Tag: orchestral

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.

 

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.

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.