Tag: New Zealand music

Bach père et fils, and antipodean Baroque resoundings, from Ensemble Paladino

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Hutt Valley Chamber Music presents:
ENSEMBLE PALADINO

James Tibbles (harpsichord), Simone Roggen (violin),
Martin Rummel (‘cello), Eric Lamb (flute)

JS BACH (arr. Lamb/Rummel) – (re) Inventions, for flute and ‘cello
WF BACH – Trio No.2 in D Major Fk 47
LEONIE HOLMES – With strings attached
J.S.BACH – ‘Cello Suite No.1 in C Major BWV 1007
CPE BACH – Trio Sonata in B Minor Wq 143
JS BACH Trio Sonata (from Musikalisches Opfer) BWV 1079

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Friday 28th April, 2017

Auckland-based Ensemble Paladino’s intentions, as stated in an introductory note to this concert, were “to present uncompromising, diverse and fearless chamber music on the highest level”, an exciting and challenging statement of intent which, to my ears was fulfilled most expertly and mellifluously at Lower Hutt’s Little Theatre on Friday evening. It was interesting that, with the ensemble’s sound still resounding in my ears, I unexpectedly found myself comparing their presentation with that of another group of baroque musicians whom I heard “live” on a broadcast from RNZ Concert a day or so later.

This was a group called the Chiaroscuro Quartet, recorded at a concert in, I think, Ireland, performing, as per their publicity, with “period instrument practice to the fore, playing on gut strings, with minimal vibrato and tuning to the lower pitch of A430” (modern concert pitch is A440 or higher). It’s probably heretical of me to admit this, but I found myself somewhat repelled by the sounds made by the “period instrument” group brought to me “on air”, the distinctly unlovely timbres of the instruments and the almost complete lack of warmth and ease in the musicians’ phrasing. Yet this group, too (so we were told by the radio continuity announcer, was well-known for its “fearless and uncompromising approach to authentic performance practice” – that was all very well, but after a few minutes’ listening I found myself wanting to turn off the radio!

Yes, what you’re thinking could be right – perhaps had I been there, I would possibly have been one of those reactionary Parisians rioting in the theatre while howling for the composer’s blood, at the premiere of “Le Sacre du Printemps” in 1913! Of course, one never knows how these things might turn out – I might well come in time to replicate my present feelings about Stravinsky’s work (total and utter exhilaration every time I hear it!) in relation to the Chiaroscuro Quartet’s version of “fearless and uncompromising”, and come to think it wonderful! But for now, I’m firmly of the opinion that period instrument groups surely don’t have to sacrifice and/or brutalise beauty and graceful expression in the name of “authenticity”; and I find myself wondering why groups would want to pursue that course anyway.

So, I was grateful that Ensemble Paladino seemed to emphasise “authentic” qualities like clarity, flexibility, tonal variation and timbral character, and put across these same aspects of presentation with unselfconscious ease and grace, hand-in-glove with plenty of energy and focused intensity at appropriate moments. I never felt the music’s more startling or innovative qualities were underplayed or blunted in any way, even though the music’s tones and phrases consistently fell gratefully on the ear , and drew us readily and willingly into any intricacies or niceties of either harmony or articulation, instead of causing us to “duck for cover” amid laser-lines of searing vibrato-less tones or fusillades of jagged accented sforzandi notes!

Not that there weren’t challenges of different kinds to enjoy in this presentation – the first item took us outside the square a little way with a transcription by two of the ensemble’s members, flute-player, Eric Lamb, and ‘cellist Martin Rummel, of the “Fifteen Inventions for Keyboard” BWV 772-786, for (you’ve guessed it) flute and ‘cello! Though a didactic work (as the composer makes clear in an introduction to the score, with his wish that “amateurs of the keyboard – especially those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way…to learn to play cleanly in two parts”) its realisation always sounds a lot of fun, and more so on this occasion with two very differently-accented voices involved. This was the first time ensemble members had undertaken such a transcription, and it shouldn’t, in my view, be the last – the music’s “ownership” shone forth in the playing!

I hadn’t realised the extent to which Wilhelm Friedermann, the eldest son of JS Bach, was highly thought of as a composer, and the Trio Sonata Fk 47 which we then heard made the best possible case for his standing in this regard. We enjoyed the Vivaldi-like opening of the work with its pictorial birdsong figurations for the flute, and the subsequent duetting with the violin, lovely imitative effects as well as concerted “transports of delight” involving soaring lines and widely-traversed terrain. Set against these were closely-worked trio exchanges involving exciting instances of give-and-take between the musicians. A sombre Larghetto and a jig-like finale completed a work whose achievement ought to have been replicated more often by its composer, had it not been for his reputed idleness stemming the flow and making his name even better known.

Auckland composer Leonie Holmes’s new work “With strings attached” was, in her own words, characterised as “a joyful, whimsical and whirling encounter” – just the kind of thing a composer might write to celebrate a positive and fruitful association with colleagues and/or contemporaries. Commissioned by the Paladinos, the intention of the group was to have a contemporary work exploring the sounds of “historic” instruments. Given the burgeoning interest in “period” performance on the part of many musicians, the idea of having a contemporary composer write for such instruments seemed an alternatively thoughtful and attractive means of injecting some “living” creativity into their work.

“With strings attached” began not with a bang, but with – well, not exactly a “whimper” but with the composer’s self-avowed “tentative approach”, gentle pictorial and visceral evocations generated by pizzicato strings and harpsichord peckings, perhaps drops of rain, perhaps birdsong. Came the cello, and then the flute joining in the instruments’ conversation, very much a discourse of individuals with lines doing precisely as people do, as liable to go off on individual tangents as to join forces and generate plenty of common motoric energy. Alternatively the energies were contrasted between groups, with strings at one point holding fast to sustaining notes as the harpsichord cantered off enlarging the world in a different direction, or with the violin “speaking to its spirit” in the form of eerie harmonics and generally ghostly ambiences.

This was the composer’s “exploration and discovery of common ground’, which involved various ear-catching sequences – winsome, long-breathed chordings between flute and strings over running harpsichord figurations, not unlike a droll episode of silent-film accompaniment, followed by flute “sparrings” with the strings’ angular pizzicati, while the harpsichord played a kind of “noises off” role – so very atmospheric! Having explored these possibilities the instrumental sounds were then gradually dovetailed, voices overlapping and augmenting one another to a point where all the strength and sweetness was rolled up into one ball and bounced towards us with a joyful “Come and play!” gesture, bringing the work to an emphatic close – joyful, whimsical and whirling, indeed! We in the audience certainly enjoyed the adventure.

Disappointment immediately followed the interval at the news that violinist Simone Roggen would NOT be playing the great Chaconne from JS Bach’s D Minor Violin Partita, due to a back injury – so to restore equanimity, into the breach stepped the ‘cellist, Martin Rummel, with a lean, lithe and flavoursome performance of the composer’s first ‘Cello Suite in the key of G Major. Interestingly, the player talked about this first suite being more of an “introduction” to the world of the six individual suites than an entity in itself, a “whole being greater than the sum of its parts” kind of idea, but especially in relation to the G Major work.

I wrote too many comments regarding the ‘cellist’s playing to reproduce here, except in shortened form – the Prelude was sounded swiftly and lightly, but with the kind of articulation that invested such “character” into each note that one could relish the timbral differences between registers unreservedly! The Allemande combined a freely-expressed improvisatory air with well-tempered momentum, while the Courante seemed to draw from an endless reserve of energetic spontaneity to whirl the music onwards. After a satisfyingly profound and thoughtful Sarabande, the two Minuets brought the lightest of touches and the most flexible of pulses – not music to dance to, but instead to activate flexibility of thought and action. Finally, the jig’s joyous and uninhibited dance gave the music’s physicality full expression, leaving we listeners properly energised and fully content.

Carl Philippe Emmanuel Bach, possibly the most innovative and certainly the most distinctive of JS Bach’s composer-sons, was his father’s true successor, while able to forge his own distinctive musical language, for which success he always gave credit to his father’s teaching and example. The Trio Sonata in B Minor Wq 143 performed here by Paladino demonstrated the new galant style of composition which Emmanuel Bach made his own, while paying homage to elements of the baroque still in favour in some quarters.

The Sonata’s first movement took on a serious, even sombre aspect at the start, which some feathery exchanges between flute and violin helped to disperse, with some superbly adroit playing. I particularly enjoyed the musicians’ warmly rounded tones, with none of the bleached-out, colour-averse quality which hardens textures and reduces lyrical warmth in some “authentic” performances. The Andante was a graceful tread, with the flute and violin doing very nicely without the cello at first, but requiring its depth of voice for some mid-movement measures. A jig-like figure for violin and flute had the finale dancing with rapid figurations, the cello more a continuo instrument, though the music developed an exhilarating whirl towards the end – a great pleasure!

It was left to “old Bach” himself to round off the concert with a Trio Sonata of his own, one instigated by his encounter with Frederick the Great while visiting his son at the King’s court. Frederick requested that Bach improvise a three-part fugue on a theme the King provided, which the composer did (all present were “seized with astonishment” at Bach’s skill, according to an eyewitness) – but the King then set Bach the task of improvising a 6-part fugue on the same theme, which the composer begged the King to be allowed to take home and work on his task – from this came the work we know as “The Musical Offering” BWV 1079, which included a Trio Sonata with a flute part – the flute was, of course Frederick’s own instrument.

This, then, was that very work, for which the ‘cellist placed himself in the middle of the ensemble instead of to one side, indicative, perhaps of the more integral involvement of his part in this music. The work’s opening Largo balanced beautifully languid and tightly-wrought figurations, the players enabling the notes to “speak” with subtle voicings and colours, whether open, or busily interactive. Bach seemed to be showing his son that there was “life in the old dog, yet” in the following Allegro, with its brilliant violin part and, in places assertive bass line; while in the Andante, the instruments pursue a long-breathed theme with rising utterances that seem to build to some kind of revelation, before finishing with a gratefully lovely dying fall.

Again Bach seemed to get his dander up and pull out all the stops with the Allegro finale, the cello instigating exciting running passages with tightly-woven, complex interactions, fantastic to follow and engage with, the playing generous and inviting in its involvement and physicality. It was, I thought, all truly and uncompromisingly joyous and interactive!

Marking Holy Week through Biblical Lamentations and music inspired by 20th century atrocities

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tudor Consort conducted by Michael Stewart

Music for Holy Week: The Desolate City

Music by Antoine Brumel, Philippe de Monte, Palestrina, Byrd, John Mundy, Rudolf Mauersberger, Douglas Mews and Jack Body

Wellington Cathedral of Saint Paul

Good Friday, 14 April, 7:30 pm

The theme of this concert, The Desolate City, was a reason to look at two cities that have suffered terrible, war-driven destruction in living memory (Dresden and Hiroshima), and to associate physical destruction with social and moral destruction as described in Biblical accounts of cities considered to have been desolated by sin or perhaps merely by adoption of a rival religious faith.

The Book of Lamentations and Psalm 137 provided the main source of music: various Renaissance motets based on the words that can be read as mourning God’s desertion of Jerusalem and thus his complicity in the city’s destruction by the Babylonians in the 6th century BC. The words of Lamentations are traditionally recited during Tenebrae, in Holy Week.

The concert was preceded by a revelatory talk by Michael Stewart and, as well as words printed in both English and other languages in the programme, a large screen behind the choir displayed the words progressively – surtitle-like throughout. An excellent innovation.

Dresden
Rudolf Mauersberger’s motet Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst, was one of the three non-Renaissance works in the programme. It applied some of the words from Lamentations to the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945, less than three months before Germany’s defeat. Mauersberger was director of Dresden’s Kreuzchor through World War II and this motet is perhaps his best-known work. The Kreuzkirche was destroyed in the bombing, and was rebuilt around 2005.

The motet expresses a deep feeling of grief, in dense harmonies that are punctuated with pauses that allowed the sounds to fill and re-echo through the large space of St Paul’s. Where I was sitting some voices, probably the soloists, Phoebe Sparrow, Rebecca Howan, Phillip Collins and Matthew Painter, seemed to emerge from deep within the choir and sanctuary, as if they were physically removed. Whether or not that was a calculated effect, the performance created a quite transcendental spirit, giving the impression of a rather more splendid composition than perhaps it is.

Byrd
To follow that by Byrd’s powerful Ne irascaris, Domine (from Isaiah), 370 years earlier, was to dramatise its contemporary relevance: in a totally different way. Through its message of spiritual rather than physical desolation, the Catholic Byrd expressed his anguish, living in a dangerous, Protestant England. The performance was exquisitely solemn, each short stanza quite extended musically, with each vocal section deliberate and perfectly in place so that at times certain voices could emerge distinctly.

Palestrina
Then came Palestrina’s Super flumina Babylonis (the first verses of Psalm 137), the generation before Byrd’s. Though a ritual lament for the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, it paints a much more peaceful atmosphere in less complex and tortured musical syntax than Byrd’s. The choir’s superbly subtle and expressive capacities were impressively revealed.

Body
Another setting of Psalm 137 came from the pen of Jack Body, this time a setting of the original Hebrew text. The succession of pleas was handled by dividing verses between men and women, dramatically and colourfully, as if to emphasise the varying ways in which the anguish of the people could be expressed. At one point (my Hebrew is not up to identifying the precise section) women’s voices rose to an almost terrifying pitch. For me, it revealed musical dimensions in Body’s music that I may have rather underestimated: sophistication, choral virtuosity, confidence.

Philippe de Monte is another rather unfamiliar name from the mid-16th century – shameful in the light of his prolific output: Flemish but, like many Flemish composers, multi-national; a few years older than Palestrina. As Michael Stewart explained, he too was touched by Reformation controversies/persecutions. On account of Queen Mary’s Catholicism, her brief reign (1553-58) gave Catholics a short respite between the Protestant extremes of Edward VI and Elizabeth I. De Monte served at her court in 1554-55 in the entourage of Philip II of Spain who was her husband.

In the 1580s he sent to the embattled Byrd a copy of this setting for double choir of some verses of Psalm 137, Super flumina Babylonis, “as a show of solidarity”, as Stewart wrote: Jewish exiles in Babylon = Catholics in England.

To one whose mid-16th century polyphonic sensibilities are not highly cultivated, it sounded not too dissimilar from Palestrina, Lassus, Vittoria or Byrd for that matter. It was slow moving and beautifully articulated.

Byrd’s Quomodo cantabimus
A year later, Byrd replied to De Monte, sending a copy of his setting of different verses of the same Psalm, Quomodo cantabimus and the choir sang it after the interval. Here there was an unexpected feeling of delight somewhat at odds with the words, as Stewart’s graceful sweeping arm movements delineated scoring that was more complex, dense, interesting (I thought) than De Monte’s. After all, Byrd was a survivor in a hostile climate.

Antoine Brumel was the earliest of the composers featured in the concert (born c. 1460); another of the French-Flemish school. The notes reminded us that he was the composer of the Earthquake Mass performed by The Tudor Consort in 2012. Unlike that important work, for twelve parts, this motet, Lamentatio Heremiae Prophete, was for men’s voices in four parts, which created a very homogeneous, tranquil, constant feeling, a chance to pay attention to the excellence of tenors and basses. I had even jotted the word ‘stately’ in my notebook.

John Mundy’s Lamentations
The last Renaissance piece was John Mundy’s De Lamentatione: a setting of a Latin poem by Jean de Bruges (about whom I can find references to only an engraver and illuminator). After their absence for a few minutes, the high sopranos here particularly pleased me, though the choir’s unvarying evenness, refinement as well as endlessly delightful dynamic and articulation variety again maintained rapt attention through the seamless contrapuntal score.

Finally Douglas Mews’s Ghosts, Fire, Water which I heard sung by Nota Bene in September 2009, and in November 2011 a performance by Voices New Zealand was reviewed in Middle C by Peter Mechen.

This was sung by alto soloist Michelle Harrison in a sort of responsory pattern with the choir. It’s a powerful work set to a poem by James Kirkup, which is an impressively persuasive and vivid evocation of the human catastrophe; yet it almost burdens itself too much with unrelieved anguish and anger (on the other hand, can Hiroshima be considered otherwise than as an utterly unjustifiable atrocity?).

So I concluded that music is the better vehicle for the expression of horror at a crime that words simply lose their ability to handle. The performance was a model of expressiveness and profound emotion while at the same time, of restraint and unambiguity. In this context, the use of spoken words towards the end, instead of music, made the greater impact.

So this was a brilliantly conceived programme, employing examples of traditional Christian music for the major sacrament of the Christian year, book-ended by two of the worst horrors of the 20th century; in wonderfully prepared and executed performances.

 

 

Galvanic lunch hour with the Rangapu Duo at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series presents:
LIAM & NOELLE
The Rangapu Duo – Liam Wooding and Noelle Dannenbring

LISZT – Funérailles (from Harmonies poétiques et Religieuses)
CHOPIN – Ballade in F Minor Op.52
SCHUBERT – Fantasie in F Minor D.940
DAVID GRIFFITHS – Rumba (from “Three Coquettes”)

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

Wednesday, 26th October, 2016

The names of both performers in this lunchtime concert at St.Andrew’s were new to me, each of them being Hamilton-based musicians, though I ought to have remembered that Liam Wooding was a prizewinner at Christchurch in 2015 at the National Concerto Competition. His duo partner, Noelle Dannenbring, for her part won the University of Waikato Concerto Competition earlier this year. Currently, both are studying at the University under the tutelage of Katherine Austin, Wooding having previously completed a course of study at Auckland with Rae de Lisle.

Knowing/remembering none of this, I was thus unencumbered by any great weight of expectation regarding either repertoire or its performance, when approaching this concert. So, it was, therefore, an exhilarating experience to find myself thrilled and delighted, firstly by the programme, and then by its delivery. Each pianist contributed a solo item to the programme, the pair then combining forces as a duo, where their playing proved just as richly compelling.

First up was Liam Wooding with a work by Franz Liszt, called Funérailles, one of a set of pieces named Harmonies poétiques et Religieuses. Scarcely known as an entirety, only two of the ten pieces, Funérailles, and the grandly-named Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude (The Blessing of God in solitude) are regularly played – though they have claims to be the finest of the set of pieces, each of the ten has its own particular kind of gravitas which works best when heard in the context of the whole.

Funérailles, as with the Bénédiction, readily generates its own expressive qualities as a stand-alone piece; and Liam Wooding’s astonishing performance brought out all of the music’s strength, power and poetry. The proximity of Chopin’s death to the time of the piece’s completion (October 1849) has led to an assumption that the music enshrines some kind of tribute by Liszt to his friend and contemporary – but the former’s focus was firmly on his native land, Hungary, and the 1848 patriotic uprising against the occupying Hapsburgs, which was brutally crushed, with the Prime Minister and a number of Hungarian generals executed by the Austrians.

Liam Wooding’s playing most appropriately “took no prisoners”, plunging into the opening bass sonorities with monumental force, bringing out the piece’s “chromatic ghoulishness” by way of characterising a mounting sense of terror, despair and hopelessness, here reaching a point where the senses were almost overwhelmed, before breaking off and invoking a kind of funeral-like processional – Wooding’s visionary interpretation readily traversed those realms between private sorrow and public grief, casting a great feeling of solace over the piece’s soundscape, and varying the emphases as the music modulated from key to key, here grieving, and there paying homage to bravery and steadfastness.

And what a tremendous effect the pianist made with those infamous left-hand octaves! – obviously inspired by Chopin’s renowned “hooves of the Polish Cavalry” sequences in his Op.53 A-flat Polonaise, Liszt extended the idea beneath vain-glorious fanfares in the right hand, creating a kind of “freedom – or death” aura about the sounds, reinforced by the sudden breaking -off of the passage and its descent into a reprise of the funeral march. Wooding most movingly characterised this section as a dissolution into a more private and personal tragedy, one which was then mocked and savagely scattered by the brief return of the “octave passage”, concluding bleakly with a number of hollow, single-note utterances.

After such ravages, Noelle Dannenbring’s beautifully-floated awakening of the opening of Chopin’s Fourth Ballade seemed to gently open the shutters and allow our recently-assailed vistas some sunshine and gentle breezes. Less pictorial, more abstract than Liszt’s music, Chopin’s evocations here pursued a subtler, though no less telling course, mapped out by the pianist with refreshing directness, her playing giving the somewhat obsessive main theme plenty of “through-line”, and melding the subsidiary ideas, such as the contrasting chordal sequences, unselfconsciously into the flow. She made the most of certain moments, such as the return to the opening idea midway, capped off by a gentle, almost Lisztian melismatic flurry, just before the main theme’s “canonic” treatment. Towards the piece’s end Dannenbring’s playing seemed less concerned with “virtuoso roar” than clarity and proportion, proclaiming the composer’s regard for the music of Bach and Mozart.

Having demonstrated their individual skills, the pair returned as their newly-formed musical partnership, the “Rangapu Duo”, ready to present for us one of the undoubted masterpieces of four-handed piano literature, Schubert’s Fantasie in F Minor D.940. Earlier this year, Wellington pianists Catherine Norton and Fiona McCabe had, during a St.Andrews concert in July, given us an even later, if less extended Schubert duet, the Grande Rondeau D.951, a work utterly charming and filled with beautiful resignation, as opposed to the forlorn anxieties and desperate energies of the Fantasie.

I loved the Rangapu Duo’s performance of this work, which, it seemed to me, “sang in its chains like the sea”, to paraphrase the words of poet Dylan Thomas. And though the players didn’t hold back from vehement expression at certain points of the discourse, the music never descended into the realms of near-dissolution, as does the slow movement of the composer’s A Major Piano Sonata D.959, which hints at anarchy and madness – Dannenbring and Wooding did the Fantasie no such violence, but made sure the music’s “fate-like feeling of necessity” was conveyed to us with all the expressive force they could muster.

We certainly needed a kind of “pick-me-up” to finish the concert, and the duo obliged in great style with New Zealand composer David Griffiths’ jolly Rumba, a piece from a work called Three Coquettes, written in 2012. Something of a polymath, David Griffiths is a performer and teacher as well as a composer – he’s composed mainly for the voice, though there’s a group of piano compositions which suggest he knows his way around that instrument pretty well – Rumba generates exactly what its title might suggest, driving rhythms, high energies and colourful contrasts. Perhaps we might hear the Rangapu Duo in Wellington again, sometime, playing the whole of David Griffiths’ “Coquettes” suite for our further pleasure!

Passage of the Soul – commemorative and reflective beauty at Wellington Cathedral

Posted on by Peter Mechen

PASSAGE OF THE SOUL
Choral Whispers of Eastern Orthodoxy

Baroque Voices
Directed by Pepe Becker

Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul,
Molesworth Street, Wellington

Sunday 2nd October, 2016

It was originally intended that “Passage of the Soul”, the name given to a concert of Eastern Orthodox choral music, would take place in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation of the Theotokos, in Wellington’s Hania Street. For those of us who hadn’t been to the venue the chance to do so represented an additional incentive to attend this Baroque Voices concert, which was evocatively subtitled “Choral Whispers of Eastern Orthodoxy”. As it turned out, circumstances prevented the Hania Street venue’s use, so at short notice the concert was transferred to the Wellington Cathedral of St.Paul in Molesworth Street.

I was able to speak with a couple of group members immediately after the concert had finished, and got the impression from them that it was a kind of swings-and-roundabouts situation regarding the different venues – yes, it would have been more appropriate in some ways to have performed the concert in the Hania Street church, but as it turned out the Molesworth Street Cathedral’s greater seating capacity was actually needed to accommodate the audience numbers who turned up! – and the Cathedral’s renowned acoustic added an extra sonic dimension to the atmosphere created by the beauty of the music and its performance.

The concert was the result of a collaboration between the Baroque Voices Ensemble, and one of its former members,  Dimitrios Theodoridis, who’s currently based in Berlin. While holidaying throughout Europe a couple of years ago he decided to stay put in Berlin for a while, eventually joining a couple of vocal ensembles and regularly performing with them. The death of his mother, Anthula Theodoridis, inspired him to write a work Passage of the Soul, and then to organise a concert in which the work could be performed. With the help of his former colleague, Baroque Voices director Pepe Becker, he was able to put together a sequence of pieces which framed his own work in an appropriate context and arrange for the sequence to be performed.

Theodoridis wanted a predominantly meditative ambience to prevail throughout the concert, so we were requested not to applaud, but let the resonances do their work. He asked us to regard the concert more as a religious service than a “performance”, in order to emphasise the occasion’s commemorative aspect. Aiding and abetting this feeling was the use of incense, which was burned beforehand in the church, and whose redolent flavour straight away elevated one’s expectations to a kind of ritualistic state, completely removed from any dynamic of performance and entertainment.

The “Choral Whispers” of the concert’s subtitle found expression in a number of pieces from different eras, by composers who were unknown to me, names such as Manuel Gazes (15th Century), Parthenios Sgoutas (17th Century), Dobri Hristov (1875-1941) and Frank Desby (1922-92). Though largely meditative, the different pieces evoked whole worlds of varied feeling through different timbres and colours, textures and dynamics.  Those pieces written by the remarkable American-born Frank Desby, who became an authority on Greek plainchant and polyphonic music seemed to express something of the on-going “flavour of interaction” between traditional Byzantine chant and Western polyphony.  Desby’s “Those Baptised into Christ” contrived to my ears to freely float between both traditional simplicity and harmonic enrichment, the whole while preserving a sense of drawing from impulses deeply rooted in the past.

An organ solo (played by Jonathan Berkahn) began the service, accompanying the placement of a commemorative candle in honour of Anthula Theodoridis, a deeply personal moment followed by a very open-hearted, public and demonstrative Alliluia from Maximilian Steinberg’s Passion Week (where possible Dimitrios Theodoridis rewrote the texts of these hymns and meditations in Greek). He was, he said, heartened by the example of Igor Stravinsky in his setting of the Lord’s prayer, set by the composer in Latin from Old Church Slavonic. Stravinsky most interestingly was attracted by Latin as a medium “not dead but turned to stone, and so monumentalised as to have become immune from all risk of vulgarisation”.

Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were all represented in this concert (Stravinsky adored Tchaikovsky’s music, as did Rachmaninov!). Theodoridis interestingly reset Tchaikovsky’s Cherubic Hymn to Greek words, but not Rachmaninov’s contribution, an exerpt from his  “Vespers”, which retained its original Church Slavonic. The performances of all three composers’ music were vibrant, tremulous and deeply-wrought. Each was notable for giving the listener a different perspective on its composer to the somewhat Westernised “classical music” mode one usually hears, an outcome, perhaps, of each composer’s interaction with text and as a result “speaking“ with more-than-usual Slavic force in their musical responses.

Of other well-known composers, both John Taverner (1944-2013) and Arvo Pärt were represented by characteristic pieces, Taverner’s beautiful piece “Song for Athene” having the distinction of being performed at Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997, though written four years earlier as a tribute by the composer to a young family friend of Greek descent, Athene Hariades, who had been accidentally killed. Here, the exchanges between the “Alleluia” chants and the invocations were varied and haunting, the ensemble making the most of the dramatic key-change from minor to major just before the words “Come, enjoy rewards and crowns I have prepared for you”.

Theodoridis’s own composition reflected his family’s Greek cultural and spiritual heritage, using references to the Greek Orthodox funeral service via a hymn, Eonia I mnimi (Eternal Memory), the theme from which haunted the piece’s conclusion, reiterating the prayer “May her soul rest in peace”. An alto solo (sung by Andrea Cochrane) ran like a thread through the piece, its strand resonating with an awareness of approaching death and the desire to farewell loved ones, before gradually letting go, the soul comforted by the gentle sounds of the handbells and the angelic voices inviting it to “sleep in peace”.

Arvo Pärt’s piece for organ solo “Pari Intervallo”, performed by Jonathan Berkahn immediately after this enabled us to continue our spiritual and emotional trajectories set up by what had gone immediately before, the meditative qualities of the sounds and their resonances allowing our sensibilities what seems like unlimited time and space to explore and be in touch with ourselves. This having been completed and a declaration of faith then made in the form of a 17th Century setting by Parthenios Sgoutas of the Nicean Creed,  we returned to the music of Arvo Pärt to conclude the concert, “O Morgenstern” (Morning Star), appropriately a piece whose tone-clusters and resulting harmonic tensions gave the impression of a soul striving towards the light, seeking a kind of affirmation in the onset of a new day.

The absence of applause provided ample proof of the capacity for listeners to express appreciation, awe and gratitude towards composers and performers alike in silence – at the end we were able to take away and continue to relish in tranquillity those resonances which the performers had so enchantingly crafted and brought alive for us.

Quintessence on show via youth and experience at Michael Fowler Centre

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents
QUINTESSENCE

String Quintets by Mozart and Brahms
(with Salina Fisher (b.1993) – Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne)

The Pettman Players
The New Zealand String Quartet
James Dunham (viola)

Concert One: MOZART – String Quintets: No.3 in C Major K.515 / No.6 in E-flat Major K.614
The Pettman Players:
Shauno Isomura, Benedict Lim (violins), Julie Park, Caroline Norman (violas), Martin Roberts (‘cello)

Concert Two:
MOZART – String Quintet No 5 in D Major K.593 / BRAHMS – String Quintet No.1 in F Major Op.88 (“Spring”)

Concert Three:
MOZART – String Quintet No.4 in G Minor K.516 / SALINA FISHER – String Quartet Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne / BRAHMS – String Quintet No.2 in G Major Op.111

The New Zealand String Quartet:
Helene Pohl, Monique Lapins (violins), Gillian Ansell (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
with James Dunham (viola)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 17th September, 2016
(Concerts 1 and 3 reviewed below)

What a lovely idea,  arranging a day of performances of quintets for strings, and then giving the arrangement the name “quintessence” – and I must confess to not previously knowing the origin of the term in classical and medieval philosophy, of the “fifth” element or essence, a substance said to comprise the makeup of the celestial bodies, no less! In relation to Chamber Music New Zealand’s event, Quintessence was having both the New Zealand String Quartet join forces with the eminent American violist, James Dunham in concert, as well as a talented youth ensemble, The Pettman Players, whose members were associated either currently or formerly with the Pettman National Junior Academy of Music, an organisation based both in Auckland and in Christchurch.

Over the course of  a single day, Wellington concertgoers were able to hear in the morning the Pettmans in two of Mozart’s String Quintets (No.3 in C Major K.515, and No.6 in E-flat Major K.614), and then luxuriate in both an afternoon and an evening concert given by the New Zealand String Quartet with guest violist James Dunham. Each of these latter concerts featured a Mozart Quintet (No.5 in D Major K.593 in the afternoon, and No.4 in G Minor K.516 in the evening) along with a String Quintet by Brahms (No.1 in F Major Op.88 “Spring” in the afternoon, and No.2 in G Major Op.111, in the evening). As well, the evening concert contained a Chamber Music New Zealand commissioned work by local composer Salina Fisher, Tōrino: echoes on pūtōrino improvisations by Rob Thorne.

I wasn’t able to attend all three concerts, but I managed to get to the first and third of them, relishing the opportunity to enjoy (and nonchalantly compare) the playing of two different ensembles.  I was, naturally enough, prepared to make allowances for the youthful aspect of the Players, as my understanding was that the musicians would all currently be students at the Pettman Academy, either in Christchurch or in Auckland. While the programme notes tell us that the ensemble consisted of both present and past members of the academy, we weren’t told who was specifically who in that respect. No matter, as the playing of the group members was of such a uniformly high standard it wasn’t really relevant as to who was up to which stage in his or her studies – this was music-making of a remarkably accomplished level as regards both individual and ensemble skills, these players able to realise the beauties and intricacies of the music with great aplomb and sensitivity.

The group opened their concert with the C Major Quintet K.515, one of the grandest of Mozart’s chamber works, and beginning with an extended dialogue between violin and ‘cello, the exchanges fluent and focused. Both players had finely-spun tonal qualities, the first violin, Shauno Isamura, able to beautifully “inflect” his line even at speed, the figurations handled with a deftness whose detailing seemed rich and full. As for the cellist, Martin Roberts, his responses to his leader were at once whole-hearted and finely graded to match the volinist’s declamations. Throughout, the teamwork of the ensemble was exemplary, the violas’ passages in thirds having a rich, velvety sound, the players (Julie Park and Caroline Norman) taking great care with one another’s sound-worlds so as to make their dovetailings coherent.

Though a long work, the C Major Quintet’s sequences seemed to fly by under these players’ fingers – I thought their corporate command of nuance and phrasing, especially so in the transition passages which so often depend on split-second timing, was astonishingly good. The Minuet engaged us from the start with its characterful sequences, a rising figure dominating the opening measures, while a Trio diverted our sensibilities with a leap of a seventh and a chromatic swerve – the players gave the chromatic figure plenty of “misterioso” by way of contrast with the physicality elsewhere. A hymn-like Andante featured heartfelt exchanges between the first violin and the first viola, everything distinctively and strongly focused, every note and associated phrase given its due. Then, the finale’s high spirits rounded the work off in a suitably celebratory fashion, the players relishing the occasional accents and beautifully colouring the moments of modulatory exploration before bringing it all to a joyous conclusion.

I knew the E-flat Major Quintet well, as it was a work featured on my very first recording of these pieces. To my intense pleasure these players took a no-holds-barred approach to the music, the two violas bringing out the hunting-horn character of the opening with terrific elan, then richly and excitingly interacting with the ‘cello through both energetic and more subtly-nuanced passages. The playing certainly brought out the music’s orchestral quality, no more so than at the movement’s end where the violins add their fanfares to the galloping rhythms of the lower strings – most exhilarating!

The Andante featured some lovely work by the pair of violins in tandem, a rare and brief moment of not-quite-matching intonation at the beginning of one of the melody’s variants apart – it detracted not a whit from the sense of easeful communion between the players, and the beauties of their shared phrasings. Again in the Minuet there were lovely cascading thirds from the “violin duo” (second violinist Benedict Lim matching his leader all the way in refinement and in energy) for us to relish, and a sense of the players’ delight in sweeping the dance steps along during the Trio. The finale’s Haydn-ish bustle carried everything before it in these players’ hands, Mozart’s fugal writing engendering a real sense of fun and freedom, the lines brilliantly nuanced by the players and brought together at the end with tremendous verve. What a tribute to Edith Salzmann, the artistic Director of the Pettman Academy, to have fostered and encouraged such talent as we witnessed here with these young players!

Back again to the MFC in the evening, this time for a more varied programme of Mozart and Brahms with the New Zealand String Quartet and violist James Dunham, and a newly-commissioned work for string quartet from New Zealand composer Selina Fisher. A measure of the quality of the Pettman Academy Group’s playing earlier in the day was that we weren’t made to feeli n the evening that “here, at last, was the real thing” with these adult performers – it was, instead, a different kind of musical experience, the players of the NZSQ reflecting their own by now familiar performing ethos of one of the country’s finest music ensembles.

Beginning with Mozart’s G Minor Quintet K.516, the music immediately took on a dark, theatrical “Don Giovanni-like” aspect, heightened by the “layered” sonorities of firstly three instruments, then including two more, making for a dramatic “burgeoning” of the tones and textures. I thought violist James Dunham’s playing most interesting, his tones more assertive than what I’ve been accustomed to with Gillian Ansell’s playing, his playing “tighter” and for me far less easeful. The music here certainly lent itself to dark, terse statements of intent throughout, concluding with some heartfelt downward sighs colouring the mood of the coda.

Again, with the Menuetto,  the mood remained terse and sombre, wonderfully downwardly spiralling runs meeting great sforzandi – dramatic stuff! The players relaxed into the trio, the two violas enjoying a moment of concerted lyricism, the surrounding ambiences easeful and grateful for some respite! Mozart anticipates Beethoven in the Adagio’s opening, music of such a rarefied state, almost above human emotion – the players made just as much of the movement’s contrasting sequences, a running accompaniment ushering in a descending major-key figure. And then there was the finale’s beginning, a heavy-footed trudge through stricken cadences, the two violins bearing the expressive burden , and keeping us guessing as to outcomes, before dancing into the sunniness of G major. We delighted in the players’ teamwork throughout the contrasting episodes, the hints of gypsy-like music adding touches of temperament to the Elysian happiness of it all.

Salina Fisher’s newly-commissioned work for Chamber Music New Zealand was then given by the NZSQ – this was an exploration by the composer of the similarities between the traditional Maori instrument the pūtōrino (similar to a trumpet or a flute in its function) and string instruments, particularly in its ability to equate with the human voice in terms of pitch, vocal timbres and different registers.  The instrument itself can produce deep mournful voices , male in character, and the more female, lighter, more erie and agile voice – as well, a more breathy sound can be produced by blowing across the instrument’s opening. Salina Fisher’s work was an exploration of these effects, inspired by the work of the pūtōrino’s foremost present exponent, Rob Thorne, who’s taken up the mantle of guardian of this taonga from legendary figures of the past such as Hirini Melbourne and Richard Nunns.

Quintessence ended with a work by Brahms, a revelation to me! – my experiences of these works by Brahms haven’t been altogether positive in the past, to the effect that I was disappointed that this series of Quintets didn’t include all six works by Mozart and have done with it! Well, I must have either been listening to the wrong recordings, or been in a peculiar frame of mind when encountering these works in the past, and specifically this G Major Quintet. The NZSQ with their visiting colleague James Dunham made the work such a life-enhancing experience for me, I listened open-mouthed right through the work and forgot to take any notes on the performance!

Thinking about how I had regarded this music on previous (and long-distant) hearings, I fished up from my memory unflattering terms like “opaque”, “weighty”, “academic”, and “self-consciously contrapuntal”. As I listened to the playing, those epithets dropped away, one by one, like scales falling from my eyes so that for the first time I could clearly see.  Right from the joyous opening, in which I could hear bells pealing and activating the surrounding ambiences (not unlike the beginning of Schumann’s great “Rhenish” Symphony) I was transfixed on several counts, by the beauty of the opening ‘cello solo and the duetting violas making their response, by the rapt sequences in the music’s development, and the reawakening of energies ,and the light and shade of the different levels of intensity right up to the music’s coda (so reminiscent of the Second Piano Concerto). The Adagio began with deep, melancholic footsteps, but varied its gait throughout between introspection and full-blooded feeling, while the mischievous Scherzo, marked Un poco Allegretto, gave one the impression of the composer chuckling to himself over the music’s enigmatic textures.

The finale certainly gave the impression of “going somewhere”, at times sounding a bit like a mystery adventure (again I thought there were parallels with the Second Piano Concerto),  with quasi-Hungarian impulses in its gait and Viennese café gestures in its mood! Hugo Wolf once wrote that “Brahms can’t exult!”, but he too may have heard performances which didn’t do the music sufficient justice as to its character and general attitude – I thought the players built up throughout the movement a terrific sense of energy, dashing and vibrant in its abandonment! It was music-making which carried all before it and throughout the final bars most appropriately brought out the joyousness of the work  – a case, as far as I was concerned, of a composer certainly having the last laugh, one which I couldn’t begrudge him in the face of such resplendent writing!

NZ Trio with Xia Jing – violin, ‘cello, piano and guzheng

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZ Trio with Xia Jing – Fa (“Open up”)

ZHOU LONG (China/USA) – Spirit of Chimes
XIA JING (China) – composition for Guzheng
JEROEN SPEAK (NZ) – Serendipity Fields (World premiere)
DYLAN LARDELLI (NZ) – Shells (World premiere)
DOROTHY KER (NZ) – String Taxonomy (World Premiere)
GAO PING (China) – Feng Zheng (World premiere – commissioned by the NZ Trio and dedicated to Jack Body)

NZ Trio
Justine Cormack (violin) / Ashley Brown (‘cello) / Sarah Watkins (piano)
with
Xia Jing (solo guzheng)

Adam Concert Room
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music,
Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 16th September, 2016

This concert was part of Victoria University Confucious Institute’s China/New Zealand Musical Exchange programme, and sponsored jointly by the Confucious Institute and the China Cultural Centre in New Zealand, with support from both the Asia New Zealand Foundation and Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music.

A special feature of the concert was the presence of Xia Jing, one of the foremost exponents of the guzheng – a kind of Chinese zither or dulcimer, whose documented use dates back over two thousand years. The instrument is growing in popularity in modern times, and is frequently used in popular and modern classical music, as either a solo or chamber music instrument. As one of the concert’s items Xia Jing played one of her own compositions for solo instrument, one which enabled us to experience at first hand the guzheng’s unique tonal and timbral characteristics.

Also on the programme was a work for piano trio, and four other pieces for the ensemble with guzheng, which were world premiere performances. The work for Piano Trio was written by Chinese/American composer Zhou Long and was called Spirit of Chimes, while Chinese composer Gao Ping contributed a piece commissioned by the NZ Trio and dedicated to the memory of New Zealand composer Jack Body, which was called Feng Zheng. And no fewer than three New Zealand composers  wrote works for the Trio to be performed at this concert – so the event represented a kind of feast of creativity come to the table to be savoured and enjoyed.

Zhou Long’s Spirit of Chimes opened the programme, the composer telling us in a written note that his inspiration came from “the sounds of chime-stones, bone-whistle and chime bells from ancient China”, though he additionally confided in us that, because of the disappearance of early pre-Tang Dynastic Chinese music, he had to imagine in his head the “real sound” of such ancient instruments when composing for the piano trio.

Beginning with soft, mournful sliding notes on the ‘cello, echoed by the piano and joined by the violin with its delicate sliding figurations, the music before too long took on a kind of processional aspect, as if bringing to us from the past the different sound-characters that could unlock our appreciation of these ancient gestures and tones. The strings interacted warmly and readily, firstly in full-blooded vocal terms, and then in a more folksy, homely, throw-away manner – the piano joined them, partly to support the interaction and partly to push things on, to plant and then to till elsewhere.  This seemed to provoke division in the ranks as the cello broke away from the discourse of three and disrupted the dovetailed interactions –  suddenly the musical exchanges were volatile and angular, with the different lines and timbres of the instruments colliding and opposing one another as much as they were colluding and intertwining. Though a measure of calm was restored  we got the feeling that those same disruptive elements were waiting for their chance to strike again, something that an enormous tam-tam stroke more-or-less- confirmed.

I enjoyed the “danse macabre” sequences which followed, the piano instigating the dry-bones manner and enjoining the strings to take part, which they did, adding weight and extending the motif to a six-note tattoo, which got all kinds of treatment. As if in payment for pleasure, the music irrupted again, almost vengefully, as if a veritable battery of physical assault, characterised by savage trills and tremolandi………did we want to be there? But what amazing sonorities!

Strings mused on the quiet that followed, the cello occasionally bursting out, more in sorrow than in anger, the other instruments following suit, and, it seemed to me,  transforming by osmosis the mood to one of great longing, almost to the point of weeping! The piano’s ambient colourings were left, pushing out the spaces and leaving us drifting, contemplating a certain “tragedy to the heart and a comedy to the intellect” ambivalence……whatever my stance I was left contemplating the startling presence with which the players enabled the voices of those “ancient chimes” to speak to me, whether real or imagined……

‘Cellist Ashley Brown then introduced the guzheng player, Xia Jing, who demonstrated to us by way of some kind of improvised solo, what her instrument could do. Sitting flat at the instrument like one might at a Western dulcimer or Japanese koto,  Xia Jing plucked the strings with her right hand and pressed the strings down with her left hand at certain points to produce pitch variations and different kinds of vibrato. Her hands seemed to alternate between melody and accompaniment, producing timbres not dissimilar to a balanaika or a cimbalon. I was astonished at the degree of energy she seemed to be able to produce, in terms of both strength and excitement.  She brought the music’s energy down to a more ritualistic level,  finishing her piece with a beautiful kind of postscript or epilogue.

Justine Cormack, the Trio’s violinist,  told us briefly about the four pieces especially composed for the trio in collaboration with the guzheng, inviting us to enjoy the pieces on their own terms as well as relishing the differences between them.  For me to try and repeat the kind of “gesture-by-gesture” commentary I noted down throughout the course of the first piece, would, I think, run the risk of depleting both my vocabulary and the number of people prepared to stay the course in any case!  The first three pieces of this group seemed to me to reflect certain philosophical attitudes towards “sound content”, though Jeroen Speak’s work Serendipity fields I thought more inclined towards out-front expression than was the case with the relative reticence of the other works, each displaying a reluctance to “resound”. Both Dylan Lardelli’s Shells and Dorothy Ker’s String Taxonomy seemed in fact more like physical choreography than sound generation, each composer stressing the importance for their piece of “semblance” (Lardelli) and “shared gestures” (Ker), ahead of creating tones from notation, a more oblique, almost “underbellied” manifestation of things.

Serendipity fields made each instrument say its name at the music’s beginning with terse but characterful impulses, which I liked, the guzheng dalicate and lyrical, the piano percussive and the strings angular and sinewy – then tossed these characteristics about, resulting in the music veering from vehement, through whimsical to wraith-like……Speak’s music had an extremely volatile inclination allied to an interior quality whose character seemed furtive and inward, setting up situations where the sounds seemed to “goad” one another, and build up sequences whose textures and ambiences produce what sounded like some kind of “chaos of delight”. Any semblance of permanence was short-lived, as the instruments swooped, burgeoned and withdrew their tones as required and then as quickly disapeared, with a final, characteristically short-breathed pair of impulses. What teamwork there was between the players in the realisation of these scenarios!

Compared with Jereon Speak’s engaging ‘serendipities”, the impression left by Dylan Lardelli’s Shells was dry and taciturn, which underlined the appositeness of the piece’s title. Whatever “substance” gave rise to these gestures, whatever fleshed-out intentions that once perhaps spoke their names, had long since disappeared, leaving only encasements and frameworks, like a luggage-room filled with empty suitcases and leaving behind little more than spaces for conjecture.  Pianist Sarah Watkins used her hands to resonate the piano’s “box” rather than any actual tones, apart from occasional single, transfixing notes, while the string-players pursued a kind of “silent music” course – for someone as sleep-deprived as I was just at that time, the effect was hallucinatory, filling my half-lit consciousness with surreal light and dumb-show gesturings, a narrative at which I felt I was little more than a mute spectator.  Dorothy Ker’s String Taxonomy seemed to me less of an “inward” experience, the movements of the players more out-going and exploratory than in Lardelli’s mutescape, vis-à-vis the use of knitting needles by both the ‘cellist and violinist, making for a dry, metallic effect involving little or no flesh-and-blood. The pianist activated the strings inside the box, the three string-players joining in with the effect through brushing or scraping, creating what the composer styled as “a sonic alchemy”, an interaction of which worked on my sensibilities to produce a kind of looking-glass-land effect – a language of meaning through gesture rather than its conventional result, counter-intuitive when it came to making sense of it all.

Again, one had to marvel at the sounds that were conceived by such original means, right from the outset, with its “knitting pattern” exchanges and determinedly non-pitched language – furious irruptions of energy biting and snapping and resonating from the stringed instruments were followed by their antitheses – coded whisperings took the place of shouted or semaphored riddles. Together these sequences gave the impression of some kind of dynamic coagulation which could surely have blossomed forth in a kind of “transfigured night” synthesis of gesture and melismatic fruition – but apart from a startlingly brilliant metallic scintillation, the work’s conclusion was as enigmatic in its effect as was the whole.

To Gao Ping’s work Feng Zheng we then came, to conclude the concert, the piece’s title transliterating into English as “Wind Kite”, as fitting an image as any for a work dedicated to the recently-departed Jack Body, a friend of Gao Ping as well as a fellow-composer. A Chinese tradition was to fly kites during the time of Qingming, when the living pay respect to their deceased ancestors by way of the kites bearing their thoughts and feelings to the realms of the departed.  Here, the music was divided into four sections: – (1) Still Clouds, (2) The Breeze, (3) Breaking the Air, (4) Broken Line. Gao Ping underlined the connection of the music with his late friend by devising a motif from his name (jACk BoDy) used at the beginning and end of the piece.

The opening “Still Clouds” captured the ‘calm magnificence” of the sky, and the wonderment of those still earthbound beneath its splendour – the music’s resonant, drifting textures suggested a peace and order away from earthly conflict – string pizzicati spiked these ambiences, attempting to disrupt the undulating tones of the guzheng and piano, violin and ‘cello irruptions tumbling over themselves before being borne away on the piano’s “wind-borne drift” of tones to which the strings contributed tremolandi and the guzheng mesmeric repeated notes.  The instruments seemed to rise from out of the music’s layered textures and then submerge again, the argument growing more and more involved – a kind of “communion of impulse”, one which brought forth some heartfelt responses from the players, such as Sarah Watkins’ exciting, toccata-like irruptions from the piano. The music developed real “schwung” with what I presumed was its “Breaking the Air” sequences, everything propulsive and exhilarating, with emphasis on the ensemble rather than individual strands, reaching a kind of crisis-point of function with trenchant tremolandi from the strings, the  weight of sound becoming more and more stratospheric, abetted by echo-chamber effects from the guzheng, almost like voices humming off-stage! It seemed very much a valedictory point, one which the composer, by some alchemic means, was able to suggest to me a “here-and-now” feeling not unlike that which infuses the final song “I Remember” in Lilburn’s settings of Denis Glover’s “Sings Harry” verses – something that could have taken place nowhere else but here – something one knew, by dint of awareness and experience. The musicians played out this mood with a deep sense of having travelled and of, at the end of it, returning home.

The Chinese title “Fa” and its associated character for this concert suggested the English words “open up” – which, it seemed to me, the NZ Trio, Xia Jing, and the composers and their music encouraged our imaginations to do here most rewardingly.

Tony Chen Lin – piano evocations, visions and premonitions at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts

TONY CHEN LIN (piano)

BARTOK – Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op.20
JS BACH – French Suite No.5 in G Major BWV 816
GAO PING – Distant Voices (1999)
TONY CHEN LIN – Digression (2016)
SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in B-flat D.960

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

Sunday, 11th September, 2016

Tony Chen Lin was one of two supremely gifted young Christchurch-based pianists (the other was Jun Bouterey-Ishido) who “slugged it out” for first prize at the 2008 Kerikeri International Piano Competition, an event which I had the good fortune to attend. The adjudicator, Australian pianist Ian Munro, awarded Jun Bouterey-Ishido the first prize by what he acknowledged was the narrowest of margins, a decision I was glad I didn’t have to make, as I remember not being able to fault either of them, performance-wise, at the time. Both have gone on to significantly further their pianistic and musical careers, this afternoon’s recitalist Tony Lin completing his Master of Music at the Hochschule für Music in Freiburg in 2013, as well as recently performing as both pianist and conductor in Germany (Freiburg and Stuttgart) and in Switzerland (at the Semaine Internationale de Piano et de Musique de Chambre), at which he’s appearing this year once again, as a conductor.

Coincidentally each of these two young pianists has appeared as a performer on concert and recital platforms in Wellington this year, Jun Bouterey-Ishido as the pianist in the Calvino Trio, which played here in July, and Tony Lin with this solo recital a week or so ago. Unfortunately I was prevented by circumstances from hearing the Trio, which made me all the more determined to partly counter my loss by “making good” at the other pianist’s concert. (I will, in time, get to the point where I can mention one of these musicians by name without having to cite what the other is, or has been doing! – your patience, gentle reader!).

I thought Lin’s recital programme fascinating – the choices suggested that the pianist enjoyed making connections and drawing attention to influences and cross-references. Both the Bartok and the Gao Ping works featured the use of folk-melodies from the composers’ respective homelands as starting-points for improvisations. The pianist’s own’s programme notes underlined the importance for each composer of maintaining the integrity of his original source material, Bartok regarding the melodies “as motifs to be surrounded by the results of their working” and Gao Ping exploring “the rich, microtonal palette of the folk tradition”. Each composer’s “workings” resulted in a distinctively flavoured sound-world that one could readily associate with those uniquely characterful regions.

Separating the two sets of improvisations was JS Bach’s French Suite No.5, a bright and cheerful collection of baroque dances in G major, presenting a more stylised and courtly mode of expression which contrasted surprisingly well with the more earthy/exotic source material of the two works on either side. Then, in the second half, we heard a piece by the pianist himself, a brief, improvisatory meditation-cum-declamation called, appropriately enough, Digression, and whose dying sounds led straight into the concert’s largest-scale work, Schubert’s final Piano Sonata in B-flat, D.960.

The recital began with Bartok, his Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op.20, a work which progressed from simple harmonisation of melody to manipulation of their shape, rhythmic patterns and harmonic associations – in effect, the composer gradually “took over” the potentialities of the material, transforming them to meet his own compositional needs while still preserving their basic idiomatic spirit. Tony Lin conveyed something of this spirit amid the volatile rhythms and favoursome harmonies and dissonances of the second song, and the “Night Piece” aspect of the third, with its quicksilver responses in the midst of the gloom, delivered here with razor-sharp reflexes and a powerfully-wrought sense of atmosphere. I particularly liked his “thinking on his feet”-like playing of the sixth improvisation, with its spontaneous series of knockabout “turns”as if from a clown, the music leaping from the black to the white keys and then back again! And, how poignant were those moments of wistful reflection in between the drolleries and caperings!

The Bach French Suite seemed, under Lin’s hands, wrought of some kind of elfin magic in places – gossamer-like threads of musical lines that were woven freely and then tweaked and pulled into place, the playing always flexible yet mindful of the music’s overall shape. Following the opening, minstrel-like Allemande, the Courante resembled a merry brook bubbling over stones, with the occasional refraction caused by natural attrition from the play of light and the ceaseless flow of water. The beautiful Sarabande’s dignified contourings put me into some of the music’s “spaces” most beguilingly, from which the pianist’s quixotic delivery of the Gavotte’s opening gently brought me back, alerted to the movement of the dance-steps and the even more energising garrulity of the Bourée!

Though more circumspect in manner, the Louré had a beautiful spring in its step, Lin allowing the figuration plenty of freedom while keeping the music’s pulse – he seemed to be able to un-regiment the most rigorous of the music’s rhythms. Then, his delivery of the Gigue was a marvel of clarity,  demonstrating a keen instinct for allowing voicings sufficient weight and momentum. I particularly enjoyed the second part’s more deeply-registered explorations, whose working-out seemed to acquire an almost orchestra sonority in places, amid the player’s varied command of colours and timbres.

Gao Ping’s Distant Voices demonstrated the composer’s use of Chinese folk melodies as “points of departure”, as did Bartok with his Hungarian Peasant Songs. The first reflection, Nostalgia, drew from a melody belonging to Inner Mongolia, Gao Ping employing “neighbouring” notes to the existing melody, and creating depth, resonance and tension from all registers of the keyboard, both delicate and full-throated. The playing brought out the composer’s “opening up” of spaces, recalling in places Ravel-like sonorities and delicacies. The second evocation, Love-Song from Kangdin, is apparently one of China’s most well-known melodies, from the composer’s own Sichuan region – here were haunting “echo” effects, sonorous melodic lines resounding and filling their own ambiences, enhanced by occasional impulses that suggested bird-song or air-and-water nature-patterns.

Gao Ping’s third realisation, given the title Blue Flower, used a melody from  the Shanbei region to evoke the dynamism and exuberance of dancing and drumming, the sounds reaching to the lowest piano-pitches for added resonance and weight, and opening up the sound-world of the music in an orchestral way. The rhythms drove the music through “little dancings” sequences vividly ccontrasted in Lin’s performance with great swirls of repetitive and dynamic energy, featuring primitive pulsatings set alongside cluster-tines and multicoloured harmonies. At one point the music recalled themes from the two previous movements, intertwining the worlds and regions, and pausing for the reminiscences to take effect before the toccata-rhythm again took the reins, finishing as a scintillation whose energy tapered away to silence – all beautifully realised by the pianist.

After an interval, Tony Lin retumed to the keyboard to fascinate and absorb us with his own piece, called Digression, inspired partly by the pianist’s involvement with Schumann’s Humoreske, and partly as a result of Lin’s own self-confessed inclinations to digress during scheduled practice sessions! The pianist called the work a mere diversion from “the main, more important subjects”, but its value for him was its marking a reawakening of his urge to compose. Between shivers of scintillation, claustrophobic chordings and single-note declamations looking for the light, the piece sounded like a true diversionary exploration, one that, somewhat unexpectedly, led straight into the opening chords of the final work on the programme!

This, of course, was the Schubert B-flat Sonata D 960, one of three such works written during the last few months of the composer’s life, music which was destined to languish in relative obscurity until the mid-twentieth century. It’s always seemed to me astonishing, for instance, that one of the greatest of all pianists, Sergei Rachmaninov, reputedly confessed to not knowing anything of the existence of these or any other Schubert sonatas – but performances of them were rare until the renowned Artur Schnabel’s advanced their cause around the time of the centenial of the  composer’s death, in 1928. They are now, of course, considered in some quarters to be on the same level of achievement as the very different late sonatas of Beethoven.

Lin brought a highly-wrought degree of sensitivity to the work’s opening – gentle, dream-like nudgings of the melody were underpinned by a murmuring accompaniment, and “ghosted” by rumbling trills in the bass, indicating a kind of “darkenss” waiting in the wings. Then the return of the opening theme burgeoned out of repeated lead-in chords and flooded our sound-vistas with torrents of tone, which continued right up to the sudden, dramatic hush of the second subject. This was played lightly and swiftly, giving the music an “elusive” character which a series of recitative-like question-and-answer phrases attempted to explain, until shouldered aside by the most wonderful, if  disturbing irruptions – those angular gestures signalling the onset of the first movement repeat, that ominous bass trill mentioned above here roaring from below like some baleful subterranean Minotaur waiting for its prey. (Of course, the presence of this repeat has been a recurring bone of contention amongst performers and commentators, one with which Lin took himself, in my humble opinion, onto the side of the angels by playing it!).

When the development did come it seemed to take on an almost spine-chilling aspect, as if the pianist was reluctant to go there! – a brave face saw him through the initial hesitations, and the rich, comforting warmth of parts of the central section emboldened his resolve! But as the music began to climb out of these warmer regions the chill returned and began to exert its grip, with a desolate, minor-key repetition of the opening theme, accompanied by the ominous trill – we felt the growing unease as the ways seemed to close in on us, and present to us nothing but oncoming darkness.

The return of the opening theme relieved our immediate anxiety – but there seemed a frailty about the proceedings, an almost “tenderised” aspect, the spirit somewhat undermined by the privations of the journey. And the pianist seemed to suddenly tire as well, losing a couple of notes to an ungainly turn of the music, though with the declamatory sequences at the exposition’s end he rallied, and brought about a beautifully-poised lead-in to the coda – in all, it was quite a journey!

The slow movement’s opening confronted us once again with that world of desolation and imminent darkness. The throbbing rhythmic figurations had a heavy, overburdened gait beneath a theme whose upwardly thrusting supplication to the firmament had an anguished magnificence. Lin’s playing had such incredible “hurt”, making the occasional short-lived recourse by the composer to some sweet previous memory so very moving.

After this, the scherzo’s rapid, almost manic energies seemed blurred at the edges, as though things were slightly out of focus – it was though the pianist was suddenly almost running on a kind of “empty”, and trusting in little else except his instincts. The Trio was angular and heavily accented, almost dysfunctional in its presentation, redolent of a kind of recklessness, or devil-may care attitude. Against which the finale’s opening bell-strike sounded a warning-note, from which the music tried to steer away, the major-key sequences attempting to establish a brave face, but being repeatedly reminded of darker realities – Lin attacked the heavy chords mid-sequence savagely, but the music then steered the mood back to a kind of resigned acceptance, the bell-strike once again “centering” the focus and dictating the terms. What a kaleidoscopic array of emotion was here! – with the pianist having to steer a course between hope, and despair, happiness and anger. After another outburst, followed by a curious variant of what Schubert wrote in its wake, Lin marshalled his resources and set the music stampeding to its destiny – “thus though we cannot make our sun / stand still, yet we will make him run”, wrote a poet in an entirely different context, but in a poignant way just as applicable here.

Rather than leaving us amid such a bleak and cheerless scenario, Lin played as an encore for us a Bartok transcription of a folksong, whose words described a poor boy’s wish for a starry night so that he may find his way back home to his beloved – it was played with great spontaneity and quietly-expressed feeling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Temples on the heights and simple dwellings – Ludwig Treviranus at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
LUDWIG TREVIRANUS (piano)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Grand Variations and Fugue for Piano, Op.35 “Eroica”
PAUL SCHRAMM – Mania
EDVARD GRIEG – Lyric Pieces Op.54
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata in F Minor Op.57 “Appassionata”

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

Sunday 26th June 2016

For three-quarters of his recent Wellington Chamber Music St.Andrew’s piano recital, Ludwig Treviranus bestrode the performing space like a young colossus. It seemed the young man could put hardly a finger, gesture or word wrong, such was the pleasure given by both his playing and his speaking to the audience. I’m aware that there are people who don’t ever want to listen to anybody speak at concerts, but nobody present could have seriously objected to listening to someone with such a charming and enviable gift for natural, spontaneous-sounding communication.

Treviranus spoke clearly and entertainingly about each of the items he was going to present to us, putting the music in the context of what was happening for its composer, after which he delivered vivid and characterful performances of the pieces in question. And though his rendition of the programme’s final work, Beethoven’s titanic Op.57 Sonata, the Appassionata, didn’t quite display the consistency of execution enjoyed by the other pieces on the programme, it was nevertheless performed with much the same whole-heartedness and engagement with the music.

Beginning the program was an earlier Beethoven work, though one hardly less epic in its way than the Appassionata. This was the piece which came to be known as the Eroica Variations, due to its theme’s subsequent reappearance in the finale of the composer’s eponymous Symphony No.3 (the Eroica), which Beethoven completed in 1804, two years after the “theme and variations” piano work. There are fifteen variations and a fugue, and , as with the symphony’s finale, the first few variations focus on the bass-line, gradually adding fragments in each succeeding variation until the “theme proper” grandly comes into being – a most exciting and satisfying process to listen to.

Treviranus took us through this process of fruition with tremendous élan and vivid detailing, at once galvanizing our sensibilities with an arresting opening chord, then deliciously playing with the bas theme’s opening notes, contrasting their delicacy and reserve with his forthright response to Beethoven’s three “call-to-arms” notes in the melody’s second half. We were thus straightaway ignited, energized, charmed and exhilarated by the music in the pianist’s hands in a way that focused our listening for what was to follow.

The Variations then took the stage, each with its own singular character, Treviranus bringing out the detail as vividly as the whole – my notes contained responses such as “I like his strut!”, “beautiful liquidity”, militaristic jog-trotting”, “amazing hammering of the bass chords”, “a murmuring, almost Schubertian left-hand”, “poised and ritualistic” ….and so on. It was like a fantastic carnival procession of different, but equally purposeful presentations.

The complex “maggiore” finale sounded very modern in places in Treviranus’s hands. The music presented us with what seemed like incredible transports of delight on the composer’s part – Beethoven speaking with the “Spirit” – before the fugue tripped its way into the picture, voices dovetailing with both charm and quirkiness. I like the pianist’s enjoyment of pianistic sonorities, conjuring up sounds that the composer may well have himself imagined, far in excess of the limited range and dynamism of the instruments he would have heard before his hearing became impaired.

Last year Treviranus gave a recital which included pieces by Austrian-born Paul Schramm, and did so here again, with a different set of works this time round. Refugees from Nazi oppression, Schramm and his Dutch wife Diny settled in New Zealand in the late 1930s, but were treated with suspicion by the New Zealand Government during the war years. Leaving his wife and son in New Zealand after the war Schramm went to Australia to reactivate his career as a piano virtuoso. However, the privations of the war years had taken their toll, and his success was short-lived. He eventually gave up music as a career and rather ignominiously became a door-to-door salesman. He never returned to New Zealand and died in Brisbane in 1953.

As if to help redress the balance of wrongs a little, Treviranus had recently resurrected some of Schramm’s compositional output for piano – most of which is still in manuscript in the Alexander Turnbull Library’s music collection. This new offering was presumably put together as a kind of suite by the composer with the somewhat disturbing title Mania. They’re rather Bartokian-sounding pieces, with hints of other composers thrown in, psychological in effect, rather than pictorial, and in the case of the final piece, oppressive and gloomy.

First up was a piece with the title Savage March, music which reminded me by turns of Gershwin and Percy Grainger – Treviranus’s playing generated real swagger and energising momentum, bringing out the angularities of a 7/4-like section and a cataclysmic csacading sequence at the end. The second piece, Gaiety, seemed ironic as a title, as the music suggested a kind of “mouse-in-a-wheel” claustrophobia, though relieved by a groovier middle section.

Two diametrically opposed opposites followed: Hilarity presented a dancing, if dogged kind of humour, with a three-note chant repeated somewhat artlessly at the end, while the black opening chords of Defeat came as a terrific shock, its grim and oppressive trajectories reminiscent of Musorgsky’s “Bydlo”. The music’s loneliness and despair was relieved only by occasional pinpricks of light, notes from a toybox kind of tune sounded as if part of a dream relieving sorrow. But it was to no avail, as the bleakness loomed up spectre-like once more, dragging the music towards a kind of oblivion.

Respite from such privations came for us with the interval, and then with some of Edvard Grieg’s adorable Lyric Pieces, the Op.54 set of six. (Incidentally, the first four of these went on to achieve wider fame when orchestrated as the Lyric Suite.) The composer said he wanted with these pieces to create “simple dwellings in which people might feel happy” – he certainly would have been charmed with Ludwig Treviranus’s playing, which caught whole worlds of flavoursome atmosphere, incident and feeling.

Beginning with the Shepherd Boy, the pianist realised the music’s gentle, solitary melancholy from the beginning, though I would have liked him to have given more air and space to those gently cascading triplet runs whose impulses adroitly modulate the music upwards and “tell” so poignantly…but this was otherwise a beautiful and thoughtful performance. The other pieces were unalloyed delight – Treviranus quite deliciously orchestrated the Ganger (March), the forward movement so easeful and redolent of its surroundings, allowing plenty of both airy textures and deeper resonances.

As for his playing of the very first note of the Nocturne, his touch proclaimed the presence of a poet at the piano, while his rumbustious approach to the March of the Dwarves forcefully brought out the piece’s “Mountain King” grotesqueries. Two lesser-known pieces remained, the Scherzo glinting with magical, elfin qualities, while the simple, but richly evocative Ringing Bells seemed to anticipate Arvo Pärt’s tintinabulations in a similarly bracing, out-of doors way. In all, I thought it a most treasurable performance which gave the music its proper stature.

And so we were brought to the granite-like entranceway of Beethoven’s imposing Op.57. Treviranus “squared up” to the opening measures with impressive gravitas, conjuring up the “elemental” nature of the sounds with great conviction. The second subject, a cleverly inverted version of the opening, was here kept on the same kind of trajectory, allowing for little false relaxation, and keeping the overall purpose in view. I did think some of the pianist’s responses to the music’s agitations more febrile than elemental, as if at times the fingers ran ahead of the notes (even losing the line momentarily during the development, but getting the argument back on the rails with real determination!)……it was as if he felt the need to “push” the music in places rather than trusting in and going with the piece’s own inner momentum.

After wrestling titanically with the first movement’s combatative aspects, Treviranus took us into the relative tranquility of the theme-and-variations second movement, which, apart from an anxious moment or two from the pianist’s fingers, flowed inexorably towards the threshold of the maelstrom to follow. The finale’s incredible swirling aspect was vividly engaged, the playing leading us square-shouldered through the flailing agitations and brooding intensities which by turns took the music over. Though a flourish was dropped through misdirection at one point, other sequences were splendidly realised – for instance, the “stamping” passages preceeding the recapitulation thrilled with their power, the music not rushed but kept steady and inexorable, allowing those cosmic impulses to speak with their own inherent force.

To my great delight, Treviranus included the movement’s second-half repeat this time round (I heard him about a year ago play the work without it). I thought a bit more right-hand assertiveness was needed from the pianist in sounding the alarm before plunging the music afresh into the development’s black-browed tumult – but still, this gesture most satisfyingly pushed out the music’s vistas, past any residual concert-hall confines that might have hung grimly onto the proceedings up to this point. From here, the performance moved into the realms of classical tragedy, the arpeggiated recitative passages charged with foreboding, the rhythms gathering power and weight with uncompromising focus, and the coda positively juggernaut-like in its relentless physicality. It was playing that risked everything and delivered for all of us a cathartic sense of coming through with the ringing out of those final, defiant chords.

Typically, the pianist then did two things which perfectly expressed both his and our somewhat rung-out state amid those magnificent resonant ruins of the music’s dissolution – he first of all announced that he was “ready for a beer, now!”, and then sat down to help us return to our lives by playing for us a beautifully expressed encore (straight after the Appassionata? – was the fellow mad?)…..this was another of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, one called Summer Evening, which gently brought our sensibilities back from wherever they’d been flung in the cosmos, so that we could all go back to our “simple dwellings” once again and feel happy.

Emma Sayers – piano recital of connections, dedications and premieres

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series presents:
CONNECTIONS, DEDICATIONS – a piano recital by Emma Sayers

W.A.MOZART – Variations on “Unser dummer Pöbel meint” K.455
JACK BODY – Five Melodies (1982) – No.5
ROSS HARRIS – For Judith Clark (2011)
DAVID FARQUHAR -Telephonic No.13 (721-230) – Eve Page
DOUGLAS LILBURN – 9 Short Pieces – Nos 1,2DAVID FARQUHAR – Black, White and Coloured – (Homage to G.G.)
ANTHONY RITCHIE – Three Pieces for J.A.R. – Fanfare / Aria for Anita / Perpetua

Emma Sayers (piano)

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

Wednesday, 22nd June 2016

Emma Sayers began her recital with the Mozart Variations, then spoke briefly to us by way of welcome, outlining how the remainder of the program had come about. She had been approached by composer Anthony Ritchie to perform a set of pieces written in memory of his parents, the whole (Three Pieces for J.A.R) named for his father, John Ritchie, with one of the set (Aria for Anita) remembering the composer’s mother. Incidentally, the work was originally commissioned by (and dedicated to) Margaret Nielsen, a long-time friend of John Ritchie.

Almost straightaway the pianist was, she told us, reminded of other music written by people either associated or contemporaneous with John Ritchie, which she thought would “sit alongside well” in a larger tribute – hence the “Connections, Dedications” title of the recital. The Mozart Variations on “Unser dummer Pöbel meint” was, however, a separate goal marking a return to solo public performance, and put in an amusing context by the pianist as, in her own words, “something I couldn’t manage when I was pregnant, because my tummy kept getting in the way of the arm-crossings”.

I was surprised that it had been such a long time (May 2005) since I’d last written about an Emma Sayers solo recital – her playing of the Variations certainly underscored the things I wrote about her then, and served to remind us of what we had been deprived on in the interim. That particular solo appearance was prior to Middle C’s formation, so I feel justified in quoting from my notes for the radio review, regarding her playing of Bartok’s Op.6 set of 14 Bagatelles – “…Sayers took us on a marvellous journey through what seemed like the “landscape of a musical mind” with all its individualities and influences….” as those words applied equally to what she gave us here of Mozart’s at St. Andrew’s.

The first thing which struck me was her playing’s vivid and forthright character, contrasting the contained, tasteful treatment of the theme with the full-blooded flourishes of the first variation’s phrases, done with flair and theatricality. At the risk of thumping a particular tub of mine, I feel compelled to venture the opinion that this was “timeless” Mozart-playing in an entirely appropriate grand piano context, the piano used to “orchestrate” the music in a way that the composer could well have imagined himself, though never actually experienced as sound coming from his own instruments.

Again and again I found myself marvelling at Sayers’ ability to invest her phrasing with some ineffable impulse of characterization which compelled one’s attention, at one and the same time realizing and transcending the composer’s “classical” context and bringing into play something intensely and universally human about the music. It all seemed so “free”, so spontaneous and alive – and yet Mozart was always Mozart, even if such energy and physicality might be thought more the preserve of Clementi or even Beethoven. By way of “exploring” the theme rather than merely decorating or prettifying it, Mozart employed a range of expression here brought out by the pianist in as direct and unmannered a way as seemed possible.

If it seemed like a recital of two, or even three parts on paper, in practice there was no lessening or burgeoning of intensity in Sayers’ playing from the Mozart throughout to the home-grown items assembled to “connect with” and pay tribute to John Ritchie and his music. Beginning with the last in the set of Jack Body’s Five Pieces for Piano, we were taken by the music to a world of light and shade, its components turning and flickering like a magic kind of kaleidoscopic wheel, and bearing our sensibilities unobtrusively but gradually into different realms, from which we emerged changed, our delight replaced by sobriety at the transitory nature of things, at the piece’s end.

Ross Harris’s work For Judith Clark, was written by its composer for the 80th birthday of one of Wellington’s foremost piano teachers (and, appropriately enough, played here by an ex-pupil, who had also played the piece at her former teacher’s’s funeral, in 2014). It’s a beautiful, sonorous piece, taking shape like some kind of frozen soundscape being brought into view and explored from different points. Deeply-rooted frameworks were laid down, and set against the play of light on the various surfaces, the pianist ensuing the serenity of the hues were occasionally enlivened by volatilities, an evocation of a goddess whose aspect occasionally flashed and scintillated, giving fair warning to those in close proximity.

Next we heard a work Sun and Shadow by David Farquhar, one of a number of pieces called Telephonics that he composed for various friends and associates, using their telephone numbers as a basis for the pieces’ composition. Farquhar stressed that the pieces were intended as a series of “musical offerings” rather than as “portraits” of the people involved. This was a piece dedicated to the artist Evelyn Page, and, by association, her husband Freddie Page, who established the Victoria University Music Faculty in 1945, which Farquhar himself was to join in 1953 after his return from a period of study at London’s Guildhall. The music conjured up an impressionistic effect, with resonantly flowing harmonies and brilliantly-etched flashpoints, Sayers allowing their interactions plenty of room to “play out” and eventually subside within the piece’s enfolding silences.

The last time I heard Emma Sayers at an actual keyboard was when she gave a performance of Douglas Lilburn’s Nine Short Pieces in conjunction with Stroma, who performed responses by various composers to each one of the pieces. Here, she revisited the first two of the Nine Pieces by way of paying tribute both to the composer and to Margaret Nielsen, to whom Lilburn in 1967 gave a bundle of unpublished pieces of piano music, collectively labelled “Crotchety at 51!” along with the words “See what you can make of these”. Nielsen was, of course, Lilburn’s “preferred interpreter” of his piano music, and had given the premieres of many of the individual works, so it seemed logical that he would entrust her with the task of creating some order from the apparent chaos.

Sayers in her notes talked about the “searching quality” and the “quirky character” of the pieces, and her remarks were borne out by the performances we heard, the first piece epic, jagged and far-flung, the second impish, angular, questioning and wryful. Again, it was the “character” of each piece which was unequivocally presented to us – under Sayers’ fingers, the music in both instances seemed to know exactly what it was doing.

David Farquhar’s music again featured, this time a piece from a different collection of pieces, entitled Black, White and Coloured. This was one called Homage to G.G. (George Gershwin) – a brilliant transcription of the song I got rhythm, flavoured by the technique of writing for one hand on the white keys of the piano, and for the other on the black, resulting in some ear-catching sonorities. Sayers gave the accented phrasings just the right amount of “ginger”, bringing out the piece’s drolleries at the beginning and unerringly building the music’s trajectories towards the bluff humour of the ending.

And so to Anthony Ritchie’s commemorative Three Pieces for J.A.R. – music intended by the composer to reflect different aspects of his father, John Ritchie’s life. Before the pieces were played, Anthony RItchie spoke briefly and movingly about Margaret Nielsen’s friendship with and support of his father over the time of their association. The first part of the work, Fanfare, marked John Ritchie’s long involvement with brass players, both in bands and orchestras, using a simple, chant-like figure at the beginning subjected to all kinds of different harmonic modulations, some progressive, others all elbows and knees, harsh and abrupt. A deep-toned, briefly sounded sequence made a humourful ending to the piece.

The second piece, Aria for Anita, brought Anita Ritchie, John’s wife into focus – making reference to her soprano voice, Anthony RItchie quoted part of Solveig’s Song from Grieg’s Peer Gynt, one of her favourites. The music’s recitative-like opening suggested a high voice at first, then varied the line with an alto-like response, the phrase-ends coloured at several points with the interval of a fifth. The music seemed to accrue its own ambient warmth, figures sounded out and then left to resonate as a context in which newer motifs could appear – a deep, rich bitter-sweet climax grew out of the exchanges,  as a strummed accompaniment to the soprano/alto voice exchanges allowed the music to deepen and linger before gently disappearing.

From the silence came Perpetua, the final movement, the upward-thrusting opening shared between the hands before changing into an attitude-driven march rhythm whose insistence scintillated into cascades of figurations, the repetitions making their own rhythmic patterns in lime with the “perpetual motion” suggested by the piece’s title. Having scattered all before it, the music then irradiated the textures with Ravel-like scintillations, even-handedly defining the heavenly vistas while at the same time plumbing the depths. Anthony RItchie in his notes alluded to the old prayer which included the phrase “perpetual light”, suggesting the soul’s continuing journey through what the composer called the “starry nothingness” of the ending.

All of this was delivered by Emma Sayers with what seemed and felt like complete identification with the music’s natural, spontaneous outpourings. Nothing in the music was forced or unduly amplified, but allowed instead by the pianist its own range of mellifluous voice-soundings which readily  put across the composers’ intentions. In a relatively short time we had been taken through an exploration of some magnitude across the face of people’s lives and sharply-focused creative achievements. I felt at the end of it all we couldn’t have had a more inspirational guide at the piano throughout our journey.

Feast of music, art and ambiences – NZTrio’s “Zoom” at Wellington’s City Gallery

Posted on by Alan Wells

NZTRIO: “ZOOM” AT CITY GALLERY
NZTrio: Justine Cormack (violin), Ashley Brown (cello), Sarah Watkins (piano)

John Musto: Piano Trio (1998)
Chris Watson: Schemata – three views of an imaginary object (2009)
Elliott Carter: Epigrams (2012)
Alexander Zemlinsky: Trio in d minor, Op. 3 (1896)

City Gallery, Wellington

16 June 2016

Appearances of NZTrio at the City Gallery are always a special event. There’s the wine, the fruit juices, the food, the opportunity to meet interesting people, the art (in this case, quirky, occasionally beautiful, watercolours by Francis Uprichard). Oh, and there’s the music.

A feature of NZTrio presentations (this one titled “Zoom”) is their inclusion of New Zealand work. Often it is specially commissioned, as were the David Hamilton and Ken Young pieces in their preceding concerts. Schemata, however, was composed when Chris Watson was Mozart Fellow at Otago University, and premiered by another group. From his early work as a recent graduate (such as …vers libre… and Derailleurs, heard at the Nelson Composers Workshops around 2002 and 2003, Watson has demonstrated an ability to create an ebb and flood of tension while using an atonal, semi-serial idiom – no mean feat in the absence of a sense of harmonic direction (an exception is the bass clarinet solo Mandible, which I’ve never warmed to: it seemed to me like a collection of effects). In the three movements and three minutes of Schemata, pauses separate terse gnomic gestures (Webern lives!), with Cormack’s violin, Brown’s cello and Watkins’ piano each taking turns to begin each movement. The tension and resolution comes in the late climax of the last few moments, where dense flourishes are beautifully resolved into piano resonance. A miniature masterpiece.

Epigrams was Elliott Carter’s last composition, written when he was 103. The first of the twelve short pieces felt very much in the same world as Watson’s. But I soon got an impression of a different, distinctive musical voice. Chamber music is commonly described as a ”conversation among musicians”, and Carter took this one step further: the rhythms are characteristically speech-like, the “conversation” often brought to a peremptory full stop by a flourish, chord or note from on of the instruments (typically the piano).

John Musto, another American composer, has some 41 years to go to reach 103. His two-part Piano Trio might be thought of as “polystylistic”, but within a fairly narrow range of styles – there is little that is Watsonian or Carterish here. The minimalistic rippling arpeggios on Watkins’ Bechstein (Steinway? Nein way!) might have been something from Philip Glass, with elegantly flowing melodic lines from Carmack’s violin and Brown’s cello – these elements return in a kind of informal rondo. There are light fast sections that suggest Prokofiev, there are jazzy syncopations, there is a hint of tango right near the end, and there are passages of rich, almost schmaltzy Romanticism: was Musto being sincere, or was he being ironic, “sending it up”? I can’t make up my mind. But the members of the Trio played it with absolute conviction.

Rich (and sincere) Romanticism was the hallmark of Alexander Zemlinsky’s 1996 Trio. Brahms saw the score (in the original version with clarinet) and was impressed. Though Zemlinsky was a pupil of Bruckner, and later a teacher (and brother-in-law) of Schoenberg, I heard little of either composer in this Trio (at a stretch, a few sequences, and descending pizzicato lines on the cello, could have come from Bruckner). What I heard was overwhelmingly Brahmsian, densely written, even overwritten, especially in the first movement. In the second, Watkins’ solo piano interlude, and Carmack’s ghostly high violin, offered welcome relief, as did the lively finale, with more of Brown’s cello pizzicato.

This concert showcased one of New Zealand’s top ensemble’s mastery of a wide range of repertoire (familiar and – in this case – unfamiliar), as well as their admirable commitment to New Zealand music.