Polish Pride

SZYMANOWSKI – Concert Overture

CHOPIN – Piano Concerto No.2

CHOPIN (arr.Stravinsky) – Nocturne

LUTOSLAWSKI – Symphony No.4

Diedre Irons (piano)

Jacek Kaspszyk (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 29th April 2010

Polish hearts beat staunchly both at the beginning of and throughout this special concert in the Michael Fowler Centre, as Beata Stocyńska, the Polish Ambassador to New Zealand, addressed those present in the Michael Fowler Centre at the invitation of Peter Walls the orchestra’s CEO.  Mrs Stocyńska spoke of her countrymen’s and women’s pride in their culture and the achievements of their creative artists, such as Fryderyk Chopin, whose 200th birthday was marked by the proclamation of a “Year of Fryderyck Chopin” by the Polish Government. There was tragedy, too, at the mention by the ambassador of the recent air-crash in Russia that claimed the lives of the Polish President and a number of government officials, an event that gave this concert and its music all the more poignancy for those present. Adding his dignified gravitas to the occasion was the Governor-General of New Zealand, the Honourable Sir Anand Satyanand, speaking on behalf of all of the non-Polish people present, and eloquently but simply conveying a nation’s sympathy for another’s anguish and grief.

The tributes concluded, it was then over to the musicians, who moved the proceedings forward spectacularly with Karol Szymanowski’s Concert Overture. Anybody unfamiliar with Szymanowski’s music would have presumed that the overture was by Richard Strauss, so unerringly does the younger man imitate the latter, at the time the most famous composer in Europe. In fact Szymanowski almost out-Strausses Strauss, if not to the music’s advantage – though exciting and forceful, the work is simply too heavily scored, and risks tiring the listener’s ear before the end. Conductor Jacek Kaspszky controlled the profusion of youthful orchestral exuberance as best he could, although one was still left with a “less-is-more” feeling after the tumultuous waves of instrumental tone had ceased once and for all.

If the excitement and energy was all too palpable during the Szymanowski Overture, similar qualities were in short supply during much of the performance of the Chopin piano concerto which followed, at least in the orchestral playing. Though numbered as the second, the F Minor Concerto was actually composed earlier than the E Minor No.1, and, despite the young composer’s love for Mozart’s music, shows little of the latter’s aptitude for using the orchestra as an effective protagonist, especially in the outer movements. It’s music that doesn’t ”play itself”, requiring instead plenty of positive and energetic advocacy, which conductor and orchestra seemed strangely reluctant to fetch up, with the result that, when pianist Diedre Irons wasn’t playing, the music seemed to amble inconsequentially along. Right at the outset there was genuine poetic feeling from the strings, and some nice work by oboist Robert Orr, but thereafter things were oddly lacklustre – some nicely shaped bassoon-and piano exchanges later in the movement raised hopes, but the duetting if anything seemed to further inhibit rather than stimulate any contrasting vigour and muscle in the tuttis.

It’s interesting, and fortunate, that the slow movement of the concerto is an absolute gem – inspired by the young composer’s passion for a singer, Constantia Gladowska, the music conjures up a kind of breath-stopping enchantment throughout, underpinned by a richly-woven carpet of sensitively-sustained orchestral tones. Diedre Irons wove one magical arabesque after another in this movement with finely-spun feeling and delicacy, nicely supported by the orchestra at every turn. But as for the rest, there was little to enthuse about – no strong impulse or spark that would have energised those admittedly dull orchestral textures and given the interchanges between piano and orchestra some interest. The pianist was doing her utmost (and how good to have her perform with the NZSO once again), but the orchestral response to her elaborate solo paragraphings and spirited lead-ins during the outer movements suggested that hearts and minds were largely elsewhere.

Igor Stravinsky’s piquant orchestration of Chopin’s A-flat Nocturne Op.32 No.2 served to demonstrate the well-known balletic inclinations of one of the twentieth-century’s greatest composers. Written in 1909 for the impresario Diaghilev, to extend an existing ballet using Chopin’s music for the famed Ballets Russes, Stravinsky produced a delightful neo-Tchaikovsky-like realisation which brought out all the sentiment of the original (a lovely “stopped” horn at the cadence-points of the opening section) and gave bright Russian colours to the more vigorous episodes in the middle part of the work. A lovely, diaphanous ambience gave the conclusion a sombre beauty, Kaspszyk and the players nicely realising the setting’s mixture of delicacy and turbulence.

Both delicacy and turbulence were writ large in the evening’s final work from Poland, the Fourth Symphony of Lutoslawski. Overshadowed at first by the incredible popularity of his Third Symphony, with its engaging tunefulness and high drama, Lutoslawski’s Fourth is a much tougher proposition, shorter, more introverted and darker, in places elegiac. The work has a two-movement layout, each part relating to the other in a way that creates a kind of arched structure, the first movement making its listeners, in the composer’s words, “hungry, and finally even impatient” for the fulfilment of the second part. So we heard the clarinet’s gentle, lyrical theme at the start against a murmuring accompaniment, extended later by both flute and clarinet,and interspersed by episodes of faster, more mercurial and less predictable music – these are marked in the score “ad libitum” and the performers asked to improvise, to shape the gestures according to their own impulses.

The players were transformed, engaged, focused and totally committed to making these sounds – my notes refer to things like “impassioned tolling-bell figures – great swinging strides from basses, snappish brass clusters splash colour and tighten tension, strings soar and sear…”  and later “claustrophobic ostinati from strings with brass and percussion bouncing backwards and forwards off walls…” the impression thus given of sometimes elemental, sometimes feverish activity. Against this were the moments of stasis, in line with Lutoslawski’s avowed intention of delaying the listener’s desire for continuity and resolution through unexpected contrast and variety. I noted “pointillistic shimmerings from strings, iridescences from everywhere, like fireflies at dusk” and “great spaces, deep loneliness, railway lights humming along lines in the middle of nowhere – a sense of impulses coursing over vast spaces, subdued but purposeful…”. One’s gradual awareness of the process of resolution of these disparate elements became a profound listening experience – throughout the performance the focus of the playing and conducting was palpable, spell-binding in its intensity and brilliance, and unerring in its control and direction, for which the musicians received their just dues from the audience at the end.

Smetana: Sarka from Ma Vlast; Sibelius: Violin Concerto; Tchaikosky: Symphony No 6 ‘Pathétique’

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Hilary Hahn (violin)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 23 April, 6.30pm

I have the feeling that while the Wellington audience realizes that Hilary Hahn is quite a good violinist, many do not quite know the extent of her international renown. One doesn’t become a Gramophone magazine Artist of the Year on account of being simply competent – and that was 18 months ago. The NZSO programme booklet, at least, marked the orchestra’s awareness of her pre-eminence with an unusual double-spread biographical essay. There was a full house and I understand some were turned away: a contrast with the situation at the fine Bruckner/Strauss concert a fortnight earlier which, of course, had deserved a similar audience.

Hahn’s vehicle was the Sibelius concerto, oddly, only seven months after the orchestra’s performance of it in the Sibelius Festival with its concertmaster as soloist. That was a fine performance, but this one was superb. Not only did Hahn demonstrate every kind of spiritual energy, from dynamic power to breathless, poetic finesse in her role, but her very presence, petite and all as she is, seemed to inspire in the orchestra a boundless intensity in the tutti, and especially in the cellos and basses (both sections seem remarkably inspired by the leadership of bassist Hiroshi Ikematsu), low brass and bassoons, but also their obverse: misty, shimmering pianissimi in the opening pages and the several magical diminishings of sheer physical power, such as in the slow movement.

Even if her scarlet dress didn’t altogether endorse the emotion of the tremulous, sub-audible dawning passage at the opening, it came to represent the character of her ful-blooded playing soon enough, helped by the commanding projection of sound from her fine instrument.

She played an encore, to cleanse he palette, as it were – the Allegro assai (I think) from Bach’s 3rd solo violin sonata.

What most characterizes her playing is not just the flawless intonation, beauty of tone and the detailed nuances that colour and embroider every phrase, but the celebration of the human spirit, generosity and optimism, belief in the importance of human creativity (if such purple extravagances be allowed). Those are the spiritual messages of all great art, regardless of the specific emotions and images with which they engage.

Those thoughts recurred listening to Tchaikovsky’s last symphony, with its assumed text of despair, a reading that is hard to avoid as one leaves with the last movement in the ears. Yet that is hardly the overwhelming message of the earlier movements, though in a performance such as this where I felt both second and third movements to be in the nature of forced rejoicing, unvarying in their tempo and without much dynamic variety.

It struck me that Inkinen’s immediate start of the last movement was as much to deny any temptation to hear the March-like 3rd movement as an affirmation of over-confidence, to reject it at once as empty bombast, as it was to stop the inevitable, unwanted applause that makes such a juxtaposition hard to bring about.

While the middle two movements are interesting, the Pathétique’s heart, unlike with many great symphonies, seems to lie in the first and last movements which seem far more complex, obscure, ambiguous and plain beautiful than the two middle movements. Their orchestration, their ebb and flow of speed and dynamics, exert a much stronger attraction to the emotions and to tantalize the intellect.

Played at the beginning, and completing this programme devoted to the music of the Slav, and near-Slav world, was the long overdue playing of one of Smetana’s symphonic poems: an imaginative stroke. It puzzles me that so many of the pieces of music that feature in writings about music and that furnish the minds of at least older audience members, from their childhood, are ignored by concert arrangers: the more popular of the Ma Vlast cycle for example, Vltava and From Bohemia’s Woods and Meadows.  Sarka is a particularly dramatic piece, perhaps not entirely successful in its shape, but susceptible, as shown here, to brilliant and arresting performance; the clarinet solos were most eloquent and there were fine passages from other players such as trombones and tuba.

Lovers of the tone poems lament that a composer of such orchestral flair didn’t attempt the symphony, or more large-scale orchestral music.

In all, this was a brilliant concert fully justifying the big audience, and the presence of this remarkable violinist.

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei

Stravinsky: Danses concertantes (1942); Psathas: Djinn (with Pedro Carneiro – marimba); Beethoven: Symphony No 3 in E flat ‘Eroica’

Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 17 April 2010

The Wellington Orchestra’s 2010 season does not have such a conspicuous theme as the two previous seasons have had. This year the anniversaries are being celebrated: while I am personally affected by such curiosity, not everyone is urged to place everything in a historical continuum. So the first concert was about this year, and marks it with a piece by a New Zealand composer first performed at this concert which is, oddly enough, 2010. Following concerts feature music first performed in 1810, 1910 and 1710 respectively.

Marc Taddei told us that the choice of the programme pivoted on Psathas’s new work, which he wanted to set between important music from the greatest composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.

At certain points in the 20th century there may have been little argument about Stravinsky’s pre-eminence; it might not be so obvious now. Just one, and clearly idiosyncratic, measure: in my own collection of LPs and CDs, six other composers born after 1875 rate higher – Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ravel, Bartok, Vaughan Williams, with Poulenc hard on Stravinsky’s heels! 

Nor would everyone think the Danses concertantes stand alongside Beethoven’s Eroica. Stravinsky envisaged it as music for dance but few ballet companies have taken it on, and it certainly doesn’t rank with the three great ballets, or even later ones such as Apollon Musagète, Le baiser de la fée or Agon. Yet it sounds very danceable, even though it is all written in varieties of common time, two of the five sections being marches, of unmistakable Stravinsky character. The melodies and the orchestration are also unmistakeable, notwithstanding possible influence of a composer like Poulenc (though that might that have worked the other way?).

The orchestra handled the vivid dynamic and tempo changes, and balances between winds and strings, with dramatic awareness; if polish was uneven there were plenty of moments where the sonorities and the instrumental textures delighted: the familiar horn fanfares were just one. Conductor and orchestra showed a singular instinct for the score.

What the performance did was to remind me of the large number of Stravinsky’s orchestral works, quite apart from the three great ballets) that we should hear more often – the three symphonies, the Divertimento, the concertos, as well as the later ballets such as Pulcinella, Jeu de cartes and those mentioned above.  If he is the greatest composer of last century, why does he feature so rarely in the concert hall and, relative to others such as those I named, on recordings?

The main course was the premiere of John Psathas’s new orchestral score, entitled Djinn. César Franck’s symphonic poem of the same name, inspired by Victor Hugo’s poem, was, naturally, of no help in preparing one’s receptors for it.

It is a concerto for marimba and orchestra, predominantly ebullient, riotous, though often with an implicit calm, suggestions of raga, of Latin sentiment, all the while employing the orchestra, especially percussion and winds, with enormous virtuosity. Not overlooking the palette of effects from strings that created the element of mysticism that lies in the Indian supernatural being which Psathas blends, at least in his evocative note, with Greek mythology and philosophy: for two of the three movements have Greek references (Pandora, Labyrinth and Out-dreaming the Genie).

One could imagine that the Djinn, depicted by the marimba, played with almost unbelievable wizardry by Portuguese percussionist Pedro Carneiro, was floating above or was inseminated into the entire fabric of the piece.  Not a conventional concerto by any means, not even with the ebb-tide, look-alike cadenza that ended the Labyrinth movement.  A secondary soloist in Jeremy Fitzsimons’s side drum, placed in front of the conductor; whose role hardly seemed to justify the limelight.

Without having seen the score, I can only imagine the near dismay that might have faced Marc Taddei when he first opened it, and even more, as rehearsals began. Not only the task of realizing the sounds and their relative weight and meaning, but the complex rhythms.  The outcome was a highly impressive premiere which I’m sure will tempt other orchestras.

Nevertheless, I found myself more than a little bemused and battered at the end of this phantasmagoria of riotous sound; increasingly a lover of the sublime, of sustained lyricism and spirituality: speed and massive orchestral forces have decreasing appeal for me, even when huge skill, undeniable musical impulse, an underlying scheme and a spiritual message are present. As the Emperor said (foolishly, and probably apocryphally) about Die Entführung aus dem Serail: ‘Too many notes my dear Mozart’. But I wouldn’t dare.

Just as it has become risky for a 90-piece symphony orchestra today to tackle pre-1800 music, because the ‘historically-informed’ police frown, so it might be risky for a small orchestra to tackle orchestral music from the Eroica onwards. (Not that today we are short of lighter, tighter, more transparent accounts of the Romantic masterpieces from the likes of Gardiner and Harnoncourt). The immediate impression was of less than ideal weight and bass-driven sonority; and faster speeds than of old. But such impressions are often fleeting, and when within a few minutes the impact of a genuine musical instinct in a conductor becomes evident, all is well.

That was not quite what happened, as opportunities, in the first movement and again in the Finale, for the dramatic pause, the slight rallentando before a fresh declamation, were not always grasped; though the latter had started with a fine sense of foreboding, a slightly uneasy anticipation.

In the first movement, the orchestra, which played throughout with uncommon verve and commitment, was sometimes discomforted by the speed; the slightly brisker andante of the Funeral March made sense, while the Scherzo was surprisingly effective, perhaps benefiting from the leaner body of strings.

Nevertheless, the conductor and orchestra continue to attract big – almost sell-out – audiences, which makes one wonder at the signs of reduced activity this season.

R.STRAUSS – Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings

BRUCKNER –  Symphony No.7 in E Major

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 10th April 2010

At the beginning of the concert the NZSO’s Chief Executive, Peter Walls, brought the Chilean Ambassador Luis Lillo onto the platform to speak to the audience. The Ambassador talked about the devastation in Chile in the wake of February’s major earthquake, and thanked the orchestra and the concertgoers present for their support of the Chilean Earthquake Humanitarian Relief Fund. The NZSO has announced that all proceeds from programme sales at this and the Auckland concert on Saturday 17th April will go to the Fund. What a pity, therefore, that the attendance for this concert was noticeably less than usual, despite Peter Walls’ hope expressed in the programme foreword, that because of the music offered the concert would be well patronised. A possible explanation is that a proportion of orchestral patrons continue to take fright at the appearance of the name “Bruckner”, while another is that the combination with Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen seemed to some people as if it would be too much like hard listening work!

Certainly the pairing of two largely elegiac and valedictory scores gave the concert a very specific flavour, exploring a particular ambience in depth as it were, from two different viewpoints. Of course, there are as many responses to great music as there are people, and for some, the prospect of having to square up to any composer’s (let alone TWO composers’) outpourings of grief and mourning can be too sobering, even disturbing an experience, rather too far outside the parameters of “comfortable listening”. It’s precisely because of this that others, like myself, would have revelled in the experience of being taken so profoundly into those darkly despairing realms, far removed from normal experience. In fact I thought that, musically, it was great and imaginative programming.

Strauss’s Metamorphosen, scored for for 23 solo strings, was written by the composer as a lament for the physical destruction suffered by German cities during the Second World War – though the larger view of the composer’s intent would probably include the havoc wrought by the Nazis and the war in general upon German art and culture. The music’s intensity was highlighted in this performance by the musicians, with the exception of the ‘cellos, standing up to play, giving the music-making an extra “gestural” quality, quite choreographic in effect, and fascinating to watch. For me, it added to the performance’s intensity and sense of player-involvement – incidentally, qualities which I’m pleased to observe, seemed to carry over into the second-half performance of the Bruckner as well, even though most of the orchestra members had for the symphony resumed their seats.

Conductor Pietari Inkinen encouraged a deeply-voiced, extremely hushed beginning to the Strauss, the sounds seeming to grow from out of the ground the players stood upon as the violas brought in the first hint of the quotation from the “Eroica” Symphony’s Marche Funebre, one which transfixes this work. The upper strings brought cool and clear light and space to the textures, with intensities hinted at all kinds of different levels, both dynamic and timbral, and everything beautifully controlled and shaped. The work unfolded in great paragraphs, giving we listeners a sense of form and perspective with succeeding episodes, the transitions bringing out remembrances of light and warmth set against darker utterances, the solo violin a plaintive voice amid the ebb and flow of levels of feeling. Conductor and players brought the music up to an incredible fever pitch at the agitato climax, the lower instruments then digging in with a will, bringing out the full emotional force of the tragedy of man’s descent into inhumanity, and properly overwhelming the textures of the music with gloom and despair. It was black and trenchant stuff, taking us right to the abyss’s edge, before enveloping us within the deepest tones of dignified mourning at the close – impressive and deeply moving.

Of all the Bruckner Symphonies, the Seventh (although some would nominate the Fourth, instead) is possibly the most approachable for the uninitiated. It’s a most attractive work, filled with gorgeous melody, rich and varied colourings and a well-balanced amalgam of pastoral gentleness, playful impulse and epic power. The orchestra and Pietari Inkinen gave what I thought was a splendidly uninhibited performance of the work, bringing out and revelling in those marvellously juicy lyrical lines throughout the first two movements, and setting the music’s more ethereal other-worldly episodes against a gloriously epic soundscape of rugged and far-flung proportions.

One of the Symphony’s most distinctive features was a highlight of the performance and a resounding success – the use of those special instruments known as “Wagner tubas” in the work’s slow movement, the music paying homage to the composer that Bruckner admired almost unreservedly. The latter was at work on the slow movement when news of the death of “the Master” reached him, and he used the quartet of these eponymous instruments to express his grief. This was the passage immediately following the music’s biggest and most resplendent climax, when the instruments begin a dignified and sombre lament, which becomes a threnody of deeply-felt emotion – here it was all quite superbly played and beautifully controlled by the musicians.

With the other movements equally as characterful and focused, this was a performance to remember and savour – a soulfully-realised first movement with wonderfully-arched lyrical lines,a vigorous and charmingly bucolic Scherzo, and a Finale whose performance here knitted the music’s somewhat stop-start character together with rare cohesiveness, and brought about a resplendent finish. Pietri Inkinen and his players delivered the last pages of the work with a breadth and grandeur that evoked an image of the world viewed by the composer from what seemed like mountain-tops akin to the portals of Heaven.

All in all, I thought the concert a most promising start by the orchestra and its conductor to the 2010 season.

WALTON – Spitfire Prelude and Fugue

Suite from Henry V

ELGAR – Serenade for String Orchestra

Variations on an Original Theme “Enigma”

Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Rachel Hyde, conductor

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

Sunday 28th March, 2010

The music-comedy team of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann (of the show At the Drop of a Hat fame) would invariably begin their live performances with a roistering number “A Transport of Delight” (happily preserved on recordings). This was, as Michael Flanders would explain, to help them “get the pitch of the hall”, a phrase which came immediately to my mind when Rachel Hyde and the Wellington Chamber Orchestra began the band’s first Sunday afternoon concert of the year. Although not as large an orchestra as, say, the Vector Wellington ensemble or the NZSO at average strength, the Wellington Chamber Orchestra is sizeable enough to make a pretty stirring noise at full throttle – one that always takes a bit of getting used to at the beginning of any concert in the confined spaces of St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace. Walton’s rousing “Spitfire” Prelude did the trick, the full-blooded sounds pinning our ears back, blowing away exterior and interior cobwebs, and probably temporarily flattening out our finer hearing sensibilities, thus enabling us to cope better with the rest of the programme! In such an immediate, even raw-sounding acoustic, it’s difficult for any orchestral group to produce a pleasing tone, not to mention surviving a fairly analytical spotlight; and the Chamber Orchestra emerged from this concert with considerable credit on both counts.

After the cinematoscopic strains of the “Prelude”, the orchestra launched into the splendidly-written fugue, negotiating its leaping energies steadily and giving the phrases plenty of “point” under Rachel Hyde’s direction. I enjoyed picking up the different changes of texture as different instrument groups threw their weight into the fray, the heavy brass sounding particularly exciting. The slower central section was sensitively handled, despite some string intonation diffculties; and apart from some slight out-of-sync problems between strings and wind when the fugue returned, momentum was excitingly restored, with the brass’s toccata-like statements at the end capping off a great finish to the work.

Elgar’s adorable Serenade for Strings was next; and to my delight it received a sensitive and glowing performance throughout – a lovely opening, the very first viola phrase’s leading note beautifully accented in a way that was echoed throughout the movement, imparting to the music a “charged” quality that gave the rhythms and phrasings a real lift, that characteristic Elgarian “stride” which informs much of his work. I thought the violins a bit reticent at first, but they leaned into that wonderful upwardly-leaping phrase so beautifully and with such heart, that the music readily took on the glow it needed to work its magic. The violas momentarily lost their poise at the reprise, but quickly recovered, supporting the violins with their last heartfelt utterance, before things were brought to a beautifully autumn-coloured close. Rachel Hyde encouraged some lovely phrases at the slow movement’s opening, the three-note figure like a sigh leading to and away from the middle note – most affecting. The strings sweetly understated the “big tune’s” first appearance, then radiantly resolved the minor key episode at the top of the phrase – very nice! Altogether, the ebb and flow of feeling in this movement was beautifully caught by all concerned, the violas at the end chiming in with a moment of smoky beauty – lovely. The wind-blown start to the finale generated deep-throated ascents from the lower strings and great strength of tone at the reprise of the tune – an untidy transition to the “striding” episode soon passed, allowing us to enjoy that lump-in-throat key-change to the full, capturing the music’s almost valedictory nostalgia at the end so tellingly.

Although Walton’s fashionable literary circle friends (notably the Sitwells) disliked Elgar’s music, Walton himself admired Elgar. There are touches of Elgarian colour and spectacle of the sort one encounters in Falstaff to be found also in Walton’s music for the wartime film Henry V, which famously starred Laurence Olivier. Walton’s score for the film has gone on to have a life of its own in the concert hall, and Rachel Hyde’s energetic leadership of her orchestral forces throughout did ample justice to the music’s pageantry and colour throughout, evident in the fully technicolour opening The Globe Playhouse. The two strings-only movements, The Death of Falstaff and Touch Her Soft Lips and Part brought lovely tones and sensitive voicings from the players, while the visceral Charge and Battle again brought the big guns into play to great effect, with terrific work from all sections of the orchestra, and an echo of the famous “Bailero” tune from Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne in the aftermath of the battle. The concluding Agincourt Song found the brasses again in fine form, with winds adding fine flourishes to the resplendent colours, and the strings determinedly keeping the triplet rhythms going steadily and strongly. Altogether  it was a great and fitting flourish of a finish.

At the second half’s beginning, Rachel Hyde spoke to the audience about the concert’s major item, Elgar’s famous “Enigma’ Variations, getting sections of the orchestra to play examples of the composer’s use of his theme throughout the work – a helpful and engaging thing to do, especially for younger listeners. She spoke also about Elgar’s original ending for the work, a more sombre and circumspect one that conductor Hans Richter persuaded the composer to change, hereby concluding with a great burst of positive energy, and sense of optimistic well-being instead!  The performance was loving, detailed and deeply committed throughout, technically fallible in a few places, but conveying a real sense of a creative artist’s genius in bringing so many different human personalities into view. Highlights were many, from the tenderly-phrased opening statement of the theme, with beautiful winds and lovely viola-and-‘cello counterpoint, through and into the first variation depicting the composer’s wife, Alice, the music’s grace and dignity giving rise to the utmost depth of feeling via a passionate climax, nicely poised and shaped by conductor and musicians. Some of the more tricky syncopated rhythms and dovetailings sorely tested the players, the strings in No.2 (H.D.S-P) never really settling, and the opening of No.4 (W.M.B.) shaky at the beginning – but No.7 (Troyte) was terrific, with strong timpani playing, and swirling strings that caught the mood, and delivered the requisite snap at the end, as did, incidentally, the playing in No.11 (G.R.S.), strings nimble, brass punchy, and winds and timpani emitting fine shrieks and thuds at the end. People who came to hear No.9 (Nimrod) first and foremost wouldn’t have been disappointed, either – the conductor kept things moving, nicely building the blocks of sound, and shaping episodes beautifully, such as the wind phrases in the central section, and the noble brass outpourings at the reprise of the famous tune. And framing Nimrod were No.8 (W.N.) and No.10 (Dorabella), each here appropriately charming and lyrically played.

The work’s grand finale, No.14 (E.D.U.) started with plenty of swagger from the players, and continued with great rhythmic elan through all the accelerandos towards those great colonnades of sound at the climaxes, building up the tension and excitement well. Just towards the end I sensed something of a “Starting to run on empty” feeling about the playing, as if, having given their all, the musicians were struggling to find enough energy for the final payoff. But even if that was the case, with everybody hanging in there for life itself’s sakes, the achievement was notable and memorable. Applause for conductor and orchestra was whole-hearted, the response auguring well for the rest of the season. Full credit to Rachel Hyde, as well as to the players – I would like to hear and see more of her as a conductor over the next while, as she got an excellent response from her musicians, and did interesting and thoughtful things with them to make it all come really alive.

ANTONIN DVORAK – Serenade for  Winds in D Minor Op.44

TABEA SQUIRE – The Suneater – for Recorders and Strings

HELMUT SADLER – Concertino for Recorders and Strings

JOSEF SUK – Symphony in E Major Op.14

Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Soloists: Members of the Recorders and Early Music Union

Conductor: Gregory Squire

St.Andrew’s on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 6th December, 2009

Family ties involving both composers and performers were brought into play through this concert – firstly, on the strictly compositional front, works by both Antonin Dvorak and his son-in-law Joseph Suk featured on the programme; while Wellingtonian composer Tabea Squire’s commissioned work “The Suneater – for Recorders and Strings” received skilled and committed advocacy from musicians whose ranks included both of her parents, conductor Gregory Squire and leader of the Recorders and Early Music Union, Katrin Eickhorst-Squire. I was interested in the conductor’s (and, presumably, the orchestra committee’s) decision to play Tabea Squire’s new work TWICE on the programme – while it seemed a laudable thing to do for a new piece, helping the audience to take in so much more of the work’s essence on a second hearing, one would hope that Greg Squire would want to extend such advocacy to all new music he conducts. His enthusiastic and engaging spoken introduction to the work emphasised the importance of repeated hearings to the understanding of any unfamiliar music – by way of example he amusingly quoted his first encounter as a student with Brahms’s First Symphony.

However, it was not Brahms, but his great contemporary, Dvorak, whose music opened the orchestra’s programme, the Serenade for Winds, Op.44. This was a work which obviously represented another formative musical experience for the conductor, who described the prospect of directing the piece as akin to a dream come true. Something about this piece truly engages people – the friend I happened to be sitting next to in the audience bent over and whispered to me “This is my funeral music” just as the piece was about to begin! It’s certainly a most lovable work, one which the Chamber Orchestra wind players (helped by a ‘cello and double-bass) relished with delight, digging into the dotted rhythms of the opening with great enthusiasm and managing some nice dynamic variation through the lead-back measures (lovely clarinets in thirds, nicely answered by horns) to the opening’s return. The second movement (a trifle fast for the players’ articulation at the outset) deftly pointed the contrast between the lyrical opening and the scherzo-like trio section scamperings, even if some of the instrumental solos had treacherous twists, and the tricky rhythmic dovetailings at the end of the scherzo-episode fully stretched the group’s capabilities as an ensemble.The players got a lovely colour at the slow movement’s beginning, horns, bassoons and strings laying down a rich carpet of sound on which the individual solos could be floated; and while there were smudged instrumental lines in places, ensemble was good and the overall feeling was right. A good, strong and forthright opening set the finale on its way confidently, and even if the ensemble subsequently lacked the sheer weight of tone to bring to bear to the growing excitement of the rhythms and exuberance of the fanfares at the end there were heartwarming moments, the most engaging being at the recapitulation of the work’s very opening, sturdily and strongly played.

Tabea Squire’s work for recorders and strings was inspired by Keri Hulme’s iconic novel “The Bone People”, in which story appears a “Suneater”, an idiosyncratic device made of wires, mirrors and crystal which spins when placed in the sun, and which is accidentally broken by its maker. Further inspiration for the composer came from various world mythologies that have developed “sun-eating” stories explaining the oscillations in nature between darkness and light. The music explored a range of colours and hypnotic rhythms which suggested these processes. Right from its eerie Aeolian-harp-like opening on strings, through exchanges both throaty and piping-like with various recorders, the piece unerringly evolved a strongly-wrought atmosphere, somewhat reminiscent of Holst’s “Neptune” in places. I liked the oscillations between rich strings and more astringent winds, which moved the sounds away from such remote “unknown region” ambiences and into more volatile and interactive realms. The intensely “breathy” effect of the recorders gave the last section an almost primitive feel, the instruments’ earthy,  “wrong-note” harmonies moving the sounds as a block out and away from the string ambiences, like a separation of disparate elements, each to their own realms. A second playing of the piece focused these thoughts concerning union and dissolution even more strongly, though I found it was interesting how uniquely “charged” the first performance felt, compared with the repeat, when things simply sounded “different” – everything with more focus a second time round, but less ethereal and magical in effect.

Helmut Sadler’s pleasant but largely unremarkable Concertino for Recorders and Strings filled in an entertaining quarter-hour’s listening, from the “Walk in the Black Forest” aspect of the opening movement, with its out-of-door, almost cinematographic ambiences, and rumbustious attention-seeking tones from the massed recorders, through some quasi-exotic harmonisings in attractively ritualised marches and processionals (some lovely, sensitive solo and ensemble work from the wind players) to a final agitato movement, whose slower middle section was marred by some poor wind tuning, but whose livelier sections were well-upholstered by the strings and deftly negotiated by the “group of soloists”.

The family circle aspect of the concert was completed by the orchestra’s performance of Josef Suk’s Symphony in E Major, an early work, in many ways indebted to the influence of Dvorak, who was Suk’s teacher as well as becoming his father-in-law, but with many original and beautiful touches. As this was the only full orchestral outing of the afternoon for the players they made the most of things, and gave the performance all they had. Before the performance Greg Squire spoke of the composer’s later, darker works, such as the Asrael Symphony, written in the wake of the deaths of both Suk’s father-in-law and his wife, and emphasised by comparison the relatively sunny nature of the earlier symphony. The playing was marked by some lovely solo work in places – a single horn at the start, the clarinet introducing the second subject – and Greg Squire asked for and got great rolling cascades of sound in places, strings capped by festive brass, triumphant and buoyant. Similarly, for the slow movement, my notes read “lovely solos from clarinet and oboe, rich string accompaniments, playing captures the music’s volatility – everything full-on…” The orchestra realised plenty of the scherzo’s dancing energy and spirit, with only the trio section sounding less happy due to some string-intonation lapses.  As for the finale, although too long (the composer’s exuberance getting the better of his judgement with too many episodes and climactic denouments) Greg Squire’s and his orchestra’s concentration never flagged, keeping the narrative well-paced and nicely detailed. There were some tricky exposed passages for strings that sounded uncomfortable for the players at one or two purple points, but more importantly, the epic sweep of the music was conveyed to us in as full-blooded a manner as was required.

BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.5 in E-flat “Emperor”

ELLINGTON – Suite “The River”

RESPIGHI – The Pines of Rome

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Marc Taddei (conductor)

Vector Welington Orchestra

– with players from:

RNZAF Central Band,

Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass Band,

Titan Hutt City Brass Band

Wellington Town Hall, Sunday 22nd November 2009

You’d be hard put to devise a more celebratory conclusion to a season of orchestral concerts than this one, with both Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto and Respighi’s sonic blockbuster “The Pines of Rome” in the programme. Of course, Michael Houstoun’s performance of the Beethoven was the last in his presentation of the complete series of the piano concerti, giving the occasion a kind of “double-whammy” effect, and at the concert’s conclusion leaving us quite exhilarated with the energy and vitality of it all. I admit to enjoying the Duke Ellington work “The River”, even if it seemed to me to be a bit of “determined to be different” programming, interesting though the music was to hear – but perhaps I’m showing my prejudices regarding both the application of musical “novelties” to programmes and the parallel neglect of homegrown music. With only one New Zealand work (Jack Body’s “Pulse”) to its concert-programming credit throughout 2009, and one (admittedly a premiere by John Psathas) over four concerts next year, I’d be tempted to observe that the orchestra isn’t putting across much of an indication of compositional activity in this country to its concert-going public, given that scheduling one New Zealand work per season is better than having none at all.

Having gotten the gripe out of the way, I can more freely plunge into the business of reviewing Sunday’s concert, which was a great success – firstly, Michael Houstoun came, saw and conquered with his spirited rendition of Beethoven’s largest and grandest piano concerto, while the two second-half works by turns tantalised and thrilled us with their displays of different kinds of orchestral virtuosity, the sultry rhythms and colours of Duke Ellington’s dance-suite, and the full gamut of instrumental brilliance and power generated by Respighi’s Roman picture-postcards. The combination of exciting solo and orchestral playing and the inimitable Wellington Town Hall ambience made for plenty of thrills and, for me, after-glowings of satisfaction.

No-one ever plays the “Emperor” these days as I first heard it played, which was in the grandest possible manner on a recording made by Daniel Barenboim with the great Otto Klemperer at the orchestral helm – totally anachronistic, but still glorious and overwhelming! Vestiges of that formative magnificence, I confess, haunt my perceptions of other performances experienced since, and with which I constantly struggle, as with all first loves – Houstoun’s and Marc Taddei’s conception was a lean and fiery one throughout the first movement, the playing generating considerable orchestral excitement in the opening tutti, and providing an interesting foil for the soloist’s slightly more detached and Olympian manner. I liked the way Taddei encouraged the orchestra brasses, the horns occasionally rasping with scarcely-contained ebullience, and wonderfully contrasting their manner with the beautifully-phrased poetry of the wind playing. As for the strings, their warm tones and incisive playing was a joy – only in places such as immediately after the “battering exchange” between piano and orchestra mid-movement, where they share canonical phrases with the piano did I feel they lacked the numbers for their playing to “tell”. Houstoun’s playing encompassed all of these moods with both initiatives and responses that took us to the music’s four corners – incisive when needed, lucid and cogent in argument, and ruminative at certain cadence-points, he realised the composer’s “generosity of spirit” to which he made reference in a programme-note containing his own, thoughtfully-expressed views of the whole concerto series.

After the first movement I found parts of the remainder of the concerto a tad less engaging – the slow movement was very pure, with concentrated feeling and tightly-conceived lines, but for me the merest shade driven in places where I wanted the music to stand and catch its own stillness, and make listeners aware of their own breath-taking….I thought it lacked some of what the Germans call “innigkeit”, an inward intensity and concentration that banishes all other awarenesses of things.  A moment that did work beautifully was the hushed lead-in to the finale, the piano’s sudden surge of energy into the rondo-theme excitingly breaking the spell and causing exhalations of pleasure from some fellow-listeners in the hall. Houstoun had an uncharacteristic moment of lack of poise in one of the rondo episodes, but quickly recovered, enjoying the music’s exhilarations and contrasting episodes of playful teasing with the orchestra, even at one point anticipating and reaching a downbeat before Taddei and the orchestra could get there, to no great harm in the flow and ebb of it all. At the end, a well-deserved standing ovation seemed to abruptly and surprisingly come to an end, as if people were expecting something would be said from the platform by somebody, who never actually appeared. If there were flowers for Houstoun, one hopes he received them backstage, at least – his achievement in presenting the whole series of concertos with Taddei and the orchestra during the year deserved the warmest and most heartfelt acclaim.

After the interval, Marc Taddei spoke with the audience about the orchestra’s 2010 season, a schedule which I thought had been very nicely devised – a feature had been made of centenaries of pieces of music and their composers, with works connected with 1910, 1810 and 1710, as well as with the present (John Psathas’s commissioned work “Djinn”).  Of course, this configuration worked against including any New Zealand composition except a new one, which was the case with the above work (“Che sara, sara” as the song goes – but I shall return, teeth bared, snapping at the orchestra’s programming heels, in 2011!). In truth I thought the schedule showed rather more flair and imagination regarding repertoire than did the NZSO’s already-published 2010 prospectus, with mouth-watering things promised such as Elgar’s Violin Concerto played by award-winning violinist Feng Ning, and Saint-Saens’ wonderful “Organ Symphony”.

I had little idea what to expect of the Duke Ellington work “The River”, though it seemed on the face of things to resemble Smetana’s well-known “Vltava” from his “Ma Vlast”, the idea of tracing the course of a river from its source through different episodes to either a lake or a larger river or even the sea. One of the sections of the score was titled “Village Virgins”, causing some conjecture regarding how such beings could be rendered musically (Smetana’s “virginal” equivalent, not actually in “Vltava” of course, but elsewhere in “Ma Vlast”, was the war-maiden Sarka and her fellow-Amazons). In the event, the suite of seven movements featured plenty of recognisably “bluesy” rhythms and textures which could have hinted at the music’s origins, but also some full-blooded cinematoscopic orchestral all-togethers, expertly scored by “the Duke”. I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d got my sequences of what I was hearing in line with the programme’s titles, but the ballad-like opening “Spring” with its melismatic horn parts made a great impression, with lovely playing from all concerned. Another movement to impress was the “Giggling Rapids” episode, evoked by a piano solo and agile brass, with terrific percussion work from Jeremy Fitzsimmons. I also liked the section called “The Lake”, beginning with great stillness, and sensitive detailing from the winds over the top of a broadly flowing tune from the lower strings, which eventually became a kind of “Begin the Beguine” from the brass. Finally, just as the virgins were getting into the swing of things during their section, the lights began to dim, and, as the music finished everything in the hall dissolved into blackness, like the end of a scene from a movie – very atmospheric and nicely brought off. Joseph Haydn, of course, would have loved it!

The empty seats in both “organ galleries” had meanwhile been filled by bandsmen and women carrying various shining instruments, in preparation for Respighi’s work to follow – and what a performance it was! I thought the orchestra boxed, as the saying goes, pounds above its actual weight, capturing all the brilliance and  gaiety of the opening section at a scintillating tempo, but one which didn’t “flatten out” the rhythms at all, keeping everything nicely spiked and buoyant. The change to a deep, sonorous ambience for the second section was utterly compelling and dramatic, with Tom Moyer’s trumpet-playing true and sweet, if simply too close and unatmospheric (if he had been offstage it would have been a truly magical moment) and Taddei and his players building the great central archway to brilliant effect. The third section featured more beautiful solo work, this time from clarinettist Moira Hurst, summoning up the enchantment of a nightingale’s song, and setting the scene for the ghostly procession to follow, an eerie, plangently-voiced cor-anglais solo ((Madeleine Sakofsky) seeming to awaken the shades of returning armies marching upon the still-sleeping city. Taddei set a marvellously slow tempo, eschewing the virtuoso romp through this section that spoils many recorded performances by crack orchestras, and instead vividly capturing the sense of a human juggernaut inexorably approaching, and menacing in its power. By this time, the array of brass players on both sides were on their feet, ready to awaken the citizenry and salute the homecoming heroes. What sounds they were! – as the brass players from the Central RNZAF Band, the Pelorus Trust Wellington Brass Band and the Titan Hutt City Brass Band gave voice to their instruments, along with the deep tones of the Town Hall pipe organ, along with the orchestra playing at full stretch enriching the soundscape with the loudest tones I think I’ve heard in the Town Hall since a performance of the Berlioz Requiem I heard given thirty years ago. Simply overwhelming! Bravo!