Tag: orchestral

Tribute to Kurt Sanderling from ICA Classics

Posted on by Peter Mechen

KURT SANDERLING (1912-2011)  – a great maestro

BRUCKNER – Symphony No.3 in D Minor (CD)

Kurt Sanderling (conductor) / BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra

(recorded Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1978 – the disc also includes an interview with Kurt Sanderling)

CD ICAC 5005

SCHUMANN – Symphony No.4 in D Minor / MAHLER – Das Lied von der Erde (DVD)

Kurt Sanderling (conductor) / BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Soloists: Carolyn Watkinson (mezzo-soprano) / John Mitchinson (tenor)

(recorded Royal Albert Hall, London, 1988

DVD ICAD 5042

Available from ICA Classics at www.icartists.co.uk/classics

Kurt Sanderling, who died last year in Berlin at the age of 98, was a name known to me from my formative days of record-collecting, through his 1950s recording made with the Leningrad Phllharmonic of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony – one of those early cotton-stitched white-and-yellow panelled Deutsche Grammophon LP covers with the composer’s facsimile autograph scribbled across the central vertical yellow panel (all very tasteful and esoteric, obviously aimed at the “discerning” record buyer of the time).

Sanderling worked with the legendary Yevgeny Mravinsky as assistant conductor of the Leningrad orchestra for eighteen years, from 1942 until 1960, when he took on the task of rebuilding the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, returning to the country he had left in 1936 because of his Jewish ancestry. As well, he became for a number of years conductor-in-chief of the Dresden Staatskapelle. But it wasn’t until 1970 that he first conducted in the UK, developing a relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra after he deputized at a concert for an indisposed Otto Klemperer, and then in 1975 appearing for the first time with the then BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra (later renamed the BBC Philharmonic). He conducted the latter group often, making his Proms debut with them in 1982 with Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

In 1981 Sanderling made his only visit to New Zealand, conducting the NZSO on a couple of occasions, most notably in Brahms and Shostakovich, of which I saw and heard the former concert (I wish I’d heard the Shostakovich as well, which drew forth clusters of superlatives from the local critics).  I well remember the imposing, authoritative figure on the podium in the Town Hall, head held high, magisterial glances and flowing gestures holding the players in thrall and producing from them glorious sounds throughout the Brahms First Symphony. Interestingly, it was Sanderling’s ability to get first-rate sounds out of orchestras not quite in the top rank that was a significant feature of several of the many tributes I read after his death – and my memory of the NZSO concert he conducted certainly confirmed that judgement.

Now, thanks to the new audio and audiovisual ICA Classics label (go visit the label’s website at www.icartists.co.uk/classics to get an idea of the riches being made available) two previously unreleased “live” recordings of Sanderling’s work as a conductor have appeared, an audio-only of Bruckner’s Third Symphony and a DVD of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, both with the BBC Philharmonic. I’d not previously encountered any of the conductor’s Bruckner, but had heard the 1981 BBC Mahler Ninth with the same orchestra – so I was delighted upon hearing both of the new recordings that Sanderling seemed as much at home with those big, rolling Brucknerian symphonic paragraphs as Das Lied’s more overtly varied, coloristic and volatile Mahlerian outpourings.

I began my listening with Bruckner, a performance of the Third Symphony recorded in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in April 1978 (presented here on ICAC 5005) at which time Sanderling had been a guest conductor with the orchestra over three seasons. The interpretation is strongly-etched, both energetic and supple, suggesting that the rapport between conductor and players was a well-established one. There’s a Klemperer-like strength and grain to the tones and textures, a straightforwardness to the big, Brucknerian rhetorical gestures, such as the declamatory unison which caps the symphony’s very first crescendo. Sanderling keeps it all moving, as if obeying some kind of primordial pulse beneath the music’s surface, the steadiness having a cumulative, organic effect entirely avoiding any kind of rigidity.

Even if one is occasionally reminded that we aren’t listening to the Vienna Philharmonic or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, there’s a far more cherishable sense of experiencing music-making that doesn’t deliver a glib or mechanical phrase. There are one or two momentary ensemble glitches – the strings have a less-than unanimous moment at the beginning of the development section, for example – but the playing is every bit as good as one might expect from a live concert, and the brass in particular are, in my opinion, superb.

Between the movements the microphones are left on, allowing the audience atmosphere to register and preserving a “live” continuity throughout the work. Again, there’s a beautiful unhurriedness about the playing in the slow movement, suggesting, in between evocations of elemental grandeur, long-breathed natural undulations doing their thing and encouraging the listener to connect with the music’s ebb and flow. What one realizes at the movement’s end is how Sanderling has build up the tensions and concentrated feelings of the sounds right throughout, investing the last few pages with a truly valedictory feeling, the horns’ held notes at the end the stuff of planets and stars – this is conducting and playing that feels to me as though it properly “owns” the music.

The scherzo’s pointed urgencies are put across with plenty of stamping girth, the earthiness of the playing carrying over into the trio, putting the countryman in dancing clothes and holding his rough edges temporarily in check. There’s an even greater contrast at the finale’s beginning, where we get playing of dangerous whirling exuberance, whose energies gradually give way to the insinuations of the ländler, one decorated by a chorale-like theme on the brass (Bruckner described this episode once as “life’s gaiety standing side-by-side with death”). Sanderling gets the orchestra to play the unsettling, syncopated second subject theme with tremendous power and agitation, as he does the recapitulation of the opening, with its chromatic variants that sound so like the final pages of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, when the River Rhine overflows its banks. Everything – the reprise of the Ländler, its interruption by the jagged syncopations, the magnificent lead-back to the symphony’s opening theme (triumphantly in the major key, with the brass again playing their hearts out) has a compelling inevitability. The audience’s applause is thunderous – and rightly so!

Abruptly, we are taken to an interview with Sanderling at the symphony’s end, a fascinating ten-minute picture of a musician whose authority and clear-sightedness comes across in his speech as unequivocally as his music-making. He speaks of his early years in Germany, his early experiences as a repetiteur at the Berlin State Opera, of his admiration for Otto Klemperer during those times, of his having to leave because of his Jewish ancestry, and his departure for Russia, leading to his first conducting experiences and his subsequent collaboration with Evgeny Mravinsky in Leningrad. He talks about Haydn and Shostakovich and Mahler, and has interesting things to say about all three, including the latter’s “triumvirate” of musical farewells. Interviewer Piers Burton-Page chooses his questions well and allows Sanderling plenty of room to give his answers sufficient breadth and depth.

ICA scores equally well with the Sanderling DVD presentation, which, in addition to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, features the Schumann Fourth Symphony from the same Proms concert, in July 1988 (incidentally, more than ten years after the Bruckner CD performance). Watching Sanderling at work confirms what one heard on the Bruckner CD, the conductor’s confidence and authority inspiring powerful and committed playing from his orchestra players, though not in a martinet-like way, as was the style of his great mentor at Leningrad, Mravinsky. Like his own hero, Klemperer, Sanderling at work looks formidable, but he’s also animated and expressive in places, giving as much the impression of coaxing what he wants from his players as imposing on them a determined will.

The Schumann Symphony leaps from the players’ instruments with a will – not surprisingly, there’s a Klemperer-like steadiness about it all, a dark, brooding introduction and a powerful, clearly-articulated allegro, the music’s exuberance breaking out in the movement’s coda to exhilarating effect. I liked Sanderling’s underlining of the continuities between the movements, each luftpause enough to gather both breath and strength before the music plunges into a new episode without lack of continuity. Sanderling gives his players time and space to float the slow movement’s phrases across the bar-lines to wondrously lyrical effect, the trio graced by some sensitive solo playing from the orchestra’s leader. I liked the players’ pointing of the Scherzo rhythms – plenty of tonal “girth” in this dance, set against the trio’s graceful and gossamer difference, the latter leading to the finale’s grandly ritualistic introduction, filled with strength and inevitability. Though lacking the last ounce of physical excitement, the cumulative effect of Sanderling’s direction invests the work’s ending with thrilling power and purpose.

As for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, it’s a performance that reaches out and grasps the music’s greatness, with everybody, soloists, orchestra and conductor completely caught up in the intensities generated through the composer’s fusion of music with his chosen texts. Both soloists are wonderful, tenor John Mitchinson a winning combination of philosopher, poet and inebriate, and Baroque specialist mezzo Carolyn Watkinson giving us a touchingly vulnerable view of the world’s beauties and disappointments. She’s perhaps a shade dry-eyed and distant in the closing stages of the “Abschied”, an approach that rivets one’s attention without overtly tugging at the heartstrings. Also, to my ears, she occasionally phrases ever-so-fractionally under the note, though never in a way that gives rise to serious alarm – what’s of paramount importance is her whole-heartedness, her investing of each phrase with meaning and involvement. Sanderling and the orchestral players support their singers with both solo and ensembles lines of great beauty and sharply-wrought focus, making every description of time, place and emotion a meaningful one. The camera-work is excellent, as it was throughout the Schumann symphony, balancing the overall with the specific to great effect, and giving a sense of everybody’s contributions to things which truly reflects the nature of a concerted effort on behalf of the music.

One comes from both experiences of Sanderling’s work here, audio and visual, with a sense of having encountered greatness. For most people music exists as sound rather than on the printed page, making the performer an essential component of that combination which produces great performance art. Sanderling and his musicians deliver the music’s greatness in all cases, to splendid and satisfying effect. I, for one, am now anxious to explore more of ICA’s issues, on both DVD and CD – this, for me, couldn’t have been a better introduction to the company’s catalogues.

Website: www.icartists.co.uk/classics

Peter Walls’s years as NZSO’s chief ends with excellent didactic performance

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Close Encounters:of the symphonic kind

Conductor and commentator: Peter Walls

Schubert: first movement of the Unfinished Symphony; Wagner: Siegfried Idyll; Mendelssohn: Hebrides Overture

 Wellington Town Hall

Thursday 15 December, 6.30pm

The NZSO brought its year to an end (apart from a family-oriented appearance at Te Papa on Saturday) with two ‘outreach’ concerts which gave retiring chief executive Peter Walls the chance to demonstrate both his conducting prowess and his distinctive gifts as a musical communicator, with words.

The hall was almost full, with many family groups, and lots of faces unfamiliar at regular orchestral concerts. This second concert, running little over an hour, dwelt on the emergence of Romanticism in music, where Walls drew frequent contrasts with the music of the classical period which he had discussed on the previous evening. His starting point was the famous 1808 concert that Beethoven mounted of his own works including both his 5th and 6th symphonies.

His introductory scene-setting: ‘On a cold, windy and wet evening in December’ – and he paused before saying – ‘1808’, prompted the audience, laughing, to recall the conditions outside (That amazing, four-hour concert also included the 4th Piano Concerto, parts of the Mass in C major and the Choral Fantasy, Op 80!) .

Schubert’s luck was far worse than Beethoven’s of course. He abandoned his Symphony in B Minor and never heard the two completed movements at all. Walls’s lively characterisation of the changes that the Romantic movement made to composers’ aims and expectations in music would have alerted the audience, particularly those who’d been at the earlier concert, to the greater attention to the expression of feelings as formal classical shapes, still very important, were no longer music’s main preoccupation. And though the orchestra did not play anything of Schubert’s very Mozartian 5th Symphony, Walls pointed to the big step towards Romanticism that Schubert had taken in the very few years between it and the ‘Unfinished’.

Walls used the occasion to point interestingly to other shifts that were taking place during the Romantic era: one was the elevation of the composer to a position approaching stardom, no longer merely a servant of a court or cathedral, but an admired artist who could, by the 19th century, support himself, independent of patrons (Handel and others, especially in the field of opera, had done so at least a century earlier). The atmosphere of sanctity, silence during the performance, dimmed lighting, the slow move against clapping between and during movements: all these were signs of the changes in the view of ‘serious’ music, and of composer as ‘genius’ during the 19th century.

Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll took matters a great deal further – fifty years further in fact, far more than the distance between Beethoven’s and Schubert’s symphonies. Though he talked about the derivation of the Idyll from the music Wagner was writing for the Ring cycle at the time, he was also at pains to draw attention to the four parts of the work and to illustrate the ways in which the ideas evolved. It also served to remind the audience about the orchestra’s scheduled performances next year of Die Walküre, the biggest such undertaking since Parsifal in 2006.

The last piece in the concert moved back 40 years from Wagner’s piece. Even though Mendelssohn and Wagner hardly saw eye to eye on musical aesthetics, the Hebrides Overture also served to show how classical forms could be turned to the service of musical scene-painting or narrative. The orchestra was reduced in size for these concerts (strings numbering 12, 10, 8, 6, 4 and merely double winds); not even the Wagner piece was written for a full symphony orchestra – as a charming birthday present for his wife, Cosima, it was originally scored for 13 players. Yet in the Town Hall the sound was big and rich, and while skeptics might suggest that with an orchestra of such quality these pieces played themselves, there was no doubt that under Peter Walls, the players were investing the music with full commitment and a warm Romantic spirit.

The orchestral climate
Peter Walls’s nine years as CEO have seen the orchestra’s standing domestically and internationally greatly enhanced; but there is no room for complacency. Though it was the Vector Wellington Orchestra that was the focus of the most immediate concern over likely funding threats by Creative New Zealand, more serious collateral damage to the NZSO has to be considered in the longer term. The findings of a study by an overseas orchestral consultant of New Zealand’s professional orchestral sector is awaited with some trepidation. One of the orchestra’s difficulties, a result of its extensive touring demands, is that it actually presents fewer separate programmes as distinct from concerts, than for example does the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

Parochial pressures from two other major cities that have often argued for the dismemberment of the NZSO and distribution of the NZSO’s round $13 million of State funding to them may be quiescent at present but remain serious. The ambitions of misguided rivals ignore the fact that an orchestra with a 65-year history that is widely considered the best in the Southern Hemisphere, makes a vital contribution to New Zealand’s reputation as a civilized state that can demonstrate excellence in more spheres than (sporadically) in sport.

 

Adventurous and educational leaving-taking by NZSO’s conductor-chief executive

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Close Encounters of the Symphonic Kind 1: “Classical Drive:

Mozart: Symphony no.31 K.297 “Paris”; first movement
Beethoven: Symphony no.1 Op.21; first movement
Beethoven: Symphony no.7 Op.92; second movement
Mozart: Overture to The Magic Flute K.620

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Peter Walls (conductor and speaker)

Wellington Town Hall

Wednesday, 14 December 2011 at 6.30pm

The hour-long concert was devised, and proved to be, a good introduction to classical music for those who wanted a taste to see if they would like to plunge in.  The concert was free, and the hall almost full.

Surely not many CEOs of orchestras are also conductors; it is probably rare for a symphony orchestra Chief Executive officer to conduct the orchestra as a swan-song to his job.  Of course, Peter Walls is an experienced conductor, but mainly of smaller ensembles.

The orchestra, a smaller one than the full band, was led for these concerts by Lyndon Johnston Taylor, Assistant Concertmaster, soon to return to the United States.

The tasters to several major works by Mozart and Beethoven were introduced by Walls in amusing and informative fashion.  He avoided the use of technical terms, and held the attention of the appreciative audience, telling us the reasons for the works’ composition, as well as something of their content.

The playing of the Mozart symphony was vigorous, with plenty of contrast in the gentler sections.  Conductor and orchestra certainly brought out the detail, and the playing had rhythmic vitality.  I enjoyed the energy of the performance.

Peter Walls demonstrated how we instinctively know harmonic sequences – but in the stress of the moment he messed up his example, ‘Away in a manger’.  Nevertheless, the characters of tonic and dominant were explained well, with the image of taking off and landing a plane, cruising at altitude, encountering turbulence etc., a worthy vehicle for illustrating sonata form.  (In turn, I have used sonata form to describe to people knowing music, how to write an essay.)

Beethoven’s first symphony is obviously his nearest to the period of Mozart, and its first movement had a theatrical feel about it in this performance.  It was a lively performance that periodically swept me away, even though the work was very familiar.  As Beethoven’s contemporary critic said, it had ‘a wealth of ideas’.

At the end, the trumpet made a great sound, adding guts to the already thoroughly committed performance.

More Beethoven came next, in the form of the second movement of the seventh symphony, first performed 13 years after the first symphony.

This movement must have appeared novel at the first hearing, opening with no violins – cellos and basses alone giving a spooky sound which was very effective.  The violas enter with a theme counterpointed to that of the lower strings, then the second violins enter in like fashion, and finally the first violins do the same.  After this, the sumptuous clarinet comes in with a significant melody.

Both the programme note and Peter Walls mentioned the use of this movement as theme music for the film The King’s Speech, and the ‘fusion of poignancy and determination’ which attracted the film-makers.  It made me think of the vulnerability of both men, due to their handicaps: Beethoven’s deafness, and King George VI’s stammering.

Hearing just one movement of each symphony, preceded by Peter Walls’s introductions (along with short examples of motifs etc. from the orchestra) sharpened perception of Beethoven’s skill and invention more than sometimes happens when listening to a whole symphony.

The overture to The Magic Flute was a great choice for a concert such as this.  As Peter Walls explained very well in his introduction, it contains humorous characters, and themes to match, and also a more serious side, including Masonic symbolism; Mozart was a member of a lodge.

This serious side, Walls spelt out, was illustrated by the unusual use of trombones in the music; they were normally employed at this period only in religious music.  Here, they underlined the quasi-religious and serious aspect of Masonic tenets.

In this glorious music, the woodwind were especially notable.

The concert ended on a high note, and thanks were expressed to the Wellington Community Trust for their sponsorship of the series of two concerts (the next evening’s was to feature Schubert, Wagner and Mendelssohn in Close Encounter 2: “Romantic Longing”.

For those with a printed programme there was added value: a Glossary at the back of common Italian “Speed Words” (allegro etc.) and “Dynamics” (piano, fortissimo etc.), and a short essay “The Language of classical Music in 500 words”, by Milan Kundera.

 

 

Accomplished playing from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lilburn: Drysdale Overture; Mozart: Violin Concerto No 5 in A, K 219; Warlock: Capriol Suite; Gounod: Petite symphonie for winds; Bizet: Carmen Suite No 1

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Michael Joel with Anna van der Zee (violin); leader Paula Carryer

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 4 December, 2.30pm

Michael Joel is a major conductor in the New Zealand orchestral, choral and opera scene, particularly in Christchurch which is where I guess I first encountered him, conducting for Canterbury Opera’s Lakmé, La Traviata and Rossini’s Le comte Ory. He has conducted the Wellington Chamber Orchestra at least once before.

Though I should be reluctant to ascribe all the credit for the impressive performances in this concert to him – for the orchestra is a very different body today from what it was a decade ago – his painstaking work was surely very important in the striking results achieved this afternoon.

Oddly enough, it was the first piece on the programme, Lilburn’s Drysdale Overture, in which the sound needed more control; it’s scored for large symphony orchestra and some of the difficulty lay in achieving balance between brass and the other sections. It was more a problem inherent in the acoustics of the church which always present problems for large instrumental ensembles and specifically for timpani and brass.

The opening chord of the overture was intentionally arresting, but it was also unduly shrill and uncomfortable. Dynamic levels continued to be a bit high, until the calmer middle section which came as a relief, with strings and woodwinds playing sensitively. I always imagine the piece as depicting a pastoral landscape, but I found myself wondering whether Joel sought to offer a tough and somewhat more brutal view of hill-country farming than is usual. Lilburn was a gifted orchestrater but perhaps in this youthful work his facility carried him away.

The Mozart concerto is music better adapted to the size of the church, and orchestrally there was much to admire. After the orchestral introduction which signalled a keen feeling for the moderate scale of the music and the way it can be accommodated in the space, soloist, Anna van der Zee, who plays with the NZSO, opened quietly, allowing the character of her instrument to express itself warmly. Her playing might have benefited from a more relaxed approach to the pace which didn’t always allow it to breathe a little more freely between phrases.  A fairly slow pace in the Adagio seemed to expose the orchestra uncomfortably, but the Finale produced a warm and relaxed quality; the Turkish aspects suggested a somewhat sinister character. The care taken with the structure of the concerto  was well exemplified through the undulations in dynamics and the telling pause before the recapitulation toward the end.

Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite seems to be the quintessentially amateur piece; yet it’s by no means easily realized by other than reasonably polished and careful performers. Ensemble was markedly good in the Pavane and I admired the pizzicato in the third movement. What it did, more than in the Mozart, was to demonstrate how much more the acoustic suits a purely string ensemble.

I had to revise that thought however with the charming performance of Gounod’s wind nonette, which he called a petite symphonie, modeled, not on Spohr’s famous nonette which is for a combination of strings and winds, but rather on the wind ensembles for seven or eight instruments by Mozart, Beethoven or Krommer. The first movement reminded me of the delightful Provençal-influenced music Gounod had written for Mireille, and the next movement’s aria-like tune reinforced the spirit of Gounod the opera composer; flute and oboe played beautifully. The excellent ensemble did justice to the lovely harmonies of the Finale.

The suite from Carmen had me further revising my thoughts about the impact of brass and of the generally boisterous playing of this music in the church. Scored for a full orchestra, there were very few moments when the volume was excessive, though the timpani was emphatic enough in the Prelude. There were numerous displays of fine playing by individual woodwind instruments; dynamic undulations and generally careful balance and ensemble kept this popular suite from sounding hackneyed, as the rather splendid brass contributions brought it to an end with the  toreador’s song.

Brilliant French programme with Anne Sophie von Otter and Wellington Orchestra at Town Hall

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Debussy); Songs from Chants d’Auvergne (Canteloube); Symphonie fantastique (Berlioz)

Anne Sophie von Otter  with the Vector Wellington Orchestra under Marc Taddei

Town Hall

Friday 18 November, 7.30pm

A full Town Hall auditorium and a stage crowded with a great orchestra of some 85 players, put me in mind of the Town Hall concerts that an NZSO of 30 years ago could sell out.

An entirely French programme was the perfect response to the Wellington Orchestra’s encounter with the wonderful Swedish mezzo who has indeed cultivated a special gift in the language and music of France.

As Marc Taddei remarked, the programme included two works that were landmarks not just for French music but for the whole world of classical music. Debussy’s Faune is now widely considered to herald the dawn of modern music, perhaps of more importance than the adventures of Schoenberg into atonality and serialism. And 60 years earlier it was Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony that pushed wide open the doors to Romanticism that Beethoven had unlocked.

Taddei opened Debussy’s enchanting work with the most discreet movements of his baton, preparing visually for Karen Batten’s ethereal, seductive flute sounds; and though such refinement characterized much of the playing by other instruments, particularly Matthew Ross’s solo violin, and Moira Hurst’s clarinet, the performance was not without more robust passages that spoke of the more earthy, physical quality of love described in Mallarmé’s poem. But its dream-like effects were sustained in an almost faultless canvas of sound.

Anne Sophie von Otter sang seven of the collection of songs from the region known as the Auvergne the name which is today given to one of France’s 22 regions, occupying the main part of the Massif Central. Canteloube was born in the département of Ardèche which lies on the southeast side of the region. I travelled through it 20 years ago on a train called the Le Cévenol (which I see has now become a ‘tourist’ journey), through Vichy and Clermont-Ferrand and south through winding, forested river gorges, through enchanting landscapes with a hundred tunnels and bridges and ancient villages.

Another composer who celebrated its music was Vincent d’Indy whose Symphony on a French Mountain Air or Symphonie Cévenole was also an early love of mine;  D’Indy had a summer residence in Ardèche.

Canteloube compiled five books of folk-songs totalling 32 altogether. I discovered them in the early 70s through the land-mark recording by Netania Davrath; it seems that Véronique Gens is the only later singer to have recorded them all.

Singing in the Auvergnat dialect – related to Provençal and Catalan, von Otter invested these idiosyncratic songs with the great variety of emotions and gestures that they evoke. She was discriminating however with things like vibrato and the affectations of ordinary classical performance; notes were prolonged for comic or sentimental effect; the fourth song, Lou boussu, plagued with switching rhythms and tempi, depicted a girl’s heartless rejection of a hunchback’s advances, with careless gusto.

There was a rare graciousness, almost grandeur, in the performance of Passo pel prat, the voice rising ecstatically, her body and arms swaying to the rhythm. Similar gestures served a comic purpose in the last song, Lou coucut.

The orchestral accompaniments were equally diverting, witty, rumbustious, here a squally clarinet, there rude blasts on horns, a sentimental cor anglais.  Conspicuous too were the piano forays of the piano – from the singer’s regular accompanist, Bengt Forsberg, that seemed to have a special flavour inspired by his intimate musical relationship.

The endless applause prompted an encore – by Benny Andersson (ABBA) – not too far removed in essence from the songs she’d just sung.

And yes: though these songs are quite enchanting, it was a pity not to have heard her, in addition, in some French art song – Debussy, Duparc, Fauré, Berlioz’s Nuits d’été…

The second half was devoted to the 50 minutes of the Symphonie Fantastique, which Taddei dedicated to the departing General Manager Diana Marsh. It opened with the Largo, breathed suspensefully by velvety strings, gaining speed till the main Allegro movement arrives, introducing the  Idée fixe which is, of course, much more than just a ‘principal theme’.

One noticed Taddei had dispensed with music stand and score, a step that meant far more than the fact of having the entire 230 pages (of my miniature score) by heart: it soon became clear that it was allowing him to attend, without his eyes distracted by the notes on the pages, to communicating with every player and creating a performance of sustained beauty at one end and utterly unbridled passion or ferocity at the other. Again it was possible to admire much instrumental playing, particularly cor anglais, horns, and the inflated numbers in certain areas: the two tubas, and two harps, the two timpanists on each set of drums (yet the timpani was often played with the utmost quiet).

One might have imagined that the orchestra had been inflated by many NZSO players; but in reality they were few. So it was possible to record admiration at the polish and integrity of the strings, and to admire the beauty and ensemble of the wind sections. The tubular bells under the balcony on the left produced a magic, remote sound with their Dies Irae, while the cornets lent a distinct anti-classical character to the music of the fourth and fifth movements.

The waltz movement, Un bal, went rather fast; I have always felt that this movement should suggest a phantasmagoric, dream ball rather than a Straussian one; something was lost. The first movement and the Scène aux champs were beautifully paced, a terrifying Marche au supplice. As for the Witches’ Sabbath I was overwhelmed by the frenzy that Taddei mustered from his totally engaged players who still had the capacity to double their speed across the final page even though Berlioz only marks it ‘animando un poco’. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.

If there was a price to pay in terms of precision and finesse for the sometimes almost reckless speeds and the intense emotion generated at many stages of this performance, it was entirely worth that price.

Perhaps for the first time, here was a performance that recalled for me the astonishment and excitement I felt when I first heard the work in my teens.

Flawed silent film, Metropolis, with original score in splendid NZSO realisation

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Metropolis – silent film by Fritz Lang, accompanied by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra playing the reconstructed score by Gottfried Huppertz, conducted by Frank Strobel

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 5 November, 6.30pm

The first thing that struck me about the otherwise excellent programme notes was the absence of any direct comment about the thrust of the 1927 German film as an anti-capitalist document.

The notes suggest that the scenes of forced labour foreshadowed the concentration camps. That seems a misleading remark, considering NAZI taking power was still six years away, while exploitation of industrial workers had characterized most industrial enterprises since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.  The pervasive message of the work is a trenchant if rather simplistic portrayal of capitalism’s unspoken but ever-present aim to control and exploit labour. It would be unusual for a film dealing with the dominant economic and social character of the age to be otherwise.

The notes also remark on the presence of the Star of David on the door of the evil inventor Rotwang, which is taken to link both Lang and his wife to incipient Nazism, and remarking on the story that Goebbels had offered him the position of Head of the film studio UFA. However, there is no evidence that Goebbels did so. Lang fled Germany as early as 1933, mere months after the NAZIs came to power. Lang’s wife did remain in Germany and did become a member of the party, however.

It is historically invalid to link anti-semitism exclusively with the NAZIs. The Star of David simply suggests that Lang shared the widespread anti-semitism that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, had less a racist basis than an association between capitalism and the major role played by Jews in the financial sphere, particularly in the minds of the working classes.  Anti-semitism was a widespread phenomenon in left-wing thinking.

The film is set in the future where the city, Metropolis, is controlled by its apparent sole industrial magnate, Fredersen (not ‘Federson’), with a sharp separation between owners-managers, who live above ground in luxurious art deco apartments, and the workers who live and work underground in slave-like conditions.

The film’s present fame is due to its complex and interesting provenance more than to its particularly insightful political message. The denouement is summed up at the end, rather portentously, and childishly: “The Mediator between the head and hands must be the heart!” The head is capitalist master Joh Fredersen, and the hands are the exploited worker/slaves; Fredersen’s sympathetic son, Freder, is the mediator/heart.

Was Lang carefully avoiding alienating part of his audience by refraining from pointing to the film’s more obvious theme: the exploitation and oppression of labour by capital; or was he really that naïve?

The film owes some of its notoriety to the vicissitudes of its survival. After its indifferent reception in Germany in 1927, the German studio UFA and Paramount Pictures butchered it for American screening, reducing its 153 minutes to 90, as well as revising the script to turn it into a shabby Frankenstein-like film. .

The original premiere version disappeared and the cut parts were believed lost.  In 2001, a new 75th anniversary restoration was screened in Berlin; it restored the original story line using stills and intertitles to bridge missing footage, and it added a soundtrack of the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz.  But the cut parts of the film remained lost. Then in June 2008, a 16mm copy of the original film was discovered in an archive of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires.   It filled most of the gaps. The 16-mm copy was made from a 35-mm print owned by a private collector, who obtained it from the distributor who brought the original cut to Argentina in 1927.

Some contemporary critics panned it. The New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall called it a “technical marvel with feet of clay”. The Times went on the next month to publish a lengthy review by H G Wells who accused it of “foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general.” He faulted Metropolis for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines’ output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley’s Frankenstein,  Karel Capek robot stories, and his own The Sleeper Awakes.  Joseph Goebbels was impressed however and took the film’s message to heart. In a speech of 1928 he noted: “The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labour, to begin their historical mission”.

But in the meantime, New Zealand had a piece of the action; strangely, ignored by the notes in the NZSO’s programme booklet.

As Wikipedia tells it:

In 2005, Wollongong-based historian and politician Michael Organ examined a print of the film in the New Zealand Film Archive.  It had been thought that it was the same cut as the Australian version, but Organ discovered that it contained missing scenes not seen in the cut versions of the film. After hearing of the discovery of the Argentine print of the film and the restoration project currently under way, Organ contacted the German restorers about his find. The New Zealand print was found to contain 11 missing scenes and included seconds of footage which were missing from the Argentine print and also footage which could be used to restore damaged sections of the Argentine print.

It is believed that the editor in charge of editing the New Zealand print for some unknown reason excised different scenes than that of the Australian print, keeping scenes missing from other versions intact. It is believed that the Australian, New Zealand and Argentine prints were all scored from the same master. The newly discovered footage was used in the restoration project.

The rights holders of Metropolis, F. W. Murnau Stiftung (Foundation), later confirmed that the newly discovered footage completes the missing footage except for a few missing frames.

How did the screening go? As an art form that depends for its existence on technology, early films encounter more impediments for modern audiences than other arts. The plain technical shortcomings are soon accommodated by the viewer, but political and social views and attitudes present more serious barriers, and even some of the critics’ comments from the film’s time drew attention to those. These failings have not become less obvious.

Acting that is unaccompanied by dialogue is very different – more like mime – and I can only conclude that many of the audience had more acute intuitive senses than I do if they understood what was going on all the time.

For it’s a long film and a fairly detailed story, not, I would have thought, the ideal for silent movie treatment. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I found the story both obscure in places and then not presenting a very profound view of the subject.  After all the exposure of hideous maltreatment of the workers, both in their working conditions and their accommodation, it seemed bizarre to present a conclusion that hardly suggested that any kind of radical change was needed other than a bit of kindness.

Its division into three ‘acts’ (Prologue, Intermezzo and Furioso) with an interval between the first and second, helped create the feeling of a theatrical rather than a cinematic, experience. The music itself was interesting. Certain episodes such as the scenes in the cabaret were presented with the kind of jazz-inflected music of the 20s, and the somewhat chilling, heavy theme that depicted the machinery was evocative, but the music did not succeed in delineating character differences or in supporting the episodes that should have been frightening or romantic. Though there were several effective musical moments such as Maria’s terrified underground chase pursued by an inexorable torch beam, in general, the music did not, in comparison with operatic or tone poem scores of the previous half-century, contribute very much to the emotional fabric.

The score, for large orchestra, showed the influence of Strauss and Wagner, perhaps, but more particularly Korngold and Schreker.  In spite of its lack of acute emotional characterization, the richness of the orchestral palette was nevertheless a revelation of the scale of the orchestral resources available in the silent movie theatres.

The orchestral score is, as the programme note records, cued with the film scenes in a very detailed way, and this would have made the job of conductor Frank Strobel less accident-prone, though no less taxing. The result was certainly a most impressive achievement by the orchestra, which undoubtedly sustained interest in the film’s narrative which, I suspect, would have been very difficult without it, over its two and a half hour duration.

There is enough music of independent substance for an orchestral suite or ‘paraphrase’ to be drawn from it.

Audience cheers the last of the NZSO’s Brahms concerts

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahmissimo! 
Academic Overture, Op 80
Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op.102 (allegro, andante, vivace non troppo – poco meno allegro meno allegro)
Symphony no.4 in E minor, Op.98 (allegro non troppo, andante moderato, allegro giocoso, allegro energico e passionata)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Mikhail Ovrutsky (violin) and Andrew Joyce (cello)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 15 October 2011, 2pm

In this concert, unlike any of the others in this series, the major works were both in minor keys.  However, it started with a work of a cheerful and light nature, described by Inge van Rij in her pre-concert talk, as “Popular and serious styles working hand in hand”.

It was pleasing to see a much bigger audience at this concert.   Obviously there are many people for whom the weekend is a much more suitable time to come to a concert, rather than 6.30pm on a weekday – at which time, inexplicably, most of the NZSO concerts have been scheduled this year.  As befitted an afternoon concert, the orchestra members wore a different mode of dress, the men in white shirts and grey ties with dark lounge suits, while Pietari Inkinen wore a dark shiny suit, and shiny black shoes.

The Overture used a smaller orchestra than that required for most of Brahms’s symphonic works; this was in response to the requirement of Breslau University, from whom the composer received an honorary doctorate in 1879.  Nevertheless, the work has flair as well as precision, in its reworking of student songs, including at the end, the well-known ‘Gaudeamus igitur’.  The playing was robust and energetic, and despite fewer brass and woodwind players, there was a loud and emphatic ending.

Compared with the violin concerto, the double concerto for violin and cello is seldom played.  Yet it is a very fine work, Brahms’s last for orchestra, and worthy of more frequent airings.  Some have thought it strange using instruments of such different pitch and timbre, but the cello has a huge range – and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto is one of the most mellifluous works of the classical repertoire.

The cello opened the action, with double-stopping and high notes.  Then cellist Joyce played a brilliant duet with the violin soloist, both players employing great subtlety and expression, rhythmic drive and unanimity.   Maybe sitting a few rows further forward than I did on Thursday evening was better for sound, or perhaps Mikhail Ovrutsky played with a more mellow tone.  Whichever applies (or neither), I did not find fault with his tone on this occasion.  On the contrary, he played with great feeling, especially in the lyrical middle section of the first movement.

The second movement, too, revealed the unified interpretation and performance of the soloists.  There was an evocative woodwind chorus, and the mellow sound of melodious strings in the final section.  Always, Andrew Joyce produced a rich and attractive timbre.

The third movement featured lithe cello, followed by the same liveliness and spirit on the violin.  The technical proficiency of both soloists was very apparent, while the positive mood of this movement gave the whole work a hopeful feel, despite its earlier minor key.  While the movement is serious for much of the time, it is not as sombre as many of Brahms’s works are.  Its triumphal ending resulted in a show of great enthusiasm from the audience, while the orchestra showed its warm appreciation; the members were obviously very impressed with the playing of the visiting soloist and of their own new principal cellist.

The flowers which Joyce received at the end he gallantly gave to his wife, acting principal violist Julia Joyce; Ovrutsky felt obliged to emulate, and gave his flowers to the nearest female cellist.

The symphony constituted the major work on the programme.  Its swaying opening bars immediately drew attention.  This was deliberate, careful, skilled writing.  Here, there was a little untidy string playing, but this was most unusual.  Drive and energy were characteristic of the attack.  Falling thirds formed part of the massive architecture; the movement was characterised by almost relentless forte.

The andante second movement stopped short of being relentless.  It had even more vigour, but was also more luminous and meditative, this mood alternating with tension and grandiosity.   Typically with Brahms, it featured memorable themes.

Allegro giocoso was just that – bright, jolly and exuberant, and according to some commentators, this was his only orchestral scherzo.  At the end, it is almost overwhelming in its power and volume.

The finale is in the form of a passacaglia, with 31 variations on a theme from a Bach cantata.  A grand opening in the brass department was followed by ominous chords before the figure from Bach was stated, coupled with the falling thirds from the opening movement.  Lovely deep brass dissonances interspersed the lines of the other players.

At times, Brahms is portentous and annoyingly repetitive.  At times, he is sublime and a master of melody, and of lofty thought and expression.  The music is frequently scintillatingly soft and expressive.  His frequent favouring of the cello and the oboe makes one wish he had written concertos for these instruments.  Indeed, he is reported to have greeted Dvořák’s cello concerto with the remark “If I had known it was possible to write a cello concerto like that, I would have written one myself”.

The falling thirds appeared again, with the brass playing a sequence rising from the bass.  There was a rousing end to the symphony, and the series, and a warm reception from the audience, the cheers resounding as the leaders of the wind section stood individually, before the whole orchestra received the applause all its members richly deserved.

 

 

Brahmissimo: Third concert with 3rd symphony and 1st piano concerto: magnificent

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Michael Houstoun (piano)

Brahms: Symphony No 3 in F, Op 90 and Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor, Op 15

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 14 October, 6.30pm

This Brahms festival which started on Wednesday, has created a wonderful festive atmosphere in the Michael Fowler Centre each evening. Though on Friday, the audience was of reasonable size – I guess around 1200 – earlier it had been smaller, but the atmosphere was there from the first evening. It’s sad that so many things militate against several thousand people waking up to the marvels of good music and Brahms in particular.

The Symphony – No 3 in F major – was played first, presumably because it’s the shorter work – a good 10 minutes shorter – and probably has to be rated less weighty; and the symphony ends quietly while the concerto is simply a more passionate work with a huge emotional range, ending in a mighty climax.

But the symphony begins with arresting timpani to launch the first waltz-style movement and continues in its peaceful, pastoral vein – remember it’s in the same key as Beethoven’s Pastoral. Inkinen’s tempi and the inner feeling within each phrase and sentence, seem to be so right, so inevitable, and his rallentandos – the recur in  the first movement – are perfectly gauged.

You can tell very early in a performance whether it’s going to carry you to heaven and back, or whether there are things that are unconvincing, irritating, deceptive or dishonest. All my recent experiences of Inkinen have been of the former kind.

I was seated in the centre stalls for the first two concerts; this time I was on the left of the gallery facing the violas with the timpani behind them. As a result I probably heard the timpani rather emphatically; and because of sound reflections which do curious things in this space, I also had rich experience of double basses which were on the left of the stage, behind the cellos which, for Inkinen, change places with second violins.

Otherwise, balances between instrumental sections were beautiful.

The second movement is slightly calmer than the first but it seems only to modify the same spirit and very similar musical material. It’s in common time but there are passages of triplet quavers alternating with the 4/4 rhythm. The second theme has the flavour of Dvořák – say, the Eighth symphony – and the mood of the whole suggests that composer, whom Brahms helped and admired and remained on generally good terms with. The oboe and clarinet have significant roles in the movement’s colour and these were beautifully played (respectively Peter Dykes and Philip Green).

While the third movement is entitled Poco allegretto, the pace sounds only a little faster than the second; towards the end, in a very characteristic Brahms idiom, a long horn solo is taken up by oboe then clarinet and bassoon, and then fades quietly to allow the finale, Allegro, to follow. It begins with a connecting chorale-like theme but suddenly catches fire as a real finale is supposed to do; it’s the first real boisterousness to emerge. But as that fell away, Inkinen recaptured the mood of the other movements, and the spirit of peace and acceptance reigned in this very unusual finale which slowly fades out in one of the beautiful decrescendos and rallentandos.

It was a very beautiful performance of a remarkable symphony.

The First Piano Concerto is astonishing: it seems such a profound and mature work to have been penned by a 25-year-old, somehow more heroic and emotionally powerful than the B flat concerto from late in his career. The orchestra has a long introduction whose burnished richness and epic symphonic character hardly created the expectation of a showy concerto.

And of course that is what it is not.

When Houstoun enters the spirit of the music doesn’t change; and the density and weight of the orchestral introduction is transferred to the keyboard. The big chords with their heavy trills announced a complete break from the kind of glittery, virtuosic piano concertos that were being written through the mid 19th century. It seems the sort of concerto that was composed with a pianist like Houstoun in mind, perfectly capable of dazzling with bravura and speed, but whose nature seems far more in tune with music of real intellectual and emotional depth. Nevertheless, there are some highly challenging and visually attractive episodes that Houstoun navigates without ado but with marvellous sonority and panache. Elsewhere, for example in the latter part of the first movement, the piano has passages that respond to his sturdy, fluidly-paced playing that is also quite beautiful.

The end of the first movement seems imminent, but Brahms keeps us waiting and filling our ears with sounds that make the delay a blessing, finally coming to rest in the dark D minor mood of the Mozart’s Don Giovanni – after more than 20 minutes of enraptured, revelatory performance.

The second movement, the famous portrait of Clara Schumann, shows a rapturous, romantic Brahms, and it’s a time to luxuriate in Houstoun’s solo piano passages which had an improvisational character, along with the orchestra in a hushed and profoundly mature Adagio – how can this be a 25-year-old’s first foray in large-scale orchestral music?

It’s interesting that the orchestra, for all its weight in this work, is at classical strength: no trombones or tuba, no percussion other than timpani, no harp, two trumpets and just normal double woodwinds without a bass clarinet, contrabassoon or cor anglais, but with five horns. Horns are a significant Brahms hallmark and throughout this festival of his orchestral music, it has been his glorious handling of French horns that has caught the ear again and again. Happily, the horn section is back in good shape after the interregnum following Ed Allen’s departure, now under guest principal Samuel Jacobs; their sounds were one of the glories of this series, with particularly difficult work in this concerto.

The concerto ends with an Allegro – non troppo and, as always, Inkinen’s tempi seemed utterly right, and though the mood is lighter, hinting at the character of Schumann’s concerto, he succeeds in making us hear that a mighty musical mind is still very present. Though the rhythm is buoyant, the serious spirit remains, and Houstoun’s piano continued to be resolute and strongly based while the second, ‘B’, section of the Rondo is often rhapsodic and decorated by trills and delightful scales and passage-work.  The occasional dramatic punctuations from the orchestra, timpani-based, alternating with translucent textures from lightly-bowed figures in the strings and fluttering woodwind decorations, created a marvellously balanced, complementary structure that was deeply satisfying.

As I finish this review, after attending the fourth concert with the Double Concerto and the 4th Symphony, I retain the feeling that, for all the splendid playing by Mikhail Ovrutsky and Andrew Joyce, and that great symphony, it was the third concert that made the most profound emotional impact, and has induced me to explore other versions of those works, none of which, though interestingly different, seem better than what I heard on Friday in the Michael Fowler Centre.

 

Brahmissimo! The second concert with the violin concerto

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahms: Tragic Overture, Op 81
Violin Concerto in D major, Op.77
Symphony no.2 in D major, Op.73

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with Mikhail Ovrutsky, violin

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday, 13 October 2011, 6.30pm

With Brahms being Radio New Zealand Concert’s composer of the week this week, plus this series of four New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concerts, music-lovers are being treated to a veritable festival of his music.  How wonderful this morning (Friday) to hear on radio Jonathan Lemalu’s superlative, sensitive recording of the composer’s Four Serious Songs.

On Thursday it was more of his symphonic music, following the first concert in the series on Wednesday evening.

Concertmaster Vessa-Matti Lepännen spoke to the audience before the conductor entered, dedicating the evening’s concert to the memory of Christopher Doig, who had died that morning.  Among his many, many roles in the cultural and sporting life of the nation he was responsible over recent years for Sponsorship and Business Development for the orchestra, based in his beloved home city of Christhcurch.  In the last week he had greeted the great tenor Placido Domingo in Christchurch, a trip organised by Doig to raise funds for earthquake victims there.

He announced only days ago a scholarship for young singers – as a superb tenor himself, one of the very best New Zealand has produced, he was always encouraging others musicians, as Lepännen attested.

In Wellington he will be remembered best as the Director of the 1990 New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, and the production in that Festival of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, with Sir Donald McIntyre as the principal soloist.  His loss to the cultural scene in this country is colossal; the fruits of his labours will live on for a long time.

How appropriate, then, for the concert to commence with the Tragic Overture, by a composer who spent most of his life in Vienna, a city where Chris Doig had been principal tenor at the opera house for a number of years.

Probably attracted by the Violin Concerto, the attendance was better than at the first concert, but there were still far too many empty seats downstairs in the Michael Fowler Centre.  We have a fine orchestra; more people need to discover it and the great music it plays.

This was as good a performance of the Tragic Overture as I have heard live; the playing had urgency, and was truly dramatic.  The wind solos were given due prominence, while the passage featuring pizzicato strings and haunting woodwind sent shivers down the spine.  The music presaged dire tragedy; it made me think of Lucia di Lammermoor.  The red and black lighting around the stage heightened the sense of looming disaster.

The sombre brass surge in the final pages, with soft descending strings, gave a sense of resolution, even of overcoming tragedy.  It was a masterful performance.

An irritant between items was that the lights were turned down.  Surely they should be turned up, so that audience members can read their programmes?  And they were well worth reading.  Frances Moore’s notes for the whole series were simply outstanding.  Her vivid language and impeccable writing made them a delight to read.

Inge van Rij’s pre-concert talk too, was informative, interesting, and well-expressed.  She spoke of the background to Brahms’s 1879 violin concerto, and the context of his time and place, which resulted in this beautiful yet unpretentious work that did not seek primarily to display the skills of the soloist.  This led to the great violinist Sarasate describing Brahms’s concerto as ‘too symphonic’, which meant it was not a showpiece for the violinist.  However, critics of the time, especially Brahms’s mentor Robert Schumann, had begun criticising works in the latter category.

As a performer on the piano rather than the violin, Brahms needed the advice of his friend, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, on technical aspects of this work, and also, since the latter Hungarian, on the gypsy idioms of the last movement.

The piece certainly has a symphonic idiom, and while opening in the major key, the soloists enters in the minor, and instead of his leading the major theme, the orchestra does it.  The cadenza that Joachim wrote for his performance of the concerto emerges seamlessly from the music it follows, and is the one most often used.

The young violin soloist, Mikhail Ovrutsky, is not one for the traditional ‘penguin’ suit; he wore a dark patterned loose shirt, open at the neck.  He was equal to the task at hand, though I found his ungainly stance on stage inelegant and off-putting.  While his tone was mostly beautiful, it was not always smooth from note to note, i.e. from up-bow to down-bow, and was even harsh occasionally.  At other times he displayed sweetness of tone, but at some of these moments, the orchestra threatened to overwhelm him.  At other times there was, for me, too much metallic string sound from him.  Joachim’s cadenza was fast and vigorous – but was it beautiful?

In the main, the orchestra was in splendid form, mellow and sensitive.  However, they were not quite together at the start of the slow movement.  The divine oboe solo was a little too assertive for my taste, though the tone was lovely, and the harmonising woodwinds were very fine, the melancholic sound thus created, haunting.

The violin solo then entered noticeably softer, and Ovrutsky employed more vibrato than previously, giving greater breadth of tone, appropriate for this movement.  Here, the solo playing was magical, and the mournful ending very refined.

For me, the huge change of mood in the final movement has always been rather hard to take – it is too much of a contrast with what has preceded it.  Again there was some harshness of tone in what was generally a very good performance.  There is certainly nothing wrong with Ovrutsky’s finger technique.

As the programme note stated “…the music never becomes an exercise in extraordinary virtuosity but is instead imbued with a passion that drives the music towards an exciting, breathtaking finish.”

The third offering, Brahms’s Symphony no. 2, features a grand, sweeping opening, counterpointed with delicate figures it.  The orchestra provided gorgeous string tone.  The first movement is mainly bold and brassy, but not without introspection too.  Towards the end of the movement there was some fine horn playing.

The second movement is more contemplative – a mixture of fibre and cream.  As has been said, Brahms makes the most of the material he has.

The third movement opens with a resplendent oboe theme, against pizzicato strings.  The full-bodied sound from the orchestra nevertheless allowed for nuance aplenty.  The exuberant clarinet and oboe both featured elegantly in the finale.  The strings introduced on of Brahms’s bold, sturdy themes; it developed excitedly.  Chromaticism followed (but not as in Wagner), and there was a great final statement of the main theme, noble and heroic.  Brahms seemed to get a little bogged down in this movement, with a tad too much working out of the themes.  However, the textures were always wonderful.

The orchestra looked as if it had successfully complete a marathon – which it will have by late Saturday afternoon.  As the audience gave the orchestra an enthusiastic response, the guest principal horn player. Samuel Jacobs, was raised for a special round of applause.

The splendour of this concert was a fitting tribute to Chris Doig, on the day of his untimely death – a man who contributed much to this orchestra as a consultant, and to many cultural and sporting bodies in New Zealand.

 

NZSO triumphs in Brahms festival with Inkinen and Irons

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Diedre Irons (piano)

Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat, Op 83 and Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 68

Michael Fowler Centre

Wednesday 12 October 6.30pm

The first of the four Brahms concerts entitled ‘Brahmissimo’ faced an audience that was a bit smaller that I’d hoped, at least in the stalls where I was sitting. I comforted myself thinking this was due to the fact that many might not be able to afford four concerts night after night, that 6.30pm has not yet been adopted as the public’s favourite concert hour and that there is still a lingering, inexplicable thing about Brahms, that must dwell mainly in the minds of the tone deaf or who allow a century-old controversy to prejudice them; or perhaps attention is all directed to the behaviour of an oval ball.

The concert was quietly advertised as part of the REAL New Zealand Festival, designed to accompany the Rugby World Cup games, and was supported directly by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.

The thousand or so who were there were in no doubt that Brahms was among the very greatest composers and that both performances were on a magnificent scale and deserved the vociferous ovations that they got.

The horns, led by guest principal Samuel Jacobs, opened the concerto rapturously, though with restraint, and pianist Diedre Irons followed in the same way, her solo passage quietly and very deliberately paced. So there was plenty of scope for a controlled amassing of dynamic energy that led to the eventual statement of the leading theme, which was clothed in grandeur.

This was Diedre Irons’s first ever public performance of this work, and it was thus no surprise to detect a degree of tension, that showed itself in the first movement in occasional minor slips, a slight lack of heart-easing lyricism and a tendency to stress individual chords rather than find all the meaning in entire phrases. There were signs of such unease in both the first and second movements though the latter, Allegro appassionato, had a spaciousness and sanguinity, that emerged as passion and excitement.

But the gorgeous Andante transformed her demeanour, allowing her to express herself with breadth and beauty. The entire movement blossomed in a spirit of flowing, relaxed calm, reinforced not a little by the rapturous cello solos from principal Andrew Joyce. In the middle of the Andante an end is suggested but there is a magical revival of life that brought all Diedre Irons’s musical gifts to the fore.

This spirit of ease and confidence carried into the finale where Irons found her way comfortably through the lively passages that invited a certain rubato and individuality of interpretation and both orchestra and piano threw themselves boisterously into the concluding phase.

The first symphony opens in a complete absence of Brahms’s much written-about shyness of the symphonic form because of the shadow of Beethoven. The Introduction is a triumphant conception: grand and expansive, and Inkinen demonstrated from the start, his command of sonority, pace and dynamics that immediately created a high level of anticipation.

Brahms’s quite other approach to writing for the orchestra, between concerto and symphony, was clear: the former taking pains with balance, both between individual instruments and individual sections of, and between soloist and, the orchestra; while in the symphony his attention is on the orchestra in its entirety, as with a single instrument. Here there was no need to create slender textures to allow the piano its space.

The sound was magnificent.

The Andante Sostenuto, second movement, with a prominent oboe – presumably Robert Orr – was a beautiful, calm, balanced, lyrical outpouring.

A nervous clarinet tune seemed to characterize part of the scherzo-like third movement which ends strangely, inconclusively, and Inkinen handled the insubstantial fleeting scraps of music which link the worlds of simple peasant dance with the overwhelming grandeur of the last movement, where the horn-led introduction drew the music suspensefully into the final climactic passages with marvelous subtlety. The restrained build-up made the eventual tutti exultation all the more triumphant as it was driven by the massive string choir operating at full-throttle.

I hope that word gets out that we had a marvellous opening to what is bound to continue as a marvellous mini-festival that offers an alternative to what is absorbing the country at present.

Don’t miss the other three concerts of Brahms’s symphonies and concertos.