Tag: orchestral

Litton and Hough combine with the NZSO to present an exhilarating concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Andrew Litton conducts the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with pianist Stephen Hough

Anthony Ritchie:  Diary of a Madman: Dedication to Shostakovich; Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No 5 in F, Op 103; Shostakovich: Symphony No 5 in D minor, Op 47

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 22 September, 8pm

To label this concert ‘Around the world in 80 minutes’ is to draw a rather long bow: every concert that includes both a New Zealand and a European work could be so called. From Egypt to Russia is not far, and Ritchie’s piece is really from Russia, after all….

But Wellington’s astute concert-goers were not misled: it was an excellent concert both on account of the programme and the performers.

Anthony Ritchie is one of New Zealand’s best and most successful composers; his arrestingly named Diary of a Madman proved a splendid piece, a sort of small-scale ‘concerto for orchestra’; it was originally written for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, to celebrate the centenary of Shostakovich’s birth in 1906. Its name derived from Shostakovich’s admiration for playwright and short story writer Gogol. He had set the story The Nose and the play, The Gamblers, as operas; another Gogol story was called Diary of a Madman, which uses the formula of ‘laughter through tears’, a formula that is very often present in Shostakovich, Ritchie writes.

It employed a large number of Shostakovich’s tunes from a variety of works, many of which would have been familiar to many of the audience, though not all easy to name. So one way to pass the time was to wrack the brains to identify each one; another pastime was to admire the orchestration of which Ritchie is a master, using xylophone or tuba or side drum with flair and wit, each element seeming to reflect something of the character of the theme involved; and also to become increasingly impressed by the organic structural feeling that accompanied its unfolding.

He hardly had to tell us, in the programme notes, that he had put them together in a process of free-association; so an attempt to find logical associations would clearly be nonsense.  It began in comfortable tonal language and didn’t deviate greatly from its idiom as music to divert and entertain.

It deserves to become a staple repertoire piece.

Stephen Hough seems to be the only great pianist who allows us to hear Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos. Years ago he played No 4; now No 5, which the composer wrote in 1896 in Luxor and Cairo, making use of some local tunes and thus acquiring the nick-name Egyptian (unlike some composers, he was not starved of melodic invention however). But the extent of this material is slight and I hear more touches of Spain and even the Balkans in this concerto.

Hough made his early reputation in certain very conspicuously virtuosic works like the Hummel piano concertos, but his playing has always revealed an exquisite poetic quality and a refined taste that the flights of unbelievable spectacle merely seem to enhance in a perfectly modest way.

On Saturday evening, he gave a spectacular demonstration of the way in which he has persuaded millions of the value of certain neglected music, particularly the much scorned Romantic composers of the second class. He has shown that the main impediment has been the belief that the music was meretricious and shallow, a view that sprang from the influence of the post Romantic and atonal schools. But it can all be blown away by a player’s musical integrity and demonstrative sincerity. Each movement has a strong individual character, with constantly changing handling of the ideas, set in delightful sunny visions.

Saint-Saëns never pretends to teutonic profundity; he can never be mistaken for Beethoven or Bruckner, and though some of his music, for example most of his solo piano works, can be called trite, far more of his music than gets played deserves to be well known. There is nothing predictable or formulaic in this concerto; its progress, as it happens, seems inevitable; nowhere more conspicuous than in the middle Andante movement, where a distinctly, perhaps north African, atmosphere appears, but which proceeds in the most unpredictable ways, portentous, then mysterious, sentimental moments alternating with deep sonorities.

The only common link between that and the Shostakovich was the number 5.

This great symphony responded to Andrew Litton’s attention just as powerfully and colourfully as had the two previous works. If one’s attention had been monopolised rather by the piano, it was now easy to be impressed by the smooth beauty of string playing, the sense of unease that was soon created, the touches of sardonic martial music, ethereal touches from the celeste or harp and the surprising entry by the piano.

At the back of one’s mind, as one listens to this symphony, is always the still unresolved question about Shostakovich’s intentions: how much do we rely on Volkov’s account of its bitter anti-Stalinist subtext, that the words attached to the score were merely to save his skin; or is it expressing a more ambivalent picture of Soviet conditions?

Nevertheless, this performance left no room for doubt about the orchestra’s ability to rouse powerful emotional responses to the music itself; it was perhaps the kind of concert that the NZSO ought to present more frequently.

 

 

Orchestral rarities in impressive performances from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Donald Maurice with Inbal Megiddo (cello)

Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man; Barber: Cello Concerto; Ives: Symphony No 2

Church of St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 16 September, 2.30pm

What an ambitious programme for an essentially amateur orchestra! Thinking back a decade or so, it would seem that the orchestra has gained greatly in the average level of skill. This was an astonishing concert.

The polish and confidence were evident at once in the performance of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. It’s nothing that a practised group of bandsmen couldn’t do very well, but the augmented brass section of the WCO did rather more than just play the notes. There was a real feel of muscular workers’ unity in the sonorous brilliance of the playing and strains of the ‘Internationale’ were not far away.

But it was both the other major works that stamped the concert with a mark of bravery and self-confidence.  I’ve never heard the Barber cello concerto live before and as it unfolded I really doubted that I’d heard it at all.

The cello concerto is a world away from the lyrical violin concerto, though not so far as to meet with the commendation of the school of Boulez, Maderna and Stockhausen.

It is a neglected work and I imagine the reason is partly its great difficulty, and partly its somewhat remoteness of tone, and its scarcity of much immediate melodic charm. Yet it was apparently considered by Barber to be one of his most successful scores.

I came across a review of the 1951 performance conducted by Barber with cellist Zara Nelsova which declared:  “Given suitable advocacy it could be a highly popular work and deserves to have a much stronger foothold on the repertoire than it at present enjoys. The work possesses an astonishing freshness, lyricism and a natural charm which grows stronger over the years. There are few modern concertos that have such a marvellous main tune as does the opening of this Concerto, and Barber’s scoring is beautifully transparent and full of colour.”

However, in the following 60 years it has not had many performances.

I must first, however, say how impressed I was to read the programme notes, unusually fluent, literate, well-informed, wide-ranging over much more than merely the mechanics and background to the music. They were by Ben Booker.

If Haydn and Mozart and just about every composer till the 20th century, could write as if the terrible and endless wars that surrounded them did not exist, it became impossible for any art form to ignore war after World War II which may explain the angularity and ‘nightmarish’ (Booker’s word) quality of the opening.

I’ve heard Inbal Megiddo play in several, varied situations, but this was the first time in a concerto; and in a very tough concerto. The writing for the cello might be challenging, but it struck me as lying well, if not very comfortably, for the instrument, much in the middle of the cello’s range, though much quite high too.

The opening reminded me a little of the start of Shostakovich’s first cello concerto, which could only have been coincidental for Barber’s was written earlier. But perhaps it points to a similar view of what constitutes music in the late 20th century. Both eschewed the avant-garde, and the sound that Barber sought seemed to be the essential cello sound.

Most eyes and ears are on the soloist in a concerto, and Megiddo’s playing, powerful and brilliant, kept attention focused where it had to be. Her end-of-first-movement cadenza was a truly professional, virtuosic affair.

A prominent and nicely played oboe signalled the meditative, yet lyrical second movement, which made more conspicuous use of trumpets, horns and trombone – the brass played very well.

The third movement followed the normal course, though any joyousness is very tempered by a certain brutal brilliance as the cello persists with highly detailed decorative passages, all lending an air of frenzy and disturbance rather than an optimistic conclusion.

Though no one could claim the orchestra played immaculately, rehearsals under Donald Maurice had clearly been thorough enough to ensure that there were few conspicuous stumbles and for the orchestra to deliver plenty of rhythmic energy, and generally very good ensemble.

The Ives symphony was also a rarity – all his four symphonies are rarities in live performance, and I don’t recall any by the NZSO. I didn’t know this one. Its opening could have been an immature and eccentric work by Schumann or Bruckner; but such seekings for comparisons are futile. The mind has to be empty of expectations for this music.

It is in five movements. There is no mistaking the Ives trademark quotations from both classics and American folk and gospel music which, to me, still sounds eccentric: I ask myself, Why does Ives feel that this technique makes good music?

Of course there is no compulsion for a turn-of-the-century composer to write in a manner that establishes his place in the chronological sequence, in the middle of the careers of Mahler or Elgar, Debussy or Janacek, Schoenberg or Rachmaninov, Puccini or Strauss, Falla or Ravel, and so on, but in doing that he has risked being considered a permanent iconoclast and loaner, which has been Ives’s fate – but is it a fate?

There were times when the music sounded simply naïve, and not able to be set alongside the composers I’ve mentioned above. But one smiles at the composer’s studied wit nevertheless. Given all that, the performance, handling quite deftly the myriad facets of his music – sentimental, quixotic, droll, long-breathed, bombastic, satiric, imitative of so many kinds of music – was remarkably competent and satisfying,

 

 

Gendall’s Triple Concerto perplexing highlight of Wellington Orchestra concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

‘The Toy Box’

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei

Haydn: Symphony No 60 in C (Il distratto); Triple Concerto by Chris Gendall with the NZ Trio (Justine Cormack – violin, Ashley Brown – cello, Sarah Watkins – piano); Debussy: ballet score – La boîte à joujoux – narrator: Jackie Clarke

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 1 September, 7.30pm

This concert was performed in the Masterton Town Hall on the previous night.

In Wellington, there was a rather smaller audience than in the past, and one can only surmise the reasons;  perhaps, the absence of a thematic link that has been so successful in the past?

Il Distratto
Haydn’s 60th symphony, (Il distratto, or the absent-minded man) was in part a satire on the incompetent composer whose command of form and taste is deficient, which was a not uncommon procedure in the classical era when matters of form were very important.

The spoofs began with the opening Allegro, with the leading motif dying out as if the hero of the story was experiencing memory loss; not once but several times. The second movement involved the juxtaposition of alien tempos. And so it goes till the last movement when bad tuning causes the whole orchestra to stop in chaos and to re-tune laboriously.

My old LP of this symphony, under Vittorio Gui, explains that Haydn actually instructed the violins to tune the G string down a tone at the start of the Finale which creates the foreign harmony of D minor when the two bottom strings play together; it is that which brings about the chaos.

The effect on the night was funny nevertheless as the retuning process is a totally unprofessional procedure; the orchestra played it with a suppressed smile that was audible, staking out the music variously, in a vein that was mock serioso or absurd, and it brought the symphony to a end, promising perhaps that the rest of the concert might carry on in the same high spirits.

Chris Gendall’s premiere
There could have been nothing more different than the next work. My earlier experience of Chris Gendall’s music had led me to considerable curiosity about a work with a title suggesting a move into the Beethovenian heartland of symphonic music. It was not that; and there was no time to make any calm, spiritual preparation for what followed.

The last piece of Gendall’s I heard was Intaglio; it too was played by the NZ Trio, both at a Mulled Wine concert at Paekakariki and at Lower Hutt (I heard both, mainly in order better to grasp Intaglio).

The NZ Trio is a leading advocate of new New Zealand music, especially of the more adventurous kind, and their contribution in this performance was quite as prominent as such a soloist group would ordinarily be. But there was little familiar in the way they interacted or used their instruments.

The relationship between trio and orchestra bore no relationship to any Beethoven-born expectations: no conventional rivalry, but a completely integrated sensation, all contributing in the ways suggested primarily by the possibilities of the instruments themselves.

Gendall was a music graduate of Victoria University and has since completed doctoral studies at Cornell University. He has been celebrated at international festivals and conferences on contemporary music, and he has been a frequent prize winner, starting with the Lilburn composition prize at Victoria University. He was Composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music and is now Composer-in-residence with the Vector Wellington Orchestra which has led to this performance.

You will find four other reviews of his music on this website by using ‘search’.

The Triple Concerto
Some of those reviews, though admiring, suggested a dense and difficult character. That was indeed the case with this concerto, which is probably one of the largest and most ambitious works Gendall has undertaken. I should have made an attempt to hear it in rehearsal; to read the score of such an extraordinarily multifaceted, complex work would have been no help at all (extracts are on the SOUNZ website).

The programme booklet did not have space for notes that appear on the SOUNZ website, recording Gendall’s description of it. It might have helped define beginnings and endings of the five sections of the music, let alone to get the hang of the musical ideas, and their evolution.

Here is the link: Chris Gendall’s Thumbnail Sketch of the Triple Concerto

Perhaps the music’s character will be suggested by a quote from Gendall’s programme notes, that explains the five movements as “traversing a variety of sonic terrain, … to explore the distinction between diffused sounds and those in close proximity in rhythmic, harmonic and physical space”.  The latter was demonstrated, among other things, by disposing a number of brass players around the perimeter of the gallery, hinting fleetingly at Gabrieli-style sounds, but that proved misleading. In the event I felt the opportunity to create some kind of major stereophonic effect was not fully exploited.

If the impact of the sounds, relentlessly produced and making formidable demands on players’ accuracy and skills of all kinds,  left many in the audience bemused or confused, the work nevertheless displayed an accomplishment and aural imagination that would probably gain it attention in international contemporary music circles. For it demonstrates a most impressive command of compositional techniques and command of orchestration that would amaze Berlioz or Rimsky-Korsakov, but which are the material of today’s version of the avant-garde.

But just as the old-fashioned virtuoso aimed to overwhelm his listeners by putting all his skills on show, so in a show-piece of avant-gardism, technical brilliance, the impulse to demonstrate a command of an astonishing array of composerly skills, leaves this listener feeling bewildered, first through the sheer multiplicity of sounds and their transformations, and secondly from an overwhelming sense of the music’s complex intellectual character; which can leave a feeling of dismay and frustration at one’s inability to grasp and hence enjoy the music. Does the music have a heart?  Are there human emotions at work there? Is there a soul? The answer may be, Yes, but there can be a problem if some glimmering of those things cannot be perceived.

Little music of this kind is actually performed in normal orchestral concerts for ordinary music-lovers, however. On the other hand, performance of new music in the exclusive environment of the contemporary music concert or festival is a defeatist response, for the ordinary music lover has not in the past found digestible material there, and they stay away.  One fruitful solution can be a ten minute exploration of some of the key elements of a new piece in the concert itself, before the piece is played.

One can say, as many listeners do, that composers would do themselves and their potential audiences a favour by refraining from employing all the extremely advanced notions, concepts and techniques they might command, for the sake of engaging with their listeners.

La boîte à joujoux
Debussy’s La boîte à joujoux is one of his least known extended pieces. I’d not heard it before. Though written in 1913 while Debussy was alive, it was not produced as a ballet till 1919, when he was dead, at the Théâtre lyrique du vaudeville in Paris.

It was written for his own daughter, nicknamed Chouchou (c.f. Joujoux), based on a scenario by painter André Hellé, but left in 1913 as a piano four-hands score, with only 93 measures orchestrated. The orchestration was completed by composer/conductor André Caplet, after its first performance as a ballet was delayed by the war.  This performance, without dancers, needed a means of telling the story and Dave Armstrong adapted a spoken narrative drawn from a scenario (was it the original by Hellé or something prepared later for a possible concert performance such as this one?).

But even though delivered vividly by actress Jackie Clarke, in a manner that was charming and entertaining (though her voice was often overwhelmed by passages of orchestral tutti), it didn’t really change it from a rather childish confection.

The music itself was rather slight, though tuneful and pleasant, especially that for the Pretty Doll, but it’s clearly not a neglected masterpiece which explains, I suppose, why it has not become familiar, and has not even inspired the extraction of a suite.

However, Marc Taddei had inspired the orchestra to play as if it was a delightful, undervalued treasure; what more can you ask?

So here was a programme that had some hurdles to clear, some of which were just a little too high to achieve a uniformly polished, flawless concert. Nevertheless, though this was not an unmixed triumph in terms of the box office and audience response, its exotic and eclectic character made its impact, and reflecting on it over the next two days was to recall it all with increasing satisfaction, and certainly a sense of discovery.

 

NZSM Orchestra cover themsleves with glory in Debussy and Mahler

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune;  Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra (andante-allegro; lento e molto  espressivo; allegro molto)
Mahler:   Symphony no. 1 in D major (Introduction and allegro comodo; scherzo; à la pompes funèbres; molto appassionato)

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra, Kenneth Young (conductor); Jian Liu  (piano)

Wellington Town Hall

Wednesday, 22 August 2012 at 7.30pm,

It was a pity that a larger audience was not present to hear this brilliant and satisfying concert.  Aside from quite a number of guest players, especially for the Mahler symphony, the orchestra was made up of students (plus a few staff) of the New Zealand School of Music.  The use of the Town Hall was sponsored by the Wellington City Council, i.e. it was free – a splendid gesture, to encourage music-making by young people.

The first impression was of the beautifully designed flier and programme, reproducing art from the Viennese Secession, notably Gustav Klimt (though not acknowledged); art from the time and place of Mahler.  However, I’m not so keen on the fashion for printing white on black – it’s harder to read, especially in the subdued lighting of a concert hall.  Programme notes by Kenneth Young were excellent, describing music in a way that gives the audience a little background, and then points to listen for, rather than exhibiting erudition.

It being Debussy’s 150th birthday, the choice of the first two works was apt – and they were broadcast on Radio New Zealand Concert (though for some reason not the equally apt Mahler) for its special day for Debussy, the theme of which was ‘La Belle Epoch’.  They must have been exciting times, the late 19th century and early 20th century – the art, literature and music were all forging new pathways.

The evocative opening of the first work by a single flute was magical.  The NZSM orchestra is well supplied with players of this instrument and also of the next to enter – the harps.  How many orchestras can boast four harpists?  Horns were next to introduce this delectable work, which I have not heard live for a very long time.  The wonderful, dreamy textures were played with great attention to dynamics.  The whole three works would have been challenging and worthwhile for students to play, since there are so many solo passages.  The pizzicato ending finished off a wonderful performance.  The first flute, Andreea Junc, received a special acknowledgement.

The second Debussy work was not a familiar one, but replete with the distinctive sounds of the composer’s unique writing.  Liquid sounds emanated from the piano; rich ones from the orchestra.  Here, there was full brass, whereas Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune used only horns.  Despite the strength of this section, balance was good throughout the work; the brass came into its own with vigour at the end of the first movement, especially the trumpets.

The calm and dreamy second movement owed some of its character to the use of mutes on the strings.  Tutti passages were quite romantic, and a prominent oboe part gave piquancy.  Jian Liu’s style on the piano was exactly right.  The allegro third movement introduced rumbustiousness in places., though in the main the music was lilting and dance-like,  Contrasts were ethereal, even ecstatic.  The piano for most of  the time was part of the texture of the music, not having concerto-style solo passages or distinctive themes.  But it was always played with beautiful tone – never louder than lovely.  The work ended with a rousing flourish.

A big orchestra assembled for the Mahler, and the leadership changed from Kate Oswin to Arna Morton. Mahler rarely uses the whole orchestra in tutti, but varies the textures superbly.  The symphony’s spine-tingling opening dawn with its sustained eight-octave note from all the instruments, followed by the birds awakening and the sun rising through the light mist, against off-stage trumpet calls was very effective.  The main melody that emerges from the Introduction is a typical Mahler melody, from his Songs of a Wayfarer cycle, blissful in mood.  This jubilant theme involves the entire orchestra.  All the delightful little solo interjections were in place; the lower strings were nuanced beautifully in their miniature phrases, below the sustained notes from a few second violins.  Bird calls abounded, and then horn-calls seemed to announce a hunt, while the cellos played another folksong; with a crash, we’re into the lively ending section of the movement, with its frenetic jollity.

The Scherzo appears to be a high spirited dance, but perhaps it has a macabre sub-text, despite some beautiful melodies in its middle section, which featured fine playing, especially from the woodwind section, notably cor anglais.   There was excellent playing from percussion, too – and tuba.

The funeral march based on a slow and minor key setting of the well-known French song ‘Frère Jacques’ begins as a double bass solo (for which the section leader, Louis van der Mespel received his own acknowledgement at the end), bizarre and gloomy, unlike anything else in ‘serious’ music.  On my record cover (yes, LP) David Hall says “the juxtaposition (as in the early T.S. Eliot poems) of the magically ideal with the crassly vulgar”.

After the double bass, the bassoon joins in, then the cellos, then tuba, creating a spooky gradual build-up, with gong and timpani (two sets) under-girding the whole  most effectively.   Oboes play their other-worldly theme against pizzicato strings; a gorgeous tapestry is created, accompanied by muted first violins, assisted by flutes.

The grotesque march dies away gently, which makes the noisy opening of the last movement all the more shocking.  Two sets of trumpets can make a lot of noise.  Outsize bangers for the bass drum and considerable use of the  gong all add to the shattering effect.  But there is wonderful melody, too, that flows out from the first violins against repeated pizzicato on cellos; trombones provided brilliant back-up. The moving effect is of reconciliation, exaltation, redemption.  There are hints of ‘Frère Jacques’ in the cello part, before a big climax from the brass.

Themes from the first movement return.  Lovely phrasing of a superbly played yearning, romantic melody featured dynamics to match.  There was real bite in the violas interruption of this soporific melody.  The exciting outburst at the end, in which the seven horns stood to play, was magnificent.  This orchestra and its conductor covered themselves with glory, and did Mahler’s great first symphony proud. Colour, rhythm, irony, beauty – they were all there, enhanced by Mahler’s singular orchestration. The use of the Town Hall added immeasurably to the quality of the performance.

 

Dancing in the Cathedral – Mozart and Bruckner from Simone Young and the NZSO

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Cathedrals of Sound – New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

MOZART – Symphony No.36 in C Major K.425 “Linz”

BRUCKNER – Symphony No.5 in B-flat

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Simone Young (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 17th August, 2012

“A Bruckner Symphony is never just another concert” declared conductor Simone Young, interviewed a few days before her scheduled pair of performances of the Austrian composer’s Fifth Symphony, in Wellington and in Auckland. Not only did she mean that, more especially in this Southern Pacific area of the globe, performances of these symphonies are fewer and further between than in some other parts of the world. It was also an affirmation by a musician who’s already a great interpreter of these works, of their special character, part of which incorporates the power within the music to transform a normal concert experience into something uniquely special and truly memorable. And those qualities were precisely what we got from Bruckner, Simone Young and the NZSO  in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre on Friday night.

For a number of reasons the appearance of Australian-born Young excited considerable interest – women conductors of orchestras are still very much the exception rather than the norm (though we’ve come some distance, I think, from the once-prevailing attitude voiced by former NZSO conductor-in-chief Franz-Paul Decker, who was once famously quoted as finding women conductors “aesthetically unpleasing”!). Young is, moreover, perhaps the most highly-regarded woman conductor in Europe, with a particularly high profile in Germany, working as she does out of the Hamburg State Opera, and as music Director of the Hamburg Philharmonic.

She’s something of a controversial figure as well, having been “at odds” with a former employer, Australian Opera, over her budgeting demands during her tenure as the company’s artistic director, resulting in her contract not being renewed after only a couple of seasons. As it turned out Australia’s loss was Europe’s gain, as her dual appointments in Hamburg followed soon after – musical director of both the city’s opera and the Philharmonic Orchestra, posts she took up in 2005. Her native country had, by then moved to make some amends for her peremptory dismissal from the Opera, appointing her a Member of the Order of Australia in 2004.

2012 is an important year for her – besides having made her debut with the NZSO, she is bringing to Brisbane the Hamburg Opera and Ballet and the Philharmonic, performing a concert version of Das Rheingold (she is a seasoned Wagnerian with several Ring Cycles to her credit, including a complete recording) and the Mahler “Resurrection” Symphony. New Zealanders who might feel aggrieved that the “Hamburg Invasion” doesn’t include these shores might consider that neither does the venture include Sydney or Melbourne, Queensland wanting “exclusive rights” to the venture – now, why does that have a familiar ring?

With all of these things in mind, expectations were pirouetting on points among the audience awaiting the conductor’s entry to begin the Wellington concert. Diminutive, but authoritative, Young took the podium, and, dispensing with a baton, launched into the concert’s first offering, the Mozart “Linz” Symphony K.425.  Of course, the geographic links with Bruckner (Linz was the latter’s birth-place) made the choice a happy and appropriate one, though there were other possibilities of programming – one being the Fifth Symphony of yet another Austrian composer, Schubert, whom Bruckner is often linked with regarding his symphonic method. I would have been as happy with either.

Thanks to my formative listening experience with the Mozart “Linz” symphony I can’t, even after all these years, get Bruno Walter’s voice on his famous rehearsal recording of this work, out of my head through that opening – “Bahnn – off! Ba-bahnn – off! Ba-bahnn – off! ….” and so on (Walter’s orchestra was having trouble with the note values!). There seemed no such problem, here, the sounds focused, crisp and precise, yet with a warmth (no didactic vibrato-less “authentic” strictures, thank goodness!) and, indeed a glow about the textures throughout the slow introduction, which informed the lovely easeful beginning to the allegro, and made a wonderful contrast with the more bumptious and high-spirited energies to follow.

It was Mozart-playing that reminded me at times of Benjamin Britten’s recordings of some of the symphonies – the same marriage of lyricism and strength, informed by an attention to detail which enriches the music’s context rather than distracts from the flow. Young conducted, it seemed, with every fibre of her being, her fingertips expressing and conveying a kind of whole-body energy which mirrored what the music was doing (as she did later in the evening with the Bruckner), her feet dancing and her knees launching the rest of her body upwards to characterize the “lift” required by the music’s rhythms.

The orchestral playing, though not without some brass “blurps” at two or three cardinal points throughout the slow movement (the players settling in more as the work progressed), produced sounds that seemed an expression of Young’s will, the strings and winds getting a lovely colour, either when “playing out” or with the more softly-lit sequences in the movement’s middle section. As for the bright, vigorous, but still elegant Minuet, Young literally led the opening dance to the audience’s delight, and then got beautifully contrasted characterizations from the winds in the Trio.

The finale again married grace and strength, the players’ articulation clear and crisp at speed, even if Young’s direction slightly “squeezed” the rhythm of the concluding downward arpeggiated figure each time, as if stressing the music’s urgency. Throughout, we enjoyed the prominence accorded the timpani, Laurence Reece encouraged to make the notes tell with just the right amount of emphasis, enhancing both the work’s texture and rhythmic character.

Back from an interval – during which it seemed the conductor’s red shoes (prominent during all those dance steps) were discussed as enthusiastically as her music-making – we settled down to behold the splendors of the Bruckner Symphony. And what splendors they were, in Young’s hands (aided by a baton for this music – doubtless due to a bigger orchestra and music with some rhythmic complexity). The rapt opening of the work recalled Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko’s way with the opening of the “Leningrad” Symphony, almost exactly a year ago in this same hall with the same players – utter concentration upon sounds whose genesis here seemed deeply elemental, like a giant slumberer’s distantly-wrought heartbeat, with those deep pizzicato notes beautifully and sensitively coloured by the upper strings’ arc-lines. What a beginning to a symphony!

During the “Listener” interview previously quoted Young stated that she thought an older school of conductors’ way with Bruckner’s music had contributed to public perception of the works being “overlong”, and that she saw the symphonies as being more direct, theatrical and emotional than they were often played. So, here, the massive brass statements which answered the quiet opening were given with plenty of declamatory force, the playing nicely poised amid pauses for the utmost effect (a magnificent brass response, here, from the orchestra) – and the allegro which followed was swiftly and urgently propelled. Young handled the transitions throughout the numerous changes of tempo in the first movement with the utmost flexibility, moulding the ends of episodes into the silences with beautifully-judged luftpauses. She also seemed ever-ready to allow the music to dance, so that the monumental, cathedral-like aspect of the work was less dominant than is usually the case.

Such was the concentration and energy of the music-making from all concerned that each of the first three movements seemed to be taken on the wing of a single breath. The sometimes problematic opening to the Adagio, with its awkward three-against-two rhythms, here flowed as mellifluously as could be, the music’s innate restlessness perfectly expressed, and the oboe solo’s emotional outpouring simple and direct. The strings’ luscious second-subject theme grew lovely, upward-reaching tendrils of sound, then joined with the brass unforgettably in a snowcapped climactic moment that filled the ensuing silence with magic. And towards the end, with the brass golden and confident, the sound-surges evoked by Young and her players created out of the spaces around us whole mountains and valleys into which the tapestried ambiences etched lonely impulses of wind tones and softly-thrummed silences.

After this came the scherzo, with its outlandish stop-go aspect, and rhythmic sequences alternating between demonic energy and heavy-footed rustic bonhomie, Young and the players (especially the brass) revelling in the quick-fire alternations. If not all of the brass detailing was entirely accurate, what was far more important was capturing the music’s quirkiness and volatility, the textures here in constant and spontaneous effervescence, in places laughter “holding both its sides”, while in others, such as throughout the trio, rustic charm prevailed, the detailing from winds and brass again treasurable (a lovely gurgling upward arpeggio from the clarinet at one point, and beautiful chording from the horns towards the end).

The opening of the finale (a similar hush to that of the symphony’s beginning) was almost spoilt by unfortunate audience coughing – as, earlier in the evening, a flurry of late audience arrivals had interrupted the Mozart Symphony’s slow movement. Fortunately the clarinet’s perky octave jumps (a precursor of the fugue to come) seemed to refocus the attention of the coughers, so that we could all concentrate on the Beethoven-like reintroduction of themes from the symphony’s earlier movements, prior to the fugue’s hugely dramatic first entry-proper. In Young’s hands, as she promised, the music was more lithe and muscular than leviathan-like, making for engaging, closely-worked arguments between voices, and advancing the music’s progress towards a promised climax or sense of fruition.

That came, of course, with those mighty closing brass chorales, which capped off the mountain ranges of music running like a spinal cord through the structures. My first reaction there was to crave a more overtly “grand” manner than Young was directing – she drove the orchestra straight into those mighty statements while keeping the music’s underlying pulse beating, risking a “more of the same” feeling rather than creating an overwhelming sense of arrival and resolution. But what her approach did do was, in the long run, elevate the status of the whole of the finale to that of a truly cosmic dance, the rhythmic drive working hand-in-glove with the “cathedrals of sound” – so that, in the midst of these mighty structures right at the end, we still felt like dancing with the music.

So – it was music-making of one’s dreams from orchestra and conductor, suitably acclaimed by a delighted audience at the end – how long will it be before we can invite Simone Young back again to make more music?

 

 

 

 

Young musicians’ mid-winter warm-up with Mozart and Rachmaninov

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra Winter Concert

RACHMANINOV – Symphony No.3 in A MInor Op.44

MOZART – Requiem (arr. Maunder)

Amelia Ryman (soprano) / Alison Hodge (contralto)

Cameron Barclay (tenor) / Matthew Landreth (bass)

Wellington Youth Choir (Katie Macfarlane – Music Director)

Wellington Youth Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall,

Sunday 12th August, 2012

Aside from the circumstance of this being the THIRD Mozart Requiem performance offered the Wellington concert-going public this year so far (after all, it’s only August!), I thought the program of this concert by its own lights adventurous and challenging. And, regarding the combination of Mozart and Rachmaninov, a well-known French saying – “Vive la différence” can easily put it in an acceptable context.

Looking at things more closely than mere concert listings, one then discovers that, unlike with the first Mozart Requiem performance of the year by the Bach Choir of Wellington, this latest performance did feature an orchestra, and not merely an organ accompaniment. And unlike both of the previous performances (the second one being by the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the Vector Wellington Orchestra), the recent one explored some different musical territories, using an edition prepared in 1986 by the scholar Richard Maunder, which largely dispensed with the attempts of Mozart’s pupil, Franz Süssmayr, to finish the work, uncompleted at the composer’s death.

Maunder’s version, completed in 1986, retains some of Süssmayr’s completions of Mozart’s sketches, but abandons what he feels are the non-Mozart parts, such as the Sanctus and Benedictus. Maunder does retain the Agnus Dei, feeling that the influence of Mozart did guide Süssmayr here more directly. But he recasts the work’s two final movements differently – Lux Aeterna and Cum Sanctis – drawing from material earlier in the Requiem. 

Like others before and since, Maunder considered Süssmayr’s work generally unworthy of Mozart’s, though many music-lovers down the years have had far more cause to thank than revile the unfortunate “johnny-on-the-spot”, given the sheer impossibility of his task. Poor Süssmayr wasn’t exactly a favourite of Mozart’s, either, the composer, in a letter to his wife Constanze, referring to his erstwhile pupil as a “blockhead”, and likening his native intelligence to that of “a duck in a thunderstorm” – but then Mozart was often almost pathologically unkind towards people he considered his inferiors.

From the singers’ point of view (as well as from that of this audience member), the dropping of both the Sanctus and Benedictus might well seem unfortunate, irrespective of considerations of greater “authenticity”. Still, both the on-going conjecture and the various attempts to render the work nearer to what the composer might have “wanted” have kept the music well away from any kind of museum mothballing. In essence, it’s very much a “living classic”, and likely to remain that way, considering that some of the work’s secrets can never be actually told – merely guessed at.

As regards the actual concert, I’ve run ahead of things, here, as the evening began with music from quite a different world. This was the Rachmaninov Third Symphony, a stern test, I would have thought, for a youth orchestra to tackle. Rachmaninov wrote this work late in his composing career, and filled its pages with contrasting and conflicting impulses and emotions. In places, the sounds and themes nostalgically evoke the Imperial Russia of the composer’s boyhood, of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, particularly the latter composer – Rachmaninov shared some of his older compatriot’s fondness for quasi-oriental themes and orchestral colorings. In other places the music snaps at the heels of contemporary trends, with enough rhythmic and timbral “bite” to suggest Bartok, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

There are the familiar Rachmaninov trademarks, among them the well-known plainchant “Dies Irae” theme, which pulsates like an electric current through much of the composer’s music (contributing not a little to its deep, prevailing melancholy, and undoubtedly influencing Stravinsky’s famous description of his compatriot as “six feet of Russian gloom”), the brilliance of the orchestration, and the heartfelt beauty of the themes, so candidly and unashamedly expressive. It seems incredible when listening to this work to imagine anybody writing of its effect – “a chewing-over of something that had little importance to start with….” which is what one New York critic wrote after the premiere in 1936. Another, a tad more sympathetically, wrote “Rachmaninov builds palaces with his music in which nobody wants to live any more…”.

Fortunately for those of us in the audience at this concert, conductor Hamish McKeich and his young players (their numbers judiciously augmented by a handful of NZSO members, probably some of the students’ tutors) seemed to pay no heed to such agenda-driven comments, and instead plunged into and appeared to revel in what the music had to offer – a whole-hearted, sharply-etched lyricism, expressed through a brilliant and wide-ranging orchestral palette. Both conductor and orchestra leader Arna Morton seemed to me inspirational by dint of gesture and physical involvement with the music, each readily able to delineate the work’s every mood and movement and show the rest of the players the way.

Arna Morton’s solo playing was nicely turned, as were some of the many wind solos throughout the work – the horn solo at the slow movement’s beginning actually sounded rather “Russian” with an engaging “fruitiness” of tone. Then first the flute and afterwards clarinet (from where I was sitting I couldn’t actually see the soloists) made a lovely job of the third movement’s solo lines leading to the whiplash conclusion of the symphony; while, of the other instruments, Dorothy Raphael’s timpani made something resplendent of the brief but impactful crescendo at the climax of the central movement’s scherzando section.

The richly lyrical moments were what this orchestra did best – the opening soulful “motto” theme, and the movement’s luscious tunes, the second movement’s richly and exotically-wrought archways, and the finale’s dying fall, the melodies and their inspiration spent. In these this orchestra gave its all, bringing a natural, youthful ardor to the shape and intensity of those yearning lines. And the  ceremonial episodes, such as the finale’s opening, had great exuberance, a similar sense of “playing-out” and letting things “sound”. Somewhat predictably, the players found the many treacherous “scherzando” passages in the work difficult, fraught with syncopations and difficult rhythmic dovetailings, as though the bar-lines were booby-trapped and waiting to pounce. To their credit, conductor and players kept going through the squalls, celebrating the triumphs and thrills along the way as readily as coping with the spills – at the end of the day the performance’s overall effect did enough of the work justice for conductor and orchestra to be pleased with its achievement.

Orchestrally, the Mozart was more uniformly impressive, perhaps even too much so in relation to the choir and soloists, whose relative backward placement seemed to put them at a dynamic disadvantage. Of the soloists, soprano Amelia Ryman shone brightly, her lines clear and silvery and always a delight. The others lacked her projection, and sometimes had to force their tone to be heard, stationed as they were just at the foot of the choir. It’s always seemed to me that composers intended soloists’ voices to stand out, rather than be given a “solo voice from the choir” kind of balance; and here for most of the time alto, tenor and bass needed all the help they could get, not necessarily an enthusiastic student orchestra anxious to demonstrate what they could do, to accompany them.

Throughout, both the general playing and detailing of individual instrumental lines from the orchestra was of a high standard – a sonorous trombone solo at “Tuba mirum”, majestic strings at “Rex Tremendae”, and secure brass and strings throughout the final “Cum Sanctis” fugue. The choir sang truly, beautifully and accurately, even if there were times when those voices didn’t manage to get across the weight of tone required to properly dominate the sound-picture, such as in the aforementioned fugue. To fill a Town Hall with sound, after all, takes some doing. I would have actually like the soloists closer, so that I could have more readily enjoyed Amelia Ryman’s singing, and got a better sense of the voices of the other three. For each of them, mellifluous moments of singing alternated with sequences where they seemed to struggle to be heard against the orchestra. Tenor Cameron Barclay made the most consistent impression, though his voice seemed not to have quite the same command and attack that was evident when he sang in the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, earlier in the year.

Still, very great credit is due to these young singers and players for what they achieved, and to their “guiding hand” on the night, conductor Hamish McKeich, who was able to bring the different elements together and preside over their fruitful interaction. The efforts he and others inspired made for an enjoyable and heartening evening’s concert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO plays benefit concert for Anna van der Zee and her family

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Players of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich with Samuel Jacobs – French horn

Overture: The Magic Flute (Mozart); Horn Concerto No 4 in E flat (Mozart); Symphony No 5 in C minor (Beethoven)

Church of Saint Mary of the Angels

Saturday 14 July, 7.30pm

This benefit concert was presented to give a little help to Anna van der Zee, a first violinist in the NZSO, and her family (Christiaan, a violist, and their daughter) who had lost everything, including musical instruments, in a house fire two weeks before. It was hosted by the church, as explained by the parish priest, Father Barry Scannell, because of Anna’s contribution to the performance of live music there.

Anna has been much heard in chamber music concerts and as soloist with the Wellington Chamber Orchestra over recent years; both she and Christiaan played in the Tasman String Quartet.

The concert itself was introduced by principal cellist Andrew Joyce who described the immediate response by Anna’s colleagues to the tragedy, suggesting a benefit concert. The news had clearly moved large numbers of people and by 7.20 there were no seats left in the church and people were directed to the choir gallery above the west door; and scores stood along the side aisles.

Around sixty NZSO players were able to participate, including the recently appointed principal horn player, Samuel Jacobs, who took the spectacular solo part in Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto in E flat.

Nothing less than the greatest music would do to mark the occasion.
The concert began with the Overture to The Magic Flute, and ended with a triumphant performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Fine touring youth orchestra from California victim of certain difficulties

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Ravel: La Valse
Copland: Clarinet Concerto
Billy the Kid Ballet Suite
Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier Suite

California Youth Symphony conducted by Leo Eylar, with Jeffrey Liu (clarinet)

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

There were a number of unfortunate features to this concert: it was not well advertised, and I suspect that thus, the audience was mainly made up of members of the Cathedral congregation, and parents and supporters travelling with the orchestra.

Secondly, the leaflet about the Cathedral’s Winter Festival of Music gave the starting time as 7.30pm.  When I got there at 7.20pm the concert had already started; in fact the Ravel item had finished.  It began at 7pm.  Yet most of the audience was already in place, which confirmed to me that they were mainly people ‘in the know’.  The Cathedral was less than half-full.

Finally, there is the difficulty with the Cathedral’s acoustics (once described by a Wellington singer as ‘bathroom acoustics’!)   The sound was surprisingly good in softer passages, but once this large orchestra hit forte, let alone double-forte, the noise was almost deafening, with no definition of sound; the various parts of the orchestra could seldom be heard distinctly.

While a chamber orchestra, particularly if playing baroque music, can be heard tolerably well here, it is no place for a very large orchestra, especially if they have little time to adjust to the acoustic.

It was generous of the orchestra to donate proceeds of the concert to the Christchurch Earthquake Relief Fund; they know about earthquakes in California.  This was an orchestra of 111 players; surprisingly, over three-quarters of the members were of Chinese or Korean ethnicity.

Given the date, it was understandable that Copland featured twice on the programme.  The clarinet concerto is a very effective work, with many virtuoso passages for the soloist, who was an outstanding performer.  The reverberation was a bit of a problem in fast solo passages, but otherwise was not as much of a concern as had I expected.  The orchestra sounded very fine, and lush in places.  The piano is used quite extensively, and, as part of the orchestra, spoke clearly enough (which is not the case with solo piano in this building).

The music was jazzy in places; it was an absorbing and enjoyable work, given an accomplished performance, especially by the soloist.

The conductor spoke to the audience in the interval about Aaron Copland (1900-1990), but much of it was inaudible, except perhaps to the people in the front few rows.

The story of the Copland ballet follows the life of the infamous outlaw Billy the Kid. The suite takes music of the ballet.  It begins by depicting pioneers trekking westward. The action shifts to a small frontier town, where young Billy and his mother are present. Billy’s mother is killed by an outlaw; Billy kills the murderer, and goes on the run.

The scene then shifts to Billy living as an outlaw in the desert. He is captured (the gun battle is featured in the music by percussion effects) and taken to jail, but manages to escape after stealing a gun from the warden during a game of cards. Returning to his hideout, Billy thinks he is safe, but eventually he is caught and killed. The music ends with the opening prairie theme, with pioneers once again travelling west.

The playing was always exciting, especially that of the brass section, but they particularly were rather mangled by the acoustic, especially when joined by the percussion; the timpani reverberated on the floor and from the pillars to an excessive degree. The strings gave a marvellously smooth and projected timbre.

The Strauss work (one played far too frequently on RNZ Concert) acquired very little precision, and became a jumble – not the players’ fault.  Wind solos got lost.  Nevertheless, when one could hear them separately, all the sections played well.  As far as I could tell, they were accurate, and phrased well.

At times it became an endurance test in the loud passages.  The famous waltz fared better, being for strings alone, with a modicum only of brass and woodwind in places.  The violin solo for the concertmaster was very fine.  However, the final iteration of the waltz came over as far too loud.

As an encore, the orchestra let it rip with Sousa’s famous march Stars and Stripes for Ever.

This is a splendid orchestra, but it needs to be heard in the acoustics of a normal concert hall to be fully enjoyed.

(Details on Billy the Kid from Wikipedia).

 

 

Triple the pleasure and more at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Orchestra presents:

BEETHOVEN – Triple Concerto, for violin, ‘cello, piano and orchestra Op.56

KENNETH YOUNG – Douce Tristesse

HINDEMITH – Trauermusik for viola and string orchestra

BIZET – L’Arlesienne (Suite No.2)

with Vesa-Matti Leppänen (violin), Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Diedre Irons (piano) and Julia Joyce (viola)

Wellington Chamber Orchestra (leader: Liz Pritchett)

Conducted by Peter van Drimmelen

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

Sunday, 1st July, 2012

Some people know how to celebrate in style, and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, by way of marking their fortieth year of giving concerts certainly popped a goodly number of musical champagne corks on this truly heartwarming occasion.

Even before conductor Peter van Drimmelen made his delightfully tangental entrance (from the side door of the church) to ascend the podium and begin the concert, there was a sense of something slightly “charged” hovering about the auditorium and amongst the audience – a buzz of excitement and expectation, undoubtedly in view of the programme and the starry line-up of musicians brought together to play some of it with the orchestra.

I was surprised at the number of concerts the conductor told us he had taken with the orchestra over the years, as it was the first occasion on which I had seen him conduct. He told us about his first concert with the orchestra, during which he played Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K.364, with his wife as the other soloist, and then, surprisingly, after a few other brief reminiscences announced his intention to make the present concert his final one with the ensemble.

So, for a couple of good reasons the concert was something of a milestone event – interestingly, though the programme proclaimed on the cover “WCO in 2012: celebrating 40 years”, nothing was made of this during the actual course of the afternoon. Perhaps the first and/or last concerts of such an anniversary year are the most appropriate occasions to mark such anniversaries, though reminders in between times (such as on the front of the programme) help keep up a sense of something special.

Thus it was that, in truly festive style, the concert began with a kind of birthday present for the orchestra, a work commissioned by Peter van Drimmelen from one of the country’s finest contemporary composers, Kenneth Young. Himself a fine conductor (occasionally of this orchestra, along with a number of others), Young has produced a number of brilliant and energetic orchestral works over the years. For this commission, however, he came up with a beautifully and lyrically-wrought piece, called Douce Tristesse (Sweet Sadness).

The composer’s brief note about his work suggested the piece was something of a valediction – his words “…..like looking at a familiar and fond vista for the last time….” reflected the music’s intense beauty and nostalgic longing, wrought by his adroit use of orchestral colour and texture. I would think that the players loved performing this work as it gave so many of them significant things to do, the wind players particularly in evidence throughout.

The whole orchestra responded to Peter van Drimmelen’s direction with, I thought, considerable sensitivity, the strings especially giving us some lovely soft playing in places. In fact the string-writing had a lovely “wind-blown” ambience during these moments, contrasting appropriately with more juicy lyrical moments such as their exchanges with the harp – the latter instrument was heard also in tandem with winds to beguiling effect.

I couldn’t see the player responsible for the firmly-toned horn solo (a forest of music-stands obscured a whole row of brass-playing faces!), but I could clearly appreciate the work of the orchestral leader, Liz Pritchett, with her solos, which incorporated a sweetly-floated harmonic at one stage of the piece, a lovely effect, as well as her delivering of the piece’s final few notes. At the music’s end, the composer was called to the front to acknowledge some well-earned applause for an attractive orchestral evocation.

The delicacy of Young’s sound-world was thrown into abrupt relief by the opening strains of Bizet’s second L’Arlesienne Suite, with its grandly processional-like opening, weighty and brassy, giving way to some wind interludes featuring the strains of a saxophone, to my delight. Later, the wind playing brought out all the folkish strains of the writing with great gusto.

Saxophone and clarinet gave the second movement an attractive rustic melancholy, while the flute-playing in the following Minuet, was outstanding, first in tandem with the harp and saxophone variously, and then in a beautiful concluding solo, which rightly earned the player the conductor’s and the audience’s special acknowledgement.

The concluding Farandole, taken at a terrific lick once the return of the opening march-tune had done its thing, brought out incredibly exciting playing, one of the players I spoke with afterwards confessing that the orchestra had never done it “that fast” in rehearsal!  There was great work from all concerned, with the percussion having a riotous time towards the end, and the counterpointed tunes roaring out uninhibitedly – I couldn’t help thinking that that devoted Francophile Sir Thomas Beecham would have heartily approved!

It was a concert of contrasts, with these heady festivities followed immediately afterwards by Paul Hindemith’s Trauermusic for solo viola and strings. There was actually a welcome luftpause after the Bizet while players not involved with the Hindemith got themselves off the stage, and a space for the viola soloist was configured. This was Julia Joyce, principal violist of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, a striking platform presence as well as a fine player, transfixing listeners’ ears with tones of intense focus and infinite nuance over the space of her first few notes, following a brief orchestra introduction.

Hindemith wrote the music while visiting London to play the British premiere of his Viola Concerto – after hearing of the death of King George V the composer produced within a day the Trauermusik, a piece for viola and string orchestra, and played this instead of his concerto at the concert. As well as quoting fragments of his own Mathis der Maler Symphony and the temporarily discarded concerto, Hindemith incorporated into the work the melody from a Bach chorale “Here I stand before Thy throne”, which was better-known in England as “The Old 100th”.

Julia Joyce took us unerringly into the work’s intensely lyrical sound-world (at the outset, to my ears not unlike that created by English composers – Tippett, for example, in places in his “Corelli” Fantasia”), moving from the first part’s sorrowing sounds into a brief folkish dance-like interlude, before plunging with the orchestra into another intense, more tightly-wrought, vigorous section, solo instrument and ensemble exchanging strongly-figured lines. These descended into silence, from which grew the chorale, Joyce’s heartfelt viola declamations speaking as an individual soul reaching out towards a kind of ambiently murmuring peace – well-controlled by all, and very moving.

So, onto the Beethoven Triple Concerto, with three more star soloists, two more section leaders (one actually the concertmaster) from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, plus one of New Zealand’s finest pianists. I had heard violinist Vesa Matti Leppänen and ‘cellist Andrew Joyce play together in a concerto during last year’s Brahms Festival, when they played the Double Concerto; and of course our third soloist Diedre Irons had, during the same concert series, given us the titanic B-flat Piano Concerto. With these full-scale, no-holds-barred traversals by the same musicians in mind, I was eagerly awaiting their combination in the Beethoven.

As was often the case in a classical concerto the orchestra set the scene, the playing here bright-toned, lively and spare, the light textures allowing some nice detailing  through, with noticeable ebb and flow, though the violins had an uncharacteristically scrappy moment just before the ‘cello’s first entry. What delight there was here in the discourse, firstly between the stringed instruments, and then including the piano, the orchestra all the while “playing to them” and stimulating even wider discoursings on the part of the three soloists.

From the very first ‘cello entry I loved the solo instruments’ different interactive voicings, with hardly a note, it seemed, taken for granted. Given the lead by the composer in most of the instrumental exchanges Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello set the tone, his eloquent phrasing by turns forthright and yielding, constantly “leading into” what his violinist colleague Vesa-Matti Leppänen was doing. In places the latter seemed like Horatio to the ‘cellist’s Hamlet, the violin-playing rather more upright and straightforward (a couple of awry end-of-phrase notes apart), and less inclined to expressive flights of fancy. But both players shared with pianist Diedre Irons a real sense of listening to what was going on both between them and with the orchestra. Diedre Irons’ piano-playing was a joy – bright-toned, and with plenty of tumbling warmth in her phrasing, bringing to the interactions that vital spark of energy which often sets performances alight. Thanks to these different expressions of give-and-take, the performance of the first movement sparkled with interest throughout, leading up to a coda that crackled with honest-to-goodness excitement.

Poetry and song filled the air with the slow movement’s performance – all three soloists responded to the orchestra’s rapt introduction with playing of great beauty – again, we experienced a sense of those musicians playing each others’ as well as their own music, in heart-warming accord.

The introduction to the finale felt like a gathering-up of tiny wisps of energy, each of the soloists adding his or her strand to the line, intensifying the mixture, and then spontaneously allowing the ‘cellist to impulsively take hold of the tendrils and swing into the open. At that point the performance became even more interesting, because the soloists and conductor seemed not to quite agree on a common pulse for the music. We heard the rhythmic strut of the polonaise-like gait richly pointed by the three soloists, but things were then moved along more resolutely, a shade impatiently, I thought in places, by conductor and orchestra.

Consequently, the ensemble had its not-quite-together moments, such as the strings accompanying of the ‘cello’s opening phrases – their droll chuggings were pushed along not quite in accordance with what Andrew Joyce was playing. As well, Peter van Drimmelen seemed not to want to give the loud orchestral chord that capped off a rush of concerted soloistic triplets any rhetorical space, but instead have it played “in tempo”, so that it too in the overall context had a sense of slightly undue haste. Of course, more sensation-mongering commentators would be glorying in the “creative tensions” that these discrepancies set up – but for me the orchestral tuttis didn’t quite have the sense of rhythmic enjoyment that the soloists had very obviously engendered. It was also (and more prosaically) true that any variations of pulse which either stretched out or squeezed the bar-or phrase-spaces were easily dealt with by the musicians.

An interesting hiatus occurred mid-movement when, after the three soloists had been musing on an amalgam of two-note phrases, tossing them back and forward with what seemed like great relish, and relaxing the pulse in doing so, the conductor, waiting to bring the orchestra in, actually turned around on the podium to look at them as if to say, “Well, have you three quite finished? – and can we get on, now?” All very professionally done, of course; and the music continued unabated.

Of course there was no great battle of wills, here, but it did seem that certain musical ideas weren’t quite in accord between those performing this work. I thought the big, A-minor “Polacca” episode didn’t “gell” sufficiently for those rhythms to have the proper “schwung”  Still, Beethoven survived! – and there were things which gave great delight, such as Diedre Irons’ sudden pianistic plunge into the vortex of C Minor, everything black-browed and threatening for a few moments before a reprise of the opening brought things back on an even keel.

Interestingly enough, after giving almost all the important leads to the ‘cello throughout the work, Beethoven used the violin to introduce the finale’s coda (well, perhaps “Stage One” of the coda! – as things go back to “Tempo 1” right at the end!). Here, Vesa-Matti Leppänen threw caution to the proverbial winds and his violin skipped away, leaving the orchestral strings trailing (fortunately, Andrew Joyce allowed them to catch up!) . What a wonderfully “busy” and mischievously garrulous Allegro the three soloists made of it, Diedre Irons keeping an eagle eye on the conductor and orchestra to keep things rhythmically ship-shape at the return of the polonaise-rhythm, and Peter van Drimmelen getting a splendidly buoyant orchestral response right at the end. Those final ascending figurations and pay-off chords were despatched with real élan from all concerned.

Sheer delight at the end, and plaudits for all – in sum, a wonderful concert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wellington Orchestra’s musical haggis

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VENI, VENI EMMANUEL – Vector Wellington Orchestra

DEBUSSY – Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire

MacMILLAN – Veni, veni, Emmanuel

MENDELSSOHN – Symphony No.3 “Scottish”

City of Wellington Pipe Band

Wellington East Girls’ Cantala Treble Choir (director – Brent Stewart)

Claire Edwardes (percussion)

Vector Wellington Orchestra

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 23rd June 2012

There’s no doubt about the ability of a set of bagpipes – or, more profoundly, a Highland pipe band – to make an impression on people – I was going to say “set the blood racing”, but I know some people for whom the sound of bagpipes has the opposite effect as regards the movement of blood! I love the sound in reasonably digestible doses and I’m sure most people in the Town Hall on Saturday night got a real thrill at the beginning of the Wellington Orchestra’s concert when the pipes began. Those of us sitting downstairs couldn’t see whether it was one, two or a hundred pipers – but of course, we could certainly hear the skirl of those plangent strains! It was as if the music presented at the concert was the haggis that was being piped in for all of us to enjoy.

It was a characteristic gesture on the part of the organizers of the concert and I thought it worked beautifully. Of course it was designated a “Scottish” programme, with repertoire combining the familiar (Mendelssohn) with the not-so-familiar (Debussy) and the excitingly contemporary (MacMillan). I thought this was fair enough, by dint of the last-named composer’s nationality, even if the work had almost nothing whatever to do with Scotland, being a meditation for percussion and orchestra upon the coming of Christ to the world. So, it was a concert planned and brought off with a lot of flair.

There remained the curious affair of Debussy writing a specifically Scottish work, a circumstance I’m certain I knew about but had tucked away in the recesses of my store of encyclopedic knowledge, never expecting to have to take it out and dust it off and actually look at it. The printed programme notes, which I thought were very good in the case of each of the works, told the popularly accepted story pretty comprehensively – that Debussy wrote the work in response to a commission from a certain Scottish military officer, General Meredith Reid. The latter wanted the composer to arrange and orchestrate a march using popular Scottish tunes generally associated with the General’s ancestors, the ancient Earls of Ross, who were also known as  “The Lords of the Isles”.

According to certain accounts, the General called unannounced upon the composer, at his humble lodgings, and handed him his visiting-card. Apparently, as neither could speak the other’s language, composer and general decided, via expression and gesture, to seek help in a local tavern, where an interpreter was found, and the General’s purpose made clear. Debussy set to work on the march, arranging it initially for piano for four hands – the original title of the piece was Marche des anciens Comtes de Ross  or “March of the ancient Counts of Ross”.

Perhaps it needs to be pointed out that Debussy, though still a young composer, and grateful for any commissions that came his way, wasn’t exactly a raw beginner by the time the incident took place, in 1891. The year before, he had written his most popular single piece of music – “Clair de lune” from the Suite Bergamasque for solo piano – and had completed various other works, including songs, other solo piano pieces, a Petite Suite for piano, four hands, and a Fantasie for piano and orchestra. Some accounts have “romanced” the General as well – he was, in fact John Meredith Read, an American diplomat and lawyer of Scottish descent, who had been the United States Consul-General for France for several years during the 1870s. Perhaps his French was a little rusty by the time he called on Debussy, but he surely would have been able to converse with the composer – and the story’s “translator”, the writer Alphonse Allais, would probably have been present in the tavern merely as a drinking companion.

Anyway, once Debussy had completed the four-hand keyboard version of the March, he took his time to orchestrate the piece, and didn’t finish the job until 1908. The result, if not the greatest of his works, is charming, and has more than a whiff of Scotland about it. Here, at the concert, it made a splendid overture for what was to follow; and the orchestra played the music with plenty of sensitivity and panache in the appropriate places.

Next on the programme was the work by James McMillan, the percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel. The Debussy piece had put all of us in an excellent humour, ready to be entertained by the spectacle of seeing an energetic percussionist dashing madly around and about the concert platform, going from instrument group to instrument group, and creating some wondrously ear-catching sounds in the process – this is what I remembered of seeing and hearing Scottish percussionist Colin Currie performing this work in Wellington almost two years ago.  But there was a surprise in store for us –  the soloist Claire Edwardes had come onto the stage and received her introductory applause, and gone over to her first “station”, when two groups of young women suddenly stood up in lines on either side of the upstairs auditorium. They began singing a plainchant version of the Hymn Veni, Veni Emmanuel, from which composer James MacMillan had received his initial inspiration for his work. The surround-effect was lovely to begin with, but then entered magical realms in verse three, where the two groups sang in close-knit canon, the result sounding like the “opening up” of some kind of enormous reverberation and enlargement of the space in which we were listening. So evocative – and so enchanting – again, indicative of flair and imagination in presenting a concert.

The choir was mentioned in the printed programme, but only if one read the acknowledgements page at the back did one pick this up – there was no indication of any such group present on the “programme list” page, the intention (so the group’s conductor, Brent Stewart, told me, afterwards) being to give the audience a surprise. It turned out that the two groups were members of the Wellington East Girls Cantala Treble Choir.  When they had finished singing, I thought the orchestra might have most dramatically begun straight away with the opening of the concerto – but instead, conductor Marc Taddei led the applause for the choir and conductor, which, of course we heartily joined in with.

Reflecting on the differences between Claire Edwardes’ performance of Veni, Veni Emmanuel and that by Colin Currie, as I remembered it, they weren’t so much in what the soloists did, but in the spaces and contexts of each occasion. Most people would, I think, agree with me that, if the same work is performed first in the Michael Fowler Centre and then in the Town Hall, it’s an utterly different experience being in the audience. Colin Currie’s performance in the Michael Fowler Centre seemed more like a ritual, more contained and prescribed, more elevated and removed from his audience. Everything seemed (was) further away, so that it was all more dreamlike, less immediate – and so was the sound, or sounds, because of a very different acoustic. Thus I was far more easily able to relate the different musical episodes to what the composer was trying to express during the earlier performance, because the distancing of everything abstracted the performing experience. I still remember, at the time, feeling that the constant movement of the soloist between stations of percussion drew the observer’s attention perhaps distractingly to what the player was doing and how he or she was doing it, rather than focusing on the sound that was being made and its expressive or symbolic effect in the overall scheme. However, at the time, there was this sense of the player’s progressing between percussion stations, suggesting some kind of journey towards a goal – so there was this ritualistic aspect, culminating in the sense of fulfillment with the tubular bells played high up at the back of the orchestra.

There was no doubting Claire Edwardes’ incredible virtuosity – an astonishing tour de force of percussion playing, no doubt about it. But in the Town Hall, in that confined space and very immediate acoustic, the soloist and what she was doing was all much more physically palpable – and her sounds very “present” – so that the element of display came across, I thought, far more strongly than any sense of larger ritual, of following some kind of poetic or spiritual ideal. Claire Edwardes had, like Evelyn Glennie (whom I saw a few years ago playing a John Psathas Percussion Concerto), a very engaging physical presence which drew our attention to everything that she was doing. For me, at any rate, the music’s programmatic significance was swamped in a series of waves of there-and-then enjoyment – a bit like the news presented as entertainment on television – somehow the actual information gets a bit lost in the razz-matazz.

The part of the work which did allow me to refocus on the composer’s spiritual expression of an idea came with the coda of the work, entitled Easter, where the heartbeats representing Christ in the human soul are pounded out between the soloist and the orchestral timpanist (the sight-lines weren’t the best and so Edwardes and timpanist Larry Reese had trouble keeping their whacks absolutely together, but the effect remained strong and telling) following which came Edwardes’ symbolic ascent to the tubular bells, which rang out hymn-like amid a scintillating sea of tintinnabulation.  Every string player softly activated a triangle suspended from his or her music-stand, while the bells rang and sank back into silence.

For performances to successfully achieve a realization of the composer’s program or scheme for an audience seems to me problematical, considering the distraction of the display element – the soloist’s movement between stations and often frenetic activity in creating the sounds was akin to what I would imagine that of a honey bee in a beehive. In both performances (more so with this latter one) I tended to get taken up with that process, fascinated by the array of skills on display and enjoying the different sounds. But I would also imagine that, as one grows more familiar with the work, its message would gradually begin to coalesce – there were certainly moments amid the beaverings and squirrelings that suggested something beyond what was going on in front of one’s eyes.

Interestingly, I had the opportunity to listen to some of the concerto’s performance via a recording, which I was able to use during an RNZ Concert review – away from the visual aspect, the sounds immediately took on a more abstracted and transcendent purpose, so that I found myself as a listener thinking of the piece’s meaning, as the composer surely had intended. Food for thought, I would think (so to speak)…..

And so to the Mendelssohn “Scottish” Symphony, which took up the second half of the program, an absolutely gorgeous piece of music – as Marc Taddei said, one of the first examples of great nineteenth century romanticism in music. I thought the first three movements of the work came across splendidly, with many fine things. The very opening of the work was beautifully played, first of all by the winds, with the oboe very prominent – for me, perhaps because of the “bagpipes” association, there’s something about the timbre of an oboe that suggests a similar ambience – and then the strings, whose tonal sheen was, I thought, utterly beguiling, and whose line was so eloquent – what beautiful playing Marc Taddei got from his orchestra! I thought the playing captured the atmosphere that Mendelssohn himself talked about when he said he found the beginnings of his “Scottish Symphony” in the ambiences of the rooms at Holyrood Palace where the lover of Mary Queen of Scots, the courtier David Rizzio was murdered by Mary’s enemies, and the chapel where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. This romantic, historical aspect which inspired the composer was brought out beautifully in the first part of this performance.

Only the finale I found somewhat problematical – and I admired what Marc Taddei and the orchestra were trying to do with it, but I don’t think it quite came off. There’s a slightly pompous and bombastic element in the work which comes to the fore in this movement with the work’s coda – a kind of grand processional, in which a version of the main theme of the opening movement is brought back, but this time in a major key. Conductor and orchestra were, I think, trying to remove its pomposity, and make it more integrated with the rest of the finale, which is an energetic Scottish dance. What happened, though, was that the finale was started at such a terrific lick that the performance almost had nowhere to go by the end, and things were steaming along to the point of everything being a bit of a gabble. I think the tempi were just too quick all through for the players to properly articulate the music – the strings had trouble pointing the “Scottish snap” at the very beginning at Marc Taddei’s tempo, and there was certainly no grandeur at all in the coda – and I think there should be some kind of sense of summing up, true, without pomposity, but with a sense of arrival. For me, here, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater – but I must say in fairness to all concerned I spoke with a friend afterwards who thought it was all tremendously exciting!

So each of us listens to these things with wonderfully subjective ears! What was also interesting was a slight hiatus at the beginning of the clarinet solo almost at the end of the work, where it seemed as though either the clarinettist Moira Hurst started her solo too early or else Marc Taddei brought her in too early – just the matter of a bar or so – she stopped, and quickly started playing again, and no harm was done. But it was significant that, whatever the case, the conductor singled her out for some extra plaudits at the conclusion of the performance – and, quite apart from the slight “blip” of the uncertain moment, the focus on the player was richly deserved.

I shouldn’t nominate favorites, as a critic – but I couldn’t help capitulating completely to the second movement, the scherzo, as played here – and with good reason. One perhaps can never play a Mendelssohn scherzo too fast, to get that fairy-like aspect, and this performance cracked along with some marvellous playing from all concerned – some wonderfully soft, bustling elfin-like delicacy in places, and then some rumbustious, give-it-all-you’ve-got hell-for-leather exuberance from the players by way of contrast, leading up to the climax. That movement alone gave me enormous pleasure.