Tag: New Zealand music

Welllington Chamber Orchestra – significant, important, moving……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:
LILBURN AND VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

LILBURN – A Song of Islands / Symphony No.1 (1949)
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Concerto for Tuba in F Minor / Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1

Naomi Christensen (tuba)
Ian Ridgewell (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 20th September, 2015

A significant, important and moving concert. Significant? – with two works by Douglas Lilburn included, the orchestra splendidly commemorated the composer’s 100th birthday year. Important? – the concert included in the programme Lilburn’s First Symphony, one that ought to be in our main-centre orchestras’ regular concert repertoire, but is hardly ever played – see “Stop Press” below, however. Moving? – the concert was dedicated by the orchestra to the memory of one of its members who had recently died, the well-known luthier and ‘cellist, Ian Lyons.

Besides the actual concert, two of Ian Lyons’ close friends, Chris and Anna Van Der Zee, together with the NZSO’s Alan Molina and former principal ‘cellist of the same orchestra, David Chickering, played, at the beginning of the second half, the slow movement from Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major Op.20 No.4. – a beautiful and appropriate gesture.

Conducting the orchestra for the concert proper was Ian Ridgewell, English-born with a background in tuba-playing, composition (he studied with with Sir Malcolm Arnold) and conducting, both of brass bands and symphony orchestras, currently living and working in the Wellington region as a teacher of music. And, to add to the concert’s interest, one of the items was none other than a Tuba Concerto by Vaughan Williams, played by Naomi Christensen, who was awarded “Brass Player of the Year” for 2014 at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music here in Wellington. We were told, in a brief biographical note in the program, that her “journey with the Tuba” began at aged ten, “from atop a pile of ‘phone books (allowing her to reach the mouthpiece)” – presumably not just the telephone’s, judging by the skill and ease with which she handled her instrument.

For the orchestra it seemed no easy task to tackle not merely one, but TWO challenging pieces by Lilburn. Though the Symphony is the later work, it seemed to me that the “Song” was in some ways just as difficult a nut to crack, both technically (it contained some extremely difficult string-writing) and interpretatively (needing a strong and secure “overview”, without which the music would have simply wandered and become shapeless and confused). To both the players’ and the conductor’s credit these things were well-attended to, the playing focused and detailed, the overall view purposeful and clearly laid out as the piece progressed.

The music opened strongly and emphatically, given enough space to allow the rolling phrases plenty of room and the brass plenty of time to expand. I enjoyed the prominence given to the finely-crafted appearances of those warm, golden harmonies which seemed to impart a glow over the vast oceanic spaces and the ruggedness of the terrain. Importantly the conductor maintained tight rhythmic control, designed to keep the music’s underlying pulses alive, while capturing detailings like the oceanic swells and the contours of the freshly-discovered landscapes.

Throughout the strings and winds had a somewhat volatile interaction, each having a turn at being either thematic or rhythmic – in some places the debt by Lilburn to Sibelius was palpably demonstrated,  but invariably with a South Seas accent. These exchanges were punctuated by moments of great splendour on the brasses, sounding the composer’s “song” while the rest of the orchestral textures kaleidoscopically energized and interacted with great volatility. The ecstasy of fulfillment at the end as strings and then brass “humanized” the orchestral textures brought out some great playing from all concerned.

Something completely different was the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto, a work which has provoked divided responses among listeners and critics ever since its composition in 1954, but which has steadily increased its following and popularity, having since been recorded over a dozen times. It’s a fine, jovial work, rumbustious in the outer movements and surprisingly expressive in the central Romanza movement. What a performance here from this young musician! With on-the-spot support from conductor and orchestra, Naomi Christensen and her alter ego of an instrument brought out all of the music’s character, to begin with bluff good humour, and then plenty of swagger and wry rhythmic agility both in the second subject section, and throughout the jaw-dropping cadenza.

That legendary tuba-playing raconteur Gerard Hoffnung would have , I’m sure, enjoyed her playing immensely, both here, and in the nostalgia-tinted central movement, where the soloist “partnered” the string melodies at the outset, later adding occasional piquant touches, rather like what an observer would do while walking through the midst of a glorious landscape. As for the last movement, the solo instrument was hardly silent, leading the bucolic romp with great élan, the orchestra allowed only a tiny moment of self-contained glory just before the final cadenza – again, masterly playing from the soloist, wryly-expressed rhetorical gestures with wonderful trills, and a cataclysmic “all fall down” finish. Glorious and memorable!

And what a lovely contrast the same composer’s Norfolk Rhapsody No.1 made in the concerto’s wake – At first the single lines of the opening (oboe and strings) sounded a little raw, but with the clarinet’s entry and the string harmonies warming the textures, the sound sweetened and began to glow – the principal viola, Stephanie van Dyk, deservedly singled out afterwards for a beautiful bit of solo playing, with the clarinet closely in support. I thought the ambient vistas were captured most effectively by the winds, both solos and concerted work with the strings, the oboe especially coming into its own here and delivering some lovely lines. An almost Delian sweep was achieved, the tutti delivering the rhapsodic aspect of the music splendidly and richly.

The maritime-like tunes which launched the allegro section came together after a slightly ragged start, establishing a characteristic gait and building, with brass and percussion, to a stirring climax, before the sounds began taking their leave of us, gradually returning to the solitary ambiences of the opening, winds giving us a valedictory version of the opening melody and the brasses softly chiming in with a slower haunting reminiscence of the central dance. At the end the oboe and strings, now thoroughly acclimatised, gently and sensitively sounded those opening strains as if it had all been a dream.

After the interval it was to the business of the Lilburn Symphony that we all turned. It began most promisingly, a bright, breezy trumpet call activated the echoes and ambiences, allowing a lovely Copland-esque feeling (I had, I confess, the previous evening, heard the NZSO play the Four Rodeo Dance Episodes!), with the dancing rhythms kept steadily on the rails. There’s such great brass writing in this work and the players here did so well, even if the St.Andrew’s ambience made them sound too uncomfortably close in places. The movement abounded in tricky dovetailings which conductor Ian Ridgewell and his players brought off so well, some sticky moments apart. The brass and winds were mostly right “on”, the wind lines in particular very tangy and earthy, while the strings strove mightily, recreating those characteristic tightly-knit tensions that make up the Lilburn sound.

So I was disappointed that, after maintaining such strong and secure trajectories for his players throughout and up to this point, the conductor then, I thought, pushed the slow movement along too quickly – the players seemed unable to settle, to properly hook into that obsessive rhythmic pattern, with the slight lack of synchronization producing a somewhat raucous result in places. Fortunately, once the brass were given their heads the rhythm seemed to steady – the horns were particularly steadfast, here, and things seemed to come together – how bleak at its centre some of this music is! And why don’t our orchestras play it more often?

The finale excitingly and abruptly unfurled, like a vast curtain being thrown suddenly open! – dark, almost Tapiola-like statements from the strings created a brooding, expectant atmosphere, the winds and brass soundinging particular “northern”, with moments of sunlight breaking through the clouds and just as quickly disappearing. When the rhythmic explosion suddenly drove detail into a frenzy, with warning shouts from the wind and brass, I was afraid that, again, the tempi would be too quick for these players – and indeed, some of the articulation was a blur at this speed – but mixed with the scrambling aspect was a certain edge-of-seat excitement, which saw the music through. Everything was excitingly capped by the brass and timpani, even if I felt the strings in particular were put under a lot of pressure in places.

The music’s sudden plunge back into the void of the movement’s opening was splendidly done – strings were angsting and winds were skirling in fine style – and those great building-blocks of sound which grew out of the built-up energies were here most satisfyingly sounded by the brass and timpani, a mighty and well-deserved sense of arrival, one which we in the audience truly relished. So, in all, warmest congratulations to conductor Ian Ridgewelll and his band of sterling musicians!

STOP PRESS: I’ve beaten my breast a couple of times in this review as to the relative neglect of this music over the years, but am equally excited to report that the Te Tōkī NZSM Orchestra’s planned Lilburn concert on Thursday October 1st at the Basilica in Hill Street, ALSO features this same First Symphony (as well, incidentally, as – you’ve guessed it! – Vaughan Williams’ Norfolk Rhapsody No.1!) So, as a change from famine conditions, it’s good to be able to enjoy, in the case of this remarkable symphony, a feast!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aural (and visual) feast from Stroma at the Wellington City Gallery

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Stroma, Wellington’s contemporary music ensemble, presents
INTERIORS

Music by Alison Isadora, Michael Norris, Jeroen Speak and Jack Body

Stroma
Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington City Gallery,
Civic Square, Wellington

Sunday 30th August, 2015

Contemporary music ensemble Stroma performed at the Wellington City Gallery, in a space flanked on three sides by images created by photographer Fiona Pardington, whose exhibition “A Beautiful Hesitation”, brought an additional resonant and interactive context to the “sounded out” work of the composers. As the images suspended objects in time for us to register our thoughts and feelings about them, so too did the music seek to impinge its sound-impulses upon our sensibilities and memories – each a process of entrapment, display, re-evaluation and judgement, fascinatingly juxtaposed.

Stroma’s artistic director Michael Norris might well have been making reference to the visual exhibition as much as to his own work in the concert, when he wrote in his programme note regarding music and human memory,  and how it depends on “both the long-and short-term storage and recall of “aural echoes” of past events which might have occurred in the recent ….or distant past….”.  It’s a view of the process that accords with Fiona Pardington’s idea of photography’s power “to suspend time and interrogate our memories”.

On the programme was a world premiere – Jeroen Speak’s Eratosthene’s Sieve, written last year (2014) while the composer was the Creative New Zealand/Jack C.Richards Composer-in-Residence at Te Koko New ZEaland School of Music – and two other relatively recent works, Alison Isadora’s 2014 Point of Departure, and Michael Norris’s 2012 Time Dance. The fourth work was written by Jack Body, his 1987 piece called Interiors, which, as can be seen, gave its name to the concert.

Alison Isadora’s Point of Departure eponymously deserved its poll position in the concert, the music creating an “exotic” feeling of scene-setting for the listener’s delight and pleasure, with a string quartet’s distinctive timbres augmented by gong strokes and muffled drum-beats. The composer included lines from a work “Falling” by a Dutch Poet, Remco Campert, which I found singularly evocative:

In memory’s long fall
I seek the essential moment.
Above becomes beneath
and the earth comes swinging up.

She also pinpointed in her notes the “ferris wheel” idea, which, in the music is expressed as a feeling of ascending and then falling back, with throbbing pulsations underlining the sustained tones. So we got the occasional frisson of impulsive energy amid sostenuto likes, quite Debussy-like in effect, hence the slightly Oriental atmospheres generated, and an accompanying philosophic feeling that things are constantly in a kind of change, but return to their origins and begin, perhaps differently, all over again.

Amid the layerings and the explorations of these worlds in between, Alison Isadora’s disclosure of the circumstance of a colleague’s accidental death and how it coloured the piece’s second half added a whole new strata of response to the sounds for us, and deepening the ritualistic sense of it all – the percussive effects (snare-like drum beats and wood-block sounds were stinging, disruptive phrase-end punctuations which played their part in what the composer called the process of moving from anger to acceptance.

Michael Norris’s Time Dance, which followed evoked a markedly different kind of response from me, intrigued as I was by the prospect of the composer’s “deconstruction” of one of my favorite pieces of Baroque music, JS Bach’s Second Orchestral Suite (the one featuring the solo flute). The transformation was indeed a radical one – we were duly warned in the programme note as to the “subliminal” nature of our experience of the original piece’s essence!

This was a condensed concert version for piano quartet, presumably taken from Norris’s score for a 40-minute film “Time Dance”, a collaboration between the composer, choreographer/filmmaker Daniel Belton, and Good Company Arts. So we had four movements from the Suite, beginning with the Sarabande, followed by the Polonaise, Menuet and finally the Bandinerie. The Sarabande featured delicate piano figurations at the beginning, which strings turned into obstinate, enlivening the textures with pizzicati, the music resembling a mechanical device performing idiosyncratically, in places reverting to a “teashop” manner, with gestures resembling quasi-Viennese swooning.

Sustained arpeggiated notes from the piano began the Polonaise, the strings eagerly overlapping their figurations, the piano beautifully colouring each phrase’s flourish – the music’s phrases looped around, strung along, echoed and drew out, going into the stratospheric regions, giving us a sense of something suspended for all time. A contrasting response to this was provided by the Menuetto, the music busy, burrowing and motoric in the bass beneath sustained upper harmonies, the piano kaleidoscopically changing its chord-colours, and the phrases ending with upward-thrusting exclamations. The ‘cello kept the main rhythm going, but even its strength waned at the end as the music drooped and lay still.

The solo violin roused everybody in time for the Bandinerie with a cadenza-like sequence, everybody else joining in the ambient fun, the piano’s phrases and the strings’ tremolandi passages giving us a “lift” with their emphatic phrase-endings, and leading our sensibilities into and out of the thickets with their wonderfully unpredictable harmonic changes, everybody playing at their instruments’ extremities – as unpredictably, the music broke off into “other realms”, with harmonics and tremolandi from the strings, and curtain-opening-and-closing arpeggios from the piano. Bach may have been there subliminally, but I was too caught up in the here-and-now of it all to notice him!

Jereon Speak’s work Eratosthene’s Sieve was the evening’s world premiere, performed by an assorted ensemble of strings, flute, harp, accordion and percussion. The composer’s starting-point was the Greek philosopher Eratosthene’s “Sieve”, a device by which any prime number could be easily recognized, the music representing an attempt by its composer to similarly “sieve” his musical creations and constructions, and in the process discovering hitherto uncovered presences within this existing material.

Such a splendid array of instruments! – and how tellingly it all began, with breath (no tones) given by the accordion as a “gift of life” to the rest of the ensemble, whose initial pointillistic touches gradually became more animated with each succeeding wave of sound, the marimba, harp and vibraphone resonating magically. The music seemed to me to resemble an organic process at work (and, of course, maths, like music, is digitally, or step-wise organic), the coalescings seeking cues from their shared ambiences, and thus generating a definite sense of mutual expressiveness which informed each gesture.

Some Archimedian excitement then irrupted between ‘cello and percussion, stimulating what seemed like random, isolated responses from other instruments at first, all generating great excitement. The flute seemed to have a role of peacemaker towards the end of this sequence, as the energies dissipated, and a kind of “melting-down” of tones and their timbres, a “draining away” of energies, with the harp’s sustaining notes lengthening the shadows. Only the occasional flute scampering remained towards the end as a final act of impulse, the accordion’s breath evoking a dried leaf blowing across desolate desert sands at the piece’s end.

I was interested in the significance of the title Interiors given by Jack Body to his piece – he made many transcriptions of pieces of music from exotic places such as different regions of China, wanting in particular to capture some of the music from ethnic minority groups. These were undertakings that involved the making of “in situ” field recordings, and devising various instrumental “backdrops” to these recordings, to enhance the listener’s appreciation of the original music’s “interior”.  The work we heard tonight involved three separate recordings of ethnic performances, two instrumental and one vocal. The largest instrumental group of the evening was on hand to contribute various augmentations of these sounds.

First was that of a long-ge, a Sichuan version of a Jew’s harp, the recorded instrument’s easy, loping rhythm reinforced by clarinet and flute and joined by violin and ‘cello, with the piano adding its own excitement to the mix. Then, in contrast with the dance rhythms, the pianist “activated” the piano’s interior, the percussionist “bowed” the vibraphone and various scintillations held time and its passing in abeyance, leaving long exhalations of melody to drift lazily away. A lovely contrast to this was afforded by a recording of three women from Guizhou singing a forthright melody, the instrumentalists supporting and colouring their singing lines with lovely, long-held notes, and continuing to play over the spoken exchanges between the singers recorded on the tape in between verses.

Something of this “anecdotal” re-enactment technique also coloured the final recording, that of an ensemble, no less, of lusheng, the instrument a six-pipe bamboo mouth-organ common in the south of China, and throughout South-East Asian in various forms. A plastic westernized version of one of these was used by one of the ensemble, as the other instrumentalists supplied various counterpoints to the mouth-organ ensemble, and occasional hand-clapping, adding to the festive character of the piece – and we in the audience enjoyed (and joined in with) a delicious and spontaneous-sounding bout of giggling on the tape after the music finished! What a concert!

Clik the ensemble – you’ll be glad you did….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Chamber Music presents:
CLIK THE ENSEMBLE

John Chen (piano) / Natalie Lin (violin) / Edward King (‘cello)

ENESCU – Prelude and Fugue for solo piano
BRITTEN – Suite for Violin and Piano Op.6
GARETH FARR – Shadow of the Hawk
SCHUBERT – Piano Trio in B-flat Major D. 898

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 22nd August 2015

What a lovely idea for a concert! – each member of the “Clik the ensemble” trio was given the chance to shine more-or-less as a soloist in different works during the first half, while the second half featured all three musicians playing the programme’s major work. It’s almost certainly something that’s been done before, but surely no more enjoyably and successfully as happened here.

“Clik the ensemble” is a group made up of young soloists who were members of groups that won previous NZ Community Trust Chamber Music Competitions – John Chen in 2001 and both Natalie Lin and Edward King in 2005. All have since successfully participated in further competitions, and have now come together to share their love of chamber music for the benefit of audiences throughout the country, Welington being the mid-point of their tour for Chamber Music New Zealand.

The concert began with John Chen as soloist, playing the music of Roumania’s most famous musician, Georges Enescu. While more widely known as a violinist, (he was actually Yehudi Menuhin’s teacher, and in 1949 made a famous recording of Bach’s solo violin Sonatas and Partitas in 1949) he was obviously no slouch as a pianist (Alfred Cortot thought highly of his playing), and actually produced several works for the keyboard, including two full-scale sonatas.

John Chen played the Prelude et Fugue, which was written in 1903, when Enescu was just 22. It seemed to me to be a kind of neoclassical work (along the lines of Grieg’s “Holberg Suite”, though more harmonically discursive), one owing a great deal to Bach’s keyboard example. The Prelude’s festive character was brought out with the music’s middle section’s celebratory and clangorous sounds, the sounds then reaching sideways and outwards to harmonic realms that gave the music a wonderful, exploratory perspective. The bell-sounds eventually “morphed ” into slow, pendulous cadences with time almost standing still in between each chord – a breath-catching effect.

The fugue stole into this world via a distinctively ornamented figuration, one which rhythmically put me “off the scent” for a while until I got the music’s “schwung”. It all then took the form of variations which again felt celebratory, mirroring the first movement’s festive atmosphere. John Chen played the piece in a masterly fashion – of course he’s well-versed in music of contrapuntal nature, having performed the Well-Tempered Clavier in concert with great distinction. Such neoclassical interweaving held no terrors for his educated fingers and his lucid, far-reaching grasp of the overall structure.

The pianist didn’t, I think, overdo any particular aspect of the work’s character, but kept things ever so slightly enigmatic – we were left pondering as to whether the music was an act of homage to Bach (a kind of pastiche in the word’s best sense?), or a determinedly neoclassical work, one which unashamedly uses baroque music as a kind of “springboard” to revitalize present-day creativity (as Stravinsky was wont to try and do)? Chen didn’t nail the music’s colours to any particular mast, playing it as he would any of the “48” and letting the composer’s own piano writing suggest what it might – a masterly performance.

Benjamin Britten’s Op. 6 Suite for violin and piano followed bringing Natalie Lin to the platform with John Chen. Britten wrote this music partly in Vienna and then in London – he had won a scholarship to travel in Europe during 1934 and (as one would) spent some time in Vienna. The work had some success, being selected for performance at a contemporary music festival in Barcelona by none other than Anton Webern and Ernest Ansermet, two avant-garde “toughies” – which would have been powerful encouragement for a composer still in his early twenties.

I was really taken with Natalie Lin’s playing of this work, in particular the movements which allowed her acute sensitivity and infinite variety of bowing and mastery of subtle coloring to “speak”. It wasn’t commanding, big-boned playing, but she had all the technique required to front up to the opening abrasive declarations (Britten showing his youthful compositional muscles) – however, she came into her own in the more intimate parts of the work, especially the third-movement lullaby. Elsewhere, her playing had a wry alertness, a precise delineation which missed nothing, and which matched John Chen’s elegance and quickfire responses, their partnership making the concluding waltz movement an absolute delight.

One of New Zealand’s most high-profile composers is Gareth Farr, whose 1997 work Shadow of the Hawk, was written for the partnership of James Tennant and Katherine Austin. Like a lot of Farr’s music, it’s a high-impact, extremely physical piece to play “requiring considerable stamina” as the composer put it. One hears the influences of both the composer’s experiences in the percussion sensible “Strike”, and the impact made on his sensibilities by the gamelan orchestras he played in as a student. This work has wonderfully-wrought contrasts – heart-stopping ascents to other-worldly realms, violent hammerings and tightly-worked motoric passages, states of drifting reverie and long-drawn crescendo leading to spectacular climaxes. It proved a marvellous “work-out” for both performers.

The young ‘cellist Edward King took to these things like the proverbial duck to water – his playing impressed with its spontaneity and enjoyment of physical engagement. He and John Chen made the most out of each of the music’s sequences, their playing drifting with the music’s inwardness in the more dreamy sections and winding up the tensions to maximum effect for the physical outbursts whose volcanic irruptions caused much excitement, right through the mighty crescendo taking all of us to to the music’s galvanic tumble-down finish.

Having “showcased” the individual talents of these musicians the concert now presented their corporate abilities as “Clik the ensemble” – and in this work by Schubert the combination resulted in the most beautiful performance of this music I can remember hearing. Right from the opening the music’s lyricism and sense of well-being was strongly in evidence. I’ve heard performance of this music delivered heroically, lots of muscle and strongly-advanced cadences, making a thrustful and forthright impression, which I really enjoy – and I though that “Clik” , being of an impetuously youthful persuasion, would similarly tear into the music at the outset. So, it was with some surprise that I registered the playing’s poetry in motion, delivered with sufficient energy to advance the music’s cause, but not allowing a single kind of character to unduly dominate.

Later in the movement there were moments of energized excitement which of course stood out all the more, rather than being ongoing episodes in a kind of big-boned epic technicolour drama – here instead was both playfulness and poetry, the irruptions of impulse as delight in first sensations. What a good thing for us all that music is always more “complete” than it can ever be actually realized at one time, so that, however satisfying a performance, one can always look forward to something else being brought out and enjoyed the next time round.

This was an approach which allowed the players’ individuality to speak at certain points, with Natalie Lin’s soft playing once again an absolute joy, and providing the perfect foil for Edward King’s freshness and vitality. And John Chen’s infinite variety of touch and phrasing seemed endlessly responsive to what both of his partners were doing, creating a mellifluous “exchange of equals” for our constant pleasure.

Perfection? – well, the Scherzo might have been a bit more bucolic, a tad more rustic, merely as a more marked contrast to the beauty of the trio section and the sheer urbanity of the rest of the music. Having said that, in some performances I’ve felt the music of the finale actually borders in places towards the end on garrulousness, but there was none of that, here – one didn’t dare stop listening for fear of missing some felicitous detail, some sigh of remembrance or impish impulse of pleasure.

One will relish the opportunity, whenever it presents itself in future, to “Clik the ensemble” – the pleasures of doing so this time round alone will long be remembered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOME-GROWN SOUNDS OF CHARACTER

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Piano Music by Douglas Lilburn
(2015 – Lilburn 100th Anniversary)

Works and performers

Sonata (1949) – Jian Liu
Prelude (1951) – Gillian Bibby
Sonatina No.1 (1946) – Gabriel Khor
Sonatina No.2 (1962) – Louis Lucas-Perry
Three Sea-Changes (1945-81) – Jian Liu
Nine Short Pieces (1965-66) – Richard Mapp
Chaconne (1946) – Xing Wang
From the Port Hills (1942) – Gillian Bibby

Adam Concert Room, Kelburn Campus
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music

Friday 31st July 2015

Robert Hoskins’ typically perceptive programme notes for this concert quoted a significant remark made by painter Toss Woollaston to Douglas Lilburn, which the composer later recalled. Talking specifically about work by New Zealand artists, Woollaston stated that “environment should give it character”. Lilburn seems, on the showing of some of the most important of his piano pieces in this concert, to have taken Woollaston’s remark to heart.

One is tempted to suggest that this wasn’t music for the city-dweller by inclination – as with most of the work by one of Lilburn’s compositional heroes, Sibelius, these sounds consistently evoked a more-or-less solitary interaction with nature, evocations of wild, uncultivated spaces, with detail wrought by natural, rather than man-made forces. It’s a world that the average New Zealander still “knows”, even though many such environments are increasingly coming under threat of compromise by various hermetically-sealed variants of so-called “progress”.

However, in the Adam Concert Room, listeners were invited by the composer through his music and the excellent performances by different pianists, to re-explore and enlarge their experiences of and attitudes towards these worlds – here were works whose structures connected us with familiar, mainstream frameworks and procedures, but whose language brought those techniques into a more localized context of relevance and meaning. Tones wrought vistas of all kinds and characters known to us, while rhythms illustrated detailing of lines, textures and sounds readily associated with these places.

As with the music of Vaughan Williams (a tutor of Lilburn’s at the Royal College of Music in London), the pictorial and atmospheric qualities of these works were merely the beginning for the listener – it was the distillation of feeling that came of the interaction that mattered more, one that surprised by its depth (as Schumann said of listeners to his music) for “those who listen secretly”. All music has a “face”, supported by underlying flesh and bone, and more deeply, with a brain in behind – and here, Lilburn’s music, like any other composer’s when investigated properly, responded in its own unique and powerful way, with what pianist Margaret Nielsen, perhaps this music’s greatest interpreter, would undoubtedly call “character”.

Whatever one’s interpretation of the interpretative and listening processes, it became obvious as the evening went on that the music’s unique world was here responding to the enormous care and attention to detail demonstrated by each of the pianists called upon to pay homage to the composer to mark his hundredth anniversary birth-year. The performing line-up was indeed impressive, as much through its range and scope of age and experience as its remarkable consistency of executant skills and strongly-focused individual variation of interpretation.

Jian Liu, Senior Lecturer in piano at the NZSM, welcomed us to the concert, readily conveying both his delight in being able to celebrate such an important centenary with an event such as this, and his great respect for the composer’s work, before beginning musical proceedings with the Sonata (1949), music whose innate strength was here given a kind of tensile quality, played as it was with enormous thrust and volatility. The sounds have a geographical quality – the sky above, the earth below, the hills all around – and Liu’s “glint” of tone and spring” of figuration made certain utterances leap forward, while imparting great strength and depth to more reflective passages.

I’d forgotten how uncannily reminiscent this music was in places of Schubert’s A Minor Sonata D 784 (no great surprise, really, as Lilburn was a devotee of the composer), the sounds similarly resonating around great octave statements, and ringing with bell-like tones amid the more urgent figurations. However, being rather less concerned than Schubert’s work with human sorrow and solace, the lines here readily “wreathe” around and about the shapes of each of the landforms, drawing in and impulsively intertwining the human spirit with the strange wildness of it all. Liu’s playing generated pangs of loneliness at the slow movement’s opening, though he also caught the grace and ease of those rhythmic trajectories which beautifully leavened the tensions for a few precious moments. And he gave full play to, the granite-like sounds which welled up towards the end , and just as quickly dissolved.

The finale begins almost like a ritualistic Spanish dance, before presenting us with a kind of “song of the high hills”, the wanderer perhaps giving vent to energetic exuberance (and in the process disturbing rabbits who seem to scamper across tussockland in mock fright!). Expectations, doubts, fears and satisfactions cross the wanderer’s face as the journey is launched further into unknown regions, and the journeyman is left to go on alone.

Gillian Bibby was next, giving us the Prelude (1951), and demonstrating an entirely different quality of sound to Jian Liu’s, richer, mellower and deeper-voiced, not, I feel merely a matter of different music, but of the pianist putting all of herself “into” the sound-spaces with great feeling. Especially resonant were the great chordal passages in the piece’s middle section, the warmth and feeling of those rolled chords an almost palpable experience for the listener!

To Gabriel Khor was entrusted the Sonatina No.1, another piece which for me evoked the spirit of Schubert at the onset with a running octave figure, the mercurial lines punctuated with powerful chords, delivered with, by turns, poise and energy. In this music sounds of birdsong alternated with sterner realities, the throwaway ending of the movement a portent of further austerities (the work of an intense young man!). After this I thought the second movement’s ritual-like opening a kind of paean of praise of creation, the movement’s wonderful contrasts of tone and dynamics fully realized by the young pianist, with an especially sensitive, beautifully ambient stillness in places. Then, what quirkiness the finale surprised us with! And how cleverly the composer maintained the obsessiveness of the rhythmic patterning, while managing both lyrical and declamatory sequences woven into the textures – here, it was all given a creditable and accomplished performance.

How interesting to experience so many different pianists in a concert! For here was another young player, Louis Lucas-Perry, ready to tackle the Sonatina No.2. proclaiming his own way of doing things by promptly changing the piano stool, and then embarking upon the “rhapsody of natural immersion” which informs the work’s ringing, singing opening, the music seemingly living upon impulse, as if in the grip of a “bright dream”. Louis Lucas-Perry’s playing took us into this world of ambient entrancement, the music’s peregrinations coloured by impulsive nature-rhythms and textures rising out of the composer’s much-cherished “then-and-now”identifications, something of a “landscape and memory” realization.

Jian Liu returned after an interval with the well-known Three Sea-Changes, the title containing an oblique tribute to Shakespeare and his magical oceanic evocations.  The music draws from different times and scenarios in the composer’s life, the first bright and lyrical, recalling a mood of exultation, obviously a feeling he associated with Brighton, near Christchurch, one which Jian Liu “orchestrated” magnificently at the piece’s climax – how different to this “exuberant and sunlit” view is the second evocation, that of Paekakariki, which Lilburn called “a more expansive view”, one with much longer lines and swirls of impulsive energy, Debussian in their impressionistic colour, and creating far more of a solitary view than the opening piece. Finally the last piece is more of an inscape, here played with great sensitivity by Liu, mingling an inner tenderness with ceaseless oceanic murmurings. Margaret Nielsen has said that these three, independently-written pieces were brought together by the composer as a kind of commentary on the three stages of human life.

The next item, Nine Short Pieces, brought the all-too-infrequently-heard Richard Mapp to the keyboard to play parts of a collection once famously characterized by the composer to Margaret Nielsen as “Crotchety at 51”. She chose nine of the pieces the composer had given her, and put them in what seemed to her like an effective sequence. Robert Hoskins sees these pieces as a kind of extension of the “Sings Harry” song-cycle, Lilburn’s settings of Denis Glover’s poetry. Even without analyzing the music, one can hear things like the self-deprecation of “Harry” the hero of the poems, in sequences such as the mock-Gothic opening of the first piece, the speech-like exchanges of the third (the piano writing recalling Musorgsky!) and the spiky, almost twelve-tone character of the fourth – “Soliloquies for piano” would have suited these pieces as a title equally well, especially as reflections of the thoughtfulness of the composer’s other music and the wondrous results of parallel homegrown artistic activities wrought by his contemporaries.

Richard Mapp played them with characteristic insight, all such evocations and angularities delineated for our pleasure and wonderment. In his hands the opening piece rumbled and resonated amid punctuating shrieks, alarms and other surprises, suggesting a kind of “savage parade” to follow – an expectation completely disarmed by the quirkiness of the following “question answered by a question” exchanges, and after that, a twelve-tone-like series of impulses bristling with abrupt agitations. I enjoyed his lovely “voicings” in pieces like No.5 with its tenor-and-baritone duetting, the lines long-drawn and resonant Denis Glover’s “Harry” in full philosophical flight, perhaps?), and similarly relished his skilful treatment of the different “characters” of No.6 – cool, crystalline and sharp-edged lines set against wonderfully resonant and vibrant ambiences filled with light.

Set amid such characterful performances of the rest of his music, the great Chaconne here became a larger-scale version of Lilburn’s established preoccupations – the way into this music had, in other words, already been well-prepared. PIanist Xing Wang brought out those attendant resonances and after-glowings in her beautifully-shaped exposition of the work’s opening, giving the sounds plenty of space, and allowing the music’s shape to guide her in places. Here she encouraged the many celebratory cascades of sound to take on a kind of free-fall aspect, before rounding out our trajectories and leading us more circumspectly into the heart of what resembled a pulsating organism, her playing tracing the sounds along delicate lines reaching out to distant realms, as if defining the work’s spaces.

In general terms hers was a whole-hearted engagement with all of the piece’s requirements, were they massive, deeply-rooted chords, steadily-pulsed outlines of melody arching over great spaces, or skitterish irruptions of impulse scattering their energies like unexpected sunshowers. And at the end she made a virtue of the abrupt challenge of Lilburn’s Sibelius-like coda to the work, giving us a direct, straightforward statement of arrival, reminiscent of the final moments of the Finnish master’s Tapiola.

Finally, what better way to conclude this composer-tribute than to have one of the pieces performed by a fellow-composer? The task fell to Gilian Bibby, who gave us a rendition of the 1942 piece From the Port Hills, the surviving item from a collection of five Bagatelles written during Lilburn’s Christchurch years. One responded immediately to the pianist’s warm, beautifully-rounded tones, which imparted a Brahmsian feel to the textures in places, the sonorities at such times deliciously rich and deep at appropriate points, but serving to highlight the delicacy with which some of the secondary material was floated so freely and radiantly.

At the end one’s impression was of having experienced a truly significant and unique body of work – music whose sounds draw their inspiration from the places we ourselves know, and which we can justifiably claim as our own. Very great credit to Jian Liu, to the NZ School of Music, and to all the pianists who contributed to the concert. One feels certain the composer wouldn’t have wished for a better-organised and more satisfyingly-realised tribute in this “marvellous year”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mellifluous reeds hold sway at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series
NZSM Clarinet Students’ Presentation
Tutor: Debbie Rawson

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

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015

Having recently enjoyed the concert given by the NZSM’s saxophone students, I found myself looking forward to hearing their “wind cousins”, the clarinettists, do their stuff.

On the way to the concert I found myself thinking of what one would call a group of clarinettists  – of course, players themselves may well have devised their own unilaterally-accepted collective term, of which I’m unaware.  Nevertheless I had fun turning over words in my mind such as “colony” or “chorus” (both rather humdrum), before more enterprisingly (and more naughtily) entertaining descriptions such as “conundrum”, “coven” or “calamity”.

Whatever the case, and whatever the reality, there was certainly nothing calamitous about the playing of these young musicians. Right from the very beginning there was delight to be had, beginning with Laura Brown’s sensitive and flowing performance of the third Movement Andante Grazioso from Brahms’ First Clarinet Sonata. Especially winning was the player’s delivery of the Trio, beautifully withdrawn tones shaped convincingly into a whole, and with lovely support from the pianist, Hugh McMillan.

A different kind of sonority was presented to us by bass clarinetist Patrick Richardson, relishing the chance to demonstrate the distinctive tones and timbres of an instrument whose raison d’ete seems little more than to “double” other instruments’ lines in orchestral works.

I was delighted to encounter a work I’d never heard before, Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folksong. Written originally for ‘cello and piano, these pieces have been transcribed for any number of instruments, the bass clarinet being particularly suited to the composer’s original choice in terms of range and colour.

Patrick Richardson played these short pieces with such evocation as to banish thoughts of winter and take our sensibilities to times and places that seemed like a world away. I was particularly taken by the beauty of the playing in the fourth study, featuring a tune I didn’t know but which nevertheless seemed to open my “nostalgia floodgates” – this despite the somewhat quirky title of the original, “She borrowed some of her Mother’s Gold”. Again, there was support of great sensitivity from the pianist, this time Kirsten Simpson.

The relationship between clarinet and saxophone was underlined by the next item, featuring saxophonist Genevieve Davidson – an Etude (No.3 from a set of 15) written by Frenchman Charles Koechlin (1867-1950), a prolific composer who was a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel, and who associated with and influenced people like Poulenc, Roussel and Mihaud but whose music has been since overshadowed by theirs.

The études (written in 1942, for saxophone AND piano) are less “display virtuoso” pieces than “examinations” of the former instrument’s resources – and Genevieve Davidson’s gorgeous, seductive alto-sax tones brought out all of the music’s tender and contrastingly energetic characteristics. Her playing captured both the waltz-rhythms’ graceful manner and the livelier polka-like mid-section’s insouciance – a delightful performance.

Laura Brown returned with a small but heartfelt 100th birthday gift for composer Douglas Lilburn, in the form of the second movement from his 1948 Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano. We were told by Brown to “listen for the morepork during the music’s middle section”. Beginning with characteristic pianistic sonorities, the music allowed the clarinet some opening declamation before requiring from the player some deeply-wrought, withdrawn tones, pushing back the work’s vistas with every utterance – the morepork’s voice chimed clearly in the piano part. Apart from some difficulty in voicing one or two high-lying notes, Laura Brown’s sounding of the movement was as ambient, flowing and lyrical as one could wish for – a birthday treasure, indeed.

Came the colony/chorus/what you will onto the platform next to perform a different kind of delight – an arrangement for clarinet quintet (if I remember rightly, Debbie Rawson thought possibly by New Zealand composer Ken Wilson) of the allegretto movement of Beethoven’s Op.10 No.2 Piano Sonata. Joining Laura Brown and Patrick Richardson for this exercise were Jess Schofield, Rebecca Adam and Brendan Agnew.

Well, whomever “Anon” was, or is, the arrangement worked splendidly, in my opinion. Beginning with the bass and B-flat clarinets, the music’s purposeful opening gestures grew gracefully upwards to their flowering-points (with double-note figurations for Beethoven’s octaves when the passage was later repeated – a deft touch), the lighter-toned instruments nicely “opening out” the sonorities. The players beautifully observed the more “relaxed” aspect of the Trio section, giving the phrases time to breath, and affording some relief from the ever-so-slightly vertiginous swing of those opening ascent

The group sprung a nice surprise upon us at the piece’s conclusion – we were treated to an ungazetted performance of Bach’s famous “Air on a G-string” , again, an arrangement that fell most gratefully on the ear, the players sensitively augmenting the dynamics in places, which served to confirm something of the music’s inner strength and indestructibility.

Back to Genevieve Davidson and her saxophone, for a performance of music by another lesser-known French composer, Florent Schmitt (1870-1958), whose music is regarded in some quarters as “the greatest that nobody has ever heard of” – among the laudatory critical appraisals of his work that I found was the following: – “it (the music) shimmers with bold conviction, elemental intensity and and a fearless harmonic vocabulary”. Given that there’s nothing like a “cause” to bring out shoals of enthusiasm for a neglected genius, on the basis of the short but intensely beautiful work we heard, the rest of Schmitt’s output would be well worth investigating.

Songe de Coppelius was a work inspired by a well-known tale of E.T.A.Hoffman, one also used by another French composer Leo Delibes as the story for a full-length ballet, Coppelia. Brief, but in places hauntingly beautiful, the music’s depth of feeling was here expressed by both players, Genevieve Davidson coaxing from her soprano sax a beguiling variety of colours and dynamics. The music’s  sense of mourning at the outset was gently interspersed in places with more rhapsodic languishment – it all further demonstrated the innate musicianship and judgement of this gifted young player.

Finally we were treated to the distinctive timbres not merely one reed but two, in the form of a work for oboe, the instrument played by Annabel Lovatt. This was a piece by Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda (1801-1866) yet another prolific but neglected composer whose work was “given an airing” by people involved with this concert. Incidentally, “Kalliwoda” is the somewhat unfortunate Germanised version of the composer’s “proper” native Bohemian name, Jan Kalivoda, which I’ve actually never seen written as such on recordings or in reviews of his music.

Unaccustomed as I normally am to such things coming my way, I was pleased to be able to indulge in some one-upmanship regarding Kalliwoda’s name, as people I spoke with after the concert had never heard of him (I must, however, shamefully admit to not having heard any of his music!). Annabel Lovatt told us that at the time this work was written, pieces for solo oboe were rare indeed, and that she would “do her best” to bring it all to life for us. She was too self-deprecating, as she gave a terrific performance of what turned out to be a full-blooded virtuoso work.

Entitled “Morceau de Salon”, the music began gently on the piano, the oboe joining in with melancholy tones, here intoned beautifully, and confidently dealing with technical hurdles such as wide leaps and exposed phrasings with admirable fluency. As the piece proceeded the virtuoso demands made of the player seemed to crowd in, as if jostling one another out of the way – there may have been one or two notes missed in the florid hurly-burly, a phrase or two snatched at a little too eagerly – but Annabel Lovatt certainly engaged with the music, and emerged at the piece’s conclusion triumphant, having obviously given her “all”.

A highly entertaining and informative concert, then – expert playing and presenting of some highly diverting and fascinating music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Apprentice, La Mer, Ibert’s flute concerto and an enchanting francophone premiere from National Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by José Luis Gomez with solo flute, Bridget Douglas

Dukas: L’apprenti sorcier
Ibert: Flute concerto
Salina Fisher: Rainphase
Debussy: La mer

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 2 July 2015, 6:30 pm

The National Youth Orchestra has generally played a major symphony in the second part of its main annual outing (and this is its 56th year). They’ve included Mahler’s First and Seventh, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Fifth, Shostakovich’s Tenth, Rachmaninov’s Second, Brahms’s First and Second, as well as Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Also sprach Zarathustra, many taxing concertos and other large and challenging works. Back in 2007, they played La Mer (I’ve only looked back a dozen years); and they played it again here.

This concert was conducted by José Luis Gomez, a young Venezuela-born, Sistema-inspired musician who has already made an impact in North and South America as well as in major European cities (Hamburg, Frankfurt, Liverpool, Stuttgart, Madrid…) in both opera and orchestral performance. Though he appears not yet to have worked in France, his programme was almost wholly devoted to French music (one can easily argue that a young composer like Selina Fisher, is essentially a disciple of the Debussyish, French tradition) which calls generally for a different and in some ways more difficult aesthetic approach to music.

New Zealand’s musical future is in good hands with the continued flourishing of this orchestra (and let’s not forget the youth orchestras in all the major cities of New Zealand), with major support from the Adam Foundation over seventeen years, as well as from the NZSO itself.

L’apprenti sorcier
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not really a true representative of Dukas the composer. (I elaborate some thoughts about the contrasts between the classicists and the impressionists and the place of Dukas in the aesthetic quarrels of the period at the end of this review).

But Dukas was a skilled orchestrator and a gifted composer nevertheless.
It’s a brilliant composition, fully deserving its real popularity. The woodwinds’ opening was careful and wonderfully refined, and the strings, given their full orchestral complement (16, 14, 12, etc, -approximately) produced a warmly confident chorus, solo flute emerged with a big romantic vibrato and bassoons too came out of the shadows that usually envelop them.

Though there were occasional partings of the ways in ensemble, the conductor inspired enthusiasm and energy that overcame all; the brass was emphatically present in the chaotic climax as the apprentice loses control of the situation, to complete an exciting performance of this popular piece.

Ibert’s Flute Concerto
The orchestra was then thinned out to chamber size for the fastidious but animated flute concerto by Ibert, who was one of several French composers born around the 1890s who did not join Les Six (who have been celebrated this week as RNZ Concert’s ‘Composers of the Week’).

Though I suppose it would be nice for a soloist with the orchestra to be a current or recent player with them, the selection of NZSO principal flute Bridget Douglas, who moved through comparable paths in New Zealand, beginning in Dunedin, was inspired; at the time she might have been a member of the Youth Orchestra, she was probably studying on scholarships overseas. However both her demeanour and performance display an exuberant youthfulness.

Her acumen clearly elevated the orchestra’s performance in what is certainly one of the most familiar and successful flute concertos. The playing hardly touched the ground in the first movement, capturing what can only be described as the quintessential sound of French flute music, leading the orchestra in high risk-taking exploits (remember this is the composer of the vivacious Divertissement). In the sharply contrasted, sombre, legato Andante, the light seemed to have dimmed, exposing the orchestra’s, and the soloist’s, expressive talents as they explored Ibert’s command of a more thoughtful strain of 1930s French music, absorbing both the neo-classical and the satirical, flippant character that post-first world war music had acquired.

The start of the boisterous and memorable third movement proved a bit tough for the horns, but they were vindicated later. Its jazzy rhythms, decorated with the most hair-raising flute passages are interrupted twice with pensive episodes, allowing breathing space, and for unexpectedly lyrical playing from the flute, often in charming duet or trio with other wind instruments or the strings.

Salina Fisher’s commission
The tradition of commissioning a piece from a young composer has become established. This year the composer, has, as violinist, been an orchestra member since 2010 and was concertmaster in 2012/13; she is the orchestra’s Composer-in-residence this year and has won composition prizes at the New Zealand School of Music and the NZSO’s Young Composer’s Award in 2013 and 2014. Her music has been played by several overseas soloists and chamber ensembles.

The array of percussionists signalled a more than average interest in the strange and exotic sounds available these days from that department. As well as bowing on the edges of the xylophone, the most magical effects, sort of disembodied flute sound, came from Rachel Thomas bowing on crotales; and episodes of bouncing bows on strings and bows brushing tonelessly across stringed instruments, in large, synchronised, circular movements. It was as entertaining for the eyes as for the ears.

I was impressed by the composer’s notes that elaborated, not on the wearisome explanations like: ‘exploring of extended techniques that might enrich the experience of hearing the contrabassoon with its reeds removed, underwater’, but a description of the source of the sound – here rain falling – arising from actual events; for example, she writes: “the variation in sound and movement of raindrops depending on the material upon which they fall, and the texture created when these countless individual timbres and rhythms happen all at once”.

There were rather enchanting melodic fragments, rising and falling scales played softly on the two harps. But as well as these singular devices for the depiction of rain falling, there were blocks of brass in warm harmony, which in the end contributed to a remarkably attractive sonorous chorus in an exciting
crescendo.

La Mer
I was intrigued, considering the watery nature of the previous composition, at the choice of La Mer as the big, symphonic work on the programme. I’m assured that neither was programmed to complement the other: pure serendipity. Though not at all a symphony, it is of near symphonic length and has three movements (like the Paris and Prague symphonies of Mozart, if you care).

This too uses a big orchestra, three trumpets as well as two cornets, three bassoons and a contrabassoon, again the two harps and an array of percussion including glockenspiel, all used with purpose and sensitivity. At every hearing of this masterpiece I gain a little more clarity about its melodic and rhythmic content, how the fleeting, fugitive gestures and arabesques, relate and contribute to the bewildering tapestry. In the first movement, the orchestra captured the dim awareness of dawn with the woodwinds countering the threatening sounds of timpani and bass drum, and though there were momentary slips, the growing illumination that the performance created, the brightening glow of the horns midway in the movement, was marvellous.

The Jeux de vagues, sometimes referred to as a Scherzo, to me a misnomer, has the role of an at times playful, at times calm, symphonic middle movement; it brings the full light of day, not in an obvious, brash way, but through the fluency of flutes, always to be remarked, over bassoons and cor anglais, suggesting a friendly sea. The third part, Dialogue du vent et de la mer, opened with very enthusiastic timpani and brass, but the gorgeous, swaying tune and the vivid evocation of conflicting forces were magnificently rendered.

It’s not just that this music might mean/should mean something special to one who has lived all his life close to some of the biggest seas in the world; as one of the first really major works of the 20th century, it marks for me a more important and influential development than the intellectually driven inventions of Schoenberg and co was to do a few years later; and at least as significant as The Rite of Spring.

Naturally, much of the audience at such concerts comprises family and friends of the players, but they could not have so filled the MFC, showing that growing numbers of ordinary music lovers are realising that if the music is your primary interest, rather than a social event, as much delight and revelation is created in a Youth Orchestra performance of this calibre as with the NZSO itself.

 

Reflections on Dukas and Debussy:

Above, I touched on the place of Dukas, between César Franck and Debussy and the intermediate composers like Fauré and Chausson.

After the 1880’s, Debussy picked up the sense that composers like those and others had been hinting at in previous decades. Influenced by impressionist painting and symbolist poetry, he believed music was about nuances, colours and emotions, story-telling and scene painting; organically evolving melodic ideas and rhapsodic shapes.

Dukas was born into the era of Debussy (he was four years Debussy’s junior) but, while they were good friends, Dukas adhered to the model of César Franck and the more classical, Teutonic, tradition, and he was a passionate Wagnerian; while Debussy, very consciously a ‘French’ composer, had come to reject both Franck and Wagner. But their totally opposite views did not seem to affect the happy friendship between the two.

And although Debussy wanted no school of Debussyistes and didn’t much like Ravel who was his passionate admirer, Roger Nichols remarks in his New Grove article: “a list of 20th century composers influenced by Debussy is practically a list of 20th century composers, tout court”.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not truly representative of Dukas the composer. True, it was written four years after Debussy’s Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune, about the same time as Nocturnes, but while
the finger-prints of a brilliant orchestrator can be heard, there is as much Strauss as Chausson in it, and a lively imagination is needed to ascribe much to Debussy.

The programme note relates a Messiaen anecdote that suggests The Apprentice was intended as mockery of the Strauss’s symphonic poems, particularly Till Eulenspiegel, that were sweeping Europe at the time, but it is hard to believe that Dukas would have expended all that effort creating such a masterly and highly sophisticated score merely as a put-down of Strauss. My reading of Dukas’s personality and nature don’t suggest that sort of behaviour; after all he remained a good friend of Debussy even though Dukas was a traditionalist, a Wagnerian, and thus not too distant from Strauss’s musical values.

A commentator writes, for example: “While Debussy was forging esoteric links with symbolist poetry, Dukas had the effrontery to compose a symphony in plain C major!” The symphony is a close relative of Franck’s Symphony in D minor; Dukas wrote it in the same year, 1897, as The Apprentice. As for Dukas’s great piano sonata in E minor, it sounds like a fine piano work that Franck never wrote (and as a passionné of the latter, I expect that to be read as great admiration).

Anyway, as one of the disappearing generation who actually saw (and heard), very young, an early screening of the Disney film, Fantasia, in which Stokowski conducted the music along with the marvellous animated version of the Goethe story, the music has been embedded in me for a long time.

In thinking about these things, I fished out my copy of Roger Nichols’ Debussy Remembered which trapped me for a while; there were not many pertinent bits of letters from Dukas relating to Debussy apart from evidence of great warmth and mutual respect and affection. But it’s the sort of book that engrosses you with all sorts of interesting people, events and ideas.

 

 

Unmissable violin sonata programme from APO’s Canadian concertmaster and Sarah Watkins

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Andrew Beer (violin) and Sarah Watkins (piano)
(Wellington Chamber Music)

Beethoven: Violin Sonata in G, Op 30 No 3
Lilburn: Violin Sonata (1950)
Good: ‘And Dreams Rush Forth to Greet the Distance’
Bartok: Two Rhapsodies
Ravel: Sonata in A for violin and piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 21 June, 3 pm

The violinist’s name would have been new to Wellingtonians – the recently appointed Concertmaster of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra; the pianist however, is very well known. But the audience was disappointing: see comments in my Coda.

I think this programme, entirely of worthwhile, interesting works, but containing only one familiar, major work, might have seemed missable to non-subscribers, unless driven by Lilburn-loyalty or special love of Bartok, and who would be paying $40 for a seat.

Beethoven
In the event, it was an excellent concert. The performance of Beethoven’s Op 30 No 3 was strong, spirited and with striking emphasis on rhythmic elements and the engaging melodies; the two players sounded as if they’d been playing together for years. The middle movement, a sort of minuet, adhered perfectly to its marking, ‘molto moderato e grazioso’, and piano and violin conversed equably, animatedly, tossing ideas to and fro. As the notes pointed out, there is playfulness in the last movement, as the two seemed to push each other a little, and drew attention to themselves with misleading expectations, and untimely modulations. All these features increase the pleasure to be found in a piece of music and one of Beethoven’s gifts was his ability to tease and mislead the audience while creating a masterpiece. All this was here in the performance.

Lilburn
This Lilburn violin sonata in B minor was actually his third. It was written in 1950 for Frederick Page (pianist and head of the music department of Victoria University College) and violinist Ruth Pearl, after Lilburn had become a lecturer at the university; they premiered it at the university and then played it again three months later in Wigmore Hall in London.

The others two sonatas, in C and E flat, were written in 1943; they were first performed, respectively, by Maurice Clare (violin) and Noel Newson (piano), and by Vivien Dixon (violin) and Anthea Harley Slack (piano).

Probably my first live hearing of the present one was at a Mulled Wine concert at Paekakariki in 2011, when Sarah Watkins accompanied Donald Armstrong. There’s an Atoll recording of both the E flat and the present one, issued in 2011, featuring Elizabeth Holowell (violin) and Dean Sky-Lucas (piano). Atoll ACD 941. It was reviewed that year in Middle C by my colleague Peter Mechen.

Andrew Beer’s comments in the programme notes about Lilburn, from a newcomer’s standpoint, are interesting. In his remarks I get a hint of surprise at what might be seen as a sort of obsession with finding a New Zealand voice, as if the job of a creative artist were to interpret or reflect his own land rather than simply to write attractive, listenable music. Such an idea, which is still current, would have puzzled Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Strauss, Prokofiev (among many others). “Telling our own stories” has become a tedious, clichéd justification for supporting New Zealand artists in all fields. There are far more important reasons.

Worrying about expressing and echoing one’s own country has been an aberration that started with the growth of nationalism in the mid 19th century, which has distorted attitudes in so many areas and fuelled the political hatreds that have dogged the world ever since.

However, Lilburn was simply a man of his times, in that matter.

Fortunately, by the time he was 35, Lilburn was writing music that exuded more self-confidence and less seeking for a New Zealand voice, and this sonata is a good example. It is now his own voice, mature, individual, yet echoing the sounds of his immediate predecessors, like Vaughan Williams, tonal and lyrical, though by no means conservative or sentimental. It has also absorbed the character of European music of the time, the tough-minded mid-century; there are moments of dissonance.

It is unusual in being in once movement, with five sections alternating between Molto moderato and Allegro. The performance establishes a searching quality which finds more confidence in the first Allegro section, with both instruments sharing a dance-like episode. The emotional undulations made the second Allegro sound like a concluding phase, but the repeat of Tempo I quickly justified itself.

In my review of that Paekakariki concert I described the sonata as “an impressive, vigorous, tightly-argued work that should have become one of the leading chamber pieces of the New Zealand repertoire.” That still stands.

The rest of the programme
The Lilburn was followed by a shorter piece by Canadian composer Scott Good, a competition piece. The notes reproduce the composer’s own views of the requirements of such a piece: very interesting and well-judged. It gave plenty of scope for virtuosity, drew on contemporary compositional trends, and it certainly, as stipulated, held the attention of an audience. Nor did it seem to think for a minute of attempting to find a ‘Canadian voice’. It simply expressed a confidence in its ability to find melody and treatments that would sound interesting. The performance delivered on all those counts, with the pianist as wholly involved in the idiom as the violinist himself.

After the interval, Bartok’s Two Rhapsodies, quite substantial pieces. Both were played with an aim of making civilized, lyrical (up to a point) music from peasant material that was unsophisticated even if complex in its own way. The first is considerably more conventional and ‘westernised’ than the second, which seems closer to its folk origins, more driven, avoiding any risk of charming the listener, with the piano in percussive mode and the violin, untypically harsh in places. One of my scribbled notes remarked that it was undoubtedly the most formidable piece on the programme, but perhaps, given that, it was over-long.

The programme ended with Ravel’s Violin Sonata, again, not one of his most familiar or engaging; somewhat severe with tunes that might be described as gestures rather than the real thing. So it’s one of those works that one has heard several times, but only the jazz-inflected second movement, is really familiar. Nevertheless, the performance extracted all its virtues, both of melody and structure – the element that allows melody to take a firm grip and holds the attention.

Coda
There have been a lot of opinions and argument about the functions of the critic, from at least the time of Plato, and no doubt in earlier civilisations. Over the years I’ve been tackled for making comments that are alleged to be outside the purview of a critic, perhaps touching on the political context of a composer’s work, his private life, the players’ circumstances, the question of state support for the arts, availability and cost of venues, the condition of music education, value judgements touching the various genres of music, and on and on… all matters of great importance in my opinion.

This is preliminary to an observation about the audience size.

The weather was cold; the venue, since last year after the closure indefinite (?) of the Town Hall, not perhaps ideal for reasons that I need not spell out, though acoustically and in seating comfort, very good. That leaves the programme; and here we find an awareness hiatus between some performers and some promoters who agree to a programme, and an average audience, about what appeals on the one hand, and what, on the other, looks a bit esoteric, worthy but not emotionally compelling.

Till last year I was on the committee of the Wellington Chamber Music Society (as it was) almost from the beginning of these Sunday concerts in 1983, and so have attended a great many of them. The number of subscribers in the Sunday series has declined steadily over many years, and so there is not a large, paid-up contingent who will come anyway, having paid for all the concerts. I can’t remember a smaller audience for a Wellington Chamber Music concert; yet they continue to be a vital element in Wellington’s music scene.

This is just one of the many musical and other organisations that is suffering from the Town Hall’s closure. Christchurch has resolved to restore its Town Hall for twice the cost of the estimate for ours. What’s the matter with our Council?

 

Jack Body – lightning leaping from the pages

Posted on by Peter Mechen

JACK! – celebrating Jack Body, composer
edited by Jennifer Shennan, Gillian Whitehead & Scilla Askew
published by Steele Roberts, Aotearoa, 2015

Available from:
Steele Roberts Publishers,
Box 9321, Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand
e-mail: info@steeleroberts

Wednesday 10th June 2015

This beautifully-prepared and richly-annotated volume contains a remarkable array of testaments of love and regard for a man whose life and work deeply touched not only immediate friends and colleagues, but many people involved with music in New Zealand, throughout South-East Asia and around the world.

Happily, it appeared while its subject, Jack Body, was still very much alive, by all accounts – an acknowledgement is made by the editors to the composer’s “stamina and concentration” in making every effort to assist with the work. Hence the opening pages proudly carry the dedication “To Jack and Yono, with love” (Yono Soekarno being Jack’s long-term partner).

Appropriately heading the list of names on a subsequent “Acknowledgements” page is another Jack – a long-time friend and supporter of Body’s, and much-esteemed arts patron Jack C.Richards, recipient of the 2014 Arts Foundation Award for Patronage, and whose support for this project made the book’s publication possible.

A feature stemming directly from the attitude of the book’s subject to biography is its avoidance of what one of the editors, Jennifer Shennan, calls “conventional ordering”. In citing Body’s “low tolerance for boredom, cliche and comfort zones”, she relishes all the more his initial response to the project – “Oh, I don’t need a book – better to have a concert!” – before recording the composer’s inevitable “day-follows-night” movement towards interest and enthusiasm for it all.

It follows that the finished work is, like its subject, a unique phenomenon, inviting no comparisons and following no formulae – it assuredly won’t be the last word on Jack (other biographers will see to that!) but his proximity to its “making” gives it all extraordinary resonance, his presence almost talismanic throughout its many adroitly-woven parallel strands which cluster around and about “pools” (well, oceanic lakes, really!) of deep-currented osmotic activity.

The composer’s actual biographical details can be found amid these different contexts, both via a section of its own called “Beginnings: family and music” (significantly, NOT at the book’s very beginning!) and a transcript of a landmark interview of Body’s with Elizabeth Kerr, as part of Radio NZ Concert’s “Composer of the Week” Series during 2014.

So, Jack himself tells some of his own story, but by far the bulk of the observations regarding his life, activities and achievements are made by the hundred-plus people whose contributions (mostly the written word, but also photographic and musical) give the reader something of the true measure of the man’s manifold accomplishments regarding his own and other people’s music, his range and scope of things in those areas alone being positively Lisztian!

One would think that the impression made by such and so many laudatory statements would begin to pall upon a reading-through of them – but Jack’s net of contact with people was obviously cast so widely and deeply (and cross-culturally), that one is struck as much by the variety of response as by its positive consistency. As individuals recorded their responses so must they have been encouraged from the start by Jack’s openness and warmth to be themselves with him deeply and utterly – so what comes across is a rich diversity and vibrancy of response that simply encourages one to read more – and more……..

There are more gems of individuality among the tributes than I can list, but I offer a few, nevertheless – “musical spark-plug” – “a true rangatira” – “visionary nation-builder” – “bottomless bounteousness” – “a great “zhi yin” (bosom friend) of Chinese music” – “the song-catcher” – “totally subversive” – “gift of a man” – “changed my life by 180 degrees” – “wonderful Body-parts”……one senses that Jack’s inspiration often gave rise to creative impulses of affection and admiration for which music was only the starting-point.

Speaking of starting-points, one such is the direct initial impression made by the publication, a volume without a dust-jacket but still nevertheless eye-catching in appearance with its gold-leaf title “Jack” embossed upon an (appropriately?) burgundy-hued cover containing also a white-pencil sketch of the composer’s face, featuring the characteristic moustache. Inside, the paper is pleasing to the touch, and the fonts with their few variants are attractive and clearly set, invariably on white backgrounds, and never against colours or hues which clash with and obscure the letters.

The words having been given their dues, the accompanying graphics are telling and vivid throughout – each of the sections features an introductory title page bedecked with designs or motifs characteristic of and readily suggesting its subject, and almost every contributor is represented by a photograph, colour, sepia and/or black-and-white. Some bring a smile, while others raise the eyebrows with a start – a particular favorite of mine features Body as a mad, google-eyed gamelan player delightedly unnerving two hapless members of the ensemble.

In short, it’s a book which to my mind has considerable visceral appeal, even before one begins reading – one enjoys the ready “chaos of delight” of colours and textures which blaze forth, but is then drawn into the “mix and mingle” to find method in the tumbling warmth of it all, the strands encircling the different pools and resonating with the sounds of voices and music suggested by the words.

Cleverly, we’re taken to each of the different areas of exploration and activity Body involved himself in and with, beginning the process with a section devoted to Indonesia, the first of the composer’s “exotic” explorations, and here subtitled “discovering a new sensuality”. As well as warm and grateful tributes from his indonesian mentors and students, there’s a detailed appreciation of his work from a fellow-ethnomusicologist, who did work for the Smithsonian “Folkways” set of recordings from the USA. This was inspired by Jack’s recordings of the country’s ethnic music, his American colleague admiring the “integrity” of his gathered material and his methods.

And so the book proceeds through the various “theatres” of Body’s work, by way of similar sections devoted to China and to Cambodia, as well as activities and projects back in New Zealand and elsewhere.  In the “China” chapter, events of vital significance to this country’s cultural heritage, such as the premiere of Jack’s opera “Alley”, are highlighted. The premiere’s conductor Peter Walls thoughtfully and beautifully equates the genesis and societal context of the work with that of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” in seventeenth-century Italy. Another section, “In performance – embracing the world”, brings into focus Jack’s relationship with groups such as the Kronos Quartet, for whom he wrote a number of works that have since been performed in places far removed from New Zealand.

Running alongside and through these sections is the inspirational Radio NZ Concert interview with Body, conducted with insight and sensitivity by Elizabeth Kerr – again, no mere retelling of a life’s minutae, but one furnishing so many insights per minute (rather than the other way round!). I found most illuminating the sections where the composer outlines and explores his compulsions to firstly explore material and then use, or (as he puts it) “reinterpret it”. He goes on to confess, openly and modestly, that the music is transformed through his actions  to reveal something of himself, with all his limitations.

What’s refreshing is the candor of the man, a composer who doesn’t hesitate to express his creative angst of having to fill emptiness, and therefore turning with relief to something that’s already there and refashioning it “nearer to the heart’s desire”. And what about any associated “crises of confidence”? – in the same utterance they’re characterized as “no bad thing” for a composer, which is remarkable as a metaphor for strength of will overcoming self-doubt. It’s also part of the demystification processes which Jack Body saw as central to his particular “heart’s desire”. And this book gives us many such instances of the essence of Body’s particular no-holds-barred brand of creativity.

The most complimentary thing I can think of saying about the book is that it’s enabled me to feel as though I now know Jack Body a whole lot better than I did. People who knew him well will be far less surprised by what’s covered here, but to others like myself whose contact with him consisted of meeting occasionally at concerts, registering, however briefly, his warmth and friendliness, and who know some of his music through live performances and recordings, the sheer range and depth of his activities here presented is nothing short of revelatory – as fellow-composer Helen Bowater said about meeting him for the first time, it’s like “being struck by lightning – never the same again!”.

Editors Jennifer Shennan, Gillian Whitehead and Scilla Askew can, I think be extremely proud of the result of their labours, in tandem with Steele Roberts Publishers. Together they have done for Jack what he himself repeatedly did in his own work – expressed essential and enduring things, which his friends already knew, but which people such as myself can now discover and realize more fully for ourselves throughout these lively, warm-hearted and inspiring pages.

 

 

 

 

NZTrio’s fascinating collaboration with three young composers in a range of their and other contemporary works

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music New Zealand in New Zealand Music Month
collaboration with SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music) and NZTrio

Conlon Nancarrow: Sonatina (piano)
Ravel: Pièce en forme de habanera (cello and piano)
Webern: Four Pieces, Op 7 (violin and piano)
Alex Taylor: burlesques mécaniques (piano trio)
Ligeti: Cello Sonata
Ravel: Sonata for violin and cello (movements 1 and 2)
Claire Cowan: ultra violet (piano trio)
Salvatore Sciarrino: Capriccio No 2 (violin)
Ligeti: Cordes à vide (piano)
Webern: Three Little Pieces, Op 11 (violin and piano)
Karlo Margetić: Lightbox (piano trio)

NZTrio (Sarah Watkins – piano, Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 9 May, 4 pm

As a contribution to New Zealand Music Month, Chamber Music New Zealand, together with SOUNZ, developed a concert programme for NZTrio that would give the job of selecting the works to three young composers. So each selected three or four pieces, including one of their own, and at the start of each bracket, one of the members of the NZTrio read a short apologia by the composer, sketching his or her philosophy of composition.

At the end of this review you will find an appendix containing the words from the three composers who have curated this concert.

Alex Taylor’s choice
Alex Taylor introduced his choice, referring to his belief that music should challenge, disturb and cause discomfort rather than simply enjoyment; certainly an objective that seems common enough among composers of the modern era. (are you too an old fogie puzzled by the use of the word ‘groove’ which Taylor used, that one has heard in a pop music context, unenlightened?) Nancarrow was famous as a composer who came to feel that it was an advantage to remove an ‘interpreter’ from process of bringing his music to listeners, composing on to piano rolls for the player piano, and it is those that I am familiar with. But I had not come across this Sonatina, an early work, said to be the last he wrote for performance on an ordinary piano, prepared later for the player piano. It exhibited the characteristic sounds of his later pure player piano compositions. His very recognisable style suggests to me a dehumanised, dissonant Scarlatti, Ives-indebted, jazz-inflected, sometimes amusing. However, none of its technical challenges bothered Sarah Watkins.

The only mainstream composer represented in the concert was Ravel – twice (pace Webern, only eight years younger, but separated spiritually from him by a half century). The decisions on the programme were of course a collaboration between the three composers, as is noted in the appendix. Ravel’s Pièce en forme de habanera, originally entitled Vocalise-étude en forme…, was here played by cello and piano (in April I heard a visiting flutist play it) where Ashley Brown took care with its lyrical characteristics as well its bravura flights. In the light of Taylor’s manifesto, was it a surprise to find this charming, perhaps ironic piece among his choices?

Webern’s two pieces together, were probably of shorter duration than most of the other single pieces. One can listen to (though not come to grips with) his entire oeuvrein a few hours, and these, for violin and piano, were typical of his highly economical, compressed utterances, violin and piano often inhabiting separate domains though in whole-hearted accord and commitment.

The contributor of the first bracket, Alex Taylor, offered his burlesques mécaniques, the longest of the four pieces, involving the whole Trio for the first time. It comprised ten pretty short pieces that the composer described in his notes as ‘ a rather extroverted collection of grotesque miniatures … dances … mechanised, electrified…’. They were identified by names that were sometimes pertinent, sometimes difficult to recognise, titles that were not all that common in ordinary musical literature, like ‘a spanner’, ‘tumbledry’, ‘anglegrinder’, ‘scaffold’, but the main title had warned us. The writing for the instruments was hectic, though there were ‘stuck’ moments, a series of spaced piano chords; the character of the three instruments became important elements in the portrayal of each piece.

Claire Cowan’s bracket
Ligeti’s Cello Sonata was Claire Cowan’s first piece, which I’d heard only once before, in Wellington: it’s a fairly accessible, tonal work, drawing fleetingly on folk music, written before his escape from Hungary in 1956 to find refuge(?) with the Darmstadt/Stockhausen school. For many, like me, music written by composers who had comparable experiences, sometimes induces the feeling that some of the constraints of Soviet hegemony were not all bad, obliging young composers to master their craft based on the old masters and on popular music, as all composers had in previous eras. In any case, this was a fine, energetic, indeed virtuosic performance by Brown and Watkins.

The second Ravel work was the first two movements of the less familiar Sonata for Violin and Cello, written in the early 1920s, coloured to some extent by the prevailing return to aspects of the classical style.  Ravel’s music is almost always welcoming, full of delights and intelligent pleasures.

Claire Cowan’s own piece, commissioned by CMNZ, ultra violet (our young composers seem to have an e e cummings proclivity; is it a sort of mock humble demeanour?), written for the full Trio, plays with the phenomenon of ultra-violet light, beyond the normal range of light frequencies visible to humans, but ‘seeable’ by various creatures including the ‘most lusciously hued crustacean in the world’, the mantis shrimp. She extends this to the realm of sound, ‘navigating a musical landscape … on a journey to create and discover colours beyond the edges of our visible spectrum’. And so, the music made use of harmonics, very high, very quiet, but comforting, with strains of beauty, hinting at the sounds of contemporary minimalists of the Baltic rather than American kind.

Karlo Margetić’s contribution
Sicily-born Salvatore Sciarrino’s Capriccio No 2 for solo violin, dedicated to Salvatore Accardo, was Karlo Margetić’s first choice. It began with harmonics, very high, very fast, very detailed, hinting at the natural world with magical bird-like sounds: a startling performance by Justine Cormack.

Margetić’s second offering was Ligeti’s Cordes à vide, the second study from his first book of piano Études dating from his post-communist period, bringing the concert full-circle, back to Nancarrow’s influence. Though for piano, the title means ‘Open strings’. Ostensibly inspired by Nancarrow’s polyrhythms and African music, those features were so integrated in the music that its impact was as a piece that pursued its own inevitable evolution in an interesting organic manner.

The second Webern of the afternoon was his Three Little Pieces for cello and piano, Op 11. Characteristically, a lot of silence between cautious, economical though evocative notes offered by the two instruments, cello muted. Though the second piece, ‘Sehrbewegt’, began at least, exhibiting a sort of normal, agitated energy for 20 seconds or so before retreating to the composer’s customary notational frugality. In spite of this admirably sympathetic performance.

My life with Webern began when I saw, 60 years ago on the back corridor notice-board of what is now called the Hunter building (housing both the entire arts and law faculties) of Victoria University College (let me be accurate), what I took to be a misspelling of Carl Maria von…’s name in a notice about a Thursday lunchtime concert in the Music Department. In the intervening decades, his constricted emotional palette and what I feel as pretentiously minute expressiveness has never much touched me.

Finally Margetić’s own music, Lightbox, a word of which I have had to ask the meaning. I liked it, from the violin and cello opening, soon joined by the piano: a busy, varied story with touches of familiar, idiomatic harmonies and evolutionary processes; they helped to keep grounded a listener who needs one foot on firm familiar ground allowing the other to shuffle confusedly through an unmapped landscape. The composer’s remarks about the ill-assorted nature of the instruments of a piano trio were illustrated in occasional surprising outbursts by the piano, separating it from the generally happy duetting of violin and cello. The result was indeed, in the composer’s own words, ‘an unexpected and strangely beautiful assemblage’.

Jack Body
Next day, Jack Body died; he was an unparalleled inspiration to composers, musicians, music lovers and the arts world in general throughout New Zealand and in many exotic places. No student composer not only in Wellington, but also throughout New Zealand can have been untouched by his manifold talents, his example, openness, humanity and generosity. Though I was never close to him, whenever we met, I felt that his very own sympathetic nature, his warmth, induced feelings in me of greater generosity and tolerance, certainly of affection towards him. I never detected the slightest antipathy that might have existed for one who had sometimes expressed misgivings about aspects of the direction and character of contemporary music.

 

Appendix:

An overview describing the concepts adopted by the three composers, from Alex, Karlo and Claire:
“While this programme may look eclectic and forbidding on paper, in practice it draws together a range of threads that connect the three New Zealand composers. We have built an overall framework rich with contemporary resonances, within which each New Zealand work has its own mini-programme and narrative arc. We have tried to pack the concert full of energy and stimulation for any audience.
“We have decided against choosing standard repertoire piano trio works, most of which have only a tangential relevance to New Zealand composition in the twenty-first century. Instead we have broken up the trio into solos and duos, building up the ensemble for each third of the programme.. This approach provides textural relief between the ensemble pieces and helps to build continuity through each section of the programme.  The shorter accompanying pieces create dialogue and draw focus towards the longer (New Zealand) works.
“All of the composers we have chosen are highly individual but linked by a strong concern with colour and texture. Within this there are two general stylistic themes: continuations of the modernist tradition (Webern, Nancarrow, Ligeti, Sciarrino, Taylor, Margetić); and concern with older forms, especially dance forms and folk music (Ravel, Nancarrow, Ligeti, Taylor, Cowan). Two pieces in particular accommodate both of these ideas – Nancarrow’s Sonatina, with its echoes of hyperkinetic Jazz idioms (Art Tatum?) and foreshadowing of Ligeti’s etudes, and Ligeti’s Cello Sonata, taking traditional folk melodies as a springboard for discursive play.”  

 

Here are the texts of the short introductions from each of the three composers read by members of the trio before they played the works each had chosen:

Alex Taylor says::
Artistic expression in today’s world is not simply about beauty and emotion. It is not an easy way to pass the time. It’s about the discursive and the disturbing, the ephemeral and the offensive. I go to a concert to be jolted out of my everyday perspective. That’s what we’ve attempted to do in creating this programme. To give you a jolt. But also to give you a platform for exploration. To find your own way through. To get you started, here are a few threads to pull on.
First, modern vs. postmodern: there’s an interesting dialogue here between the desire to create something new and the desire to repurpose something old. Composing is a dialogue with tradition, but also a dialogue that leads outside of that tradition. Engage with the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Second, groove vs. gesture: some of these pieces rely on a groove to drive them forward. Some deliberately resist grooving, treating music as a collection of finely sculpted objects rather than a continuous rolling landscape. Some take the idea of groove or gesture and altogether confound it.
Third, straight vs. camp: although there’s some profound, deep music here, it’s also an opportunity for play, superficiality, artifice and irony. Perhaps not everything is what it appears to be.
So rather than asking you to sit back and relax, I’d encourage you all to lean forward and draw your own connections through this very special programme.  

Claire Cowan says:
I chose Ravel and Ligeti to stand shoulder to shoulder with my new work to represent my continued inspiration and fascination with colour. Ravel, the masterful French colourist; and Ligeti, whose solo cello work showcases the cello’s versatility beautifully (and I suppose I am biased, being a cellist myself). It reminds me of the Bach solo cello suites in its clarity of gesture and emphasis on melodic lines. It just goes to show – composers can have fun adopting other composer’s sensibilities; challenging expectations while at the same time also being true to themselves. Ultimately I think we write what we need to write, for ourselves..my composition is both my craft, my survival and my therapy!

Karlo Margetić says::
In some ways, the works that precede my piece form an exposition of its basic building blocks. All are transparent in texture, and simultaneously manage to be elegant and completely unrelenting in their approach. I’m quite drawn to music that has this continuous, unrelenting quality, from the cycles of fifths that form the bulk of Ligeti’s Etude, to the minutely varied repetitions in Sciarrino’s Caprice that make it feel as if time has been suspended. Writing Lightbox was like getting lost inside a maze designed by M.C. Escher, complete with impossibilities, improbabilities and optical illusions. I hope you will all enjoy being lost in it too.

 

NZSO with Lilburn’s Symphony No 2, his successor’s impressive piece plus striking Swedish composer and trombonist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSO Aotearoa Plus

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; Christian Lindberg conductor and trombone, and David Bremner – trombone

Michael Norris: Claro
Jan Sandström: Echoes of Eternity
Lilburn: Symphony No 2

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 1 May, 6:30 pm

The title of this concert covered two-thirds of its music, though perhaps the most spectacular element was supplied by trombonist-plus, Christian Lindberg in a work by compatriot Sandström, Echoes of Eternity. The concert, in the two New Zealand works, spanned almost the entire post-war musical history of the orchestra and its home, Wellington. For the orchestra was founded in 1946 shortly before Lilburn moved from Christchurch to Wellington to become a lecturer at the newly established Music Department of Victoria University in 1949. There he finished his first symphony, played two years later by the then National Orchestra; the second followed quickly. Both Lilburn and the NZSO remained in Wellington, the orchestra rather slow to take seriously a responsibility for New Zealand music, but Lilburn and the school of music soon became the pre-eminent harbingers of New Zealand music. This year (2 November) is Lilburn’s centenary.  

The orchestra’s early dilatoriness can of course be understood, for its first task, obviously, was to establish its importance to the community at large which had, in a very short time, first to become familiar with the huge central body of classical orchestral music in live performance. Only having ingested the basic repertoire was there any real hope of audiences coming to grips with the music that our few composers were then writing.

The other New Zealand work in the programme was by a young composer, inheritor of that Lilburn-Victoria University Music School tradition: Michael Norris, 2003 winner of the Lilburn composition prize at Victoria, now senior lecturer in composition, as was Lilburn. As well as composing for orthodox instruments and orchestra forces, he engages with avant-garde techniques – sonic arts, electro-acoustic music, which he studied with fellow-New Zealander Denis Smalley at City University London.

Lindberg appeared as both conductor and trombonist. He ran on to the stage, bounded on to the podium, in a tight, glistening black jacket hinting at his self-image as some kind of bad-boy – at least a bit unorthodox – of music.

Norris’s piece, newly commissioned by the orchestra, reportedly composed for the same orchestral forces as Lilburn’s second symphony was, apart from anything else, a remarkable exercise in imaginative orchestration and harmonic ingenuity; with a more precise musical memory, I could have figured out whether its initial outlaying of pitches constituted a tone row. Even if it did, and in spite of its hardly throwing out any melodies that would persist in the mind long into the night, it was by no means music of the jagged kind that one longs to be finished. There was a recognisable recurrence of certain intervals that rose several times to a state of near resolution; a rising quasi-arpeggio passage with shimmering violin solo and harp; there were interesting passages for tuned percussion – xylophone and marimba. It was all propelled, somewhat miraculously, and mesmerizingly, by the man on the podium given to far-flung, angular arm gestures, commonly both arms mirroring in opposite directions.

The composer’s words in the programme suggested the title of the work, Claro, implied a “state of transparency, lightness and clarity”, and it would be hard to find more specifically descriptive language to characterise it.

That we are now in an era that has turned aside from the alienating styles of composition that drove audiences away, was clear through hearing admiring, if sometimes a bit bemused audience comments, broadly appreciative of all they’d heard.

Lindberg’s showpiece was a sort of concerto for two trombones and orchestra by the 61-year-old Swedish composer, Jan Sandström, written for the Extremadura Symphony Orchestra, the region west of Madrid, adjacent to Portugal. Its major city, Cáceres, has UNESCO World Heritage status, with important Roman, Islamic, Gothic and Renaissance architecture and these features, says the composer, inspire the music.

An off-stage trombone sounds as the orchestra awaits the conductor’s arrival, a long legato melody rising and falling. Now he enters, in a close-fitting white jacket brandishing trombone, continuing to play, accompanied by wood-blocks (virtually the only percussion on hand) and a bed of strings. Nothing could have been a greater contrast with the previous impressionist/virtuosic, multi-tonal Norris than this forthright, quasi-conventional orchestral tutti, big opulent melody verging, for some ears, no doubt, on blowsy. Later there are near-percussive throbbing passages from cellos and basses.  

We’d had a long wait for the other trombonist who eventually entered from the right: NZSO principal trombone David Bremner, and the two were soon involved in battle even as Lindberg continued, as best he could, throwing his right arm towards the orchestra behind him, which seemed enough to keep the players alongside. 

Prominent in the orchestral melee was the tuba, as the two trombones, occasionally inserting mutes, became increasingly frenzied, doing things at a speed one might have thought impossible. There was a calm point in the middle when Lindberg recited a poem that described Cáceres, which did not have quite the impact that a reading by a George Henare (recalling the ANZAC concert last week) might have had. Among later diversions was the winding of a air-raid siren driven by a sort of wind-machine that lent a note of terror – was the city attacked by murderous Falangist rebels in the Civil War?

Music that is conspicuously tonal, though now reinforced by some of the more expressive, perhaps aggressive, features of the difficult music of the past era, has returned, and is no longer scorned. Audiences can now feel welcome in the concert halls again.

Conductor Lindberg appeared in the second half in a plum-coloured jacket (I exercised myself conjecturing synesthestic implications) to conduct Lilburn’s second symphony, written in 1951 but not performed till 1959. Opening with vivid trumpet over firm strokes by strings, this symphony has now signalled Lilburn’s escape from some of the slightly repetitious decorative gestures that constituted an unneeded trade mark in earlier music, and a total maturity and self-confidence. I soon felt that I was hearing a fresh and unhesitant, thoroughly thought-out performance as proved by a conductor who’d committed the score to memory.

It was energetic, assertive in its handling long phrases, its breathing of dynamics, the contours studied and explored with care and traversed with confidence. Again Lindberg was a conductor whose gestures were compelling, for the audience at least (I haven’t asked players whether they were valuable or something else). My only pause came with the feeling that the main theme and the signature motifs in the last movement were overstated.

Never mind: this was a very fine performance, and it was great to have a committed and serious view taken by a non-Anglo conductor capable of grasping its character and inspiring a pretty electrifying performance.

Though the MFC was not full, the audience was no disgrace considering the absence of an acknowledged masterpiece. And the applause was generous.