Tag: orchestral

NZSO opens the musical year with Bach, Rameau and Locatelli

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, led by Vesa-Matti Leppänen

Bach: Brandenburg Concertos nos. 1 in F (BWV 1046) and 3 in G (BWV 1048); Air from the Suite no.3 in D, BWV 1068
Locatelli: Concerto in E flat, Op.7 no.6 ‘Il Pianto d’Arianna’
Rameau: Suite from Dardanus

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Friday, 2 February 2018, 7.30pm

The orchestra made a start to the New Year that was rather different from usual.  A band without conductor, but led from the violin, that was made up of between 12 and twenty-five players, depending on the work being played.  Unusually, the players stood to perform, except of course the harpsichordist (Douglas Mews) and the cellists; the horns and percussion had chairs to sit on in those movements where they were not playing, in the Rameau Suite.  The men’s dress was black shirts, business-style suits and dark ties, not full penguin-rig.

It was a thoroughly refreshing performance; I heard audience members expressing this sentiment as they walked away afterwards.  I was fortunate to be sitting at the front of the church, and so did not suffer from the effects of the long resonance time which may have affected people sitting further back in the packed venue.  However, I could see and hear well and my fears about fast baroque music sounding jumbled in this venue were unfounded.

What I heard was crisp, vital playing.  The string players for the most part adopted baroque bowing technique, played with greater detachment of the notes than they would employ in playing Classical or Romantic music, and rendered stress and phrasing in a baroque manner. The wind instruments were all modern ones; their greater force than had their ancestors in the Baroque period meant that they were sometimes a little too loud for their string colleagues.  Nevertheless, their contribution was tasteful; there was no attempt at vibrato, and notes were frequently slightly detached.  The playing was in a straightforward manner.  However, when the winds were playing, the harpsichord could barely be heard.

The concert began with a fanfare from two trombones placed in the side gallery, near the front of the church.  They were unannounced and their contribution was not to be found in the printed programme.  When Leppänen spoke to the audience following the first Bach concerto he mentioned the fanfare as a celebration of the opening of the 2018 NZSO series, but did not name the composer.  Two of the musicians whom I asked thought that it was Monteverdi, which seemed not only likely, but appropriate, being brass sounding from a high gallery à la St. Mark’s in Venice.  It sounded great in this acoustic.

Brandenburg No 1
The first, and longer, Brandenburg Concerto, was played stylishly.  The contrasts between Minuet, Trio, Polacca, were delightful.  The concertino players: Leppänen, plus three oboes and two horns, were admirable.  Leppänen’s leadership of the ensembles was effective throughout the concert.

The Locatelli work is seldom heard.  It is described as a short opera without words, but sad in theme (‘pianto’ is Italian for tears, weeping), depicting the sufferings of Arianna, deserted by her lover, a story much beloved of writers of opera.  The composer’s dates were 1695 to 1764.

This work was performed by a smaller ensemble.  After an andante-allegro movement, came a largo with a singular and appealing violin solo, followed by an even slower grave movement.  Throughout, the instruments depicted the drama.  Another allegro led to a final largo; an unusual way to end an orchestral work, but appropriate to the tragedy of the operatic story; mournful for the sad end of Arianna.   Again, there was beautiful playing from Leppänen.  The music could not be said to be as inspiring as that of Bach, nor as lively as Rameau’s offering to come.

Rameau
After the interval came another unusual work, by baroque French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau.(1683 to 1764).  The suite consisted of 14 movements, but some of these were repetitions.  Dardanus was an opera by Rameau written in 1738 but greatly revised in 1744.  A very sprightly Overture was followed by ‘Air gracieux pour les Plaisirs’, and gracious it was, featuring flute.  Then we heard percussion, consisting of a traditional (not modern) timpani (strictly timpano, in the singular) and a tambourine, expertly played by Thomas Guldborg and Leonard Sakofsky respectively, in a movement, repeated, named for the instrument: ‘Tambourin’.

The Pleasure ended, with the ‘Entrée pour les Guerriers’.  The movement was indeed martial, with drum in a very lively march.  It was followed by a repeated rigaudon, a French dance of lilting quality.  It began with strings only, then woodwinds joined in.  The next movement, ‘Air’, was slow and piquant in character.  Minuets were elegant and yet bright, with a change to the minor key for contrast.  The ‘Tambourin’ returned, but with piccolo adding a sparkling quality.

‘Air Tendre’ opened with a cello solo, soulfully played by Andrew Joyce, then flute entered.  There were notable passages from Leppänen’s violin.  The final ‘Chaconne’ featured oboe, and later bassoon joined in.  The mood was jolly and sombre by turns, and completed a delightful suite that was lively and interesting at every turn.

Brandenburg No.3
We returned to Bach for his Brandenburg Concerto no.3, probably more popular than the no.1, as the audience showed by their prolonged applause at the end.  A smaller ensemble performed it, in a very energetic and rhythmic style, the allegros being faster than one often hears.  Again, it was a complete contrast with the preceding work.  In this music I was aware of the vibrant and rich viola tone.  The adagio was short and solemn, before a return to liveliness for the last allegro.

Leppänen spoke again, saying that the encore had been included in the printed programme: the firm favourite known as ‘Air on the G string’ (Air from Bach’s Suite no.3 in D, BWV 1068).  A larger orchestra played this final item.  The pizzicato on cellos and double bass was most effective, and the beautiful melody was fully exploited, without any un-baroque excess.

All in all, a most satisfying concert to open the year’s NZSO season.

 

Legal choristers and instrumentalists in anniversary class action supporting child cancer campaign

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Crown Law Presents: Counsel in Concert: Musical Anniversaries; in aid of the Child Cancer Foundation

Items by Monteverdi, Telemann, Haydn, Gershwin, The Beatles

Lawyers’ choir and orchestra, with soloists. Conducted by Owen Clarke

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday, 19 November 2017, (12.15pm); 5.30pm

It was heartening to see such a large bunch of lawyers who enjoy making music – and the large, mainly young audience who came to hear their second performance.  The 38-strong orchestra included some 21 players from the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington, but only one lawyer – the indefatigable Merran Cooke, who rehearses the performers and organised the concert.  The choir consisted of 53 singers.

The composers selected were a heterogeneous bunch, chosen for their anniversaries this year.  The programme notes gave details: 450 years since the birth of Monteverdi, 250 years since the death of Telemann, 250 years since the composition of Haydn’s ‘Stabat Mater’, 80 years since the death of Gershwin and 50 years since The Beatles’ ‘Sergeant Pepper’ album.

The first item, which included a harpsichord continuo, was the opening movement from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610: ‘Deus in adjutorium’.  Those opening words are intoned in plainchant, followed by the magnificent ‘Domine…’ from choir and orchestra, each part singing on its own single note for a couple of pages.  The heightened drama of this effect is resolved in triumphant fashion when all parts shift on the word ‘Alleluia’.  It was a very effective performance, even if the splendid brass almost drowned out the choir at times.  It made a great opening for the concert.

Next was a welcome from the Solicitor-General, Una Jagose.  She spoke of the health and social benefits of making music in groups.  Telemann’s Der Tag des Gerichts, or The Day of Judgement (appropriate for legal professionals to perform).  Two choruses from this religious work were given: ‘Schallt ihr hohen Jubellieder’ and ‘Die rechte des herrn’.  Only a slight knowledge of the German language is needed to deduce that the first was about sounding jubilant songs, while the second deals with another suitable subject for lawyers – the rights of men.

A line-up of five soloists from the choir sang well in these excerpts, particularly Amanda Barclay, soprano, apart from starting slightly off-key.  Then the choir gave Telemann all they had, in a very vigorous performance.

The soloists sounded more comfortable in Monteverdi’s ‘Beatus vir’, a setting of Psalm 122 from his Selva Morale e Spirituale of 1640.  It is probably his best-known choral piece.  Four of the five soloists from the Telemann appeared again, with the addition of two other male singers.  The women on the whole acquitted themselves better than the men, and again, occasionally the choir and soloists were drowned by the orchestral sound.  However, with strings only, we heard more from the soloists.  The choir sang well, with plenty of lung power; the orchestra played with appropriate style.  Rhythm and articulation were good, and the beauty of the woodwind playing stood out particularly.  The choir parts were clear and confident.

Owen Clarke has conducted the annual concert for a number of years, even after moving to Auckland, and now Australia.  He spoke briefly to the audience about how he enjoyed taking part in this annual event.  He was followed by Lara Cooke (no relation to Merran Cooke), a teenager who has suffered two major bouts of cancer.  She spoke clearly, fluently and unemotionally about her experiences, and the help she and her family had received from the Child Cancer Foundation.  It was a moving experience to learn a little of what she had gone through, including having to move to Christchurch and Auckland at different times to receive treatment.

A medley from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess followed; an arrangement by Ed Lojeski.  ‘I got plenty o’ nuttin’ opened for the orchestra, and the wind players certainly opened their lungs.  Anna Rowe sang ‘Summertime’, amplified, to excellent effect – although in St. Andrew’s acoustic I did not think that amplification was necessary.  The choir came in too, and piano and percussion were added.  The choir reiterated the opening number, using the pronunciation ‘nothing’.  Then there was ‘It ain’t necessarily so’, with Ken Trass an excellent soloist, along with the choir.  ‘Bess, you is my woman now’ had similar treatment.

Idiomatic, well-rehearsed singing of a good standard were the marks of the entire medley, with clear words.  There were some delightful clarinet passages before the medley ended strongly with ‘O Lord, I’m on my way’.

Three Beatles songs concluded the programme, the music arranged by Daniel Hayles, a New Zealander who teaches jazz at the New Zealand School of Music here in Wellington, the skilled arrangement being commissioned for this concert.  The soloist was Mauricio Molina, a Wellington singer originally from Argentina.  I found his amplified voice too loud in the first song, in the St. Andrew’s acoustic.  The choir also sang, in Sergeant Pepper, Penny Lane  and All you need is Love, but in the first song they could hardly be heard.  Things were much better in the gentler Penny Lane.  The soloist was not too loud, his words could be understood, and the choir could be heard.  The triumphant ending of the last song had the audience joining in clapping the rhythm.  The beginning and ending of the song features phrases from La Marseillaise – a great effect.

Sponsors contributed to the cost of the concert; all audience donations would go to the Child Cancer Foundation. I trust this was a considerable sum; the musicians worked hard for it.

 

 

 

Admirable Sibelius as well as Lilburn and a rare trombone concerto from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ewan Clark with David Bremner (trombone)

Lilburn: Suite for Orchestra (1955)
Tomasi: Trombone Concerto
Sibelius: Symphony No 2 in D major, Op. 43

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 10 December, 2:30 pm

Lilburn’s Suite for Orchestra was composed for the Auckland Junior Symphony Orchestra in 1955. Thus it was a sensible piece for a non-professional orchestra, though that is not to suggest that its wide-ranging moods, brilliant orchestration and rhythms that range widely from the utmost subtlety to the unusually boisterous are not very taxing.

Subtle brass playing is rarely a highlight of amateur orchestras and it was trumpets and trombones that had some difficulty in adapting to ensemble expectations, particularly in the opening Allegro movement. However the large string sections and both the horns (four of them) and woodwinds contributed the sort of sounds that are recognisably Lilburn. The middle movement, Andante, offered rewarding opportunities to oboes and horns; while the orchestra’s timpani has been problematic in this church in the past, Alec Carlisle’s handling ensured its role was perfectly integrated in the orchestral texture.

The fifth movement, Vivace, is a delightfully scored dance in Latin rhythms – Mexican I guess, which is no doubt the reason for J M Thomson’s programme notes for William Southgate’s recording remarking on a Copland influence (I imagine, with El salon Mexico in mind; a solo trumpet sounded very idiomatic). Conductor Ewan Clark gave the players their head in this movement and the result was perhaps a rare occasion when Lilburn lets rip – not too much, mind you. However, the performance was a happy opportunity to witness a not often heard aspect of his personality, and it was also sufficient to make the audience aware of the composer’s international stature.

Henri Tomasi (French, not Italian; of Corsican origin) flourished through the middle of the 20th century; he wrote a number of concertos, mainly for winds, and this one seems to have gained popularity. The opening movement is in triple time, entitled Andante et scherzo – valse, and this gave the piece a dreamy quality. David Bremner’s programme note mentions jazz influences – Tommy Dorsey in particular, though I tended to listen for French influences. Debussy and Ravel are there though not dominant, and there are rather more suggestions of later French composers such as Ibert or Jolivet; but Tomasi’s language, while essentially tonal, melodic in a Poulenc sort of way, sounds more radical, testing than either – more acidic, harmonically complex.

There were interesting forays for most other instruments. One interesting event was a sudden break off in the middle of the second movement (Nocturne) which had been going along in a calm, bluesy manner: a trombone breakdown. A gadget called a trigger broke; it enables the player to obtain low notes by diverting the sound back through the tube behind him instead of fully extending the slide forward. Since none of the orchestral trombonists was playing, one of those instruments came to the rescue. So it continued its rather charming (Ellingtonian, I thought) way.

The last movement too was rather diverting, though Bremner didn’t pull off a comparable stunt; here, there were offerings from side drum, timpani, xylophone…, all ear-catching, quirky and attractive.

I’d like to explore Tomasi’s other music.

Sibelius 2
Then came the main course: Sibelius’s Second Symphony. The work opened very promisingly, as we were drawn in with those expectant, pulsing strings and the oboe and then the four rapturous horns; and the strings long legato lines, handled with gentle emotion. This was the first Sibelius symphony I heard played live by the then National Orchestra in the 1950s, and still a feeling of rapture overcomes me.

The second movement is announced almost threateningly, with a startling timpani fanfare, followed almost silently by a longish pizzicato episode that emerges slowly from basses then cellos, overlaid by questioning bassoons. Its rather rhapsodic character – it’s labelled Tempo andante, ma rubato – and its increasing grandeur involved much from the fine horn section; and though other brass didn’t always blend in the otherwise good ensemble, the whole was certainly more successful and more beautiful than the sum of its parts. The slow movement runs to around a quarter of an hour and to hold audience enraptured throughout is a considerable challenge for a conductor, one that Clark met admirably.

The emotional crux of the scherzo movement, Vivacissimo, is the contrasting string of nine repeated notes (B flat?, and repeated a semi-tone higher) from the oboes and these were beautifully played. And the transition from a further evocation of those repeated notes through the steady build-up to the grand opening out into the Finale, Allegro moderato, remains just another of the glories of the work that I have simply never tired of, and although this was not to be compared with the many magnificent performances that one has heard by professional orchestras, live and recorded, any performance that seems driven by an awareness of the emotional and spiritual splendour that Sibelius conceived here, simply works. This one did.

 

Cataclysmic conclusion to Orchestra Wellington’s Diaghilev season

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ORCHESTRA WELLINGTON – The Rite of Spring

BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.3 Op.55 “Eroica”
STRAVINSKY – The Rite Of Spring (Ballet – 1913)

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 2nd December, 2017

This concert began with two of the most famous chords in all nineteenth-century music, those which opened a thrilling performance by Orchestra Wellington of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, the work by which the composer allegedly intended to celebrate the achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte, but changed his mind, and, according to an eye-witness account, scratched out the original dedication, and reinscribed it as “composed in memory of a great man”.

Napoleon or no, the work was definitely a revolutionary statement, one which of itself proclaimed a “new era” of musical expression. Beethoven himself was obviously less concerned with the selfconscious idea of being at the forefront of any such new age, than with his own development as a creative artist. He had said to a friend at around this time – “I am by no means satisfied with my work up to now, and I intend to make a fresh start from now on”. That “fresh start” embodied the Third Symphony, the “Eroica”.

What made it revolutionary was its length – the first movement alone was longer than many whole classical symphonies. Other notable aspects were the second movement being styled as a funeral march, and the third movement being a new-ish concept which gradually overtook the idea of the Minuet, replacing it with something called a Scherzo (in Italian, a “joke”). Finally, the symphony’s finale seemed more serious than usual – a theme-and-variations movement based on some music Beethoven had already written.

Again, the composer wanted something different, not being content with the usual “light entertainment” of symphonic finales. To this end, he used music from an earlier work of his own, a ballet about Prometheus, the Titan who breathed life into a pair of statues, making them humans, before being slain for his impudence, and then brought to life again by Apollo. The theme follows the general pattern of the symphony – heroism triumphing over death and returning to life.

The thrust and dynamism of Orchestra Wellington’s playing and Marc Taddei’s conducting made the symphony’s first movement a force to be reckoned with, and the second movement a heartfelt, almost confessional piece of music, laying bare the basic emotions – joy, sorrow, exultation, disappointment, resignation – everything was characterized so strongly and directly in the playing and the overall direction of the piece.

Over the years I’ve collected a number of recordings of the work, my first purchases reflecting what used to be the “norm”when it came to playing Beethoven, very much tending towards a romantic mode of expression, with large orchestral numbers and in some cases monumental tempi – conductors such as Furtwangler, Klemperer and Knappertsbusch seemed to stress the sheer physical amplitude of the music’s range and scope, and developed what seemed like a Beethoven for the ages. Other conductors preferred to bring more dynamism to the music, notably Toscanini, Erich Kleiber (as did his son Carlos), and Karajan, while continuing to use nineteenth-century orchestra numbers. And so interpreters of the music came and went, evoking the composer’s spirit in their different ways, which nevertheless seemed virtually indestructible throughout.

However, of late, there’s been a revolution in the matter of performing music from different historical periods, with musicians wanting to realize a more “authentic” sound by means of examining earlier playing techniques and practices, included among which was a more “purist” approach to the score itself, especially in the matter of metronome markings. Whole articles have been written by different researchers into questions such as the viability of Beethoven’s own markings and tempi directions in general, not to mention the use of “authentic” instruments and playing practices different to those we had become accustomed to.

Even if conductors and orchestras don’t go as far as employing either “genuine” older instruments or copies of the same when they play eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music, there’s now a far greater awareness in mainstream concert performance of “period” practices, resulting generally in smaller ensembles playing music at faster tempi and with phrasing and tonal production which produce a “purer”, less romantically-laden sound and texture in the music. This was certainly evident in Marc Taddei’s conducting of Orchestra Wellington on this occasion, especially in the symphony’s first two movements, both of which were given urgent, dynamic tempi, and crisply articulate phrasing, with sharply-etched, largely vibrato-less texturings. There’s a roistering spirit of adventure about this combination’s music-making which invariably carries the day, and which on this occasion, for me, resulted in a performance which crackled and sizzled with blood-stirring energies throughout.

The musicians having breasted the epic traversals of the symphony’s opening two movements (the work already lengthier than any other symphony completed up to that time), they then tackled the next “revolutionary” aspect of the work, the substitution by the composer of a “scherzo” movement for the traditional minuet, a more exciting and dynamic development. Particularly striking was the playing by the horns of the “trio” section of the music, given with tremendous panache by the players. Afterwards, one might have expected a finale of more fun and games and relaxation, but the composer had other ideas, infusing the movement with references to an earlier work of his , a ballet about Prometheus, the Titan who breathed life into a pair of statues, making them humans, before being condemned to die for his impudence, and then brought to life again by Apollo.

The theme follows the general pattern of the symphony – heroism triumphing over death and returning to life. The performance here had some lovely aspects including a “solo string” treatment of a variation on the Promethean theme, one which is usually given to a larger complement of strings – here, less was made deliciously more as the solo string textures “personalized” the lines more sharply and characterfully as well as providing a telling contrast with the rest of the movement’s sounds.

A little more than a hundred years later an audience heard another very revolutionary piece of music for the first time, one from a young composer, Igor Stravinsky, the Rite of Spring, whose first performance in Paris in 1913 had occasioned one of the most famous riots in musical history. Though nothing like Stravinsky’s music had been heard before, it seems that the troubles in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées at that first performance were equally provoked by the choreography devised by the principal dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, and that certain members of the audience took vociferous and even violent objection to what they saw on the stage. Stravinsky himself later described what he saw on stage as “a group of knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down”, though later still he pronounced himself satisfied with the outcome of the production as a whole, scandal or no scandal.

Despite being over a hundred years old itself, by now, I think parts of “Le Sacre” still have an incredibly “here-and-now” feel about them, a kind of innate power to sound in places modern, totally unique and original. The introductions to each of the work’s two parts are both remarkably evocative, an aspect of the work which the players brought off here to great effect, right from the plaintive bassoon note which sets the work in motion through to the ever-burgeoning sense of something from long ago coming into being. The second part begins rather more claustrophobically, chord-clusters bringing oppressive weight to the textures and underlining the thrall in which primitive peoples were held by the passage of the seasons. Everywhere, the conductor and players gave these evocations the space and weight needed to underline these powerful resonances and let them do their work.

The other aspect of “Le Sacre” which helps define its unique character is its rhythmic variety and complexity, which seems to my untrained ear to reach some kind of apogee in the final Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One – the trajectories are so irregular, so angular, so unpredictable! For the uninitiated listener it might seem like complete mayhem, nothing but desperate irruptions of movement by a chosen victim sacrificing herself to the spring. Of course it OUGHT to sound desperate and out of control, and Marc Taddei and the players delivered it all with a remarkable amalgam of assurance and spontaneity, so that the awe of the music was maintained right up to the point of its dissolution. All were heroes, and we in the audience treated the players and their conductor as such, after we’d recovered from the final onslaught of the music’s implaccable energies.

So, from a brilliantly successful season of Diaghilev-inspired works this year we’ll be taken by Marc Taddei and the orchestra through Antonin Dvorak’s mature symphonies in 2018 – a journey which was announced this evening, and whose delights we’ll meantime savour in anticipation and without a doubt relish in their performance next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO players in special concert under Aisslinn Nosky with Baroque masters

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aisslinn Nosky (director and violin soloist)

NZSO players:
Violins: Ursula Evans, Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Haihong Liu, Anne Loeser, Simon Miller, Megan Molina, Gregory Squire, Rebecca Struthers, Anna van der Zee, Beiyi Xue
Viola: Michael Cuncannon, Victoria Jaenecke, Lyndsay Mountford, Belinda Veitch
Cello: Eleanor Carter, Robert Ibell, Ken Ichinose
Bass: Malcolm Struthers
Harpsichord: Douglas Mews

Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op 3/6, RV 356
Handel: Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op 6/6, HWV 324
Vivaldi: Concerto for two violins in D minor, RV 565
Telemann: Burlesque de Quixotte, TWV 55:G10
Geminiani: Concerto Grosso in D minor, Op 5/12, ‘La Follia’ H.143

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 17 November, 6 pm

It’s been a fine Baroque week in Wellington, at St Andrew’s, with an attractive lunch-time concert on Wednesday, with four strings from Wellington’s two professional orchestras and an NZSM harpsichordist; and this evening a special ensemble, of 18 players from the NZSO, plus harpsichordist Douglas Mews.

The story behind this evening’s concert was elaborate. NZSO violinist Anne Loeser travelled to Toronto in the Summer of 2014 for an intensive Baroque course where she met the hugely inspiring Aisslinn Nosky. Anne saw an opportunity to share her experience in Toronto with her NZSO colleagues, with the help of the June Commons Trust, a fund established by violinist Commons to foster study opportunities; and Anne’s colleagues responded enthusiastically to the opportunity. Aisslinn Nosky came to Wellington and has spent a week in lessons, workshops and rehearsals, in preparation for this concert, a mix of German and Italian Baroque music.

I arrived a few minutes late and missed hearing the first Vivaldi concerto, which an acquaintance told me had presented a hugely exiting first movement.

Handel Concerto Grosso
The chance to hear an appropriate ensemble play one of Handel’s Op 6 concerti grossi – No 6 – was a singular, rare pleasure; it employed a concertino group of two violins (Aisslinn Nosky and Rebecca Struthers) and a cello (Eleanor Carter) against the ‘ripieno’ – the rest of the orchestra. I wasn’t even sure that I’d heard it before, and was deeply impressed by the calm pathos of the first movement Largo affettuoso, and a comparably beautiful Musette, the third movement. I can’t help a reminiscence: I recall the music master at Wellington College introducing us – in the merely once-a-week ‘core’ music period – to at least one of Handel’s Op 6 set, an experience that has left me puzzled over the many subsequent decades, that such music, that I assumed was important (in other classes we heard the Hebrides Overture and the Academic Festival Overture) and which had appealed to me, seemed never to be performed. The fourth and fifth movement, both Allegros – the first in common time, the second a minuet-like dance in brisk triple time. A quite splendid concerto running to around 15 minutes.

Vivaldi Concerto Grosso
A second Vivaldi concerto followed, again from the Op 3 set, No 11 in D minor. As was intended in planning alternate German and Italian pieces, the contrast between the meaty, substantial yet delightful Handel, and lighter textured Vivaldi was interesting, though the character of this Vivaldi concerto was significantly more Germanic to my ears than the typical Vivaldi work. Though merely labelled a ‘concerto, it was in fact a ‘concerto grosso’, the concertino parts played here by Aisslinn Nosky, Anne Loeser and Ken Ichinose.

The first two movements, Allegro and Adagio, were very short and I confess to thinking they were merely parts of the first movement. Though the central Allegro was vigorous and substantial, played with painstaking rhythmic emphasis, taking care to exploit as much instrumental variety as possible: the three concertino instruments were singularly striking, making me frequently aware of the energy being injected by Nosky’s leadership, from the violin. As she played her bowing and her body movement guided her players vividly, often merely by turning her head and glancing encouragingly at players.

And the final Allegro illustrated in its gusto and opulence, the splendid balance and rapport between the soloists and the ripieno. The Largo, between the middle and final Allegros, expressing a pathos that offered evidence of the importance of Vivaldi, reinforced an astonishment that the Vivaldi revival has taken so long – like some 250 years – to take root and for him to become an accepted master in, not just Baroque music, but universally, placing him very close, it not equal, to Bach and Handel.

Telemann’s Burlesque de Quixotte was written in his last year, 1767 – in fact this is the 250th anniversary of his death, as you’ll have noticed by the huge amount of attention being paid by the popular press and commercial radio and television (though I’m not sure I’ve heard it referred to by RNZ Concert either). The suite consists of eight movements. It begins with a substantial French overture and continues with some quite brief pieces that depict some of Quixote’s adventures, that lend themselves to musical wit and drollerie. There are amusing, successful portrayals of people and events, such as the windmills, Quixote’s galloping horse, Rosinante, and Sancho Panza’s ass, which induced smiles with its bizarre, irregular dissonances.

The fact that Strauss wrote a symphonic poem on Don Quixote prompted me to wonder whether one might hear in Telemann hints of the kind of descriptive music that developed in the Romantic era. Hardly; but notable ‘programme’ music had been composed, even in the 17th century – Biber’s Battalia for example; some Renaissance English keyboard music; Couperin’s keyboard music is full of descriptive elements, for which his detailed ornamentation was an important element; there’s Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, obviously; and other pieces by Telemann himself, such as the suite Hamburger Ebb’ und Flut.

The performance was revelatory; Nosky inspired energetic playing, full of dynamic rhythm and opulent orchestral ensemble, taking every opportunity to find and exploit the colour and narrative quirks and their exaggerated orchestral depictions, with which Telemann fills his score. Nor did it mean a movement such as the Don’s amorous sighs for Dulcinea was anything but warm, supple and full of chivalric love.

Corelli’s La Follia from Geminiani
On Wednesday we heard Corelli’s variations on La Follia, played as a set of variations for violin and continuo (cello and harpsichord). It was the last of Corelli’s twelve sonatas for violin and continuo, Op 5, published in 1700, and they were arranged by Geminiani 26 years later as concerti grossi (also Geminiani’s Op 5). Friday’s NZSO baroque orchestra played No 12 of the set, entitled La Follia; one could be forgiven for hardly recognising their origin in Corelli, so much more opulent and varied was Geminiani’s version.

Nosky, as well as being a specialist in baroque performance practice, doesn’t for a moment allow scholarly scruples to inhibit her gusto and concern to give her performances all the colour and vitality she can draw from her players. Happily, one had to conclude that the players who emerged from the NZSO for this concert were all of a mind to respond with enthusiasm to her spirit; fast was as fast as possible; ornaments included vibrato, with discretion; she took every opportunity to exploit expressive gestures, with arresting emphases and rhythmic adventures. And one was always thoroughly aware of the tempo fluctuations and changes of tempo, both through hearing and through watching Nosky’s direction from the violin, which never failed to give vivid interpretive guidance.

Envoi: A Baroque orchestra
This concert by an ensemble drawn from the NZSO, reminded me that it’s rather a long time since the excellent NZSO Chamber Orchestra, led by Donald Armstrong, was disbanded, and there’s been no revival of such a group. The packed church on Friday showed the high level of interest in this kind of music, and I wish the orchestra would revive a chamber orchestra such as this that, on a permanent basis, could give professional performances of baroque and other early music that is otherwise seriously neglected. Though I suspect that dynamic chefs d’orchestre such as Aisslinn Nosky are not thick on the ground, visiting conductors as well as some local conductors with a love of Baroque music would be delighted to have the chance to play this music alongside their regular programmes with the NZSO.

 

Edo de Waart and NZSO in deeply assimilated music of Brahms, Wagner and Sibelius (with Janine Jansen)

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Edo de Waart with Janine Jansen – violin

Brahms: Symphony No 3 in F, Op 90
Wagner: Siegfried Idyll
Sibelius: Violin concerto in D minor, Op 47

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 10 November, 6:30 pm

The programme might have looked fairly conventional, except that the symphony, usually the sole occupant of the second half of the traditional concert, was played first. That may have been because the Sibelius concerto enjoys one of the most exciting endings while Brahms’s Third Symphony is a favourite as a result of its steering a path between peacefulness and joy and quiet drama, ending with one of most reflective, serene finales.

Brahms No 3
Generally, De Waart and the orchestra demonstrated a profound sympathy with the symphony: an awareness of its sanguinity as well as its suppressed passion, in a performance that struck one as authentic and deeply assimilated, from a descendant of performances by De Waart’s compatriots, Mengelberg, Van Beinum, Haitink (though not all are unreservedly admired in this symphony…).  So it’s perhaps a little strange that I noted in the first movement, early on, a certain instability in handling the elusive rhythms, and perhaps in ensemble, particularly among the winds.

The symphony’s laid-back nature doesn’t mean any departure from Brahms’s structural complexity that, on the one hand, can be overlooked in a conscious sense without loss of enjoyment, and on the other can engross the serious listener with score and analytical notes at hand.

There were many felicities in the course of the performance, momentary unstable passages that were elucidated by giving prominence to a few notes or by the emergence of flutes or violas from the orchestral aggregate; a fragile rhythm, nicely managed without simplifying it.

The third movement, Poco allegretto, where a scherzo would normally be, was yet another departure from the orthodox, in C minor, 3/8 time (though they’re very slow quavers), De Waart was unhurried, almost somnolent, passing the lovely main theme repeatedly through strings and winds – exquisitely with horns; it might be tedious in less inspired hands: not here.

The sense of a driving impulse was a major feature of De Waart’s performance, through the numerous tempo and rhythmic changes, that hold one’s attention, absorption in the music. But the result of such impulse is sometimes to overlook the epic grandeur of the work which exists in certain deeply admired recordings (Haitink, Sanderling, Giulini for example), that run to around 50 minutes. This was not a performance of that kind, but one for immediate consumption bearing in mind an audience that might not be ready to give itself to playing devoted to architectural magnificence on the scale of a mighty Gothic cathedral.

Siegfried Idyll 
The Siegfried Idyll followed after the interval, excellent tonic for those who have succumbed to anti-Wagner xenophobia. It needs to be stressed, as I sometimes do to non-believers, that it’s just a small part of the 16-hours of the marvellous Ring cycle where hours of comparable beauties are to be found.

The orchestra was stripped back to ten first violins, descending to four basses and single winds apart from pairs of horns and clarinets. That was Wagner’s published expansion from the small group of 13 that had gathered at dawn on the stairs near Cosima’s bedroom to mark her birthday/Christmas morning in 1870 in their house at Triebschen on Lake Lucerne (yes, I’ve been there on a lovely summer’s day). It was beautifully paced, a sort of aubade, with the scent of a calm night, with elegant, perfectly integrated strings; and an arresting moment from Michael Kirgan’s trumpet.

Sibelius Violin Concerto
Janine Jansen is a Dutch violinist, born in 1978 (the ritualised patterns of artist CVs ignore basic information that is likely to be interesting and pertinent to most concert-goers). She is clearly among the most distinguished of the increasingly large body of brilliant soloists in the classical music world.

Her Sibelius concerto was part of a uniquely refined, perceptive, passionate, imaginative and simply enchanting performance which had the characteristically restrained Wellington audience jumping to its feet, accompanied by prolonged shouts and clapping.

The concerto opened with fairy-like, whispering sounds over pianissimo murmuring strings, that were quickly echoed by Patrick Barry’s comparably fastidious clarinet. The prevailing character of her playing was soon clear: an almost obsessional care with every phrase and a delight in highlighting contrasts that are often handled in a more uniform manner. An early fiery passage that ends suddenly with rising, meandering, pianisssimi theme, that seemed to be delivered with more dramatic contrast than is common. At the heart of the first movement, rather than towards the end, the violin’s cadenza becomes a more central feature than usual, described as assuming the role of the development section rather than merely a spectacular forerunner to the climactic conclusion.

Though Sibelius never allows you to become comfortable with a particular emotion, tempo, style, world-view or belief system, and in every movement the listener runs the gauntlet, it’s the slow movement, Adagio di molto, that approaches a miracle of calm, transcendent beauty. It seems to seek the elusive idea of the sublime, but coloured by unease, evoking the still, Arctic air; and there’s a yearning quality, a sense of loss in through the singular emotional force with which the violin speaks. Jansen dealt enchantingly with the passages where she was virtually alone as sections of the orchestra murmured discreetly, merely embellishing the silence.

Though one knows the concerto very well, I have never been held so transfixed, so alert, so awakened to sounds that I seemed never to have heard properly before. The last movement can suggest a fairly conventional affair, boisterous and exciting, but Jansen’s playing was variously mercurial and endlessly lyrical; it was energised in throbbing exchanges with the orchestra, which was probably inspired by the soloist to sonorities and detail that were comparably dynamic, emerging with unusually clarity. That is a feat that’s perhaps not so hard to achieve given Sibelius’s uncluttered scoring, and a general avoidance of dense, Brahms-like expression.

On every level, this was a remarkable and memorable performance.

Orchestra Wellington out-performs the fireworks with a stunning “Petrouchka”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PETROUCHKA

TABEA SQUIRE – Colour Lines (commission from Orchestra Wellington)*
CARL NIELSEN – Violin Concerto Op.33
IGOR STRAVINSKY – Petrouchka (Ballet – Revised 1947 Edition)

Arohanui Strings – Sistema Hutt Valley (Alison Eldredge – director)*

Andrew Atkins (conductor)*
Suyeon Kang (violin)
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Saturday 4th November, 2017

Audiences can be curiously unpredictable, on occasions exhilarating and galvanizing masses of energy to be part of, caught up in the excitement of either enthusiastic or rapt responses to some performances, (especially those involving soloists) and then for no apparent reason, every once in a while, strangely under-responsive. Why this sudden out-of-the-blue observation, going a little against the grain of my normally unrelieved positivism as a music reviewer?

It was Saturday’s Orchestra Wellington concert that left me feeling a little bemused, after I’d experienced warmth and enthusiasm aplenty on the part of the audience in response to the efforts, firstly, of the youthful Sistema Strings, playing both a group of demonstration pieces and taking a vital role in composer Tabea Squire’s newly-commissioned work “Colour Lines”, and secondly, violinist Suyeon Kang, in giving us a rapturously beautiful performance of that concert-hall rarity, the Nielsen Violin Concerto, with plenty of tensile strength and winning gossamer-woven lines.

In each of these cases the performers’ energies were accorded the kind of reaction from the listeners that reflected the music-making’s outstanding and warm-hearted qualities. However, I thought that, on the same performance “Richter-scale”, the audience’s reaction to the concert’s second half, a breathtakingly brilliant realisation by orchestra and conductor of Stravinsky’s music for his ballet “Petrouchka”, by rights ought to have been something along the lines of a twenty-minute standing ovation!

That such a stunning realization of the work didn’t seem to me as forthcoming as it fully deserved could have been because (1) there had already been a lot of applause in the concert already, due to the presence of the Sistema students, (2) the remarkable violinist Suyeon Kang had already taken the lion’s share, with her gorgeously elfin-like performance of Nielsen’s Violin Concerto (including a round of spontaneous applause at the first movement’s conclusion) and (3) Petrouchka of course ends not with a Firebird-like bang, but with a subdued whimper, from which listeners have to then re-activate those glowing embers of enthusiasm and get them bursting into flame once more. So the audience response conveyed what I thought W.S.Gilbert might have described as “modified rapture”, instead of conveying (as I and a colleague afterwards were both feeling) a sense of “Did we really hear that? It was mind-blowing!”

Overall, the concert’s trajectory lent itself to a kind of “from seeds to forest giant” progression, with tremulously awakened beginnings demonstrated by the cutest brigade of junior string-players one could imagine, all under the sway of their director, Alison Eldredge. All of these were introduced by Orchestra Wellington Music Director, Marc Taddei, and included OW’s assistant conductor Andrew Atkins (unfortunately not credited in the programme for his efforts with both the Arohanui Strings, in their introductory items, and in directing the combined ensemble in the commissioned piece “Colour Lines” by Tabea Squire).

This was a work whose composer conceived as involving both the student players and the orchestra proper, by using ‘”free-time” notation in places to allow the younger players the means of continuously contributing to the music’s texture. A chorale which appears in various guises during the piece eventually blends with the younger musicians’ efforts. I was struck by the confident orchestrations throughout, a definite character emerging with each of the sequences, making for strongly-etched contrasts (scintillating upper strings are then “cooled’ by the winds near the opening, before a lovely dancing interaction develops between strings and winds beneath warm horn tones, the latter then assuming a ”stopped” out-of-phase effect which kaleidoscopes the music into yet another world of wonderment).

I recall both my Middle-C colleague Rosemary Collier and myself being delighted by Tabea Squire’s work for string quartet “Jet-lag” at a 2014 concert, a piece with something of a similar sharply-etched sense of character, obviously wrought by a composer with an ear for textures and the on-going ambiences. What mischief, and indeed, even danger, was let loose with the burble and ferment generated by the brass in their “hornets’ nest” sequence! – again contrasting with the nobility of the chorale voiced by those same instruments not long after – reminiscent of Hindemith, here, as the strings muscled up to join with the tutti in gestures of satisfying finality, snappy and definite. I thought the music most skillfully and confidently focused and blurred its edges all at once, throughout, as the title suggested it might.

Relatively unknown compared with its Nordic cousin written in 1904 by Sibelius, the slightly later (1911) Violin Concerto of Carl Nielsen’s proved equally as strong and fascinating a work, and certainly as difficult to play, if not more so. Like Sibelius, Nielsen was himself a violinist, though neither composer would have attempted to perform his own concerto, despite Aino Sibelius describing her husband’s playing of the work’s solo part during its composition as “on fire all the time.….he stays awake all night, plays incredibly beautifully,…he has so many ideas it is hard to believe it….”

Nielsen’s work, unlike Sibelius’s, turned away from the standard three-movement concerto form, the composer casting the work in two large movements, each with a slow and quicker section (some commentators alternatively describe the work as having four movements). The music began strongly, dramatic and declamatory, the soloist (South-Korean-born Australian violinist Suyeon Kang) meeting the orchestra’s initial challenge with full-throated recitative-like passages whose striking quality of tensile strength and flexibility of phrasing instantly compelled and held one’s attention throughout. I wondered whether, in the big-boned virtuoso sequences, Kang’s tightly-woven silken tones would fill-out sufficiently to provide a sufficient match for the orchestra’s more assertive gestures – but such was her focused concentration her instrument seemed able to “inhabit” the music’s dynamics in an entirely natural and unselfconscious manner. From these trenchant responses right through to the Elgar-like lyricism of the Praeludium’s final musings, she held us in thrall.

Nor did she shirk the physicality of the jolly “cavalleresco” opening of the allegro, with its vigorous exchanges, rapid running passages, and sudden moments of introspection, all leading to a solo cadenza which mirrors the quixotic moods which have gone before in the music, before dancing back to the allegro’s lively theme. And such was the breathtaking skill with which she swung into the movement’s dancing coda, and traded playful feints and gestures with the orchestra right to the end, that the audience responded with some spontaneous unscheduled applause (to which Marc Taddei, after acknowledging the soloist and the clapping, remarked “But wait! – there’s more!”).

The slow movement featured lovely playing throughout the opening sequences from the winds, joined by the horns, and some beautiful Sibelius-like accompaniments in thirds for the soloist, whose utterances seemed bent on expressing some kind of private sorrow. The horns offered comfort at various points, as did the strings, so that the music’s abrupt recourse to a kind of droll waltz seemed almost Schubertian in its stoic, at times quirky and humourful resignation, the orchestra occasionally launching into moments of mock seriousness, none of which last for very long. One thunderous episode provoked an angular cadenza from the soloist, during which, at one point, she played simultaneously a drone bass, a repeated pizzicato note and some bowed figurations, all most divertingly and unselfconsciously. It was a remarkable performance from all concerned, and fully deserved a response which matched in enthusiasm that given to another Korean musician in the MFC just over a week ago, Joyce Yang, after her Rachmaninov concerto performance with the NZSO.

We reformed after the interval to the sounds of fireworks outside, which were soon well-and-truly put in their place by a performance of Stravinsky’s eponymous ballet “Petrouchka” from Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington which I couldn’t imagine bettered in terms of precision, skill, atmosphere and overall theatrical and musical impact. Every sequence, every scene, every tableau came alive, the music-making bringing into being both dance and drama, and forming a kind of triumvirate of successful evocation of artistic achievement. At its conclusion I felt sympathy for Marc Taddei and all the players who deserved to be brought to their feet and given individual acknowledgement – but the trouble was, there were too many of them! Nevertheless I thought that all the winds and all the brass players were simply heroes, and that Andrew Atkins deservedly got his dues after all, for his superb piano-playing. Very great honour, of course, to Marc Taddei and his all-encompassing direction of the score. For all these reasons and more, I could have clapped for much, much longer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachmaninov – jubilation and bitterness, but sheer poetry from Joyce Yang

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
RACHMANINOV
Vocalise Op.34 No.14 (transcribed by the composer)
Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor Op. 30
Symphonic Dances Op.45

Joyce Yang (piano)
Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 27th October, 2017

A beautifully put-together programme, this, devoted to the music of Rachmaninov, and in almost every way, superbly delivered! There could be no doubt, however as to who the “star of the show” was – Korean-born American pianist Joyce Yang gave what seemed to me a performance in a thousand of the composer’s fearsome D Minor Concerto, regarded by many as one of the most technically difficult works for piano and orchestra ever written. Earlier, the NZSO and conductor Edo de Waart had breathed into life a deliciously-poised orchestra-only version of the wordless song, Vocalise, in an arrangement devised by the composer. Then, following the concerto, came a performance of Rachmaninov’s very last work, his “Symphonic Dances” , written in 1940, three years before his death. The first two of the dances came off best, here, particularly the first, with its beautifully-played saxophone solo – I confess to being a tad disappointed with the final dance’s performance, feeling that it was wanting in “bite”, and needing more wildness and desperation in its execution.

The Vocalise, which began the programme is one of those pieces which has been arranged or transcribed for a variety of instruments – it began life as a wordless song which concluded the composer’s Op.34 collection, entitled “14 Romances for high voice and piano”, and was written specifically for the voice of the great Russian soprano Antonia Nezhdanova, Rachmaninov wishing to give the singer a vehicle for displaying the beauty of her voice without recourse to words. The composer was to subsequently arrange the work both for voice and orchestra accompaniment, and for orchestra alone, although more recent sources suggest that Rachmaninov originally wrote the work for Nezhdanova to perform with orchestra AFTER the rest of the songs were already written for voice and piano, the Vocalise being subsequently added to the “Romances” collection. Among the various arrangements, the most unusual is probably that for theremin and piano, arranged by Clara Rockmore (nee Reisenberg), who was the electronic instrument’s most well-known exponent during the twentieth century.

This was a gorgeously-played performance (the conductor’s very first of this work, as he tells us in the programme’s introductory note), enabling the NZSO strings to really show their mettle, and delivering all those qualities which bring out the work’s inherent tenderness, lyricism, depth of feeling and range of intensity. The strings at first had the lion’s share of the playing, but they were gradually joined by the winds, firstly seeming to merely echo-phrase-ends, but then to increasingly augment the harmonies of the textures, as well as contributing counterpointing lines. Towards the end the music becomes strongly reminiscent of the slow movement of the composer’s Second Symphony, by dint of a clarinet solo which takes over the theme for a few measures before surrendering it again to the ascending strings.

Though in some ways moving from the Vocalise to the D MInor Piano Concerto seemed like something of a “quantum leap”, the links between the two works were here more than usually stressed by the character of the concerto performance, soloist Joyce Yang giving one of the most poetic and sheerly beautiful realizations of this work I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing!  She and Edo de Waart had played the piece together at least twice before with different orchestras, so the interpretation was “of a piece”, with the give-and take between soloist and orchestra replete with understanding and fluency.

Among what marked out her performance for me from so many others was her conveyance of involvement with every note of the music she played – nothing sounded mechanical or “less important” (as either “fillip” or transitional” sequences), but all had its place in a kind of organically-conceived whole. Another thing was, as I’ve said, her remarkable poeticizing of so much of what she played – never did she seem interested in virtuosity for its own sake. Whatever “display element” was in the solo part was there because of the music, and nothing more.

In addition, neither have I heard another pianist bring out to the same extent the music’s impish, quixotic aspect – she found a spikiness in some of the figurations that I thought equated with Rachmaninov’s contemporaries such as Prokofiev,Ravel and Bartok, and even in places, Gershwin. Humour isn’t often a quality one associates with Rachmaninov’s music, but the way Yang articulated some of the filigree passage-work in places made me smile at the playing’s sheer character – this was no faceless perfection, seamless articulation, bland liquidity or pure decoration on show – every note, as I’ve said, had its own raison d’etre, in this performance.

I confess I had to go back all the way to 1993, and Peter Donohoe’s performance of this work with the NZSO under Nicholas Braithwaite, to recall the same wonderment and pleasure at hearing this work “live” – an example of such shared alchemy of interpretation was during that brief, but telling sequence just before the final first-movement reprise of the work’s opening, when the piano gently drifts a repeated bell-like sequence of notes across an ambient crepuscular soundscape enriched by soft horn-chordings – like Donohoe did, Yang drew out this passage exquisitely, once again allowing the notes to speak their character and make an indelible impression upon the listener, however brief and fleeting…..

As for the notorious “virtuoso” elements of this concerto, Yang showed us that she could certainly “finger it” with the greats, as well as match the orchestra in tonal depth when she needed to, putting all of her physical weight into the playing of the heavier chords, such as in the massive first-movement cadenza, and again during the build-up to the final peroration at the work’s very end, and letting her fingers and wrists do the work in the more scintillating passages. People expecting virtuoso thrills got an amazingly musical version of the same from their soloist, one which realized all of the work’s necessary excitement and exhilaration.

No greater contrast with the concerto could have been given to us than what Yang played as an encore – an enchanting performance of one of the most beautiful of Grieg’s “Lyric Pieces”, his “Nocturne” from the “Lyric Suite”. Though it seems heretical to say so, I could have gone home happily after hearing this, feeling as if I had heard a piano articulate all the intrinsic beauty that it was possible for the instrument to express. Of course, I stayed! – lamenting the degradations that have resulted over the last generation of years in visiting artists such as Joyce Yang NOT giving solo recitals in tandem with NZSO appearances, as used to invariably happen in the (good) old days! A modestly-resourced Music Society such as that in Waikanae, which hosts world-class artists such as Alexander Gavrylyuk consistently and successfully organizes piano recitals – why can’t the NZSO do the same with their visiting artists, any more?

Though the first half was a hard act to follow, the orchestra and Edo de Waart did their best with the composer’s compositional swan-song, the “Symphonic Dances”, which appeared in 1940, three years before Rachmaninov’s death. The composer wryly remarked, “I don’t know how it happened – it must have been my last spark!” – but upon closer analysis of the music itself one can hear alongside all the echoes of the past and allusions to previous works, a spirit determined to raise its voice not only in protest at and defiance of the critics who reviled his works, but in bitterness and anger at having lost his homeland and his sources of inspiration. Had Rachmaninov lived for another ten years and been able to work further through these feelings, who knows what else he might have achieved?

The work itself was received with some negativity on all sides – with bewilderment by some of the composer’s “fans”, who were expecting more lyricism and lush orchestrations along the lines of the Third Symphony and the Paganini Rhapsody, and with a good deal of both half-hearted enthusiasm and outright derision by the critics, some of whom by this stage had made Rachmaninov-denigration a kind of “sport” (readers should look up the critical warblings of one Pitts Sanborn for a particularly vicious example of this, in relation to the composer’s Fourth Piano Concerto).

Rachmaninov described himself to an interviewer as “a ghost wandering in a world grown alien”, not being able to either “cast out the old way of writing” or able to “acquire the new”. Despite this assertion, the Dances’ relative toughness, leanness of orchestration and rhythmic asymmetries are nowadays regarded as evidence of the composer’s very apparent awareness of what was happening all around him. This is opposed to the more institutionalized view of Rachmaninov as some sort of nineteenth-century compositional throwback almost right to the end. As Brahms would have said, “any jackass” could hear elements of the old Rachmaninov in places throughout the music, the aching, yearning lyricism, the exciting rhythmic snap of certain figurations, and the oft-quoted “Dies Irae” theme which haunted his work from his First Symphony onwards.

The first two dances were beautifully done, the highlight being the saxophone playing of Simon Brew in the first dance, Rachmaninov writing one of his most beautiful melodies for the instrument, before allowing the strings to take over and repeat the melody, to lump-in-the-throat effect. The whole was framed in sharply-accented, no-nonsense rhythmic fashion by de Waart and his players, who took just as readily to the spooky waltz-rhythms of the second movement, a kind of Russian “Valse Triste”, and gave its melodies a proper “yearning” quality most characteristic of the composer.

Where I craved some more “bite”, a tougher, harsher, more urgent response to the music was in the third dance, whose Stravinsky-like rhythms for me “sat” too heavily – de Waart’s steady-as-she-goes way with the music I thought produced more a feeling of petulance and bad-temper rather than galvanizing, sharply-etched bitterness. With the “Dies Irae” and exerpts from the Russian Orthodox liturgical Chant “Blessed is the Lord” literally “fighting it out” in the music, I wanted more sparks flying, more combustion, more sense of triumph over bitter adversity at the end. Perhaps while on tour with this piece de Waart and the orchestra will push this piece further and further to its limits, and achieve a harder-won but ultimately more cathartic and appropriately triumphal conclusion to an already momentous concert.

Outstanding concert to mark disasters at Aberfan and the Pike River: music by Schubert and Karl Jenkins

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Simon Brew and Jonathan Griffith

Massed adult choir, children’s choir and screen projections
Solo voices: Jenny Wollerman (soprano) and James Clayton (baritone)
Solo instrumentalists: Ingrid Bauer (harp), Monique Lapins (violin), Buzz Newton (euphonium), Lavinnia Rae (cello)

Schubert: Symphony No 8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’
Karl Jenkins: the Benedictus from The Armed Man and Cantata Memoria for the children of Aberfan

Michael Fowler Centre

Monday (Labour Day) 23 October. 2 pm

Concerts by the Wellington Youth Orchestra in the past, in my experience, have been poorly promoted and have played to an audience numbering just a few score.

This one was very different. Hand-bills had been thrust into the hand at most concerts in the previous fortnight and there were interviews on radio and in the press drawing attention to the tragedies that the orchestra had decided to commemorate.

The concert came about through the conjunction of separate elements. Last year a concert in New York had performed a cantata by Karl Jenkins commissioned by, among others, a Welsh Television channel, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster.

The result was Jenkins’s Cantata Memoria: for the children of Aberfan. It was performed by United States conductor Jonathan Griffith, the conductor of Distinguished Concerts International New York. Among the performers there was Wellington resident Wim Oosterhoff who conceived the idea of bringing the work to New Zealand. The project was a formidable one; Oosterhoff persuaded Griffith to come to Wellington to conduct the Wellington Youth Orchestra and a 300-strong choir that included 60 children, arrayed behind the orchestra.

It was to combine the work in memory of Aberfan, Cantata Memoria, with music to mark the Pike River disaster seven years ago: a movement, the Benedictus, from Jenkins’s choral work, The Armed Man, a mass for Peace (which had been written to mark the advent of the new millennium in 2000).

The Unfinished Symphony
The concert began however, with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, chosen no doubt because of its focus on a work that the composer left incomplete; a composer whose life too was incomplete: it is hard to think of a composer, even among the many who have died young, of such genius that he would probably have produced the greatest music written since Beethoven, having already come close to that point when he died.

The symphony was conducted by the orchestra’s permanent conductor Simon Brew who had also rehearsed the Aberfan oratorio and the piece from The Armed Man.  It was a fine performance of the Schubert, one that could well have come from a totally professional orchestra, such was the remarkable elegance and pathos of the conception. And there was strikingly beautiful playing by violins, then cellos, horns, choruses of majestic trombones and each woodwind section in turn. The contrast in spirit between the sombre opening and the more sanguine Andante con moto second movement, marked a performance of real sophistication.

Benedictus for Pike River
Jonathan Griffith took over after the interval with the Benedictus from The Armed Man, employed sympathetically to commemorate the Pike River disaster. It is dominated by one of Jenkins’s most gorgeous creations, the solo cello episode which was played exquisitely by Lavinnia Rae; lovely children’s voices. The massive attack by brass and percussion towards the end had the required shock impact.

Curiously, unlike a reference in the Aberfan work later, no context was found to refer to the culpability of the Pike River mine owners whose guilt and prosecution seems quietly to have been forgotten.

The Cantata Memoria for Aberfan 
The Cantata Memoria was strikingly accompanied by images projected on a large screen behind the performers, and they were successfully related to the subject of the relevant passages. Rain rippled down a window to the delicate accompaniment of Ingrid Bauer’s harp; there were landscape scenes from the air which seemed to be a mixture of New Zealand and Wales.

The two soloists, James Clayton and Jenny Wollerman delivered important and moving passages; after the baritone’s grief-laden lament, the children’s choir (impressively, they sang their parts without the score) turned to face a photo of Aberfan engulfed by the collapsed mountain of mine tailings.

As choir members chanted the names of the victims of the catastrophe which were also projected on the screen one by one, with a pointed reference to a culpable National Coal Board (what about the private owners of the coal mines?). Later the euphonium, played by Buzz Newton, accompanied Clayton, in a telling sonic association, and the euphonium had several significant later episodes. Elsewhere, Monique Lapins’ violin led the emotional journey, along with the children’s choirs repeating the Agnus Dei, with Wollerman and Clayton repeating some of the most powerful words from the Latin Mass, ‘qui tollis peccata mundi’.

Then the Lacrymosa from the Requiem Mass, was accompanied alternately and impressively by euphonium and James Clayton’s voice, though the impact to my ears was not especially grief-laden.

Jenny Wollerman’s major part in the performance arrived with the bright, consoling words, ‘Did I hear a bird?’, the orchestra accompanying onomatopoeically as swans flew across the screen and that spirit was sustained as the two solo singers shared the singing of a Welsh folk song in a calm, reflective manner.

In a school playground, as children played hot-scotch and other games, harpist Ingrid Bauer accompanied, tapping the wood sounding board of her harp.

The concert attracted a good-sized audience, probably among the biggest I can recall for a WYO concert, and a standing ovation greeted the highly impressive performances by adult and children’s choirs, the Wellington Youth Orchestra, special involvement by singers Jenny Wollerman and James Clayton and by instrumentalists Ingrid Bauer, Monique Lapins, Buzz Newton and Lavinnia Rae; plus the thorough preparation and leadership by Simon Brew and Jonathan Griffith.

 

Excellent NZSO concert – Berlioz, Elgar and Tchaikovsky – draws disappointing audience

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Travels in Italy

Berlioz: Harold in Italy
Elgar: In the South (‘Alassio’)
Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini (Symphonic fantasia after Dante)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Judd, with Antoine Tamestit (viola)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday, 6 October 2017, 6.30pm

Here was a stirring programme, the items linked by their composers’ inspirations from Italy.  It happens that these three were all superb orchestrators; the works all exploited the orchestra fully.

We have had both Berlioz and Elgar already this year in NZSO programmes; no shame in that.  James Judd was noted for his Elgar performances when he was Music Director of the NZSO – one of the eminent composers of his homeland, just as after him, Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen programmed much music of his homeland’s most famous composer, Sibelius.

Berlioz treats the theme of Harold (aka Childe Harold in Byron’s long narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage) in four different scenes, or movements, and so our eminent viola soloist also travelled, performing from different parts of the stage, not only from the front, which added interest.  Some commentators have seen the work as semi-autobiographical.  It is neither symphony nor concerto, but has elements of both.  Berlioz had recent experience of living in Italy, as winner of the Prix de Rome.

The opening of the work is quite spooky, a portentous wind solo playing against repetitive strings in a minor key, then the soloist played the main theme, standing behind the second violins.  During the movement he began his travels by moving forward to the usual position, on the conductor’s left  It was inspiring to hear the lovely tone of Tamestit’s viola, a Stradivarius from 1672.  One of the movement’s highlights was hearing the harp passages beautifully played, as a counterpoint to the brilliance of the viola solo.  The latter played variations on the main theme, all performed with flair and gesture, but without any element of technical display for its own sake.

The movement, titled “Adagio: Harold in the mountains.  Scenes of melancholy, happiness and joy”, built up feverishly and dramatically, reminding one that it was Paganini who requested Berlioz to write a work, that turned out be this one.  Snatches of brief phrases were tossed around the woodwinds, then things went almost berserk at the end of this movement, and the soloist retreated to the rear of the second violins.

The second movement is marked “Allegretto: March of the pilgrims singing the evening prayer”.  The whole orchestra plays the main theme; this is repeated with muted upper strings, while the cellos and basses play pizzicato and the woodwinds intone a single note.  There is an atmosphere of timorous expectation (rather spoilt by the amount of audience coughing).  A bell tolls as the procession fades away.

“Allegro assai: Serenade of an Abruzzi mountain dweller to his mistress” is the description of the third movement.  There is a splendid cor anglais solo.  Horns rumble away on the main theme; a dance tune is played by the woodwinds, accompanied by violas.  The soloist plays throughout, weaving in and out of the orchestral textures.  All is understated, and muted in the last phrases.

The solo viola has less to play in the final movement, which is “Allegro Frenetico: Orgy of brigands.  Memories of scenes past.”  Tamestit strode to the rear of the basses and played from there.  We heard rambunctious chords from the orchestra, with plenty of brass and percussion interjections.  The master orchestrator maintained the work’s interest throughout.  Violins were frenetic.  After some more quiet playing from the soloist, then Wham! Bang!  The end.

In response to prolonged enthusiastic applause, Tamestit returned to the platform and played an encore by Hindemith: a movement from one of his viola sonatas – a phenomenally fast and furious little piece of perpetuum mobile.

The remaining two works were each half as long as the Berlioz one, which had acted as both symphony and concerto.  In the South is one of Elgar’s inspired shorter orchestral works.  It, too, involves a solo viola, but in this case it was not the distinguished soloist from the Berlioz who performed, but an unfamiliar face, who took over the principal’s chair from Julia Joyce for this item.  A knowledgeable young violist sitting near me informed us that the principal was soon to take maternity leave, so we assumed that the excellent unknown violist was to fill in for her.  He gave a a fine and beautiful performance of the folk-song solo – slow and dreamy.  Perhaps this could be the southern Italy siesta?

The very spirited opening section soon led to quiet playing, the strings using mutes, and the woodwinds playing meditative music.  Some of the Elgar pomposity appears here and there, but this is a characterful work, partly gentle in character, though in the middle of the work there is a grand slow march; as the programme note said “… the texture of the music rapidly transforms between  expressive grandeur and secretive meditations.” Then brass and percussion come to the fore.  There was much light and shade in the music, and a great build-up to the climax.

Tchaikovsky’s theme was much more sombre, inspired by the tragic story of Francesca di Rimini from Dante’s Inferno.  Here was another portentous opening, cellos vying with woodwind for the honours in presenting the dramatic themes.  The violins then took over issuing the challenges.  When the brass broke in, we had the full drama.  The storm raged, to be followed by a sublime clarinet solo.  Muted strings featured in this work too, with a large, sweeping unison melody.  Flutes came to the fore, sounding like a flight of birds.

The work continued with many and varied orchestral colours and dynamics.  Oboe and flute had a conversation; the horn joined in, followed by the big unison theme again.  As the programme note said: “…Tchaikovsky at his most romantically lyrical.”  It was so dramatic one could almost see the stage or screen action – stirring stuff indeed, and all extremely well performed.

It was disappointing to see many empty seats in the Michael Fowler Centre, given it was such an interesting programme.  Perhaps for many people 6.30pm is not a favoured hour for a concert.  Nevertheless for those present, it was an early evening of outstanding music, stunningly well played.