Tag: orchestral

Courageous Wellington Youth Orchestra tackles enterprising programme amid space difficulties

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich with Arna Morton (violin)

Twentieth Century Classics: Lilburn: Song of Islands; Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No 1, Op 35; Sibelius: Symphony No 7 in C, Op 105

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 5 October, 7pm

Though audiences at the tri-annual concerts by the Wellington Youth Orchestra are sometimes no bigger than the number of players, and this one was probably about that too, critics do not exaggerate when they remark that in most cases the performances are impressive and satisfy all but the most (unrealistically) demanding of listeners.

Again, if your interest is in hearing great if unfamiliar music pretty well played, as distinct from imagining serious deficiencies compared with our professional orchestras, why not come along? When did you last hear a performance of any orchestra work by Szymanowksi? A look through the 5-year archive of Middle C reviews reveals only the Concert Overture played by the NZSO in April 2010.

So we rely on our amateur and student orchestras to come up with performances of slightly out-of-the-way but quite important music like Barber’s Cello Concerto from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra or Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony from this orchestra last year.

On Saturday we heard Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto. It’s a very demanding work, exploring a sound world that might have suggestions of certain of his contemporaries, but is quite likely to lose listeners in its mystical sound-painting. The challenge for the violinist was as great, and in the treacherous acoustic, much of the dense and low-pitched sound verged on the chaotic.  The difficulties for both soloist and orchestra are so great that the impact can be cluttered, its real beauties almost impossible to perceive because of Szymanowksi’s scoring and musical imagination.

The opening from woodwinds and the solo violin’s sparkling, ethereal lines promised well enough as the violin sustained its long notes voluptuously. Arna Morton is certainly a gifted player and her navigating the fiendishly complex and rhythmically intricate decorative phrases had to be admired. What is demanded above all is a sound that is warm and opulent, but strangely, from what was evidently a fine violin (on loan from the New Zealand School of Music’s donation from Clare Galambos-Winter) the sound was a bit less than that and its tone, sometimes edgy and brittle, did not altogether capture the sensuality of Szymanowski’s music.

One of the shortcomings of a youthful orchestra can be its difficulty in sustaining pianissimo sounds, and providing a really sensitive underlay for a solo part that is rarely of blazing intensity, though still
demanding extraordinary virtuosity and finesse. The occasional outbursts from the orchestra left too little space for the intricacies of the violin part to emerge, apart from passages such as 8 or 10 minutes in where the violin has vigorous marcato down-bowings that match the orchestra’s exuberant mood.

One of the tell-tales marks of orchestral imbalance, the lack of clarity in orchestration which is not really all that thick, was my inability to hear either the celeste or the harp even though I was sitting on
the left side, not far from them: they were rather lost in orchestral turmoil.

It’s really a most beautiful concerto which demands subtlety and extremely careful balance between sections and between instruments. I rather feared that this admirable initiative, allowing an audience to hear a work that seems neglected in this country, was not quite the triumph it might have been.

The other works in the programme were more within the reach of the orchestra. Lilburn’s Song of Islands deserves to be better known, written while he was living very much in the world of Sibelius; in fact I know of no other composer whose music has so absorbed aspects of Sibelius’s sound world while imposing on it his own musical personality. Lilburn was 30 when he wrote this piece and he has made a
distinctly personal statement in it, creating sounds that might be hard to hear as picturing the Otago landscape but which do seem to suggest New Zealand in a quite confident and mature way. By and large, the orchestra, particularly the strings, produced very fine, near velvety sounds, while it was the woodwinds whose lines seemed to fare less well, not quite so well integrated.

The orchestra was strengthened in almost every section by professional guest players and though I could not see well who was playing the principal parts in the prominent and generally most accomplished wind passages, I imagine they were given mainly to the Youth Orchestra players themselves.  The guest players’ roles would have been in mentoring and in maintaining good ensemble and balance rather than seeking the limelight.

Sibelius himself was represented by his Seventh Symphony, not his easiest to bring off on account of its single-movement structure and the need to enliven rhythms amid big sweeps of broad melodic washes. If there were the usual problems of too loud brass and timpani, where a degree of modesty might have been expected, the strings were again conspicuous for their warmth and homogeneity, and woodwinds as they danced against timpani.  The orchestra’s playing was most effective in passages where stronger rhythms and bolder melodies arose.

The orchestra is faced with a conflict between playing in a space which is too small and reverberant and in the Town Hall where they have generally played in the past to good effect, but which is too big for the modest audience that usually comes.

Wellington Chamber Orchestra – after the First Cuckoo……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

DELIUS – On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring / La Calinda (from “Koanga”)
BOTTESINI – Concerto No.2 in B Minor for Double-Bass
BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.7 in A Op.92

Hiroshi Ikematsu (double-bass)
Vincent Hardaker (conductor)
Wellington Chamber Orchestra

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

Sunday 29th September 2013

A comment from a friend at the interval helped answer my unspoken query “Why isn’t this
gorgeous music more often played?” which I’d been posing to myself while listening
to the two Delius items at the concert, before voicing it out loud to her – “Oh, it’s such
dreary, shapeless, formless stuff! – I can’t bear it!” was her response. It reminded
me that music-lovers world-wide can be readily divided into two groups – those who
like Delius’s music and those who don’t.

For the admirers there was plenty to like about these two performances, once the players
had roused their  instruments’ true “voices” from sleep at the start of each piece. After the
lovely “awakening” chords beginning the “First Cuckoo” piece, the upper strings had some
initial difficulties accurately pitching the rocking notes sounded thoughout their opening
sequence, though they settled down subsequently to give us some lovely playing. The winds
made some delightful contributions, the flute a bit too eager to begin, but still managing a
lovely solo – the strings’ increased confidence showed with a beautifully silvery entry,
answered by secure horns and winds. Of special distinction was the cuckoo itself,
beautifully and hauntingly given voice, the clarinet notes having a properly “recessed”
quality. It’s music that needs the utmost delicacy – and in places such as that lovely
moment of “frisson”between strings and winds just before the reprise of the main
theme, conductor and orchestra achieved that, to our delight (well, to the delight of
half of us, that is…)….

The programme note named Delius’s amanuensis Eric Fenby as the arranger of “La Calinda”
the lovely dance from the opera “Koanga” – however, this was one which was new to me,
beginning with some introductory string chords, presumably lifted from the opera. All I can
say is that there must be as many “arranged Fenbys” as there are recordings of the piece,
because they all seem to be different (some adaptation may have been done by
the conductor or whomever to fit the orchestra’s available players on this occasion)
– still, the essentials of the music were here,  the lovely oboe solo, the beautiful and mellow
flute-sound, and the ever-growing confidence of the strings as the piece unfolded,
despite some occasional spills. I did register a strange counter-melody from the lower
strings towards the end, which wasn’t on any of the recordings I owned – but it was all
part of the “not knowing what to expect next” scenario…..

I did so enjoy the Bottesini Double-bass Concerto, as much for the playing of the star
soloist, Hiroshi Ikematsu, as for the music, which was new to me. How wonderful for
the Chamber Orchestra to be able to draw upon soloists of this calibre for concerto
performances! – one thinks of some splendid instances at various past concerts, and
this one had a similar kind of distinction. HIroshi is, of course the current leader of the
NZSO’s double-bass section – and during his tenure he has noticeably galvanised those
players, whose unanimity of tones and deportment give great pleasure at any orchestra
concert. It was therefore distressing to read that he intends to return to Japan next year –
in a number of ways, our great loss.

Though I was sitting too far to the side to be able to fully enjoy the soloist’s range of
tones, I was assured by people in closer proximity that the experience of listening to
such playing was a kind of feast for the senses. I could register his more vigorous work,
but was able only to guess at the quality of some of the softer passages, all of which he
seemed to play with the agility of a ‘cellist, despite having to stand and hold up what
looked like an extemely cumbersome instrument to manage. We were able to fully enjoy
his technical capabilities in the first movement’s cadenza, which featured plenty of double-
stopping, rapid runs and virtuoso leaps, the orchestra coming in “on the hoof” as it were,
to deliver an excting conclusion to the movement.

Having in mind some of those interminably vapid virtuoso violin concerti which sprang
up like weeds through out the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I rather thought
this music might turn out to be a “contrabass” version of the same kind of thing – but in
fact I found the work a stimulating listening experience with its composer tossing us
some unexpected twists and turns. The slow movement began with some raw tuning from
the wind and brass but soon settled down, the soloist firstly  counterpointing a warmly
romantic string tune, then “swapping roles” with the orchestra later in the piece, and
finishing with a graceful and winsome ascending line.

It all contrasted excitingly with the finale’s opening, the orchestra bursting in with heroic
gesturings, and the soloist setting off on his journeyings with a spirited kind of “road
music” theme. The players found it hard to keep together with some of their interjections,
and some of the exchanges were raucous, but the enthusiasm was evident, and the
soloist’s playing astonishing in its technical and expressive range. At the end of the piece
he got a warm and properly appreciative reception from all of us present.

After the interval it was time for Vince Hardaker and the players to confront Beethoven!
I remember reading, years and years ago, a review in “Gramophone” of a recording of the
Seventh Symphony made by a fairly prestigious orchestra and a well-known conductor.
The reviewer, who had himself conducted the work with amateur groups, commented on
what he called the “orchestra difficulty” posed by the incessant dotted rhythms of the first
movement, noting some lapses in ensemble on the recording.  Although Sir Thomas Beecham’s
well-known rehearsal comment on the music – “What can you do with it? – it’s like a lot of yaks
jumping about!” referred particularly to the work’s scherzo, a similar kind of boisterous spirit
informs much of the other quick music in the work.

True to expectation, it was the first movement which here caused the players the most
difficulty, the strings in particular having to bear the brunt of those obsessive rhythms. As
well, the ascending scale passsages after the opening chords caused some momentary grief
among the strings before the trajectories “found” one another and started to jell between
the players. Set against these purple patches were some splendid sequences, the lyrical lines
nicely handled by the winds and the brass chiming in at climactic points with great gusto,
contributing both thrills and spills.

The lower strings got the second movement processional off to a great start, with the violas’
counter-melody and the violins’ shaping of the main theme brought out nicely by players and
conductor. I liked the warm, reassuring tones of the major-key section – lovely clarinet and
horn solos – and the ensuing string fugato, though a bit seedy at the outset, developed into
something determined and powerful.  As for the Scherzo I thought Vince Hardaker’s tempo
just right for these players, giving them sufficient spaces in which to fill out the rhythms.
The Trio was a highlight, with the strings sustaining the oscillating theme while the winds
and brass notes rang out splendidly.

To my surprise the calls to action at the finale’s beginning were articulated crisply and
excitingly at the outset, with the momentums strongly kept up – a bit later, I liked the
leaping-figure exchanges between upper and lower strings (even if I thought the lower
strings could have “held onto” their final note a bit longer each time), and enjoyed the
wholehearted plunges back into the mainstream of the music’s flow after each divergence.
If the fearsome vortex-like passage towards the movement’s conclusion had an extra hint
of desperation about the playing, then conductor and orchestra’s achievement in pulling
themselves out of it all made the mighty brass-led homecoming all the more exciting,
the horns at the end sounding the triumph with gusto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fancies and realities from Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents
LA DONNA IDEALE

BEETHOVEN – Leonore Overture No.1 Op.138
Symphony No.8 in F Major Op.93
LUCIANO BERIO – Folk Songs
JULIET PALMER – Three Pop Songs “Solid Gold”

Madeleine Pierard (soprano)
Marc Taddei (conductor)
Orchestra Wellington

The Opera House, Wellington,

Sunday, 8th September, 2013

Restricted as to performing venues on account of the capital’s various earthquake-generated strengthening projects, Orchestra Wellington triumphantly made good in the Opera House on Sunday afternoon with its most recent concert, La Donna Ideale, whatever difficulties might have arisen from having to make music in relatively unfamiliar spaces.

By covering the pit and extending the floor area of the stage to well out in front of the proscenium arch the organisers had given the musicians a surprisingly immediate acoustic for its audience to enjoy. Though a smallish orchestra, the sounds in the purely orchestral items packed plenty of punch, with clear (almost too clear) detailing – the string passages which began the Leonore Overture No.1 had great intensity, but moments of less-than-uniform intonation, a glitch which receded as the players “found” one another.

For me the concert’s venue recalled my first-ever orchestral encounter in a similar kind of space – the Palmerston North Opera House in 1969.  Maestro Piero Gamba conducted the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra in an evening of music-making that rocked my socks off, especially with Ravel’s La Valse as a rousing finale. Here, the fireworks at the concert’s end were Beethoven’s, Marc Taddei leading a performance of the composer’s Eighth Symphony that emphasised the music’s dash, drive and excitement, though somewhat at the expense of wit, charm and good humour.

It was Beethoven’s music also which led this latest concert off. Here was a further instalment in a survey by the orchestra of the various Leonora Overtures written by the composer for his opera “Fidelio” – the composer wanted “Leonora” as his opera’s title, but Beethoven was persuaded eventually to make the change, as at least three other composers had previously used that name for their operatic settings of the story.

Leonore No.1 was thought for many years to be the original version of the overture  – but recent research has established it was written after the other versions, specifically for a Prague production of the opera in 1808 which apparently never actually took place (hence the Overture’s somewhat “academic” high opus numbering). Though not as overtly theatrical in its layout as the other “Leonora” overtures, the music still has a pleasing and satisfying overall shape – a sombre introduction, giving way to determined energies followed by lyrical yearnings, the whole completed by a surging, all-conquering conclusion.

Having the players, specifically the strings, brought foward of the proscenium arch made for a more-than-usually analytical sound-picture, sharply-focused, but lacking the bloom of the Town Hall’s ampler ambience. However, the smallish number of strings survived the sound-spotlight with considerable credit, a couple of previously-mentioned ensemble and intonation inconsistencies aside, during the slow, recitative-like opening passages.

Once the allegro got under way the full orchestra’s extra weight and immediacy of sound was thrilling to experience, the music’s syncopations and energies here, and at the conclusion of the work, done with verve and dash. Conductor Marc Taddei managed the music’s contrasts beautifully, the horns and other winds giving great pleasure with their handling of the famous yearning theme sung in the opera by the imprisoned Florestan.

The following work on the programme indirectly gave the concert its overall title, “La  Donna Ideale”, which was the title of the sixth of a collection of eleven Folk-Songs composed and/or transcribed from other sources by avant-garde Italian composer Luciano Berio. Of course, Beethoven’s eponymous heroine celebrated in the concert’s opening music had already ticked the requisite boxes suggested by the title!

Berio wrote these songs for the celebrated singer Cathy Berberian, whom he was married to for a number of years. Today’s singer was our own Madeleine Pierard, resplendently pregnant, and as engaging in voice and platform manner as ever. I could imagine Berberian’s voice having a bit more “edge” and feistiness in places compared with what we heard, but not any more charm, wit and heartfelt directness which Madeleine Pierard gave to us so generously.

The singer’s focused diction enabled us to hear every word of the two American songs which opened the set, and her fully-vocalised engagement with the changing moods of the others brought each one to life. From song to song one marvelled at the differences
of ambience and energy and the range of emotion.

Particularly telling were the contrasts across the final sequence of four songs, the eerie, almost spectral quality of the singer’s “bleached” tones in Motetu de tristura, the out-of-doors chirpiness of Malurous qu’o unno fenno, the folksy, tongue-in-cheek exchanges between singer and solo ‘cello in Lo fiolaire, and the verve and energy of the concluding Azerbaijan Love Song – it sound as though those people in the final song were playing for keeps!

Supporting and matching Pierard’s artistry was the quality of the orchestral playing throughout, both in ensemble and across the many solo lines, making the whole a heart-warming experience.

What a contrast with the world evoked by ex-pat Toronto-based Kiwi composer Juliet Palmer – unlike the often more rarified, prescribed work of many of her contemporaries, her Solid Gold presentation drew directly from mainstream culture, namely, those of pop lyrics associated with music.

Juliet Palmer used only the texts of various pop songs to gather the shards of material she needed to make into a kind of distillation of impulses concerning  love – the composer declared her aim to “unearth the heart of the love song”.  A lot of the time the singer was using the word I – beginning with “I am, I said” which was about the closest to a direct quote from an actual song – but elsewhere it sounded as though Palmer was actually reassembling  the sounds of the words. Other reconstructions brought forth phrases beginning with such words  as “I wanna be” –  according to the composer, echoing a 1984 hit song “I wanna know what love is”.

As she was inspired by pop music’s “distinct sound world” her own music here mostly courted pastiche, (I scribbled the phrase “Disney-like accompaniment” at one point) primarily a kind of springboard for those deconstructed/reconstructed lyrics to bounce along before taking and relishing their brief individual moments of glory. But there were also abnormalities and angularities in places, diverting horn glissandi notes during the work’s introduction and a clustered, Ligeti-like accompaniment to the words “I am” and their subsequent development, sharp Stravinsky-like chords  contributing to the faint underbelly of edginess in certain places in the work.

Enjoyable, but intriguing – and sung by Madeleine Pierard with a richly-wrought relish that brought to mind Noel Coward’s comment  regarding “the potency of cheap music”.

After this we pleasurably anticipated a different kind of delight – the rich, robust humour of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. It’s always seemed to me a work of enormous verve and assurance, one which appears to confidently sum up a whole cosmos of symphonic achievement on the part of its composer. Though outwardly it appears something of a classical “throwback”, the music constantly confounds expectation and is filled with dramatic surprises and rhythmic angularities.

Alas, in this performance, the “rich, robust humour” was a sometimes thing. Brilliantly though the orchestra played the work, I thought Marc Taddei’s frantic pacing of the music took away some of the work’s capacity to delight and confound as Beethoven probably intended. For every sequence that impressed with its near-breathless brilliance, there were two which caused me to lament the over-riding impression of excessive haste  – with such deliciously-contrived humour and droll charm to be savoured, I’m at a loss to understand why these things seemed to be put to the metronomic sword.

To be entirely fair, the parts of the work which I thought did come off well were certainly exciting to listen to – the first movement development evoked a kind of tense game of chase between groups of instruments, the horns in particular bringing out their accents tellingly at one point, though the crescendo leading to the reprise had little chance to register at such a pace. And the finale, too, had its best moments mid-movement, the music’s driving force giving an extra vertiginous quality to the “giant’s footfalls” and their hair-raising harmonic lurches.

The middle movements seemed to me far less happy with so much detailing being made to rush by at speed – the Allegretto scherzando movement lost some of its droll contrasts between delicacy and girth, while the canonic passages between winds and strings had little chance to properly register at such a tempo. Similarly, the Tempo di Menuetto sounded too businesslike and regimented here, as if all the dancers had personal trainers as their partners, keeping things up to speed. And the delicious triplet accompaniments for the horns and winds in the Trio went almost for nothing for me, despite the wonderfully alert playing.

One person’s meat, they say – but even so, a thing of beauty is surely to be savoured and not merely efficiently despatched. There were enough good things about the symphony’s performance here to divert the harshest critic, if only momentarily – but I felt that, if more time had been given for notes, phrases and paragraphs to properly “own” and relish their allotted spaces, a good performance of the work would have become a great one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Admirable performances from Kapiti orchestra under Ken Young and hornist Ed Allen

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Kapiti Concert Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young with Edward Allen (horn)

Beethoven: Egmont Overture, Op 84
Fauré: Masques et bergamasques
Mozart: Horn Concerto in E flat, K 447
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin – Waltz and Polonaise
Saint-Saëns: Romance for horn and orchestra, Op 36
Brahms: Hungarian Dances Nos 1, 5, 6

Church of St Paul, Kapiti Road, Paraparaumu

Saturday 30 August, 3 pm

I don’t think I’ve heard the Kapiti Concert Orchestra play before, which does seem an extraordinary state of affairs. In fact, Middle C seems to have noticed the orchestra’s performance only once: my colleague Rosemary Collier reviewed their concert for Christchurch in March 2011.

This concert under conductor Ken Young revealed an ensemble that must be one of the most accomplished to arise in a community of only about 40,000, though it’s fair to observe that several players come from other parts of the Wellington metropolitan area.

The programme was a model of what is appropriate for an amateur orchestra. It began with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, which does not present any insuperable problems for such players. I can say that for it was one of the pieces that the orchestra, the predecessor of the Wellington Youth Orchestra, in which I played, tackled satisfactorily in the 1950s.

This dramatic overture began with a massively arresting sound, with basses delivering truly stentorian chords. The following steady tempo that pictures the hope of the Low Countries for relief from brutal Spanish rule under the leadership of Count Egmont. The playing was clean and purposeful; the tension that precedes the transformation that follows Egmont’s sacrificial execution was powerfully created and the coda, in spite of the odd flaw, quite inspiring.

Faure’s Masques et bergamasques was, as the programme note explained, a suite of eight pieces drawn mainly from earlier pieces, some of which had never been published. Given the charming character of most of the suite, it serves to remind us of how much music gets sidelined and goes unheard, for obscure reasons. The orchestral suite includes only four of the eight pieces: the Ouverture, a Menuet and Gavotte (all from an abandoned 1869 symphony) and Pastorale (the only new movement).

The unused pieces, Wikipedia notes, were Madrigal (Op. 35, 1884; for chorus and orchestra), Le plus doux chemin (Op. 87 No. 1, 1904; for tenor and orchestra), Clair de lune (Op. 46 No. 2, 1887; for tenor and orchestra), and a Pavane (Op. 50, 1887).

It’s interesting that in 1869, when this symphony was drafted, Fauré had no significant French symphony of conventional form as a model (Gounod perhaps, but Bizet’s was unknown, and Berlioz’s works hardly supplied a model for a composer of a more orthodox turn of mind). So we can think of Masques et bergamasques as containing at least something of his first attempt at a symphony; there’s also a later unpublished Symphony in D minor (1886). So it’s not typical, especially of his mature period.

The playing was perhaps rather more forthright than one is used to in Fauré, but if the notes are there, then who am I to comment on the way the conductor wants to hear them? In any case there was quite admirable playing from various quarters – violins, oboes and clarinets. But I felt the Minuet wasn’t much of a dance: rather plodding, and the Gavotte emphasized the peasant origins of that dance. With its confident touch of the romantic, the Pastorale felt French and reflecting more of the composer’s ethereal, disembodied personality.

The main course in the first half, in the whole concert in fact, was a good performance of Mozart’s third horn concerto (they’re all in E flat except the first which is in D).  Not only did we get a warm and immaculate performance from former NZSO principal horn Ed Allen, but the orchestra was clearly energized, even inspired, by the task they had taken on, under the conspicuous leadership of Ken Young. The string playing in the slow movement was particularly accomplished.

After the interval – it was a bit long considering there’s no café or much to do other than watch traffic on Kapiti Road – the orchestra played the two dances from Eugene Onegin; the waltz and the polonaise. Instead of a ballabile, flowing quality, the waltz took on a too staccato character, and here I felt the wind players showed excessive energy; timpani too, perhaps as a result of its placing towards the corner, produced a troublesome booming at times.  Something of the same fore-square quality also bothered me in the polonaise, though the marching character of this very formal dance may justify such an approach.

Ed Allen stayed for a second horn piece: one of Saint-Saëns’s pieces for instruments whose solo potential was overlooked. This was a Romance, in slow triple time with a contrasting middle section. Though not one of the composer’s more memorable inspirations, it offered another chance to
hear Allen’s superb playing.

The concert ended with three of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances.  I think these, originally for piano, are pretty hard for an amateur orchestra to bring off for they need an instinctive feeling for flexible, varied rhythms and nicely judged dynamic nuances. While the notes may not be too hard to get, they are the sort of music, like Strauss waltzes, and ballet music, that we’ve heard played in relaxed style, effortlessly, idiomatically, flawlessly, by the very greatest orchestras.  It’s music that needs playing with utter simplicity, limpidity and perfection: our taste has been spoiled.

However, everyone came away marvelling at the excellence of the concert, and the fact that an orchestra of such comparative accomplishment has taken root in the Kapiti area. Only in the presence of such generally excellent playing would I have felt able to make the few critical remarks that have fallen inadvertently onto the keyboard.

 

Mozart from the NZSO – magical music and music-making

Posted on by admin

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
Magnificent Mozart

Overture: The Abduction from the Seralio K.384
Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola in E-flat K.364
Symphony No.40 in G Minor K.550

Andrew Grams (conductor)
with Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin) and Julia Joyce (viola)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 9 August 2013

This early evening concert was conducted by Andrew Grams, billed as “one of America’s most promising and talented young conductors [who] has already appeared with many of the great orchestras of the world”.  The band of 40 players was nicely sized for the works, and Grams amply demonstrated his talents as he drew from them a sparkling sound, wide dynamic range, and the clean crisp playing so vital to Mozart’s writing.

The opening work was the opera overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio K.384 – seven minutes of glittering brilliance that made full play of the “Turkish” effects in its orchestration, and the wide dynamic contrasts that swept dramatically from whispering piano to full throated fortissimo and back in a matter of moments, with effortless precision. The excitement of this music and the playing immediately captured the audience.

Next was the much loved Sinfonia Concertante in Eb major K.364 for violin and viola, with soloists by Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen and Principal Viola Julia Joyce. The opening Allegro maestoso showed immediately that both principals and conductor were of one mind about their interpretation, and this was underpinned throughout by impeccable support from the orchestra. The lilting rhythms and melodies of this beautiful movement were woven effortlessly between the participants, and the romance of the phrasing was fully exploited with rubato where appropriate. The double cadenza was executed with great panache.

The central Andante was presented as a beautifully contemplative conversation between the solo instruments, and it was executed with exquisite delicacy. The poetry of these exchanges was further enhanced by the contrast of Julia Joyce’s beautiful misty blue satin gown with Leppänen’s sombre black suit. The audience was spellbound, and you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium.

While my personal preference is for a reading that maximizes the silken warmth of the violin and has the throaty syrup of the lower viola sound filling the space with Mozart’s luscious melodies, that is very much an individual choice. Having settled on their particular approach, these players held the audience in breathless appreciation.

The sparkling final Presto got off to a galloping start which had me wondering if it could be adequately sustained. The tempo was certainly presto, but the orchestra and soloists literally never missed a beat. What did suffer was Mozart’s wonderful passagework for strings and winds, which was sacrificed to the god of speed to no real advantage. The riveting sweep of the scales missed out on that spine-tingling quality that is imbued by the clarity of every note speaking within the rushing texture. There is magic in every single note of Mozart’s orchestral writing, and it does not deserve to be lost.

When I chatted briefly at the interval to a musician whom I greatly respect, she expressed the view that it was courageous to try and present this Concertante work in such a large space. This perfectly voiced my sentiments. The impeccable musicianship and technical execution of the performance were never in question, but there were times when the soloists, and the  lower register of the viola in particular, were overshadowed by orchestra, despite its modest resources. The work was not composed for the mega halls of modern times, and it lost some of its complexity and emotional richness in the transposition.

That said, the audience was hugely appreciative and called the players back repeatedly to the stage. This surely is grounds enough for offering the public this extraordinary work more frequently.

Mozart’s Symphony no.40 in G minor ‘The Great’, K.550 formed the second half of the concert. The orchestra and conductor were again in perfect understanding, and Andrew Grams’ light touch with the baton confirmed his absolute confidence that the players were responding to every nuance in the music. The Molto Allegro opened with a whisper of string sound before the restless melody which is the famous hallmark of this movement. Its sense of insistence at each reappearance  provided a clearly articulated framework for the excellent string and wind playing.

The following Andante was rendered with due presence and a measure of solemnity, while never becoming heavy; rather it was like a respectful homage to one of the last works that was to come from Mozart’s prolific and remarkable pen.

The contrasts of the following Menuetto:Allegro sections were beautifully balanced, with exquisitely clean woodwind playing in the Trio. The conductor and orchestra then captured wonderfully the boisterous exuberance of the closing Allegro assai, and it formed a great finale to an evening of magical music and music making.

The packed house and hugely appreciative audience must surely demonstrate that the listening public is hungry for more of this repertoire. Wellington is fortunate to have two outstanding orchestras that can do justice to this, yet concerts of this type are regrettably few and far between. Bring on more!

Fine Choral Symphony from Wellington Youth Orchestra, but where’s the audience?

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Beethoven: Symphony no. 9 in D minor, Op.125

Wellington Youth Orchestra, Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus, members of the Bach Choir, Madeleine Pierard (soprano), Bianca Andrew (mezzo), Derek Hill (tenor), Robert Tucker (bass), conducted by Hamish McKeich

Wellington Town Hall

Monday 29 July 2013, 7pm

The Wellington Youth Orchestra obviously works very hard, and is made up of extremely competent young musicians.  It is only two-and-a-half months since the last concert, which included a taxing Shostakovich Symphony.  Here they are again, playing Beethoven’s demanding final symphony, with choir and soloists; a considerable undertaking for a youth orchestra.

But where was the audience?  This major work has not been performed very recently in Wellington.  Perhaps people think ‘this is a kids’ orchestra – it won’t be very good’.  That is totally incorrect.  Where, though, was the advertising?  I was unaware of the concert until a few days before it happened.  I didn’t see any flyers handed out at other concerts (perhaps there were).  Here was a major choral concert, but the Wellington Regional Committee of the New Zealand Choral Federation was not notified of it, for their excellent listing emailed to choirs, giving details of forthcoming choral concerts.

Not only was the audience small; the orchestra and choir were both smaller than is usually employed for this work.  This did not matter in a less-than-half-full hall, and both lived up to expectations, on the whole.

Again, the orchestra had ‘friends and guest players’, whose names were not listed, joining to support some sections.  I noticed the NZSO’s principal double bass and others added to that section, the principal flute from the NZSO, plus a horn player, a cellist and a violist  There may have been others.

The concert began 10 minutes late – for a relatively early concert timing, this was an irritant.  However, I was soon disarmed by the playing: crisp rhythms and lively variety of dynamics were immediately apparent.  As I sat back and enjoyed the music, I thought what a great a symphony this would have been even without the choral finale.

These young musicians knew what they were doing, as the majestic first movement grew in stature – everything was given full weight.  This is not easy music, but there was no hesitancy and only a very occasional wrong note from this fine ensemble of 50-plus players.

The second movement was driven along forcefully by Hamish McKeich.  All parts were beautifully articulated in this highly dramatic scherzo.  The tempi of the movements were rather confusingly printed in the programme; suffice to say that they are 1 fast; 2  Scherzo: faster; 3 slow; 4 fast, with numerous slower bits interspersed.

The gorgeous slow introduction to the third movement, with its noble melody is followed by
variations upon it.  The playing was full of wonderful woodwind and horn ensembles.  Occasionally the pizzicato accompaniment on strings was not completely together nor loud enough, but that is a quibble; the playing was generally splendid and built up the tension marvellously well.

Beethoven’s motifs came through more than adequately – for example, the frequent pizzicato
passages for the cellos.

The final movement opened quite fast.  There was a big moment for cellos and double basses, and they performed it very well.  Then they were lucky enough to introduce the grand theme upon which the remainder of the movement is built.  The bassoon variation was played superbly.  When the violins finally got their chance, followed by the full orchestra, the music was declaimed with confidence and strength.

Beethoven’s words to introduce Ode to Joy by Friedrich Schiller were sung by Robert Tucker with plenty of power, and a rich vocal quality, although the lowest note was rather beyond his easy reach.  The other soloists were all exemplary, but their placement behind the orchestra meant a lack of volume and clarity at times.

The chorus of about 35 voices was, on the whole, impressive. However, the orchestra rather overwhelmed it at some climactic moments.  The men were strong in their passages sung without the women.  They are frequently asked to sing in a high tessitura, and those passages are spiked with chances for error, only one of which I was aware of the men falling into: shortening the word ‘muss’, thus making an unpleasant hissing noise where it was not wanted.

Tenor Derek Hill is quite slight of build, but he delivered the goods.  Bianca Andrew’s and Madeleine Pierard’s voices blended well, and were similar in timbre.

While I don’t expect the soloists to have ghastly grins on their faces, I would have thought that Ode to Joy might have evinced some appearance of happiness from the soloists, especially at the end; the women particularly looked very glum.  In some performances of the work, but not in this one, the soloists join with the chorus at the end, which seems a good idea – all the singers combining in the last great shouts of joy.

I haven’t listened to a performance of this masterwork for many years – instead, I’ve sung in it
numerous times.  This performance was uplifting – and I didn’t have to worry about whether I could reach the repeated top notes!

 

Contemplations of life and death from disparate times and nations

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Orchestra Wellington conducted by Marc Taddei

Beethoven: Leonore Overture No 2, Op 72
Mussorgsky: Songs and Dances of Death with Jonathan Lemalu – bass-baritone
John Psathas and Warren Maxwell (vocals and guitar): Pounamu, a ‘concerto’ for voice, guitars and orchestra

Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 28 July, 4pm

In 2008 Warren Maxwell, frontman of Little Bushman, collaborated with John Psathas and the Auckland Philharmonia in a concert entitled Little Bushman meet the APO; and in the following year, the NZSO also staged the Little Bushmen collaboration, again with Psathas, and on a film score, The Strength of Water.

Psathas approached Maxwell again suggesting the idea of a collaboration that would become Pounamu. It was performed with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in May 2011 and later that year the contemporary music ensemble Stroma took it on in a reduction from the original score for full orchestra. The orchestral original has awaited a performance in Wellington and it found a place filling the second half of a concert by Orchestra Wellington.

It was understandable that not all of the orchestra’s usual audience showed up although it was by no means a poor house. Judging by the style of the acclamation from a significant section of the audience a good representation of the followers of Trinity Roots/Little Bushman was on hand.

What Wellington heard was an expansion of the original, heard in Auckland; a sixth part was composed for this revival. Maxwell described the work in his programme notes as well as in an engaging interview with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat programme in the preceding week. In six sections, it contemplates shortcomings of our society, neglect of disadvantaged groups such as the homeless and unemployed, the elderly, those with hard-to-manage addictions and so on: those on the outskirts of the community (as he puts it).

In his unmistakable, hushed and breathy voice, often in an alto, falsetto register, accompanying himself on regular or bass guitar, he sang/delivered in sprechgesang, sometimes addressing us, sometimes third parties, sometimes the universe. In ‘Grandma’s Tears’ we heard a recording of thoughts and memories of his grandmother(?) in her 90s.

In light of the normal practice of reproducing the words in full, often in the original and in English of liturgical works and songs, it was a pity not to have printed at least the essentials of what he spoke (which was done with the four Songs and Dances of Death).

It was not entirely clear from either the notes or what he told Eva Radich, how much of the music was conceived by him and how much was originated by Psathas; or was Psathas’s contribution largely orchestration?

It was moving, poignant, capturing the nature of the  words and subject matter; just occasionally, and more, I thought, in the closing phase, it suggested a film score, a shade too elaborate and sophisticated, and expressing less sincerity as it did so. It was long – some 35 minutes – but did not outlast its interest, and the eventual impression was of a partnership between equals even though the idioms themselves – the symphonic and the Maori-tinted rock/popular worlds – might have been very far apart.

The other vocal work on the programme was astutely chosen, for it touched on certain of the same human concerns, four poems by a friend of Mussorgsky’s, one Golenishchev-Kutuzov. Mussorgsky, like Psathas/Maxwell, set them in music that often, at least in the first song, approached Sprechgesang, singing without apparent strict notation, though the voice seems to find telling pitches which I’m sure could be notated if one were disposed to try.

Though my first hearing of these songs was from an LP I bought at a sale in the 1950s, purely on exploratory impulse, sung by Jennie Tourel, with the Bernstein at the piano, which has remained a sort of bench-mark, there is no doubt that a dark bass-baritone delivers them with more immediacy and realism.

There could hardly have been a more powerfully sympathetic singer than Jonathan Lemalu, of these dark though not really despairing songs, for Death is depicted mainly as friend, offering peace in place of suffering. Lemalu’s Russian sounded as if he were singing in his first language and his entire demeanour and vocal quality expressed their sombre but richly musical quality with utter conviction.

And the orchestration by Shostakovich gave them wonderfully appropriate, almost too particular accompaniment, leaving little to the imagination. Under Taddei the orchestra did them vivid and detailed justice.

Finally, the first work on the programme was one of the four overtures that Beethoven wrote for the various incarnations of his troubled opera, Leonore/Fidelio.

Just to refresh memories, No 2 was probably the first written, and was the one played at the opera’s first production in 1805; No 3 was a modified version of it which was played at the revival in 1806; in the latter, the trumpet call was moved from near the end in No 2, to nearer the middle of the piece. No 1 was found among Beethoven’s papers after his death (and carries the posthumous opus number 138), perhaps intended for a performance in Prague that did not eventuate; possibly, judging by the abrupt ending, it was unfinished. The Fidelio Overture was written for the revised version of the opera produced in 1814, less than half the length of either Nos 2 or 3.

This was a spacious, stentorian performance, opening with huge dramatic chords, nothing like the relatively polite chords one can hear on some recordings; and later, Taddei created great, suspenseful pauses between arresting scene changes. The blazing, victorious trumpet leading to the finale made a marvellous impact, played from the back of the gallery by Chris Clark.

Though Taddei held tempi under effective tension throughout, all that changed in the last stretta bars in which the orchestra hurled themselves, chocks away, into the peroration that proclaimed Florestan’s rescue.

The orchestra’s adventurous programme was entirely vindicated.

 

Enterprising take on the year’s anniversaries with Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Michael Vinten

Overture: Oberto (Verdi)
Requiem on the anniversary of Verdi’s death (Puccini)
Plymouth Town – ballet music (Britten)
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten  (Pärt)
Hommage à Wagner: Liszt’s Venice: music for Wagner’s death (arranged by Michael Vinten)
Symphony in C (Wagner)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 7 July, 2.30pm

2013 is the two hundredth anniversary of the births of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of Britten’s. Here was an ingenious concert that included pieces from the early years of each composer as well as music written to mark the deaths of the three.

Some were fairly obvious, others obscure and interesting, if not great works.

Those in the habit of listening to Radio New Zealand Concert after midnight will have become familiar with a disc of Verdi overtures which I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times over the years. (Much less interesting is their attachment to overtures by Marschner). The all-night programme seems to be drawn to certain discs and I have always enjoyed this one.

Oberto was the first opera that Verdi completed and was performed, at La Scala indeed! It reveals Verdi as a bold melodist and orchestrator, in the style of the day which was heavily influenced by Bellini. It’s interesting as demonstrating the accepted and expected approach of the day that made no virtue of ‘originality’ but merely sought to display talent in finding memorable, dramatic music that fitted the story and maintained the attention of those paying for their seats: today that’s considered tawdry commercialism in some quarters.

It was a fine way to start, as there was little that a sub-professional orchestra could not play adequately. Gusto and good sense compensated for some rough edges and the usual problem of modulating the volume of brass instruments.

I had never come across the little Requiem that Puccini wrote in 1905 to mark the fourth anniversary of Verdi’s death. It was a bit hard to discern the composer of Madama Butterfly of just the year before. It was composed for choir, solo viola and organ but this was an arrangement for orchestra. It was thoughtfully played but didn’t leave much of a mark. I’ve listened to You-Tube performances, both employing a choir, which I confess I found a little more engaging that the orchestral version.

More interesting was a very early work by Britten, a ballet score entitled Plymouth Town, the story hinting a similar topic in Bernstein’s ballet Fancy Free and the musical, On the Town, though the scenario involved a bit of violence in the middle that Britten handled with a mixture of inventiveness and inexperience. Largely based on the evolution of the sea-shanty A-roving, the first few minutes, working well with cellos and bassoon did not strike me as offering music that cried out to be danced, but it became more ballabile in the course of its 20 minutes duration. There were later passages that offered flute, clarinet and timpani some attention, and there were well controlled pianissimo string and woodwind passages marking a restoration of peace.  Given that Britten was writing for the stage, where other senses could be engaged, it was hardly surprising that the music alone seemed a bit long.

Then came the piece that had opened the NZSO concert two days before: Arvo Pärt’s moving Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. Tubular bells were unobtainable and the part was played at the piano; the piano, played to produce the purest sonority sounded most appropriate.  Of course, the performance lacked a little of the sense of breathless grief that can be achieved, but the final note of the ‘tubular bell’ lingered longer in the air than seemed possible.

After the interval Wagner had the floor. It began with Vinten’s quite Wagnerian-sounding orchestration/precis (shall we say) of a couple of Liszt’s late piano pieces prompted by Wagner’s death in 1883. One was entitled Hommage à Wagner and the other, Am Grabe Richard Wagners, which Liszt had partly orchestrated. There were hints of Götterdämmerung and Parsifal; not a bad experiment in musical manipulation, and well played by the orchestra.

Finally, the most impressive work on the programme, Wagner’s symphony, written aged 19 and played in Leipzig to an encouraging reception. As the programme notes pointed out, its models were Beethoven and Weber (interestingly, Weber’s two early symphonies, both also in C major, were written when he too was 19 and 20).  Though ten years before Schumann’s symphonic ventures, it seemed to me that he and Wagner had both been similarly influenced by Weber, particularly in the scherzo, third movement. Furthermore, Wagner’s symphony was performed in Leipzig where Schumann lived in 1832, studying with Friedrich Wieck; did he hear Wagner’s work?

It’s a most impressive early work that deserves occasional outings with major orchestras, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra made a very creditable fist of it, as they did with most of this very interesting programme.

Magnificent Nordic programme from NZSO, Vänskä and Currie

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä with Colin Currie (percussion soloist)

Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (Pärt)
Percussion Concerto ‘Sieidi’ (Kalevi Aho)
Symphony No 5, Op 50 (Nielsen)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 5 July, 6.30pm

Osmo Vänskä’s name first came to my notice as conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra in a series of Sibelius symphonies that returned to the composer’s original versions. Even though the consensus was generally that Sibelius’s further thoughts were best, there were interesting revelations; in any case, the performances were acknowledged as powerful and highly motivated.

Though in his conversation with Eva Radich on Radio New Zealand Concert’s Upbeat, Vänskä hinted at the way he has been rather confined to the Nordic repertoire, it was no bad thing for us to experience this splendid programme; just a shame that Wellington audiences seem to be overlooking the meaning of the increasingly empty boast of being the Cultural Capital: there were far too many empty seats.

Wellington heard the first of the four performances of this wonderful concert (the orchestra goes on to Christchurch, Hamilton and Auckland), and it proved to be a landmark, both for the astonishing percussion concerto by Kalevi Aho and the electrifying performance of Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony. Many of us consider Nielsen to be a symphonist in almost the same class as Sibelius, and this Finnish conductor clearly believed in the music’s stature and importance.

While Nielsen avoided referring to a ‘programme’ behind this symphony, it is generally felt that the horrors of the First World War – it was written between 1920 and 1922 – are the unspoken sub-text. Robert Layton, for example, remarks of the end of the first movement that the conflict eventually subsides leaving “a desolate clarinet mourning the terrible cost of the triumph [surely a most unfortunate word to apply to any aspect of the war, especially the Versailles treaty, pregnant with the seeds of another war]”; and an “evocation of the terrible conflict from which Europe had just emerged”.

Violence is audible in many parts, particularly in the role of the insistent automatic-weapon-like rattle of the snare drum in the first movement.

Though it is cast in two movements, each divided into several sections, a strong unity of musical subject matter binds the whole so that the audience is gripped for its entire 35 minutes or so. The symphony emerges as a very distinctive and memorable work in almost any hands, but there was a powerful, arresting atmosphere here, from the very start, with the music seeming to emerge from nowhere as violas rock across a minor third; it announced Vänskä’s intimate understanding and command.

Familiarity with the work creates a tense feeling of anticipation, awaiting the entry of the terrifying snare drum, played by Lenny Sakofsky.  Even though the drum was placed in the middle of the orchestra (where I couldn’t see it) rather than in a soloist’s position at the front, its arrival and its growing, almost overwhelming, force came as something of a shock which mere familiarity with recorded versions cannot quite prepare you for. That staccato attack is not confined to the drum however, and the driving staccato characterizes all other sections of the orchestra.

And it’s not till the last few pages that a sunny rising motif arrives to lead to the beautiful, perhaps more characteristic sound of the lyrical Nielsen with which the second part, Adagio non troppo, begins. If the tempo marking might suggest less of the drama and dynamism of the first movement, that was not the way it happened; though the conflict of the first movement was resolved, there was no loss of momentum or intensity and it proved an entirely convincing sequel.

We’d been prepared for the character of Vänskä’s performance by the two works in the first half: scrupulous, detailed attention to dynamics and to the balance between individual instruments and orchestral sections, but above all, enormous energy and rhythmic impulse.

The concert opened with Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. It’s a piece that I have long promoted to family and friends who might need persuading of the existence of classical music that is irresistible: simple, spiritual and profoundly moving.  However, while I am usually most reluctant to parade comparative remarks about performances, I was unable to ignore the sounds of the recording by the Bergen Philharmonic under Neemi Järvi that is engraved in my head. This playing rather lacked the same clarity and deep spirituality. But its place as a prelude to the massive works to follow was intelligent and should awaken those hearing it for the first time to music other than Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel by this singular Estonian composer.

The percussion concerto, Sieidi, by Kalevi Aho was jointly commissioned by the London Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony orchestras and the Luostoclassic Festival which, the programme notes did not tell you, is in Finnish Lapland (An amazing place; look at: www.bachtrack.com/about/luostoclassic‎).

It might be tempting to denigrate Kalevi Aho’s work as largely a virtuosic showcase for Currie, and to wonder about its musical substance; would it prove to be slight if the huge score were to be reduced to a solo piano version? But that is the equivalent of analyzing the artistic value of a painting by turning it into naked black and white.

While there were moments early on when such thoughts cropped up, admiration and persuasion soon supervened. As well as being mesmerized by Currie’s astonishing prowess, the orchestral episodes that offered the equivalent of the Promenade in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, allowing Currie to move comfortably from one instrument or set to the next, were opportunities for lyrical, reflective and often simply beautiful music. Even as the soloist was in full flight, the orchestral composer was very conspicuous, in complementary developments that were exquisitely attuned to the character of the particular solo percussion passages.

The music evolved, metamorphosed, maintaining the listener’s attention through its varying moods and along its diverting paths. There is of course, no problem with the concerto’s form, formal anarchy has reigned in all styles of music for at least a century. It’s not divided into the traditional three or four movements, and the musical ideas are not handled in traditional ways: sonata form, rondo, or the theme and variations form, though that could be a way of considering it, where motifs are treated successively by each of the percussion instruments or groups of instruments, as well as the orchestra itself.

There were novelties among Currie’s battery of instruments: African hand-drums, and a five-octave marimba, which I had not seen before, and vibraphone. Three other orchestral percussionists participate, their positions prescribed by the composer – in the middle of the orchestra and on either side. The orchestral percussion makes its impact from the very start, as the hand-hit djembe is accompanied by quite stunning timpani and bass drum.

The deliberate visual effect is intended to reflect the shape of the music as attention on soloist Colin Currie moves from right to left and, after reaching the giant tam-tam on the left, begins a return in the other direction with the music generally exploring sounds that sounded distinct from those heard on the up-journey.

It is an extended work and makes huge demands of the entire orchestra, particularly the percussionists. I would be surprised if this performance could be heard as inferior to the premiere performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vänskä. In fact, his agreeing to come to conduct the NZSO in the piece speaks volumes about the orchestra’s international reputation. Obviously, Vänskä would have agreed to conduct this massive programme only in the confident knowledge of the NZSO’s capacities.

While it might be tempting to offer a reserved view about its musical value, I did not share some opinions that it was a bit too long; in spite of the burden of being heard as a virtuosic exercise, there is real music here, of colour, spectacle, huge variety and sustained power; and I was in no hurry for it to end. All of this could hardly have been more vividly, brilliantly brought to life than from the hands of Currie, Vänskä and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

 

Antipodean stargazing and planetwatching from the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents

MUSIC FOR MATARIKI

EVE DE CASTRO-ROBINSON – The Glittering Hosts of Heaven

GUSTAV HOLST – The Planets

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 14th June, 2013

“Matariki” – the “eyes of god”, are said to be the stars belonging to a cluster (known elsewhere as the “Pleiades”) which were formed by the fierce God of the Winds, Tāwhirimātea, who tore his eyes out and threw them into the heavens in anger at the separation of his parents the Earth and Sky.

Somewhat less overtly savage is the account in Greek mythology of the seven daughters of Atlas, the Titan, who were pursued by the hunter, Orion, and saved (presumably from a fate worse than death) by Zeus who placed them in the sky. And, yes, there are seven stars, and in both of the mythologies quoted here, each star is given its own name and character.

Only after the concert did I go looking for these definitions and explanations – and I was both delighted and amazed by how these archetypal depictions and metaphorical interpretations of the particular stars in question seemed to particularly resonate with my memories of Eve de Castro-Robinson’s wonderful “Glittering Hosts” music, which was the first music we heard during the evening.

This work was a new commission by the orchestra, and I thought one that most successfully threw wide open its composer’s particular gifts of evocation, along with an ear for near-inexhaustible detail and an unerring sense of structure. De Castro-Robinson’s arresting story-like rhetorical gestures and vivid instrumental characterizations kept us transfixed, like some sultan of antiquity in thrall to his Scheherazade, as she related tales of wonder and excitement.

I liked how the piece began, not with far-away, nebulous murmurings divorcing us by dint of sheer distance from the firmament and its activities, but with in-the-face insistent, spiky, here-and-now happenings, the deep strings and percussion opening up the vistas only after we ourselves had become caught up with some of the scintillations. So, the vastness of the territory was indeed evoked, but so were its relative immediacies, with three of the seven instrumental soloists, flute, clarinet and trombone, drawing us into their opening interplay as part of the overhead galactic goings-on .

The piece seemed very “layered”, with frequent ostinati delineating patterns of orbital and rotating movement, bursts of shimmering detail evoking both individual and “clustered” stars, and more long-breathed lines (usually from the strings) suggesting the mystery of great distances. Details came and went more by osmosis than chance, leaving resonances in their wake, a cantabile figure from the solo ‘cello taken up by the strings, and a trombone solo sounding part-clarion-call part-lament. And across the larger picture, orchestral percussion gradually added their weight and colour to a kind of processional sequence which generated great warmth and colour, almost Straussian in its impact.

After this, the sounds deepened and darkened once again as though some kind of “event’ had occurred, leaving far-reaching resonances, and the soloists all gingered-up with impulse-gestures, angular figures bouncing between one another and different orchestral groups! The solo ‘cello, high in its register, brought forth a deep, double-bass and timpani response, as the flute “sounded breath” against a solo viola’s romantic inclinations, and the percussion trickled in strands of ambient warmth, taking little notice of the larger concerns of gleaming brass and scintillating winds.

The vastness of physical territory was matched by the piece’s far-flung moods – out of the sounds’ passive objectivity at the beginning gradually evolved what sounded to me like a baleful oppressiveness, challenging the solo violin’s lyrical warmth and generating energies throughout the orchestral textures which rose up in a kind of madness, the laughter chromatic in accent and mocking in tone, a kind of display of awesome power dwarfing any human aspiration. The solo trombone’s flatulent-textured comments gave ready rise to similarly pithy responses from among the other soloists, almost an “enter-the-clowns” scenario, one which both entertained and disturbed with its implications for we earthly mortals.

All of these interactions seemed to me in the overall grip of some wonderful kind of axial trajectory whose volatility of detail and surety of progress seemed to mirror, in a star-crossed way, human affairs on earth. I could fill paragraphs with minute-to-minute impressions of the journey taken by the music, but such an undertaking would be out of the scope (orbit?) of this review. Enough to say that the whole was rounded off by the seven soloists’ adroit dovetailing of their lines and fusing of their ever-waning tones and textures with those of the orchestral winds, into a deep silence at the end.

As homage to the splendour of the night skies, I found De Castro-Robinson’s work compelling and satisfying. While it may never challenge its companion concert piece this evening in the popularity stakes, it’s a work which, I think, will reward repeated hearings, and – what would be best of all to happen – a recording. Certainly it’s a handsome tribute by the composer to her “beloved parents”, one of whom (her father) was able to be present at the performance (I understand, somewhat hair-raisingly, after having his scheduled flight to Wellington cancelled earlier in the day!) – it was obviously “in the stars” that he was able to eventually make it!

Having had our terrestrial selves already somewhat borne aloft by contact with the “glittering hosts” of Matariki, we were more than ready for some closer-to-home interplanetary explorations in the form of Gustav Holst’s well-known seven-movement suite “The Planets”. Despite its great popularity, it’s an elusive piece, terribly difficult to get “right” all the way through, due to its wide-ranging moods and compositional styles over the seven parts, not to mention the sheer virtuoso instrumental demands upon the players. Surveys by commentators of recordings which have been made over the years haven’t turned up a single performance by one conductor and orchestra which is reckoned to have “nailed” the piece through and through – though,of course, the same could be said of many, many works, both on record and in concert.

So, how did Holst’s brilliant series of astrological character-studies come across here, throughout the evening? Generally, I felt that Pietari Inkinen and his players were happiest when the music took them to realms furthest from the heat of the sun (with the exception of Venus, more of which in a moment). In fact the final three movements were, I thought, superbly delivered, not least of all the composer’s own favorite movement, Saturn (the Bringer of Old Age), which was cold and unremitting at the outset, with the music’s growing disquiet built to a terrifying central climax (such scalp-pricking trumpets!), before slowly and inexorably turning the music’s despair to resignation and acceptance. Uranus (the Magician, and a favorite of mine) I thought a riot of colour, energy and scarily-directed impulse (the music should sound, as here, just as dangerous (baleful brass and shrieking winds!) as it does funny (galumphing timpani and wheezy contra-bassoon!).

And the enigmatic Neptune (the Mystic) demonstrated such endless reserves of sustained tonal control from all concerned (including the wordless off-stage choir), that we sat for what seemed almost like an age in eerie silence at the end, lost in our own wonderment at the spell cast by those beautifully-distant voices. Earlier in the suite , the cool, chaste, and determinedly virginal charms of Venus (the Bringer of Peace) were of course as much Holst’s doing as anybody’s – and this performance from Inkinen and his players was no exception, with peerlessly pure horn-playing from Samuel Jacobs and matching tones from the winds, as well as Vesa-Matti Leppanen’s violin and the rest of the strings (apart from a not-quite-true attack on their soft final chord, obviously difficult to achieve).

Interestingly, I found myself talking with an old friend at the concert’s interval (before the Holst work was played) – this was an extremely experienced concert-goer friend who enthusiastically praised Pietari Inkinen’s recent work with the orchestra (much of which he said I was heartily agreeing with!) – he then said something like “…and such elegant music-making! – never a vulgar or ill-conceived sound from the orchestra…”. Again I was able to agree, though as I was about to opinion that with some music, this conductor’s encouragement of elegant, and unfailingly mellifluous orchestral textures didn’t for me take some things in the music far enough, the “resuming-bell” sounded, and that was the end of the discussion.

So as I listened to each of the remaining pieces, I found myself recalling my friend’s words – Mars (the Bringer of War) was first up, with everything expertly played by the band, and including some wonderful individual moments – a big-boned, sonorous euphonium solo, for instance! – but the playing for me, though brilliant, didn’t really disturb or truly alarm. One of Holst’s own books on astrology had the following description of the planet: “Mars is cruel,has blood-red eyes and is prone to anger”. Here, it all seemed not quite brutal- or harsh-sounding enough – while at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, I thought Jupiter (the Bringer of Jollity) lacked real humour and bucolic energy. In a sense, each characterization needed more sheer abandonment, towards ugliness in “Mars” and vulgarity in “Jupiter” – and this is probably the rub!

Finally, Mercury (the Winger Messenger) featured skilled, precisely-timed playing, but was it all mercurial enough? – was this the speed of thought? My own thought processes, perhaps – but then I’m a flat-footed, somewhat pedestrian thinker, lacking in true wit and real spark. There are wings on the feet of visual depictions of Mercury that l’ve encountered, but this performance’s sounds didn’t accord with those images in my head. Alas, Mercury here remained earth-bound!

So, in the fine old tradition of performances of this work, some of the planets on Friday evening shone more brightly than others. Those that really glowed did so most effulgently – and conductor, orchestra and choir can be especially and justly proud of that unforgettable moment at the end of Neptune’s performance when it seemed in the hall that the whole of the Universe had stopped for a few seconds just to listen to the music’s silences…..