Tag: orchestral

A divided NZSO with a breathtaking cellist in a sparkling touring programme for the South Island

Posted on by admin

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Benjamin Northey; Narek Hakhnazaryan (cello)

“In the Hall of the Mountain King”

Mozart: Symphony No. 31 ‘Paris’
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme
Grieg: Holberg Suite
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 21 November. 6:30 pm

From the first downbeat of Mozart’s ‘Paris’ Symphony, Australian conductor Ben Northey galvanised the orchestra into a sparkling and vivacious performance, and set the tone for an authoritative, yet electrifying evening’s music making. His engagement with the players was almost tangible, epitomised in the initial Allegro assai where he drew out real magic from the contrabasses, in episodes that can often pass almost unnoticed. In the following Andante he fashioned the delicate melodies with gossamer lightness before bursting into the Allegro finale at breakneck speed. His two silent upbeats established a total control that achieved crystal clarity in high speed runs that never felt hectic or hurried. It was an electric, riveting finale that harnessed the extraordinary talent of the players with complete unity of vision between conductor and orchestra.

Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme  gave New Zealand audiences their first opportunity to appreciate the breathtaking talent and musicianship of Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan. All of 26 years old, he nevertheless exhibits a total technical mastery that is completely at the command of his extraordinary musical depth and vision. At the pre-concert talk, Northey remarked that no two readings of the Variations were ever the same from Hakhnazaryan, a comment that I recall Barenboim making about the performances of Du Pré. In my mind this newly emerging cellist certainly sits in the same pantheon, and like Du Pré, he held the audience totally spellbound with his interpretation.

You could have heard a pin drop in his magical pianissimo moments, for which Northey fashioned the orchestral support in perfect balance – no small feat for a low register solo in an auditorium seating 2500. The opening theme was offered with loving delicacy in a silken tone that immediately set his playing apart. And likewise the second theme was delivered with deep affection, indeed reverence for every note. Throughout the whole performance he engaged in a mutual conversation with the orchestra that was completely devoid of soloistic bravura; rather they were fellow players making music together with just the lightest touch from Northey at the helm. All shared a common, deeply romantic concept of the work that drew in the audience completely, and led to rapturous applause at the end.

We were treated to two solo encores: first Giovanni Sollima’s Lamentatio that opened with stark, spare harmonies, and dirge-like vocalisations from the cellist. This idiom alternated with episodes of frenzied despair as though the bereaved were tearing his hair out, interrupted by the recurring, and eventually terminal exhaustion of the dirges. It was a deeply moving performance, and left the audience hungering for still more. Hakhnazaryan obliged with a final offering: first he enquired for any fellow Armenians in the audience, of which there were a few (I understand that there are about 50 such living in Wellington). Then he announced that he would play a setting of an Armenian folk song by a “suffering, lonely person far from their homeland”. It was a soulful, almost anguished piece, exquisitely performed, and obviously very personal to him.

It is a rare and very real pleasure to hear the NZSO strings alone, and what better choice of work than Grieg’s much loved Holberg Suite. Ben Northey’s  sure touch again opened the piece with real lightness and grace, but the super fast tempo he chose sometimes put at risk the clarity of that very distinctive rhythmic motif which drives the whole Praeludium. However, his dynamic control was brilliant, as he built the sound from a feathery piano to a rich full throated climax. He made the most of the contrasting three central movements, Sarabande, Gavotte and Air, which were marked by graceful lilting melodies and lovingly wistful phrasing. He skilfully set their moods of pathos against episodes of warmth and fullness where every string player seemed to relish the chance to draw the maximum richness from their instrument.

The final Rigaudon is a hectic celebratory folk dance gallop distinguished by fiery roles for two soloists – violin and viola – here Donald Armstrong and Peter Barber. So often the lower pitch of the viola comes off second best in this movement, but Peter was not having a bar of that. With vigorous competition from Donald, he made brilliant, spirited play for the attention of the prettiest girl in the troupe, and I’d put my money on his winning out. A great romp!

The full NZSO is currently divided for two separate tours, with this programme being played in Wellington and the South Island. The lesser string resources of this particular ensemble proved, however, that they were more than equal to working with the full blown line-up of wind, brass and percussion needed for Grieg’s Peer Gynt. This suite again showcased Ben Northey’s skill in creating huge contrasts in mood and dynamics: there was the wonderful fresh transparency of the opening Morning Mood; the incredible build-up from pianissimo to fortissimo in The Death of Aase; the beautifully fashioned and puckish pizzicato sections of Anitra’s Dance; and the lovely murky bassoons at the opening of the Mountain King finale, that Northey built on inexorably in tempo and dynamics to create a monumental climax.

The audience was hugely appreciative of this evening of sparkling music making, turning out a virtually full house to hear works they knew and loved. The pedants may speak of hackneyed familiarity, but the listeners voted very clearly with their feet when offered the best of classical and romantic works performed by the outstanding talents of the NZSO and Ben Northey. They worked together in such obvious empathy and produced outstanding results. I very much hope we will see more of Northey on the rostrum in future, and more of this sort of programming.

Orchestra Wellington ends its year in blaze of irreverent glory

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orff: Carmina Burana; Haydn: Symphony No 87 in A.

Arohanui Strings, an El Sistema-inspired programme providing string instruments and tuition to children from deprived areas: at Pomare and Taita Central schools

Orchestra Wellington, the Orpheus Choir and Wellington Young Voices, conducted by Marc Taddei

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 15 November, 7:30 pm

This last of Orchestra Wellington’s most successful 2014 subscription series not only delivered the last of the Haydn’s Paris symphonies, but brought together Wellington’s other major, locally-specific musical organization: the Orpheus Choir, to perform what is one of the most popular, large-scale compositions. Also called for in Carmina Burana is a children’s choir and Christine Argyle led Wellington Young Voices to contribute that element.

In the first half, Haydn’s No 87 was given a splendid, full-blooded performance, opening in four-square, positive spirit, staccato and emphatic. Only in the development section of the first movement does Haydn temper the joy, saying, ‘But look here! Life’s no bed of roses’. And Taddei lent emphasis to the caution by his exaggerated pauses between sections.

Several wind players had their place in the sun, particularly the oboe, in the Trio of the Minuet. And while the Finale resumes the optimism of the first movement, Haydn again makes us pause with his not uncommon phantom endings that can lead to untimely applause. Not here though; yet, after what I thought an utterly delightful and characterful performance, the applause petered out rather abruptly.

The concert also offered the opportunity for a high-profile appearance of Arohanui Strings, founded in the Hutt Valley by Orchestra Wellington violinist Alison Eldredge and inspired by the Venezuelan-originated El Sistema; the project involves children from less favoured areas learning instruments and playing in an orchestral setting. The performance began with a simplification of the opening of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, with many of the more experienced children sitting at the orchestral desks alongside members of the Orchestra: pretty good!

Then another group of younger children carrying violins emerged from both sides and took up their places across the front of the stage, ranged in size from left to a surprisingly small girl on the right (her evident feeling for rhythm, at least, must have drawn the audience’s attention particularly). They followed Alison’s gestures, all lifting their violins in unison, and placing them professionally under the chin. They played Pachelbel’s Canon and then a square dance by Brooker and an approximation of the tune known to Mozart as ‘Ah! Vous dirai-je Maman’, the English version known as Twinkle, twinkle, little star’.

The whole affair had the faces of the audience wreathed in smiles. It was a delightful episode.

But it’s not enough for such an important phenomenon to exist as a result of isolated initiatives in one or two places nationwide. These things should be funded and guided, though better not actually run, by the Ministry of Education.

As if that wasn’t enough of delightful diversion, one of the most astonishing pieces of music of any era filled the second half. Perhaps we should forget that Carmina Burana was written by a German composer, in Germany, just before the Second World War; at the time when the music of most classical composers, especially the Jews, was being classified as degenerate by the Hitler regime, this work was a success and was acclaimed by the cultural gestapo. It’s a wonder that Orff was not, like Wagner, condemned for being approved by a nasty political regime.

Though many of the poems, written in medieval Latin and various vernaculars, were the work of students and clerics, piety is hardly present; it is the secular, popular notion of Fortune that rules, and perhaps it was the rather irreligious, satirical, earthy, not to say occasionally bawdy character of the texts that allowed the Nazis, notably heathen, to feel comfortable with the work.

The Michael Fowler Centre was emphatically the right place for this performance. First, because contrary to much ‘informed opinion’, I like the place as a whole, including the acoustic, which does have varying sound characteristics in different areas of the auditorium; and Saturday’s  full house would have meant hundreds turned away from any other suitable city venue.

Timpani and brass launched the performance with a mighty, stunning attack which established a benchmark for the rest of the evening. There was no lack of fortissimo and sheer energy (a different thing) from the choir and orchestra; the staccato assertions from the men’s chorus, with chilling side drum, of the inevitability of Fate in ‘O Fortuna’, the medieval notion that underpins many of the miscellaneous poems and songs, also set a standard that never slackened. Nevertheless, the many rejoicing episodes were no less convincing as the Springtime songs proved, illustrated with choral and orchestral colours. One of the main delights of the work lies with the varied and pungent use of individual sections of the choir, sometimes small and sweet as in ‘Floret silva…’  which drew attention to the many younger voices in the choir.

The children’s choir becomes an important element in the third part, Cour d’amours, and though I wrote in my scribbled notes ‘not unduly perfect in ensemble’, the sheer innocence of their voices worked its magic.

Three very fine soloists were a major strength. First, Australian baritone James Clayton who entered with ‘Omnia sol temperat’ and grew in histrionic impact with every successive entry. He became a one-man theatrical performance with his combination of vocal and gestural energy.

It’s curious that the biographical note about James Clayton omited his earlier New Zealand connections. Middle C records his performances in Rigoletto (Count Ceprano) in 2012, in the bass part in the Mozart edition of The Messiah from Orchestra Wellington and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir in June 2013 and this year the totally over-the-top Baron Ochs in Days Bay Opera’s Der Rosenkavalier. We’ve noticed before that the notes about visiting artists often omit mention of earlier New Zealand appearances, as if the person putting the programmes together does no more than copy the agent’s hand-out, which can very well omit appearances, such as those in New Zealand, that are deemed unimportant in building an artist’s profile for international consumption. I suppose it could be a commentary on our own often ill-based inclination to boast that we punch above our weight in many things, such as the arts.

We at Middle C would be happy to be consulted by New Zealand concert and opera promoters to help flesh out inadequate biographies. Or anyone can search our archive without any sort of barrier to check such things – the archive goes back to our beginning in 2008.

Australian tenor Henry Choo emerged from the left of the choir In the Tavern, as it were, in ‘Girat, regirat garcifer’, a clear and penetrating voice that did show a little strain at the top but made a truly musical and dramatic impact. Dunedin-educated Emma Fraser is well-known: here she waits for her first outing till the ‘Amor volat undique’ in the Cour d’amours part, but the wait was fully rewarded, and she handled her last florid, operatic peroration in the ‘Tempus est iocundum’ with a keen feel for the message and musical style. In that part, Clayton and the children’s choir also join, as the minor key reasserts the power of the Wheel of Fortune – of Fate; that all worldly pleasures are passing fancies and futilities.

There was a shouting and standing ovation at the end, that went on and on. It’s hard to imagine a more magnificent climax to what must have been, in every way, one of the orchestra’s most successful years. Marc Taddei has again proved to be a marvellous gift to Wellington’s musical culture.

In speaking to the audience, Taddei spoke about next year’s plans which will follow the pattern in 2014 with a series of six symphonies to be played in six concerts. Tchaikovksy was the obvious candidate and the Russian theme will lead to a lot of other Russian music, mainly 19th century, that will be explored most rewardingly. In addition, Michael Houstoun will be piano soloist throughout, again in a series of mainly Russian piano concertos, including less familiar but splendid examples like Scriabin’s in F sharp minor.

Good to stay alive for another year!

 

Musicians join in with the fireworks in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
OPULENCE – Music by Tchaikovsky, Ravel and R.Strauss

Eldar Nebolsin (piano)
Michael Stern (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

TCHAIKOVSKY – Piano Concerto No.2 in G Major Op.44
RAVEL – Ballet Suite from “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose)
R.STRAUSS (arr. Rodzinski) – Orchestral Suite from “Der Rosenkavalier”

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 8th November, 2014

Happily, the days of accepting “as Tchaikovsky’s work” the long-established truncated version made by Alexander Siloti of the G Major Piano Concerto – such grievous cuts in the second movement! –  seem to be at an end. Here, at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s “Opulence” concert at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday evening last, we had, in all of its undiluted glory, the original work as Tchaikovsky conceived it. Those extended solo string lines of the Andante were allowed their full expressive voice, maximizing the movement’s dramatic contrast with the energy and vigour of the outer sections of the concerto.

This done, the rest was up to the musicians – and we got a performance from pianist, conductor and orchestra that, to my ears, simply got better and better as it progressed – perhaps a shade four-square and pompous throughout the opening exchanges (partly the fault of Tchaikovsky’s writing), but with every entry made by pianist Eldar Nebolsin creating sparks and flashes of impulse which eventually built up to the point of open conflagration. Here was, I thought, a demonstration of keyboard virtuosity which seemed to grow from right out of the music’s heart – it possessed a kind of compulsive playfulness that exuded total involvement, far removed from brilliance for its own sake.

Nebolsin seemed to take nothing he played for granted, voicing his lines exquisitely in quieter places, in dialogue with the orchestral winds, then just as spontaneously bubbling his textures up and over with delight in his more rapid passagework. Yes, that odd-sounding “ready-steady-GO!” orchestral entry (not terribly convincing at the best of times!) at about nine or ten minutes into the first movement didn’t “come off” here with any great conviction, but the orchestral winds then played like souls possessed with their concerted triplet figurations that buoyed along the string lines which followed. From then on I thought the playing really took wing, with a grandly-sprung orchestral entry immediately after the pianist’s astonishingly volatile first-movement cadenza, and some riotous exchanges leading up to the movement’s end.

It seems tiresomely cliched to say so, but the Andante’s opening conjured up an entirely different world of sensibility – firstly Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s violin, and then Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello gave us moments of aching lyrical beauty, the players’ lines mingling ease with intensity in a way that might well have caused the pianist to exclaim in rehearsal “What a pity to come in and spoil that!”…….however, Nebolsin’s real-time response was to add to the melody’s beauty with phrasings that actually brought to my mind in places the Brahms of some of the latter’s Intermezzi  – Tchaikovsky, who was ambivalent about the German composer and his music, would possibly be spinning in his grave at the audacity of such a comparison!

But there was more to it than lyrical expression – the exchanges took on a passionately operatic air in places, the piano building “Swan-Lake” climaxes with the orchestral strings, and violin and ‘cello “crossing bows” with a vengeance, before returning things to a state of equilibrium, save for that uneasy sequence shared by the lower strings and brass over tremolando violins – some remnant of a painful and poignant memory of its composer’s, perhaps?

How we all delighted at the whiplash crack of the finale’s opening! – again, Nebolsoin’s playing had such a sense of fun accompanying the brilliance! We got a superb horn-solo as a counterpoint to the second theme, and an exciting, soaring, conflagration of strings in their brief but telling flourish which followed. I thought, in fact, the whole performance seemed to be alight, with plenty of “sting” in the exchanges between soloist and strings – an example was that tricky-run-up to yet another whiplash chord at the beginning of the coda – real panache, a wonderful amalgam of impetuosity and confidence!

Had the Michael Fowler Centre been more generously peopled that evening (was that reprobate Guy Fawkes to blame on this occasion?), the response at the concerto’s end would have been simply overwhelming! We did our best, calling the pianist back for more and richly-deserved acclaim, until we could put hands together no more – Eldar Nebolsin’s was playing which made me long for the days when such a soloist’s appearance with the orchestra would usually be followed up  by a solo recital – alas, as civilizations progress, so, it seems, do they also decline……..

We had been told in an announcement before the concert that the interval would be spaced so as to allow patrons the opportunity to observe the Wellington City Council’s annual fireworks display – so, at 9pm most of us had arrayed ourselves either at a convenient window or vantage-point just alongside the building, ready for the visual scintillations and batteries of percussive retorts accompanying such happenings. It all seemed in perfect accord with what we had just heard, actually – so everybody was in a high old humour when the concert’s second half began.

Certainly, after the “double-whammy” effect of Tchaikovsky at his most extroverted and brilliant, and the full-on battery of fireworks over the harbour, we were all ready for something a shade more subtle and delicate – and Ravel’s music for his Ballet Suite “Ma Mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose) was just what the doctor ordered. A pity the whole ballet is seldom played in the concert-hall, as there’s more to enjoy – an enchanting introduction plus a series of wonderful linking episodes (rather like the “Promenades” used by Musorgsky in his “Pictures at an Exhibition”). Still, the Suite is the next-best thing, and it brought out ravishing sounds from conductor and players in all instances.

The Suite preserves the work’s original inspiration – five pieces written for piano-duet for the children of friends, each piece characterizing a favourite fairy-tale. Ravel, too kept the structure intact when he first orchestrated the pieces in 1911 – the following year he added the “extras” which introduce and then link the movements. Tonight we began with the “Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty”, the sounds like the play of vapours around the head of a sleeping child, as if guardian spirits were in attendance.  The orchestral winds had a great deal of solo work throughout, and the players performed their own and the more concerted lines with requisite beauty and character, especially in this opening piece.

Next came another delicate evocation, “Petit Poucet” (Tom Thumb), whose principal melody, played on the cor anglais, had such an aching, nostalgic quality, one could readily identify with the composer’s longing to somehow re-enter the world of childhood. The forest birds made an appearance in this tale as well, a solo violin joining various winds to emulate their wild, plaintive voices. What a change of ambience with “Laideronette, Empress of the Pagodas”, the pentatonic figurations creating bustling, excitable movement before a gong evoked the splendour of an Oriental Monarch! How the composer must have loved writing this!

One of the most famous of all fairy-tales, “Beauty and the Beast”, got truly graphic treatment from the orchestral instruments, the story’s two characters clearly demarcated at the beginning, bright-eyed, almost questing wind-playing depicting Beauty’s attractiveness and open, enquiring mind, and then louring percussion supporting the hideous tones of the contrabassoon to portray the unfortunate Beast – a wonderful noise! Then when the lighter winds and the deep-throated Beast got together, the synthesis was breathtaking in its audacity and clarity – a kind of “vive la difference” to savour and remember.

In fact, the only, very slight criticism I could find to make of the playing was of places in the final movement, “The Enchanted Garden”, whose episodes I thought unfolded beautifully, but a shade (just a shade, mind you!) too glibly – the sequences could have done with a touch more breathless wonderment at some of the phrase-ends and harmonic turns, as a child might experience when exploring some kind of wonderland – places where the music’s hymn-like progressions could have caught and held the flow for split-seconds of poised, ecstatic delight, a “registering” of certain moments, one might say. Still, the final peroration very satisfyingly gathered all together and opened up the vistas to the oncoming sunshine, a triumph of light and good and happiness over the dark, the orchestral harps properly drenching our sensibilities with warmth and excitement.

I hadn’t read the titles of the items as carefully as I should have, thinking that we were going to get the “Rosenkavalier Waltzes” at the concert’s end – which I do love! But instead I found myself enjoying the opera’s notoriously orgasmic Prelude – perhaps there’s something about an unexpected pleasure! – before the music went  on to explore various episodes of the drama. A quick look at the item’s listing clarified what was happening – this was a proper “Suite” from the opera, with an opus number, no less!

The programme note implied that the Suite had been made by the composer together with the Polish conductor Artur Rodzinski, in 1944. But the conductor was in New York at the time while Strauss was in war-besieged Germany, suggesting that the Suite was actually Rodzinski’s work, as he gave its premiere with the New York Philharmonic that same year. Strauss must have eventually approved the work, because it was published in 1945 with its present Opus number.

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Stern’s conducting and the playing of the orchestra throughout this exercise – I wondered in places whether the work was a couple of sequences too long, but the reaction of the audience at the end certainly dispelled that impression! Parts of it I thought were particularly magical, notably the moments which featured the haunting wind-chord figurations that accompany Octavian’s presentation of the Silver Rose to Sophie at the beginning of Act Two; though I thought some of the opera’s vocal lines lost some of their intensity and focus when played by groups of instruments instead of a single instrumental voice – Sophie’s ecstatically soaring response to Octavian’s presentation here somehow didn’t “tug” the heartstrings as it always does on stage, the impact a bit too generalized from a body of strings or doubled wind lines.

What worked superbly well were the waltzes, particularly the gold-digging Baron Ochs’ lascivious “With me, no night for you too long” tune, which Strauss presents, as here, using, first of all a solo violin (gorgeously played by Vesa-Matti Leppanen) and then, with the orchestral throttle fully open – great moments! But one doesn’t really blame either Rodzinski or Strauss for favouring a kind of good old whizz-bang concert-ending to the suite, instead of going with the prevailing emotions of the opera’s conclusion, and replicating that ambience at the finish.

So, after some heartfelt and beautifully-phrased playing by gorgeous strings (plus some lovely high trumpet work) of the opera’s final “eternal triangle with a difference” Trio, we got the haunting wind arabesques once again along with Octavian’s and Sophie’s final duet – and then the music roared into Ochs’ “Leopold! We’re leaving!” orchestral riot, with great horn whoops sounding above the exuberant rhythms, and a properly-gradated payoff at the end. Everybody seemed to love it! – and as an orchestral showpiece it certainly demonstrated what conductor and players could do, in spadefuls!

 

Wellington Youth Orchestra’s final, tumultuous concert for 2014

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:

BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.7
WAGNER – Overture “Die Meistersinger”
J.STRAUSS Jnr. – On the Beautiful Blue Danube

Wellington Youth Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

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

Tuesday 21st October 2014

Richard Wagner described Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as “the Apotheosis of the Dance”, referring to the dominance of rhythm over melody throughout much of the symphony’s duration. Yes, the tunes are there, but, apart from some lyrical sequences in the work’s introduction, and throughout the trio of the third-movement Scherzo, the melodies are constantly dancing, stamping or galloping about!

If ever a work by Beethoven demonstrated the composer’s own euphoric description of his art – “I am the Bacchus who presses out this wine which makes men spiritually drunk!” – it’s this uninhibited riot of a Symphony – though not as epic as the Third or Ninth Symphonies, nor as heaven-storming as the Fifth, the Seventh Symphony gives an elemental display of god-like exuberance that leaves its listeners exhilarated and its performers spent through giving their all.

It had an enthusiastic contemporary reception, even though most of the acclaim that followed the very first concert in 1813 went to the composer’s gimmicky “Wellington’s Victory”, with which it shared the program. But once the novelty of the “battle piece” had worn off, the symphony began to assert its well-nigh irresistible appeal, with the second, Allegretto movement in particular capturing its listeners’ imaginations – this movement was in fact played alone for a time more often than was the complete work.

Beethoven’s efforts did not, however, find favour with some commentators, whose sensibilities were obviously affronted by such unseemly demonstrations of raw energy! Friedrich Wieck, father of Clara (Schumann), was present at some of the rehearsals and observed that the composer of such music must have been in a “drunken state” when writing the work. And Beethoven’s great contemporary, Carl Maria von Weber, thought that parts of the first movement alone qualified the composer as “fit for the madhouse”. Even a decade later, a London critic wrote of the work, “Often as we have heard it performed, we cannot yet discover any design in it, neither can we trace any connection in its parts.”

Posterity has reversed these opinions, though a dissident echo was provided by the legendary conductor of more recent times, Sir Thomas Beecham (no great lover of Beethoven’s music, even though he recorded several of the symphonies) – after giving a typically riotous performance of the Seventh, Beecham drolly commented, “Well, what can you do with it? – it’s like a lot of yaks jumping about!”

Such criticisms and comments missed the point of the “excessive” nature of the work’s rhythmic character, one which Beethoven had touched on more generally with his “I am the Bacchus” comment, and which the work brought to a kind of apogée in terms of constant energy and momentum. And these qualities were at the heart of what Hamish McKeich and the Wellington Youth Orchestra players were able to achieve in their recent performance.

The players clearly felt the import of the symphony’s “introduction” here – no mere symphonic throat-clearing, or “getting the pitch of the hall”, but a statement of intent containing the seeds of what was to follow – thus the tensions were built up via the strings’ dovetailing of the scales, the lower echelons “digging in” with point and focus on each occasion, the winds and brass intensifying the harmonic ambiences, then nicely terracing the tensions, keeping us in a suspended state for what was to break forth. Something much more than Viennese “gemütlich” was obviously on the agenda.

The allegro was taken at an urgent clip – the flute led the way magnificently, well-supported by the strings, while the first big tutti was a riot of energy and colour, the brass a bit approximate in their note-pitching, but the impulses were right where they ought to have been. Early on, a feature of the playing (as it needed to be in this symphony) was the work of the orchestra’s timpanist, whose command of both propulsion and dynamics right throughout was, I thought, exemplary. But everybody hove to – the winds were sonorous, the brass exciting, even when fallible, and the strings kept the rhythms a-tingling.

The beginning of the development brought some anxious ensemble moments with those treacherous dotted rhythms, the winds further unnerving things by being temporarily awry with an entry. But they made amends by steadying the rhythm leading up to that wonderful, exhilarating reprise, together with the brass getting those shouted dotted interjections bang-on! By this time the interactive support between the sections was kicking in nicely, so much so that there was a wonderfully delighted squawk from a young child in the audience during one of the pauses before the coda!

What followed was like an encounter with the elements – the lower strings caught the “vortex” aspect of those incredible “churnings”, from which the rest of the orchestra, by a sheer act of will gradually pulled us upwards from and into the light – though the horns struggled a bit with their triumphant “whoopings” the rhythms had oceans of momentum, and caught the exhilaration at the movement’s end.

I thought the second movement arresting at the outset, the lower strings purposeful, the violins sharing theme and counter-theme, stoically supported by the winds, brass and timpani. The trio, too, was nicely focused, the theme by turns tender and expressive, with lovely clarinet work. A somewhat weedy start to the pp string fugato broke the spell momentarily – the strings seemed happier when playing with fuller tones. But apart from the surprise of the clarinets seeming not to enter with one of their phrases right at the end, the movement’s gravitas was strongly maintained.

Which was the last thing that sprang to mind with the explosive beginning of the scherzo! – instead, boisterous fun was the order of going, the music’s triplet rhythms a whirl, and the winds and strings managing their “giggles” at the end of each of the sections. By contrast the trio’s solemn lay rang out lyrically (winds) and then majestically (strings and brass), with the timpani again a tower of strength in conjunction with the latter.

I confess that I momentarily gaped at the hectic pace the conductor adopted following the finale’s two opening flourishes – this was a REAL allegro con brio and the young players certainly bent their backs to the task, whether exuberantly stamping the rhythms out or whirling through the figurations. Conductor and players kept the momentum going splendidly through the lighter passages, and made a great fist of things like the leaping string unison exchanges and the whooping brass calls – hair-raisingly exciting in places, as were the timpani’s splendidly focused and detailed energies.

And so it continued, through the powerful thrustings of the last big orchestral build-up before the coda, and into the furious vortex of scarily shifting, droning harmonies from winds and lower strings, leading up to what Sir Donald Tovey called the “Bacchic fury” of the work’s coda. Perhaps the winds might have lost their footing momentarily with their tricky angular entries and syncopated harmonic shifts amidst the maelstrom of sound and fury that the composer was building up, here – but somehow, it added to the effect of this elemental, inchoate material being imbued with energy and propulsion as to burst out with unparalleled power and splendour, everybody pulling together to bring off those final, whiplash chords in properly thrilling and conclusive fashion.

We needed an interval after that! – so, having enjoyed a breather, everybody was back for the second half’s intriguing mix of Wagner and Johann Strauss. FIrst up was Wagner’s Overture “Die Meistersinger”, an item I was looking forward to immensely, because I had played the cymbals in a performance during another life, many years ago!  Here, the brass rang out the first four notes gloriously, setting the scene for a carnival atmosphere of polyphonic largesse, the same players getting slightly ahead of the rest of the orchestra in one place in their eagerness to impress. Hamish McKeich favoured fairly brisk tempi, even through the transitions containing fragments of the opera’s more lyrical moments, which made for a breathless effect, as we were quickly plunged into the “entry-music” for the Mastersingers from Act Three, which, incidentally, went with proper pomp and ceremony.

I thought McKeich could have relaxed a little with the central section’s lyrical sequences – the playing wasn’t allowed to expand vocally, in the way that the tunes do in the opera itself, though perhaps the conductor wanted to keep the ensemble “tight”! However, the winds trotted in merrily during the “apprentices” section, managing a cheeky trill at the end of their sequence, as did the strings in places, the odd precarious-ensemble-moment smartly manoeuvered back into place within a few measures!

As for the famous “trio of themes” at the end – well it was a joy! The tuba sounded terrific, especially his concluding trill, while the brass gave warning of their “en masse” arrival in sonorous fashion, helped by the timpani the second time around. It all came across as properly festive, even if I felt the cymbal player was a little overawed by the occasion and didn’t “sound” his instruments as resplendently as they could have been.

After such rumbustiousness, the Johann Strauss piece was lovely! – it was really the waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube”, but played in a way as to imitate a loosely-strung set of waltzes – I suspected it was also to enable the players to turn their pages comfortably!  A gorgeously-played horn at the beginning presided over magical ambiences, passed adroitly by some moments of hesitant ensemble, and, gathering in a solo ‘cello, led us into the dance. To my delight the players made a great fist of the Viennese “lilt”, obviously well-schooled by their conductor, the ensemble sounding in places for all the world like a well-drilled Viennese dance-band! Another surprise for me was the repeat of the opening “waltz-sequence”, which I’d never heard done before. Right up to the nostalgic coda, with its trumpet solo and trilling flute, the players caught the idiom of the piece with great style, readily communicating to us their pleasure of performance.

But there was more! – in fact the final item set the seal on the afternoon’s music-making brilliantly, via a tremendously exciting performance of the “Waltz King’s” well-known “Thunder and Lightning Polka”. It was put across with such panache, such energy and exuberance, with the percussion having the proverbial field day! At one point in the work’s middle section I wanted (once again!) the cymbal player to bash his instruments more vigorously, but it must be said the player made up for his reticence in the closing measures of the work. I would have loved to have taken part in such a performance myself – what a blast it seemed to be for all concerned!

Very great credit to the inspirational Hamish McKeich, and to his hard-working, talented instrumentalists. To my mind conductor and players can look back on some singular achievements this year, their successes auguring well for seasons yet to come. On their showings throughout 2014 it’s my opinion that they’re becoming an orchestral force to be reckoned with, a stimulating and valuable contributor to the capital’s enviable array of orchestral concerts.

 

 

Orchestral spectaculars from the NZSO – and a 2015 sneak-preview

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:

JANÁČEK – Sinfonietta
BRETT DEAN – Trumpet Concerto
MUSORGSKY (orch. Ravel) – Pictures at an Exhibition

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Dima Slobodeniouk (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Wellington

Friday 10th October, 2014

I thought it happy and appropriate that the second half of the NZSO “Bold Worlds” Wellington concert on Friday of last week was prefaced by several of the principal players telling us something about the 2015 orchestral season (details of which had just been released), and specifically what each of them was particularly looking forward to taking part in.

So we were able to hear concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen telling us about the various 2015 concerts involving violinists, including reappearances by Hilary Hahn, Baiba Skride and Anthony Marwood, plus a concert featuring the first appearance of Janine Jansen with the orchestra. Vesa-Matti also talked about Sibelius’s Four Legends, conducted, naturally, by Pietari Inkinen – and mentioned that he would also, at some stage, be revisiting Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending”.

Principal flute Bridget Douglas then took over, expressing her delight at having played all the Beethoven Symphonies, and at the prospect of taking part, with pianist Freddy Kempf, in performances of all five piano concertos next year. She told us about us about her scheduled performance of the Ibert Flute Concerto with the 2015 National Youth Orchestra, along with a new work by the orchestra’s composer-in-residence, Salina Fisher. She also mentioned the return of Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko, with the Mahler Fifth Symphony, as another highlight.

Then it was the turn of Principal Trombone Dave Bremner to wax enthusiastic about his favourites from the coming season, naturally enough focusing upon his eagerly-awaited partnership with the world-famous trombone virtuoso Christian Lindberg, the latter conducting Jan Sandström’s Double Trombone Concerto “Echoes of Eternity”, Bremner citing the exercise as “proof that men CAN multi-task”, then afterwards drawing our attention to the orchestra’s centenary tribute to the work of Douglas Lilburn, via his Second Symphony.

Having suitably whetted our appetites for the coming season the players returned to their places to await the arrival of guest conductor Dima Slobodeniouk. How fitting it was that, having told us about some of the orchestral highlights of the coming year, the players then pulled out all of the orchestral stops in giving us terrific performances of two favourite orchestral showpieces and a spectacular new concerto for trumpet and orchestra, the latter with one of the world’s great soloists, Håkan Hardenberger!

First on the  evening’s program was Leos Janáček’s grandly festive and excitingly virtuosic Sinfonietta, a work that’s as exciting to watch being performed as to hear, thanks to the writing for brass choir which begins and ends the music, and which is often delivered by players placed either antiphonally or (as here) in a group separated from the remainder of the orchestra. Janáček began writing music for a gymnastics festival at Brno, in his native Moravia, intending to compose a number of fanfares to mark the occasion – but his imagination gradually took charge of the original idea, and he found himself overwhelmed by a mixture of patriotic fervour (the work was dedicated to the Czechoslovak Armed Forces) and parochial feelings (apart from the opening fanfares, each section of the work celebrates a landmark in the town of Brno).

Also informing the music is the composer’s incredible native exuberance, additionally fuelled by his late-in-life infatuation with a married woman, Kamila Stosslova, almost 30 years his junior – many of his important works come from the period of his “idealized” relationship with Kamilla, who was obviously a kind of “Beatrice” to the composer’s “Dante”, an archetypal Muse.

All of this would have gone for very little had the performance by the orchestra, directed by their striking current guest conductor, Dima Slobodeniouk (a name which led me to make wild and inaccurate first-guesses as to his nationality, which was Russian!) faltered or hung fire in any way. Placed in the gallery at the rear of the main orchestra, the brass consort began the work, pinning back our ears with some fantastic playing, bringing out that hint of barbaric splendour which, alas, is sometimes smoothed over in performance. This all took place in tandem with Larry Reese’s thrilling, on-the-spot timpani contributions, the sounds ringing around the proverbial rafters most excitingly and satisfyingly.

The rest of the work brought in the main body of the orchestra, each movement vividly characterized by instrumentation which, in Janáček’s characteristic way, often exploited the extremities of tonal and timbal characteristics of the groups – thus the treble instruments of the orchestra often shrieked and squealed most excitingly, while the lower reaches menacingly loured and rumbled. Performances which don’t bring out this sense of striving to push of the sounds in certain places simply don’t do the composer or his music justice – and thankfully, Dima Slobodeniouk seemed to understand and readily engage Janáček’s particular demons in that respect.

So, in the second movement (The Castle at Brno), the strings joyously chirruped their vigorous figurations over brasses that muttered and rumbled, in between sequences of great lyrical beauty. Similarly demonstrative was the fourth movement (appropriately titled “The Street”) with its festive trumpet-calls, invoking all kinds of responses from the rest of the orchestra, involving gruff, big-boned bass strings dancing heavy-footedly and orchestral bells ringing out almost in alarm at the summons. I liked, too, the boyish “tumble-down” orchestral phrases, winds squawking in roguish pleasure at the unseemliness of it all, energy and laughter paramount.

These two movements were such a marked contrast to the third, middle movement (evocatively called “The Queen’s Monastery”). At the beginning all was melancholy, the tuba mournfully intoning a pedal-note over which the strings and then the winds sang what seemed like a lament, broken only by extraordinary flourishes from the winds in a handful of places – when questioned about these by a worried flute-player, the composer apparently emphasized that the irruptions need to sound “like the wind”. But the most marked contrast came with the music’s middle sequence, the pent-up energies firstly hinted at by the brass, and then, after a brief restatement of the opening by the strings, suddenly unleashed, to the alarm of the strings and the orchestral bells – what larks were here! – riotous goings-on amongst the brasses, with whooping horns, bumptious heavy brass and scintillating trumpets making the most of their “moments”, despite the frightened squawks of the winds!

A gentler, more folksy beginning to the final movement from winds and strings gradually built in strength and tension towards the great moment when the brass at the rear, summonsed by a clarion call and a cymbal crash, rejoined the orchestra with the work’s opening fanfares, this time underpinned by whole-orchestral counterpoints. I confess that I did want the conductor to broaden the music slightly as it drove towards its resplendent final chords, but he chose, just as excitingly, to maintain the momentum until the very final peroration – what a noise, and what an overwhelming effect! Even the somewhat ungrateful acoustic of the MFC was activated, shaken and stirred by all of this, with the players’ efforts and their conductor’s magisterial direction receiving justly-deserved acclaim.

Straight after Janáček’s far-flung ambiences, our ears were freshly-syringed by the opening of Brett Dean’s Trumpet Concerto, an evocation, it seemed, of huge machinery being activated piece-by-piece, begun by woodblocks and metallic scintillations, and building through an enormous crescendo, a cavernous bass line underneath the more superficial figurations suggesting some kind of gigantic ship being launched. Having activated his orchestral forces, the composer introduced the trumpet, played here by Håkan Hardenberger, by repute one of the world’s best on the instrument. He was the “superhero” of the composer’s conception, his music brooking no interference, and very much “in charge” of things until his downfall, delineated by the dying flight aspect of the lines at the movement’s end.

The second movement, given the title “Soliloquy”, presented a more meditative mood, the “draining away” of energy and colour reminding me of some of Salvador Dali’s paintings of melting objects. The trumpet played long lines trying to stem the downward flow, but was itself caught in the torpor of it all – all seemed decay and disillusionment. The trumpeter’s attempts to energize his world – last-ditch attempts at rallying fanfares – seemed to fall on deaf ears, as the orchestral basses take up the chromatic downward figurations. All the soloist seemed to be able to do was salute the passing of things, and wait for some kind of redemptive force to appear.

It came with a muted trumpet call which seemed to awaken a distant response in kind from within the orchestra, one which grew in detail and resonance – rather like the opening of Respighi’s “Appian Way” sequence from “The Pines of Rome” the voices were distant and representing mere possibility at first, remaining muted and disembodied, but with impulse and ambience beginning to mushroom into something. As the interactive dialogue between trumpet and orchestra began to flourish and establish itself, a distant march-like rhythm suddenly began, beautifully “placed” by the composer from with the existing textures. This quickly took on a course of its own, set in opposition to the trumpet and orchestral discourses, the music building up to an incredible climax, most theatrically brought to an unexpected close by a stratospheric note from the trumpet and a dismissive whip-lash phrase played by the solo violin – what an ending!

We need an interval to doubly realign our ears after those two works! – In that respect the “sneak preview” of the 2015 season was doubly welcome, as it helped “close off” what had been before, in preparation for Ravel’s take on Musorgsky’s tribute to the work of one of his dearest friends. It’s a work that’s too well-known to have to comment on each section, here, but the “pictures” and their interspersed “promenades” were again notable for their sharply-etched characterizations, the conductor seeming to me to pay particular attention to the nuancing of the string lines in places, to the point where the textures exhibited all kinds of characterful fibres, enough to remind one of human speech – one of the composer’s obsessions, of course.

My only criticism of the conductor was that he seemed to elongate many of the pauses between the pictures, breaking the continuum of the voyage. Yes, the pictures are self-contained – but Musorgsky himself abruptly “butted-together” pairs of them, sometimes incongruously, as one would experience when disparate pictures in galleries are hung next to one another. The composer also “filled in” some of the pauses between the pictures by the use of “promenades” music derived from the work’s very opening, a melody that changes in mood and feeling in relation to different parts of the gallery. Elsewhere, pictures aren’t linked by anything except silence – and I found the silences in some cases stretched by the conductor so far as to take us away from the experience. A pity, because I found myself having to re-establish myself in the gallery a number of times instead of simply being taken from picture to picture, in what should have been a sequence of unbroken enchantment.

But as for the orchestral playing – well, it was of a vividness and impact that meant that one was very quickly returned and imbued with the pictorial and emotive force of whatever music was being performed – it was the best possible advertisement the orchestra could have devised for its up-and-coming programme next year. And I do hope to encounter both conductor Dima Slobodeniouk and trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger again in concert, before too long. It was wonderful to experience an evening of music-making so distinctive and engaging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orchestra Wellington confirms its vital role in city’s musical life with wonderful Haydn and Mahler

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei with Kieran Rayner (baritone)

Haydn: Symphonies No 85 in B flat and 86 in D
Mahler: Songs of a Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) arr. Schoenberg
Schnittke: Moz-Art à la Haydn

Opera House, Wellington

Sunday 7 September, 4 pm

In the lobby before the concert a friend asked whether I’d been to Marc Taddei’s pre-concert talk and I confessed I had not. She, with a wide knowledge of music, though from another artistic perspective, had been delighted with it, had gained rewarding insights in what was about to be played.

Some pre-concert talks are more fascinating than others; Taddei’s are among the best: he has a gift that reaches both young people and those who might think they know it all, and serious assistants (in the French sense; to avoid the obnoxious word attendees) should make time for them.

Haydn’s Paris Symphonies
One of the topics he would have covered would have been the Paris symphonies of Haydn which have provided the backbone of all the orchestra’s subscription concerts this year. This concert was special, with one each at the beginning and the end.

They are probably among the symphonies that even the moderately well-versed might recognise but be unable to ascribe a number to. That is certainly my case. Though the symphonies were commissioned by a Paris orchestra, Haydn did not conduct them in Paris, as Mozart had his a few years earlier.

No 85
No 85, reputedly a favourite of Queen Marie-Antoinette, opens with stately, perhaps ponderous Adagio, rather un-Haydn-like, with a deceptive dotted rhythm; its move into the substantive first movement, is as serious as the opening of an early Beethoven symphony, and seemed indeed to call for a bigger orchestra than we had. Though the programme notes recorded how Haydn had taken advantage of what he knew to be the great size of the Paris orchestra, we were limited to the scale of an Esterhazy ensemble. There were six each of both violin sections, down to just one double bass.

However, Taddei, through his brisk triple-time speeds and a sense of resolve, soon succeeded in creating the impression of a big band, acknowledging a work of major significance, as Haydn displays his assurance in adroit modulations and his unfailing wit in the varied treatment of his themes. The second movement, scarcely a ‘slow’ movement, either as written or as played, with its solid emphasis on every other crotchet, in common time, handles a French folk tune said to have been one the Queen played in her prison cell a few years later awaiting her 1793 fate under the guillotine. Indeed, memorable, with its charming flute obbligato weaving through it.

The Minuet and Trio had an unusual quality, with its asides and solo excursions for violin and woodwinds; but notably the little diversions and the discursiveness, especially in the shy Trio, almost a Schubertian Laendler, a sort-of mirror image of the Minuet itself, which avoided any risk of the predictable, all of which were charmingly captured. The finale had a more orthodox feel: brisk and bright, though there’s the characteristic Haydn diminuendo and the music’s near disappearance before the recapitulation. All performed with a splendid feeling of affection and an authentic feel for the gallant/classical period.

No 86
I might as well mention here the other symphony – No 86 in D major – played at the concert’s end. Though played with the same forces, and even though I had found No 85 thoroughly delightful, this was even more imposing right from the more than a minute-long introduction – Adagio, with an illusion of greater weight, such as Haydn would have imagined in the orchestra for which he was writing. And perhaps, though I don’t have perfect pitch, a reflection of the way composers felt about the D major key.

After that fine rhetorical Adagio, the Allegro spiritoso came like a moment of sheer delight, and it brought me to what I’m sure has driven Taddei to programme all six of these works this year – the realisation that, given Haydn’s remarkable sense of the differences in culture and style between London and Paris (then and now), these symphonies are every bit the masterpieces that the dozen London Symphonies are.

Compared with No 85, the slow movement here really is that, though oddly labelled ‘Capriccio largo’.
Though the programme note observed that the melody was not especially memorable, in fact the whole movement IS memorable, for the spirit of poignant seriousness, of profondeur and throughtfulness
that invested its performance.

The Minuet and Trio were no less engaging, with the Trio again offering charming episodes for solo violin against, woodwind solos, its tune undecorated in comparison to the Minuet itself in which almost every note is embellished. And it ends with an imposing, finale, quite the equal in grandeur and zest of any Salomon-symphony: timpani, brass and all. Which was a splendidly-judged ending to a splendid concert.

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen by Mahler
But the second work in the concert was Mahler’s Wayfarer songs sung by young Wellington baritone Kieran Rayner. I’ve been hearing him over many years since he was getting parts as an undergraduate in the School of Music operas and other performances; and since then in the wonderful Candide, done by the Orpheus Choir and Days Bay’s Così, Alcina and Viaggio a Reims.

This youthful cycle (Mahler was about 25) is a fine exercise for a singer at Rayner’s stage, and accepting the very occasional technical blemishes, he invested each song with its individual character and emotion: full of opportunity for rich and extreme late Romantic passion and grief. His discreet hand gestures and facial expressions were all that was needed to support the words, which emerged clearly.

The orchestra may have felt that the Schoenberg arrangement of the score better suited the small orchestra that had been decided on for the Haydn. Many would have found the score perfectly satisfactory, but with Mahler’s own orchestral sounds in my head, the orchestra’s size: small string bodies and the limited range of wind instruments, seemed a little dry.

Others have found in Schoenberg’s arrangements their own intensity and colour, which is felt to match what Mahler himself set on paper. Rayner captured the moving expression of pain in ‘Die zwei blauen Augen…’, though I found something inauthentic in the sound of strings against single clarinet and flute: ‘Quelque chose manquait’. Yet there were many aspects that I enjoyed, the contributions of both piano and the digital (I suppose) harmonium, in ‘Ging heut’ Morgen…’ and the agitated feel of ‘Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer’, for example. And above all the final words, ‘Unter dem Lindenbaum … War alles, alles wieder gut/Alles! Alles, Lieb und Leid/Und Welt und Traum!’: defeated and lost, accompanied by small, thin flute and clarinet notes.

Ideally, one would have liked both German and English texts to have been offered in the programme; after the synopsis of each song, the English translation of each was a bit redundant: better to have printed the German.

Schnittke
Finally, and to my mind a bit oddly, Schnittke’s manipulation of his notion of the style and sense of Haydn and Mozart.

When we returned after the interval, the stage was in darkness; slowly, figures could be discerned entering, a violin began to play a jaunty, fractured tune, then another violin and eventually the stage lit up to reveal the full orchestra and conductor, standing. The music, in detached scraps, came from unfamiliar music Mozart wrote for a commedia dell’ arte; they had no impact of themselves, and it was hard (for me) to derive much entertainment or enlightenment from Schnittke’s efforts.  After a few minutes, the stage started to dim and players left one by one, as in the Farewell Symphony, and it ended with the double bass playing alone with Taddei tapping his baton on the music stand. I was left wondering what it was that I’d missed, that had gained it the sort of standing it has in avant-garde circles. (Does Schnittke actually love Haydn and Mozart? Does he love music? For all his difficult life and the sadness of his last years, I have never warmed to his music).

However, the Haydn and Mahler were the real thing, deeply touching both the mind and the emotions, and the orchestra’s performances offered another demonstration of the value of a city based orchestra which tackles music that is less played by the NZSO, but which is revealed as of major importance.

 

Searing contribution from the WYO to “Recovering Forbidden Voices”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.8 in C MInor Op.65
BEETHOVEN – Two Romances for Violin and Orchestra Opp. 40 and 50

Malavika Gopal (violin)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Wellington Youth Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Monday, 25th August, 2014

This concert was associated with a series of performances, presentations and discussions entitled “Recovering Forbidden Voices” –  programmes organised by Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music and the History and German Programmes of Victoria University of Wellington, and held over the previous few days (22nd-25th August) in the capital. The “Forbidden Voices” referred to music and composers who fell foul of the Nazis in Europe, resulting in many works, particularly by Jewish composers, being suppressed or banned over the period associated with the rise of Hitler to power in Germany.

The music of Shostakovich came under fire in his native Russia at the same time for different reasons – the composer had, during the 1930s, famously fallen foul of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” but had rehabilitated himself somewhat as a “people’s artist” with his Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, the latter work celebrating the siege of Leningrad and the heroism of the Russian people. What the composer privately thought of the war, its effects upon his homeland and the events surrounding the conflict was more realistically delineated in his Eighth Symphony.

The work wasn’t received with any great acclaim, reviews being tinged with disappointment and bewilderment at the music’s bleak, pessimistic tone – “significantly tougher and more astringent that either the Fifth or Seventh…..unlikely to prove popular…” commented a colleague of the composer. These were prophetic words, as in 1948 the infamous “Zhdanov decree” issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party attacked the composer and his work, accusing him of “formalist perversions”. As a result, the Eighth Symphony wasn’t performed again until 1956.

The Russian view of the symphony that has endured was expressed a number of years later later by the great pianist and associate of the composer, Sviatoslav Richter, who called it “the decisive  work in Shostakovich’s output”. While perhaps not as popular in the West as the aforementioned Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, the C Minor work’s greatness and incredible  depth of tragic expression has come to be acknowledged everywhere.

While the symphony’s performance readily associated the occasion with the “Recovering Forbidden Voices” theme, the concert’s first half presented a dramatic and perhaps a welcome contrast in anticipation to Shostakovich’s conflict-torn work. This was supplied by both of Beethoven’s Romances for violin and orchestra, performed by soloist Malavika Gopal, currently a player with the NZSO, and back home in Wellington after a period of study and performing experience overseas (including a stint with the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra).  However, before the concert proper began we were properly welcomed by three speakers, firstly Professor Donald Maurice representing the School of Music, and then by the Mayor of Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown, and the Government Minister for the Arts, Chris Finlayson, all of whom talked about the “Forbidden Music” venture.

Once the music got under way, Malavika Gopal’s quality as a violinist was instantly apparent, the opening solo of the first of Beethoven’s Romances as sweet-toned as one could wish for, and the contrasting middle section properly gutsier and grainier, as befitted the music. Naturally all the attention seemed to be on her, except that if Hamish McKeich and the orchestra’s accompaniments had faltered in any way we would surely have noticed!

I have a slight preference for the less ritualistic, more rhapsodic No.2 of the pair of Romances, and Malavika Gopal didn’t disappoint with this one either, if anything sounding even sweeter-toned in the music’s freer, more soaring lines.Though reluctant to pass judgement to any great extent on her musicianship after such brief encounters with her playing, I would nevertheless be anxious to hear her tackle some more extended solo repertoire, which her return to take up a place with the NZSO “firsts” will hopefully enable her to do here in Wellington.

An interval decently distanced the two very different listening experiences for us, after which it was “all posts manned (sic)” for the Shostakovich. Though feeling hopeful as regarding the capabilities of these young players (thanks in part to my hearing a wonderful recent performance by the School of Music Orchestra of Vaughan Williams’ difficult “Pastoral” Symphony) I did have reservations regarding their abilities in sustaining Shostakovich’s vast and bleak vistas of pessimism and deep sorrow, punctuated by frighteningly intense outbursts of fear and anger. And I wondered how on earth this group of young players was going to be able to generate sufficient tones to fill the spaces of the Michael Fowler Centre. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

Right from the beginning, the playing seemed galvanised by a kind of spirit akin to grim determination, Hamish McKeich getting the lower strings to dig furiously into the textures, and, together with the chilling entries of the winds and the brasses, catch the “edge” of the music. Each section of the orchestra seemed to “speak its name” and assert its character in full measure, the treble voices across the sound-spectrum by turns plaintive and shrill, the middle voices properly insistent, and the basses both brooding and massively weighty as required.

Though the upper strings occasionally had problems with their intonation when essaying those great contrapuntal passages, the players kept the intensities to the fore, keeping the argument strongly and inexorably ploughing forwards, the winds and brasses rising spectrally from growing disquiet mid-movement and brutalising both the themes and their interaction, with incredibly powerful onslaughts of sound, leaving the cor anglais and the clarinets to try and pick up the pieces. Despite the strings’ on-going struggle to hold those long mezzo-forte lines together, and the trumpet with its sudden declamatory phrase having a bad moment (probably after the player had delivered the passage  perfectly at rehearsal umpteen times!) the music’s purposeful strength was tenaciously held to the movement’s end.

What amazing, garish, full-on sonorities were hurled at us over the course of the two following scherzo-like movements! Such tremendous, playing-right-out work from the winds – and to such ghastly, ghoulish effect – in the first scherzo, Allegretto, piccolo, bassoon, clarinet, and then piccolo again, were all superb! Here, the strings occasionally had that nightmarish “wartime air-siren” aspect, which galvanised the brass and percussion into brutal sequences, harrowing ostinati torn by savage climaxes – however, Hamish McKeich took care to preserve the music’s shape with his players, maintaining a sense of ebb-and-flow, which held things in check, albeit temporarily, the contra-bassoon having a few droll soundings of its own, helping to ease the tensions.

All, it seemed, to little avail, as the savage, relentless viola ostinati which began the third movement allegro lashed out and flailed away at our sensibilities. My favourite part of the symphony (sensation-monger that I secretly am), I’ve always found the Russian recorded performances of this movement in particular streets ahead of those made in the West, with conductors like Kondrashin and Mravinsky requiring of their players such raw, unbridled attack and relentless, unequivocal savagery when addressing the music’s machine-like rhythms. I had been told by McKeich that he had studied the work with Valery Gergiev in Europe, and that he was fully aware of the special “Russian” performance characteristics, which for him informed the playing of that repertoire. In this movement, as with the rest of the symphony, his direction was as good as his word.

It actually sounded for much of the time as if a Russian orchestra was playing, so determined and up-front were the efforts of the players to give what their conductor was asking for – and for me it put some of the professionally-polished, but much-too-genteel efforts of some crack ensembles I’d heard on record in the shade. Full marks in particular to the trumpeter and side-drummer in the crude, ironic trio section – the strings couldn’t quite match the “bite” of the solo instruments here, but they made up for it when the opening returned. And the brass and percussion at the climax overwhelmed, as they ought to have done, the timpanist lashing out mercilessly, underlining the brutality of the composer’s nightmarish depiction.

So it was we were plunged into the great Passacaglia of the fourth movement, brass announcing the crack of doom and the string lines utterly despairing, the winds adding to the desolation with their helplessly-lost utterances, piccolo, bass clarinet and tongued flutes expressing the “fumbling in the despairing dark” referred to by one commentator – here it all sounded exactly like that, the impulses and gestures well-and-truly “gutted”.

Which is why the transition to the finale effected by the bassoon solo was such balm to the senses, even though the resolutions which followed remained properly haunted and bruised to the end. When questioned, the composer told a friend that the C Major transition to the concluding Allegretto had cost him “so much blood”, but that the end of the symphony was optimistic, despite the reiterate of moments of anxiety – though nothing further from the tub-thumping of the Fifth Symphony’s finale could be imagined than this work’s closing pages.

What these young musicians and their conductor gave us was a deeply-felt, incredibly-committed and stunningly-delivered emotional journey, thrills and spills all part of the human experience. It deserves to be remembered as a landmark performance by any standards, but certainly as a glowing achievement on the part of Hamish McKeich and the orchestra, and a cause for warm appreciation on the part of those fortunate enough to be present.

 

 

Imaginative programme of too rarely played masterpieces from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by admin

Orchestra Wellington: Marc Taddei (conductor) and Jian Liu (piano)

Haydn: Symphony No. 83 in G minor, The Hen
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G
Stravinsky: Song of the Nightingale
Rimsky-Korsakov: The Golden Cockerel

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 9 August 2014, 7:30 pm

This imaginative programme by Orchestra Wellington was an opportunity to enjoy a selection of colourful works heard all too infrequently on concert stages here. Haydn’s The Hen Symphony was performed with appropriately modest orchestral forces for which Orchestra Wellington is admirably suited. The opening Allegro Spiritoso sparkled with clean vigorous playing of exemplary precision that allowed inner voices to speak through beautifully clearly. The contrasting central episode was beautifully judged by Taddei, as were the dynamic contrasts and pauses of the following Andante, where his tempo shaped and enhanced the transparent artistry of the melodic lines.

The Minuet was undertaken at a tempo that would have been well beyond even the sprightliest pupils of any Baroque dancing master, but it bounced along with appealing grace providing one ignored its origins in the dance (a somewhat questionable approach in my view). The Finale bears the designation Vivace which is best interpreted as lively or sprightly, but the hectic tempo imposed by Taddei was such that the wonderful, brisk triplet rhythms simply could not be enunciated cleanly and effectively. It was disappointing to have such an invigorating reading of this symphony somewhat clouded in this way.

Soloist Jian Liu gave a riveting performance of Ravel’s delightful Piano Concerto in G major, and he was supported by some spectacular playing from the orchestra. In the opening movement Ravel has crafted some exquisitely balanced conversations between the pianist and various instrumentalists. The Allegramente designation means simply cheerfully, merrily, but hectic tempi in the fast sections often obscured Ravel’s remarkable skill and artistry as an orchestrator. By contrast, those episodes that call up the world of Louisiana blues were wonderfully languid and seductive, particularly in the hands of the brass and woodwind (with imaginative use of the French bassoon by Preman Tilsen.)

The soulful simplicity of the opening piano melody in the following Adagio was beautifully expressed by Liu, and was deliciously savoured by the winds as they picked it up one by one. Full breadth of tempo allowed the wandering tonalities and modal overtones of the orchestration to be genuinely explored. But sadly the signature cor anglais melody of this movement sounded strangled by nerves, whereas it deserves to ooze out with rich seductive warmth over the lacework of the piano part.

The Finale is certainly marked Presto, but as in the first movement, Taddei’s frenetic tempo unjustly obscured Ravel’s spectacular mastery of complex orchestral resources. However, no player appeared to flinch at Taddei’s demands, and Liu’s technical mastery was quite spectacular, with mind-blowing solo work from first bassoon Tilsen deserving particular mention. But in fact Ravel’s extraordinary skills were robbed of their true exposure by such a tempo, whereas he, and the audience, most surely deserved better.

Stravinsky’s symphonic poem Song of the Nightingale is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s oriental fairytale of the same name. Right from the first notes of the spectacular opening outburst the players were clearly revelling in the extraordinary colour and complexity of the writing. But the initial tempo was just too hectic to allow Stravinsky’s amazingly intricate colour palette to be properly appreciated, degenerating rather into a frantic muddied melange .

Things improved markedly in the following episodes where Taddei gave the instrumentalists a chance to show off both the vigorous and poetic qualities of the work. The somnolent and subdued sections were sensitively crafted to create a  truly evocative air of mystery and oriental fantasy, and the final retreat of Death’s threatening presence from the striken Emperor’s bed chamber left a breathless hush over the hall.

Six months before he died in 1908, Rimsky-Korsakov completed his opera score for Golden Cockerel based on Pushkin’s 1834 fairytale. It was immediately banned by the Tsar’s political censors for its satirical political overtones, and this orchestral suite was only later was compiled from his work by Glazunov and Steinberg (the composer’s son-in-law). It is an outstanding showcase for the amazing skill, colour and complexity of orchestration that Rimsky-Korsakov had exactingly honed over his lifetime.

The opening scene depicts Tsar Dodon at home in his opulent palace, followed next by his unsuccessful venture onto eastern battlefields to defeat imagined threats from a neighbouring potentate. These two movements were given a most evocative reading that did full justice to the rich colours lavished on the orchestral canvas. The potentate was in fact the Tsaritsa Shemakhan, whose seductive powers overcame Tsar Dodon in the third movement, where dancing melodic lines were artfully shaped in contrast to the energetic central section. The brass had a marvellous field day with all the pomp and ceremony of the ensuing wedding ceremonies which they tackled with great drama and intensity. And the orchestra readily transformed  the mood into the dark, sombre foreboding that presaged the Tsar’s  unfortunate demise at the hands of the triumphant magical cockerel.

The whole work gave a wonderful opportunity to appreciate not only Rimsky-Korsakov’s extraordinary powers, but the technical mastery and musicianship of Orchestra Wellington’s musicians. Full marks too to conductor and management for offering a most imaginative programme of lesser known works. Those Wellington concert goers who opted for a cosy evening at home on an inhospitable winter’s night missed out on a  real treat.

 

Masters of whole worlds: Mozart and Mahler with the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
MOZART – Violin Concerto No.4 in D Major K.218
MAHLER – Symphony No.9 in D Major

Simone Lamsma (violin)
Edo de Waart (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 8th August, 2014

What to play at a concert along with a Mahler Symphony? It’s a question that has diverted promoters, critics and musicians themselves over the years, and the various possible solutions seem often to complicate further rather than clarify matters.

It isn’t so much the actual music that’s the problem – it’s the awkward length of Mahler’s symphonic conceptions that makes programming with other pieces something of a challenge. At least the composer’s First and Fourth Symphonies aren’t so problematical due to their shorter durations – each can easily accommodate a “normal” first half of, say, an overture followed by a concerto, within a concert.

Not so the other Mahler symphonies, all of which are that bit too lengthy to allow anything pre-interval along the lines of the above, though, apart from the longest of them, the Third Symphony, not quite of the length that normally takes up a whole concert. Having said that, two of the works – the “Resurrection” (No.2) and the “Symphony of a Thousand”(No.8) are such spectacles in themselves that on that count they’re often played “alone” – in each case the sheer “size” of the experience comes from other considerations beside the music’s time-span.

The work featured in tonight’s concert, the Ninth Symphony, though perhaps less viscerally spectacular than either of the above, has the kind of gravitas that can make it a stand-alone piece as well. The conductor of tonight’s performance, Edo de Waart, said in an interview a day or so before the concert that he usually performed the Ninth on its own, as he felt it would overshadow anything else that’s played. If something else was chosen to be performed at the same concert it would have to be “strong”.

Perhaps Mahler himself gave a kind of “guide-line” with a remark he reportedly made to Sibelius when discussing the nature of symphonic form – in response to Sibelius’s professed attraction to the form’s “severity and logic”, Mahler exclaimed that “symphony is like the world – it should embrace everything!”.  I certainly thought that on this occasion the choice of the Mozart Violin Concerto (K.218 in D Major) presented by Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma was appropriate – it seemed to me to fulfill at once that “all-embracing” aspiration valued by the composer, while presenting two uniquely characterful works with their own clearly-defined boundaries.

As it turned out, the Mozart concerto was given a delightful performance by Simone Lamsma, her bright, silvery entry banishing for the remainder of the performance a slightly wiry-sounding beginning to the work from the NZSO strings, and her energy and élan nicely countering an initial impression of petiteness. I thought her passagework most characterful, her accented notes given plenty of emphasis, bringing out a “layered” quality to the music.

The cadenza developed these perspectives further, getting very physical and gutsy playing, the sequence sounding more like Beethoven’s voice in places than Mozart’s! We then got a heavenly “andante cantabile” at the slow movement’s beginning, the soloist’s floated notes exquisite-sounding, her silvery discourse sensitively accompanied by the ensemble, and, in conclusion, capped off by a cadenza for the violin which occasionally broke into what sounded like birdsong.

Not to be outdone in effect, the finale took us through poised, gavotte-like steps by way of introduction, and then whirled us into an allegro, the exchanges between the two sequences continuing throughout the movement. And such an exuberant cadenza! – demonstrating to us the soloist’s brilliant fingerwork, and leavened in places by pure, elevated tones. After this came a lovely, “dying fall” kind of finish to the work of the “that’s all, folks!” variety, not unlike what the composer had also done in his previous violin concerto – all very piquant and charming.

And so to the Mahler – it was true, as Edo de Waart had pointed out, that this work was perfectly capable of standing alone in concert – but having the Mozart concerto first up we felt more “tuned in”, at one by this stage with the ambience of the listening-spaces, and with the throes of our day-to-day existence put well aside, ready to face Mahler’s symphonic retelling of his life’s most profound “dark night of the soul”.

The conductor had said when interviewed that “one needs a top orchestra” for this work, so I think he would have been thrilled with the NZSO’s response to his direction throughout the symphony – certainly his demeanour at the end and his ready acknowledgement of the players indicated his wholehearted appreciation of their efforts. Each of the movements here had a surety of impulse, touch and expression, the structures clearly outlined, the emotions unlocked and ready for we listeners to square up to.

Those enormously cataclysmic first-movement climaxes which characterise the composer’s despair in the face of his all-too-pressing mortal sickness and imminent destruction were here delivered directly and swiftly, growing from the musical textures rather than over-laden, or imposed from outside – obviously the “line”, the shape and coherence of the music was important to de Waart, something not achieved lightly, but integral to the flow. I felt it was more “musical” than “psychological” in the conductor’s hands, concerned less with emotional extremes and more with soundscapes, making the throes of despair more of a human than a personal problem, with its own set of resonances.

In this the conductor was supported by a plethora of superbly-wrought orchestral detail, the occasional brass “blip” like “spots on the sun” (as someone said once about the great pianist Alfred Cortot’s wrong notes!), playing whose richness and variation of colour and texture fully realised Mahler’s love for the world and his agony at the thought of having to relinquish life so peremptorily. The word “leb’wohl” (farewell) readily came to mind in tandem with the two-note theme that dominated the music.

Both middle movements were strong on “attitude”, the Landler/Waltz by turns good-naturedly bucolic and sentimental at the beginning, with the quicker waltz-music taking on an almost manic aspect in places, before everything ground almost to a halt, leaving the rustic tune to run its course, here nicely tossed about the orchestra before cheekily ending with a piccolo phrase.

Set against this drollery was the harsh Rondo-Burleske, here a tightly-coiled set of poses and  rapier-like thrusts, purposeful and almost business-like in its insistence and cruelty. Whatever savage humour could have been lurking around corners and in alcoves, de Waart’s splendidly-maintained focus gave it no chance, though the claustrophobic mood was relieved by a trio-like section featuring a nostalgic, splendidly-played trumpet solo.

The frenetic, abyss-bound final pages of the Rondo, brilliantly delivered, were succeeded by sounds which seemed wrung from tissues of pure emotion by the strings, playing at first in octaves and then generously flooding the textures with warmly-impassioned harmonies – conductor and players here made this moment work as profoundly as I’ve ever heard it presented. But even more impressive were the work’s final few minutes, here played with such rapt beauty and concentration as I’ve rarely experienced anywhere in a concert hall – string phrases and sound-impulses that suggested all too palpably a farewell to life, a leave-taking whose silences continued to sound for what seemed like ages afterwards – for all of us present, very much the stuff of legends.

This performance’s dedication, announced before the concert, to the recently-deceased Franz-Paul Decker, for many years the NZSO’s Music Director, had no more appropriate voice than that final movement of a work that had been one of Decker’s greatest interpretative achievements. The old maestro’s shade would have sighed contentedly in tandem with those beautifully-realised, seemingly-endless silences to which we were all so very privileged to be able to lend our  presence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anniversaries, celebrations and NZ premieres – NZSM Orchestra at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
PASTORAL ELEGY
Music by Gade, Villa-Lobos, Vaughan Williams

NIELS GADE – Overture “Hamlet”
(Vincent Hardaker – conductor)
HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS – ‘Cello Concerto No.2
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Symphony No.3 “Pastoral”
Inbal Megiddo (‘cello)
Alicia Cardwgan (soprano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
NZ School of Music Orchestra

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

Wednesday, 6th August, 2014

I thought this an exceptional concert in every way! – innovative repertoire choices were thrillingly and memorably supported by skilled and strongly-focused, committed playing from all concerned.

Each piece as presented had its own world and voiced its own particular character – partly the result of stylistic and contextual differences, but also  indicative of the extent to which these musicians were determined to get to grips with things, and put across the music’s differing flavours, colours and feelings.

I’d never before encountered either the Niels Gade overture or the Villa-Lobos concerto (the performance of the latter by ‘cellist Inbal Megiddo was, in fact, the New Zealand premiere). Gade may have been thought conservative in musical outlook by his contemporaries and by subsequent posterity, but I thought his “Hamlet” Overture fully worthy of Shakespeare, as regards the music’s beauty, dignity, energy and theatricality.

Conductor Vincent Hardaker and his players deftly nailed the “cat-like tread” mood of the opening, preparing the ambiences for the intense, dramatic urgencies that grew, spectre-like, out of the textures. Though not strictly following the play’s action, the music portrayed a good deal of the drama’s significant moods and character interactions.

A telling example of this came with the strings’ very Lisztian melody depicting the beautiful but ill-fated Ophelia’s love for the Prince, and the music’s gradual disintegration as the girl’s madness and death drew near, lyricism undermined and eventually overlaid by repeated turbulence and purposeful strength. A final ‘cello solo then sounded over rich brass chordings, suggesting some kind of valediction being played out, the tragedy grimly resolved. I enjoyed it all, music and playing, immensely.

After this things were somewhat re-aligned – from Shakespearean tragedy the focus morphed into Latin American intensity and exuberance. This was accompanied by a change of conductor and the introduction of a soloist to perform Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Second ‘Cello Concerto. It was Kenneth Young who took the podium, and we also welcomed Inbal Megiddo, Head of ‘Cello Studies at the School of Music, as the concerto player.

To hear Megiddo perform this work was to experience the next best thing to a direct link with its composer, as she had studied the concerto with its first performer, Aldo Parisot, for whom Villa-Lobos actually wrote the work. Megiddo described that experience for her as “exhilarating”, and expressed the hope that she might be able to convey something of that same feeling in her performance for us, by way of dedicating her efforts to her “teacher, mentor, collleague and friend”. I can only report that she certainly made good her intention in spadefuls!

From the work’s first chord, with the music’s upper registers straightaway reaching for the stars, we in the audience were galvanised anew, as much by the playing as by the music itself – the writing seemed to possess a kind of “top echelon” quality, something of an edge which constantly tingled and thrilled. We heard marvellous exchanges between soloist and orchestra, with the former’s rhythmic verve readily communicating itself to the young orchestral players, encouraging them to take up the spirit of the music’s frequent syncopated figures and impulses dancing along the ‘cello-strings.

The folky-sounding second-movement Modinha, a Brazilian love-song genre, featured a beautiful ‘cello melody, with an intensely-laden heart-on-sleeve dance-like accompaniment. Still, the music seemed always to have a slight “edge”, an astringency which put paid to any feeling of its emotion cloying, Hollywood-style. A Scherzo, dance-like and mixing the exotic with the “folky” brought forth more exciting playing – in places intense and gutteral, at other times airborne and melismatic – from Megiddo, with conductor and orchestra splendidly responding to her energies with sharply-syncopated tutti sequences.

What the cellist herself described in the notes as a “virtuosic cadenza” was here excitingly and full-bloodedly played, with wonderful near-the-bridge timbres, triple-stopping and resonant open strings, some spectacular glissandi launching us into the world of the work’s finale. Here, ‘cellist and orchestra had a terrific time with a four-note theme that was tossed about like a straw man in a blanket to exhilarating effect, right up to the sheer abandonment of the coda, complete with its breath-snatchingly abrupt ending!

After the Villa-Lobos work’s ferment of whirlwind energies and arresting sonorities it seemed on paper entirely appropriate for the concert to feature by way of contrast a piece entitled “A Pastoral Symphony”, moreover one written by Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer of that quintessential English-landscape piece “The Lark Ascending”. Thinking about the juxtaposition of the two pieces made me recall a conversation some years ago with a friend who had visited London for the first time – he told me that after encountering the overwhelming grandeur and magnificence of St.Paul’s Cathedral he simply had to go back to his lodgings and lie down for a while.

True, the Villa-Lobos concerto, for all its engagingly vigorous and heartfelt qualities, wasn’t exactly grand, stupendous and cathedral-like! – but neither was the Vaughan Williams Symphony a mere exercise in English pastoral evocation (as a fellow-composer of Vaughan Williams’ dismissively remarked, concerning the work – “like a cow looking over a gate”!)  Whatever restorative qualities the symphony possessed applied to its own set of tensions and tragedies embedded within its contexts, those of its composer’s wartime service with the Medical Corps in France, a scenario fraught with death and loss. The composer, in fact referred to the work as a “War Requiem”, the Mahlerian second movement of the work with its bugle calls (played on a natural E-flat trumpet, and echoed by a natural horn) and anguished strings particularly underlining this idea.

Elsewhere, the music sang, danced and echoed with evocations of landscapes and people’s lives darkened by war and stained with blood – each movement wrought its own kind of ravaged beauty, the language and atmosphere one of lament rather than conflict and carnage. Ken Young kept the music’s pulse flowing throughout, to the work’s great advantage in this case, as tensions were made palpable by the playing’s urgency and tightly-wrought figurations. In the first movement, for example, the flowing themes were never allowed to settle, the music’s aspect having an almost haunted air, with memories of what had gone before “charging” the textures with tragedy.

The orchestral playing was, I thought, impressively focused, poised and suitably alert at all times, the textures and colours having the right mix of beauty and astringency. The winds at the beginning had tuning problems most obviously in their ensemble passages, but their individual work was outstanding throughout, with many a beautiful solo turned as the work proceeded. The brass chimed in with rich resonances when required, their ensemble capping the climaxes beautifully in places. And the work of the strings was a joy to experience, from the players’ most sensitive nuances to the most earnest and full-blooded climaxes. Conductor and players caught the ebb and flow of it all, the beauties and the sorrows.

The second movement’s nostalgic brass calls (the trumpet offstage, as indicated) came off splendidly, ably supported by contributions from the solo viola,’cello, and clarinet – but the work from the strings was again wondrous, phrases so sensitively and unerringly delivered, the players obviously right into the music’s world. Young aimed for and got a telling contrast of mood with the swiftly-delivered third movement, the tempi quicker than I’d ever heard previously – but it worked brilliantly, completely avoiding the somewhat heavy-footed quality sometimes encountered in performances of this movement. It also had the effect of sharpening the players’ responses to the movement’s elfin-textured coda, impulses striving for the greatest possible contrast with what had gone before in the bucolic scherzo.

Another off-stage “effect” in this work came with the final movement, the voice of a soprano at the very beginning and at the end. The singer’s disembodied tones have an ethereal effect, her wordless line a part-lament, part-incantation, which the strings repeat fervently at the movement’s climax – a stunning, breath-catching moment, as on this occasion. Soprano Alicia Cadwgan’s voice was ideally placed, not quite pure-toned enough at the outset of the first solo, and rushing a phrase mid-way through – but sounding far more at ease with her return at the end, floating her last few notes beautifully and hauntingly. As far as “capturing” the particular character of the movement mattered, Young’s direction and the orchestral playing was I thought, beyond reproach.

In the silence that followed we sat and allowed the resonances to fade as the tones had done, and pondered the music’s effect. I couldn’t help at that moment recalling various descriptions of the work which I’d read via my first, youthful hearings of recordings, comments which, even at that latter stage seemed to concentrate more upon the composer’s depictions of the “Corot-like landscapes” in France, and scarcely remark upon the music’s darker context of war’s grim realities. Perhaps a certain distancing wrought by time was necessary for people to re-examine the work’s and its composer’s circumstances – appropriately so, of course, as the anniversaries of that particular conflict presently loom disturbingly from out of time’s mists, carrying their warnings!