Tag: orchestral

HK Gruber’s critique of classical music with the NZSO a hit with a younger, if smaller, audience

Posted on by Steven Sedley

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by HK Gruber and Håkan Hardenberger
‘Frankenstein’

Håkan Hardenberger – trumpet and HK Gruber – chansonnier

Kindersinfonie – ‘Toy Symphony’
Stravinsky: Circus Polka
HK Gruber: Aerial
Haydn: Symphony No. 22 in E flat major
HK Gruber: Frankenstein

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 10 October 2019, 7:30 pm

‘Why serious?’ the programme notes asks, presumably quoting HK Gruber. The music in this programme was meant to be fun. Gruber wanted to make music simple, approachable, and break down the demarcation between classical and popular music. Simplicity, however does not mean stupidity. Gruber’s models were Kurt Weill and Hans Eisler, and their iconoclastic music of Berlin of the 1920s. So this evening’s music was a long way from the usual symphonic fare, and the audience reflected this. There were empty seats and many of the regular followers of the orchestra were missing. In their place there were many children and young people, not a bad way of attracting a new generation to symphony concerts.

The first half of the concert was conducted by the composer, HK Gruber, with Hardenberger playing the solo, while in the second half, their roles were reversed, the trumpet soloist took over the baton and the composer took on the role of the Chansonnier, narrator.

Kindersinfonie: Toy Symphony

The concert opened with an old favourite of concerts for children, a work variously attributed to Haydn, Joseph or his brother, Michael, Leopold Mozart, or the largely unknown, Edmund Angerer. The music of short movements was written to be played outdoors as light street entertainment to amuse. In this concert the usual classical orchestra was augmented by a toy trumpet, a recorder playing the cuckoo, toy drum, a rattle and a triangle. This signalled what was to come in the rest of the programme.

Stravinsky Circus Polka

The Ringling Brothers and the Barnum and Bailey Circus commissioned Stravinsky to write a piece for 50 young elephants and 50 ballerinas to be choreographed by Balanchine. A couple of years later Stravinsky re-orchestrated the score originally written for a circus band and used a large orchestra, still retaining the sound of the circus performance, with resounding bass drum and crashing cymbals. At the end, with a touch of humour, he introduced Schubert’s March Militaire. All hilarious.

HK Gruber Aerial 

Aerial is a major symphonic work for the trumpet. It was commissioned by Hardenberger, and showcases the different musical attributes of the the trumpet with all its potential. It is a fine vehicle for a brilliant trumpet player and Hardenberger used an array of mutes as well as a piccolo trumpet and even a cow horn to highlight it against a colourful large orchestra that provided not a mere accompaniment but a foundation.

The work is in two parts, ‘two aerial views’ as Gruber describes it, an imaginary landscape beneath the Northern Lights. The first part bears an inscription from Emily Dickinson’s poem, Wild Nights: “Done with the compass, done with the chart”, the second is entitled Gone Dancing. The piece opens softly with an ethereal air, gradually evolving, making use of the resources of the large orchestra with its broad range of percussion. It is this brilliant interplay between the clusters of orchestral sound and the trumpet solo that gives this work its distinctive character. The slow first movement is followed by the energetic second movement with jazzy harmonies and musical quotations embracing the music of the whole last century. It has echoes of Stravinsky, Bernstein and the music of the 1940s. It is full of surprises that kept the audience alert.

Haydn Symphony No. 22 

The second half of the concert opened with an early Haydn symphony nicknamed ‘The Philosopher’. The orchestra was reduced in size to a small string section, with, unusually, two horns, two cor anglais and harpsichord. Haydn was a young man when he wrote this, developing the form that became his distinctive style of classical symphony. The sombre first movement, Adagio, is followed by a buoyant Presto a stately Menuet and Trio, and a high spirited Finale. A slight work played with style. Sandwiched in between the two large orchestral works of Gruber, this modest piece presented an interesting contrast, a respite from the high energy of the work that preceded it.

HK Gruber Frankenstein

Frankenstein is Gruber’s signature piece, his first breakthrough as an internationally recognised composer. He has performed it with major orchestras all over the world since its premier forty years ago. It is a strikingly original work. It is a sprechstimme, a work in which the spoken dialogue is strictly pitched as in a singing. The best known precedent for such a work is Schoenberg’s melodrama, Pierrot Luniare, but what a contrast. Gruber’s is irreverent, cynical, sarcastic, cruel. The text is children’s nursery rhymes, absurd, mocking, shocking, by the Austrian poet H. C. Artman. Originally written for a chamber music ensemble of 13 instruments in 1971, Gruber re-orchestrated it for a huge symphony orchestra with toy instruments, including kazoos, swanee whistles, honking car horns, a melodica, five paper bags, a bird warbler, and hose-pipes.

Enlarging an entertaining work for a small ensemble to a symphonic score is in itself a play on absurdity. Don’t take music too seriously, it is all meant to be fun. Gruber recited the text with great aplomb, earnestly to emphasize its absurdity, in English with clear dramatic diction. Has the text a deeper meaning? Can you read more into it than the words imply? Artman described the poems as being, among other things ‘covert political statements’. This however, doesn’t matter. It is pure entertainment. The poems are about figures in popular culture, demons, heroes, a female vampire, John Wayne, the actor, Robinson Crusoe, Superman, Batman and Robin, James Bond and Goldfinger and Frankenstein, the scientist, who is not a fearsome but a benign figure.

Both the orchestra and the audience entered into the spirit of the fun, and there was an exceptionally large ovation at the end of the performance.

The NZSO is to be commended for trying something quite different. The generous programme notes provided with the full text of the poems in translation and the context of the compositions added to the appreciation of the music.

Accomplished performances from Wellington Youth Orchestra with talented Asaki Watanabe in Bruch concerto

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Mark Carter

Glazunov: ‘Autumn’ from The Seasons, Op 67
Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (Asaki Watanabe – violin)
Saint-Saȅns: Symphony No 3 in C minor, Op 78, ‘Organ’

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday, 6 October, 2019, 3:30 pm

Being part of a symphony orchestra is a huge commitment for young people. It involves rehearsals every Monday evening during term time. It also requires a high degree of competence on an orchestral instrument. A full symphony orchestra needs 20-24 violins, and a corresponding number of violas, cellos and double basses as well as a full compliment of winds, brass and percussion. The Wellington Youth Orchestra mustered an almost full complement of instruments and guest players filled in the missing ranks, but it was short of string players.

Glazunov: Autumn
The concert opened with Glazunov’s ‘Autumn‘ from his Seasons. Seasons was composed for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg in 1900. It is late romantic ballet music. The performance was distinguished by fine disciplined wind playing. The strings had some luscious sustained rich extended melodies. The orchestra played with a strong sense of rhythm.

Bruch Violin Concerto
Joachim, the great violinist, considered Max Bruch’s first violin concerto that he helped to revise, the richest and most seductive of all great German violin concertos. It is one of the most popular concertos in the repertoire. Asaki Watanabe, concert master of the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta won the WYO Concerto Competition with this work. She is a Japanese exchange student studying at Onslow College. She started learning the violin at the age of two and a half and has competed in annual provincial competitions in Japan since she was thirteen. In Wellington she is taught by Yuka Egochi, the NZSO assistant concertmaster.

From the very first notes of her entry it was evident that she is an assured young violinist. She produced a powerful tone, and played with confidence, with meticulously clear phrasing. She inspired and carried the orchestra with her. Every note was clearly and thoughtfully articulated. She displayed a prodigious technique. Her solo had the strong backing of the orchestra, underlining the emotional sweep of the music and beautifully echoing the phrases of the soloist. It was a phenomenal performance.

Organ Symphony
This is a grand symphony scored for a very large orchestra with piano, organ and enlarged percussion section. The music demands a powerful sound. Though called an Organ Symphony, it is not a true symphony for an organ. The organ is used as part of the orchestra in two out of the four sections of the work. In structure the piece is unusual, instead of the usual four movements of a classical symphony it is in two movements with each movement made up of three contrasting parts. The piano is used as a virtuoso soloist in one section, the organ adds colour and power and is used to add an otherworldly effect in the Maestoso section in the second movement. The piece culminates in an all encompassing fugal passage.

This symphony is a challenge for any orchestra, let alone a student orchestra. It has to be played with abandon, but without losing the structure of the work. The orchestra played with enormous dedication, producing some beautiful string sounds, and the winds and brass with the enlarged percussion section managed the exposed individual parts well. It required courage and confidence to cope with the difficult entries and solos. It is a sweeping romantic work, in places overblown, bombastic, but still an important corner stone in the French symphonic repertoire. It was a creditable performance despite all the limitation of the orchestra, too few strings, and the overwhelming acoustics of the venue. All the musicians who participated would have got a lot out of being involved.

Mark Carter, appointed Music Director last year is the Sub-Principal trumpet of the NZSO. He studied conducting and participated in masterclasses with Sir Colin Davis and Sir Simon Rattle. He is also assistant conductor of Stroma, the contemporary music ensemble and music director of the Hutt Valley Orchestra. He is an experienced conductor, conducting with a clear beat. He appeared to have a great rapport with his young musicians. The concert was a wonderful journey for all involved.

If you missed this concert, and Asaki Watanabe’s playing is not to be missed, you can hear the same programme at the St. James Church in Lower Hutt on 12 October, at 3:30 pm.

Ken Young’s final outing with the NZSM Orchestra with a new composition and a concerto with a gifted violinist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young

Luka Venter: ts’onot
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor Op 47 (violin – Nickolas Majić)
Prokofiev: Symphony No 5 in B flat, Op 100

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 4 October, 7:30 pm

This was a little more than a routine concert by the music school of Victoria University, featuring a couple of its post graduate students: one, composer Luka Venter and the other, violinist Nickolas Majić.

At the end  of the concert it emerged, with a large cluster of flowers and speeches, that this was the last concert with the orchestra’s regular conductor, Kenneth Young; it marked his retirement from the position in the school of music, as he is about to take up the Mozart Fellowship at Otago University.

Limestone to music
Venter’s piece was inspired by an unusual geological feature in limestone areas of Mesoamerica, a recondite name for the region inhabited by the Mayan or pre-Columban peoples in what we’d call Mexico and the central American states as far south as Costa Rica. He explains that ‘ts’onot’ is the Yucatec Mayan name for these limestone features, “labyrinths of subterranean tunnels where sheaths of light cut through turquoise groundwater”.

It began with an underlay of strings that was soon joined by an oboe, then horns and soon the involvement of the large orchestra.  It’s not easy to conjure musical sounds from limestone caves and sinks and one had to attempt to relate the sounds and visual impressions that Venter has presumably experienced himself, to what emerged in the music he’d written. It was a shapely sequence, sensitively orchestrated, employing marimbas and a variety of other percussion in an attractive if elusive way. The composer himself conducted his piece with particularly clear and expressive gestures.

Majić with Sibelius
Violinist Nickolas Majić is completing an honours degree under Martin Riseley head of strings at the school. He’s been concert master of the NZSM Orchestra, associate concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra and a casual player in Orchestra Wellington.

The orchestra supported the Sibelius violin concerto splendidly under Young’s vivid and decisive guidance, providing balanced and rich support for Majić’s violin. His playing was confident and colourfully nuanced, yet perfectly unpretentious. In the past I have sometimes found orchestral performance in St Andrew’s an uncomfortable experience as a result of the position of brass and percussion, not very carefully engaged. Not this time, as brass and timpani were clear of the sanctuary which tends to amplify excessively.

This is a taxing concerto, in no way accommodating an any less than thoroughly accomplished violinist, and there was hardly a moment when a less than fully professional performance would have been heard by an unknowing listener.

Prokofiev Five
The second half was rather in recognition of Ken Young’s long involvement with the orchestra: Prokofiev’s 5th is a celebration of victory by the Red Army over the Nazis approaching the end of the 2nd World War, and its optimism and rejoicing was an excellent way of acknowledging Young’s commitment and achievement in his years at the school of music, and leading and inspiring the orchestra.

The last movement epitomises hopes of a new beginning for the Soviet Union, with its renewed opportunities for material and social progress; it’s undoubtedly one of the most brilliant celebratory orchestral works of the mid 20th century – never mind the cruel realities that were soon to emerge.

For the audience it was a dynamic and stirring musical experience, drawing attention to the musicianship of the players as well as the ensemble coherence and polish of the orchestra under pressure.

 

Versions….and versions – Beethoven, Mahler (orch. Michael Vinten) and Bruckner, from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:
BEETHOVEN – Overture to the Opera “Fidelio” Op.72b
MAHLER (orch.Vinten) – Piano Quartet in A Minor (1876) (first public performance)
BRUCKNER – Symphony No. 3 in D Minor “Wagner Symphony” (1874 version)

Michael Vinten (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday, 22nd September, 2019

As Michael Vinten told Radio NZ Concert’s “Upbeat” interviewer David Morriss during the week preceding the concert, none of the three works presented by the orchestra were original versions of the pieces. The closest we came to hearing a work representing its composer’s first thoughts was in the Third Symphony of Anton Bruckner – and this was the second of no less than six (or was it eight?) documented versions of the same composition by name. It could thus have been called a concert of music whose composers couldn’t make their minds up!

Each of the pieces thus carried a uniquely remarkable tale of composing and rewriting – Beethoven’s  overture to his opera “Fidelio” was a completely rewritten piece compared with the original and two other revised versions of the work that the composer had previously produced, all with the name “Leonore” (the opera’s original title). Unlike each of the “Leonore” Overtures, the “Fidelio” overture was a “stand-alone” item, making no reference to the plot or the opera’s themes, thereby keeping intact for the listener the events of the opera until their actual exposition in the work! Michael Vinten’s own programme notes explained all of this and the situation regarding the concert’s two other items most absorbingly!

As an assemblage the three works made the concert an enticing prospect for the listener, an adventurous and stimulating amalgam of the familiar and the new. And if the orchestra players themselves felt at all daunted at the prospect of taking on the longest in duration of all the symphonies written by Anton Bruckner, it didn’t show beforehand, except, perhaps for some less-than-unanimous ensemble in parts of the concert’s opening item, the “Fidelio” Overture, which could have just as easily been put down to the piece being rehearsed less assiduously than was the remainder of the programme, due to the latter’s well-nigh obvious demands (pure conjecture on this reviewer’s part, of course!)

After a couple of uncertain entries and chordings during the piece’s slow introduction, Beethoven’s work was negotiated with ever-increasing confidence by the players, solos from the oboe, clarinet and horn steadily and reliably keeping with the conductor’s vigorous lead through thorny thickets of rhythmic syncopation, the performance reaching a transfiguring moment at the opening’s reprise, with the horns’ beautiful playing casting a “glow” over the music that resulted in everything coming together and producing a fizzing, sizzling ending!

The orchestra having “played itself in”, and the conventionalities of an “overture” having been observed, it was time for everybody to get down to business, firstly, with that most tantalising of rarities, a premiere performance! I was surprised that no mention of any such circumstance had been made, either in the programme or on the aforementioned radio interview – but there it was, the first scheduled performance of Michael Vinten’s orchestrated version of Gustav Mahler’s single-movement Piano Quartet in A Minor (besides the first movement left more-or-less completed, there are a few fragments of an intended scherzo extant). I can only attribute the lack of publicity regarding this event’s “first-time” occasion to Vinten’s own avoidance of self-promotion, putting the composer and his music first, instead! As well, the Quartet was linked to the Bruckner Symphony played after the interval by dint of Mahler himself having made a piano duet version of the Symphony, one published in 1880 (a not uncommon occurrence with orchestral music in the nineteenth century before the invention of the gramophone)…………

The Quartet music itself began darkly and purposefully, filled with romantic, atmospheric feeling. The brass produced lovely, dark-hued sounds, the effect somewhat Schumannesque to my ears as the winds answered the serious, sombre statements, the oboe lines in particular shaped strongly and pliably. I thought the brass’s splendid restatement of the opening theme reminiscent of Mendelssohn in a “Ruy Blas” mood, with the strings and winds helping to build up to a terrific climax – a great unison shout by the orchestra stimulated some trenchant, exciting music-making, with a repeated dotted-rhythm phrase storing up energy and momentum, again capped off by well-rounded brass statements.

Solo violin and ‘cello together with the oboe took us back to the dark, brooding opening, before the wind and brasses “martialized” the music beneath the string lines, building once more to the “grand manner”. A short solo violin cadenza later we were into epilogue country, with the brasses nobly sounding the end, leaving two pizzicato chords to finish the piece. At a good fifteen minutes‘ worth, this intensely poetic, romantically wrought music seemed to me a strong and significant addition to the orchestral concert repertoire, thanks to Vinten’s and his players’ sterling efforts, and the conductor’s expertise and zeal on behalf of Gustav Mahler.

More epic questings awaited both musicians and audience following the concert’s interval, with a performance of Bruckner’s Third Symphony more-or-less as originally written in 1873, with a few “touching-ups” on the part of the composer made the following year. Unlike the version of the work I first got to know (one which the composer made in 1889 some time after the disastrous premiere of the work, in an edition by Leopold Nowak) this was how Bruckner originally intended the work to “sound”, with a whopping twenty minutes’ additional music to that contained on my first LP (DGG) of the Symphony! We were obviously in for something of a re-appraisal, with the original version giving the D Minor work the distinction of being the longest of the composer’s works in that genre.

The famous trumpet tune which Wagner had so admired here (and which gave the symphony its nickname) opened the work over the strings’ forward-thrusting rhythms, the player here beautifully “onto it” (as was the reply of the horns), and the orchestra building the crescendo steadily and surely towards the great shouts that led to a modulated repeat of the thrusting rhythms and resounding orchestral declamations! Never has a symphony “announced” its arrival more gloriously than here – and as sequence followed sequence the players bent their backs to the task with both enthusiasm and detemination. Apart from the occasional entry and ensemble stumble amid the music’s torturous, cross-rhythmed course, conductor and players steered a remarkably sure-footed and true-toned passage through the movement’s many changes of mood, pace and tone, holding enough power and energy in reserve for the coda to make its properly overwhelming effect.

The Adagio alternated between tender utterance and forthright declamation, full, rich tones from the strings being succeeded with steady support from the winds and then the brass. Exchanges between the winds and horns generated a kind of rapt, sacred ritual aspect to the figures in places, and the strings generated plenty of fervour in their soaring lines. We also enjoyed the rousing “Tannhauser” quote played by the brass, who proceeded to take the music by the scruff of the neck and deliver spadefuls of its glory and majesty.  And that moment towards the movement’s end which always reminds me of Dvorak’s famous “Largo” melody from his “New World” Symphony was here balm for the soul, the horns holding their supporting notes magnificently.

Sinuous, writhing violins launched the scherzo, building the crescendo towards the great strings-and-brass-and-timpani shouts of purpose and resolve, beside which the second subject sounded a tad anaemic here, the strings happier with the opening than with the peregrinations of the discursive second subject – the Trio, however, was charmingly done, the violas relishing their exchanges with the violins, the latter a tad dry and insect-like in effect. The finale’s opening, eerie, whirling string-ostinati had an almost space-age effect, with the brass entry terrific and the strings resolutely keeping their whirling rhythms – great work from all concerned. The players got a lovely lift from the dance rhythms of the second subject, and brought out the tenderness of the brief moment before the dance started up again. The great syncopated fanfares dovetailed their figurations to great and outlandish effect – a most stirring sound! – and the brasses heroically soared over the top of the rest of the band with their resounding lines.

Everybody bent their backs to the task splendidly during a middle sequence where the composer seemed to frenetically reprise the opening, the dance melody and the syncopated fanfare, at which point we heard the horns nobly suggesting that a “promised land” was imminent – after brief reminiscences of the first three movements, the orchestra opened the tonal floodgates and, in the grandest possible way, ascended the final slopes to the music’s hard-won, but golden-toned summit of achievement – a brief, breathless hiatus of “are we really there?” after the final chord was followed by oceans of applause from all of us who had made the journey with these intrepid musicians!  – surely one of the orchestra’s finest achievements, thrills and spills included, and a tribute in itself to the vision and unfailing skills and energies of conductor Michael Vinten.

 

 

Orchestra Wellington succeeds with an odd programme of important, challenging and beautiful works

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Dierde Irons, piano
Transfigured Night

Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht
J S Bach: Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 131 (Orchestrated by Dimitri. Mitropoulos)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 21 September, 7:30 pm

For a subscription concert series labelled ‘Epic’, that included Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantasique, Bruckner’s 8th Symphony, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a concert by a string orchestra, with no major symphonic work was odd programming. It is not that Verklärte Nacht, or Beethoven’s C sharp minor quartet were not worth hearing, but they were arrangements of works not written for orchestra. But let me not quibble, they are all beautiful and significant pieces of music seldom heard in these arrangements.

Arnold Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht
Schoenberg, a student of Zemlinsky, was 25 years old, and he earned his living at the time orchestrating operettas, when he wrote Verklärte Nacht for a string sextet. Under the influence of both Brahms and Wagner, he attempted to combine the structural logic of the former with the harmonic language of the latter. This is his first successful major composition.

Verklärte Nacht was inspired by the poem of that title by the Austrian romantic poet Richard Dehmel. The poem describes a man and a woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night. The woman shares a dark secret with her new lover, she bears the child of another man. She fears that her new lover would condemn and abandon her. Yet the beauty of the night and the intensity of their love overcome their difficulties and their lives are transfigured.

The music is in one continuous movement of five parts corresponding to the story of the poem. The stages of Dehmel’s poems are mirrored in the composition, beginning with the sadness of the woman’s confession followed by an interlude in which the man reflects upon the woman’s confession and a finale implying the man’s acceptance (and forgiveness) of the woman. It is rich sensuous romantic music. Schoenberg was at the time in love with Mathilde Zemlinsky, the sister of his teacher and friend. This almost 30 minute long work foreshadows the new era of Schoenberg’s music and the break down of traditional harmonies. It is a landmark in the history of modern music.

The original piece is written for a string sextet. Fifteen years after its first performance Schoenberg rearranged it for a string orchestra. To create the rich sonorous string sound required is a challenge for the string section of an orchestra and the players of the Orchestra Wellington stood up well to this challenge.

Bach: Concerto in D minor
This concerto is one of a number believed to be arrangements of an earlier work written by Bach in Cöthen and is the one most often performed now, perhaps because of its dramatic qualities. It is one of eight concertos that Bach transcribed for harpsichord. The large string orchestra of almost 50 players was reduced to a small group of four each of first and second violins, viola, cello and a double bass.

It is a substantial work in three movements. The first movement, Allegro, is full of contrast with sudden switches of key and dramatic effects.  The lyrical slow movement, Adagio, is built on a ground bass, played in unison by the whole orchestra over which the solo keyboard spins a florid and ornamented melodic line. In the third movement, Allegro, the keyboard plays a free flowing virtuoso passage over the repeated orchestral passage. Brahms’s cadenzas enhanced the grandeur of the concerto.

Diedre Irons played with a translucent fluid style with no exaggerated mannerism. There was a lovely interplay between orchestra and soloist. It was a performance of sheer beauty. The great ovation at the end reflected the love and respect for of this wonderful, modest, self-effacing artist.

Beethoven: String Quartet, Op. 131
Beethoven’s C sharp minor quartet is one of the most difficult and challenging of his works. The epigraph set against one copy of the music describes it as ‘Composed out of scattered fragments and snatches of movements’.  It is in seven continuous but fragmented, contrasting movements, starting with the very slow introductory Adagio, ‘the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music’ according to Wagner, through a fugal passage, a set of variations of contrasting moods to the fierce gaiety of the Presto and the mad dance of an indomitable fiddler. Some, including Mahler felt that the weight of the music was too much for a string quartet to bear and rearranged it for a full string orchestra. The version played by Orchestra Wellington is the arrangement by the great Greek conductor, Dimitri Mitropoulos.

The orchestral version of the quartet added a certain depth of sound and gravity to the work. The eight double basses enhanced the rich deep notes of the music. Reworking a string quartet into an orchestral piece changed the tone of the original. Passages that sounded like intimate meditations by the violin and the viola in the quartet came through as anthems and chorales by a large choir, altering the character of the piece. To appreciate this quartet played by a whole large string orchestra one had to leave behind the quartet version and think of the piece as an entirely different composition, a culmination of Beethoven’s grand vision.

All credit to Orchestra Wellington for tackling this work and introducing it to its large number of followers, some of whom were probably more familiar with the orchestral than the chamber music repertoire. It was a challenge for the string section of the orchestra to tackle this very difficult work and was a salutary experience for all the players who participated in this performance. This was a concert different from other Orchestra Wellington subscription concerts, but not less moving and enjoyable.

 

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.