Tag: orchestral

Edo de Waart reaffirms his comprehensive Mahlerian authority and insight with Number Seven

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conductor Edo de Waart

Mahler: Symphony no.7 in B minor, Op.36

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday, 9 November 2018, 6:30 pm

The concert was one of Edo de Waart’s ‘Masterworks’ series.  A mammoth symphony of over 80 minutes in length was obviously not everyone’s cup of tea: the front block of seating downstairs was virtually empty.  But it was a tour de force for conductor and orchestra.  The huge variety of musical and instrumental content and the diversity of sounds, timbres and musical ideas bore out Mahler’s well-known saying that ‘the symphony is like the world, it must encompass everything!’

It is the only one of his symphonies with which I was not familiar, and of which I have no recording; it is probably the least frequently performed, not only on account of its length.  Such a long and complex work takes some getting to grips with.  Yet like all the composer’s works, there is much in it to delight as well as much to wonder at and to ponder on.  An excellent essay in the printed programme contained interesting and illuminating material.

The orchestra was led by Yuka Eguchi, assistant concertmaster (though this was not shown in the programme), and numbers of guest players were brought in to create the large orchestra required.

With five movements, the symphony is one of the largest in the orchestral repertoire, and is played without an interval, though the breaks between movements must have been welcomed by the orchestra’s members.

A theme for the symphony suggested by the composer (though he made many revisions to it) was ‘darkness to light’.  However, each movement has a distinct ‘personality’.  The first movement, very long, like the last, is entitled ‘Langsam [slow]– allegro molto ma non troppo’.  The opening seemed indecisive, that could not entirely be blamed on Mahler, but the brass soon made their presence felt; next, woodwinds were added, with strings playing at a low pitch, the tones very solemn.  Woodwinds take over again, before a general overall shindig breaks out.

More lyrical figures creep in, before the large percussion section has a good workout.  The clarinettists play their instruments unusually, holding them up horizontally in front of their faces.  The full orchestra plays military motifs, then all is quiet, with a few solo instruments having short statements, and many changes of orchestral colour.  The two harps created lovely ripples, and there were dramatic passages with typical Mahlerian harmonies and intervals.  The brass contributed numerous expostulations.  Everyone was busy; the percussion had their own outbursts, but eventually the music subsided, though soon quickened to a brass march, that illustrated the different tonalities and discordant chords in this symphony compared with the harmonies in Mahler’s earlier ones.

A problem here was the unhelpfulness of the programme in describing the additional brass instrument used.  When the player stood for his special bow at the end of the concert, I thought that he had a euphonium.  However, Wikipedia says that Mahler did not want that instrument, but describes the instrument variously as tenor horn or baritone horn.  The player sat next to the trombones, and in the list of players at the back of the programme he is stated as simply “Brass  Nitzan Haroz”.  Certainly here was a distinct sound at various points in the symphony.  Another failure of description there was in joining the fourth movement guitarist (Jane Curry) and mandolin player (Dylan Lardelli) under the heading ‘Guitar’.

The second movement, like the fourth, is titled ‘Nachtmusik’ (Nocturne).  It opens with a horn figure, echoed by a muted horn, then an oboe, before the other musicians gradually enter, including distinctive percussion.  A jaunty rhythm has the strings tapping their bows, but soon the contrabassoon makes a noteworthy contribution, and a marching tempo takes over the music; then a smooth theme, like a folk-dance, is played on violins, before one of Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs, ‘Revelge’ (or ‘The Dead Drummer’) sounded forth its sad but militaristic tones.  We heard the horn echo again.  We heard superb, rich, colourful, sonorous playing throughout.  The four flutes contributed largely, with lots of delightful little figures for woodwind before a fortissimo passage with spooky elements (as so often with Mahler).  The ‘kitchen department’ lived up to its nickname here and elsewhere, with splendid cowbells.  Lyrical motifs issued from all sections.

To the Scherzo third movement, Mahler had given the description (in German: Shadowy.  Flowing but not too fast.  It has a spooky character throughout, but also spiky and perky..  Horn, drums and double basses began proceedings, with many brief utterances from various instruments, notably frequent short solo violin fragments.  Likewise, the viola contributed lovely sonorous solo fragments.  After some hectic brass, the clarinets contributed to a quirky ending.  The ¾ time used in this movement led a commentator to call it ‘a most morbid and sarcastic mockery of the Viennese waltz’ (Wikipedia). Among the unusual instruments employed was the small E-flat clarinet, played by David McGregor.  Its distinctive sound was heard quite frequently throughout the symphony.

The fourth movement, another ‘Nachtmusik’, this time andante amoroso throughout, as compared with the varying tempo markings of its predecessor.  Brass is absent (except horns), and the use of guitar and mandolin create a serenade atmosphere.  A brief violin solo opens the movement, then a charming oboe intervenes, soon allowing the violin to resume.  I noticed that in this more intimate movement, Edo de Waart conducted without the baton.  Violin, flute, oboe, mandolin and guitar continued the serenade-like character of the music.  This movement was in many ways more colourful than the earlier ones. There was always something new happening; some great horn melodies emerged and the movement had a gentle ending.

Now for the powerful Finale – a rondo, that opened with timpani and brass, and great excitement.  There is repetition of a main theme from the first movement.  A jaunty dotted rhythm makes its appearance, then the woodwind take over, followed by strings – but the brass cannot be suppressed for long.  Muted trumpets were most effective.  There such a variety of sounds!  Tapping the top (wood) of the bass drum was done with a sort of whisk.  I learned in Wikipedia that this was a rute.

“The rute… from the German for ‘rod’ or ‘switch’), also known as a multi-rod, is a beater for drums. Commercially made rutes are usually made of a bundle of thin birch dowels or thin canes attached to a drumstick handle… A rute may also be made of a bundle of twigs attached to a drumstick handle. The Rute is used to play on the head of the bass drum.”

Shrill flutes and piccolos contribute to the continuing variety of the movement, as did the high-pitched, sometimes squeaky sound of the E-flat clarinet.  A huge musical wake-up ensues, and then subsides.  Peals of bells and full brass brings the movement, and the symphony, to an end with grandeur, although a soft passage intervenes, and finally an enormous proclamation, with all players flat out.  The climax resulted in great acclamation from the audience.

It is noteworthy that the Dutch premiere of this symphony took place only a year after its initial performance in Prague in 1908.  It seems that the Dutch have an affinity with Mahler.  Not only is our present conductor a notable interpreter of Mahler, but there are others, including Bernard Haitink.  If we didn’t already know that de Waart is a great Mahler conductor, we found out when he conducted Symphony no. 5 in 2016.

 

Great performances of unfamiliar Bartók and major Dvořák introduced by young geniuses

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Christopher Park (piano); joined by Arohanui Strings (Sistema, Hutt Valley), led by Alison Eldredge

Simon Eastwood: Infinity Mirror, for Arohanui Strings
Smetana: The Moldau (Vltava from Ma Vlast)
Bartók: Piano concerto No 1
Dvořák: Symphony No 8 in G Op 88

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 27 October, 7:30 pm

Each year, one of Orchestra Wellington’s concerts is embellished by a contribution from Arohnui Strings, the Sistema-inspired children’s orchestra based in the Hutt Valley. They took their places at the beginning of the concert in the place of most of the regular strings of Orchestra Wellington, interspersed by a few of the professionals to lend some body to the sound. The nerves and excitement of the young players infected the audience too as they opened the concert, under conductor Marc Taddei, with Simon Eastwood’s Infinity Mirror, commissioned for them by SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand music). The string elements were sympathetically scored for the young players while there was supporting music from marimba, xylophone and timpani, creating a happy ensemble.  It was followed by Dvořák’s Humoresque (which is actually No 7 of his eight Humoresques, Op 101), and the young string players clearly relished the chance to play an actual classic of the repertoire.

That was followed by Alison Eldredge leading a dozen or more very young musicians across the front of the stage to play the famous last section of the William Tell Overture, plus a Maori item. All of which occupied about half an hour. As a result the concert lasted till about 10 pm.

Denis Adam
In his opening words, Marc Taddei spoke about the death last week of the man who has for several decades been one of New Zealand’s most important benefactor of the arts: Denis Adam; and he dedicated the performance of the Dvořák symphony to his memory. There have been obituaries in the press and references from all those indebted to his Foundation’s generosity, acknowledging his wide-ranging philanthropy. Middle C must add its name to those by recalling that the Adam Foundation was the leading financial supporter of Middle C when it began in 2008, to enable a website to be created and for the reviews to be collected and printed.

At a more personal level, the Adam Foundation gave funding to support a concert series that I had undertaken: two series of lunchtime concerts, in 2000 and 2002, during the New Zealand International Arts Festivals. It will be recalled that daily lunchtime concerts were an important part of the early festivals, from 1986 to 1998. When the festival in 2000 dropped these popular concerts that gave prominence to New Zealand musicians, I decided to tackle the job, along with my wife, Jeanette. We were very lucky to find a talented manager and planner in Charlotte Wilson (now a RNZ Concert presenter), who in the space of about three months did most of the organising and negotiating with fifteen groups of musicians.

The series was very successful, and a surplus was carried over for another series in 2002. It too ended with a modest surplus which has been used to support classical musical enterprises since then.

Vltava
The grown-up musicians then took over, with a piece that was my first love as a nine-year-old, hearing it played in the then ‘Broadcasts to Schools’ which had the important effect of implanting classical music sounds, permanently, in unprejudiced, receptive minds: Smetana’s Moldau, the German name of the river which later became known by its proper Czech name, Vltava. The performance captured the moods of the river as it passed through Bohemia’s countryside and towns, but it struck me that it hadn’t had quite the studied attention that either the Bartók or the Dvořák music demonstrated next.

Bartók
In most ears Bartók’s music can sound more alien and unapproachable than that of any other Balkan/Central European composers (it had not been that way with Liszt whose music has come to be denigrated as not truly ‘Hungarian’). Interestingly, while other composers used the indigenous music of their country in a recognisable framework for listeners in western Europe, Bartók took the more challenging route, sacrificing easy popularity by treating the Magyar music of his country in ways he felt were faithful to its non-Western character.

His first piano concerto was not a work of impetuous, iconoclastic youth as Prokofiev did; Bartók was 45 when he wrote his first concerto (and you might feel that he should have been over his impulse to shock and upset; many great composers were dead by that age!). However, it is a useful weapon in the armory of an adventurous young pianist like Christopher Park; in his hands it was utterly committed: brilliant, fearsome and astonishingly idiomatic.

For the orchestra and conductor, however, the challenge would have been of a very different order; because of its technical and interpretation difficulties it’s rarely performed. Geoffrey Norris, in a Gramophone article a couple of years ago speculated about its treatment:

“Are the concertos rarely performed because they are not popular, or are they not popular because they are seldom performed? In a pragmatic sense, the comparative sparsity of performances could well be explained by finance or, at least, by the demands of orchestral schedules. Particularly in this straitened age when rehearsal costs have to be ruthlessly budgeted, the hours needed to get the First Concerto up to scratch could be punitive. Even present-day British orchestras, acknowledged for their swift, reliable sight-reading, have been known to find a first run-through of the First Concerto troublesome. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is said to be a doddle by comparison.”

In the light of that view of the concerto’s (he’s speaking, mainly, of the first two) difficulties, here we had a part-time orchestra with very constrained rehearsal time, tackling it.

Piano Concerto 1: 1st movement   
While it opens with chilling ferocity, reminiscent of parts of The Rite of Spring, that is not the prevailing character of the piece, for after the hard-hitting piano and timpani and the fierce response from brass, convention is acknowledged with sombre bassoons, bass clarinet, and strings in staccato melodic snatches that offer sign posts that are not hard to recognise when they reappear.

Bassoons soon supply an almost conventional tune and later, they offer a hesitating, rising motif all of which contribute to a structure whose parts become recognisable, almost old friends later on.

I’m tempted to say that the piano has the hardest time of it, but then Christopher Park had had an intensive relationship with it for much longer than the orchestra. He had become its master, hitting all the right keys at the right time, as well as capturing its radically non-western idiom as if he’d lived with it from childhood. For Marc Taddei and the orchestra, in spite of the limited time (equals ‘funding’) available, the music’s alien character seemed of little consequence; almost masking its extraordinary success in keeping pace and meeting the technical difficulties. Each time I was tempted to think a passage wasn’t too challenging, I would be struck by another fearsome orchestral flare-up that demonstrated both Taddei’s impressive grasp of the entire work and our orchestra’s real acumen.

Though I’ve listened to recordings of the concerto, this was my first live hearing and the impact of the real thing was a revelation: the orchestration, the careful, studied employment of particular instruments, to far greater purpose and deliberateness than in much 20th century music.

At the start of the 2nd movement, a discreet side drum presages the piano and one by one, timpani, snare drum, cymbal; then very specific percussion; after a couple of minutes, a lone oboe then a clarinet, flute, bass clarinet, cor anglais, but no strings at all. Though not a conventionally contemplative movement, these sounds stayed with me in the most haunting way. But it was of course Christopher Park’s piano that perpetuated the sense of astonishment, for his feat of memory to start with, for his technical panache and profound intellectual grasp of Bartók’s musical idiom and intent.

An entirely new energy emerges as the 3rd movement, launched by various drums, muted trombones, then the piano; again, always in the limelight, commanding wonderment. The orchestration is always precise, deliberate, and this imposes special demands on players, as more general, indiscriminate scoring can conceal smudges; I won’t say there were none but the energy and tempo were of far greater importance and a matter of both astonishment and delight.

Applause was enthusiastic, and Park played an encore, from an utterly different planet: the 20-year-old Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor (Lento con gran espressione), Opus Posthumus.

Dvořák: the Eighth
The common ground for this year’s series, the last five of Dvořák’s symphonies: No 8 followed after the interval. That distance was vital to settle the head and emotions after the extraordinary impact of the Bartók. No 8 is in the sanguine key of G, not subject to painful soul-searching or grieving. The opening, after the calm introductory cellos, then trombones, released its alternating tuttis and folk-tune like themes in a delightful way. Here was a focused energy, that was perhaps a bit lacking in Vltava; the brass was vivid with precision and clarity, and the strings, perhaps not at quite the strength that a Dvořák symphony demands, were splendidly secure.

But their playing of the lovely woodwind-led second movement, Adagio, was both dynamic and poetic; I always especially loved the slow descending scales on strings with a pensive oboe; the long, near-silences that mark the movement seemed exactly in tune with the composer’s spirit; and there are disturbed moments, of unease, atmospheric horns, throbbing strings. It’s a movement rich in changing emotions: for me the Adagio is the very centre of the work; until, that is, we reach the striking and moving parts of each of the other movements.

As so often with third movements, even one as charming, a sort of waltz, as this, its first phase opens peacefully, followed by the more pensive, though equally beautiful second part – a sort of ‘Trio’ to a traditional Scherzo. Every movement has its striking contrasts between unsullied delight and long moments of uncertainty, regret; and all these phases were clearly and vividly created in a great performance. So the last movement, after its brilliant trumpet fanfare drops to a slow, stately episode with the orchestra’s cellos biting into their rising arpeggios; but suddenly bursting with brio as the whole orchestra creates its own driving version of that arpeggio. The last movement is full of variety, yet with just the right amount of repetition and reflection, with a limpid clarinet handling it wistfully as the end approached.

If I have suggested that earlier parts of the symphony held the greatest intellectual and emotional interest for me, hearing the work live in the hands of Taddei (without score before him) and the orchestra, after many years without the opportunity, bringing it to a heart-warming conclusion through its disparate last movement, renewed my understanding of the wonderfully inventive and universal character of the Eighth Symphony.

Exuberance and poetry from pianist and conductor Lars Vogt with the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
LARS VOGT PLAYS MOZART

BEETHOVEN – Overture “The Creatures of Prometheus) Op.43
MOZART – Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K.467
WEBERN (orch. Gerard Schwarz) Langsamer Satz
MOZART – Symphony No. 36 in C “Linz”

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 26th October, 2018

Review for “Upbeat” RNZ Concert (with David Morriss)
Monday 29th October 2018

There’s always great interest whenever somebody decides to take on the dual role of soloist and conductor in the performance of music – we had Freddy Kempf here with the NZSO a few years ago playing the entire cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos, for example, which, from all accounts , was a great success. And now, with even more historical precedent in the case of Mozart’s Piano Concertos, here was Lars Vogt demonstrating his skills in that respect with one of the most famous of all Mozart’s concertos, popularly known as the “Elvira Madigan” concerto, due to its use in a 1970s Swedish film of the same name. How did his playing and conducting of the concerto come across for you?

He is obviously a brilliant pianist and, on this showing, a talented and exciting conductor. In fact I found more interest in what the orchestra was doing under his direction than I did with what he was doing at the keyboard – his playing was predictably brilliant, but at times I thought the passage-work became a bit mechanical – he would ever-so-slightly race the figurations faster than I wanted them to go, giving the music in places a “machine-like” quality, I wanted him to “savour” the music more, and allow it a bit more light and shade.

Of course other people will have “heard” the music somewhat differently – simply where one is sitting in the hall makes a tremendous difference to how one “hears” the music, and the microphones placed over the top of the orchestra will pick up a different kind of “quality of sound with anything we play to that which I heard on Friday evening. I thought, for instance, that from where I was sitting the violins seemed to be dominated by, even sound underpowered next to the wind and brass instruments in tutti – but others could well feel different, depending on where they were sitting. Music, as we know, evokes very subjective responses, and it would be a very boring world if we as listeners all felt the same way about everything we heard.

The slow movement we’ve just heard part of had a silken, light-as-a-feather quality throughout, but with plenty of variety in the exchange of phrasings between piano and orchestra. The only thing was that, at this tempo it was all over so quickly! – It came across as more divertimento-like than as a serenade, beautifully done though it was.

All-in-all, do you think he was able to successfully combine the functions of both soloist and conductor in this performance? We know that Mozart did this – conduct his own concertos from the keyboard – and most successfully, by all counts. 

I find myself wondering whether these people who direct from the keyboard need to be so demonstrative in their direction of the players. I was speaking to someone from the orchestra who had played in the Freddy Kempf performances of the Beethoven concerti shortly after, and I remember this person saying that they wished Kempf had simply sat still and directed the players from the keyboard and not jumped up and down from his seat all the time. I imagine it varies from musician to musician what they feel is necessary to do to achieve control when conducting, but I still found it distracting, as I did Kempff’s movements.

I wondered whether there was an element of anxiety in Vogt’s playing, wanting to get to the next orchestral entry to bring the players in, or trying to keep an “edge” to the overall performance. The playing in the slow movement we’ve just heard was lovely – but for me, the finale was the most successful movement, because it had an overall “bubbling exuberance” spirit from everybody that was extremely well-captured, as was a slightly more wistful sequence in the music’s alternate minor-key sequence from the opening

Also in the concert there was a real rarity – an early work by Anton Webern which I’m sure most people on hearing would never associate with the actual composer! Rather like a piece of early Schoenberg, do you think?

This was Webern’s single-movement work “Langsamer Satz”, which I thought was a beautiful piece! I found myself thinking, “How could this have been written by Webern?” – because it was so romantic-sounding, which is the antithesis of what most of the music by Webern I’ve heard sounds like! I thought this piece had the makings of some kind of modern classic, like Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht, or Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

Of course Webern’s original, written in 1905, was for string quartet (Webern himself never heard the work, incidentally). It was the only movement he completed of a planned string quartet, and was lost for well-nigh 60 years.  After being rediscovered and played, the piece came to the attention of American conductor and composer Gerard Schwarz, who thought it would sound more effective if transcribed for string orchestra, with a bass part added. This was done and first performed in 1982.

Concluding the concert was Mozart’s “Linz Symphony  – one of a trio of Symphonies named after cities the work had a particular association with – the “Paris”, the “Linz” and the “Prague”. Mozart was supposed to have composed this work in four days – does it sound like a “rush job to you?

Not even slightly – of course Mozart was renowned for his ability to put things together inside his head before they’d even been committed to paper – and this symphony seems as though it almost “wrote itself” in that respect – he must have been truly inspired by his surroundings or put in a frame of mind that gave his imagination full reign, because the work has a wonderful “spontaneous” quality right throughout. The only detail in the playing I found difficulty in “placing” in an overall sense was the conductor’s somewhat abrupt way with the opening chords, before the music relaxed in the quieter sections which followed. I found it hard to marry the two sections together, because the music has always seemed to me to continue in the same rhythmic vein, albeit muscular and arresting at the beginning and suspenseful and charged in the subsequent passages. I thought it could have all been done in one tempo. Apart from this, I thought the overall conception of the movement beautifully brought out the music’s different characters in a flowing and unified way.

The name “Linz” (after the city of Linz) suggests something with a certain “public ” character, as if drawing attention to the characteristics of a city as a whole, something, of course representative of a great number of people, something easily identifiable with a place’s particular set of characteristics.

Yes, you’re right – it seems to be a very “public” statement, doesn’t it, especially compared with other symphonic works like the two G Minor symphonies. The very opening is a “call to attention”, with a kind of rumbustiousness that follows, driving the music forward, the second movement is dance-like rather than ruminative and deep, and the third movement – well, the third movement is an out-and-out invitation for people to kick off their shoes and join in the Minuet. It was so infectiously played, here, that in the trio section, one could almost imagine the dancers’ impatience to get back to the dance when the Minuet finally returned!

There used to be a famous rehearsal recording of this symphony available, one conducted by the great Bruno Walter in the 1950s – 1955 I think….. It illustrates how much Mozart interpretation has changed over the years, as you can hear if you own Walter, Klemperer or Karl Bohm recordings of these works – and yet Mozart remains the same spirit in the hands of each conductor.

I was sitting close to John Button, the DomPost critic, and asked him at halftime whether he remembered the Walter rehearsal recording – he immediately said, “Yes, especially Mr Bloom, the oboe player!” Walter talks a lot with “Mr Bloom”, the oboist in the orchestra, whose name was hereby captured for all time on these records! I believe this recording was from 1955, which is pretty old, now – and yet the chance to hear a famous conductor painstakingly rehearse a work that he knows and loves is one I wouldn’t think anybody interested in music and music interpretation would want to miss.

What would you say unites those different styles of playing so that you could say – yes, it still sounds like Mozart? What did you hear on Friday evening that bore a relationship to those older performances we know?

Well, after the somewhat abrupt start, with those assertive, swiftly-played chords I’ve already mentioned, I thought the playing and conducting brought out a sense of “line” that I hear on those older recordings – and that was what I think gave Lars Vogt’s conducting of the symphony such overall strength. It was a consistency – a kind of “connective tissue” – which I felt was made up of things such as the feeling of the players being encouraged to “own” their musical phrases, so that this sense of “caring” about the music was constantly being presented to us  – that’s what I mean by “line” not everything played legato, or anything like that, but, as I’ve said, a consistency.

The other prevailing sense for me was Vogt’s bringing out the music’s character – and I felt this was better, more strongly achieved in the symphony than in the concerto because the conductor was free to conduct and “focus” the music’s on-going consistencies, generating a truly infectious exuberance and not just note-spinning, which I thought parts of the concerto weren’t entirely free from. Again, there are parallels with an older style of music-making, the best of the modern performances just as concerned with the music’s overall feeling as with some kind of so-called “authentic” way of playing it. This came to full fruition, I think, in the symphony’s finale, which seemed to engage every player and bring out the music’s essential joyfulness.

 

Admirable concert of well-chosen music from Wellington Youth Orchestra under Mark Carter

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Mark Carter with Samantha McSweeney (flute).

Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Op 84
Copland: Appalachian Spring
Mozart: Andante in C for flute and orchestras, K 315/285e
Tchaikovsky: Suite from The Nutcracker
Riley Centre, Wellington High School

Sunday 14 October, 6 pm

The last musical occasion I was in the Riley Centre (alias, the school hall) at Wellington High School was, I think, for the splendid International Viola Congress in 2001, led by the indomitable Professor Donald Maurice (as was the most recent one in Wellington in 2016). My recollection of the acoustic then was confirmed on Sunday. The orchestra has tended to confine itself in recent, post-Town Hall years, to smaller and acoustically constricted places like St Andrew’s and the Sacred Heart Cathedral; this hall struck me as better suited to the character of the orchestra, in allowing all instruments to be heard clearly but not in an acoustic that was inclined to draw attention to inexperience.

The Egmont Overture is a fine piece for a youth orchestra: I can attest from personal experience, having played it in the predecessor of the Wellington Youth Orchestra, back in the 1950s. I have never grown tired of the dramatic character of the work that blooms into a triumphant Coda at the end. And I hope current orchestra members still derive the same emotional delight from it.

Here, conductor Mark Carter transmitted a strong sense of its heroism as well as its deeper humanity. Balance between strings and woodwinds was excellent, and the violin sections in particular sounded like thoroughly rehearsed professionals.

I don’t think I’ve heard Copland’s Appalachian Spring played by amateurs before and was delighted to realise how well is suits young players. There’s a lot that’s not too difficult technically, but a lot, on the other hand, that demands finesse and can reveal weaknesses in intonation and control of articulation and dynamics. The leisurely opening music is dominated by strings, flutes and soon clarinets, admirably finding the right open-air, springtime feeling (though Copland did not compose the ballet, for Martha Graham, with a specific scenario or even a title in mind: the title was suggested at the last minute when Martha suggested a line from a poem by Hart Crane).

The quiet opening exposed the players, rather to their benefit, and they showed reassuring pleasure in their charmingly animated playing. Later came a fine, attenuated trumpet on top of more general brass, and further opportunities to admire fairly important bassoons as well as the solo opportunities for trombones (the latter were all Youth Orchestra players – though several other sections, including the strings, were strengthened by a few guest players).

This longish piece, containing a great deal of slow, delicate music as well as much that’s sprightly and animated, can lose audience attention and patience in unskilled hands: not here.

Then came the Mozart Andante, written as an alternative slow movement for one of his flute concertos. It proved semi-familiar to me and was well worth hearing. It evolved, slowish and attractive, the solo part beautifully played by flutist Samantha McSweeney who is in her second year at Victoria University school of music.

The concert ended with the Nutcracker Suite; at least, most of the dances from the Suite. Here, there were charming episodes from flutes and other winds, including rather impressive horns (admittedly including a couple of guest players) excellent harp contributions and throughout, seamless, well integrated strings. Though there were, of course, minor blemishes, it was possible to listen to these all too familiar pieces with the same delight as from a professional orchestra.

I don’t believe citing individual players for praise is helpful for a band of young players however; generalities are more appropriate. Certainly, the polish and confidence, what seemed a real balletic flair, audible in Nutcracker, and elsewhere, was singularly impressive and evidence of both the overall level of musicianship and the result of first class direction by conductor Mark Carter.

 

Monumental NZSO concert of Russian masterpieces with cellist Johannes Moser

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian with Johannes Moser – cello

Borodin: Overture: Prince Igor
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No 1 in E flat
Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet, selections from the ballet

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 13 October, 7:30 pm

Plus a review of Johannes Moser’s solo cello recital
Bach: Cello Suites Nos 1 in G, 4 in E flat and 3 in C
St Andrew’s on The Terrace
Sunday 14 October, 3 pm 

The NZSO concert Saturday 13 October

This Russian programme might have been expected to be a winner, but it wasn’t, in terms of audience size.

However, in terms of musical quality and sheer excitement, it was a tremendous success. It’s a surprise to me that Shostakovich’s 1st cello concerto didn’t fill every seat; does that suggest that our musical horizons are getting narrower every year? For it’s a truly stupendous work, and we heard one of today’s most brilliant cellists sitting at the front of the stage.

Secondly, does a crowd smaller than is expected suggest that the general run of classical music lovers doesn’t hear properly some of the greatest ballet music ever written; that there’s a huge gulf in taste and intellectual curiosity between ballet groupies and Beethoven groupies?

Even the opening overture should be better known and more sought after than evidently it is.

Borodin’s Prince Igor Overture
My first encounter with it, on the radio many years ago, was associated with the then popular story that Borodin had not written the overture down, but that Glazunov had heard him play it on the piano, and with his phenomenal memory, went home and scored it completely. Roughly true but both Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov left written accounts. Rimsky wrote: “…Glazunov and I settled the matter as follows between us: he was to fill in all the gaps in Act III and write down from memory the Overture played so often by the composer…”

Glazunov’s own account is this:
“The overture was composed by me roughly according to Borodin’s plan. I took the themes from the corresponding numbers of the opera and was fortunate enough to find the canonic ending of the second subject among the composer’s sketches. I slightly altered the fanfares for the overture … The bass progression in the middle I found noted down on a scrap of paper, and the combination of the two themes (Igor’s aria and a phrase from the trio) was also discovered among the composer’s papers. A few bars at the very end were composed by me.”  

These quotes are from the splendid Wikipedia article on the opera which is fascinating, evidently authoritative and very much worth reading.

Productions are rare in the west, and I was lucky enough to catch it conducted by Mark Ermler in the Olympiahalle in Munich in 1989. A film from the Metropolitan Opera was screened here a couple of years ago.

Borodin’s great historical opera may be heavy-going for some, but it’s got a lot of hit tunes and the Overture contains some of them. It opens calmly, remotely, but in a couple of minutes conductor Peter Oundjian had successfully anticipated the opera’s epic grandeur with fierce brass heroics on top of general orchestral energy. What a splendid introduction to the later direction of Russian music, parallel with Tchaikovsky and Rimsky, but on through Rachmaninov, Glazunov, Medtner, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Schnittke, Weinberg (?)…

Shostakovich Cello Concerto – Johannes Moser
This was Johannes Moser’s second visit to New Zealand. In 2016 he played Lalo’s cello concerto, impressing, but it’s not a work on which super-star reputations are often built. However, he could not have made a more astonishing impact than in his performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. It was written in 1959 a few years after Stalin’s death, for Rostropovich who famously committed it to memory in four days, and played it with the Leningrad Philharmonic under Mravinsky the same year.

Even more memorably (for us), Rostropovich played it with the NZSO under Maxim Shostakovich in one of the orchestra’s most famous events, in the 1988 International Arts Festival in Wellington (an era when we had truly great international festivals). I will never forget sitting side-on in the MFC gallery, hearing and watching that monumental performance.

Now this weekend’s performance was on a par, from a cellist who had likewise utterly absorbed the work. He played with a ferocity that was chilling, often producing a sort of vibration (different from vibrato) that created all the emotional power that a full orchestra might have supplied; for the work is scored only for strings orchestra and modest pairs of woodwinds (though they are not merely decorative in their contributions), timpani, celeste… and one horn (Samuel Jacobs) whose role was pivotal, somehow providing all the chilling, suspenseful, intense atmosphere that made more elaborate orchestration superfluous.

The cello dominates the first movement, but there are fleeting, less troubled, almost lyrical and rhapsodic passages in the second movement, plenty of scope to hear the orchestra’s dramatic strength under Oundjian’s highly expressive leadership. The four movements are played without break, so the extended and often magically beautiful cadenza which slowly takes shape at the end of the second actually comprises the third movement.

The last movement returns to the troubled spirit of the first, involves the cello in impressive passages combining bowing while plucking strings with the left hand. The work ends with repeated assertions of both the composer’s self-awareness and the emotional value of the signature DSCH (his name abbreviated in German musical notation) as an enigmatic motif. Just in case we were to forget who the composer was: but neither this performance, nor the work itself will ever make that likely.

A charming encore by John Williams was something of an antidote, perhaps a bit long considering the environment.

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet 
The second half was taken with a memorable performance of about half of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet music – about an hour. The programme book did not attempt to list the numbers included: most were familiar from the three orchestral suites that Prokofiev himself put together, but there were certain episodes not so familiar. Again, perhaps there was a bit much; without the important accompaniment of the staged ballet, the music itself, even in all its variety, dramatic strength, visual evocativeness and its ability to conjure one’s recollections of the ballet itself, doesn’t quite hold a concert audience as does a Mahler or Bruckner symphony of similar length.

Nevertheless, this was a performance that should have reinforced the belief that we have here an orchestra of real international distinction, able to capture a huge range of musical colours and narrative characteristics. A score like Prokofiev’s, though not demanding all the peripheral instrumental forces that some Strauss or Mahler scores do, make prolonged demands on everything from heroic virtuosity to chamber music subtlety and refinement with equal conviction.

So at its end, apart from delight at having lived through the previous two and a quarter hours, I remained all the more disturbed that an obviously remarkable concert had not pulled a full house.

 

Solo recital by Johannes Moser
St Andrew’s on The Terrace
Sunday 15 October, 3 pm

The added attraction of a solo recital by the soloist was advertised for the following afternoon. It’s a practice that the orchestra should adopt routinely with its soloists who could often serve to attract people to kinds of music – chamber music or song – that might normally be outside their main interests.

At St Andrew’s on Sunday, 3 pm, Moser played three Bach solo cello suites: No 1 in G, No 4 in E flat and No 3 in C. The church was near full. And the three performances were of spell-binding, compelling strength. We have come a great distance from the days when it was proper to play these and other baroque music as if in a straight-jacket, as if baroque instruments and their players didn’t allow rhythmic, dynamic expressive variety. These performances were hugely fluent and expressive with episodes in the preludes and the sarabandes, for example, that were emotional, pensive and full of humanity, and where clusters of notes and double-stopping turned them into impressive ensemble works rather than just one person on one cello.

And on the other hand we heard lively dances in which Moser’s suggestion that the suites could be heard as if describing the phases of a social gathering, from introductory, exploratory preludes through somewhat formal, conversational allemandes to more relaxed, letting-hair-down courantes, gigues or bourrées (in nos 3 and 4), was an interesting way of envisaging developments.

It was indeed a most rewarding hour-an-a-half, both for the audience, and I hope for the orchestra management which should be inspired to expand on this example.

In earlier years, such concerts were organised routinely – just one example, I recall recitals by Julius Katchen in the St James Theatre; but they were frequent.

But I see nothing to indicate such recitals in the 2019 programmes. Surely some of the soloists featured would be delighted to offer small-scale recitals – mezzos Susan Graham and Anna Larsson; soprano Lauren Snouffer; pianists Joyce Yang, Denis Kozhukhin, Steven Osborne, Louis Lortie; violinists Carolin Widmann, Jennifer Koh; trumpeter Håken Hardenberger, the orchestra’s own horn-player Samuel Jacobs … or the quartets of singers in the Choral Symphony and Messiah???

 

300 years of riches from the NZSM Orchestra – What is it about Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto this year?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra presents:
THREE CENTURIES

BELA BARTOK – Violin Concerto No. 2 BB 117
MICHAEL NORRIS – Claro  (2015)
ANTON BRUCKNER – Symphony No.8 in C Minor (ed.Haas): Mvt.4 – Finale

Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (violin)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Tuesday 2nd October 2018

Though primarily a vehicle for displaying the stellar talents of violinist Claudia Tarrant-Matthews, winner of the NZSM Concerto Competition for 2018, this concert gave considerable added value in terms of the wide range of repertoire, not to mention the quality of the NZSM Orchestra’s committed, focused and excitingly-played performances of the same. Following Tarrant-Matthews’ astonishing traversal of one of the twentieth century’s truly great concertos, we heard an evocative piece, Claro, by the recent SOUNZ Contemporary Award winner Michael Norris, and then, to finish, the finale of what many people regard as the greatest of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies, the Eighth (difficult to “bring off”, but here, most excitingly played, the movement’s somewhat unwieldy structure tautly held together by conductor Ken Young’s visionary direction).

Not for a moment did I think I would hear ANOTHER live performance of Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto during the same twelve-month, much less one that was as skilfully-played and richly-wrought as an interpretation as that of Amalia Hall’s earlier in the year with Orchestra Wellington. But here was Claudia Tarrant-Matthews, fearlessly shaping up to the music with the utmost authority, putting her own stamp on the composer’s idioms and evocations, and together with a group of musicians who were prepared to follow her through thick and thin, enabling the music to come alive,  every detail from both the soloist and orchestra in the mercilessly clear St.Andrew’s acoustic finding its place and expressing its character in relation to its context in the work as a whole.

Tarrant-Matthews’ tone throughout I thought gorgeous in its sheer range of expression, maintained unfailingly throughout the most demanding sequences involving double-stopping, glissandi or rapid passagework, yet sounded always with an ear to what the orchestra was doing, giving such character to her interactions with the winds (a strongly atmospheric cor anglais, for example) or the sometimes irreverent brass. Her cadenza-like displays had a hair-raising, spontaneous quality that contributed to the “rush-of-blood” effect in many places throughout the first movement, most excitingly and satisfyingly. As well, the slow movement’s ethereal opening occasioned a beautiful cantabile from the soloist, giving the big orchestral tutti even more impact with its raw emotion, and in turn throwing into bold relief the ensuing “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” world eerily evoked by winds and percussion. Each variation brought its own character to bear on the narrative so eloquently, the solo violin’s stratospheric work illuminating pinpoints of light as the strings slowly danced, before they and the winds towards the movement’s end generated suitably celestial resonances in the wake of the whole.

The work’s finale – a reworking of the first movement, Bartok enabling the Variation form he wanted its utmost scale of expression, here – burst in upon us furiously, strings swirling about, and the soloist at first steadily and folkishly playing the earthily-flavoured melodic fragments of themes which straightaway “grounded” the music, before “taking the orchestra on” as a kind of sparring partner – most exciting! The themes were here played by the orchestra in such a heartfelt and forthright way, combining emotion and physical energy so irresistibly! – and the soloist replied in kind, before leading the way into a chromatically-flavoured kind of vortex of tightly-wrought exchanges, dissolving into sinuous, eerie utterances.  These moments made for a lovely contrast with the more raucous, “Concerto for Orchestra”-like confrontations, all of which were duly disarmed by the composer and set upon trajectories into different realms – such staggering invention! I loved the Holst-like timpani and brass towards the end, as well as Bartok’s sweetly simple reversion to a child-like folk-figure, so artlessly and innocently played by Tarrant-Matthews, before the orchestra “let ‘er rip” over the final few bars (I think the composer could have let the violinist join in with the fun, but there you go!) – a great, and much-acclaimed performance by all, and deservedly so!

After this, it almost seemed that to go on was risking an anti-climax – however this was decidedly not the case! On two counts conductor Young and his players fully justified pairing the concerto in its wake with two other pieces, both of which received riveting performances.  The first of these works was Michael Norris’s 2015 work Claro, commissioned by the NZSO for that year’s “Aotearoa-plus” concert, and well-received by my colleague Lindis Taylor in these columns, with the words “a remarkable exercise in imaginative orchestration and harmonic ingenuity”. The composer himself wanted to write a piece that unselfconsciously explored the idea of “a gradual emergence of line out of simple little points in space – of expressivity out of abstractiveness”. Admitting that Douglas Lilburn’s work exerted something of a subconscious influence in this case, possibly due partly to the commission being intended for performance with the earlier composer’s Second Symphony, Norris cited Lilburn’s awareness of space and colour as having certain resonances of sustained quality in this later work, though without exerting any direct influence on the piece’s outcome.

We heard harp, percussion, and pizzicato strings at the outset, joined by piano, the pizzicati alternating with bowed notes, the percussive sounds with “held” wind notes, these latter having an “electric current” quality, a feeling of energy being channelled and sent to various places. The sounds began to cohere and make patterns, vary dynamics and pitches, tumbling over the top of one another in a kind of awakening chaos of delight, a rolling, bristling ball of impulses, the light within the “lighter” instruments playing, bouncing and refracting, while the heavier instruments created impulses that moved and shook land masses. A high shimmering string note stimulated wonderment in all sonic directions, with instruments, in Dylan Thomas’s poetic words, doing “what they are told” in describing the play of natural forces.

An uneasy calm was coloured and flecked with a second wave of gradually animated trajectories, as kaleidoscopic scintillations and movements gradually sped up, the instruments fusing their impulses together, sometimes falling over themselves to push the animations onwards, at other times vaingloriously “fanfaring” the soundscape and stimulating challenges from other quarters. The feelings of movement spread steadily and remorselessly through the textures, the variations of texture, colour and dynamics constantly leading the ear on. As the figurations took on more and more girth the excitement from within grew – huge crescendi of sounds dashed themselves to fragments against the music’s basic pathway. In their wake the sounds seemed to settle in overlapping layers, while a solo violin sent out a raincheck call answered by winds and harp, and allowing the instruments which began the piece to re-emerge and gratefully complete the circle. In all, I thought it a marvellously-constructed “adventure” for orchestra, here patiently, fearlessly and sonorously delivered.

That last sentence would sum up almost any successful performance of a symphony by Anton Bruckner, though we were given only a movement from one of the Austrian master’s greatest works this evening, the finale of his Eighth Symphony. A much-troubled work in its genesis, the Eighth was completely revised by Bruckner after suffering the humiliation of having the piece rejected for performance by his chosen conductor, thus leaving two versions for posterity (1887 and 1890), and an ongoing argument as to the relative merits of each version, with, confusingly, a “combined” version thrown into the mix for further argument! Up until recently the edition prepared by Leopold Nowak in 1955 was the one most favoured by conductors, but the earlier edition by Robert Haas (1935) incorporated more of Bruckner’s original ideas from the 1887 version and restored certain cuts that an earlier editor, Josef Schalk, had made to ANOTHER revised edition of 1892! (At this point the reader needs to take a deep breath, and recall the late Sir Thomas Beecham’s response to news of a new edition of somebody’s (it could well have been Haydn’s) symphonies, with the words, “Are they scholarly, or musical?” – which, regarding all of this, of course, is the most important consideration!)……

After reading Ken Young’s note telling us that the edition used in this concert was that by Robert Haas, we could settle down and enjoy the music, its tumultuous beginning with apocalyptic brass and thunderous timpani! Having “cleared his symphonic throat” as it were, Bruckner then gives us an amazingly discursive amalgam of seemingly disjointed motifs, fused together in the best performances by a strongly-projected overview involving no-holds-barred playing and focused, clearly-articulated figurations throughout. Which is precisely what we got from Young and the NZSM Orchestra, with the help of certain extra players to make up the numbers required by the composer in this epically-conceived work. Young pointed out that Bruckner had set orchestras difficulties by requiring “specialist” instruments like Wagner tubas, whose parts were played here most effectively by two extra trombone and two euphonium players. The St.Andrew’s acoustic barely passed muster throughout this encounter with such gargantuan forces, further advancing the urgent need for a recommissioned Town Hall, presently undergoing “earthquake-strengthening”.

Without indulging in a blow-by-blow description of the performance, I can still remark on the “charged” playing by the string sections throughout (only in the latter “working-out” sequences did their lines occasionally register the occasional strained note in their convoluted passagework), supported by sonorous work from the winds, having to deal with equally intricate patterns of symphonic impulse from the composer’s  fertile brain, and invariably golden-toned brass, their sounds somewhat constrained in the venue, but by turns massive and richly-wrought throughout, everywhere sturdily underpinned by alert timpani-playing, the latter especially enjoying his “road-music” sequence with the strings and brasses that at an early stage takes us into the symphony’s heart.

Always of concern for players of these works is being able to keep enough strength in reserve for the massive perorations with which they invariably finish – and the Eighth Symphony is certainly no exception. Here, the monumental build-up throughout the coda, beginning in C Minor, moved inexorably in Young’s hands towards that point when the music turns on massive pivots into the all-encompassing sunshine heralded by those brass shouts of C Major, thunderously supported by the rest of the orchestra. As Ken Young had remarked in farewelling certain players who were completing their studies and appearing in the orchestra for the last time, “You can’t get a better farewell than playing in the Bruckner Eighth Symphony” (or words to that effect!), a statement that was unequivocally affirmed at the end by the music, its composer, the interpreters and the by-now-flabbergasted, but still-appreciative audience!

 

 

Exotic, rhapsodic, gruesome and tragic – Wellington Chamber Orchestra with conductor Andrew Atkins and Thomas Nikora (piano)

Posted on by Peter Mechen

GREAT ROMANTIC SYMPHONIC POEMS

BORODIN – In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880)
RACHMANINOV – Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini Op.43**
DVOŘÁK – Symphonic Poem “The Wild Dove“ (Holoubek) Op.110  B.198
TCHAIKOVSKY – Fantasy Overture “Romeo and Juliet“ (1880)

Thomas Nikora (piano)**
Andrew Atkins (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday, 23rd September 2018

I thought the programme’s given, somewhat “Readers’ Digest”, title “Great Romantic Symphonic Poems” simply didn’t convey the essence of this concert, so I have invented my own, above, thinking that it ought to “grab” people’s attention more readily, even if for the wrong reasons. The adjectives refer, of course, to the concert’s contents, and by no means to the performances, which were simply riveting throughout – and what reservations I might have had concerning the latter can be self-dismissed, in any case, with the words “in my opinion”, writ in water rather than in stone!

At least the title conveys the extraordinary range of content and sensibility to be found in this assemblage of music, of which only Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” could be said to be truly standard fare. I can’t ever remember hearing Alexander Borodin’s delectable piece “In the Steppes of Central Asia” in concert, before, and we don’t get to hear “live” THAT often the most jazzy and contemporary-sounding of all of Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra, the Paganini Rhapsody. As for the Dvořák symphonic poem “The Wild-Dove”, well I didn’t anywhere see any labels on the item with the words “Contains disturbing content” or “Adults must be accompanied by children” – but the material from which the composer drew his inspiration for this and several other tone-poems outdoes even some of the Brothers Grimm’s stories for malevolence and bloodthirstiness (the “Wild-Dove” actually being the least brutal of a very nasty bunch of stories by Karel Jaromir Erben, based on Czech folklore!)

So, ‘twas programming of a most enterprising kind, and its realisation was, I thought, most successful. Beginning with that most evocative of musical realisations, Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia”, a brilliantly-conceived musical picture of, for we South-Sea Islanders,  a most exotic and fairy-tale part of the world, the performance straightaway took us to a land of seemingly endless vistas, through which occasionally passed travellers from both east and west, in this case a caravan from Asia making its way westwards accompanied by Russian soldiers. Borodin’s idea was to portray these salient characteristics of two worlds in music, separately at first, and then together, all under the sway of the landscape’s vast spaces.

The strings began with a single held note, delineating the vast stillness of the steppes, with solos from firstly clarinet and then horn (beautifully played) establishing firstly the “Russian” presence, followed by the sinuous “Eastern” melody, here most evocatively sounded by the oboe, both wind choirs and brasses beautifully realising their differently-coloured and ambiently spaced-out sequences. And so came the ”big tutti”, which burst upon the scene in brazen glory, the Russian theme splendidly “rasped” by the brasses and ably supported by winds and strings alike – magnificent!

But the most splendid part of the work was to come, with the two melodies then so beautifully and nostalgically combined as the different worlds intermingled, sharing instrumentations and colours and timbres between them in lump-in-throat ways, the strings particularly affecting here as they changed from Russian” to “Eastern” in one of the sequences. A shortness of breath in one of the early wind solos, and some momentary imprecise ensemble between wind and strings in the “intermingling” of melodies did no violence to the power and beauty of the evocation by conductor and players, the horn and wind solos all heroic, the strings and flute heartbreakingly magical at the end.

Enter then Thomas Nikora, taking time out from his duties as Music Director of Cantoris Choir, to essay the soloist’s role in Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” for piano and orchestra. With a flick of the conductor’s wrist, a couple of emphatic, confident piano chords, and a frisson of orchestral energy, we were away on a wild, spontaneous-sounding ride, the music very much in Rachmaninov the composer’s later leaner, more spiky mode, though with a few melting moments at one or two places. Of course, everybody was waiting for the work’s most well-known sequence, the eighteenth variation (when asked about this variation’s return to the “old” Rachmaninovian style, the composer simply replied “That one was for my agent!”) – and Nikora and Atkins and the players didn’t disappoint, giving the famous melody plenty of room to expand and fill the spaces with luscious tones – even if the strings lacked the “heft” of professional orchestras their backs were bent to the task and their phrasing of the melody fully demonstrated their depth of feeling for the music.

Elsewhere, the soloist and players relished the “cat-and-mouse” moments of the music’s interactions as much as the quieter, more reflective sequences. I was impressed with the articulateness of it all, and the fitting-together at high speed of the various impulses, drolleries, explosions and longer lines – there was only one minor derailment, early on, that I noticed (I think in Variation V), when the orchestra was in one place slightly too quick for the pianist, who adroitly skipped the hiatus and reconnected in an instant, a moment atypical of the performance as a whole, though the realignment was in fact perfectly in line with the quicksilver responses of the musicians in general.

Besides the brilliance there was atmosphere – Variation VII brought the first appearance of the composer’s oft-used  “Dies Irae” theme, with bassoon and lower strings filling out the lugubrious tread of the music, and Variation XI rhapsodised, with tremolando strings and piano recitatives bringing a stillness to the soundscapes into which was poured cascades of piano notes in quasi-cadenza fashion, followed by Variation XII, which disconcertingly turned the “Dies Irae” theme into something like a ballroom waltz, graceful and sultry. More half-lit and even sinister in places was Variation XVI, staccato strings and stealthy piano ushering in a plaintive oboe, with the harp sounding the tocsin and strings shivering with foreboding at the phrase-ends and the solo violin doing its best along with the clarinet to reassure,  despite wonderful moans from the horn and flute – everything so well characterised!

As for Thomas Nikora’s piano-playing, it was by turns brilliant, forthright, charming, poetic and ruminative, as befitted the character of each of the variations – whether scintillating with cascades of notes as in Variation XI, or emoting with elegance and poetry, as in the famous No XVIII, or in complete contrast despatching the virtuoso demands of the last three variations with strength, wit and brilliance, he seemed in complete command of the music and in accord with what conductor and players were doing – at the end of it all we felt we had been “treated” to something out of the ordinary, and responded accordingly – quite unexpectedly, we were then given by the pianist an additional gift of a delicious arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the “Nutcracker” Ballet.

After the interval we returned for some more serious, not to say grimmer, business – Antonin Dvořák’s “Holoubek“ or “The Wild Dove“ is one of four symphonic poems written in 1896  by the composer, all inspired by a collection of folk-ballads called Kytice (Bouquet) written by Karel Jaromir Eben. Dvořák had previously written works inspired by Eben’s poetry in his “Legends“ (written firstly for piano fourhands, but later orchestrated), and like both Mussorgsky and Janacek in their music sought to reproduce something of the native flavour of the texts, and make specific musical references to objects and events in the stories, in the case of the symphonic poems often using Eben’s actual speech-rhythms in his treatment of the thematic material. The influential and arch-conservative critic Eduard Hanslick, who had previously expressed great enthusiasm for Dvořák’s music, was outraged at this “descent“ into programmatic detailing (Hanslick had previously castigated Liszt’s symphonic poems for similar reasons), calling Eben’s poems “ugly, unnatural and ghastly“, adding that Dvořák “has no cause to go begging before literary texts”. Fellow-composer Leos Janacek, on the other hand, embroiled at the time in his own work on the opera Jenufa, praised Dvorak’s latest pieces, saying that “the direct speech of the instruments……has never sounded with such certainty, clarity and truthfulness”.

The story of “The Wild Dove” involves a woman who has poisoned her husband and taken a new lover, whom she intends to marry. After the wedding a wild dove appears from nowhere and lands on the grave of the former husband. Its piteous cooing reminds the woman of her guilt, and increasingly torments her conscience, so that she eventually takes her own life. Conductor Andrew Atkins and his players brought the whole doom-laden scenario to life, right from the introductory darkness of the funeral march, through the quickening of interest between the widow and her new lover, the music’s pastoral beauties burgeoning into joyful dance-like expression with the wedding celebrations, and the arrival of the dove and its piteous cooing, accompanied by sinister winds and baleful horns, with the bleakness of the scene activating guilt and subsequent suicide on the part of the murderess. Dvorak also adds a kind of “redemptive” coda, suggesting a kind of acceptance and even forgiveness NOT in Eben’s story! I thought it a strong, evocative and sharply-focused performance.

Perhaps after such a gamut of tragic and harrowing dramatic expression, Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture “Romeo and Juliet” which followed was all just a bit much of a similar mode to take in! I appreciated the conductor letting us know that the piece was special for him, and I wondered whether at times he was “loving” it all a bit too much rather than letting parts of the music simply breathe and establish a more natural flow. Ask person B for his or her opinion and the impression could well be different; but I thought in places the expression was too “full on” at the beginning of a sequence for the music to be able to “go” anywhere except where the players started from. Particularly in the case of the wind choirs at the beginning and end of the work, I thought a lighter, more air-borne texture would have given the music more life and allowed the players room to deepen the expression as the sequences developed – here, it seemed to me that everybody was trying just a bit TOO hard!

That said, the work’s other sequences provided by turns plenty of excitement and lyrical warmth – apart from a too-eager horn at the beginning, the detailing from the different instrumental strands readily and precisely  brought things to life – the timpani and the lower strings built the tension superbly just before the “fight” music, the strings’ swirling exchanges with the winds prepared the way excitingly for the brass and percussion interjections depicting the warring houses, and the combination of strings and cor anglais melted all hearts with the famous love-theme, the harp and strings sounding gorgeous together with the winds when creating a diaphanous resonance in the lovers’ wake.

The return of the “fight”music created even more tension a second time round with great work from the horns, and the strings brandishing great attack and holding tightly-wrought rhythms, so important in this music. The heavy brass made splendid sounds, while the trumpets, fallible at their first big entry, rallied and delivered, contributing to the excitement – amid the exhaustion of these energies, the conductor drove his winds and strings onward to that incredible upsurge of feeling which  flooded in with the love theme’s return, the strings giving all they had with real passion and commitment. One more frenzied upsurge of energy and the music most satisfyingly collapsed, all passions spent, everybody having played their hearts out! A pity that the brass, having done such sterling work throughout were a degree or so too loud for the timpani’s deathly, funereal drumbeats to be heard, though a friend I sat with who was an ex-brass player commented on the difficulty for the players of keeping the instruments’ tones really soft. Though I thought the winds also gave too generously at the end, I thought the strings positively celestial in their rising figure, with the thunderous timpani and powerful brass giving us a most emphatic conclusion to the concert.

I haven’t given sufficient attention to Andrew Atkins’ direction throughout – though parts of the Tchaikovsky I thought needed a lighter touch, I was riveted by his work with the players for the rest of the time – the responses he got from the orchestra throughout the afternoon’s music-making produced, to my way of thinking, a truly memorable musical occasion.

 

 

 

 

Strong, exemplary student performances of string orchestra masterpieces

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts 
New Zealand School of Music String Ensemble, conducted by Martin Riseley

Handel: Concerto Grosso in D, Op 6 No 5
Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings in C, Op 48

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 19 September, 12:15 pm

I confess I was unprepared for the actual nature of this concert, entitled string students of the NZSM. Naively I’d thought of a string(?) of solos, duets and threesomes, perhaps a string quartet. I was a bit late, arriving as Martin Riseley finished his introduction to the recital, and launched into Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D, Op 6 No 5, inspiring playing that sounded as if it was a prelude to a highly dramatic opera, perhaps not even by Handel.

I’d missed hearing Riseley’s comment about Handel’s borrowing tunes from a contemporary, Gottlieb Muffat, in this and others of his works, a practice that was common and evidently acceptable at that time. Muffat was Handel’s contemporary whose career was at the Austrian court. It explained the impression I got that Handel’s fingerprints were not very conspicuous, certainly in some parts of the work. The Introduction was marked by vivid dotted rhythms, boisterous rather than elegant, while a different energy infused the fugal Allegro that drew vigorous playing from the very distinct concertino and ripieno sections: the concertino parts were taken cleanly and strongly by Nick Majic on first violin, and Sarang Roberts and Ellen Murfitt on second violin; Rebecca Warnes played the concertino cello part.

The Presto was an even more dynamic movement, with the concertino handling the triplet quavers while the ripieno maintained the strong pulse, with its very emphatic first note of each animated and light-spirited triplet. The Largo was a long time coming, but it seemed to speak in a more familiar Handelian language, the last note leaving it unresolved, awaiting the arrival of another Allegro, and further demonstration of the players’ energy that Riseley succeeded in maintaining splendidly. And the Menuett, rather than any kind of Presto Finale, was a calmly played, pensive movement that ended in an elegant, civilised manner.

So I was thoroughly impressed by the ensemble’s competence (only minor flaws of no importance), and looked forward with confidence to the different challenges of the Tchaikovsky. It’s symphonic in length, and so, the Handel having taken about 20 minutes, the concert ended around 1.15pm; and such was their enjoyment of a splendid hearing, right to the end, that scarcely anyone left, convinced as I was that it’s one of the composer’s real masterpieces.

They captured the varied phases of the first movement with distinction, often sounding more like a professional ensemble than a group of students.

Riseley again set the tone and the spirit with big gestures that emphasised rhythm, as if the notes were written in BOLD. I approved. Though there are distinct virtues in taking some parts pretty slowly, such as the Introduction – Andante non troppo, and particularly, the end of the Elegy and the rapturous, almost silent start of the Finale; and these were carried off well.

The Waltz used to be much played on its own, and I’m surprised not to hear it occasionally, removed from its family, on RadioNZ Concert, which now specialises in dismembering substantial pieces of music, for fear of frightening listeners with a 2-minute attention span.

This was no Karajan performance, and no one would have expected to hear a specially subtle or immaculate performance. But it was a very fine student effort, captured the essentials, and dealt with them with confidence, sensitivity and accuracy. In truth, it was probably their level of gusto and energy that masked very successfully what blemishes there were in ensemble and intonation.

It’s a long time since I heard the Serenade in live performance, and I was deeply grateful; reminded me what a great work it really is.

Some great hits from NZSO’s popular classics concert; a win by a big margin

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich with Andrew Joyce (cello)

Schubert: Symphony No 8 in B minor ‘Unfinished’ 
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme
Gillian whitehead: Turanga-nui (premiere)
Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 September, 7:30 pm

I don’t know what sort of audiences have been showing up at the other ten performances of this concert between Invercargill and Kerikeri, but the thin population in the MFC was a bit of a surprise. There was certainly competition from the rugby on Saturday evening; but there was probably also a more insidious factor: no glamorous overseas soloist; no internationally recognised conductor.

Other inhibitors: a deterrent for the serious musical aficionado was the presence of music likely to be enjoyed by the masses; and at the other extreme, for those with only superficial interest there wasn’t much they might have encountered in film or TV.

The Unfinished
But it was a good try. Schubert symphonies are not much played, compared with Beethoven, Brahms or Mahler; and they should be (a Schubert series from Orchestra Wellington is worth thinking about). McKeich moved elegantly and sensitively through the Eighth, the pianissimi rather exquisite, the interrupting fortissimo interjections a bit too emphatic, but with absorbing attention to its unique spirit. But the end of the first movement arrived too soon; I’m sure Schubert called for a repeat of the exposition.

The second movement hung together very well, with a chance to admire the composer’s orchestral subtleties, especially the winds that now included trombones, with Beethoven’s innovation in his Fifth Symphony 15 years earlier. In all, this was a beautifully evoked account.

The Rococo Variations had a troubled birth, having been subjected to arrogant revision by Tchaikovsky’s professorial colleague at the Moscow Conservatorium, cellist Fitzenhagen.  I didn’t see the relevance of the programme note’s remarks about an arrangement for piano and cello for that was not publicly performed. Furthermore, the notes left it to be assumed that the orchestra used Fitzenhagen’s controversial revised version which has been more played, since its seven sections were named. Andrew Joyce confirmed to me that it was Tchaikovsky’s original, eight-variation version. Among many minor changes, including the deletion of one variation, the main alteration was the Andante sostenuto which Fitzenhagen had moved from its affecting penultimate place to become the third variation in his version.

In fact, reading accounts of its composition and Tchaikovsky’s strenuous objection to the quite major alterations in Fitzenhagen’s unauthorised interference, it is surprising that it took so long for Tchaikovsky’s own version to be first performed, in Moscow in 1941.

The Rococo Variations were inspired by Tchaikovsky’s love of Mozart, and scoring is more limited than the normal scale in the 1870s: just pairs of winds; no trumpets or trombones, no timpani. While the orchestra played with discretion, even distinction, the aural focus was predominantly on cellist Andrew Joyce, who has to be recognised as a cellist of international standing, such was his splendid bravura as well as the extraordinary beauty of tone that he produced. There were moments of dazzling virtuosity, often climbing to the top of the fingerboard, using thumb position and perfect, false harmonics.

The beauty of the orchestral parts were a fine match with the cellist’s playing, and there were no balance problems. It’s fashionable to denigrate the piece as a concerto-manqué, but Tchaikovsky composed exactly what wanted, a homage to Mozart (who never wrote either concerto or sonata for cello), and you can think of it as a half-breed if you like, but it stands convincingly just as Tchaikovsky composed it and I was utterly delighted by the performance.

Joyce’s encore was a tune from the British Sea Songs of the Last night of the Proms. Wasn’t sure I heard correctly: Tom Bowling?

Gillian Whitehead Turanga-nui 
After the interval came Gillian Whitehead’s Turanga-nui which, though the fact was ignored in the programme note, is the third of a ‘Landfall’ commissions by the NZSO that marks Cook’s 1769 arrival (we’re a little previous, obviously, for the 250th anniversary) at Poverty Bay (Turanga-nui-a-kiwa), though oddly, the programme note didn’t mention that. This piece dwelt initially on the arrival half a millennium earlier of another group of strangers.

Much contemporary orchestral music employs a good deal of percussion and this certainly used percussion, but it was never gratuitous, integrated sensitively with conventional stringed and wind instruments. To some extent it was a depiction of landfall, of encounter that turned ugly between human beings with almost no common context, and conflict. Timpani and ethereal strings set the scene but were followed by shrill wind-led agitation; bird-song, flutterings, the dance of the wind. It often astonishes me that the sounds arising in the composer’s head can be translated into actual orchestral sounds, at all. But the feeling created here was of that magic occurring, and that the offerings from marimba and xylophone, trombones and tuba, discreet Maori instruments, flutes and strings, and a particularly evocative bassoon solo, existed just as precisely on paper as in they had in Whitehead’s mind.

The music and its instrumentation quite enchanted me, and I think it enchanted the audience generally. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if many a sceptic in the audience didn’t came away with a much greater respect for and pleasure in contemporary New Zealand music than they might have had earlier.

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 
The Debussy; it’s the centenary of his death this year, so he’s being played plenty around the world. In fact, a couple of weeks ago a surprisingly effective version of the Le Faune for flute and piano was played by Diedre Irons and Rebecca Steele at a lunchtime concert, and the day after the present concert, NZSO principal flutist, Bridget Douglas, played his famous little solo flute piece, Syrinx at a Wellington Chamber Music concert. This was a good performance, with much careful and evocative playing by woodwinds and harps. It doesn’t play itself by any means, and there were moments when some of Debussy’s still elusive, mythologizing creation slightly missed its potential.

But the last work, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet symphonic poem, to use the appropriate descriptive term, was a splendid, emotion-laden, orchestrally exciting performance. Curiously, even though there was a full complement of winds, the strings were fewer than is typical in late 19th century orchestral music; it made no perceptible difference. There are things about its orchestration, its near-dissonant harmonies, its structure, not to mention its powerfully emotional, musical inspiration that anticipates the future directions of music as did Debussy’s Faun (only 15 years later). And the tragic passion of its last pages, declining to the subtlest gestures from oboes, clarinets and bassoons, proved a wonderful climax and catharsis.

The programme’s construction might have been a bit unusual, but it worked very well in the end and certainly deserved a much bigger crowd.

Rachmaninov and Stravinsky – not such strange bedfellows, courtesy of de Waart and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

STRAVINSKY – Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920 rev.1947)
Symphony in Three Movements (1945)
RACHMANINOV – Symphony No. 2 in E Minor Op. 27

Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, August 24th, 2018

What a pleasure it was to be able to read in the programme NZSO Music Director Edo de Waart’s comments about each of the pieces due to be conducted by him in this evening’s concert with the orchestra. His words resonated on a number of fronts, one of them historical as he touched on the NZSO’s special relationship with Igor Stravinsky, who, in 1961 visited New Zealand at the age of 79 as a renowned “guest conductor” of the orchestra. On that occasion the conducting was shared between the composer and his assistant, Robert Craft, the latter directing the orchestra in one of this evening’s works, the Symphony in Three Movements, and Stravinsky himself taking the baton for Apollon Musagete, followed by the Lullaby and Finale of The Firebird.

Equally fascinating (as well as speaking volumes regarding his versatility as a musician and conductor) was de Waart’s recounting of his own history with some of the music, notably the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which he had previously performed many times as oboist/director of the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. To then read of his enthusiasm for Rachmaninov’s music via his comments on the Second Symphony (he conducted all the symphonies on record with the Rotterdam Philharmonic) suggests a sensibility on the conductor’s part which inclines towards the inclusive rather than the drawing of demarcation lines between composers based on judgements wrought from fashion or intellectual snobbery.  In their very different ways both Rachmaninov’s and Stravinsky’s works have undergone such travails over the years courtesy of self-styled “high priests” of opinion regarding artistic merit – one turns with some reassurance to Sibelius’s observation on behalf of his vocation in general, that “no-one ever erected a statue to a critic”, even if there exist a handful of exceptions to that dictum.

In fact, Rachmaninov’s and Stravinsky’s differences as creative artists were never the cause for the degree of disjunction between them promoted in certain circles of musical academia, people who regarded their own judgements as something akin to “holy writ”, and dissenters as somewhat lacking in “proper” faculties (Theodor Adorno, for one, regarded Rachmaninov’s music and people’s enjoyment of the same as “regressive” and in one famous instance even “infantile”!). The composers themselves were surprisingly accepting of one another’s music, Rachmaninov speaking of Firebird and Petrushka as “masterpieces”, and regarding even Le Sacre du Printemps as having “solid musical merits in the form of imaginative harmonies and energetic rhythms” (one can, I think, hear Rachmaninov’s debt to Stravinsky in the pounding rhythms of the first of the former’s Symphonic Dances of 1940).

If Stravinsky’s opinion of Rachmaninov’s music was expressed somewhat more equivocally, it was without rancour or condescension – he spoke in later years of the latter’s earlier pieces as “watercolours”, adding that he then “turned to oils and became a very “old” composer”, but qualifying his judgement with the words “….do not expect me to denigrate him for that.” – an attitude in marked contrast to that of many of Stravinsky’s devotees who saw it as their “duty” to summarily disparage Rachmaninov’s music. The two composers famously became neighbours in Beverley Hills towards the end of Rachmaninov’s life, their social interactions apparently marked not by discussions about music but about agents, managers, copyrights and royalties! (For a more detailed account of this interaction between the two composers, click on the link below, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra Public Relations Office, to an article by commentator Michael Steinberg.)

https://www.sfsymphony.org/Watch-Listen-Learn/Read-Program-Notes/Articles-Interviews/Rachmaninoff-Feature-Oct-2014.aspx

Stravinsky used the title of his work for wind instruments to refer to the original meaning of the word “Symphony”, a “sounding together” – the music derived from a chorale Stravinsky wrote in honour of Debussy, who died in 1918, which gradually developed into what the composer called “a grand chant” using the “objective” tones of wind instruments, as opposed to the “warm, human tone” of strings.  He himself claimed the work lacked any general appeal, containing nothing that resembled his earlier, more popular compositions. Even so, the music at the outset contrasted strident, attention-grabbing wind chords with passages for mellow brass, everything spacious and beautifully al fresco. The mood throughout resembled an enactment of some kind of ritual, not unlike the iconic Le Sacre du Printemps in the intensities generated by the different sections, though with a somewhat loftier, more austere overall effect. At all times, Edo de Waart got playing from his instrumentalists which could only be described as sublime, the ensemble by turns sharply-focused and richly-rounded, the sonorities replete with varied interest and engagement.

The later Symphony in Three Movements seemed to more readily evoke the composer’s past, in the outer sections recalling (once again) the muscularities and acerbities of the aforementioned Le Sacre, as well as using a piano obbligato reminiscent of another of his ballets, Petrushka. The work’s opening sequences resembled in places a circus band that had gone off the rails, with the percussion having great fun! Throughout the movement there seemed an almost “Concerto for Orchestra” aspect, the composer’s writing skilfully interactive while keeping an openness of texture. The piano was given a lot to do, almost like a mediator between sparring elements, each determined to “be themselves”, come what may!  I loved the strings’ articulation of the gentle jog-trot rhythms at the second movement’s beginning, with the harp taking on the obbligato role here, while the winds coloured their sounds for de Waart most exquisitely, relishing their ad lib-like contributions, and creating some magical ambiences together with the strings. The music led the ear innocently enough to the finale’s beginning, at which point what sounded like a jingoistic kind of anarchy unfurled its flag to the strains of pompous fanfares, the composer flying in the face of his own pronouncements regarding music, here (“…music is powerless to express anything except itself…” for example – Igor Stravinsky: An Autobiography 1935) by admitting that he was inspired by World War II newsreels of goose-stepping German soldiers, and that the build-up towards the music’s triumphal ending marked the war’s turning-point in favour of the Allied forces. The debate regarding the composer‘s words in relation to his own music continues, meantime……but for now, I’m happy to report that de Waart and the players gave a performance of the whole that bore out the conductor’s description of the music as a ‘glorious work”.

So we came to the concert’s second half, featuring music by a different composer, one whose attitudes and intentions regarding his work (and music in general) are on record as diametrically removed from any Stravinsky-like ideas of music’s “powerless” objectivity as could be. Edo de Waart unequivocally described Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony as “a haunting and deeply moving work”, thereby cutting the Gordion Knot of binding judgement regarding musical styles by treating all of the concert’s individual works entirely on their own merits. It was ironic, therefore, that, his conducting of the Symphony to my ears didn’t seek to invest the work with any particular nationalistic or geographical character of sound other than a kind of echt-European mellowness of utterance – in other words, his was an objective, well-rounded and beautifully-proportioned reading, one which allowed “the notes”, as written by the composer, to speak for themselves.

Which is another way of my saying that the music here wasn’t made to sound any more “Russian” than what the composer had written into the score. While my preference, when listening to this music, is for rather more “temperament” expressed in occasional volatilities and explorations of near-extremities of tone and timbre, I relished de Waart’s obvious love and respect for the music and its composer, and the orchestra’s sensitive, well-rounded and at times brilliant playing.

We heard a beautifully long-breathed opening pair of exhalations which set the work in motion, before a light, lithe allegro moderato swung into action, its phrases beautifully weighted and nuanced. Throughout each succeeding episode de Waart and his players similarly wove layer upon layer of lyrical utterance, both strings and winds shaping their expression next to great rolling crescendi from the brass, capped by scintillating percussion, until the dancing exuberance of the movement’s coda was done.

More excitement was to be had from the scherzo, incisive strings and ringing horns leading the way, de Waart keeping the exuberance seemly, as well as curbing any overt sentimentality in the phrasing of the second theme, apart from a touch of portamento in one of the upward string figures. The brasses got their galloping syncopations excitingly right, the strings reducing things to a whisper before the whiplash entry of the Trio – here, clear and incisive rather than weighty, though the brass resonances rang deeply and richly soon afterwards. What I always think of as the “Rimsky-Korsakov” sequences – those lovely prancing, wind-decorated martial figures! – had plenty of exotic glitter before things accelerated excitingly towards the reprise of the opening, the movement then racing to its suddenly sombre conclusion, its spectral brasses and ghostly whisperings vanishing into the night.

Again, the famous opening of the slow movement, with its “continuous melody” wrought by strings and clarinet, was simply and directly expressed, with exquisitely-judged playing from clarinettist Patrick Barry, matched later by the NZSO strings, and supported by the other wind-players. Nothing was over-wrought, de Waart keeping the heart-on-sleeve emotion of it all within the realms of natural utterance, while encouraging an interactive sound-picture, the wind counterpoints and brass-and timpani climaxes all part of the greater flow. This served to highlight the finale’s joyous release of energies, even if I thought the horns could have been allowed a more exuberant voice in places – still those echoes of the previous movements made their mark amid the festivities, as did the hushed build-up of the ‘bells” sequence towards a sonorous, scalp-tingling panoply of ringing sounds whose effect was all the greater in the context of the conductor’s restraint elsewhere. And though I occasionally craved more raw excitement in places, I relished de Waart’s insistence on clarity of detail at all times, my ears in a constant state of titillation through registering so much that’s normally masked or underplayed.

A thoroughly-deserved burst of acclamation from an appreciative audience greeted conductor and players as the music’s final hammered-out chords flung their energies out to the four corners of the hall – splendid stuff!