Tag: orchestral

Asher Fisch, Louis Lortie and the NZSO in splendid form with classical masterpieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Asher Fisch with Louis Lortie (piano)

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor, Op 18
Strauss: Tod und Verklärung, Op 24
Wagner: Overture to Tannhäuser

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 6 September, 6:30 pm

Asher Fisch is taking this NZSO programme with pianist Louis Lortie on a four city tour. It’s his first visit to New Zealand, though I encountered him as conductor of the production of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Adelaide in 2004 (it was an Australian production, in some kind of reaction to the cycle borrowed from the Châtelet Theatre in Paris, six years before).

Rachmaninov’s Number Two
‘Rach 2’, along with the Tchaikovsky No 1, are probably the most popular of all piano concertos. The opening is magical: seeming to emerge from nowhere and by no means easy to invest with definable feelings; however, they got it absolutely right, with the slow emergence of the crescendo of rich, opulent sounds. Perhaps the piano was a bit recessed during the following violin-led passage, but the balance was recovered and Lortie’s command technically and interpretationally was immaculate.

I was seated centre stalls and was a little surprised how, in full-orchestra passages, individual instruments tended to be obscured, while those less densely orchestrated had impact and clarity. All the usual wind instrument strengths were there – particularly, a beautifully pure solo horn passage expressed peace after Rachmaninov’s long period of depression following the shameful performance of and reaction to his first symphony.

There was fitful applause at the end of the first movement which I charitably ascribed to a genuine feeling that it had been particularly moving.

The second movement offers lovely solo opportunities to flute, then clarinet, over calm rolling arpeggios from the piano. My pleasure increased here as I reflected on how long it had been since hearing a live performance of this richly romantic masterpiece. There are several near-solo, piano passages that serve as kinds of cadenzas with quite subtle music from individual instruments, till eventually an actual cadenza takes over, rather briefly, followed by a resumption by dreamy, legato strings. Again, Lortie’s performance was of the greatest subtlety, wonderfully in sympathy with the entire work.

The last movement, more rich in tumbling bravura, is also music of engrossing variety of emotion, pace, with a return in the first few minutes of a meditative beauty; and it resumed its basic character, maintaining a fast pace to the finish. Rachmaninov’s orchestration never drew attention to itself but it is a major element in the concerto’s greatness and that was thoroughly exploited in the subtlety of its performance, wrapping itself sensitively around the piano part.

Greatly loved, some might even call it hackneyed, it might be; but that in no way diminishes its reputation, and this evening’s performance confirmed its standing most convincingly.

It puzzled the audience at the end when Lortie manoeuvred himself back to the piano and another chair was brought out; and it dawned on us that Fisch himself was going to take part in an encore. I didn’t recognise the duet movement they played, though it was pretty clearly Mozart era though I didn’t think it was actually him. So I was surprised to learn that it was in fact Mozart: the second movement, Andante, from his Sonata in D for piano duet, K 381.

Tod und Verklärung
In the second half German classics held sway. Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung is among the composer’s earlier compositions and for many, his most moving (for me too). Written aged 24, immediately after Don Juan, it always feels like the music of a much older composer, long exposed to the pains of life and realities of death.

My last recollection of it by the NZSO is in 2010, under Alexander Shelley.

Immediately, it created a sombre mood of a unique character, opening without first violins, confining the orchestra to second violins, violas, cellos and bases, bassoons and timpani.  But soon its mood is modified as first violins enter as well harp and flute. The sudden outburst by timpani, trombones and tuba, announcing the struggle between life and death, was more stunning than I have ever heard before. It quickly subsides as the orchestra’s handling of the tortured mood and dynamic changes took charge, expansive, with a sort of profound grandeur. Bridget Douglas’s flute created a trembling agitation depicting one part of the battle.

Through the turmoil of near-death experiences, Fisch never allowed the tension and excitement to subside. Its singular beauties were constantly threatened but never overwhelmed by brass-led crescendo passages that depicted the dying man’s agonies, and his reflections on a heroic life, on love, on his pursuit of ideals. Interestingly, Strauss commented on the fact that while Don Juan started and ended in E minor, this work dwelling fundamentally on death starts in C minor and ends in C major, the most sanguine of keys.

There dwelt, throughout, a powerful, ecstatic feeling that one might consider the epitome of late Romantic sensibility. That is certainly the way I have always felt about it, since first hearing it in my 20s, and the many hearings since then have not altered my opinion or reduced the profound impact of the work. This performance confirmed again my love of its conception, enhanced strongly in this musical realisation from Asher and the NZSO.

Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture
It seemed slightly odd to end the concert with an overture, though I could tell, given the decision to perform these works, that arranging things in terms of length and in handling the piano in the easiest way, led to this sequence. Before the concert I had wondered whether scheduling it last might have encouraged the orchestra to follow the overture with the Venusberg music, the ballet music that Wagner had to write for its 1860 Paris Opera production, and which is often played immediately after the overture in concert. Given that the concert ended a quarter of an hour before usual, that would have been entirely possible.

Asher Fisch emphasised the pseudo-religious character of the music with the tune from the Pilgrims’ hymn, evoking sounds hinting at an organ in the apotheosis of a religious occasion.  But the equally important element in the overture is the Venusberg music, which is expanded in the ballet that became Act I, scene one in the Paris version, and Fisch drew from it all the wildness that is inherent in it, with as much as possible of the erotic freedom permitted in a respectable concert. The overture ended with a grand return to the pious strains of the Pilgrims chorus, leaving no doubt about the success of conductor and orchestra in handling this rather over-the-top music.

The performance of overtures, which used to be a standard way of opening concerts till a couple of decades ago, should be resurrected. This case, even though in an unorthodox position in the programme, at least offered an example of the sort of music to be found in scores of the once popular and well-known overtures that introduced and illuminated most concerts in the old days; and more importantly, are still an ideal way for young people to be won over to classical music.

Two sides of a genius – Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies from Edo de Waart and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
JOY – Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies

BEETHOVEN FESTIVAL – Symphonies 8 in F Major Op.93* and 9 in D Minor Op.125 “Choral”

Sabina Cvilak (soprano) / Kristin Darragh (m-soprano)
Oliver Johnston (tenor) / Anthony Robin Schneider (bass)
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra*
Edo de Waart (conductor)*

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 31st August, 2019

This, the final concert in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven Festival, presented two symphonic works at what seemed like opposite ends of everything – black-versus-white parameters of style from a composer of genius. Beethoven in his Eighth Symphony appears to be “playing” with the form, parodying the classical symphony, satirising fashions and fads, heightening and debunking all kinds of gesturings and yet still producing a forward-moving, radically original work of art. On the other hand, the Ninth Symphony seems, from its very beginning, to put the listener in touch with a kind of basic life-force that finds its full expression in Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” with orchestral sounds inviting the use of words as an aid to symphonic expression for the first time in the form’s history.

It can be seen from these descriptions that the two works have practically nothing in common except their composer’s name and the degree of freedom and innovation employed in the music’s being. To thus present them in the same concert would ensure a musical feast of uniquely diverting, and, for some, even bewildering, variety. However, as with almost all of this composer’s work these pieces can survive practically any kind of treatment involving musical intent – so we were guaranteed a fully absorbing and thought-provoking evening’s listening!

I’d already heard and enjoyed these musicians’ traversals of the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies two evenings previously, remarking in my review that the intensities of music-making seemed to gather and coalesce more purposefully as the evening progressed, finally bursting fully-forth in a performance of the Fifth Symphony’s finale that brought the house down. Here, the same kind of pattern somewhat uncannily emerged, with the great “Choral Symphony’s finale, the “Ode to Joy” releasing such surges of energy as had merely been hinted at throughout the music-making earlier in the evening. It was as if everything had been almost “tailored” for maximum effect towards that final movement, and specifically focusing on the entry of the voices with their message for all humankind!

In theory this approach eminently suited the evening’s musical journey, with the opening Eighth Symphony’s elegance and fluidity emphasised by Edo de Waart’s meticulous approach, a quirky detailing or three thrown in for good measure – while the Ninth Symphony which followed grew its mighty concluding oak-like girth from acorn-beginnings, the intended space of the whole work “suggested” by the first movement’s purposeful gesturings and the scherzo’s energies, except that the actual “substance” came with those voices and the instrumental support they received. As an intellectual construct the scheme was eminently satisfying, though I confess to missing the excitements of a more “visceral” approach in the playing –  I do like things even quirkier in the Eighth, and more epic and rugged in the Ninth’s first two movements …. but, chacun à son gout…..

By contrast with Thursday evening’s attendance at the MFC, which featured a noticeable number of empty seats, tonight’s house was packed full – and my Middle C colleague Lindis Taylor reported a similarly pleasing state of things for Friday’s performances of Nos. Six and Seven. I wondered whether the orchestra might have been better advised to split the four concerts over two weekends or even a fortnight, in the interests of affordability or accessibility –  still, no doubt it was something of an achievement to get the levels of attendance that it did over four consecutive nights of concerts!

So, we began with the Eighth Symphony – but not before we were told – at once poignantly, and heart-warmingly – that tonight’s gig was the cellist Roger Brown’s last concert with the NZSO after 20 years in the orchestral ranks, which occasioned affectionate and appreciative audience applause. Then we were off, Maestro de Waart and his players flinging the opening phrase across the expectant vistas with purposeful energy, everything clear, precise and well-chiselled, the timpani direct and sonorous. A demure, precisely-groomed second subject provided the contrast, while the development set about stocking up the argument with richly-varied textures, building things so very beautifully towards a splendidly forceful full-orchestra statement. The horns having then shown us what nobility of tone and timing they were capable of, the music stuttered to a somewhat quizzical conclusion!

Then came what sounded like a taste of the “new” (Beethoven perhaps inspired by the newly-invented metronome of his friend Johann Maelzel) with an Allegretto scherzando second movement that seemed to pay homage to the “mechanical” of invention and regularity, the music, however, spectacularly “misbehaving” at the end and breaking free of such constraints with gleeful gesturings! I was diverted by this, but thoroughly enjoyed the “old” which then followed, a Tempo di Menuetto, played with delicious “old-world” languour, and featuring a trio in which the double basses literally “stole the show” with their ear-grabbing accented accompaniments of the winds!

What elfin scamperings there were at the finale’s beginning, followed by a truly off-the wall summons to unbuttoned hi-jinks! A contemporary English review of this work commented that “Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony depends wholly on its last movement for what applause it obtains; the rest is eccentric without being amusing, and laborious without effect.” More balanced was the view of Sir George Grove, who described it as full of “those mixtures of tragedy and comedy….which make (Beethoven’s) music so true a mirror of human life….equal to the great plays of Shakespeare….for the same reasons.” Inclined to whatever view, the listener is nevertheless carried along by the sheer energy of it all – de Waart didn’t overplay either comedy or drama, letting the finely-controlled orchestral playing allow us to make of the music what we wanted!

And suddenly (well, after the interval) we were faced with another work, one whose sounds seemed to mirror a different dimension of awareness, a new awakening to the world! So very hushed was the opening (the strings at first seeming more like slivers of light than sound), that the opening crescendo was suddenly upon us, muscular and thrustful rather than monumental and titanic – a mode that seemed to me to dominate de Waart’s interpretation of the instrumental parts of the work. While not straitjacketed, the lines were kept tensile throughout, with the timpani prominent, though more dramatic and whiplash than rugged and epic. There was no rhetoric – the mid-movement cataclysm, for example, almost took us by surprise with its suddenness, the timpani splendidly impactful, the strings and winds giving it all they had, the brass grimly hanging on to their reiterated single note – and then the crisis was passed, and the great river of music flowed onwards.

I thought the scherzo splendidly launched, with the timpani again focused and incisive – as the strands of impulse bonded together and danced along, the music took on an almost bucolic feeling, the energies good-humoured rather than incisive and grimly-focused, the mood further celebrated by the repeats. The Trio section thrust its way into the music’s trajectories, the wind-playing a joy, the horns lovely, the oboe solo delectably-phrased, and the strings judging their crescendi to perfection. Was the scherzo’s return slightly more sharp-edged, more urgent? – perhaps I’d gotten used to the music’s bucolic mood by then…..

The slow movement’s opening phrases moved swiftly and lightly, in accord with what we’d already heard, the impulses fluent and air-borne rather than time-arresting, the strings leading things forward to what’s always seemed to me to be the music’s “inner sanctum”, here the repose had a quality more “on the wing” than one holding time in thrall. But the playing was divine, winds and horn fervently communing, and stimulating a surge, a flow of energy, whose accompaniment even had a “swing” to it! I did want more sense of “leading up” to something with those brass shouts, however – surely more of a “transformational moment” than we got, here? Other listeners will possibly disagree – but I was wanting to be “imbued” with some kind of great “feeling” at this point, and felt not a little perplexed and disappointed at its rapid passsing, which emotion persisted right to the movement’s end…….

No time for any further self-communings – the vocal soloists had by now taken the stage and something was definitely brewing! In crashed the finale, with its “horror chord” leading the way! I wasn’t aware of the performance “hanging fire” in any way, here, except that a couple of people said to me afterwards that “it (the finale) took a long time to get going!”. What I registered was the growing excitement of it all, the brusque dismissal of the work’s previous themes and the impulsive reaction to the first appearance of the “Joy” theme. The melody itself here resembled a “song of the earth” with those superb double-basses, then beautifully “forwarded” by the ‘cellos and violas with the bassoons, and flowering with the violins’ treatment, before the winds and brass rang it grandly out at the climax.

Again the “horror chord”, and its accompanying tumult! – but this time the bass soloist (Anthony Robin Schneider) demanded our attention, with his “O Freunde, nicht diese töne!” – and the whole performance took wing, soloists and choir scaling the heights of physical impact and emotion and inviting the players and their conductor to join them, and spread the “joy” among their enraptured audience. I particularly enjoyed the work of both Schneider and mezzo, Kristin Darragh, and thought the work of the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir was overwhelming! Here we got the full, transcendental force of the music’s reaching out for the stars at “Über Sternen muß er wohnen”, and the full-blooded vigour of both voices and instruments in the fugal “Seid umschlungen, Millionen” – the work’s range and scope realised in this all-embracing panoply of creative and recreative human energy!

Has it all defined an orchestra and its conductor? Sergei Rachmaninov, asked once why he didn’t play more Beethoven Piano Sonatas, said, characteristically, “The Beethoven Sonatas contain everything – and no one pianist can play everything!” True, in a sense, but how one wishes that he HAD played and recorded them all, nevertheless! And how instructive in so many ways when performing artists, faced with a totality of creative achievement, attempt to realise something of that totality, as here! Very, very great honour to Edo de Waart and his splendid band of musicians for enabling so many of us to make all or even part of that precious journey with them so resplendently.

 

Compelling, relentless performances of Beethoven’s sixth and seventh symphonies continue the NZSO’s festival

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart

Beethoven Festival: Symphonies Nos 6 in F, Op 68 “Pastoral” and 7 in A, Op 92

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 30 August, 7:30 pm

When I looked around at the audience at the third of the Beethoven concerts and saw that every last seat was occupied, right to the far sides of the stalls, I felt I needed to retract my post-script remark about Wednesday’s audience, which was indeed not very large. I needed to consider that there were probably many who couldn’t afford all four and had to make a hard decision – which two or three would be most exciting?  And with works in all four programmes that were unmissable, many opted to sacrifice the early ones in the belief that they were, naturally, less great. While that’s not true, the notion that it might be was enough.

Another introductory comment: my earlier review of the first three symphonies mentioned earlier performances under De Waart; I listed 1, 3 and 7, forgetting the Choral which was played, with two of the same soloists, last November (it was reviewed here by Rosemary Collier).

The Pastoral Symphony
I don’t know why I was unexpectedly delighted, and surprised, as the orchestra launched with such spirit and enthusiasm into No 6. There’s no preparatory introduction to warm up or to allow the audience to settle down via an  Adagio molto, or a Poco sostenuto. We have arrived at once ‘auf dem Lande’ (Beethoven broke tradition at once by using German movement names; and it left no doubt that Beethoven was composing what was the first ‘programme’ symphony in any real sense – music that overtly paints a picture or tells a story).

Beethoven’s mood is felt throughout the auditorium from the very first phrase, and the orchestra left us in no doubt, with every section sounding full of the delight that Beethoven had created in his score. While flute and oboe were conspicuous early, all woodwinds had their place in the sun, playing as if they rejoiced in the pleasure they were bringing to surrounding peasants (a situation more conspicuous in the third movement, of course).

The second movement – the scene by the brook – was also at an above-average speed, even though the pleasure depicted here is more passive. Bridget Douglas ‘s bird-like flute was again prominent along with bassoon (Robert Weeks), clarinet (Patrick Barry) and Robert Orr’s oboe, all played much more distinctive roles than their usual job of being modestly integrated in the entire orchestral fabric. All produced sounds of the most pure and open quality. Their apotheosis was the later cuckoo imitation.

And though the third movement opened with warm, energised strings which pervaded it, keeping the almost transcendent joyousness well grounded; the  important role of the woodwinds, as well as horns, flowed through it.

The memorable element in the storm scene of the fourth movement was the startling, even frightening intensity of the Laurence Reese’s timpani.

If I’d imagined that the performance might have exhausted the possibility of even more beautiful music, the utterly rapturous last movement which combines a shepherd’s song with the composer’s ‘joyous and grateful feelings nach dem Sturm’, there was a quality about the playing that risked inducing tears of joy.

I had not really expected to be so moved by the performance of a symphony which one knew so intimately; however, I was somewhat (read: considerably) undone.

The Seventh Symphony
The first thing noticed about the orchestra’s constitution for the A major symphony was the space to the right of the trumpets, previously occupied by trombones, now vacant. It did not indicate any retreat into the 18th century.

Though No 7 is generally considered one of the dramatic, even heroic, odd-numbered symphonies, that’s not how it opens. A firm, emphatic chord is followed by steady but calm woodwind phrases lasting three or four minutes before the infectious and, in this performance, joyous dance tunes, Vivace, take over, with those growling string accompaniments satisfyingly prominent.  It’s long, near a quarter hour, and the pulse didn’t falter.

The orchestra opened the Allegretto (second movement), with its subdued lower strings creating an almost secretive atmosphere; in fact the entry of the first violins is unusually delayed, and in the key of A minor now, it created a certain air of expectancy, perhaps tension, that held the audience in an uncanny calm.

The third movement is named ‘Presto’, not Scherzo, but that’s what it is, in Rondo form, and De Waart launched into very fast. Even with the alternating, slower ‘trio’ section (meno presto assai) it remained driven by the same relentless energy, delivering repeat after repeat to the point of….well, hypnosis…. I have sometimes found it one repeat too many, but not this time; it was totally arresting.

At the end of the Presto, I sometimes sense disbelief that that last movement can deliver excitement more intense than the first three movements. De Waart allowed no pause to the fast, shocking start of the Allegro con brio, an instruction that sometimes seems rather an understatement. Here, ‘con fuoco’ or ‘con furia’ might have better described this performance, for a while at least. But there was something in his conducting that even hinted at acceleration, which would have been impossible given its current relentless pace.  And throughout all the compelling tumult, the orchestra was held together, hardly a blemish perceptible, sustained by the conductor’s unostentatious yet inspiring leadership.

Though the entire audience didn’t stand (Wellington audiences are extremely discriminating) the smaller numbers represented the entire house on its feet in many other places.

 

And then we heard……Symphonies Four and Five from the NZSO in its Beethoven-fest……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
DESTINY – Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies

BEETHOVEN FESTIVAL – Symphonies 4 in B-flat Op.60 and 5 in C Minor Op.67

Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Thursday, 29th August 2019

My Middle C colleague Lindis Taylor having reviewed the opening night of this momentous occasion (one would expect that performing the complete Beethoven Symphonies would be something of a milestone for any orchestra that takes itself and its “craft” seriously), it was my “turn” with the following two works of the canon. This was in no way tied to any preference for any particular work on the part of either of us – I could just as happily have reviewed the first three symphonies, as Lindis could have the following two. I simply happened to have a friend who wanted desperately to go with me to hear the Fifth Symphony – and so the arrangement was duly made. Of course, each of the “Nine” of Beethoven has a kind of distinction which at once singles it out from its fellows and binds it to what has gone before and comes after, so in a sense, wherever one “dips into” the canon of these works one comes up with fascinating ponderables, delights and revelations!

Robert Schumann, ever the one to “poeticise” a creative impulse, statement or finished work of art whether his own or another’s, declared that Beethoven’s “Fourth” Symphony, standing as it did between the mighty “Eroica” and the cataclysmic “Fifth” resembled “a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants”. In a sense, Beethoven almost HAD to write something that contrasted with such a world as brought into being by his previous symphony, though in its own way, the Fourth continued the composer’s exploration of symphonic possibilities very much in line with each of its predecessors – Schumann’s delightful characterisation of the work serves more as a starting-point for our senses than an out-and-out appraisal of the music’s merits.

Having said that, artistic endeavour has an endearing habit of attracting many colourful and telling responses bent on conveying an “essence” or a “character” belonging to a work – I’ve always enjoyed, for example, a potent description I came across somewhere of the hushed, shadowy and sombre effect of the Fourth’s opening measures – almost forty bars in length – as “4 am”, and find myself, while listening to most performances, conjuring up in my minds’ eye suitably dark, desolate and unpeopled vistas! Then, with the Fifth Symphony, there’s novelist EM Forster’s famous response of one of his characters in the book “Howard’s End”, to the “ghostly” parts of that work’s Scherzo, equating the music with the footsteps of “a goblin walking quietly over the universe from end to end…” and followed by others, “phantoms of cowardice and disbelief” – until the composer appears and scatters them with “vast roarings of a superhuman joy”.

I’d been told that all seats for the last concert in the Beethoven series, one featuring the “Choral” Symphony, and paired with the Eighth, had been sold – so I was surprised (as my colleague had been the previous night) to find the occasional whole row in the MFC galleries empty as well as spaces dotted around the stalls – I would have thought that the Fifth Symphony concert, as much as that for the Ninth, would have been a real drawcard.  My friend and I were sympathetic when a couple of people at the interval who were sitting alongside us turned and asked us which Symphony it was that we had just heard – but somewhat perplexed when they then asked us what it was that was coming next (were we REALLY in a concert hall in Wellington?)

The music, for the moment, crowded out extraneous thought, as the concert began – with a dark and mysterious B-flat chord whose development took our sensibilities to realms entirely removed from anything found in the aforementioned first three symphonies. Conductor de Waart kept the pulses ticking over throughout, eschewing the “stillness” of many a more romantically-conceived realisation I’d previously heard, with the focus firmly propelled towards the great outburst that launched the allegro, the orchestral playing alert and urgent, with timpani prominent, and wind and brass bolstering the string lines. A delectable “plunge” into the repeat enhanced our pleasure enormously, while the development brought to us those mysterious re-explorings of the opening, underpinned by the timpani, whose crescendo excitingly returned us to the energies of the allegro’s reprise.

Though de Waart’s purposeful way with the slow movement made something of a literal, almost “ungiving” impression with the opening figures, his players brought out the music’s lyricism, the wind-playing in all its forms a dream to experience! Particularly telling was the “vista of loneliness” generated by the solo clarinet, followed by the most heart-warming passage of birdsong from the flute, the contrasts between the two so breathtakingly characterised! After this the syncopated rhythms of the Scherzo set rumbustious accents against winsome lines, the two characters here deliciously “playing” with one another – then, each of the “Trio” sections were like balm for the senses after the hustle and bustle, the horns finally capping off the energies with a round-up call!

De Waart would have been particularly pleased with his players’ efforts throughout the finale – the players achieved a thrilling synthesis of strength and style throughout with some “star turns” where appropriate, such as the various winds’ helter-skelter renditions of the opening figure – the bassoon’s jaunty manner was an absolute delight! I liked also the great “hammerings at the door” which grew out of the molto perpetuo rhythms in places, and the double basses’ almost nonchalant rumblings as they demonstrated that they were up with the play as well!

So, after such disciplined and tightly-woven music-making, what was in store for us with the genre-defining Fifth Symphony? At the outset, de Waart seemed to emphasise the music’s severity and line, rather than any rhetoric and theatricality, the opening “integrated” into the urgency of the whole, with none of the sounds “held” for effect, but quickly moved onto the next phrase. At the development, the horn utterance remained part of the on-going argument rather than presented as an imperious statement, as was the return of the “Fate” theme – emphatic, but remaining “in tempo”, the oboe allowed the merest bit of give for its solo. However. with the string/wind/brass exchanges towards the end, we realised that the music’s tensions had been steadily building throughout, as the groups seemed, suddenly, to begin “fronting up” to one another, with the horns particularly vehement-sounding – most exciting!

The players launched the second movement quickly and eagerly, the great brass shouts at the phrase ends magnificently underpinned by the double-basses with tremendous thrust! The playing had such concentration, such focus, it sounded as if the musicians were “discovering” the music phrase-by-phrase as it went along, with nothing routine or pre-conceived – I felt an air of engagement throughout, not from any great over-emphasis, but from a sense of purpose, resulting in as many rapt and contemplative moments as there were stirring ones. The scherzo continued this process, so that the horns didn’t balefully blare their great repeated-note opening, but integrated it with the music’s overall movement, leading nicely to the double-basses’ great flexing of corporate muscle, echoed by the bassoons and the rest of the band, anxious to join in with the fun!

Then, of course, came the aforementioned “goblins walking across the world” section, here suitably angular and grotesque, the atmosphere suitably “charged” with mysterious expectation, the timpani eventually taking over from the winds and strings, the sounds magnificently held in check until the firmament was rent by the music’s unstoppable surge into C major, the brass finally allowed to roar out their music, and the rest of the orchestra conflagrated by the sheer energy of it all. De Waart’s control enabled everything to “speak”, but encouraged an on-going vitality, incorporating the spooky return of the scherzo’s “goblins” and the composer’s “vast roarings” putting the latter to flight once and for all, the strings singing out in tandem with the bassoon, piccolo and flute, and the music’s surging towards a communal joyousness at the end – the concert as a whole a true “darkness-to-light” journey of the human spirit, and a privilege to witness. Those many people who leapt to their feet at the C Minor symphony’s end in the Michael Fowler Centre in appreciation of what they had heard obviously thought so too!

 

 

Rewarding start to the NZSO’s Beethoven Festival from Edo de Waart

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart

Beethoven Festival: Symphonies 1 in C, 2 in D and 3 in E flat, ‘Eroica’

Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 28 August, 7:30 pm

While under Edo de Waart’s musical direction the NZSO has performed several Beethoven symphonies (I recall only 1, 3 and 7) the last complete cycle was a valedictory series (well, his penultimate year) by Pietari Inkinen in 2014. And De Waart is following the same, strictly chronological order, with the first concert devoted to Nos 1, 2 and 3.

Looking back at what I wrote about the first Inkinen concert, I find I’m making a similar and, I suppose, not uncommon observation that there is not the sort of marked difference between Nos 2 and 3 than is sometimes believed to exist. De Waart signalled that in the incremental enlargement of the orchestra between each of the three. No 1 used two horns and strings numbering from 10 down to three basses; in No 2 there were three horns, 12 first violins and four basses, while the Eroica employed four horns, 14 first violins, descending to six basses.

No 1 in C major
The C major symphony opened in a sort of secretive manner that was immediately captivating, strings and winds sounding separately quite a lot but always with a beautiful feeling of carefully balanced ensemble. Beethoven’s scoring and the smaller orchestra allowed individual instruments to emerge clearly.

There’s slightly more Haydn than Mozart audible in  the first symphony but it’s not fruitful to dwell on the composer’s predecessors, for you don’t have to be very perceptive to hear already what can only be Beethoven’s voice, a melodic individuality and a way of handling the shapes of phrases.

Like many of Haydn’s London symphonies, its slow movement, Andante cantabile con moto, is in triple time, and its performance enhanced its gentle character, its minuet-like character which sounds, in some ways more like a minuet than the third movement itself. The Menuetto was Beethoven’s only named minuet movement; while, in the sprightly way De Waart took it, the Menuetto seemed to be striving to be a Scherzo.

I remember how, when I first heard the symphony in my teens, being captivated in the last movement, Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace, by the way Beethoven teased the listener with successive ‘attempts’ at the rising major scale, in G for the moment, rather than the home key of C. The touch of restrained wit seemed to be present throughout De Waart’s performance, and it seemed to draw attention to other games, such as the tossing of the theme back and forth between winds and strings.

No 2 in D major
Not only does each successive symphony grow in length and instrumentation, but also in melodic and formal complexity. For my ears, there’s as much evolution and elaboration between 1 and 2 as between 2 and 3. And De Waart created a mood in the first movement in which the D major key sounded very much more mature and meditative that its predecessor, with its more elaborate orchestration and melodic development; all of which was spread out at a moderate speed – it lasted about 12 minutes; it commonly comes in at about 10. The sense of maturity and calm seriousness, dictated I suppose by the key of D, was consolidated by the Larghetto second movement which shifts to A major, confirming its emotional richness, compared with the first symphony.

After writing this I came across an anonymous quote from a contemporary (1804) review of the D major symphony which is in line with my own feeling about it:

“It is a noteworthy, colossal work, of a depth, power, and artistic knowledge like very few. It has a level of difficulty, both from the point of view of the composer and in regard to its performance by a large orchestra (which it certainly demands), quite certainly unlike any symphony that has ever been made known. It demands to be played again and yet again by even the most accomplished orchestra, until the astonishing number of original and sometimes very strangely arranged ideas becomes closely enough connected, rounded out, and emerges like a great unity, just as the composer had in mind.”

Commentators commonly remark on the synchronous appearance of Beethoven’s distressing Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802 confessing his dismay and wretchedness at his increasing deafness, and I hear this in the symphony’s general mood.

While it’s labelled Scherzo, the third movement seems not to conform particularly to its meaning: ‘joke’ or ‘jest’. Thus it doesn’t suggest any great departure from the spirit of the rest of the symphony.  The last movement persists with the somewhat sombre mood of the other movements, and the orchestra continued to relish the greater sophistication and occasionally teasing seriousness of the movement.

The Eroica
And so, I really don’t share the common view that it’s really only with the Eroica, that the real Beethoven emerged. Its fame derives in part from its intended dedication to Napoleon and Beethoven’s shock when he crowned himself Emperor in 1804, scratching out the dedication. And there’s its grandeur, its greater length and the enlarged orchestra; and its surprising and unusual turns of tonality and orchestral texture. At least one writer has noted that Beethoven could in certain respects have modelled his E flat symphony on Mozart’s E flat symphony, No 39 (inter alia, its first movement in triple time, its second in duple time).

That writer argued his case, concluding: “Even from his earliest works like the Opus 1 Piano Trios, Opus 9 String Trios, opus 5 Cello Sonatas, and Opus 2 Piano Sonatas, Beethoven’s breadth of spiritual vision, his profundity of emotion, his sky-lifting wit and unconstrained audacity are fully developed.”

I don’t claim that there are aspects and elements of No 3 that exist in a mature shape in No 2; they are merely less conspicuous, not so fully formed, suggesting that these signs of genius are present and will soon emerge.

Its main claim to fame is the profoundly impressive Marcia funebre, its second movement, which introduced a powerfully expressive emotionalism of a kind not heard before. Here, Beethoven does, emphatically, transcend anything he’d written before; the challenge is to perform it in a way that reveals its genius without exaggerating the emotion. De Waart’s approach to it was through restraint and an elegiac spirit that was controlled and thoughtful with no hint of unrestrained or even suppressed grief.

The Scherzo, which Beethoven clearly uses as an injunction of ‘life goes on’, after its timid first bars, rang out as an expression of optimism and human delight, perhaps also in the natural world.

To have put the three symphonies in chronological order is at once an obvious and a revelatory approach; I only hope that the audience took away the same message that I did, that, apart from the Marcia funebre, the first two are not far behind the third.

De Waart’s taste and instinct for finding the middle ground, neither too reticent nor to flamboyant, led to performances that were temperate and assured, without vices. They left Beethoven’s voice and intelligence to be understood and heard without input from an egotistic intermediary.

But …
While it’s reported that there’s a full house for the last concert, with Nos 8 and 9, the audience on Wednesday rather worried me. Though the gallery was reasonable well inhabited, the stalls looked little more than half occupied. And more empty seats appeared around me after the interval. Is Wellington…New Zealand…on an irreversible cultural decline as a new generation, less exposed to great music in school and in the general musical environment, is simply less broadly educated.

 

Third of NZSO’s Shed series delivers some hits, some misses, and a couple of real successes

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: Shed Series, Concert III
Conductor: Hamish McKeich

Piazzolla: Sinfonietta
Eve de Castro-Robinson: Cyprian’s Dance
Mozart: Symphony No 32 in G, K 318
Piazzolla: Histoire du tango  – III Nightclub 1960
Bach/Webern: A Musical Offering – Ricercare
Webern: Symphony, Op 21
John Adams: Chamber Symphony

Shed 6, Wellington Waterfront

Friday 9 August 7:30 pm

The NZSO’s Shed series is one of the orchestra’s gestures that seeks to attract new audiences. You stay out of conventional venues, you avoid any of the trappings of a forbidding classical music concert which finds the entire audience in white tie and tails and ball gowns; there are no rows of comfortable seats. Instead, just a few dozen seats with backs, a lot of padded benches scattered around, high bar tables with a few stools round them and lots of room on the floor on which to sprawl comfortably. At the last concert, 15 minutes before curtain rise, I was lucky to find a last seat against a wall. This time I was uncommonly early and so, comfortably seated.

The emulation of a rock concert involved no printed programme. We have evidently reverted to the age of oral as distinct from literate culture. A couple of friends expressed puzzlement to one of the roving ‘ushers’ at the neglect of the art of reading, and had a pleasant, smiling response. However, there are a few notes on the concert on the NZSO website which computer-literate audience members would have accessed.

Another of the friendly touches was a scattering of musicians at their desks (yes they were allowed the scores), playing their way round tricky passages; but I saw no audience members chatting to them.

While I’m at it, I could say I was surprised to find bar charges about 25% higher than in the MFC: perhaps they’d misread the nature of the concert, expecting a well-heeled audience in a wharf shed?

Fortunately, Hamish McKeich is the ideal conductor/compere: congenial, light-spirited, casual and mildly droll. However, I wondered if his remarks about composers and the pieces revealed a depth of knowledge that might have discomforted or offended the more narrowly focused rock-concert addict. His introducing the music and its composers was admirably clear and offered sufficient information, generally placing it in its historical context.

Piazzolla made a good opener for a concert like this.
It was a relief to be offered something other than the much played Four Seasons of Buenos Aires; his less familiar Sinfonietta successfully straddled the intellectual character of good classical music and the essence, refined, of its tango origins. It’s in three movements: 1. Dramatico. Allegro marcato, un poco pesante; 2. Sobrio. Andantino – Poco più mosso – Tempo I; 3. Jubiloso. Vivace).

The piano began by repeating a six-note phrase, then low strings and xylophone join, uttering staccato gestures in sombre mood. The second movement adopts an even more subdued feeling, at a similar pace, seeming to subtly disguise its tango roots, so unassertive were its sounds. The third movement finally takes off as a more recognisable, energetic and sophisticated tango. If Piazzolla’s purpose was to assert his legitimacy in the classical mainstream, recognising that Western music has absorbed the ambient music of its environment throughout its history, he succeeded here.  There was a satisfying feeling of genuine invention and formal mastery of the broad classical tradition, successfully integrated with a prevailing tango flavour. The result combined clarity with colourful orchestration.

Eve de Castro-Robinson’s Cyprian’s Dance was accompanied by a change in the lighting to an unusual rose, playing against interesting wall patterns. Hints of a tango rhythm suggested themselves to me; but the prevailing tone was of high register strings, long glissandi, a disturbed feeling of a brittle, highly-strung creation. There was also a fleeting Mozart quotation from Eine kleine Nachtmusik whose connection with its surroundings escaped me. The piece rather lacked warmth and lyricism, and its reception was luke-warm.

Mozart’s Symphony No 32 is a bit of an oddity: only about eight minutes long, in three unelaborated movements. The early pages were typically and charming Mozartian, setting off as if it would become a conventional symphonic work, by means of repetition, development and the introduction of contrasting themes. But each movement ended too soon, rather leaving one hanging, expecting more. It could probably have been managed in a way that made its abbreviated length sound deliberate, but it just seemed incomplete; I didn’t feel that the orchestra’s heart was in it.

Piazzolla: Histoire du tango
It was followed, unprogrammed, by the Nightclub 1960 movement of Piazzolla’s four-part Histoire du tango, this time arranged for flute and xylophone; one of his most familiar pieces and so a touchstone that eased the return to our own age.

Webern appeals to rather small number of ordinary classical listeners; programming it here was obviously with the hope that a less ‘prejudiced’, young and uncommitted audience would be more open-minded, may have been a good try. Perhaps it was felt that linking Webern with a piece by Bach, even a relatively unfamiliar piece like the Ricercare from A Musical Offering might break the ice and perhaps its character was a little less dense and impenetrable than Webern’s not well-known Symphony that followed.

The Symphony is scored for two violins, viola, and cello, and clarinet, bass clarinet, two horns, harp. But accepting that where I was seated didn’t allow a well-balanced aural picture, it was probably unreasonable to expect a successful performance in this environment.  I was left with the feeling that it needed a more seriously lyrical approach, to tease out its improbable beauties. I’ve certainly heard it so played on recordings.

The choice of John Adams’s Chamber Symphony was more successful; Though it may well have been chosen because it was for a smaller ‘chamber’ orchestra for four strings, a dozen winds, piano and percussion, it, along with Piazzolla’s Sinfonietta, was the most immediately accessible (and therefore successful) work of the evening (apart naturally, for the Mozart). The orchestration is certainly unorthodox but not the least alienating. It’s in three movements; multitudinous, eclectic (just look at the names Adams gives its movements – “Mongrel Airs”; “Aria with Walking Bass” and “Roadrunner”) with moderately avant-garde elements. Some of rthe sounds in its first movement reminded me of Stravinsky in L’histoire du soldat.

Adams wrote that it’s partly influenced by Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony (1907, long before his twelve tone era), but also by his young son watching old cartoons. Adams writes: “Sam was in the adjacent room watching cartoons (good cartoons, old ones from the ’50’s). The hyperactive, insistently aggressive and acrobatic scores for the cartoons mixed in my head with the Schoenberg music, itself hyperactive, acrobatic and not a little aggressive”.

So the pulsating, exciting third movement was a splendid way to end the concert. Probably as a result of the seating (everyone’s aural experience would have been different because the audience was spread around three, perhaps four, sides of the orchestra), the sound was less than ideal, not balanced properly; it would be good to hear it in a conventional auditorium.

Is this the way forward?
While the orchestra’s aims are admirable, the performances first rate, and there was a reasonable, though by no means capacity audience of more young people that are found at the normal concerts, I’m not sure about the whole package. Is the creation of some sort of pseudo-rock concert environment, aping an utterly different musical genre, the way to attract new audiences to the music that is at the heart of the symphony orchestral world? After all, most of this music is far from central to the huge body of wonderful music that has stood the test of time for up to half a millennium (at least).

A traditional venue such as the Town Hall, where seating was on a flat floor, flexible, and with the orchestra at that level, might be a better venue: a half-way house between the genres. My mind goes back to the much lamented ‘Promenade Concerts’ that flourished in the 1950s: informal, relaxed, where the audience sat and lay on rugs and cushions on the floor and there was food and drinks available inside the stalls, at the back. The music was not like this of course, but it did was music that was accessible and beautiful and it did attract hundreds of young people like me, getting to know great music that helped form criteria that cultivated taste and the ability to distinguish the good from the rubbish. Another reason for longing for some faster action on the Town Hall.

Camerata continues exploring Haydn with an aside to Mozart: charm and surprises

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Camerata chamber orchestra. Leader: Anne Loeser

Haydn: Overture to La Fedelta Premiata
Haydn: Symphony no. 9
Mozart: Divertimento in D, K. 136,
Haydn: Symphony no. 5

St Peter’s church, Willis Street

Thursday 8 August, 6 pm

Looking back on Middle C’s reviews of Camerata, I see they have been a peripatetic ensemble, having been in St Mary of the Angels, the Wesley Church, Taranaki Street and the Adam Concert Room in the university school of music, but most often at St Peter’s.

St Peter’s may not be such a prolific provider of concerts as St Andrew’s, but it always shows its virtues when musicians choose to perform there. Its timber structure offers a slightly more mellow quality to the sound and its greater antiquity along, I suppose, with a richness of religious decoration, imagery and memorials, which has not been subjected to doctrinal austerity; it creates a warm and interesting environment, in a less bright light.

Their main sphere has been the Baroque/Classical era, though there have been departures from Haydn, Mozart and their contemporaries: like Dvořák, Pierné, Elgar and Mendelssohn. This time there was no departure from their dedicated field.

Overture to La Fedelta Premiata
Haydn dominated, with two early symphonies and an opera overture. The overture was for an opera of 1781, twenty years after he began his service at the court of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy. Few of his operas survived a few performances at Esterháza (or Eszterháza, in Hungarian spelling) and opinion of the time and even today has not really left us with a collection of seriously undervalued masterpieces. The overture contains a prominent hunting theme, which gave it a special character leading Haydn to use it as the finale to Symphony No 73, named ‘La Chasse’.

It opens with a jolly, rhythmic hunting tune that taxed the brass players (trumpets and horns), making a fine impact as the concert’s opener.

A Ninth Symphony
It was too early in the history of the symphony for a Symphony No 9 to be a guaranteed masterpiece, and in truth, though I write this with a degree of trepidation, its performance hardly presaged the sort of fame that Haydn achieved through the 1780s. Yet there was plenty of melodic invention, it was animated and well-paced and there were clear signs of the richer musical gifts that emerged more vividly over the years and employing flutes, oboes, horns and a bassoon. The Andante, second movement, using only flutes and strings, was charming and the Finale, in the shape of a minuet, brought horns back, enjoyed a lovely oboe solo over delicate string accompaniment; not flawless but it created a confident, genial spirit. The main handicap here might have been a lack of string numbers that restrained a truly lyrical and shapely performance.

Mozart divertimento/symphony/string quartet
Between the two Haydn symphonies came an early work by Mozart, written ten years after Haydn’s No 9. While Haydn was 29, Mozart was only 16 when he wrote this. It’s for strings only, sometimes called a string quartet, sometimes known as the first of the three ‘Salzburg Symphonies’. It’s much admired, for it’s a fully formed, accomplished and elegant work that has always held its own, and set in this context, it displayed rather more urbane confidence than Haydn did at twice his age. The third and last movement, marked Presto, was evidence of that confidence, taken at maximum speed, even through the accomplished little fugue found in the middle.

The Fifth Symphony
I wondered whether the selection of Haydn’s symphonies 5 and 9, signalling two of the greatest symphonies ever, by another composer, was a deliberate bit of playfulness. Also noted was that these two symphonies straddled the fairly familiar numbers 6, 7 and 8 (Morning, Noon and Night symphonies, but no relation to the Suppé Overture).

The Fifth was the only four-movement work in the programme, though not written according to the later symphonic recipe (fast, slow, minuet, presto-finale); but rather in the ‘church sonata’ form (slow, fast, dance – as usual a minuet – and fast). It was probably written aged 26 (Wikipedia thinks after 1760, aged more like 28), before Haydn was engaged by the Esterhazy family.

As the programme notes point out, the opening movement has real gravitas; I heard, rather than ’gravitas’, an interesting sensitivity which made one realise that Prince Nicolaus did have an acute ear for the work of a slow-maturing genius.

The programme note again, hints that the second movement, Allegro, gives a pre-taste of the spirit of Sturm und Drang (the German pre-Romantic phase, which didn’t really emerge till the 1770s); and the speeds and agility it demanded, and the high horn parts, didn’t sound easy. It was in triple time which rather reduced the contrast normally found between the second movement and the Minuet which was also played at a rather similar pace. But one could sense its underlying delicacy which tended to be forgotten as the typical Minuet movement later became more boisterous, eventually turning into a Scherzo with Beethoven.

The Finale was indeed, Presto, and one had hardly noted the couple of tunes that it uses, and the high horn parts, before it was over. A model overlooked by Bruckner and Mahler.

This admirable project by Anne Loeser and the Camerata orchestra, that is slowly exploring Haydn’s early symphonies, puts me in mind of a wonderful series of concerts, perhaps a couple of decades ago, covering all Mozart’s symphonies in a day-by-day festival, employing all Wellington’s orchestras, even some from amateurs. No one could sensibly suggest such an undertaking for Haydn, but there’s more than enough evidence in these concerts, that such an enterprise, selecting 20 or 30 symphonies might capture attention; and I don’t forget Orchestra Wellington’s series of Haydn’s Paris symphonies in 2014.

 

Innovative, adventurous, AND intensely musical!! – “Pictures” with Orchestra Wellington and Marc Taddei

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Music by Debussy, Barber, Alex Taylor, Musorgsky

CLAUDE DEBUSSY – L’Isle Joyeuse (orchestrated Bernardino Molinari)
SAMUEL BARBER – Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra 1945
ALEX TAYLOR- Assemblage (robotic incarnation by Simon Ingram)
MODEST MUSORGSKY – Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrated Maurice Ravel)

(Images accompanying Musorgsky’s “Pictures” courtesy of Tony Mackle
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa)

Lev Sivkov (‘cello)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 2nd August 2019

Such a cornucopia of sound, image and incident, with projected images and robotic contraptions playing an integral part in the proceedings! One certainly sensed that something out of the ordinary was being enacted here in the Michael Fowler Centre, although it must be said that, right from the very beginning, in the foyers outside the auditorium was that familiar “buzz” of expectation which we’ve come to expect accompanying Orchestra Wellington concerts – and then, inside, was the overwhelming impression of a full-to-bursting hall of people instantly making for a kind of frisson of anticipation entirely its own. What a tribute to the work of the orchestra, along with its conductor and management over recent times!

True to form, there was even an unchartered surprise in store for us throughout the evening, conductor Marc Taddei at one point enjoining his enthralled audience to assist in the making of a “virtual reality” cyber-game which involved a player conducting an orchestra, and, in response to this receiving appropriately adulatory, lukewarm or downright derisive audience reactions to her/his efforts. What fun we all had, prompted by Taddei, simulating by turns a few seconds of each of these responses, all duly recorded!

All of it certainly added up to a distinctively “different” evening with an orchestra – and if some of the more experimental happenings were received with as much bemusement and bewilderment as appreciation, it was all part of the experience. Some of these “experiments” I do admit I found it difficult to respond to without sounding impossibly fogey-ish, but, buoyed along by the spirit of adventure and enterprise that marked the whole, I thought it important to set down a reaction as a mark of respect for people’s efforts, if nothing else. I should say, before going on, that musically, I found the evening an enthralling experience – even the Samuel Barber concerto on this occasion, which has in the past never done much for me.

The concert began with Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeuse though here, of course, in a version orchestrated by the composer’s friend the Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari. The latter used a large orchestra, a measure of the power of Debussy’s original solo piano evocation, which was inspired directly by a painting by the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau, L’embarquement pour Cythère (The departure for Cythère), depicting a group of revellers leaving for the island associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It was around this time that Debussy was “escaping” with his lover, Emma Bardac, to the island of Jersey, hence the music’s sensuality and excitement. We were shown Watteau’s painting on a screen above the orchestra during the performance, the image perhaps needing one of those gradually “closing in” views during the music for some of the central detail to involve us more immediately – but nevertheless, a nice idea.

Beginning with lovely, engagingly throaty wind-gurglings, everything delicately energised and transparently coloured, the music danced its way along, the orchestral timbres allowing a more obviously visceral element to the music, but keeping to the fore a constantly-turning, kaleidoscopic quality, the winds nimble and atmospheric, and the brass magically sonorous. The strings took full advantage of their thematic moments of romantic warmth, the whole gradually building up the excitement with surging “La Mer-ish” moments, then bursting forth with a full panoply of orchestral splendour!

After this, Samuel Barber’s “Cello Concerto seemed at first like dried biscuit following a sumptuous dessert, until one got use to the composer’s almost self-consciously fragmented manner in dealing with his themes, the first movement of the work mercilessly “worrying” its material for much of the time. I did think, though, that the playing of Lev Sivkov, the soloist was most impressive. The slow movement, however, converted me to the cause more than anything, a kind of measured Sicilienne, featuring beautiful work from the soloist and woodwind players alike, the oboe singing with the solo ‘cello in a dance-like processional, with all the winds distinguishing themselves in gorgeous outpourings, becoming increasingly fraught with emotion as the music proceeded – deeply moving in effect!

The finale’s full orchestral opening approached a “cry of pain” in effect, though the music quickly moved into gear, crackling with angular energies, Sivkov bringing off a number of fiendish-looking runs the length of the fingerboard, the orchestra by turns muttering and “shouting” the main theme insistently. A seesawing orchestral ostinato built up intensity like an approaching juggernaut, before allowing the ‘cello a little declamatory space, though there was no let-up in the orchestra’s determinedly-renewed onslaught, save for an impassioned solo from the ‘cello that did seem to gain some ambient empathy. A quirky triplet rhythm, another impassioned solo, and orchestra and cellist swiftly dealt the music its coup de grace-like final gesture!

Alex Taylor’s piece Assemblage came inextricably linked with visual artist Simon Ingram’s “autonomous painting robot”, its various manifestations mightily intriguing all and sundry! I wasn’t quite prepared for the “austerity”, let alone the somewhat static nature of the visual result, as the machine took its time to produce single lines, curves, arcs, in tandem with the musical composition. In this particular case the actual relationship between visual artist and composer, machine and music, was, as Alex Taylor explained in his SOUNZ interview, not dissimilar to any of the pictures/music relationship in the Musorgsky work, except that the “source material” for the composer (the machine and its visual creation) was , as he put it “alive, and an active part of the piece”.

As a listener/observer, one had to accept that the experience was “what it was” in terms of having to take in (a) the robot’s workings, (b) the picture that was being crafted by the machine as prompted by its operator, and (c) the music. It was all too much for this “bear of little brain” at a first encounter, my instincts (as with the Musorgsky work that followed, which was “inundated” with visual images) being to focus my attentions towards the music, though the distractions in this case produced more of a bewildered response than anything else, rather like the sailor in AA Milne’s poem from “Now We Are Six” who “never could think which he ought to do first”.

As for the music, orchestral sounds mingling with amplified robotic workings, the result was nothing if not inventive, beginning with low, sinister Fafner-like growls (I had not long ago listened to Wagner’s “Siegfried!), then suggesting some kind of inter-planetary lift-off, coinciding with the robot’s workings and its resulting arc-like markings being shown, enlarged, on the screen. We heard a series of excitable crescendi with differently-scored scintillations punctuating the flow, the effect at times filmic and transcending the robotic workings in terms of imagery suggested, while in other places generating toccata-like frenzies of motoric excitement.

After subsequently gathering its energies for a “birth-pangs” series of mighty efforts, and dragging something from the pupa – with the strings supporting a nobly heroic theme on the brass,  the music triumphantly reached a kind of “breaking free” threshold, suggesting open spaces and wide-eyed wonderment at some kind of journey’s end, the robot’s peregrinations having produced an angular assemblage of circles, as enigmatic as the machine’s actual workings!

Our “virtual reality audience” collaborations having then been mooted and satisfactorily executed, it was time for the evening’s culmination – a performance of Modest Musorgsky’s most famous undertaking, but one with a difference. In keeping with the evening’s focus upon music’s powers of “visualisation”, we were not only given French composer Maurice Ravel’s justly-celebrated orchestral transcription of Musorgsky’s original work for piano solo, but were shown a series of artworks from the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa to accompany the music, images selected to “match the categories of castles, tombs, witches and unhatched chicks”, as the programme note put it.

I wanted this idea to work, as it seemed such an exciting and out-of-the-ordinary thing to do – but as soon as I got the accompanying insert containing what seemed to me to be a huge number of images, I felt misgivings – surely all of this was far too much to “load into” a piece of music whose original conception was of pieces written in response to just ONE single image for each? Straightaway, the idea of showing different images of “people walking about in a variety of contexts” to illustrate the composer’s originally unifying and binding intention seemed to me damagingly discursive and superficial. Where were these people all going, and for what purposes? What was the plan?

In effect, the exercise for me became more frustrating than fulfilling – I felt there were too many vaguely conceptualised images, with most in any case having detailings that were impossible to discern properly at that distance. Occasionally one popped up which was arresting, and whose impact stayed with me – an example was the Waharoa, or gateway, from the Te Papa collection,  something whose power and gravitas could have easily maintained its stunning impact right throughout the playing of the work’s final ”Great gate at Kiev”. The problem of detail could have also been better addressed by having “close-ups” (detail!) from the picture or image selected. Musorgsky would have expected audiences to “enter the world” of each of his specific musical images during their individual courses – no chance of that was possible, here, unless one shut one’s eyes, or focused primarily on the music.

Which was what I eventually did, and which course brought forth such riches! – for, irony of ironies, this performance by Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington was one of the finest, most focused, exquisitely-detailed and richly-characterised I’ve ever experienced. Here was beautifully deep and rich brass-playing, characterfully nimble and artfully-textured winds, string-sounds of every conceivable hue and colour, both rich and delicate, (the players’ eerie pianissimi in “With the dead in a dead language” simply unearthly!), and everything from the deepest and most sonorous percussion to the lightest and most delicate detail. Individual touches such as the saxophone in “the Old Castle” and the tuba in “Bydlo” were vividly projected, the players deserving their own special accolades at the performance’s end, as did, from a justly appreciative audience, the whole orchestra and its conductor!

The best drawn from Wellington Youth Orchestra in taxing programme under Donald Armstrong

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Youth Orchestra (WYO)
Guest conductor – Donald Armstrong

Dukas: Fanfare to precede La Péri
Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48
Weill: Little Threepenny Music (Kleine Dreigroschenmusik)
Enescu: Rhapsody No. 1 in A major

St Andrews on The Terrace

Sunday 28 July 2019, 7 pm

The Wellington Youth Orchestra is the only full-size symphony orchestra for young players in Wellington. The ages of the members range from 25 to 13. They all have to go through a rigorous audition to join. The orchestra has an important place in the Wellington musical scene, not only for the varied and interesting programmes it offers, but because it is a stepping stone for young people who aspire to be professional musicians. A number of its alumni now study overseas or are members of professional orchestras. These include Gemma New, who is now carving out a successful career as a conductor in Canada and the US. In an interview she talked about the sheer pleasure of being part of an orchestra and its sound produced through the cooperation of a large team. This pleasure radiated from more than 60 young musicians who participated in this concert. The programme was designed for orchestral training as much as for its musical interest.

The concert opened with a Fanfare to precede Dukas’ ballet La Péri. Dukas is now mainly remembered for his Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but in his time he was a greatly respected teacher and composer. He was extremely critical of his own music and destroyed most of his works, which almost included La Péri. The ballet is now largely forgotten, but its magnificent fanfare which was originally used as the opener for the ballet is still enjoyed. It was played by the full brass section. Getting an ensemble of brass players to play with the subtlety and clarity that is demanded in an orchestra is a challenge to which these players responded ably. It was a grand piece that made the various brass instrumentalists listen to each other and make their sounds blend.

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings was the string section’s opportunity to shine. The gorgeous rich string sound reverberated in the friendly acoustics of the church. The title and the structure of this work paid homage to Mozart and 18th century divertimento music, but Tchaikovsky renders these in his own Russian late 19th century idiom. The work is in the traditional four movements, ‘ I Pezzo in forma di Sonatina’, ‘Waltzer’, ‘Élégie’, and ‘Finale’. The first movement is a beautiful rich chorale scored for the whole orchestra with the cellos playing lots of fast notes underneath a slower moving passage in the upper strings. The cellos came through with an opulent sound, while the upper strings played the melody with a rich silky tone. The second movement, the Waltz, takes the place of the 18th century minuet. It is the best known part of the work, often played on its own. The third movement is lyrical, elegiac, with a hint of Tchaikovsky’s other worldly fairy tale like music. The final movement goes from a subdued opening based on a Russian theme to a vibrant section of Russian dance sequence. The orchestra played with clear precision and confidence, undaunted by the difficult filigree passages of this substantial symphonic work.

The brass and the strings having had their turn to shine, it was the turn of the winds and percussion to display their skills in Kurt Weill’s Little Threepenny Music. The cultural gulf between the Berlin of the 1920s and Wellington of 2019 is huge, but the group of eight woodwind, four brass, piano, banjo and guitar, and percussion managed to capture the cynical, decadent feel of the popular themes from the Threepenny Opera, all tinged with parody. It is a difficult work with all the players exposed in solo parts. Credit to the whole team for tackling this seemingly light but technically difficult piece. It is very enjoyable music.

The whole orchestra came together for the final work, Enescu’s Rhapsody No. 1. This is an early work, based on popular dance tunes and songs of the time. It uses Romanian dance rhythms that get faster and faster until they get to a quite dizzying speed. It is ebullient, and outgoing, with none of the barbaric quality of the music of his contemporary, Bartók, who also explored the music of Romania. A clarinet, introduces the theme song that is gradually taken up by the whole orchestra. It is exuberant music and the large orchestra in full flight playing these wild gypsy rhythms was a joy to behold.

For an encore the orchestra played Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance from his ballet Gayane. It is a rumbustious, energetic piece, very appropriate for this concert by young musicians to end on.

Donald Armstrong is in appearance modest, self-effacing, but as Associate Concert Master of the NZSO, and vastly experienced conductor of various ensembles, he knew how to get the best from his players. He allowed them to play with confidence, gave them space, air, and freedom to express themselves. He let them play with a bold sound, yet still playing with discipline.

The Wellington Youth Orchestra is a great asset to the city. Such a concert augurs well for the city’s musical future.

The next concert of the WYO is on Sunday, 5 October.

The programme will include Saint-Saëns, Bruch and Glazunov.

 

 

Splendid, richly satisfying NZSO concert of four strongly contrasted works played with mastery and conviction

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlos Kalmar with Steven Osborne (piano)

Michael Norris: Matauranga
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 12 in A, K 414
Osvaldo Golijov: Last Round
Nielsen: Symphony No 4, Op 29 (‘The Inextinguishable’)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 13 July, 7:30 pm

Anniversary: Cook’s first voyage and Matauranga 
The first piece in Saturday’s concert was entitled Matauranga, which means ‘knowledge, wisdom, understanding, skill’, according to the programme note. It was in part to mark the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first voyage one of whose purposes was to observe the transit of Venus in Tahiti in June 1769. His reaching New Zealand was timely to observe the transit of Mercury on the Coromandel Peninsula in November 1769, and the names Cook’s Beach and Mercury Bay celebrate it.

The intelligent programme note also places in perspective Cook’s voyage (voyages) as a product of The Enlightenment in Europe. The notes write: “The ideals of the Enlightenment sprang from a rejection of institutional religion, entrenched tradition and superstition in favour of rational thought, logic and the empirical, organised advancement of knowledge”.

Michael Norris’s approach to the subject was to combine taonga puoro with the orchestral strings and live electronics. Nevertheless, the score created an attractive pattern of subtle sounds, the Maori instruments having the most conspicuous role while the strings and the electronics seemed present in principle rather than in their actual impact. However, this piece offered an interesting range of sounds generated by taonga puoro, a wider range of these instruments than I think I’ve encountered before; scored with considerable sensitivity and clarity and played confidently by the versatile Alistair Fraser.

This is not the first time that I’ve rather wished that a little time had been taken in naming and sampling the sounds of each instrument, and for the programme book to have illustrated and named each one. I have the same feelings about the value of identifying with visual and sound examples the huge range of less familiar orchestral percussion instruments which, apart from timpani, are referred to merely as ‘percussion’.

The orchestra might have hoped that the inclusion of a quite approachable piece highlighting taonga pouro might have attracted a number of Maori to the concert; it didn’t. Furthermore, the concert as a whole attracted a much smaller audience that is usual for NZSO subscription concerts.

This was a surprise and a disappointment given the programming of a charming Mozart piano concerto by a particularly gifted pianist, and an arresting, strong-minded yet beautiful Nielsen symphony.

Steven Osborne in Mozart
Mozart’s piano concerto no 12 is one of the first group of three that he wrote for his own very successful subscription concerts after he moved to Vienna from Salzburg. Conductor Carlos Kalmar didn’t reduce the size of the string sections to the extent than has become common for music of the ‘Classical’ period. Instead, he concentrated on a warm, quite opulent sound that the modest-sized orchestra produced, while Steven Osborne’s piano offered quite a contrast with crisp, semi-detached playing that was nevertheless in perfect accord with the orchestra. His articulation was varied and subtle, and that modesty characterised the not especially bravura cadenza. The Andante, second movement, though at a walking pace, gave off a restful air. Here, as with the first movement, the orchestral part is very much simply a polite accompaniment, and though there’s quite an extended solo episode, it wasn’t the occasion for anything flashy.

The unostentatious character of the concerto ran through the Finale too; again, little work for the winds: just oboes and horns. Though Mozart also scored optionally for bassoons, none were audible (I couldn’t see).

This performance of this very charming concerto was, along with the other three very significant pieces, the reason for being dispirited about the size of the audience. It also prompts a comment about the failure of the NZSO to make better use of their soloists, especially ones as distinguished as Steven Osborne, in solo and other recitals in Wellington and other parts of the country. A few decades ago it was normal; now, with declining audiences for good music and their increasing unfamiliarity with what one could formerly consider standard, popular repertoire, it strikes me as even more important for concert promoters to exploit every means to get people through the doors. For many people, even one unfamiliar or New Zealand piece is a turn-off.

I would love a subscription series to be devoted to Mozart’s piano concertos, with particular attention to these earlier Viennese ones, before the much more played ones from No 20 in D minor. But does the poor audience tell us something about the general level of cultural awareness? I think it does.

Golijov and the culture of the tango
Osvaldo Golijov was born in Argentina to Romanian-Jewish parents and has quite suddenly put contemporary Latin American music on the map. Many will remember the impact made at the 2014 festival by a semi-staged performance of his opera Ainadamar (the place where Federico García Lorca was killed by Franco’s Falangist assassins in 1936).

Last Round was inspired by the sudden death in 1992 of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla and refers also to notable Argentinian singer and composer Carlos Gardel, the most important main-stream tango musician.  We were fortunate in having this performance from the hands of a particularly vigorous and inspiring conductor whose background lends a special insight into the spirit of the music; and the orchestra responded with great enthusiasm.

Last Round is tango in character though obviously unorthodox. Symbolic conflict dominates the first movement, Movido, urgente, between the divided strings: violins, violas and cellos, half on each side with double basses in the centre, behind. The tango rhythm remains steady for long periods before accelerating and becoming agitated or violent, with characteristic sudden screeching glissandi – very bandoneon. Without an actual pause, the pulsing first movement rhythms subside and the tragic spirit of the second movement, Deaths of the Angel emerges, much slower and exhibiting less overt tango in rhythm and articulation. In the words of the programme note, the tango flavour returns as Golijov “yearningly quotes the refrain from Carlos Gomes’ ‘My beloved Buenos Aires’”.

This is no forbidding, intellectually pretentious avant-garde music: it seems to summarise aspects of contemporary music, through an Argentinian lens that injects a powerful emotional spirit in a perfectly coherent accent, perfectly accessible yet of our age.

Nielsen No 4
Nielsen is a symphonist who is in many ways the equal of Sibelius, and not just through being born in the same year and coming from the broad Scandinavian region; his six symphonies are so different in character both from any other symphonist and from each other that they are difficult to characterise. I would like to think that an enterprising Wellington orchestra might perform all six in the course of a season, but I’d have my work cut out, looking at the size of the audience here.

The fourth, the Inextinguishable, is probably his best known: particularly dramatic, coloured by the First World War, calling up words like ‘violence’, ‘intensity’, ‘headlong energy’, ‘the indomitability of life itself’. The massive brass call to attention at the start might have set the scene, but there are extended passages of beautiful, calm music, such as we are suddenly presented with from the lovely woodwinds of the NZSO in the shorter second movement and in the pensive, beautiful third movement. In all the quicksilver variety of emotion and musical character Carlos Kalmar led the orchestra with energy and rigour, yet with a sense of freedom, giving rein to all Nielsen’s detailed and instrumentally vivid orchestration.

If I had to choose, it would be the Nielsen that I found the most richly satisfying in the concert, and that’s from a field of four very successful, strongly contrasted works each of which was performed with mastery and conviction and should have pulled in all but deeply prejudiced, half-hearted concert goers.