Tag: New Zealand music

Orchestra Wellington out-performs the fireworks with a stunning “Petrouchka”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PETROUCHKA

TABEA SQUIRE – Colour Lines (commission from Orchestra Wellington)*
CARL NIELSEN – Violin Concerto Op.33
IGOR STRAVINSKY – Petrouchka (Ballet – Revised 1947 Edition)

Arohanui Strings – Sistema Hutt Valley (Alison Eldredge – director)*

Andrew Atkins (conductor)*
Suyeon Kang (violin)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Saturday 4th November, 2017

Audiences can be curiously unpredictable, on occasions exhilarating and galvanizing masses of energy to be part of, caught up in the excitement of either enthusiastic or rapt responses to some performances, (especially those involving soloists) and then for no apparent reason, every once in a while, strangely under-responsive. Why this sudden out-of-the-blue observation, going a little against the grain of my normally unrelieved positivism as a music reviewer?

It was Saturday’s Orchestra Wellington concert that left me feeling a little bemused, after I’d experienced warmth and enthusiasm aplenty on the part of the audience in response to the efforts, firstly, of the youthful Sistema Strings, playing both a group of demonstration pieces and taking a vital role in composer Tabea Squire’s newly-commissioned work “Colour Lines”, and secondly, violinist Suyeon Kang, in giving us a rapturously beautiful performance of that concert-hall rarity, the Nielsen Violin Concerto, with plenty of tensile strength and winning gossamer-woven lines.

In each of these cases the performers’ energies were accorded the kind of reaction from the listeners that reflected the music-making’s outstanding and warm-hearted qualities. However, I thought that, on the same performance “Richter-scale”, the audience’s reaction to the concert’s second half, a breathtakingly brilliant realisation by orchestra and conductor of Stravinsky’s music for his ballet “Petrouchka”, by rights ought to have been something along the lines of a twenty-minute standing ovation!

That such a stunning realization of the work didn’t seem to me as forthcoming as it fully deserved could have been because (1) there had already been a lot of applause in the concert already, due to the presence of the Sistema students, (2) the remarkable violinist Suyeon Kang had already taken the lion’s share, with her gorgeously elfin-like performance of Nielsen’s Violin Concerto (including a round of spontaneous applause at the first movement’s conclusion) and (3) Petrouchka of course ends not with a Firebird-like bang, but with a subdued whimper, from which listeners have to then re-activate those glowing embers of enthusiasm and get them bursting into flame once more. So the audience response conveyed what I thought W.S.Gilbert might have described as “modified rapture”, instead of conveying (as I and a colleague afterwards were both feeling) a sense of “Did we really hear that? It was mind-blowing!”

Overall, the concert’s trajectory lent itself to a kind of “from seeds to forest giant” progression, with tremulously awakened beginnings demonstrated by the cutest brigade of junior string-players one could imagine, all under the sway of their director, Alison Eldredge. All of these were introduced by Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei, and included OW’s assistant conductor Andrew Atkins (unfortunately not credited in the programme for his efforts with both the Arohanui Strings, in their introductory items, and in directing the combined ensemble in the commissioned piece “Colour Lines” by Tabea Squire).

This was a work whose composer conceived as involving both the student players and the orchestra proper, by using ‘”free-time” notation in places to allow the younger players the means of continuously contributing to the music’s texture. A chorale which appears in various guises during the piece eventually blends with the younger musicians’ efforts. I was struck by the confident orchestrations throughout, a definite character emerging with each of the sequences, making for strongly-etched contrasts (scintillating upper strings are then “cooled’ by the winds near the opening, before a lovely dancing interaction develops between strings and winds beneath warm horn tones, the latter then assuming a ”stopped” out-of-phase effect which kaleidoscopes the music into yet another world of wonderment).

I recall both my Middle-C colleague Rosemary Collier and myself being delighted by Tabea Squire’s work for string quartet “Jet-lag” at a 2014 concert, a piece with something of a similar sharply-etched sense of character, obviously wrought by a composer with an ear for textures and the on-going ambiences. What mischief, and indeed, even danger, was let loose with the burble and ferment generated by the brass in their “hornets’ nest” sequence! – again contrasting with the nobility of the chorale voiced by those same instruments not long after – reminiscent of Hindemith, here, as the strings muscled up to join with the tutti in gestures of satisfying finality, snappy and definite. I thought the music most skillfully and confidently focused and blurred its edges all at once, throughout, as the title suggested it might.

Relatively unknown compared with its Nordic cousin written in 1904 by Sibelius, the slightly later (1911) Violin Concerto of Carl Nielsen’s proved equally as strong and fascinating a work, and certainly as difficult to play, if not more so. Like Sibelius, Nielsen was himself a violinist, though neither composer would have attempted to perform his own concerto, despite Aino Sibelius describing her husband’s playing of the work’s solo part during its composition as “on fire all the time.….he stays awake all night, plays incredibly beautifully,…he has so many ideas it is hard to believe it….”

Nielsen’s work, unlike Sibelius’s, turned away from the standard three-movement concerto form, the composer casting the work in two large movements, each with a slow and quicker section (some commentators alternatively describe the work as having four movements). The music began strongly, dramatic and declamatory, the soloist (South-Korean-born Australian violinist Suyeon Kang) meeting the orchestra’s initial challenge with full-throated recitative-like passages whose striking quality of tensile strength and flexibility of phrasing instantly compelled and held one’s attention throughout. I wondered whether, in the big-boned virtuoso sequences, Kang’s tightly-woven silken tones would fill-out sufficiently to provide a sufficient match for the orchestra’s more assertive gestures – but such was her focused concentration her instrument seemed able to “inhabit” the music’s dynamics in an entirely natural and unselfconscious manner. From these trenchant responses right through to the Elgar-like lyricism of the Praeludium’s final musings, she held us in thrall.

Nor did she shirk the physicality of the jolly “cavalleresco” opening of the allegro, with its vigorous exchanges, rapid running passages, and sudden moments of introspection, all leading to a solo cadenza which mirrors the quixotic moods which have gone before in the music, before dancing back to the allegro’s lively theme. And such was the breathtaking skill with which she swung into the movement’s dancing coda, and traded playful feints and gestures with the orchestra right to the end, that the audience responded with some spontaneous unscheduled applause (to which Marc Taddei, after acknowledging the soloist and the clapping, remarked “But wait! – there’s more!”).

The slow movement featured lovely playing throughout the opening sequences from the winds, joined by the horns, and some beautiful Sibelius-like accompaniments in thirds for the soloist, whose utterances seemed bent on expressing some kind of private sorrow. The horns offered comfort at various points, as did the strings, so that the music’s abrupt recourse to a kind of droll waltz seemed almost Schubertian in its stoic, at times quirky and humourful resignation, the orchestra occasionally launching into moments of mock seriousness, none of which last for very long. One thunderous episode provoked an angular cadenza from the soloist, during which, at one point, she played simultaneously a drone bass, a repeated pizzicato note and some bowed figurations, all most divertingly and unselfconsciously. It was a remarkable performance from all concerned, and fully deserved a response which matched in enthusiasm that given to another Korean musician in the MFC just over a week ago, Joyce Yang, after her Rachmaninov concerto performance with the NZSO.

We reformed after the interval to the sounds of fireworks outside, which were soon well-and-truly put in their place by a performance of Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet “Petrouchka” from Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington which I couldn’t imagine bettered in terms of precision, skill, atmosphere and overall theatrical and musical impact. Every sequence, every scene, every tableau came alive, the music-making bringing into being both dance and drama, and forming a kind of triumvirate of successful evocation of artistic achievement. At its conclusion I felt sympathy for Marc Taddei and all the players who deserved to be brought to their feet and given individual acknowledgement – but the trouble was, there were too many of them! Nevertheless I thought that all the winds and all the brass players were simply heroes, and that Andrew Atkins deservedly got his dues after all, for his superb piano-playing. Very great honour, of course, to Marc Taddei and his all-encompassing direction of the score. For all these reasons and more, I could have clapped for much, much longer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maximum Minimalism – simple, state-of-the-art complexities from Stroma

Posted on by Alan Wells

STROMA: “MAXIMUM MINIMALISM”

Bridget Douglas (flutes), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Reuben Chin (saxophone), Jeremy Fitzsimons (percussion), Leonard Sakofsky (vibraphone), Emma Sayers (piano), Anna van der See , Rebecca Struthers (violins), Giles Francis (viola), Ken Ichinose(cello), Matthew Cave (contrabass), conducted by Mark Carter.

Steve Reich: Double Sextet (2007)

Alison Isadora: ALT (2017)

Julia Wolfe: Lick (1994)

Terry Riley: In C (1964)

City Gallery, Wellington,

Thursday, 19 October 2017

“Maximum Minimalism” was the wittily oxymoronic title for this concert by Wellington’s (New Zealand’s?) premiere contemporary music ensemble, Stroma. “Minimalism” was the name bestowed on a group of American composers who, in the 1960s, reacted against the forbidding complexity of atonal and serial music and began (largely independently of each other) employing the extended repetition of simple elements. Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley were the pioneers (La Monte Young is sometimes included, but this is confusing, because his work explores indefinitely sustained sounds, tuned to ratios from the harmonic series, rather than rhythmic repetitions).

Steve Reich preferred the term “process music”. His early compositions were as rigorous in their way as anything in the preceding period of modernism: tapes which went gradually out of phase (Come Out, 1966), or chirping chords progressively lengthened until they became an oceanic swell (Four Organs, 1970). Later, he started making composerly interventions into these strict procedures. In Double Sextet the forward driving momentum was interrupted by slower chordal sections, and the whole piece included a slow movement. The live instrumentalists (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano) played with precision against a recorded version of themselves (hence the “Double”), producing a dense, busy texture. This, and the interaction between Emma Sayers’ high piano and the piquancy of Leonard Sakofsky’s vibraphone, created an edgy, astringent world of sound.

If Double Sextet represented late minimalism, Terry Riley’s In C stood right at the beginning. His approach was very different from Reich’s. Here the complex counterpoint was the result, not of careful calculation, but of giving the performers freedom progress through a series of short melodic fragments, each at their own pace. I was impressed by how these classically trained musicians handled the improvisatory elements. While there was no particular overall shape, Stroma created the dynamic ebb and flow that could be expected from experienced improvisers. There were even segments of long notes where the tempo seemed to slow down, despite the persisting pulse of the high C’s on piano and percussion.

American cross-genre composer Julia Wolfe’s Lick began with short, arresting phrases before the syncopated rhythms kicked in. Reuben Chin’s saxophone and Nick Granville’s electric guitar contributed to the jazz-rock ambience. Again I felt the absence of a clear overall structure, but was engaged by the well-paced contrasts of texture and rhythm.

For me, the highlight of a Stroma concert is often the premiere of a New Zealand work, and this was no exception. Victoria University graduate Alison Isadora has spent much of her life in The Netherlands, but maintains her connections with New Zealand, and held the 2016-17 Lilburn House Residency. Many of her compositions have involved mixed media, often with a political undertone (“agitator-prop”, perhaps – one piece included an onstage washing machine). Her recent scores have been more introverted however, the string quartet ALT notably so. Ethereal and understated, ALT wove its texture almost exclusively from string harmonics, sometimes near the top of musical pitch-perception. But its quietly seductive surface was underpinned by a well-formed musical structure, propelled to a subtle climax by a gentle pulse in the cello, before resolving into a sustained sense of suspended time. It could almost have merited a place in Stroma’s next concert (“Spectral Electric”, City Gallery, Thursday 16 November), which will be a tribute to the Spectralist composers who base their sonorities on the harmonic series: this will feature a new concerto by Michael Norris for Wellington’s own, Mongolian trained, throatsinger, Jonny Marks.

Wilma Smith and Friends play fine programme for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wilma Smith (violin), Caroline Henbest (viola), Alexandra Partridge (cello), Andrew Leathwick (piano)

Piano quartets: William Walton’s in D minor; Andrew Leathwick’s No 1 and Brahms’s No 3 in C minor, Op 60

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 15 October, 3 pm

We reviewed Wilma Smith and Friends at their Waikanae concert on 24 September. There they had played Beethoven’s not-much-played Op 16 piano quartet, Dvořák’s greatly loved Op 87 as well as the piano quartet by the group’s pianist, Leathwick.  I suppose I can wait till next August when I see that Wellington Chamber Music’s just announced 2018 Sunday series will hear the Dvořák played by the Leppänen, Thomson, Joyce, Irons quartet.

Wilma’s three colleagues, two of whom are New Zealanders, all have an association with the Australian National Academy of Music, in Canberra, while Wilma herself teaches at the two principal Melbourne universities.

This Wellington programme avoided playing anything too well-known: Brahms’s 3rd piano quartet is the least familiar of the three. Played here with such finesse and musicality that its relative neglect became hard to understand.

Walton’s 16-year-old creation
However, the concert began with a, to me, totally unknown quartet, by a 16-year-old William Walton. Though it might not display the brilliance and musical delights that Mendelssohn or Mozart were producing at that age, this was a very impressive achievement, even allowing for its getting revised much later in the composer’s life (when he was 72).

It was written in the last year of WWI and so might have reflected the Englishness of Bax or Ireland or Vaughan Williams, even Elgar. All I could say is that the music had a generalised English, as distinct from a Continental feel, and Herbert Howells’s own piano quartet has been offered as a possible influence. Would Walton have heard Bartók in 1918? something at the start of the last movement suggested it. It was too soon for the iconoclastic Walton of the Bloomsbury years to be audible anywhere, but there could have been touches of Ravel, for there was much in it of a surprising sophistication.

It began with a clear conception of certain melodic ideas that seemed authentic rather than arbitrary, and an understanding of the art of building music in a formal shape. It was indeed formal in having four movements –  a bright, positive opening, a scherzo that seemed singularly assured, then a calm Adagio in a nocturnal mood, with muted strings, and finally an energetic Allegro that might have attempted to emulate the radical composers of the Continent, even certain rhythmic elements from Eastern Europe (do I mean Bartók?though what was known of him in England in the First World War?).

Writing for the quartet as a whole was quite mature, and it was clear that the young composer had a refined appreciation of the characteristics of each instrument – a solo viola passage caught the ear. Music from the first movement returned in a natural-sounding was to bring it to an end.

Andrew Leathwick’s quartet
A quartet by the group’s pianist Andrew Leathwick, followed. He introduced it, but in rather too casual a way, without sufficient care for enunciation and for the rhythms of his speech to be easily followed. The music largely explained itself – an opening that was almost secretive, improvisatory, slowly awakening with long phrases carried high on the violin strings. The second movement, entitled ‘Freely’, began with muted violin and cautious piano notes and signs that the composer became aware of the need to retain the listener’s attention with an almost Dvořákian melody. The composer seemed sensitive to the particular character of each instrument, subtly varying colours and dynamics; the viola carried a vaguely familiar elegiac tune which I couldn’t attribute. The composer recorded that ‘the great Romantic composers’ had inspired the last movement – Con moto. Those influences were clear enough. The whole piece, written in an idiom (idioms?) of earlier music made me aware of the styles of music that music students now feel free to write, far removed from the strenuously avant-garde, ‘original-at-all-costs’, audience-alienating music that I used to subject myself to in my early years reviewing for The Evening Post in the late 80s and 90s.

The style adopted in this piece is now accepted in a more open and tolerant musical environment in music schools, though one naturally hopes that it will not discourage a freedom to explore more adventurous approaches that make judicious use of influences from the music of the recent past.

Rosemary Collier’s review of this piece will be found in the review of 24 September.

Brahms’s Piano Quartet No 3
The last piece was Brahms’s Piano Quartet No 3, Op 60.  As I noted above it’s not as well-known as the Op 25 quartet, or perhaps even as the second one. But here was a performance that did it credit. It launches itself in a distinctly C minor manner, commanding, weighty and serious minded, rather than seductive, first in the Adagio opening and then the Allegro non troppo main part. But it’s exactly what a paid-up Brahms-lover looks for; not what the censorious Schoenberg who orchestrated the Op 25 piece because he thought it too dense for chamber music, would have enjoyed at all.

For it is indeed almost symphonic in its textures although the quartet produced all the clarity that I needed. Though the second movement is more animated, it dwells in a similar  sound world, darkly impassioned, with energetic piano writing that Leathwick handled, though the piano lid was on the long stick, in excellent accord with the strings.

The third movement, Andante, opens with a soulful, though sanguine duet between piano and cello which offered Alexandra Partridge (and again the pianist) an admirable opportunity to be enjoyed. And the finale too confirmed that impression left from all that had gone before of a carefully studied approach in which the essence of Brahms had become thoroughly embedded. Rapport between strings and piano was always perfectly integrated in terms of balance and interpretive view.

It ended a very satisfying chamber music recital, offering a sound reason to take comfort in a cultural relationship with Australia.

 

 

China/New Zealand Ode to the Moon concert with a radiant Aroha Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

China Cultural Centre in New Zealand presents:
ODE TO THE MOON
Celebration of the 2017 Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival

Music by A.Ke-Jian, Zheng De-Ren, Ding Shan-De, David Farquhar,
Zhou Long, Bao Yuan-Kai, Huang Kiao Zhi, Anthony Ritchie,
Shi Yong-Kang and Zu Jian-Er

The Aroha Quartet
Haihong Lu and Ursula Evans (violins)
Zhongxian Jin (viola), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

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

Sunday October 1st, 2017

This was one of those concerts that, had I been an ordinary audience member I would have looked forward to immensely! However, being a reviewer and facing the prospect of commenting on a genre of music about which I knew very little, I felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation about what I might encounter! As it turned out I need not have worried, as the music written and arranged by the Chinese composers listed above possessed strength, energy and beauty as I could easily relate to – the sounds communicated to my ears something essentially meaningful, however “unfamiliar” the actual pieces themselves might have been.

Of course the music was refracted here through the medium of the string quartet, one wholly familiar and identifiable to my ears. Having said this, I was amazed by the extent to which the instrumental timbres were made by the players to sound exotic, especially those conjured up by the quartet’s leader, violinist Haihong Lu, whose instrument at times sounded thoroughly “folk-traditional”, not at all like the tones and timbres of a conventional violin.

The programme began with an adaptation of a folk-melody by composer A Ke-Jian and jazz musician Zheng De-Ren into a Song of Emancipation given the title “Fan Shen Dao Qing”, here a forthright and energetic statement of bold intent, its direct and vigorous manner not unlike that of Dvorak in some of his chamber pieces. The piece included a contrasting “slow” middle section, notable for the instruments’ used of “slides” between notes, creating to my ears a wondrously exotic character, while the return to a more vigorous manner included a lovely “dancing on tip-toe” effect, and a brief valedictory sequence with folksy violin to the fore once again, the whole concluding with an exciting stretto.

The life of Hua Yan-Jun, or “A-Bing” as he was known to his family, seems like the stuff of racy novels, albeit with a tragic, premature conclusion due to ill health. Regarded as one of the most important Chinese musicians of the 20th Century, his legacy includes a work for erhu (a Chinese two-stringed fiddle) “Reflection of the moon in the Er-quan spring”, which has become one of the most-loved pieces of Chinese music, arranged for many combinations of instruments. The Aroha played a quartet arrangment made by Ding Shan-De, a prominent composer and pianist who studied at the Paris Conservatoire and afterwards taught at the Shanghai Conservatory.

The arrangement by Ding Shan-De gave all of the instruments opportunities to express their characteristics, the violins playing very much in the Chinese style, a mournfully affecting, lump-in-the throat-inducing effect, as befitted the music’s nature, for me – a kind of lament / prayer / invocation expressing in music the beauties of the moon’s interaction with the waters of a spring amid life’s joys and tragedies.

Though whole worlds apart in style and content, David Farquhar’s “Ring Round the Moon” music seemed to fit like a glove in this company. As was the previous piece to its composer, Hua Yan-Jun, Farquhar’s is easily his best-known work, its genesis a commission by the New Zealand Players for their 1953 production of Jean Anouilh/Christopher Fry’s play “Ring Round the Moon”. Though what the quartet played for us was described as a “Waltz Suite” only two of the three movements could have been characterised thus, as the concluding “finale” was a boisterous galop! Each of the other movements was also “quick”, which denied us an effective contrast during the course of this otherwise attractive music – a pity we weren’t treated to at least one of the two beautiful slow waltzes from the full work. Incidentally I’ve not been able to find details of which movements Farquhar used in his versions of either the complete “Waltz Suite” or in his transcription for strings commissioned by Nova Strings in 1989.

Evoking reminiscences of Anatoly Liadov’s “Eight Russian Folk Songs”, the next item gave us a comparable overview of Chinese folk-music from the composer Zhou Long, in the form of his “Eight Chinese Folk Songs”, published in 2002. Having completed both traditional Chinese and formal music studies at Beijing University the composer then relocated to the United States, there continuing to write and arrange music in the traditional Chinese style for both folk- and western instruments, and promoting performances of this repertoire. He currently works as Professor of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

I was taken by the emotional range of this music, almost Janacek-like in places in its direct, heartfelt use of the instruments’ full capacities, the opening of the first song “Lan hua-hua” demonstrating the sweep of feeling across vistas of anxiety, loneliness and grim determination, the original work concerning a girl escaping from an arranged marriage to be with the man she really loves.

Each of the song arrangements delivered a similar kind of strength and focus, while covering a wide range of human activity. The music abounded both in exquisite detailings as well as broader sweeping gestures – the second song, “Driving the mule team”, demonstrated, for instance, the composer’s exceptional ear for evocative rhythms in its combination of arco and pizzicato scoring, the resulting textures mimicking the sounds of the team’s harness bells.
The third song “The flowing stream” readily depicted a watery delicacy as a backdrop to what was originally a love song, while the fourth song “Jasmine flower”contrasted the rhythm of the dance with the performer’s awareness of the jasmine’s scent in the music’s more contemplative sequences. The remaining four songs continued with these kinds of evocations, mingling the ordinary with the fabulous in delightful and sometimes unexpected ways, as witness the hearty shouts of the quartet members-cum-herdsmen in the final jaunty “A horseherd’s mountain song”.

The programme’s second half again judiciously presented a New Zealand work amid music by Chinese composers, with the same resonantly positive outcomes. Three arrangements of traditional songs from various parts of China came first, followed by a depiction of an iconic New Zealand landscape via the music of Anthony Ritchie, a work evoking the countryside around Lake Wakatipu. The scheuled programme then concluded with an arrangement of music from a work called “The White-Haired Girl” – music originally cast in operatic form in 1945 before being reworked as a ballet, in which guise it has achieved the most popularity. This adaptation was the work of Shi Yong-Kang and Zhu Jian-Er, completed in 1972 at the time of American President Richard Nixon’s ground-breaking visit to China.

The three folk-song arrangements were played without a break – the first, poignantly called ‘Little Cabbage” actually enshrined a pitiable lament of a child (some sources say a girl, others a boy) who was ill-treated by her/his stepmother, and longed to be reunited with her/his mother. The music was appropriately wistful and played with great feeling (beautiful solos for both violin and viola) with an exquisite passage in thirds for both violins, with pizzicato accompaniment from the lower instruments. The second, “Camel Bell”, featured a great variety of exchange and dovetailing between the instruments to a jogtrot rhythm, in places freely modulating, the effect rather like a rapid-fire theme and variations treatment – as promised by the group’s second violinist, Ursula Evans, who introduced the group of pieces, we heard the actual “camel bell” at the end played softly on her instrument. The final song, “Happy Harvest” delivered what its title promised, after a “ready – steady – go!” kind of beginning – headlong tempi, real hoedown stuff, contrast brought about by an almost sentimental, more reflective section, in which the gestures reminded me of ritualistic happenings, with the instruments having turns to lead, and sliding notes of the most expressive kind figuring largely. A return to the stamping rhythms then brought about an appropriately bountiful conclusion!

Anthony Ritchie’s work “Whakatipua” came next, a single-movement work whose slow-fast-slow structure set the scene at the piece’s beginning – music of open, isolated spaces, with an almost lullabic character conveying a sense of nostalgia. Rather more matter-of-fact by contrast was a descending phrase heard at the outset and then returned to, suggesting a certain degree of depth and solidity, something enduring over time. A more active, urgent spirit awoke within the music, throbbing viola notes bringing ready responses from the other instruments, outdoor, angular figurations breathing copious draughts of fresh air, the sounds not unlike Douglas Lilburn’s “Drysdale” Overture in overall feeling. After the running exchanges between instruments had worked off some of the music’s energies, I liked the way in which everything gradually settled back into the serenity and spaciousness of the landscape, re-establishing a sense of isolation and distance (was that a hint of the erhu in one of Haihong Liu’s phrases?), the long-held notes at the end gradually dissolving into memory.

The final work on the programme carried with it something of a history, having been first set as an opera, then adapted to being a ballet, and in that form achieving classic status in China. This was a piece titled “The White-Haired Girl”, the story depicting the bravery and fortitude of a young girl who triumphs over adversity in difficult times. The music shared some thematic material with the folk-melody, “Little Cabbage”, which we heard earlier in the concert, and which link was demonstrated by one of the players.

A strong, forceful opening, achieved by vigorous bowing from the quartet members, opened the piece, followed almost immediately by a lyrical romantic theme, perhaps one which characterised the girl in the story, Xi’er. It was but one of many attractive, lyrical themes which provided a foil for subsequent sequences depicting conflict and struggle, the music making determined efforts to win through adversity through vigorous action – all very like Tchaikovsky in its heart-on-sleeve emotion, and requiring full-blooded responses from all four musicians! None were found wanting, as the piece took both players and audience through a gamut of feeling, the music freely ranging from hushed expectation to grand declamation at the piece’s end, rounded off by a brilliant running finish!

As if the players hadn’t given their all, they chose to entertain us with a stunningly brilliant encore which, to my ears sounded like gypsy music with eastern influences, something which I thought somebody like the Roumanian composer Enescu might have written, inspired by folk-themes depicting the utmost in visceral excitement. I subsequently found out that the piece (called Sa Li Ha, a girl’s name) was connected with Kazakhstan ethnic groups of the Xingjiang Uyghur Autonymous Region in northwest China. My informant told me I had been on the right track, but needed to go a little further eastwards! Still, the most important thing was what I thought of it all as music – to which I could reply unequivocally, “What a piece, and what a performance!”

Breaths of fresh air – the Imani Winds hit Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:
IMANI WINDS
Valerie Coleman (flute) / Toyin Spellman-Diaz (oboe)
Mark Dover (clarinet) / Jeff Scott (horn) /Monica Ellis (bassoon)

VALERIE COLEMAN – Red Clay and Mississippi Delta
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (arr. Jonathan Russell) – Scheherazade
PIAZZOLLA (arr.Jeff Scott) – Contrabajissimo
NATALIE HUNT – Snapshots (CMNZ Commission)
PAQUITO D’RIVIERA – A Farewell Mambo
SIMON SHAHEEN (arr. Jeff Scott) – Dance Mediterranea

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Monday 26th September 2017

This was the New York-based ensemble Imani Winds’ first concert in New Zealand as part of a 10-venue tour organised by CMNZ. Every member of the group during their introductions for each of the concert’s items conveyed considerable pleasure and excitement at being part of this inaugural visit by the ensemble to New Zealand. They’ve come with something of a reputation for being innovative and adventurous in their programming, as well as devoting considerable energies in developing outreach and education programmes, one of which makes up part of their touring schedule in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, a special “Musical Journey Around the World” concert.

The ensemble has two recognised composers in its ranks, flutist Valerie Coleman and horn-player Jeff Scott, both of whose efforts figured on this evening’s programme, an original work by Valerie Coleman, “Red Clay and Mississippi Delta”, and two arrangements by Jeff Scott, firstly of Astor Piazzolla’s “Contrabajissimo” (originally a work for double-bass and jazz ensemble, here recast for bassoon and winds), and then of Simon Shaleen’s “Dance Mediterranea”. Whether originally written for an ensemble featuring the oud, a short-necked lute-like instrument, Middle-Eastern in origin, which Shaheen learned to play in his youth, or for the violin (an instrument the composer later took up as well), it’s unclear – Scott’s arrangement here gives the opening solo passage to the flute, before sharing the material between the other instruments – I particularly liked the oboe’s exotic-sounding pitch-bending sequence at one point in the dance.

Another avowed commitment of the ensemble’s is to new music, of particular interest being works by composers of diverse backgrounds, part of Imani’s interest in bringing together European, American, African and Latin music traditions. In keeping with this philosophy the ensemble programmed a new work by New Zealand composer Natalie Hunt, a commission by Professor Jack Richards – itself something of a cross-cultural work, a three-part piece called “Snapshots” containing impressions of the composer’s first visit to Africa.

Mention must be made of a curiosity which the Imanis served up for us – composer/arranger and horn player Jeff Scott during the course of the evening had bemoaned to us the fact that the wind ensemble repertoire simply couldn’t compare with that for string ensembles in terms of quality and variety, and that ensembles therefore had turned to arrangements for winds of various pieces for “other” instruments, an example being an “arrangement” of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” for winds by a London-based clarinettist, conductor, composer and arranger Jonathan Russell. From the point of view of cleverness of adaptation, the exercise would, for some, have had its merits and its interest, but in my opinion the adaptation all but destroyed the original work through extensive cutting of the material, removing much of the narrative aspect and severely reducing the dramatic range and emotional scope of the music, and its ability to deliver. There must be any number of shorter pieces “out there” (some by Rimsky himself, come to think of it), which could have served the purpose just as well, and able to have been played more-or-less in full, rather than bowdlerised so savagely, as here. Yes, I’m missing the point of the exercise, I know – but even despite the presence of a few incidental delights of adaptation, I didn’t REALLY enjoy hearing one of my favourite pieces of orchestral music mutilated thus in public!

Enough of my tub-thumping! – time to turn to the other individual pieces in the concert! The Imanis began with the wind version of a hiss and a roar, Valerie Coleman’s work, “Red Clay and Mississippi Delta” opening with wild, raunchy declamations which then settled into a swinging, sultry rhythm, one that allowed lots of melismatic detailings within a relaxed pulse. There were forthright virtuoso clarinet irruptions, rapidly-fingered and skilfully-tongued bassoon passages, and numerous sly detailings from flute, oboe and horn, all with distinctive and ear-catching instrumental timbres. We were even invited to join in at one stage of the piece during a finger-clicking sequence, the composer turning to us and saying “You can help!” as the music insinuated its way forwards, our “cool” aspect by turns backed up with atmospheric solos, and colourfully decorated by sequences of riotous, swirling activity.

Astor Piazzolla’s “Contrabajissimo” was introduced by horn player Jeff Scott who had arranged the piece for wind quintet. He outlined the piece’s original genesis for us, how Piazzolla had been asked by the bass player in his quintet to write a piece that, for a change, gave his instrument some of the “limelight” instead of being relegated to its usual accompanying role, and how the composer wrote a work that he came to regard as his favourite – in fact “Contrabajissimo” was the only music played at the composer’s funeral! There was no doubt, Scott told us, that the only wind instrument capable of doing a string bass justice was the bassoon! Judging from the opening bars alone, with the bassoon immediately taking the soloist’s role in a kind of free-ranging dialogue with the clarinet, the work would have taxed Piazzolla’s double-bass player to the utmost! The dance that followed slyly and suggestively pushed the syncopated rhythms along and encouraged more and more excitement until the flute spearheaded a rallying call to which everyone was suddenly listening, and wanting to contribute. When the mischievous rhythms resumed I like the way the bassoon “spoke” to the rest of the ensemble via the player, Monica Ellis, who pointed her instrument every which way when she played her solos, like someone obviously wanting their voice to be heard, be it in tones of poetic wistfulness or with sharp bursts or assertive vigour!

We then heard the music of New Zealand composer Natalie Hunt, winner of the NZSO/Todd Foundation Young Composer Award in 2009, and the recipient of various commissions from groups such as the New Zealand String Quartet and The Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson. This was a work called “Snapshots”, commissioned by CMNZ for the Imani’s New Zealand tour, and written by the composer while travelling through Africa last year. In three parts, each of the individual pieces sought to capture the aspect and mood of a specific place, the first, Namib, evoking for us the Namibian Desert, where, in the composer’s words, “the landscape creeps and morphs, the rocks glow in the evening sun, and the night sky is brilliantly clear”. This first piece was, for me, the most focused of the three, its precision of detail and beautifully-contoured shape placing us vividly in a specific and spell-binding soundscape. The other two pieces seemed not quite on this level of focus, with details (the “extra” instruments) seeming to me appropriately ambient, but not having the same instinctive surety of placement I experienced throughout the opening piece.

In “Mosi-oya-Tunya” (presumably Swahili for “The Smoke Which Thunders”, the African name for the Victoria Falls) we heard the exotic sounds of the “thunder drum” (a brightly-decorated drum with a kind of rachet-tail, able to make a surprising amount of deep noise) and the “rain stick” (a hollow tube which contains rice or some such grain, or else small stones, and which can be turned on its end or otherwise moved to produce a kind of white ambient noise) adding their disparate tones to the ensemble’s wind roulades and the oboe’s splendidly isolated solo line – something of the awe and mystery of the place was conveyed to us by the ensemble, despite moments where I thought the players of the “special” instruments seemed a little uncertain of their dynamics or durations.

The third part, “Delta Dreams” I thought a kind of African “road music” , going somewhere in an engaging fashion, via syncopated rhythms and angular melodies. Jeff Scott forwent his horn in this movement to “play” a wine glass, supporting ostinati by clarinet and oboe, as the flute improvised, the players rolling the sounds jazzily and euphorically towards a “point” where the experience seemed to breast a peak and die away, with only the sound of the thunder drum left, a kind of resonance of departure, again I thought, a detail that would be stronger with some “firming up” of its actual place in the scheme of things.

Clarinettist Mark Dover described the next piece, “A Farewell Mambo (to Willy)” by Pasquito D’Riviera, as a kind of “melting-pot” of local ethnic and established classical traditions. D’Riviera is both a jazz- and Latin-music-performer (his autobiography sports the engaging title, “My Sax Life”) and his piece reflected these disparate, yet interactive strands of his creativity – I was reminded of Hindemith’s music in places by the droll, quasi-academism of some of the instrumental interactions within the framework of those mambo rhythms. The music allowed the instrumental timbres to ring out in places – we heard things like piccolo and clarinet arguing over primacy before the latter plunged into a riff-like kind of apoplexy, reducing the basssoon and horn to a kind of awed accompanying ostinato. The music resembled to my ears interaction between strong-willed individuals vying for their voices to be heard in getting across a particular aspect of the eponymous tribute “to Willy” (Guillermo Alvarez Guedes, a singer, stand-up comedian and record procducer, and obviously an iconic figure in the world of Latin American culture).

Concluding the programmed part of the concert was the aforementioned work “Dance Mediterranea”, by Palestinian-born American composer Simon Shaheen, in an arrangement by Jeff Scott for wind quintet. Shaheen himself plays the violin on a Facebook clip of a version of the “Dance Mediterranea”, showing the violin taking the lead in the work’s introduction, which was here given to the solo flute. Shaheen wanted a synthesis of styles from different parts of the Mediterranean world, hence the piece’s title (something of an “Arab Spring” in music!). After a sultry, evocative opening, the music gathered momentum and brought the other instruments into the picture, to sometimes volatile effect – there are lines with bending pitches, swirling melismas, whispered concourses and sudden sforzandi – these wild expressions of freedom came together most excitingly in a kind of amalgam of riotous energies at the piece’s conclusion.

We were sent home with the strains of a Negro Spiritual resounding in our ears, “Go, tell it on the mountain”, the music laid back at its very beginning, touching on different stylish references along the way (even Klezmer-like at one point), and then with everybody increasingly “playing out” towards the culminative “Yes, Lord! Alleluiah!” kind of gesture, without which salvation might not seem assured! Here, there was simply no doubt!

Playing with fire – music that sears and burns, from the New Zealand String Quartet

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The NZSQ’s Dangerous Liasions Tour 2017 – programme 2 (Wellington)
JANACEK – String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters”
JACK BODY – Saetas
MENDELSSOHN – String Quartet No.2 in A Minor Op.13

Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins)
Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

Hunter Council Chamber, Victoria University of Wellington

Sunday, 10th September, 2017

The NZSQ’s 30th anniversary “Dangerous Liasons” national tour featured two programmes of works which encapsulated so much of what the ensemble has already achieved throughout its existence, including world-class presentations of some of the core string quartet repertoire, both in concert and on recordings, and an on-going committment to New Zealand music. Works by Beethoven, Bartok, Schumann and Mendelssohn have been given much-acclaimed performances in all parts of the country, and recordings of complete cycles of quartets by Bartok and Mendelssohn have internationally enhanced the group’s reputation. I would truly welcome a completed recorded cycle by the group of the Beethoven Quartets, to parallel Michael Houstoun’s already-completed recordings of the composer’s piano sonatas, for the sake of directly preserving the sheer quality of an achievement we’ve similarly acclaimed.

I thought that I’d previously encountered the first of Leos Janacek’s two string quartets as performed by the NZSQ at some stage – but a search of Middle C failed to turn up a review. Though I couldn’t specifically recall a previous hearing of either of the quartets I knew what to expect from the composer, having been variously excited and bewildered by my first encounters with his music (the Sinfonietta, plus a rhapsodic and volatile orchestral work called Taras Bulba), and sufficiently engaged by it all to explore further – piano pieces (Along an Overgrown Path, In the Mist), chamber works (Capriccio, Concertino) and opera (The Cunning Little Vixen).

Janacek (1854-1928), a native of Moravia, was one of music’s most remarkable “late bloomers”, producing in his 60s and 70s most of the works that would carry his name throughout the twentieth century and into the present day as one of the most original and innovative composers of his time. At an age when most people had long since sowed their wild oats and settled down to enjoy what has endured in their lives and would “see them out”, Janacek was experiencing a remarkable renaissance of activity and emotion normally associated with people in their twenties, through meeting a married woman, Kamila Stösslová, 37 years his junior, and falling deeply in love with her.

Both Janacek’s wife and Kamila’s husband “tolerated” the affair, largely because Kamila, though flattered by Janacek’s attentions, seemed outwardly unresponsive, as well as showing little interest in his music. But the composer was undeterred, writing hundreds of letters to her of a passionate and at times intimate nature. Kamila was obviously the driving force for his rejuvenated creativity, even if Janacek was to specifically enshrine his affair with her in just one particular work, his Second String Quartet “Intimate Letters”, writing to her and telling her that the music represented “all the dear things that we’ve experienced together”, and adding, “You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving”.

The NZSQ’s ‘cellist, Rolf Gjelsten introduced the work for us at this afternoon’s concert, quoting another passage from Janacek’s writings to Stösslová, which referred to the Quartet’s music as having been “carved out of human flesh”. The words seemed to make for the composer the ultimate claim on the woman that he loved, to thus write her into his music.

Surely the music that followed was a portrait not of Stösslová per se, but of Janacek himself, and his projected emotions towards his paramour – everything that came after the striving, heartfelt opening declamation was sounded impulse, here whispered intensity, and there obsessive ostinati-like passages, the fulsomeness of the gestures heightened by extremities of dynamics and “unvarnished” string timbres. Lyrical sequences found themselves suddenly grappling with heightened, overbearing figurations, or with gradually sharpening focus, an extended solo for Monique Lapins’ violin arching at one point into intensely passionate exchanges which threatened to become orgasmic in places – a beautiful viola solo from Gillian Ansell similarly succumbed to the pull of the cataclysmic surges, swallowed and digested by the music’s ongoing default-setting intensities.

These descriptions, of course, stem directly from the NZSQ’s fiercely-committed playing as much as from the composer’s music – having heard and seen the ensemble perform many times over the years I’ve come to expect a kind of base-line intensity brought to whatever they play, which invariably makes for thrilling results – here, it seemed to me that Janacek’s creative spirit had been spontaneously re-ignited in performance, engulfing us in a veritable tide of raw emotion , which was surely what the composer intended! To similarly anatomise the way the NZSQ delivered the remaining movements of the Janacek would be to go overboard in terms of review space and reader time – enough to say that the second movement took us on a rhapsodically obsessive roller-coaster ride, Janacek subjecting the opening viola melody to all kinds of expressive extremes, rather like a manic lover reiterating the same words in endlessly inventive ways. The third movement, too, opened with melancholic declamations and easeful rhythmic trajectories which soon found themselves under siege from extremes of rhythm and timbral projection, Helene Pohl’s violin emoting almost to stratospheric breaking-point over several anguished sequences!

The finale’s near-manic folk-dance opening had an almost nightmarish gaiety, the atmosphere to all and intents and purposes “spooked” by what had gone before and its still-to-come possibilities. What incredible energy and focus these players seemed to draw on, to put across what seemed like a barrage of unsolicited chunks of reconstituted emotion! Whatever dancings that were left were punctuated with feral, animal-like scamperings and frighteningly vicious tremolandi – T.S.Eliot wrote somewhere that “human kind cannot bear very much reality”, and it seemed to me that these musicians had taken us perilously near to something like those realms of disturbance and disintegration via this extraordinary music.

After cheek-by-jowling with these full frontal intensities one wanted something removed from such hot-house emotions – Jack Body’s Saetas, while no less focused and involved with its subject matter, seemed to signal a throwing open of windows to let in air and light, following on as it did from Janacek’s somewhat claustrophobic series of confessional outpourings.

Gillian Ansell introduced us to Body’s work, which was commissioned by the Quartet as long ago as 2002, and which had come from the composer’s explorations of music associated with the Spanish flamenco tradition. Body had been researching material for a work, Carmen Dances, whose central character was the then iconic Wellington-based figure of Carmen Rupe, a transexual strip-club owner, who had also run as a mayoral candidate. Saetas (a word meaning “arrow” or “dart”) was composed as a separate project, with Body focusing particularly on music associated with religious feasts held in Spain during Holy Week – saeta are semi-improvised, highly ornamented flamenco songs, many of which were transcribed from different sources by the composer for his material.

Gillian Ansell talked about the quejío, or lament, aspect of these songs, sung by penitents as statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary are carried through the streets in the processionals. The first and last pieces featured the musicians exclaiming such a cry of lament at the very beginning. As well, in the opening bars of the first piece the composer quoted excerpts from both Tchaikovsky’s “Pathetique” Symphony, and a Hugo Wolf song from his work “The Spanish Songbook”, which, together with the quejío constituted a kind of effervescing “cocktail mix” of diverse but still intensely-focused emotion in line with the fervour normally generated by the occasion.

Body’s transcriptions also featured strong drum pulses, which were here represented by additional instruments in the performance, a drum and an accordion, played by Rolf Gjelsten, who demonstrated to us aspects of what these instruments would sound like before the group began the work. After playing the ‘cello during the first piece, he swopped instruments, taking up the accordion for the remaining three pieces.

The upward-rushing figurations at the music’s beginning actually made me think of Wagner as much as Tchaikovsky! The lyrical declamations were played “folkishly”, the instruments readily exploring timbres associated with raw, direct emotion, characterful and unvarnished. Most of the music moved slowly and processionally, a dirge of tightly-knit intensities (the violins directed to play as if their notes were “searing beams of light”), both focused and atmospheric!

Rolf Gjelsten having swapped his instruments, the second saeta began, with single jabbed staccato notes to which the viola replied with a sombre melodic line, the accordion adding its harmonium-like tones besides contributing a rhythmic “crunching” accompaniment, viola and violins repeating the mournful thematic material in different registers. The third movement’s source material is not strictly a saeta (rather, a fourteenth century song “O sad life of the flesh!”) but the subject and general mood of the piece certainly accorded with the rest, and began with a quejio which linked it to the tradition. We heard dense clusters of accordion notes at the outset vying with flurrying string rhythms, which begin to alternate gypsy-like running figures and searing single held notes – gradually the piece’s agitations and divergent threads were bound together, the strings playing in unison at the end over a long-breathed accordion figure.

The fourth and last Saeta opened with another vocalisation (marked “with anguished fervour”) from the quartet players, reinforced by drum-and footbeats in a great “Bolero-like” crescendo to the final thunderous thump immediately after the strings finished their lines and reached their cadence. Leading up to this cataclysm were swirling maelstroms of sound from the instruments, creating an overwhelming effect of a specific, yet universally human kind of life-force.

In my mind arose the question – was Mendelssohn’s music going to make any impression upon us in cheek-by-jowl company with such raw extrusions of attention-grabbing emotion? Ought his contribution to the evening’s music have been put in a less assailable comparative position in relation to the rest? Well, in a concert of surprises this music’s ability to hold its ground and create its own culture of intense feeling was among my afternoon’s most noteworthy discoveries.

The NZSQ has, of course not long since completed a recording project for Naxos involving the composer’s complete works in this genre, a venture I’ve yet to catch up with – but on the basis of what I heard the players do with this particular quartet (No.2 in A Minor, Op.13), I would be very keen to seek their recordings out, and get to know the music better, especially so when, as here at this concert, it’s presented in what seems to me the best possible light. Having encountered such playing and interpretation of this order “live”, I would want to encourage as many people as possible to explore more of Mendelssohn via the efforts of the NZSQ on their recordings.

Monique Lapins, the ensemble’s second violinist, introduced the work, which was actually Mendelssohn’s first “mature” string quartet (composed in 1827) despite its later Opus number than the so-called String Quartet No.1 in E-flat Major, Op.12 (written two years AFTER No.2! – classical music would, of course, be the poorer without such mind-tickling anomalies!). She quoted the words of a song “Frage”, written and composed by the precocious 18-year-old during the same year as the “second” quartet, a song whose opening words “Is it true?” appear throughout the quartet as a three-note motif (incidentally, both Liszt and Brahms used a similar 3-note phrase, each in a solo piano work).

A slow, richly-voiced introduction began the Quartet’s performance of the work, the three-note motif derived from the song occurring at the end of the opening paragraph, just prior to the players’ precipitous plunge into the movement’s allegro, during which I readily took in the playing’s strength and gutsiness, imbuing the music with a greater and more satisfying degree of those qualities than I would have expected. After some intense duetting between the first and second violins in the development, the reprise brought back those first urgencies, engaging our sensibilites at a white-heat rate which again I found exhilarating.

The slow movement’s rich, hymn-like melody, so very characteristic of the composer, came with surety and strength in performance. The mid-movement fugue, modelled after Beethoven’s example in the latter’s Op.95 (despite his father’s disapproval, the young Felix idolised Beethoven’s quartets), was put through its somewhat volatile, though always characterful, paces by the players before the lovely return of the hymn-like opening music, at the movement’s end.

I loved the limpid poise and gossamer grace of the third-movement Intermezzo, a dance that was a kind of antique gavotte at the outset, replete with lovely instrumental interchanges and dovetailed melodic figures. A scherzo-like change which came over the music brought deft, rhythmically ambiguous gossamer scamperings in a kind of “hide-and-seek” scenario, almost Schumannesque in its “merry pranks” aspect, before the music returned to the opening solemnities – a coda glanced fleetingly and mischievously back at the “merry pranks” episode before smiling, and disappearing!

Not unlike what Schubert does at the beginning of his Octet’s finale, Mendelssohn presented us with chaos and disorder in a tempestuous opening, the first violin beating its breast over agitations wrought by the tremolo accompaniments . However, Mendelssohn’s ensuing allegro wasn’t as genial as Schubert’s, the NZSQ players here pushing expectantly towards points of intensity with exciting unisons and horse-galloping sequences. Gillian Ansell’s viola called for clear-headedness by revoicing the fugato of the second movement, but soon became caught up with the ensemble’s rebuilding of the lines towards a return of the allegro and thence to the movement’s tremulous opening. Keeping us on the seat’s edge, the composer fetched up a disconsolate solo, sung with oceans of feeling by Helene Pohl’s volin, quoting the fugato before taking final refuge with the others in the quartet’s opening – and the requoting of Mendelsson’s three-note figure was like balm for the soul! – it was caressed and embraced by the players, to the point where we in the audience were made to feel as if we ourselves were young lovers all over again! – a treasurable experience!

Pleasure of a “return to our lives” kind was then afforded by the players doing a “swop-around of instruments for a klezmer encore, written, I think, by Ross Harris, Rolf Gjelsten back on the accordion, and Helene Pohl in the ‘cellist’s seat for a change, while Gillian Ansell and Monique Lapins also did an exchange – wot larks! No more madcap scenario was evoked, and no enjoyment was more relished than by these talented musicians sharing their fun and games with us, and afterwards, sending us home replete!

Madrigals-a-go! defined, declared and delivered by Cantoris with director Thomas Nikora

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Madrigals – \ ˈma-dri-gəlz \ n. Poems set to music, sung a capella for two to eight voices

Cantoris, directed by Thomas Nikora

Music by Mozart, Tallis, Gibbons, Morley, Bruckner, Saint-Saens, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Chris Artley, Manning Sherwin, Billy Joel

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

Wednesday, 6th September, 2017

The programme note was right to describe the evening’s entertainment as “a delightful Spring programme”, even if Wellington hadn’t thus far (and hasn’t since yet) had a weather response worthy of the name! Still, none of this was through want of trying on the part of Cantoris, whose singing at least warmed our insides and gave as good a precursor of the winds of change as any recent general election poll!

First up we were treated to a kind of “surround-sound” presentation of Mozart’s Cantate Domino, a piece of music I’ve not been able to find anything about, and certainly have never heard before – however, Cantoris’ treatment of the piece rendered such detail superfluous in situ, such was the impact of the group’s warm, open-hearted singing.

Beginning with a unison line, the sounds spread around the church’s interior, separating into parts and overlapping like an indoor version of “Forest Murmurs”, reaching a kind of saturation point at which the strands wound into a great unison statement of the opening – I found the effect of it all exhilarating!

Though the beautiful Thomas Tallis anthem/motet “If You Love Me” inevitably brought a reduction of ambient scale to the proceedings, following after such a spectacularly antiphonal opening, it also tightened up the vocal textures of the group to the point where we could register the balances and the different timbres of the voices, the women sounding a tad more secure than did the men, especially at the highest pitches. Towards the end, the overlapping effect of the voices produced a frisson of beauty which memorably coloured the music’s dying resonances of the music.

Orlando Gibbons’ “The Silver Swan” elicited properly silvery tones from the sopranos, with only the highest notes vulnerable to strain, while Thomas Morley’s rather less exposed lines in “Sing We and Chant It” allowed a more relaxed, rhythmically infectious mode, in which the lines found and balanced one another admirably.

Though I was far less familiar with Anton Bruckner’s choral music than with his majestic “symphonic boa constrictors” as Brahms unkindly called his symphonies (which, incidentally, I love!), I was charmed by “Locus Iste” a motet Bruckner wrote for the dedication of a new votive chapel at Linz – the words of the motet go on to translate as “This place was made by God”. Reminiscent of Wagner’s “Tannhauser” in places, the piece built impressively and characteristically, the voices fully relishing the piece’s dynamic range by appropriately “singing out”, while giving passages such as the concluding repetition of “a Deo factus est” a peaceful and serene aspect. I might have even guessed (well, maybe after two or three goes), had I listened “blind”, that the piece had been written by Bruckner.

The second Bruckner item, “Vexilla Regis” (The banners of the king) sounded quite a different kettle of fish – composed “out of a pure impulse of the heart” in 1892, it was the composer’s last completed motet, and demonstrated a markedly transformed style of writing compared to the earlier “Locus Iste”. Characterised by sudden unexpected shifts of harmony, the music recalled passages in the slow movements of Bruckner’s later symphonies (this time, I’m almost certain I would have guessed the composer first up!) How wonderful to hear the choir sing with such a confident sense of line, the voices taking all but the somewhat awkward concluding descent in their stride.

Asked to name composers of madrigals, I wouldn’t have thought to mention Camille Saint-Saens, though Cantoris would have you believe that he wrote at least one, “Calme des Nuits Op.68 No.1”, which we heard this evening (there also exists an Op.68 No.2, “Les fleurs et les arbres”, which one presumes would have been composed along the same lines…..). Anyway, due investigation suggested to me that Saint-Saens probably wrote the texts of both of these choruses himself, and invested them with a depth of feeling that isn’t usually accorded the composer’s music. Here, the “Calm of the Night” unfolded with long-breathed lines, the music freely modulating, the tones then burgeoning impressively for a few imposing measures before falling back again, and taking us to a concluding paragraph featuring some rapt, soulful soprano tones, most sensitively controlled.

Two madrigals of the “English” variety followed, each by Thomas Morley – the first was something of a workout for the soprano voices, having to sustain demanding exposed lines with support lower down from an answering group, a challenge the voices steadfastedly met, despite a “parched” sequence or two along the way. Rather less demanding was Morley’s “Now is the month of maying”, a jolly fa-la-la romp, with director Thomas Nikora on this occasion electing to sing as well as direct from within the ensemble’s ranks, making for plenty of fun and immediacy of dynamic differentiation!

The first of Purcell’s “madrigals” was, it seemed, a vocal arrangement of an instrumentally-accompanied solo, Fairest Isle, from a stage work “King Arthur”. The soprano solo was ripely-toned and gorgeous, with occasional bell-like qualities lightening the vocal ambiences. Then, with the second item “If Love’s a sweet passion” from “The Fairy Queen” the solo voice, joined in a reprise by the ensemble, brought strength and character to the words, qualities which underlined the music’s theatrical origins.

To finish the programme we were given an attractive bracket of performances with madrigal-like qualities across a spectrum of musical styles, beginning with Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Bogoroditse Devo” from his “All-Night Vigil”, a text known to English speakers as the “Hail Mary”, a gorgeous performance, filled with rapt fervour. New Zealand choral composer Chris Artley’s work “O Magnum Mysterium” resonated richly throughout its opening, towards some beautifully emphasised “Alleluias” and some echo effects between the men’s and women’s voices, before the piece finished with enriched clustered harmonies, beautifully shaped and resonated.

I knew “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” but not the concluding Billy Joel song. In Manning Sherwin’s pre World War Two hit, recorded by the “Forces’ Sweetheart, Vera Lynn”, a wordless vocalising sequence introduced a brief solo line before some flavoursome harmonic shifts tested the voices, who emerged with great credit from the sequences, nicely capturing the song’s atmosphere with plenty of nostalgic feeling.And so it was left to Billy Joel, with a song I thought worthy of the Beatles “And so it goes”, featuring a true-toned male solo voice briefly joined by a single woman’s voice, fetchingly harmonised and attractively resonated. It made a relaxed and good-humoured ending to the concert, one which I think the singers and their inspirational and energising conductor, Thomas Nikora, ought to be well pleased with.

“New Look” NZ Trio performs old and new at Wellington City Gallery

Posted on by Alan Wells

NZTRIO: “SPIRAL” AT CITY GALLERY

Natalie Lin (violin), Ashley Brown (cello), Sarah Watkins (piano)

Arnold Bax: Trio in B flat major
Jenny McLeod: Seascapes
Samuel Holloway: Corpse and Mirror (New Commission)
Beethoven: Piano Trio in E flat Op. 70 No. 2

City Art Gallery, Wellington,

Tuesday, 22 August 2017

NZTrio are undergoing a dramatic change. With the departure of foundation member Justine Cormack, attention at this concert was inevitably centred on the replacement violinist for this tour, Natalie Lin, a New Zealander currently living in Texas. She immediately impressed in the vigorous opening of the Bax trio with her strong, confident tone, going on to duet lyrically with Ashley Brown’s warm dark cello. This was densely-written, lush late-Romantic music for the most part, exceptions being a berceuse-like section in the middle movement, and an almost Bartokian staccato energy in the finale. Perhaps because Bax was a pianist, and the original commission was from a pianist, the overriding sonic impression however was that of the rippling arpeggios, trills, and interludes from Sarah Watkins’ Bechstein piano.

The programme began with this 1946 work from the afterglow of Romanticism. It ended with an 1808 one from the pre-dawn of Romanticism. Beethoven’s E flat trio is not well known (possibly because, unlike its “Ghost”-ly twin, Op.72 No. 1, it does not have a catchy title). Here the pianist’s articulation was aptly crisp and classical, the strings gracefully Mozartian, but everyone had Beethovenian heft where required (as in the second movement). Occasionally the interaction between the strings, on the one hand, and piano, on the other, reminded me of the treatment of voice and piano in some of the songs that Beethoven was composing around the same time (“Neue Liebe, neues Leben”, for example), or there would be brief declamatory passages (again not unknown in the lieder, such as “Andenken”).

New Zealand composer Jenny McLeod’s Seascapes (2015) are her arrangements of two of her 1995 Tone Clock pieces that were requested by Jack Body to commemorate Douglas Lilburn’s centenary year. They were good choices: the iterated piano notes in the first piece, and a hesitant Scotch snap in the second, are both reminiscent of characteristic Lilburn “fingerprints”. Having heard these rich, full-bodied versions for piano trio, it is hard to imagine them for piano only.

A welcome feature of NZTrio’s recitals is their commissioning of new New Zealand works. They have had a long association with Auckland composer Samuel Holloway, playing his remarkable Stapes at the 2005 Nelson Composers’ Workshop, and later including it on their excellent Lightbox CD(the strings, using non-standard tuning, make the piano sound eerily microtonal). Over time, Holloway’s style has become increasingly austere: in his string quartet Impossible Songs, long, often microtonal, solos on the strings are relieved only by the emergence of a sensuous female voice in the final movement. In more recent work still, there is often no such reward at the end. At last year’s Nelson workshop, for instance, duo pianists performed Holloway’s Things, in which each “event” – chord or note – had its own page: although potentially tedious, it encouraged focused, meditative listening to the inner life of the sounds.

Corpse and Mirror reminded me a little bit of Things, but here the “events” followed one another in quick succession, establishing a regular (though not slavish) rhythm. With the precision ensemble playing of the NZTrio, the piece had the effect of a “trio for one instrument”, each “sound object” finely nuanced, ever changing yet ever familiar, like a kaleidoscope, or like the obsessive cross-hatchings of the artist Jasper Johns that Holloway refers to in his programme note (Johns also provided the title). The result was rather like a jagged Webernian melodic line but with a pulse such as found in Steve Reich (one of the few minimalist Holloway holds in high regard). Not an easy listen, then, but one which had its rewards after all.

Mahler, Berg – and Salina Fisher, from the NZSO – music of innocence and experience

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SALINA FISHER – Rainphase
BERG – Violin Concerto “To the memory of an Angel”
MAHLER – Symphony No.1 in D Major “Titan”

Karen Gomyo (violin)
Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 11th August, 2017

Spectres, once they’re established, can haunt the world of music for decades, for oceans of time, during which certain attitudes and values can be gradually eroded, or else further entrenched. The fact that each of this concert’s three items might well have reawakened specific “ghosts” lurking among the sensibilities of the NZSO’s many loyal supporters might well have accounted for the relative paucity of attendance (by my reckoning the hall was no more than two-thirds full).

In fact, two of these so-called “spectres” probably contributed far less to the numbers or empty seats than the one which I’ll come to in a moment. Time was when programming a piece of New Zealand music at a concert would ensure that a certain number of music-lovers stayed away. Nowadays, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that home-grown music, partly by dint of sheer persistence (thanks to various staunch advocacy from certain musicians and listeners) and partly due to its intrinsic attractiveness no longer “scares off” people to the extent that it used to do.

As for the music of Gustav Mahler, the composer was famously quoted at some point as saying in response to shafts of critical disapproval “My time will come”, a prediction which appears to have come true wherever Western symphonic music is regularly performed. It did take more than a decade after the then National Orchestra of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service was founded in 1946 for the ensemble to tackle a Mahler Symphony (the Fourth with conductor John Hopkins in 1958), though since then all the others, including the unfinished fragment of the Tenth, have been more-or-less regularly performed.

It’s interesting that Hopkins, according to Joy Tonks’ 1986 history, “The NZSO – the first Forty Years” – Reed Methuen), had to fight the Assistant Director-General of the then NZBC, John Schroder, to programme what the latter called “this long and boring music”…! – an indication of the extent at that time of the composer‘s “spectral” aspect in people’s minds. Now, it seems, concert audiences can’t get enough of Mahler, even though the presence of the First Symphony on the occasion of this concert didn’t help to make up for what appeared to be more potent misgivings on the part of a goodly number of patrons.

So maybe it was the presence of music by Alban Berg which could have been the crucial factor – though Berg was in many ways the least “hard-core-radical” of the famous Schoenberg/Berg/Webern trio whose work popularly defined the “Second Viennese School” of composition, his music is still regarded as “difficult” by association with his two contemporaries, enough, perhaps, to put off people of a less adventurous inclination from attending the concert. One woman sitting just down from me lasted ten minutes into the Berg Violin Concerto before she was gathering her things and was off – but at least she was prepared to give the music a try!

But what riches there were for those of us who stayed, firstly to marvel at the finely-wrought and freshly-contrived super-detailings of instrumental textures, timbres and tones of Salina Fisher’s miraculous new work Rainphase, and then to luxuriate in the miraculous contrivance of acerbic twelve-tone structurings interlaced with russet-coloured afterglowings throughout Alban Berg’s last completed work, his Violin Concerto. Both works required active listening of a kind which occasionally confronted rather than soothed the ear – and perhaps the Concerto might have attracted more people had there been a pre-concert talk of some kind, helping to shed some light in advance on some of the music’s ebb and flow. It was certainly a work which richly illustrated Berg’s teacher, Schoenberg’s dictum about there being “no such things as dissonances – merely more remote consonances!”

Beginning with Salina Fisher’s work, the first sounds were Keatsian in their “Fled is that music? – Do I wake or sleep?” quality, harmonic-like tones so ethereal and other-worldly – in point of fact, not unlike those at the very opening of the Mahler Symphony we were to hear later in the concert. The tones then multiplied and harmonically “clustered”, and seemed to initiate the process of a giant organism gently breathing, with still more textures and timbres joining in with the wonderment, and with percussion gradually becoming more prominent. The lower instruments provided a foundation while the lighter-toned sounds clustered, glowed and scintillated before receding into an almost transcendental world of gestural sonorities, for all the world becoming “naturalistic” in their textural and timbral explorations, sonorities best described by the words “swishing” and “murmuring” and “breathing” and “rippling” – all water-words describing both activity and aftermath.

Gentle string pizzicati turned the processses into a kind of promenade or dance – a “gavotte of the stormwater pipes”, or some such activity – with as much happening on the ground as there was in the air. Winds found their characteristic voices and intoned a kind of nature’s hymn, individual lines finding one another and growing in intensity, reaching what felt like a kind of fruition of a natural process, most satisfying to experience. Fisher’s assured instrumentation throughout these sequences made for breath-catching results in places, no more evocative than during the piece’s long drawn-out diminuendo, flecked with motifs of valediction. As strings and winds found a commonality and the textures dried slowly out, the piece magically returned to its origins, the ending surviving even the oddest irruption of vocalised noise from (one presumed) some audience member somewhere, made for whatever reason, accidental or intentional…….

Last year I had the good fortune to both hear and review a performance of Berg’s Violin Concerto here in Wellington played by Wilma Smith, well-remembered in Wellington as a former leader of the New Zealand String Quartet, as well as an ex-concertmaster of the NZSO, before her relocating to Australia in 2003. On that occasion Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington were the musical collaborators, so this time it was the NZSO’s and Edo de Waart’s turn, with the superb violinist Karen Gomyo, whom I’d previously heard playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the NZSO and Pietari Inkinen in June 2015. On that occasion Gomyo was a substitute for the newly-pregnant Hilary Hahn, and captured my interest with a reading of the great work which provided a distinctive and memorable experience.

Throughout the work’s opening Andante movement one would think that there was little the average concertgoer would find troublesome or unpalatable. It wasn’t music which “played itself”, and did require some concentration – but the rewards for listeners were considerable. Berg began the work with a series of open fifths alternated between the solo violin and various orchestral instruments such as the harp and the clarinet, Gomyo keeping her higher tones exquisitely pure, while squeezing more emotion from on the lower notes. After musing on the opening in exchange with muted brass, the soloist connected with the orchestral winds, taking part in both gentle, bitter-sweet exchanges, and a couple of trenchantly-delivered arched lines, throbbing with feeling.

Out of this the clarinets began the dance that ushered in the second movement. A somewhat angular figuration in places built up to some vigorous to-ings and fro-ings, with the peasant-like dance-steps tossed about, and the violin taking charge of the rhythm for a “this is how it goes” sequence. As if it had been playing quietly for a while and nobody had noticed, the solo horn suddenly introduced an affecting counter-melody which the muted trumpets then picked up – like a memory of long ago suddenly coming into focus! The composer when young had had an affair with a peasant girl, which produced a child and it was believed that this tune was a reference to that particular memory.

As well, Berg had already begun the concerto when he heard of the death from infantile paralysis of Manon Gropius, the daughter from a second marriage of Gustav Mahler’s widow, Alma, a girl he knew as Mutzi. The violin’s quixotic dancings in this movement seemed like the composer’s attempt at capturing for all time a young girl’s vivacity and sweetness, the music lightly evoking fond remembrance and nostalgic sadness, and watched over by guardians such as the stern tuba and a wraith-like pair of Sibelius-like clarinets. As the trumpet hauntingly sounded the folk-tune once again the soloist suddenly danced away, as if wanting to preserve the impulses of memory which brought happiness and escape from what was to follow.

Whereas the music had thus far been vivacious and volatile on the one hand, and thoughtful and nostalgic on the other, the third movement’s opening produced a shock with its harsh ferocity – the stuff of nightmares come into the midst of contentment. Gomyo’s playing bit deeply into the music’s textures like a wounded animal, then withdrew into hiding, accompanied by spectral tones from the oboe and flute, the music feeling “cornered” and subdued, the textures slightly “ghoulish” , the lines from the soloist suspended in space. With another irruption welling up from below, the music appeared in utter turmoil, the solo violin screaming in agony and despair, and the brass in ghoulish-march mode. The soloist’s tones were overwhelmed by the orchestra’s sheer weight and harshness – such horrible, merciless music!

Out of the vistas laid waste by the turmoil Gomyo’s violin sang resolutely to herself a strongly sustaining ascending line, one which the clarinets then took up and played with such beauty and poignancy – this was the chorale used by JS Bach in his Chorale “Es ist genug”, one which soloist and orchestra here made their own, playing it warmly and tenderly, resisting attempts by the individual instruments to drag the melody back to earth. As the strings sang the last vestiges of life, the soloist beautifully ascended the melody, to a point after which the winds and brass broke into radiant support of “the angel” of the music’s title, the silences at the work’s end carrying with them only her memory.

After these somewhat overwrought utterances, the opening of the Mahler Symphony which followed the interval seemed to take us back to the world of childhood, of first impressions of consciousness and the wonderment induced by nature and creation. De Waart and his players gave the music an almost timeless quality, the sounds here seemingly conjured out of the earth’s elements.The work’s many moments of reflective beauty brough out this performance’s most distinctive quality, an incrediby rapt, breath-holding sense of listening to the silences and the soft sounds in between. Writing this now, it all comes back to me so vividly – playing and conducting of the utmost concentration and refinement.

The work’s more bucolic passages were also rendered with an ease of utterance (more elegant than earthy, I felt, probably because the MFC isn’t renowned for its warmth and richness of sound). Apart from a brief (and uncharacteristic) first-movement woodwind slip, the orchestral playing was simply to die for, so much of the detailing heavenly in effect (the off-stage trumpets, for instance)! Had it all taken place in the Town Hall I’m sure this performance would also have heaved, grunted and roared all the more readily. As it was, the exquisite refinement of those soft passages (onstage brass performing miracles of quiet, withdrawn playing) gave the first movement’s peformance a distinctiveness of its own that won’t easily be forgotten.

De Waart’s second-movement country dancers moved briskly and easily, encouraged by the winds lifting the bells of their instruments as directed by the composer, and by the string players bouncing their bows on the instruments’ strings, adding to the rustic effect. A solo horn most elegantly called the dancers indoors for a more genteel waltz, the playing rich and velvety in effect, and the string-wind counterpoints to the dance a delight. The return of the countryfied Landler brought forth, among other things a splendid cymbal crash and, to the heads of all the dancers, a fine rush of blood at the end.

Timpani strokes, both eerie and purposeful, ushered in the third movement, a double-bass solo voicing the instrument’s spectral tones throughout a minor-key version of the folk-song Frere Jacques (apparently always sung that way in rural parts of Austria), counterpointed by a piquant oboe line, before giving way to the strains of a small klezmer band, almost offstage and passing by, in effect. Again, conductor and players achieved wonders with the quieter sections of the score, most notably the rapt, break-of-day beginning of the trio section of the movement with its near-heartbreaking quotation of the song “Die zwei blauen Augen” from the composer’s own Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen – here, the play of different emotion, the surge of hope and the minor-key pang of anguish from the original song was as affecting as with the original.

Out of the movement’s deathly hush at the end came a blaze of ferocity from the brass and a crash from the percussion that made everybody jump, launching the finale in no uncertain terms! Though the hall doesn’t give much back, the percussion section did a great job, Lenny Sakofsky punishing the cymbals for all they were worth and both Larry Reese and Thomas Guldborg fetching up great roaring avalanches of tone from each of the two sets of timpani. The movement’s ebb and flow was strongly characterised – the tumultuous flare-ups of excitement and agitation were tellingly counterweighted by the more inward, lyrical sequences, each mood in a sense “overtaken” by another in what seemed like an inevitable and organic progression of things. As for the final all-together, it most spectacularly featured the horn sectio “standing and delivering” as the music roared forth, driven by the timpani and upholstered by every orchestral section singing and playing its heart out.

As I’ve said, in the Town Hall we would have been overwhelmed by these sounds, perhaps even too much so for some people – but not for this writer. Conductor Edo de Waart made an interesting gesture with his actions immediately after taking his bows in front of an enthusiastic audience, by giving his bouquet of flowers to the double-bass player, Joan Perarnau Garriga, in acknowledgement of his restrained but telling contribution to the performance – maybe for de Waart those rapt, inward-looking sounds were the ones that enshrined the true soul of this remarkable music.

Enthusiastic reception of nicely varied programme from Takács Quartet

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Takács Quartet (Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz (violins), Geraldine Walther (viola), András Fejér (cello)
(Chamber Music New Zealand)

Haydn: String Quartet in D, Op.76 no.5
Anthony Ritchie: Whakatipua, Op. 71
Webern: Langsamer Satz
Dvořák: String Quartet no.14 in A flat, Op.105

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday, 4 August 2017, 7.30pm

My initial reaction at the concert was a longing for the Town Hall to be restored to use; chamber music does not sound nearly so well in the cavernous Michael Fowler Centre unless one is near the front, which I was not; it simply does not provide the resonance, and makes ‘chamber music’ a misnomer.

The concert began with vintage Haydn – musically, and chronologically, being written around 1797, (he was born in 1732) part of a set of six quartets.  Its performance immediately demonstrated the lovely cohesion of the players and their subtly varying dynamics.  This is the seventh visit of the world class quartet to New Zealand, but the first visit, I think, for violist Geraldine Walther.  The quartet was founded in Hungary in 1975, but for the larger part of its life has been based in Colorado, USA.  The only remaining original member is the cellist, András Fejér.

After quite a fast allegretto first movement, the placid and charming largo, cantabile e mesto impressed with its lyrically beautiful melodies and harmonies, a touch of melancholy pervading it here and there.  The warmth of tone of the members of the Takács was always apparent in their expressive playing.

The Menuetto and Trio (allegretto) were full of movement.  The higher strings carried the melody and harmony while the cello grunted away underneath in the Trio.  A return to the minuet brought sunnier, uncomplicated music

Chords opened the presto Finale dramatically, then interesting rapid themes with sprightly rhythms took hold.  A change of key added piquancy.  The whole performance was faultless, played with panache, and in an appropriate style.

Anthony Ritchie is an established New Zealand composer who writes in several different genres, always with musical interest, and not tied to any school such as minimalism, but always something worthwhile to say.

His Whakatipua was a musical depiction of Lake Wakatipu, and its town, Queenstown.  The dramatic scenery, the busy tourist town, and the gold rush history all found a place in his musical essay.  In the early part, there was juxtaposition of pizzicato against the bowed lower instruments that was most effective.  Cohesiveness of the instruments with each other was a feature.  Lightness and lift, along with the business-speak aspect of the town seemed to be features of the inspiration.

There was vigour aplenty in the piece.  The last section returned to a more serene depiction of the landscape, as at the beginning, and called forth an atmosphere of peace and calm, before the piece petered away on a high note.

If one heard only of Anton Webern’s works his Langsamer Satz, one would have no idea of his later atonal, twelve-tone music.  This piece began with a Romantic, mellow melody and accompaniment.  There followed a fine passage with pizzicato from the first violin while the other instruments were bowed.  The mellow, somewhat chromatic  music persisted, with its rather introspective mood.  Plaintive tones arose.  This was warm-toned, vibrato-aided playing, which gave the work a richness that contrasted with the classicism of Haydn and the relative austerity of Ritchie’s composition.

In places the music reminded me of Schönberg’s Transfigured Night, composed in 1899, six years before Webern’s piece.  The programme notes state that, after commencing study with Schönberg in 1904-05, Webern began ‘producing work of structural rigour and musical cohesion, uniting meticulous craft and profound emotional expression.’  These elements were apparent in this one-movement work as was the influence of Mahler, especially in the final part of the work, of which the notes use the word ‘transcendence’.  The clarity of the music was a delight, and the ending quite magical as well as satisfying.

The major work on the programme was the Dvořák String Quartet no.14, one of the composer’s many exhilarating, cheerful, melodic compositions.  The first movement starts with an adagio that is low and sombre, beginning on the cello, followed by viola then violins.  Then an allegro appassionato breaks forth energetically, with plenty of work for all the players to do.  Again we had demonstrated such accomplished playing; they made the music glow.

The Scherzo second movement was a lively Bohemian dance, followed by a gorgeous lyrical melody.  Lento e molto cantabile was the marking for the third movement, where a calmly beautiful theme was developed.  The quiet, pensive mood took on a more solemn character after a time.  As in the first movement, the two violins sing a song while the lower pitched instruments accompany, initially with pizzicato.  The movement has an ecstatic pianissimo ending.

The opening to the Finale was quite lovely, and the movement was full of sprightly Bohemian motifs.   The cheerful and optimistic mood carried on to the triumphant ending.

The audience received it all with much enthusiastic applause and cheers, and we were granted an encore: the spirited, fast last movement of Haydn’s quartet Op. 20, no.4.  It made for a jolly ending to a first-class concert and was received with delight.