed by a blending of the two trajectories – great fun!

Afterwards, the finale takes us to the fairground for some  hi-jinks, the excitement becoming heady and more trenchant, almost “boys’ own” (oo-er! – very “thirties!”) in the second subject, with the vigorous themes becoming more determinedly expressionist and claustrophobic until problems are sorted out and brouhaha is satisfyingly brought back over the final bars. It seems obvious that, In the treacherous slipstream of Shostakovich’s scarifying experience with Stalin over his opera Lady Macbeth, writing this work had obviously felt like some kind of redemptive balm for the composer’s senses.

The concert’s third and final work brought its own particular distinction of novelty and interest to the proceedings – this was Edvard Grieg’s 1878 String Quartet in G Minor, described variously elsewhere as No.1 and No.2 (in fact the composer’s first attempt at a string quartet was lost, appropriately leaving the G minor in its “pole” position). The popularity achieved by the work encouraged Grieg to attempt a further string quartet in 1891, though he finished only two movements, leaving sketches for the final two, making  a couple of subsequent efforts  to finish the work but seeming to lack the inspiration to complete what he called “that accursed string quartet which constantly lies there unfinished like an old Norwegian cheese.” (A couple of attempts have since been made by other composers to complete Grieg’s sketches.)

Grieg’s inspiration, however, proved constant throughout the composition of practically the whole of the G Minor quartet – commenting after finishing the work that it was “not meat for small minds” and adding that “it aims for breadth, vigour, flight of imagination and , above all, fullness of tone for the instruments for which it is written”. It uses a kind of motto theme taken from the composer’s own song “Spillemaend” (meaning Minstrels or Fiddlers) about a water-spirit, the Hulder, who promises musicians great inspiration in exchange for their happiness, one which recurs throughout the work. Violist Gillian Ansell commented in her introduction on the work’s inspiration for Claude Debussy who wrote his own String Quartet in the same key ten years later.

The work has a big-boned quasi-orchestral sound right from its outset, a grand and imperious opening and a fleet and impetuous allegro to follow, featuring incredibly volatile playing, music that breaks off suddenly from whatever mood it inhabits to effect a contrast with another – Anna van der Zee’s playing and leadership throughout I found astonishing, her sweet, silvery tones readily augmented with energetic trajectories and trenchant attacks excitingly replicated by the other players. The movement’s dramatic ups and downs come to a head with a beautiful ‘cello solo that grows out of a tremolando passage towards the end before leading to an explosively vigorous coda.

Added to this, I thought the musicians gave the second movement simply gorgeous treatment – the opening uses a typically redolent “Grieg” melody (one which couldn’t come from any other composer), sonorously projected by Callum Hall’s ‘cello, before “bouncing” into an extraordinarily playful passage involving both pizzicato and staccato phrasings. Then the opening melody returns, the accompaniment this time investing the hapless tune with full-on “salon” treatment, charming in its almost “tea-shop-like” way. It’s then given a kind of Tchaikovsky-like balletic set of guises, before evoking parts of the latter’s “Serenade for Strings” in its acerbic-sweet final harmonies!

The Intermezzo that followed was a vigorously-swinging waltz-like piece, the players digging into those playfully-eyeballing syncopated chordings before gracefully giving way to more demure legato-phrased interactions. Even more delicious was the Trio section, with Grieg revisiting his “Cowkeeper’s Tune and Country Dance” manner to foot-tapping effect, and further spicing the mood with brief bouts of contrasting mania and introspection! All of this was brought off with relish on the players’ part and proportionally huge enjoyment on ours, further underlined by the sheer fun generated from the scampering coda!

Finales often bring composers trouble and anxiety, and there were places in Grieg’s finale where I felt his inspiration was bolstered more by the trajectories of the saltarello form which he had chosen, than any spontaneous melodic invention. Of course, composers are perfectly entitled to “step outside” their own native trajectorial languages and explore something exotic – one thinks of so many who have done so (Mendelssohn, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Sibelius, to name a few, the last-named indulging in a “Bolero” complete with castanets in his Op. 25 Scenes Historiques music!) – but I can’t help feeling that Grieg was at his most inspired in the other, more ostensibly Scandinavian-influenced movements of this work, even if he puts up a good show in places! Still, a no-holds-barred kind of performance can be relied upon to do any piece of music the greatest justice, and that was what we got here!

After the high seriousness of the Lento introduction, with its canonic recitatives and great crunching chords, a “ready, steady, go” sequence from the players kick-started the finale in fine style! By turns vigorous and lightfooted, and alternating the dotted rhythms of the vigorous saltarello with more straightforward “running” passages, the playing’s impetus kept our sensibilities agreeably focused, apart from a couple of sequences featuring repeated rhetorical chromatic scale passages which briefly felt to me like “filler” and an ending which seemed to be looking for a grand finishing statement but didn’t quite achieve the sheer magnificence of, for instance, the composer’s Piano Concerto! However, in terms of incredible skill and sheer commitment, the players took us to what seemed like the music’s overall limits of achievability in grand style – and Grieg had already given us more than enough in the work as a whole to satisfy our pleasure at encountering what was a significant and remarkable creative achievement! (From where do I buy the CD, again?)

Hats off (well, hearty thanks, at least!) to Wellington Chamber Music – an inspired beginning to a richly promising 2025 season of music-making!

Wellington City Orchestra – heartily home-grown with Lilburn and Anthony Ritchie and gloriously global with Inbal Megiddo in Shostakovich

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Donald Maurice (conductor) and Inbal Megiddo (‘cello) rehearse Shostakovich with the Wellington City Orchestra, December 2024, at St.Andrew’s Church, Wellington

DOUGLAS LILBURN – Overture “Aotearoa” (1940)
DMIYTRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra No. 1 Op. 107 (1959)
ANTHONY RITCHIE – Symphony No. 5 “Boum” Op.59 (1993)

Inbal Megiddo (‘cello)
Wellington City Orchestra
Donald Maurice (conductor)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington
Sunday, 7th December 2024

A review of the film of this concert courtesy Angus Webb (recording) and Nick Baldwin (camera),
written by Peter Mechen for “Middle C”

To my great disappointment I couldn’t, for various family reasons, get to this concert and had to perhaps settle for the once-removed pleasure of reading a review or possibly even getting to hear a recording.  I was then contacted by the orchestra’s newsletter editor, Jeannine Thomas, who told me the concert actually hadn’t been reviewed, and asked me whether I might be able to at least contribute some comments on the performances from the DVD recording made of the occasion. I agreed somewhat reservedly at first – but to my surprise, the further I went into the DVD of the concert the more I became convinced it would be a splendid thing to do! Angus Webb’s recording seemed to me right from the outset to “catch” a nicely-balanced sound-quality; and Nick Baldwin’s camera-placement, though static, actually gave me a real sense of a well-placed seat in the organ gallery with a view of the whole orchestra. And as for the performances – well, what might I suggest but that one should read on and take the plunge with me into what proved to be an exhilarating and sumptuous feast of music-making! I must add an apology for the lateness of this review in relation to the actual event – but now that the time-toll of the initial delay plus the demands of the festive season has been duly paid, everything can happily proceed!

And what a programme! – beginning with perhaps the most iconic single piece of New Zealand composition penned for orchestra, Douglas Lilburn’s Aotearoa Overture, now eighty-plus years old, and still sounding as fresh and ambient as when it was completed in March 1940, in London, at the conclusion of Lilburn’s studies with the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. In a matter of weeks after completion the work had its first performance as part of a concert organised to celebrate New Zealand’s centenary, with expatriate New Zealander Warwick Braithwaite conducting the Sadler’s Wells Orchestra. By August of that year Lilburn had returned to New Zealand, the young composer describing his elation upon catching sight from his trans-Tasman boat of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman with the words “My heart gave thanks with recognition that I’d returned”, sentiments whose heartfelt feelings he’d already in a sense “composed” as the music for his Aotearoa Overture.

Other Kiwis have since described similar kinds of feelings when hearing this music while overseas – there’s also a growing feeling  that in hindsight the piece ought to have been used to preface the famous 1970 Expo film “This is New Zealand” rather than the Sibelius piece the film-makers chose at the time. Self-doubts of this kind are unlikely to recur, as the strength and purpose of Lilburn’s example has since empowered generations of younger composers who have readily “learned the trick of standing upright here” – and not only here but out there in a wider world of creativity.

The Overture begins with pure inspiration, two flutes springing rapturously into the air from an opening pizzicato chord with a long-breathed melody largely in thirds and augmented by gloriously arching strings and rolling timpani, building through these sounds for our mind’s eye aspects of a landscape we ourselves know and identify with so well. Conductor Donald Maurice and his players gradually widen and strengthen the vistas, while encouraging a growing excitement brought to the sound picture by the brass with fanfare-like shouts and calls to attention which leave us longing to be drawn further into the terrain’s mysteries and marvels. Strings and timpani beckon us into a rippling, rushing, almost volatile texture of sounds which winds brass and percussion evocatively join in with detail – quixotic birdsong, tides breaking over rugged coastlines, bush-clad hillsides and distant splendour of snow-capped peaks. All of this stimulates both tactile pleasure and in places a deeper wonderment, the music taking us between pictorial images and soliloquy-like expressions of awareness at the character of the surroundings and a sense of belonging.

Suddenly we are brought back to the strings-and-timpani opening (catching the timpanist out, here, momentarily) as Lilburn gathers the strands together and builds towards exuding that same “thanks with recognition” which his writing of the work surely must have anticipated. Here conductor and players triumphantly arch the sounds upwards and onto the pinnacle of arrival with those characteristic thrusting impulses! bring about for us at the end.

One thinks more readily of the music of Sibelius or Vaughan Williams as company for Lilburn, so the choice of Shostakovich was a bold and enterprising step for the concert to take,  expressing a different kind of solitude and artistic challenge for a composer. Shostakovich’s First ‘Cello Concerto was completed in 1959 and dedicated to the great Russian ‘cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, a younger, but long-time friend  who had long wanted the composer  to write a work for him to play. I read a rather amusing anecdote about Rostropovich shyly asking the composer’s wife, Nina, if he might ask her husband about this, to which she replied, “If you want Dmitri Dmitrievich to write something for you, then never – NEVER ask him or talk to him about it!” Rostropovich’s restraint eventually paid off when, in 1959 he was asked by Shostakovich to come and hear a new concerto, and play through it – upon assuring the composer that he liked the piece, Rostropovich was disarmed to learn that the work was to be dedicated to him!

Here the soloist was Te Kōkī School of Music’s Associate Professor in ‘Cello, Inbal Megiddo, a player who’s already demonstrated to Wellington concertgoers her superb technique and riveting communicative skills as a musician.  Shostakovich wastes no time with introductory niceties, giving the soloist centre-stage immediately with his characteristic four-note motiv that haunts this work, a figure the composer used elsewhere in various forms as a kind of signature (the notes G,F-flat,C-flat,B-flat  correspond to D-S-C-H in German transliteration), such as in his Tenth Symphony and Eighth String Quartet. The motif is the dominant, even slightly paranoic presence of the movement which the composer styled as “an allegretto in the style of a comic march”, and one that also features the solo horn, the only brass instrument in the smallish orchestra.

Inbal Megiddo’s playing astonishes as the solo part becomes increasingly elaborate and jagged as the music grinds on. The orchestral winds are superb in their support for the soloist with a repeated rat-tat-tat figure, and various other sardonic gesturings adding to the music’s feeling of caricature – and the horn playing from Caryl Stannard is  fearless and remarkable, having to repeat the cellist’s  “signature” theme on a number of occasions and truly capturing its “obsessive” character. Donald Maurice keeps the band on its toes throughout the movement’s tricky syncopated passages, both throughout the opening, and when accompanying the soloist’s second subject and draws the utmost emotion from the horn with its account of the second theme’s anguished and obsessively mournful line.

A beautiful, husky cantabile from the strings introduced the second movement, with suitably mournful tones from the horn bringing in the soloist, the latter ably accompanied by the violas – and how lovely and withdrawn is that “stricken” playing from the strings a little later,  taken up by the ‘cello, and all in very heart-rending fashion! –a slightly jauntier air brings a glimmer of light but all too soon turns to angst and anguish, the orchestra pitching in with heartfelt solidarity. Suddenly the horn sounds a kind of warning, by way of announcing what’s probably the work’s most remarkable passage, with the soloist playing in eerie harmonics accompanied by the celesta and “lost and wandering” figurations from the other strings, and a soulful clarinet – the music sinks helplessly to the ground,as Megiddo begins the elaborate cadenza that make up the work’s third movement.

This was a spell-like montage of soliloquy, pizzicato both agitato and mysterioso, single-instrument dialogues building up up to agitated passagework whose compelling exertions suggest the motif that began the symphony, priming us for the orchestra’s sudden reawakening. And so conductor and players begin to build, push around and stack up blocks of the finale’s music, leading to the  moment when the motif which began the work takes hold of it again and gives everything and everybody – soloist, orchestra and audience – a massive shake-up and drops us onto the floor! – (yes, I say “us!”, because by this time I’ve broken through the membranous tissue separating performance and film viewer, and am in there with the players and audience!) – and  despite our exhaustion we can’t help the feeling of exhilaration! We get up, look around, and it’s over! – we’ve made it home! – what a ride! – Kudos to all!

One presumes an interval followed all of this, enabling everybody, myself included, to “find” their place in the scheme of things once again and get their batteries of all kinds recharged for the concert’s second half, the presentation of a work whose composer, I believe was present for the occasion. A pre-concert Facebook post from Anthony Ritchie articulated some of the excitement and expectation associated with the event (I quote his own words): “I’m really pleased the Wellington City Orchestra is playing the work and I am coming up for the occasion – I haven’t heard it live for a while! I have known members of the orchestra, including my cousin Anne Ballinger on the flute, and have collaborated with Donald Maurice on many projects in the past. I’m glad he is at the helm.”

Of course there’s always something special about a performance attended by the composer, as I’d registered just a short time ago at Orchestra Wellington’s “A Modern Hero” concert at the start of which Auckland composer Eve de Castro Robinson’s work Hour of Lead was given its premiere with the composer herself present – a real buzz! One takes on for one’s own delectation some of any composer’s imagined feelings upon hearing both inspiration and perspiration come to fruition, whether for the first or fiftieth time! How lucky we are to have such people so readily accessible, and so tangibly, to boot!

Ritchie’s First Symphony dates from 1993, while he was Composer-in-Residence with the Dunedin Sinfonia, and received its first performance within a year with Sir William Southgate conducting the same orchestra. The work’s title, “Boum”, is inspired by an incident in E.M.Forster’s novel “A Passage to India” where two of the characters enter the Marabar Caves and experience a mysterious echoing sound which takes on a symbolic meaning in the story relating to the same characters’ grasp of their differing realities. Ritchie uses a tam-tam to replicate this echo throughout the symphony as a kind of “motif”, sonorous and purposeful at the beginning and varying in intensity as the music indicates.

It’s all quite an adventure on its own! – what stays in the memory after the tam-tam opening, is the  gathering of momentums whose energies build to elemental proportions, a saxophone delighting us with a sinuous, suggestive alternative character, and an oboe line getting a deliciously eerie, sinuous backdrop from the strings. The winds here have a fine time playing their themes in canon until a solo cello calls “Enough!” on the fun with a figure that contains the inklings of a march, at first teasingly “played with” by the saxophone and winds, but excitingly burgeoning until the tam-tam reasserts its presence!  The march ceases and the music floats upwards through a winsome series of airborne phrasings, brought again to earth by a softer but just as implacable tam-tam stroke at the movement’s end! So! – what next?

The second movement’s a frenetic dance driven by Cook Island log drums in regular attendance! – Conductor and orchestra relish the enjoyment, as winds and a horn reiterate a three-note fanfare which a perky theme attaches itself to in a cheeky array of guises, The log drum introduces a string quartet and then a wind ensemble, and, of course the brass can’t be kept out of the fun at this point, the players having a ball with their outlandish whooping and blaring! The saxophone also can’t be kept quiet, beckoning its fellow-winds to speak out as the brasses and percussive forces keep the rhythms going, with great, on-the-button work from all concerned! Out of this comes a plaintive theme from the strings echoed by brass and then indulged in by the whole orchestra!. But, of course, the music’s “got rhythm!” – and back comes the opening to hammer the movement to its conclusion!

By contrast, winds begin the slow movement as a lament, karanga-like in its expression of grief as a solo cello further internalises the same. The upper strings beautifully float an elegiac line, joined by the saxophone – the ambience turns back to tragedy as winds, brasses and solo sax are joined by tolling bells underlining the sombre mood, the composer intending this music as a tribute to the victims of the Bosnian wars of that time. Strings seek to comfort but are overtaken by a remorseless build-up of harrowing tones, superbly controlled, the climax echoed by melismatic wind arabesques, the brass entering to underpin the note of tragedy. Beautiful solo string-playing leads to several concluding doom-laden double-bass rumblings, and silence – a bereft, grief-ridden world of its own but one of course tragically echoing present day conflicts and lamenting still more innocent victims.

I loved the darkly rumbustious beginning of the finale, in places reminiscent of Holst’s Ballet Music “The Perfect Fool”, with its touches of sorcery and mischief, a mood which then abruptly changes with what seems like graceful dance-steps by the strings , but gradually becomes almost rock-music rhythmed, the playing generating plenty of exuberance, and a sense of striving towards joy! – the kind of thing that a modern-day Bach might put into a Brandenburg Concerto! Ritchie then, by a further piece of delicious alchemy, brings in his winds to perform a Caribbean-like dance which spreads through the orchestra, pizzicato strings and cruising brasses also “hep to the jive”, the different orchestral sections alert and alive! The return of the tam-tam strokes seems if anything to goad the rhythms into even greater exuberance, until a hugely reproving and resonating blow curbs any further escalations, and casts an “envoi-like” feeling over the rhythms – their gradual diminution leads to a farewell statement by the string quartet of the symphony’s beginning and a final tam-tam stroke – a wonderful moment and beautifully-wrought ending!

What joy, what relief and what pride and satisfaction would have accompanied this concert’s epic achievement on the part of all the musicians! And how wonderful that technology keeps it all alive, so that it’s more that either just a memory or a reminiscence such as that which I’ve been privileged to give, here. Something definitely to remember an already momentous and historic year by, and return to with lasting pleasure!

Orchestra Wellington – heroically fulfilling the need for music

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
A MODERN HERO

EVE de CASTRO-ROBINSON – Hour of Lead
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – War Requiem

Morag Atchison (soprano)
Daniel Szesiong Todd (tenor)
Benson Wilson (baritone)

Orpheus Choir, Wellington
Wellington Young Voices

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (music director)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 7th December, 2024

What could possibly preface in concert a work such as Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem?  Here, on Saturday, at Orchestra Wellington’s epic presentation “A Modern Hero”, that challenge was taken up by Auckland composer Eve de Castro Robinson with her brief but searingly concentrated orchestral composition “Hour of Lead”, a sonorous meditation on a similarly-titled poem by Emily Dickinson.

The poet’s words explore the consciousness of pain in a variety of forms and processings, its progressions variously rapier-like, systematic and torpid, with responses paralleling thought, reflex and movement, as do the different characters of the four movements of de Castro Robinson’s work, with each outwardly signing inner turmoil. The first, Searing, takes just milliseconds to live up to its name, with an opening ostinato suddenly pierced by screams. The rhythms trundle jazzily onwards, set upon by punch-drunk szforzandi, whose assaults bring forth raucous clamourings, and building to a tutti for the tumultuous ages. After this comes music of the air, Bittersweet, a vertiginous scenario whose incessant movement quixotically dissolves into a juicily-flavoured hymnal, and reaching zany volume levels with a single, tumultuously constituted chord that eventually self-destructs!

Next is Leaden, with its “quartz contentment”, deeply-wrought sounds with richly-purposeful rumblings, its darkness countering the previous movement’s scintillations. A flowing viola/cello melody sings above the rhythms as winds and brass emit birdlike sighs and cries, which brass turn into gargantuan earth-groans – how wonderful to hear the  strings playing an Orpheus-like role here, their sounds taming the beasts’ convulsions, raising their spirits, and suggesting an ecstasy on the other side of the darkness which reclaims the last few bars.

“Remembered, if outlived” says the poem; and the beginning of the final Chilling scintillates on percussion, winds and high-register-strings before becoming almost extra-terrestrial, freed from gravity and atmosphere! –  all impulses are drawn towards a super-galactic kind of rendition of “Abide with Me”, a kind of invitation for sensibilities frozen in the manner of “centuries before” . Perhaps the “stupor – then the letting go” is the reawakening of human consciousness via the bringing into being a gloriously aleatoric-like pitchless chord which grows to fullness before being “taken up” by the same players’ stamping,, clattering, and then gradually receding footsteps – whether “taken up”, or “being taken”, one is not quite sure, but what an enigmatically human way to end the piece! After such colourful coruscations, the appearance of the piece’s composer, Eve de Castro Robinson, called to the platform at the end, seemed like some kind of angelic or otherwise blessed visitant, come to lift the spell by which her work had held us all in thrall.

And so, to the Britten – after the extra players and singers and their conductor had all made their entrances and set themselves up to begin, conductor Marc Taddei raised his baton and the first sounds of the War Requiem were made by the strings, awkwardly-pulsating figures gradually brought to life. For some reason I felt a proper sense of “atmosphere” lacking, without being able to put my finger on just what was missing – and only right at the work’s ending did I experience what could have made an enormous difference at the beginning. Accompanying the final exchanges between the children’s choir at the words Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis, and the main chorus’s Requiescant in pace, Amen  was the stunning effect of gradual dimming  the stage lighting to near-darkness, the voices’ diminuendo contriving the sounds to disappear as if by magic. How wonderful, I thought, if the work had begun this way, and the lights gradually brought up as the music threaded its way towards its first climax at the choir’s first full-blooded Et lux perpetua luceat eis joined by full-throated bells and percussion!

Britten’s use of the tritone, the interval C-F-sharp, in medieval times known as “diabolus in musica” (the devil in music) dominates these opening exchanges, here brought off tellingly by both voices and orchestra, the composer seeking to suitably “haunt” the text’s idea of “eternal rest”,  usually, in conventional requiems, given the most consoling music possible.  Increased tensions crackled and blistered with the tenor’s first solo entry intoning the first of poet Wilfred Owen’s bitterly challenging verses “What passing bells for these who die as cattle?” – though I found Daniel Szesiong Todd’s enunciation of the words less than clear, he still conveyed the words’ terrible ironies, along with the sounds depicting the battlefield slaughter and the “tenderness of silent minds”. All of the forebodings were then given full vent in the brutal contrasts which followed, the rapt “Kyrie/Christe eleisons” and the great onslaught of instrumental and vocal sounds of “Dies Irae”. Just as awe-inspiring and pitying were the poet’s words in the at once tranquil and fearful, “Bugles sang” which followed,  redolent with echoes of the “Dies Irae” in baritone Benson Wilson ’s hushed but growingly apprehensive conveyance of the bugles’ tones, sounding their sorrowful calls and catching the portentous mood.

Though Morag Atchison’s soprano tones “spread” when put under pressure in the “Liber Scriptus”, she effectively and sonorously “nailed” the text’s message that nothing would remain unjudged or unavenged, sentiments echoed by the chorus’s troubled utterances at “Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?” and by the soprano’s stentorian “Rex tremendae majestatis!” Then, the poet’s supremely ironic “Out there” verses came bounding in, the two soldiers teasing death as a playfellow, an “old chum” , and never as an “enemy of ours”. (we could have done with surtitles for the poetry as the auditorium was too dark to be able to properly follow the words in the programme)!

The chorus splendidly contrasted the women’s prayerful “Recordare Jesu pie” with the men’s later, jagged-edged “Confutatis maledictis”, halted by the timpani’s introduction to the baritone’s saluting of the great gun – “thou long black arm” – ironically addressing its malevolence before uttering a curse upon its being (though the words were not clear the tone of voice was unmistakeable! – great timpani and brass playing, here!). Its brazen function then became clear as the music burst once again into ”Dies Irae”, again magnificently  delivered, but then dramatically slowing, and holding everything in cosmic thrall for the “Lacrimosa” to make its heart-wrenching appearance  – Morag Atchison’s singing was to die for, here!  Britten brilliantly uses the “Lacrimosa” in tandem with what are perhaps Wilfred Owen’s most moving verses in the entire work – “Move him gently into the sun” – no matter that the words were not entirely clear in places, as the overall sense of grief was here palpable beyond description. I think we needed to have been told, somewhere, that there was an interval at this point, because we were uncertain as to what to do at first, after the choir had breathed its concluding “Dona eis requiem” – still, our somewhat mesmerised state wasn’t inappropriate!

As with every note these angelic voices sang this evening, the Wellington Young Voices’ Choir covered itself in glory  with the Offertorium that began the work’s second half – and, not to be outdone, the Orpheus voices then launched into the text with sterling orchestral support, firstly at Sed signifier sanctus Michael, and then giving us a deliciously-crafted fugal romp through Quam olim Abrahae promisisti, one whose conclusion then tossed the momentums into the introduction to another of  Owen’s poems. This one was a setting based on part of the composer’s earlier canticle, “Abraham and Isaac”, but this time with a different and brutal ending to the story. Both soloists here projected their texts more clearly, combining their voices particularly beautifully when describing the “Ram of Pride” sent by God for sacrifice –  glorious singing again from the Young Voices here, in heart-breaking response to the story’s murderous end, in which we were told Abraham “slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one!”, the soloists obsessively repeating the final phrase of the poem. Afterwards, the choir and orchestra then returned to the “Quam olim Abrahae” fugal passage to complete the savage irony of the tale.

Came the Sanctus, resplendent in its glory and especially so in the wake of the Parable’s bitterness – a plethora of shimmering instrumental tintinnabulations and with ecstatic acclamations from the soprano, after which the choir divided into eight parts for Pleni sunt Caeli in terra (the choir stood up section by section, which created great visual excitement!), using the rapidly-repeated words to create an excitable babble of ever-burgeoning voices to the accompaniment of a great instrumental crescendo!  A pause, and then brasses and voices began firstly, the Hosanna in excelsis and then, led by the soprano, the gentler, more processional  Benedictus, the interactive flow here kept alive with great presence by Morag Atchison interacting with voices and orchestra under Marc Taddei’s expert control.

A final Hosanna from chorus and orchestra produced a concluding flourish, and the baritone began Owen’s thoughtful meditation, The End, the poem questioning  the Earth’s capacities for forgiveness of humankind for the carnage, with the beautiful instrumental colourings accorded the words’ images emphasising the bleakness of  the previous music’s religious exaltation. Again, the solo singer’s words were difficult to make out, but the sense of desolation held fast.  The tenor’s rendition of the following verses from At a Calvary Near the Ancre intersected here with the choir’s sing of “Agnus Dei” from the Requiem Mass, the words again highlighting the poet’s angst and anger with war – here, Owen castigates the institutionalisation of  Christian faith and patriotism  by clergy and polilticians. with Britten’s own pacifism never more unequivocally articulated than in this part of the work.

The Libera me, as with Verdi’s setting in his famous Requiem Mass, contains some of the most searing and heartfelt writing, with again, in Britten’s work the universal plea for deliverance and mercy extended to include the “pity of war”.  The opening here was as portentous as anything by Berlioz or Verdi, with the writing filled with vertiginously fearsome chromatic shifts of harmony and colour, gathering momentum and fervour, and brought into sharp focus for us by the soprano’s sudden entry (“Tremens! – Factus sum ergo!”) when she spits out her words, bring the choir’s voices with her, and realising with the orchestra a cataclysmic ferment of energies and strengths –  a truly apocalyptic threshold through which we were taken and left gasping as the sounds gradually died away, leaving the  two soldiers about whom this work has told us such a lot, and, of course, very much on our behalf!

Which left the poet’s last text, a poem called “Strange Meeting”, bringing to us a dream-like sequence  in which Owen describes an encounter involving two soldiers who had been on opposing sides in a battle, one of whom had killed the other in combat – “I am the enemy you killed, my friend”…. exchanging as well “the undone years, the hopelessness” along with “the pity of war, the pity war distilled”, and bringing to bear the desire to cleanse the human spirit with water from the “sweet wells we sunk too deep for war”. And it was difficult to remain dry-eyed throughout the music of reconciliation, with the two men sharing the line “Let us sleep now” in a sequence magically wrought all about its perimeters by the choir’s intoning the Latin hymn In Paradisum – “Into Paradise may the Angels lead thee”, but with Britten again disturbing the conventional idea of “eternal rest” of such commemorations by using the tri-tone interval for the Children’s Chorus’s final utterances of “Requiem Aeternam….” as a kind of “warning” for mankind.

Then came a stunningly evocative ambient withdrawal from the work’s world, achieved by the slowest of diminuendi throughout the work’s final chord sequence, allowing the performers and their sounds to magically and memorably dissolve into the darkness. It was only then I found myself wishing that the musicians had brought the work’s beginning out of the same darkness at its beginning – a work that everybody had so brilliantly recreated for our on behalf of the genius who wrote this music…..

Jack Body’s 80th birthday concert – music and creativity of enduring worth

Posted on by Peter Mechen

                                                                                                                                                                                      Jack Body (1944-2015)

“Jack!@80” at St.Andrew’s
(an 80th birthday concert of Jack Body’s music)

Concert organisers: Pepe Becker, Judith Exley, Robert Oliver,
Dan Poynton, Jennifer Shennan, Yono Soekarno

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington
Saturday, 12th October, 2024

A concert devoted to the work of a single composer by its very nature promises to be a singular occasion no matter where in the world such an event takes place. In the past we in Aotearoa, New Zealand have had a number of concerts to celebrate anniversaries of some of our composers, alive or dead, with Douglas Lilburn and David Farquhar being the first to come to my mind. And certainly many others have produced sufficient volumes of work that would fill out plenty of single-composer concert programmes – so there have probably been other instances of such single-composer events that I simply haven’t heard of.

Anniversaries do provide welcome excuses to “celebrate” a particular composer’s work – and such a chance presented itself this year with the eightieth birthday anniversary of Wellington composer Jack Body, who died in 2015. A group of the city’s prominent musicians and associates set about bringing together various performers who were associated with Jack Body as students, colleagues or simply contemporaries of his, all drawn to the manifold creative energies and significances emanating from his music – strands of influence that were brought together to wondrous and colourful effect last Saturday evening at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church in Wellington.

Aptly described in the programme for the event as “a selection of Jack’s smaller-scale solo and ensemble works” the concert nevertheless clearly demonstrated something of the range of his interests and preoccupations as a composer. Especially prominent was evidence of his activities regarding the establishment of cultural links with Indonesia, China, Cambodia, and other places throughout Asia besides his awareness of western traditions of song, dance and literature. Though Jack’s seemingly boundless energies in organising larger-scale events featuring his music were only hinted at here – one thinks of his opera Alley (based on the life of Rewi Alley, and performed at the1998 International Festival of the Arts), the multi-event “Sonic Circuses” of the 1970s, the promotion of Asian music and musicians both here and in various Asia-Pacific Festivals and Conferences of which he was the artistic director, and on numerous other festival occasions often the “featured composer”, in addition to his work as “Composer-in-Residence” with the Auckland Philharmonia in 2012-13 – there was no doubt as to the range and scope of his creative imagination evidenced by the works we heard, even if in some cases the “snippets” from complete works left one wanting to have one’s cake and eat more than a mere tantalising slice or two!


The First Smile Gamelan Group – Jennifer Shennan and Gerard Crewson (right) assisted by Chris Francis and Rosalind Jiko

At the outset prospective concert attendees were charmed upon entering the church by the sounds of a gamelan group of four called The First Smile performing on their instruments at the rear of the church nave, playing pieces composed by two of the actual group members, Gerard Crewdson and Jennifer Shennan, assisted by two others, Chris Francis and Rosalind Jiko. Also, remarkably, as if apropos of the cornucopia of achievement on the part of the concert’s subject about to be presented, each person upon entering and contributing a koha was offered a free copy of “Jack – celebrating Jack Body – Composer” – a gorgeously lavish book which had been published by Steele Roberts in 2015, a collection of tributes and recollections penned by Jack’s many friends, colleagues and contemporaries from over the years, all beautifully appointed and illustrated.

Once inside and all gathered we were welcomed to the concert by Robert Oliver, former director of music at St.Mary of the Angels Church in Wellington, and well-known as an instrumentalist and conductor with a number of ensembles in the capital over the years. In thanking the audience for coming to pay tribute to Jack Body’s memory and legacy, he remarked on the need for the latter’s remarkable qualities and creative achievements to be remembered and given their due and “not to be interr’d with his bones”.

And so began a veritable feast of musical sounds for our pleasure, enjoyment and wonderment, beginning characteristically with the composer’s 2006 work Rainforest, originally for flute and harp, but here adapted for flute and piano. We heard four of the work’s six movements, played by Monica Verburg (flutes) and Dan Poynton (piano), each one preceded by a “field recording” of music performed by the Aka and Ba-Benzele Pygmies of the Central African Republic, and recorded by the French/Israeli ethnomusicologist Simha Arom. The first, Hunting Song, featured some brief vocalisings whose repetitive pattern was elaborated into ostinato from the piano and accompanying decorative flute phrasings. No.3 was the first of two Lullabies, a chant accompanied by percussion, and here developed into a folk-dance-ish pattern, with the flute exploring a “bluesy” counterpoint, the two working up to a jazzy, riff-like response. A second Lullaby sounded like a wordless vocalised meditation, to which the piano and flute responded with what seemed like ecstatic wonderment akin to “loving” exchanges, with the piano reaching downwards as if “earth-breathing” in between each melodic flowering – lovely. The final movement, Children’s Games, brought three singers to the platform with the instrumentalists, reproducing the tape’s brief but racy chanting, with the flutist joining in with the singers’ energetic vocalisings in places while the piano played off-beat syncopations , all to exhilarating effect, and finishing with a flourish as the singers scampered off the stage at the piece’s end!

One of Body’s most-travelled works is the “Five Melodies for Piano”, a work written for and premiered by Margaret Nielsen in Europe (she also recorded the work for Kiwi-Pacific Records). Dan Poynton told us of his introduction to the work while a student of Jack’s, and being given each of the pieces separately to “try” out! Tonight’s version had the added interest of incorporating a solo electric guitar transcription, here played by Gunter Herbig (in what I presumed was his own reworking) of two of the pieces. The piano led off with the well-known opening 3-note repetitive figures, the composer’s “melody within a melody” idea borne out by the performer using the left hand to “mute” some of the played notes, varying the mutes and their intervals and incorporated “extra” notes as the piece proceeds. Gunter Herbig’s guitar took the second and third melodies, the second melody delivered in a breath-holding sequence of beautifully-suspended notes occasionally punctuated by near-toneless “strummings” as the melodic line climbed into its own near-stratospheric space to be swallowed by the silences.

Even more intense was the third piece’s plaintive three-note call with its achingly sharpened second note, the sounds entering their own kind of “nirvana”, the composer inspired by the sound-world of the ancient Chinese zither, Gu Qin, and here transporting our sensibilities most affectingly. Dan Poynton’s piano returned for the fourth melody, beginning with a similarly “lost” figure, the mood then “cleft in twain” by a Saint-Saens-like cock-crow from “Danse Macabre”! The interaction continued, with the cock-crow distended over the keyboard’s whole range! – pulled every which way, hammered, screwed, stretched and flattened, before being allowed to quietly recompose itself and slink away, its “squawk” whimperingly pulled out to a “ninth” in a pathetic gesture of submission! A more seemly envoi came with the final melody (piano again), a gentle ostinato, with notes that established their own patterns before pushing exploratory feelers gradually into different realms, transforming themselves almost effortlessly into impulses which expressed at one and the same time wide-eared amazement and calm acceptance – here, something of a Zen Buddhist attitude when contrasted with the tortured journey of the previous melody.

Exploring a vein of nostalgia can, of course, put one’s sensibilities in touch with unexpected surges of feeling, something which Body felt compelled to explore when recalling his parents’ and grandparents’ fondness for “old songs” – hence his fascinating, almost Brittenesque settings of four such songs, three of which were performed here in different parts of the concert. First up was the ever-popular “Daisy Bell”, performed with suitably sonorous sentiment and gusto by baritone Roger Wilson with pianist Michele Binnie’s sure-fingered accompaniment (we were adjured as an audience to “join in” with the chorus, with what I thought was a creditable response!) – then variously during the concert’s second half we heard another baritone, Chris Berenson (again with Michele Binnie’s piano) in the lesser-known and thus more audience-shy “Sweet Genevieve”, followed later by the hymn-like “All Through The Night” with Pepe Becker’s heavenly soprano and Michele Binnie’s gorgeous piano chordings leading the way through the verses and leaving us to chorus the song’s one-liner refrain!

Back to the first half now for another vocal work, one I’d previously seen performed in full – Body’s 1982 work ”Love Sonnets of Michelangelo”, of which a single one, No.5 “Non posso altra figura immaginarmi” was presented. Originally written for the dancer, Michael Parmenter, and two female voices, this concert version featured Pepe Becker’s soprano with a viola played by Nicholas Hancox taking the lower-voiced part of the duet, an interaction which I found extraordinarily moving,  the artist/poet’s words being given “voice” within yet another kind of medium, a different abstraction…..both singer and player brought out the poem’s “ecstasy of despair”, as it were, underlined by the occasional foot-stampings of both musicians and the obsessive quality of the actual notes…..

There followed an electroacoustic work “Musik Dari Jalan” (Music from the Street), a soundscape which drew for its composition from field recordings made in Indonesia by the ethnomusicologist Allan Thomas of the sounds of Jakarta street hawkers. Interestingly, this work won prizes at a major electroacoustic music festival in Bourges France both in the 1970s and 1990s. Further similar interest was garnered by the item which closed the concert’s first half – here, a quartet of string players (Edward Clarkson, Eros Li (violins), Nicholas Hancox (viola) and Jamie Beardslee (‘cello) performed two separate pieces from a 2008 work called “Yunnan”, a collection of transcriptions and arrangements of Chinese minority nationalities in the South-West China province of Yunnan. The first , Bouyi 1, actually NOT from Yunnan (as Body admitted in a performance note) was a kind of “fantasia” for string quartet, the players interacting with the taped singing voices of two Bouyi women, and drawing forth sounds of a particularly haunting quality, with some episodes reminiscent of modal-like passages in English string music by Elgar and Vaughan Williams.

A second piece entitled Bai Sanxian was more dance-like and didn’t appear to feature taped sounds, but simply “live”, dance-like music-making which put one in mind of some kind of exotic-sounding lute, in this case a “sanxian”, its singularities ably suggested by the players.

So much was there to talk about during the interval that it seemed no time at all before we were being refocused upon the platform and the second half’s intriguing beginning – a kind of “Tour of a Neighbourhood” item which emanated from pianist Stephen De Pledge’s commissioning a set of “Landscape Preludes” from New Zealand composers – Body’s characteristically singular contribution to the idea was this 2007 portrait in words and music of his own neighbourhood “The Street Where I live”.  Dan Poynton here “teamed up” with the voice of the composer (as pianist Henry Wong Doe had done on the piece’s first recording) to realise the “counterpoint” of  speech and its “musical analogue”. Here I thought the voice in places insufficiently projected, with the piano notes occasionally blurring the spoken message; and the abrupt start first time up seemed to leave pianist Dan Poynton in his starting-blocks! – but a re-run righted the balance, and all thereafter was well!

Body’s constantly inventive creative urge brought out many unorthodox touches to his compositions, one of which was the use of “invented language”, vocalising sounds “with no semantic meaning”. His 1989 work “Five Lullabies” was first performed by the Tudor Consort, conducted by its founder, Simon Ravens, and this evening featured three singers, Pepe Becker, Jane McKinley and Andrea Cochrane, from that first performance, here joined by Samuel Berkahn for the second of the two selected lullabies.

                                                                                                                                                        Singers Jane McKinlay, Pepe Becker, and Andrea Cochrane, with Robert Oliver

The first, No. 3, uses what the composer called the “wonderful vocal polyphonies” of China’s minority cultures, with the so-called “dissonant” interval of a second often held to resonate instead as “consonant” , Pepe Becker and Jane McKinley steadfastedly “holding their lines” with these almost Schoenbergian “more distant” consonances! It was No.5 which worked its magic almost unreservedly for me, however – such hauntingly long and sinuous lines, with Samuel Berkahn’s and Andrea Cochrane’s tones seeming by turns to meld into and drift alongside Pepe Becker’s unswerving lines, the voices’ creating amazing resonances, partly lullabic, and partly lament-like, with the intensities maintained until the cortege of sounds seemed to pass enigmatically into the night.

Yet another glimpse of Body’s seemingly unquenchable search for expression through means that disregard convention was given by pianist Dan Poynton with two excerpts from a work written for and dedicated to him, called “14 Stations”. It’s a title which straightaway suggests to anyone familiar with Christian beliefs a kind of representation of Jesus Christ’s torturous journey towards his crucifixion and death, though Body has proposed the term might as well apply to any journey involving “stations”, such as one by rail. Also, the composer had as well suggested the title might refer to the many different travails undergone by pianists who have to practice at a keyboard for hours each day to “perfect” their art. Certainly each excerpt from this work which Poynton presented here illustrated a specific area of physical effort which, as Body remarked in his programme note subject the body “to stress and discomfort which can extend to physical pain”.

I’d seen one of Dan Poynton’s concert performances of this work not long after the premiere, so was able to relate each of the excerpts’ titles to that memory – each one concentrated on its title’s subject, the first one, “Shoulders” (No.10), moving from an intensely thoughtful aspect to vigorous jabbing motions and a kind of “kneadling” counter-movement, the pianist sighing with the effort at its conclusion. By contrast, “Stiffness” (No.14) presented a hyperactive figure stretching in different directions, percussively beating the instrument’s different surfaces, with moanings and gruntings, then feeling all about both the instrument and his own person to see if there was still life in (a) the instrument and (b) the pianist! We were left hungry for more…..though after such hyperactivity the following 1979 work “Aeolian Harp” resembled a journey from chaos to order, with Nicholas Hancox’s instrument conjuring up harmonic sounds of such unworldliness we felt somewhat disoriented, even “haunted” in ourselves by the readily-imagined passing of air-borne spirits and the resonating earth-echoings left in their wake – stunning!

Such resultant ambiences seemed to spontaneously generate an unprogrammed but entirely apposite item from Dan Poynton on one of the electric keyboards to hand, in bringing to life a precious relic of a bygone age – Jack Body’s own theme music from the television series of what seemed like so many lifetimes hence, “Close to Home”, with the years for a few brief moments peeling off so many listeners’ shoulders (mine among them) like spring blossom from a tree. However redolent for many of us, the composer’s shade was having none of such things as a “farewell”, instead making his “exit” with a somewhat anarchic cocking of a snoot in the face of convention – this was his setting of Auckland writer Russell Haley’s quirky verses which made up “Turtle Time”, a matching of composer and poet whose interaction in itself imbued the piece with singular character.

                                                                                                                                        “Turtle Time” with speaker Jonathan O’Drowsky, and conductor Robert Oliver.

Poet Ian Wedde vividly characterised Russell Haley’s work in a written tribute after his death in 2016 as “subversive deadpan comic surrealism, where even the most factual and banal components of it, such as the names of people and places, are stretched thinly over layers of alternative reality and identity.” The script of “Turtle Time” revels in such subversions and their separate realities, though this evening’s performance needed, I thought, clearer and perhaps more “Brechtian” poise from its engagingly energetic, if rather too over-excitable speaker/actor Jonathan O’Drowsky, from whose utterances, however zestfully zany, I would have liked a bit more spaciousness and clarity in places  (I must add, to be fair, that the St. Andrew’s acoustic has never seemed to me especially kind to ventures featuring the spoken voice sans microphone!). Still, conductor Robert Oliver unfalteringly marshalled his instrumental forces throughout both the trajectories of freely-non-metrical impulse and the spontaneous clusterings of colour and stasis here served up by his expert players, Monica Verburg (harp), Jonathan Berkahn (harpsichord), David Treefrog Sanders (organ) and Dan Poynton (piano).

The concert’s last strains were those of “Auld Lang Syne” in a version very probably wrought by Body himself, and rendered by Dan Poynton on one of the keyboards as a very much “in keeping” gesture. At the end it very much seemed we had spent a most successful evening in the company of a remarkable creative spirit – Jack Body’s is undoubtedly one of those whose legacy will not be forgotten.

                                                                                   Some of the performers at the conclusion of “Jack@80” at St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church,  Saturday 12th October, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ghost Trio completes a great 2024 for Wellington Chamber Music Concert Series

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
THE GHOST TRIO  –  SCHUMANN, HOLMES, SAARIAHO. RAVEL

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No. 1 Op.63
LEONIE HOLMES – Dance of the Wintersmith (2017)
KAIJA SAARIAHO – Calices (2009)
MAURICE RAVEL – Piano Trio in A Minor (1914)

The Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin). Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

(Andrew Joyce replaces ‘cellist Ken Ichinose for this concert)

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

Sunday, 25th August, 2024

“New Zealand has so many great musicians that we have decided to have eight concerts” proclaimed the Wellington Chamber Music’s 2024 series website at the year’s beginning. Having been fortunate enough to attend (and review) six of these concerts, I’m finding myself at the conclusion of this, the final one in the series, overcome with gratitude at being able to enjoy so much great music in the company of these – yes, truly! – great musicians! And glancing at the society’s prospectus for 2025 has already whetted my appetite for more….

But, to the business at hand, this final concert! – and to The Ghost Trio’s remarkable metamorphosis via a replacement ‘cellist, Andrew Joyce, stepping into the role for the temporarily unavailable Ken Ichinose, and bringing his own remarkable qualities to bear upon the concert’s two major works by Schumann and Ravel without any discernable hiccups! The composer-lineup remained the same as before, except that violinist Monique Lapins and pianist Gabriela Glapska adroitly substituted two not insubstantial violin-and-piano works by Leonie Holmes and Kaija Saariaho respectively for the original “all-piano-trio” lineup.

First up was Robert Schumann’s adorable D Minor Piano Trio Op. 63, a work which shows how much the composer’s recent absorption of JS Bach’s works (particularly the “Well-Tempered Clavier”) had influenced his thinking, evident in a new kind of expression marked by contrapuntal entwinings and polyphonic voicings well beyond the scope of his other chamber music up to then. The players here responded with sombre, forward-thrusting gestures at the outset with vibrant lines and strong but always flexible trajectories, continually catching our ears with the music’s on-going subtleties of dynamics and intensities. Monique Lapins had demonstrated for us on her instrument Schumann’s innovative use at one point in the movement’s development section of ghostly sul ponticello bowing accompanied by the piano in its highest registers – when it came in the performance it sounded extraordinary! – it brought to my mind the composer’s well-known penchant for the expression “different realms”, which he himself obviously cherished.

After a couple of “Ready, steady” chords, the players “galloped in” the dotted-rhythm scherzo, the oft-repeated ascending theme cheekily combining whole- and half-note intervals, with the contrastingly graceful Trio a series of ascending and descending figures, almost like the scherzo itself in a more languid, even sleepwalking mode. A different world awaited us with the Langsam mit inniger Empfindung slow movement, the opening violin solo solemn and focused with near-vibratoless tones – the ‘cello encouraging more warmth from the notes, and seeming for a while to “lighten” the violin’s emotional load. The gravitas then returned, so exquisitely “voiced” here by both players, and with the piano giving discreet and sure-footed support, the instruments gradually reducing their tones to near-silence, and leaving us with only our beating hearts for company for a semi-second of silence…… Schumann then decided to give us as a finale one of his warmest and great-hearted of melodies by way of leading us back into domains of light and joyousness, a mood not unlike that of his Piano Concerto’s finale, albeit here in 4/4 trajectory rather than the Concerto’s 3/4!

Teamwork between the players pinged, clicked and hummed as the theme flowed, skipped, sang and declaimed its way through sequences conveying by turns energy, contentment, mischief and exaltation, each with its particular deftness of touch or vigorous exuberance – I admired things like the will-o’-the-wisp exchanges between Monique Lapins’ violin and Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello, as well as the latter’s beautiful intonation in a high-lying rendition of the movement’s second theme, and (perhaps most especially) pianist Gabriela Glapska’s brilliant dexterity and unflagging strength in holding together and maintaining the flow of the finale’s seemingly boundless energies.

Monique Lapins, who’d introduced the concert’s first item, then added something of a performer’s perspective for us to the programme note written by the composer regarding the concert’s next item. This was a work, Dance of the Wintersmith, by Auckland composer Leonie Holmes, inspired by a Terry Pratchett book for children called ‘Wintersmith”, a fantasy-tale of a young witch whose dabbling in “dark arts” causes worldwide climate disruption that puts humankind in jeopardy.We were alerted to the composer’s requirement that the violinist additionally “vocalises” some of the music, and were told not to be alarmed at the inclusion of such sounds at some point!

The work began with an almost Gypsy-like solo gesture, one with eerily-spaced intervals and chromatic descents, and alternating near-frenetic bowings with mysteriously disembodied harmonics – all beautifully realised by the player! The piano’s entry echoed the atmospheric character of the sound-picture, though the players soon “struck out” with some impactful gesturings – strong pizzicato, followed by scherzando interchanges between the instruments, with the scenario marked in places by a vivid sense of grotesquerie, the “dance” angular and fantastic, its projection almost visceral! – a silence created a moment of mystery which the piano embellished at first, the violinist then quietly humming a melody, and accompanying the vocalising on the violin – the effect was of a kind of lament, a “lost song” looking for some kind of answer or redemption – all very moving, as everything drifted into silence.

Monique Lapins (who on this showing would, I feel, get a PR presenter’s job in any sphere of activity with no difficulty) then told us briefly about the composer, Kaija Saariaho, of the next item and the music we were about to hear – again a work for violin and piano, its title Calices (2009) means ‘calyxes’ in French, and refers to the protective layer surrounding a flower in bud; one could imagine the violin as representing a spring flower bursting into life. Calices is actually derived from Saariaho’s own violin concerto Graal théâtre (1994).

I found this extraordinary quote from the composer regarding the concerto which could well have a bearing on the shape, form and syntax of Calices:

‘I had a kind of vertigo, a fear of high places, when I started this concerto. I played the violin as a child and I loved many violin concertos passionately – and I was afraid to step into this domain.’

The programme note enlarges on this with a further comment by Saariaho herself relating to  this particular time, one involving “frustrated illusions, longing and love”. The article went on to emphasise that Calices is noteworthy for its intimate familiarity with violin technique, wrought from those experiences of the composer. Monique Lapins’ and Gabriela Glapska’s remarkable performance reinforced the character of the writer’s description “ the piece ebbs and flows through different moods, from calm and contemplative to violent, with a good deal of tempo fluctuation, and with recurring notes acting as reference points within each section, like a magnet to which the music returns….”

The work was in three sections, opening with a gesture that suggested folk-like, almost oriental influences, which at first belied the violinist’s description of the work as “icy”, but soon established its severities, demanding both percussive exchanges between the instruments and contrastingly isolated single notes from both – we experienced incredibly unworldly-sounding harmonics from the violin in places, and  the pianist occasionally reaching into her instrument’s body to hauntingly activate the strings.

Part Two began with a “falling” set of sequences from the piano as the violin delivered cadenza-like flourishes, the piano creating what one description called “cloud-formations ”as the violin mused throughout repetitive meditations – my notes at this point read  “we are in a fantastic world of improvised fantasy”.  The third part of the work began in agitato fashion, tersely dynamic gestures exchanged but then coming together in a part conciliatory, part “distanced” mood, leaving this listener with feelings more enigmatic than resolved – in that sense similar to the ending of the Fourth Symphony of another Finn, Jean Sibelius.

With the concert’s final item ‘cellist Andrew Joyce provided for us a “from-the-heart” introduction to the work, Ravel’s 1914 Piano Trio, echoing the programme note’s associating the work’s genesis with the outbreak of war in Europe, and Ravel’s desire to be involved despite his poor health and his mother’s anxieties regarding her son’s decision. I particularly enjoyed his remark regarding the composer’s attested “sobbing over (my) sharps and flats” (in a letter to a friend at the time), commenting that Ravel should have spared a thought for the generations of musicians left “sobbing over those same sharps and flats” when preparing performances of the work! Perhaps the nearest Ravel got to this kind of admission was with the piano writing, which he confessed was ‘too difficult for its composer to play!”

As with Ravel’s great contemporary, Debussy, in his String Quartet, this A Minor Piano Trio demonstrates mastery of classical form but with many individual touches – Gabriela Glapska’s beautiful piano-only opening of the work suggested the composer’s attraction towards the music of the Basque region, the melody at once dreamy and restless, able to express at once great longing and anxiety. The violin and ‘cello octave-doubled string-writing carried this mood onwards until its growing angst irrupted as the instrumental exchanges intensified. What relief, then, as these energies quickly dissipated to allow the achingly beautiful second subject to appear on the violin, then on the cello and be echoed by the piano – we so relished such a gorgeous dialogue for the strings here, together with such limpid piano notes! And what passions we were then plunged into by the return of the opening theme revisiting its volatile tendencies, the sounds here flung even more energetically across the soundscape by the players, and quelled only by the second theme’s “laying on of hands” return. We were relieved by the violin and ‘cello’s wanting to make peace and, finally, prevailing over the piano’s brooding aspect! Peace, when it finally came, was like balm for the senses.

I’d obviously got carried away with this first Ravel movement in The Ghost Trio’s hands, but their “characterisation” of the music’s chameleon-like moods was so absorbing and well-rounded, it seemed to squeeze words out of me like toothpaste! The second movement is a scherzo headed Pantoum: Assez vif , and takes its title from a Pantoum, a Malay-sourced poetic form popular with French poets such as Baudelaire, one which repeats and overlaps words and lines in much the same way as Ravel alternates the movement’s first two themes – though I’ve always thought the highlight of this movement is the Trio, during which Ravel cleverly combines fragments of the strings’ scherzo themes (in 3/4) with the slower, more lyrical Trio theme (4/2) on the piano, and all without the music’s heartbeat seeming to falter, the players skilfully maintaining the different time-signatures’ happy co-existence!

The third movement Passacaille: Très large is of course a Passacaglia based on the piano’s opening eight-bar bass line – when played on a string instrument the melody straightaway sounded “folky”, and its return on the piano in a higher register had the same heartfelt effect. Moment then followed breathcatching moment, such as the duetting between violin and ‘cello, the succeeding ‘cello solo, and the rapt concentration of the piano’s final utterances.

Then, not unlike the effect Schumann had achieved earlier in the concert during his G Minor Piano Trio with his strings’ sul ponticello playing and high-registered piano figurations, Ravel’s violinist and cellist respectively played arpeggio harmonics and double-stopped high-fingerboard trills at the finale’s beginning, a melody whose exotic decorative aspect gave it something of an oriental fairytale  character, but then whose irregular time signatures of 5/4 and 7/4 in places added a vertiginous quality to the music’s vigorous and ever-burgeoning sonorities, the players giving their all and achieving an exuberance and euphoria right up to the piece’s no-holds-barred ending.

Nothing much further needs to be said, but “Roll on, 2025” – Wellington Chamber Music can justly feel pride and satisfaction with this year’s efforts on behalf of a grateful public!

 

 

Where Fairburn Walked – worlds of home-grown sounds

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WHERE FAIRBURN WALKED
– an exploration of New Zealand Piano Music

Jian Liu (piano)

Rattle RAT – D149 2024 (3 CD set)

In 1987 Kiwi songwriter Ross Mullins wrote a song “Where Fairburn Walked” for an album “Passing Shots”, a song subsequently taken up by singer Caitlin Smith in her 2004 album “Aurere”. Various commentators whose opinions I’ve read have since expressed regret that the song never quite achieved what was deemed “classic status”, though the appearance of its title on a new set of recordings on the Rattle label suggests that It hasn’t entirely been forgotten – in fact I was able to ”connect the dots” in making the discovery that the Steve Garden who currently runs Rattle Records was also the producer of Ross Mullins’ “Passing Shots” album on which the “Fairburn” song itself first appeared.

The “Fairburn” of the song is of course poet A.R.D. Fairburn (1904-57), who, at the time of his premature death was considered one of the country’s most important poets – his work has since survived a something of a post-mortem dip in status and regard, with his contribution continuing to undergo a revitalised appraisal. So, when I first saw this new Rattle compilation of twentieth (and twenty-first) century New Zealand piano music bearing the title “Where Fairburn walked” my first thoughts were of some of the poet’s laconic verses from “Walking on my Feet” (Fairburn was an inveterate walker for practically all of his life) –

I know where I’m going
where I’ll lie down
nice quiet place
Long way from town

long way to go
I’ll sleep all alone
fingers round the earth
earth round the bone…

The simple directness of such writing is disarming, though not characteristic, as readers of Fairburn’s other poetry will know – but the willingness to engage with the isolation and earthiness of the land heightens the appropriateness of the new recording’s use of the poet’s name, as it does with much of the music we hear.


                                                                                                                                                            A.R.D (Rex) Fairburn

Rather more poetically evocative in terms of imagery and feeling (and according more readily with some of the music found on these recordings) are these lines from a later poem “Estuary” –

The wind has died, no motion now
in the summer’s sleepy breath. Silver the sea-grass
the shells and the driftwood,
fixed in the moon’s vast crystal.

The lynch-pin of this latest undertaking has been pianist Dr. Jian Liu who’s currently both the Head of Piano Studies at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, and the Acting Head of School at the NZSM, and is widely celebrated both as a performer and music educator. The recording was in fact produced by Dr.Liu in conjunction with sound engineer Graham Kennedy at the New Zealand School of Music’s Adam Concert Room, with help from the New Zealand Music Trust and Rattle Records. Funding for the project came from Creative New Zealand in conjunction with Victoria University of Wellington and SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music, and from the New Zealand Music Trust itself. The recordings complement an earlier undertaking involving the publication in China of two volumes containing these same piano works by the Shanghai Music Publishing House, the largest classical music publisher in Asia.

                                                                                                  Dr. Jian Liu

I did express some surprise to Jian Liu at the omission of any of Douglas Lilburn’s piano music from the set – however, because of difficulties in securing copyright from the Lilburn Estate to publish any of the composer’s pieces in China, it was decided to maintain the accord between the publication of the music and these recordings. Of course Lilburn’s spirit is still a “presence” far beyond the single actual reference to him found in Jenny McLeod’s Tone Clock Piece X – “for Douglas on his 80th birthday”. It’s Interesting that Fairburn himself was well aware of Lilburn as a composer, and in fact they corresponded regarding the possibility of Lilburn setting some of Fairburn’s poetry, with the composer suggesting that the “shorter, simpler poems” (such as the aforementioned “Walking on my Feet”) would be best for such a purpose (Denys Trussell “Fairburn” Auckland University Press 1984 Pg.212) – alas that it was an idea that never bore fruit.

Still, these might-have-been conjectures have their own separate life; and Lilburn’s piano music has certainly received its due on disc already through the stellar efforts of interpreters like Margaret Nielsen, Dan Poynton and Michael Houstoun over the years. It’s entirely appropriate that this new set of recordings should be a world unto itself, one in which the compelling uniqueness of the music’s character is honed by the incredibly-focused commitment towards and identification with the music on the part of Jian Liu. And completing the picture is the brilliance, clarity and atmosphere of sound engineer Graham Kennedy’s recording. The three discs together constitute an overall programme whose structure sustains listening interest through both consistency and contrast. Jian Liu himself indicates in the booklet notes that each disc represents “increasing levels of technical difficulty and musical complexity”, providing new and interesting repertoire choices for pianists in different spheres of activity.

Disc One reflects the possibilities for pianists wishing to begin such a journey – and there ‘s a kind of chronology present as well in the process which adds to the flavour of things with names like Warwick Braithwaite, Thomas Haig, Gordon McBeth, Harry Hiscocks, Ernest Jenner, and Paul Schramm, all of whom were born in the nineteenth century. There’s a definite period charm about Warwick Braithwaite’s Fragment, Gordon McBeth’s An Idyll,  Harry Hiscocks’ Nocturne, and Ernest Jenner’s Foxglove Bells – and both Thomas Haigh’s deliciously glutinous-sounding Rotorua (Boiling Mud Pools) with its accompanying touches of gothic atmosphere, and Paul Schramm’s What a Silly Joke with its knockabout comedy routine are all evocatively presented by Liu’s ever-prevailing sense of time, place and character in the music.

On the same disc one finds contemporary composers exploring these same charming, fragrant, atmospheric, and pictorial evocations – though there’s insufficient space to comment on every individual piece one still responds to Ronald Tremain’s artlessly attractive Sleigh Ride, and Claire Cowan’s more exploratory Paper Dragonfly, and with extension of the rich variety of keyboard textures provided by David Hamilton’s Clouds over Aoraki and Gillian Whitehead’s Outlines Through Rising Mists. Gareth Farr’s Love Songs and Anthony Ritchie’s Caroline Bay Suite set simple but satisfying rhythmic challenges of ostinato and syncopation.

The remainder of pieces on the disc take the player to more demanding levels of achievement both technically and interpretatively with Jenny McLeod’s Mysterious Whirly Square Dance providing a stimulating test for any beginning player, and Paul Schramm’s already-mentioned What a Silly Joke even more so.  Gillian Whitehead’s Lullaby for Matthew and Craig Utting’s Covenant have more reachable notes but inhabit worlds which require an advanced synthesis of hands head and heart. And so to John Elmsly’s Six Little Preludes which conclude the first disc and which in Jian Liu’s hands definitely represents a kind of technical and aesthetic gateway through which a player needs to pass to tackle the demands of the “next level” of keyboard accomplishment.

Straight away one senses a more elevated world of expression with the beginning of Disc Two, and one to which the pianist instantly responds, firstly with Kenneth Young’s Elusive Dream, a series of spontaneously-wrought roulades becoming increasingly interactive as their explorations flirt with both expectation and illusion – a kind of “growing-up” metaphor, an awakening to a new reality. Liu adroitly enables David Farquar’s Three Inventions to playfully lock horns with one another before coming to a kind of “rubbed-off-edges” terms with themselves, while Ross Harris’s utterly charming Nga Manu delineates by numbers the birth processes of birds from incubation, through hatching and feeding and pushing out fledglings, including a somewhat pitiful “runt of the litter”.  Leonie Holmes’s Nocturne comes with a poem describing the flight of a moth, the sounds, Liu perfectly realising Holmes’s fine detailing expressing the creature’s “Midnight Empress” status and her “unchallenged” sweep into and through her “hushed domain”. And just as majestic in a different, “other time and place” manner is Michael Williams’s Arteria Meridionali, whose ritualistic, almost Respighi-like gestures seem to evoke something of their European origins.

It was simply my way of thinking about things, but Anthony Ritchie’s grandly-conceived Olveston Suite, a tribute to an historic Dunedin stately home, seems to mark the end of the set’s “coming of age” evocations, the “grand gesture-like” sounds nostalgically reawakening my youthful impressions of such places with their faded glories and echoes of old times. Everything here seemed like a newly-minted dream with lots of rumbustion (The Kitchen and Scullery – as well as, surprisingly, the Billiard Room!), proper old-world etiquette (the Dining Room) and some genteel tranquility (the Writing Room), all part of the fairy-tale-like fantasy of a lost age.

After this, I felt the remaining works on the disc, Jenny McLeod’s Four Tone Clock pieces and Anthony Ritchie’s selection of PIano Preludes, possessed a gravitas which lifted them away from the other pieces, more akin to the collection of works on Disc Three. All of the pieces had that depth of content, either focused or discursive, which required the kind of responses to technical difficulty and/or musical complexity as outlined by Jian Liu in his introduction to the set.

McLeod’s Tone Clock pieces were inspired by Dutch composer Peter Schat’s theories regarding equal-temperament tonal and chromatic approaches, expanding Schat’s basic idea to incorporate what she called a “Grand Unified Theory” far beyond the idea’s original source. Liu plays four of McLeod’s twenty-four pieces, two of which are each dedicated to previous composer-colleagues of Mcleod – Douglas Lilburn and David Farquhar – both of whom had preceded her as Professors of Music Studies at Victoria University. I imagined I could “hear” certain characteristics of each of the older composers in the pieces McLeod had inscribed to them.

While more conventionally named as “Preludes”, Anthony Ritchie’s survey for solo piano encompasses the accepted spectrum of all twenty-four keys from the chromatic scale. Jian Liu recorded five of these for this recording, covering a wide range of differing “character” pieces, influenced to some extent by other composers’ efforts in this form but remaining true to the composer’s own “sound and musical expression”. Each has a particular distinctive character which Liu brings out with splendid-sounding surety – I particularly enjoyed the contrasts in his playing of No. 15, with its agitated, excitingly “dangerous-sounding” figurations vying with bell-like treble sounds, dismissed mockingly and derisively, when compared with No. 24 (subtitled “For my Mother”), a time-aged memory of mother and child at the keyboard perhaps? – something at first charming and nostalgic, though at the end, sounding a strangely forlorn note…..

True to Jian Liu’s previously-quoted overview, the two previous pieces and those occupying Disc Three all seemed ineluctably “ingrained” in terms of conveying a character, environment, situation, emotion or any other such viewpoint relating to this part of the world with requisite skill and conviction. Two of the third disc’s pieces were by composers whose music was appearing for the first time in this set – interestingly one was the oldest in the group (Edwin Carr 1928-2003) and the other was the youngest (Selina Fisher (b.1993) – beside which we heard further works by David Hamilton, John Psathas, Gareth Farr, Gillian Whitehead, Claire Cowan and John Elmsly.

Whether it was the juxtaposition of youth and age, or the “newness” of the two composers’ music on this disc, I found myself unexpectedly, but more resoundingly, drawn to both Edwin Carr’s and Salina Fisher’s very different sounding works. Carr composed prolifically in most forms, including a number of works for solo piano, among them this attractively-varied set of four sharply-characterised pieces requiring from the player, by turns, both a lyrical touch and brilliant virtuosity. By contrast Selina Fisher’s world is more readily ambient and impressionistic, though capable of sharply-etched incident and irruption, however micro-cosmic. Both of these pieces would certainly encourage me to seek out further explorations and expressions of the world of sound, light and ambience through which we all move and deign to share with others. It‘s a kind of overall unifying quality which all of the pieces on these three discs so brilliantly and evocatively presented here by Jian Liu have a share in defining and characterising as our very own distinctive living-space.