Tag: orchestral

TAPIOLA / SYMPHONY NO.2 (SIBELIUS)
DON QUIXOTE (R.STRAUSS) – with Gautier Capucon (‘cello)
Friday 18th September

SYMPHONY NO.3 / SYMPHONY NO.6 / SYMPHONY NO.7 (SIBELIUS)
Saturday 19th September

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra : Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

Was it a previously undiscovered ‘cello concerto by Sibelius that made an appearance right in the middle of the orchestra’s festival of the composer’s music? – alas, no! any rumours of there being a work which had somehow survived the self-critical silence of Sibelius’s last thirty years turned out to have no substance. The “cello concerto” was by the Finnish composer’s almost exact contemporary, Richard Strauss – and it wasn’t really a ‘cello concerto at all, more of a concertante work in the form of themes and variations for solo ‘cello and orchestra, with significant soloistic contributions from both viola and violin. What was it doing in one of the Sibelius Festival concerts? – Peter Walls teasingly answered a query along those lines at a pre-festival talk involving him, Pietari Inkinen and Vesa-Matti Leppanen, by saying that it was there because Sibelius never wrote a ‘cello concerto. But the orchestra had engaged French cellist Gautier Capucon to tour a programme featuring one of the Sibelius Symphonies, and Tapiola, as well as Strauss’s magnificent tone-poem Don Quixote, the concertante work.

One could have complained about this on several counts, one being that we were deprived of hearing a couple of Sibelius’s other tone-poems which could have easily filled up the concert’s spaces had the Strauss not been played. In fact, another of the problems of organising the concert was that the first item, Tapiola, wasn’t really a suitable work with which to begin the evening  – it’s too terse, austere and uncompromising a piece to set upon an audience first time up. We could have instead had En Saga or Pohjola’s Daughter, or even, as an alternative, the Four Legends, all of which would have more successfully “tuned the audience in” at the outset.

However, we would have been the poorer had Gautier Capucon not made an appearance at the concert with his performance of “Don Quixote”– not only did Strauss’s music make for a fascinating comparison with his Finnish contemporary’s (worlds apart from Sibelius’s quintessential nature-work Tapiola), but the music’s performance was outstanding. The orchestra played with a brilliance in places that was richly satisfying to experience, as was Capucon’s own complete identification with the title-role. He seemed to “live” the part of Don Quixote, expressing as much with his face and body-language as with his playing, constantly engaging and interacting with the first violist (representing Sancho Panza), the concertmaster, the conductor and the rest of the orchestra – a true piece of music-theatre. With these players in charge, the old story came to life, the music no longer having need of words to express Don Quixote’s knightly delusions.

Despite my reservations regarding Tapiola as a concert-opener, Sibelius’s masterful tone-poem was given an impressive performance, the playing readily conveying the work’s bleak austerity and dark foreboding, if underplaying the last ounce of raw savagery which depicts nature at its most elemental. I wonder whether Pietari Inkinen was simply too refined a spirit and elegant a musician to push the music to the extremes that are sometimes called for – I recall for example his mellifluous but oddly undercharacterised performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique earlier this year, where the same strictures seemed to apply. What impressed most here was the tension generated between strings and winds, the rhetorical opening exchanges building up a dark, brooding quality, and the tightly-focused quicksilver dialogues readily suggesting fairy laughter amidst the prevailing gloom. But for me the picture remained tantalisingly incomplete, with the brass entries towards the end having insufficient snarl and bite to evoke the forest god’s baleful presence, the dry-ish MFC acoustic perhaps partly to blame here, for the lack of ring and presence.

In the pre-concert discussion Peter Walls had remarked on Sibelius’s Second Symphony resembling a kind of detective story, with the composer sprinking clues throughout the first movement as to the nature of the whole. Inkinen and the players contributed to the compositional sleight-of-hand by keeping the opening movement moving, the strings allowed just a little room to breathe within their phrases, their warmth and richness actually making the horns sound somewhat lack-lustre in comparison. I thought the brass-writing throughout the symphony was hampered by the hall’s lack of resonance, the antiphonal calls throughout the second movement in particular having little atmosphere and spaciousness. Even so, the “mountain-tops” sequence in the same movement worked its magic, with the beautifully-played solo trumpet nicely supported by strings, winds and horns. The brass  brought out the music’s epic character with powerful chording and magnificently-controlled crescendi, a perfect foil for the answering poetry of the strings, with their “big tune”. I wanted more whirlwind recklessness from the strings with the third movement’s vivacissimo, but Inkinen and the players generated plenty of excitement in the build-up to the finale, the strings singing almost crazily throughout, and the winds making the most of their “journeying” tune on its first appearance, as did the rest of the orchestra with a magnificently-delivered build-up towards the final peroration, the brass at the end giving all they had.

And so to the final concert the following evening – three rarely-played symphonies in a single evening making a treat for Sibelians and an intriguing prospect for the uninitiated. Fittingly, I thought the concert the best of the series overall, though my judgement could well be impaired by a particular fondness for the works presented. The pieces represented the composer in different guises, classicist, polyphonist, visionary, nature-poet and epic adventurer, each symphony sharing some of these aspects but having its own strongly distinctive character. Part of the success of the evening was due to Inkinen and the orchestra bringing out that special identity held by each work, with the Seventh Symphony making a fitting climax to it all.

The Third Symphony presented the strongest possible contrast with the Second the evening before – here were restrained orchestral textures and cleanly-conceived classical lines, the voices balanced and poised throughout. Inkinen got his first movement string polyphonies to bubble over beautifully, their effervescence building up nicely to the point where the strings and winds reintroduced the opening theme with a roar and a swing; though I felt the true climax of the movement came in this performance with the “giant’s strides” of the timpani and lower strings leading away from the brass crescendo and through hushed vistas towards the ritualistic hymn-tune with its wonderfully conclusive “Amen”. The slow movement had an enchanting “other world” ambience throughout, with winds and then strings in characteristic Sibelian thirds, contrasting nicely with brilliantly melismatic recitatives from the winds in the movement’s more animated episodes. The finale’s opening pastoral playfulness featured some adroit rhythmic dovetailing from strings, winds and muted horns, before the grand processional of the final theme suddenly appeared, winningly introduced by the ‘cellos, and spreading across the rest of the strings, the different textures making for an ear-catching effect as the power and momentum of the music increased – glorious playing from all, right up to the end.

There’s an “other-world” quality about the Sixth Symphony which some people find elusive and even puzzling. Despite what seemed like a less-than ideally poised beginning from the strings, the vibrancy of the playing quickly regained the ground, the music’s timeless aspect unfolding as inevitably as the lines of a great renaissance polyphonic motet, the horns calling forth the dancers at the string-saturated climax, led by the harp’s dulcet notes and the winds’ first energising steps (how could anybody not respond to such music?)…..the slow movement similarly hinted at a parallel kind of perfection, the winds ringing the timbral changes with great point, especially the oboe, the music’s stillness-within-the-bar beautifully caught. Horns made the most of their off-the-note accompaniment, the music at once lyrical and plangent and full of character, building towards the inevitable climax and release-point with marvellous spontaneity – at the end, the elfin swiftness of the strings’ figurations transformed meditation into dance with the surest of touches.

In an ideal world I would have requested more assertiveness from the brass in the scherzo movement, though the players found more of a voice for the final flourish. And had I been Inkinen I would have again encouraged my brass and excellent timpanist to play out even more in the finale, though each of the irruptions had more weight and snap than the previous one, so that the cumulative force of the last outburst had something of a proper cataclysmic effect, if falling a little short of the  glimpse into the abyss. Inkinen and the orchestra made amends with the epilogue, the string phrases filled with visionary fervour, and everything impulsive and heartfelt, as the music seemed at one and the same time to suggest eternities while turning and glancing homeward once more. If not of unalloyed greatness, this was music-making of something approaching the highest order.

Almost straightaway, the epic, questing Sibelius was returned to us with the very first phrase of the Seventh Symphony – the NZSO’s playing had both breadth and forward impulse from the opening ascent of the strings, through the hymn-like sonorities of its opening section, and to the first of three great trombone solos, sometimes characterised by commentators as great peaks rising from a continuous mountain range.  Inkinen took his time and allowed the music to unfold, with the dancing figures evoked by timpani, strings and wind, through the skitterish play of the elements and into the rolling orchestral juggernaut of strings and timpani that prepared the way for the trombones’ second appearance, here magnificently supported by the rest of the brass, the strings tumbling and skirling with the winds after the heavy batteries had shut down. Nobly heroic horns and graceful string replies led to tricky cross-fertilisations of rhythms and motifs – Inkinen and the orchestra right on their toes throughout this section, generating excitable interactions from which grew the final trombone solo, big and imposing and lovely, with strings arching upwards and bringing tensions to fever-pitch. A shout from the brass, a cry of anguish from the strings, and the crisis passed – in the MFC it seemed as though human angst had spent itself and nature was reassuringly drifting back to its place of pre-eminence.

At the end there was applause, prolonged and heartfelt, from those of us who had witnessed Pietari Inkinen’s and the NZSO’s wondrous Sibelian journey in concert. At this point I couldn’t help thinking that some kind of ritualistic public acknowledgement of the undertaking, perhaps from some representative of the Finnish government (what about the New Zealand Government?), or even a prominent Finnish person resident in New Zealand, would have added significance to the occasion. Apart from the pre-concert discussion on the festival’s opening night, there was precious little else visible to people to help suggest that the orchestra and conductor were doing something out of the ordinary. There were no displays featuring Sibelius, Finland and things Finnish that I noticed, no flags, national costumes, photographs, art-prints (what about those beautiful Kalevala illustrations familiar to those of us who buy recordings?), and certainly no groups performing Finnish songs or dances in the MFC foyer beforehand – things that would have added colour and interest and distinction to an event described as a “festival”. Really, it was all left to the music and the musicians, whose commitment to the cause brought forth magnificent results; and whose efforts were not yet done –  several recording sessions involving these same symphonies had been scheduled for during the coming week. If the recordings manage to capture something of the excitement of what we heard on the festival’s final night, they will be a series of sound-documents well worth waiting for.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen

Sibelius: Symphonies Nos 1 and 4

Michael Fowler Centre, Thursday 17 September

The second of the four concerts in the NZSO’s Sibelius Festival drew a much smaller audience than the previous night, with its Finlandia and the Violin Concerto. Old story: a soloist is essential to the box office.

But because this one contained the Fourth Symphony – and the First too, which is far from merely journeyman work – and because it was played with such vision and spellbinding build-up of tension at its climaxes, this was the best of the four concerts.

I would have reversed the order of the two symphonies, because the profundity of the Fourth would have been my choice of music to carry away and to ruminate upon during the following hours.

The music to go home with was left for the First Symphony, which is a splendid work, already showing clear marks of the fully mature composer. It has been fashionable to denigrate it by hearing Tchaikovsky and others in parts of it – yes, Wagner, Schumann, too if you want – but such pursuits are usually profitless.

After all, you might argue (I would) that if you can’t hear a composer’s antecedents at least in his early works, then he is a phony, has not learned his trade.

It is simply the first great symphony (if we overlook Kullervo and the Lemminkainen Legends) on the journey of a genius, and fortunately, Inkinen sought to discover and rejoice in its strengths and its character, building tempi and phrasing in ways that best reflected those strengths, as well the overall architecture of the distinct phases, movements and the whole.

It was replete with the immaculate and expressive playing of the soloists, from the shimmering strings and the trembling clarinet of Patrick Barry [I have been corrected, having assumed, unable to see from the stalls, that it was principal, Philip Green, who did contribute at other stages]  at the opening, that immediately lifted the spirit in anticipation of a great and moving performance. At once, it can be no one but Sibelius: then bassoons and the fuller wind assemblage and Laurence Reese’s arresting timpani.

The opening of the second movement is already true Sibelius, its big rhetorical voice beautifully uttered by low woodwinds, and solo cello, magnificent in its calm. The horns over tremolo strings, a hint of Siegfried’s forest murmurs that are no longer of Wagner.

Not only does one have to remind oneself of the high virtuosity and expressive refinement of each of the wind soloists, and string principals, as they emerged, but also to wonder at the miraculous ensemble that the whole achieves. Though I do not pretend to be a student of the recorded archive, listening recently to a couple of examples has demonstrated the superb quality of the NZSO.

The Fourth invades territory that is new to Sibelius. There are sounds early in the first movement that presage the spirit of Gorecki; more use of cellos and basses than elsewhere; instead of warm woodwinds we have attenuated sounds from cellos and basses and clarinets and oboes that produce narrow, textureless sound.

Though there is a lighter spirit in movement 2, which is vivace, coloured by flutes and oboes, the symphony’s proper character returns in the third movement, long, introspective, with pauses, with protracted phrases that rival Bruckner. At its end I wanted no more. I felt this might have been Sibelius’s Bruckner 9, unfinished yet complete. In some perverse way, even though the performance was utterly persuasive, I have always wondered if the last movement is merely to meet conventions, not true to the work’s real essence.

Like most people, when I first heard the Fourth, let’s say forty years younger than I am now, I simply thought, in spite of the quiet dancing in the second movement and the lift in the last, that it represented a low point in Sibelius’s life, and I could hear only a troubled soul. I would have been immensely sad if I had died before reaching an age when I think it one of the most beautiful creations in music. And this performance, from a young man at whose age I was still unready for it, was the most profoundly moving of the entire festival.

The Sibelius Festival: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Vesa-Matti Leppännen (violin)

Sibelius: Finlandia, Violin Concerto, Symphony No 5.

Michael Fowler Centre, Wednesday 16 September

When the 2009 NZSO season was announced I sensed certain misgivings in some people who wondered if a Sibelius festival was really such a good theme, and if it would fly.

Yes, we had a talented young Finnish conductor whose reputation, we gathered, was growing fast overseas; and a Finnish concertmaster who’d make a pretty authentic fist of the violin concerto. But typically in New Zealand, I continued, and continue, to hear certain carefully phrased reservations. It seems not to be possible that another orchestra, in a country like New Zealand might have found a young conductor who was doing himself and his orchestra a power of good; like a Simon Rattle making the Birmingham orchestra equal to the best in Britain, and a Maris Janssons raising the Oslo Philharmonic to international rank, or perhaps Andris Nelsons who’s now in charge of Birmingham (notice: two Latvians? A smaller country than New Zealand). Can’t happen here?

A couple of Naxos CDs of Sibelius have won high praise, but for many people, that’s not important; Naxos isn’t Deutsche Grammophon is it?

Personally, I’m much more sanguine.

In the first concert, I sat middle stalls, not where I sit very often, and it was wonderful. Finlandia began, with its portentous rhetoric flowing from the sonorous body of strings, the weight supported magnificently by the basses and cellos. They breathed deeply, overflowing with Finnish national passion, turning to a quasi-religious hymn that sustained this most emotional of national musical poems.

It was the obvious way to start the festival and certainly, on that first evening, it seemed to me a great idea. (Which is not quite the same as being a commercial success).

Though I heard the expected comments about the soloist in the violin concerto, egos noting that there were weaknesses and asking why we could not get a big name to play the piece. But this was a Finnish show, Inkinen and Leppännen are friends and the latter is not only an excellent orchestral concertmaster, but a considerable soloist.

In fact Leppännen’s performance was, in most ways, extremely fine, and whether it was just sentiment on my part, I sensed real empathy between violinist, conductor and orchestra. The opening passages were sheer magic from both orchestra and soloist, conjuring a dim Arctic light through tremolo strings. His extremely refined pianissimos were sheer magic and there was no remaining calm during the well-planned climaxes in the first movement.

The orchestra’s double bass section has, perhaps through the leadership of Hiroshi Ikematsu, become a force to reckon with, creating a dense luxurious sound that can never be excessive. This concerto can use a great deal of that quality, particularly in the second movement, and it was deeply satisfying. There were, I suppose, signs of tiredness, slight flaws in scales and arpeggios in the last movement, but far more important was the feeling of complete artistic unity that drove the work with such emotional power.

The Fifth Symphony has become the most popular. Compared with the hushed, wintery opening of the Concerto and the deeply meditative hymn in Finlandia, the Fifth is summer time. This performance was so carefully prepared, with an ear to the most careful balances, yet suggesting happiness, though not perhaps, an unbridled joyousness.

Bassoons make themselves felt here as much as heard, and their passages, over shimmering strings, were memorable. The second movement curiously betrays its origins in the mid-century symphonists, but Sibelius takes command with characteristic wind symphonies that the orchestra played with all their usual refinement and warmth.

If I had any disappointment, perhaps it was with the handling of the emergence of the thrilling ostinati that drives their way through most of the last movement. Inkinnen seemed to have judged the rate of acceleration and of the crescendo correctly enough but, as with the performance of No 2 on Saturday, that longed-for sense of impending climax didn’t take hold of me early enough. Perhaps it’s age.

Tangazo (Piazzolla); Piano Concerto No 4 in G (Beethoven); Symphony No 104 in D ‘London’ (Haydn)

Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Marc Taddei with Michael Houstoun (piano); dancers from Footnote Dance

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 12 September 2009

The fourth in the Wellington Orchestra’s subscription series continued the orchestra’s theme of combining the symphony with dance and movement. An imaginative enterprise but it presents quite surprising aesthetic problems.

The concert opened with an interesting dance piece by Astor Piazzolla, perhaps the only Argentine composer many classical music followers have heard of. His fame rests on taking tango music into the concert hall, taking its essence and subjecting tango rhythms and melodic motifs to classical techniques.

The piece began with basses and cellos playing slow, sonorous, elegiac ideas, soon picked up by violas and violins in quasi-fugal fashion: it might have been Tchaikovsky or Mahler. As it proceeded dancers came up the aisles and sat on chairs on stage.

When tango music emerged, one of the dancers rose, the female in scarlet, making arching, long-legged, tango-style gestures as she stalked across the stage. Unfortunately, neither the male nor the other female quite matched her command of the idiom; and one kept hoping that some arresting, authentic tango would develop; it didn’t quite happen.

I did not envy the dancers, called on to perform on a bare stage, without scenery or props, dancing to music that had really been gentrified, turned into polite concert music, stripped of most of its essential sensuality. Theatricality was missing.

What followed was an entirely different matter.

Michael Houstoun’s presence throughout this series of Beethoven piano concertos has certainly been the key to their success. His playing, again, was immaculate, finely shaped and with discreet dynamics and rhythmic flexibility. It was perhaps too discreet for the orchestra to pick up for after the piano’s famous opening, the orchestra didn’t quite prolong and develop the musical features that were implicit in those phrases, but when the piano re-entered the temperature rose subtly. The first movement cadenza thus proved a particularly engrossing phase.

The slow movement could well be called merely an Intermezzo, but it is of singular beauty and the orchestra judged its character and scale with great sensitivity. This was an excellent collaboration between piano and orchestra, creating a wonderful stillness, a stylish sense of occasion.

The size of the orchestra will be defended on ‘classical’ grounds; this is so, but the smaller the band, the more testing are matters of balance, absolute unanimity in the string playing and in blending of winds and strings. While it may have been better to defy ‘classical’ strictures a little and risk a few more strings, the whole performance, embroidered by very fine wind playing, again reinforced how important it is that this orchestra be maintained at good strength and in good morale. .

Usually the London Symphony seems one of the weightiest of the 12 that Haydn wrote for his two London visits. If this performance didn’t present it as of quite the grandeur of Mozart’s last three, for example, that too may have been a question of orchestral size.

Conductor Taddei changed the orchestra’s string seating for the symphony: from the left, first violins, violas, cellos, second violins, and it offered a subtly better sound picture.

After the somewhat less than monumental Adagio introduction, the Allegro itself gained stature as it got into its stride; there was energy and vivacity. The Surprise-Symphony-like fortissimi in the varied Andante were effective, as was the woodwind quartet that adorns it and Taddei knew how to dramatise the quirkiness of this typically off-beat Minuet and Trio and to keep interest alive throughout the novelties of the last movement.

There was a pretty full house, if one ignored the scattering of empty seats in the stalls. It’s a pity that the quality of the seats in the stalls – too close together – encourages the audience to sit in remote parts of the gallery.

NZSO/TODD CORPORATION YOUNG COMPOSER AWARDS

ALEX TAYLOR: “fray”;
NATALIE HUNT: “Rain II”;
PIETA HEXTALL: “Portrait”;
TABEA SQUIRE: “Vee Dub and the Little Tiger go Wandering”;
CORWIN NEWALL: “Significant Figures”;
HANNAH GILMOUR: “Though It Lingers”;
LIZZIE DOBSON: “A Study in Scarlet”;
ARNA SHAW: “Timatanga”;
MINTO FUNG: “The Chase”;
ROBBIE ELLIS: “Feral”;
AJITA GOH: “Freedom is Not Free”;
MATTHEW CHILDS: “Alone In The Night”.

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hamish McKeich

Michael Fowler Centre, Monday 24 – Tuesday 25 August 2009

The Todd Corporation’s – and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s – support for the Young Composer Awards makes it one of the most important arts sponsorships in the country. Their promotion of the growing point – the apical meristem – of creative artistic development promises to deliver a much greater return in cultural benefits than the (more typical) funding that goes into many, more prominent, areas. As conductor and co-adjudicator Hamish McKeich put it, where else in the world would young people write such imaginative, fresh and varied pieces?

On occasions like this it seems almost de rigueur to say (as indeed McKeich did say), that the standard this time was higher than ever. I cannot entirely agree: in my view, I feel we have reached something of a plateau (albeit a gratifyingly high one). Certainly this year I found nothing as striking as the 2008 winning score, Alexandra Hay’s compellingly adventurous “Nocturnis Bellum”, which I covered in my review for “Salient” – (Google: alan wells september music month, or go to http://www.salient.org.nz/arts/music/classical-music-september-music-month)

However to be fair to McKeich and his fellow assessor Ross Harris (who mentored the young composers), while the best of 2009 might not have equalled that of 2008, the least satisfactory piece this year was arguably better than the comparable composition last year.

Aucklander Alex Taylor came closest to matching Hay’s achievement. His “fray” belonged to the same world as the very accomplished wind/string quintet “Four Abstracts” which Taylor presented at this year’s Nelson Composers’ Workshop and, like the quintet, was based on a single chord. The orchestral “fray” was an atmospheric study in the exploitation of clusters, sometimes sustained and static (occasionally with an “electronic” ambience), and sometimes moving in a closely woven microtexture. Taylor demonstrated an assured control of tension and release, and changes – even when abrupt – were always adroitly managed. During one magical moment, a high piccolo note was deftly thrown into violin harmonics.

Taylor, a first-time participant in the NZSO/Todd Awards, would have been my choice to win. Nevertheless it was another first-timer, Natalie Hunt, who did win. A graduate of Wellington’s New Zealand School of Music, and the 2009 National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence, Hunt is an experienced young composer (though her evocative tone poem “Only to the Highest Mountain” for the NYO is the only other orchestral score of hers I had heard). Her NZSO/Todd submission “Rain II” opened with jaunty, jazzy pizzicato on contrabass (perhaps closest in spirit to her work for the Saxcess saxophone quartet): this was contrasted with a mournful, molto vibrato melody on the solo cello. A marimba ostinato began to add momentum, then suddenly a high, expectant sustained note made an inconclusive end – the pulse quickened just as the piece was about to die. It felt much more like the introduction to a longer work, than a complete composition in its own right. It was this unfinished quality that made the judges’ decision a surprising one for me.

Hunt admitted to being under a time constraint – the rush to meet the submission deadline. Fellow NZSM graduate Pieta Hextall, too, faced an issue of time: in her case, the stipulated limit on overall length. Hextall’s “Portrait” had as its core a central, ostinato-driven rhythm piece (reminiscent of “Impetus” in the 2008 Awards, and even more of her “Second Etude for Bassoon and Piano” – the sort of music Philip Glass might have written if he’d had any imagination). Framing this was a texture piece: rarefied, spare, carefully paced (similar to her “Third Etude” – the sort of music La Monte Young might have written if he’d had any imagination…). As with Hunt’s “Rain II”, I felt that “Portrait” could have gone on to develop further – there was so much more potential there.

This was Hextall’s third appearance at the Awards. So too for another NZSM student, Tabea Squire (NYO Composer-in-Residence in 2008). Her whimsically titled “Vee Dub and the Little Tiger go Wandering” hinted at Bruckner in its wide string tremolandi and grand chorale-like gestures, and Glass in its repeated ostinati, but was ultimately unlike either (someone suggested the pastoral Vaughan Williams as well, prompted perhaps by the “VW” of the title). Squire made sensitive use of soloistic timbres in addition to solid orchestral chords, and created a convincing flow of tension without the need for any single definitive climax.

Both Hextall and Squire have undertaken extensive university study. Corwin Newall, likewise making a third appearance at the Awards, is still at school (Dunedin’s Kaikorai Valley High). His cheerful, resolutely tonal “Significant Figures” showed an increasing competence in writing colourfully for orchestra, while retaining a youthful exuberance and abundance of musical ideas.

Waikato University is notable for encouraging its students to write for orchestra. The four represented last year employed fairly conservative tonal idioms, but with great facility in some very attractive compositions. Two of these young composers returned in 2009. Hannah Gilmour (who won a special commendation in 2008 for “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”) brought “Though It Lingers”, which packed in (perhaps a little too tightly within the restricted length) poised, suspended moments, urgent climaxes, and an expressive violin solo. Her compatriot Lizzie Dobson offered “A Study in Scarlet”, a genial score with some sombre undertones, less bright than its title might suggest (and a stark contrast to Dobson’s frenetically driven toccata for orchestra “Ricercare per Vita” of 2008).

Arna Shaw (then living in Christchurch) received a special mention in 2007 for best first entry. This proved a prescient judgement. Now studying at Wellington’s NZSM, Shaw displayed significant progress in her well-constructed “Timatanga”, balancing koauau glides on the flute, and solemn string laments, with driven rhythms and forceful climaxes. A further NZSM student, Minto Fung, provided an very short but engagingly witty tone poem “The Chase”.

Music with a narrative or pictorial element was indeed strongly in evidence. “Feral” by Robbie Ellis bore a programme note describing a secretive, sinister creature. Ellis’s composition was characteristically energetic: dark and restless with exciting climaxes and only rare moments of respite. With his feeling for theatre and an ear for unusual orchestral effects, the Auckland University graduate (now resident in Wellington) utilised “jet-whistles” on the flute, rapid parallel chords on the trumpets, a “blood-curdling scream”, and instructions for lighting manoeuvres. The Orchestra entered enthusiastically into the over-the-top spirit, vocalisations and all. They voted it their favourite piece.

Aucklander Ajita Goh’s “Freedom is Not Free” was inspired by the inscription on a Washington DC Korean War memorial. The string ostinati and stately brass chorales reminded me (again) a little of Bruckner, while the splashes of unexpected colour from harp and vibraphone recalled Goh’s own, more lyrical “Reflection” from last year.

Also suggestive of Bruckner was Matthew Childs’ orchestration in “Alone In The Night”, in that there were hardly any solos, and extensive use of instrumental groupings – rather in the manner of organ registration. Rhythmically tricky, this score employed many changes of time signature.

I have, regrettably, no information on Childs. In contrast to last year – which was organised by the excellent Roger Smith – no scores were made available to reviewers (my phone message of enquiry was not returned), and some of those that I did see (courtesy of the composers) contained no biographical notes. This event is worth constructive, critical evaluation – witness the number of young composers who have appeared in previous Awards (such as Claire Cowan, Ryan Youens, Robin Toan, and Karlo Margetic) who have been taken up by the NZSO-Sounz Readings.

Recordings made over the two days, together with interviews by Jeremy Brick, will be broadcast later in the year by RNZ Concert, in programmes in their 8 pm Sunday evening “Young New Zealand” series.

Vector Wellington Orchestra and the Orpheus Choir conducted by Marc Taddei with Helen Medlyn (mezzo soprano) and Donald Nicolson (organ)

Wellington Town Hall, Saturday 22 August 2009

Wellington’s experience suggests that there’s no such thing as the Last Night of the Proms. The big audiences – this one was sold out – justifies the Wellington Orchestra’s decision to stick with a good thing, or at least a rewarding thing, so the adjective ‘last’ has to be understood as a relative term. One wonders how Wellington would turn out if another of the scores of nights at the Proms were presented; they have long been the way to get an assured audience to listen to unfamiliar or new music, which would be otherwise difficult to sell to the British public.

The fact is of course that, although presented in a music venue, by a symphony orchestra and other musicians, the event is not really about music. It’s about a ritual: coloured balloons, silly hats, waving Union Jacks (albeit with little gusto), standing up and making a noise some of which doubles as singing.

Marc Taddei is the ideal front-man, just a little larger than life, unabashed by the need to act the fool with unembarrassed conviction.

Though the pattern and perhaps the secret of its longevity is sameness and familiarity, there is usually at least one gesture towards something different, like a New Zealand piece. This time they got it out of the way quickly: David Hamilton’s Zarya (Russian – Dawn), which had marked an event in space exploration; it was a stagy fanfare with dominant brass and organ that sounded pseudo-festive, as if the composer was striving to create something brilliant, momentous but not quite feeling it in his bones.

That out of the way, the normal fare follows. Handel’s Zadok the Priest, had a strangely unimpressive performance. The long introduction by strings that should move with increasing excitement through the splendid sequence of harmonies over a steady rhythm, was seriously underpowered, mainly by the small string numbers, and matters only somewhat recovered with the choir’s more convincing though hardly overwhelming arrival.

Is there any connection between these signs of orchestral weakness and the unexplained resignation of the highly successful General Manager Christine Pearce?

Helen Medlyn threw herself into the spirit of the show from the beginning, even though the two Handel arias were hardly festive; as she herself remarked, they were both sad (and neither of them was in English). The first, the famous ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Rinaldo, the second, the very unfamiliar ‘Furibondo spira il vento’ from Partenope which no one would have heard of a few years ago; it’s one of the most recently unearthed of his operas. Helen gave them her best, florid passages and all, but the orchestra hardly lent her lustrous or energized support.

I was glad that she demonstrated to an audience, many of whom were probably unfamiliar with a singer without a microphone, that a real voice can fill the hall perfectly well. When it came to the Noel Coward songs in the second half however, she succumbed, though Coward would probably have been horrified. Microphones did not come into use for musical comedy and light opera till the 50s, and of course it’s been downhill since then.

But at least she demonstrated how the device could be used with subtlety and to expressive effect.

Her utterly over-the-top performance of the A Bar on the Piccolo Marina was one of the best things in the evening (a memorable demonstration of ‘slipping into something loose’; see the lyrics – http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/a/abaronthepiccolamarina.shtml).

The Polovstian Dances from Prince Igor followed, with the welcome presence of the choir (I remember hearing them played by orchestra only on radio many times in my youth without realising that they were ‘choral’ dances). Again, it was the choir that gave them the colour and energy they need so much.

When the strings again sounded uninvolved at the start of Walton’s Crown Imperial March I wondered whether it was the position of my seat that was affecting my experience; I don’t think so.

The second half is the time for flags and noise, and music inherited from an age of jingoism and xenophobia. First was Eric Coates’s Dambuster’s March, celebrating one of the much vaunted but more useless exploits of the Second World War, which succeeded in drowning hundreds of civilians but made no dent in Germany’s arms production capacity; then Elgar’s first Pomp and Circumstance March with its cringe-making words, and Rule Britannia, ironical in an age when the country has difficulty even ruling itself.

However, the audience made Marc Taddei’s job easy by responding spiritedly, singing along, regardless. And Donald Nicolson’s brilliant organ flourishes contributed greatly.

As for Henry Wood’s classic, Fantasia on British Sea Songs, as usual, it was much abbreviated, ending with the hornpipe, Jack’s the Lad (fifth of the nine parts): it accelerated too early, a phenomenon known in other contexts as ‘premature ….’, and so its excitement was compromised. There were good moments: Brenton Veitch’s cello solo offered a lovely calming phase; and a happy clarinet solo by Moira Hurst stood out. Last year the London Proms dropped the Sea Songs: what of the future?

The concert came to and end with the audience on its feet for the most part, in Rule Britannia, ‘No place like home’, ‘Hine e hine’ and ‘Auld lang syne’.

Even though this formula remains popular, and it does expose people to a real orchestral experience, I do wish we got some different music, such as is heard at Vienna’s New Year Concert or Berlin’s Waldbühnen concerts.

Simon Dickson – Partial Aspects (World Premiere performance)
Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto in D
Vaughan Williams – Symphony No.6 in E Minor

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra
Ben Morrison (violin)
Kenneth Young (conductor)

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington,  Tuesday 18th August

Enterprising programming here by Kenneth Young and the NZSM Orchestra, bringing together a new work, an established warhorse and a feisty twentieth century classic, a “something for everybody” offering which, as it turned out, criss-crossed more sensibilities than was expected, and made for a great listening experience.

The Orchestra makes a point of including whenever possible contemporary and New Zealand music in its programmes, and Simon Dickson’s piece “Partial Aspects” came with a merit sticker slapped on it, the 2009 Jenny McLeod Composition Award. Described by its composer as an amalgamation of textural atonality and quasi-tonality, the work grew from its deep, primordial beginnings into a kind of evolving “cluster-chord” whose different timbres and dynamics created an ear-catching “layered” effect, all the while changing colours and hues like a moving mirror-ball. I liked the music’s patient, osmotic growth through still more colourations and more dynamic interjections, which climaxed with some hugely monumental chords whose span gradually dissolved in various non-tonal refractions. After this was left a single ‘cello and glockenspiel oscillating on a two-note motif, the strings then descending to a single note an octave below, and gently exhaling a sombre conclusion. In all, I thought conductor and players did this (incredibly boyish-looking) young composer and his music proud.

Impressive youthful endeavour was again to the fore in the concert’s next item, this time from the soloist, violinist Ben Morrison, in Tchaikovsky’s oft-played Violin Concerto. Right from his very first entry, following an ardently lyrical orchestral introduction, Morrison commanded the music, playing with real feeling, and negotiating the passagework with the kind of detailing that gave one the impression that every note had been thought about, as if the instrument was an extension of his own self. Not every note was bang in tune, but the player’s characterisation of each episode in the first movement was “dug into” in a way I found entirely compelling. Kenneth Young and the orchestra were with their soloist all the way – not being a professional orchestra, the group’s sound wasn’t particularly “moulded”, which I liked, enjoying the flavoursome timbral strands in both sectional and tutti passages. In the slow movement Morrison was at his best with the rich, full-throated writing – the other side of the interpretative coin, the music’s inward, almost “hurt” quality, he will increasingly find in this work as he matures as an artist. The finale had its moments of imprecision between soloist and orchestra – the first “Russian Sailors’ Dance” episode came adrift momentarily, as did some of the skittery exchanges in the work’s coda – and I thought the orchestra initially lacked a bit of “oomph” in their interjections mid-movement, which they did, however, make up for towards the end. Again, as Ben Morrison gains experience, he’ll be able to more readily capture that “brandy-on-the-breath” abandonment in the music that the famous nineteenth-century Viennese critic Hanslick cited to roundly damn the work at its Viennese premiere.

There was no lack of “oomph” with the opening of the Vaughan Williams Sixth Symphony, Young and the orchestra conjuring up searing, intensely confrontational bursts of sound at the outset, flooding the St.Andrew’s ambiences to bursting-point in a way that the composer would probably have enjoyed. The jog-trot rhythms of the first movement were fiercely driven – perhaps too fiercely for detail such as the saxophone’s counterpoint phrasings to have the proper grotesque effect – but the overall effect was that after the turmoil the great “tune” worked its magic and lifted us aloft splendidly. I thought Young’s tempo for the second movement was a bit quick, though what it lost the music in menace it gained in forcefulness and angularity. I wanted everything to be a bit more daring, with more extremes of dark foreboding and cataclysmic force than were the case, but the players made it work with their on-the-line commitment to phrasing and filled-out tones. Individual contributions such as made by the cor anglais at the end of the movement, and the saxophone in the throes of the anarchic scherzo told magnificently, providing the perfect foil for the hollow, apocalyptic voice of the finale. Young and his musicians realised all of the music’s bleak chill with marvellous soft playing from all concerned, the harp a ghostly angel surveying the desolation with pity and sorrow, leaving it all to stricken winds and string quartet with unspoken words at the end.

Also reviewed by Alan Wells

The NZSM concerts towards the end of the year usually show the School of Music Orchestra at its tightly-rehearsed best. A highlight of this event was the premiere of the winner of the Jenny McLeod Composition Award to an NZSM student composer. Previous holders of the fortunate position of having their work performed by a full orchestra have included Alison Grant, Alexandra Hay, Hermione Johnson, Simon Eastwood and Pieta Hextall.

This year it was Simon Dickson. “Partial Aspects” may have been so titled because, as the composer himself writes, it is “an amalgam of my recent compositional styles; a combination of textural atonality and quasi-tonality”. The first section – the aptly characterised “textural atonality” – evoked a sound-world similar to that of the shimmering “White Dwarf” for string quartet that Dickson brought to the 2008 Nelson Composers’ Workshop. With “Partial Aspects”, other – orchestral -colours were added to the string clusters and tremolandi. Dickson gradually increased tension, introducing motifs (the “quasi-tonality” style) in the woodwind, reminding one of his sensitivity to the subtleties of the solo clarinet in “On the Wind” (at Nelson in 2006). A two-note wind ostinato led into a powerful climax, after which the ostinato returned on the vibraphone to usher in the timeless feel of the beginning and the sense of a satisfying, completed compositional arc..

Ben Morrison, who was so impressive in the Mahler Seventh with the NYO in July, was soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Not afraid to use expressive nineteenth-century gliding portamenti as well as judiciously placed vibrato, Morrison soared to almost untrasonic heights in the rhapsodic first movement cadenza, and elicited a chocolate-dark, melancholy tone near the end. Nevertheless, I felt this first movement was something of a struggle for Morrison, as much a reading as a performance. It was in the captivating slow movement that he reached the emotional heart of the concerto, especially in his dialogue with the flawlessly creamy woodwinds. He seemed to gain in confidence as the work progressed, the worried concentration evident in the Allegro being replaced by an outgoing assurance in the Finale.

Vaughan Williams’ Sixth is one of his most intensely wrought – and fraught – symphonies, with only rare moments of relaxation (such as the lyrical episode for harp and strings in the first movement, which is familiar as an excerpt illustrating pastoral moods). The often dense orchestration was intriguing: with my ears still attuned to Dieter Mack and his Selisih Ensemble, it suggested a prefiguring of the tone-colour building of Mack, and the French Spectralists. The occasional use of xylophone looked forward too, perhaps, to the exotic percussion of VW’s Seventh (“Sinfonia antartica”) and Eighth Symphonies.

Listening to this orchestra, finely honed by conductor Kenneth Young, it was hard to believe that (aside from a handful of guest players) these were student musicians.

NZSO NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA

50th Anniversary Tour, July 2009

Paul Daniel (conductor)

John Chen (piano)

NZSO National Youth Orchestra

NATALIE HUNT – Only to the Highest Mountain

RAVEL – Piano Concerto for the Left Hand

MAHLER – Symphony No.7

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,  Saturday 4th July (also Christchurch, Wednesday 8th July, and Auckland Friday 19th July)

This concert marked an historic occasion for the NZSO Youth Orchestra, 2009 marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Youth Orchestra’s conception, thanks to the vision, energy, skill and commitment of the newly-appointed Principal Conductor of the National Orchestra, John Hopkins, who put his dream of forming a nation-wide orchestra for promising young players into action in 1959 with concerts in Lower Hutt and Wellington, in September of that year. Their programme included a Handel Overture, Delius’s “Walk to the Paradise Garden”, the Beethoven First Symphony, Mendelssohn’s ubiquitous Violin Concerto, and Glinka’s Polonaise from “A Life for the Czar”. Fifty years later, the same orchestra was programming the Mahler Seventh Symphony, an indication of the enormous technical and interpretative advances made in the interim by the country’s young musicians, such an undertaking being of an order that would have daunted the National Orchestra of half-a-century ago, let alone their newly-formed youthful counterparts.

Before the concert began, a former member of the orchestra, violinist Wilma Smith, talked with the audience, and to everybody’s delight introduced the same John Hopkins, over from Australia for the anniversary, now in his eighties, but with the same boyish grin and bright piercing eyes, ascending the podium and waving to the audience, acknowledging the plaudits pouring in from all sides – a pity that the flowers arrived so quickly that he didn’t get the chance to have the microphone put into his hands for a few words (he managed a “Thank you very much!” as he left the stage, again to great applause, shaking hands with a few of the youthful musicians who were now coming onto the platform to begin the concert). I would imagine that he had plenty of other opportunities to speak at the various functions planned for the celebrations, but I still would have liked to hear a couple of his verbatim thoughts at the occasion of the concert.

Paul Daniel, the latest of a series of NYO guest conductors with an impressive performing pedigree, took the podium, and with little further ado set in motion the first item, composer-in-residence Natalie Hunt’s “Only to the Highest Mountain”. At a mere five minutes’ duration, the composer set herself very little time to make an impression and get the salient points of her work across to the listeners; but from the beginning the arresting, bird-like calls of the antiphonally-placed oboe and cor anglais were able to coax our sensibilities towards and into a kind of nature-ambience suggesting maritime influences, subaqueous rumblings and light-shafts of wind and brass tone interacting with string ostinati whose oceanic figurations played a part in defining the music’s origins. I was able to talk briefly with the composer after the concert and she confirmed the references to the sea, with the weaving of undulating rhythms and textures into the music, in a way that occasionally reminded me of Sibelius’s music for “The Tempest”. What the music lacked in breadth it made up for in sheer atmosphere and focus, with occasionally daring effects such as the shaking by string players of sheets of their music to create a rustling effect. And there’s something proverbial about that kind of circumstance, about saying what one has to say, succinctly and to the point and then stopping, to telling effect…..

Somebody who had a similar penchant for economy was Ravel, whose Piano Concerto for the Left Hand was also featured in the concert, the solo part played with a stunning amalgam of élan and sensitivity by John Chen, supported to the hilt by the orchestra under Paul Daniel. The performance brought out all the music’s unities and contrasts, from the very opening’s “slumbering giant” orchestral ambiences to the pianist’s absolutely electrifying entry, capped off by a gravity-defying upward flourish, again setting the tumultuous orchestral tutti that followed in bold relief. Some marvellous moments – the limpid beauty of the pianist’s playing, and soulful bassoon and cor anglais solos, characteristic of the orchestra’s individual instrumental contributions work – testified to the all-round excellence of the performers, even if the build-up to the swaggering march mid-work lacked the sheer weight that professional players would have been able to summon at that point. No reservations about the wealth of detailing from individual players and sections during the march itself, or the energy and incisiveness of John Chen’s marvellous playing (scintillating repeated-note cascades from soloist and orchestra at one point, and complete control over the music’s character-changes to filigree scamperings, wind solos following suit). In between these episodes, the march gathered terrific momentum of an almost barbaric splendour, again with colourful detailing from the winds, beginning with the bassoon, and building up to the full orchestra most resplendently. The grandly ritualized final few pages of the work again go back to what seem like primordial beginnings with the piano musing in its lowest registers,  reawakening those same instruments that began the work, and eventually goading them into shouts of triumph towards an emphatic, non-nonsense ending of a colourful concerto.

Thus far in the concert the focus had been on either the composer (Natalie Hunt with her work “Only to the Highest Mountain”), or the soloist (John Chen in the Ravel Left-Hand Concerto). Now, with the major work of the evening, the Mahler Seventh Symphony, it was the turn of conductor Paul Daniel and the orchestra to take centre-stage, which they did with a vengeance. The Symphony is Mahler’s second-longest, one of those works which, after you’ve experiences a performance you can’t remember what the world was really like when you began it. It’s an extraordinary work, with two long and demanding outer movements, flanking three “character” pieces, two of which are called “Nachtmusik” by the composer, in between which is a spooky Scherzo.

Right from the beginning, orchestra and conductor showed their mettle, everybody digging into the grim opening utterances with gusto, the tenor horn solo played with extraordinary virtuosity and characterful point by Luke Christiansen.  Paul Daniel encouraged string playing of the utmost conviction and commitment at a pace that allowed a sense of something gathering momentum and purpose, the allegro creating the necessary “flailing” effect without rushing. In fact all through the first movement the tempi seemed beautifully judged, allowing the players technical and expressive room in which to pour their very beings in what sounded and felt like a most satisfying way. Though the orchestra lacked tonal weight in places, the “lean and hungry” impression this created actually worked to the music’s advantage, as the textures never sounded overblown and bloated, always realizing the composer’s tremendous variety of timbral incident, and registering the character of each mood-change, such as the typically “far from the madding crowd” episode in the first movement, nostalgic brass fanfares helping to bring about what seemed like a transformed world for a few moments, the abyss temporarily forgotten (though not very far away), the chamber-like scoring for winds and brass (including the four-note-quote from the Dvorak ‘Cello Concerto, which I always enjoy) leading via a sweeping harp glissando to the big string tune which, for a short while, allows the music to wear its heart on its sleeve. The return of the “grim reaper” opening featured a scalp-prickling confrontation between trombone and tenor horn, creating a great, black sound, the brass like stone-giants confronting one another across glacial valleys. The players gave the dotted-rhythm motive extra juice, aided by the timpani, as the music gathered momentum, through a brief backward-looking hiatus and into the movement’s final pages, the excitement generated being too much for the conductor’s baton which escaped its owner’s grip and flew spectacularly through the air a few bars before the end, landing among the brasses, who never missed a beat, driving home the music’s abrupt conclusion, and only then relaying the errant stick back to its owner (to the delight and amusement of the audience).

Mahler’s scheme for this symphony comprised an epic first movement, followed by three “mood-pieces” two of which the composer named “Nachtmusik” (though he could well have given the middle Scherzo the same title), and a concluding finale which is as festive, energetic and joyous as the first movement is grim, dark and wild. Nachtmusik I is a purple-hued processional through evocative gloamings, containing both naturalistic and stylized elements, the rhythms mostly slow-march, but with occasionally dance-like episodes, pastoral allusions (cowbells and hunting-horns) and irruptions like the timpani’s sudden forceful reiteration of the basic rhythm near the beginning. The young players made the most of their opportunities throughout, though the swift tempo adopted by Daniels meant that some detail (for example the eerie bouncing of bows on strings) for me flowed too quickly to properly register, and a couple of the rhythmic dovetailings towards the movement’s end became scrambled as the players strove to keep up instead of deliciously fitting their voices in with the others – still, if a bit breathless in places, the phantasmagorical processional aspect was vividly conveyed by all concerned. And one really must put in a special word for the horns in this movement, their call-and echo sequences at the beginning, and in other places, beautifully played.

The scherzo that followed is probably Mahler’s most “haunted” symphonic movement, with the fantastic element very much to the fore in an ironically-expressed manner. The strings have a great deal to do throughout, and the NYO players gave it everything they had, with plenty of “schwung” to the phrasing, their lurching aspect perfectly matched by the tuba’s elephantine comments and the solo viola’s personal “danse macabre”. Despite somebody in the orchestra dropping something noisily in the middle of a “tuba dreams” sequence, the ambience was maintained unbroken, with the brass anticipating the composer’s Ninth Symphony Scherzo at one point, joining in with the waltz-tempo towards the end in a suitably riotous fashion. Great though the playing was throughout the movement, I thought the second “Nachtmusik” which followed even more special, with Ben Morrison’s juicy opening violin solo and the tender voicings of guitar and mandolin setting the scene for some lovely things to follow – a gorgeous horn solo making the most of the first appearance of the movement’s “big tune”, then matched by the violins, Paul Daniel encouraging them to give the melody all the juices they could muster, with goosebump-making results.

If the finale wasn’t quite at this level of execution, it was partly due to the music’s sheer difficulty , and partly because Paul Daniel’s interpretation was so volatile, an approach which took no prisoners and “fronted up large” to the score’s every variation of tempo, dynamics, colour and nuance – you could say, to the point where the music’s through-line felt obscured by detail. I would imagine the conductor wouldn’t have wanted such a large musical structure to “sag” at any point, with tempi that may have given the players more time to breathe, but could have easily resulted in plodding. It was certainly a vividly-conceived viewpoint, and undoubtedly a challenge for the orchestra but even so, it seemed to me to put the emphasis for these young players overtly on the music’s technical demands at the expense of the work’s overall coherence as a symphony. The brass, who’d played so well throughout, were under real pressure in places, and had a few uncharacteristically uncomfortable moments with their gleaming fanfare-like statements that pop up along the music’s course, though they did really well in other places, for instance over the top of the strings’ fugato-like scamperings (so reminiscent of the Fifth Symphony’s finale), while front-desk strings and wind beautifully pointed their chamber-like sequences a little later, underlining Mahler’s skill at creating diaphanous textures from such large forces. This is to perhaps cavil unnecessarily – generally, the challenges that Daniel’s approach set for the young players were triumphantly met, with the thrills matching and eventually supplanting the spills, the symphony’s last few pages raising the roof and the temperatures of all concerned.

Conductor : Michael Joel; Soloist: Catherine McKay (piano)

PSATHAS – Luminous;   LILBURN –  Overture “Aotearoa”;  BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major;     VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – A London Symphony

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington; Sunday, 28th June, 2009

This was a richly-conceived and engagingly-presented concert from the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, the music covering a kaleidoscopic range of repertoire, with the character of each separate work explored and brought to the fore for the listener’s delight. Things are seldom what they seem, as the saying goes – and it may have appeared to the average audience member that the concert would be something of a “separate halves” affair, with the “lighter” and therefore “easier” works placed in the first half, followed after the interval by a lengthy and hugely demanding single symphonic work. In fact, the programme had varying kinds of technical and interpretative challenges for the musicians all the way through the afternoon, most of which were triumphantly surmounted, even if there were occasionally moments of not-quite-together ensemble. Right at the end, the orchestra rose magnificently to the challenge of the finale of the Vaughan Williams symphony, throwing everything into the music’s impassioned utterances, and then achieving with their conductor Michael Joel (and leader Ann Goodbehere’s lovely final solo) an evocative and compelling stillness and beauty throughout the epilogue. In a sense it was appropriate for the concert to end this way, because establishing and sustaining a specific mood, especially in the slower music, was one of the things that the orchestra did extremely well at various times throughout the afternoon’s music-making.

The opening item, John Psathas’s Luminous, was recreated by conductor and players with breath-catching beauty, underlining that dichotomy of stasis and osmotic movement with firm, well-focused but still diaphanous tones, and a magical “other-world” ambience caught at the moment of withdrawal of a full orchestral triple-forte. The musicians nicely brought out the composer’s concentrated suffusion of the textures with light and atmosphere, very Ligeti-like in places, and building to the full weight of an orchestral climax with sound judgement, the close ambience of the hall allowing us to enjoy the full-textured differences between the smoky brasses and the more translucent strings. From outer (or perhaps “inner”) spaces we were taken out of our heads and out-of-doors in Lilburn’s Overture “Aotearoa”, the striking opening as plangently delivered as I’ve ever heard it by the bright, long-breathed flutes, contrasted beautifully with the other wind timbres, secure strings and nicely “terraced” brass, exchanging rhythmic figures with strings. The tricky dotted-rhythm motto theme of the work was occasionally a stumbling-block, the strings in particular not quite certain as to how much “snap” to generate in places, which put ensemble “out” in places. There was also an occasional rawness of tone, now and then a bit intrusive, but mostly helping to capture the bracing ruggedness of the writing, very much at the service of the music’s intentions – and better the occasional roughness than something lacking in spirit, which this performance never was. Though lacking finesse in places the playing plainly and forcefully brought out the music’s essential character.

Readings of Beethoven’s G Major Piano Concerto seem either to declaim the notes as if intoning a sacred ritual, or trip a kind of light fantastic, carrying little ballast – this performance was of the latter, light-footed variety, the orchestra kept very much on its toes by Michael Joel’s edge-of-the-seat tempi for the opening tutti. Catherine McKay’s silvery playing was delightfully poised throughout, her rhythmic trajectories giving the notes plenty of phrasing-space while keeping up the music’s basic momentum, something which the orchestra found difficult to successfully emulate in places. The orchestra by contrast, seemed tenser, the playing even slightly “accelerando” in places, so that some of the “tumbling passagework” sequences took a while to find complete accord between soloist and band. Despite the lightness of touch, certain places where Beethoven hints at more esoteric, even metaphysical realms, received full due – the piano’s rapt modulation into distant harmonic realms mid-movement nicely highlighted the rolling concertante arpeggiations that followed, though I confess I wanted from Catherine McKay more of a contrast with the big G Major-related chords from the magically elfin passage that follows immediately after. The cadenza was the longer, more conventional of Beethoven’s, beautifully shaped by the soloist, and, despite a miscalculation by the oboe, nicely augmented by the winds at the end. The slow movement’s first string declamations were terse, abrupt and to the point, provoking a rather more assertive reply from the pianist than one usually experiences, more emotion-laden than ethereal and distant. As for the finale, what the strings lacked in rhythmic poise at the start they made up for in sensitivity of tone – and the whole orchestra made a splendid showing in the tutti passages in between the soloists’s fleet-fingered counter-statements. I thought the violas made lovely sounds during their “moment”, just before the build-up to the reprise of the opening; and the winds and strings worked well in accord throughout the myriad modulations leading up to the cadenza, the “stamping beginning” one, to which Catherine McKay gave plenty of dash and élan. Finally, what a joy to hear the horns right at the end sound the hunting-call with such confidence and relish, bringing the work to an exuberant close.

I’ve already mentioned the orchestra’s energy and commitment regarding the final movement of the Vaughan Williams symphony (such a lovely work!). Michael Joel and the players coaxed the first movement’s beginnings into life and brought about a vibrant sunrise, with a wealth of instrumental incident too numerous to recount in detail – though one remembers things like the tuba’s wonderfully rhythmic raspings leading into the allegro, and some great shouts of exuberance from the other brass in places, along with the entirely memorable “Thomas Tallis” string ambience at the beginning of the becalmed central section of the movement – lovely playing from the front desk strings. As with the Lilburn Overture, some of the jaunty syncopations in the exposed string phrases were ragged-sounding, though the section rose to the occasion magnificently in tutti at the movement’s conclusion. The slow movement I thought outstanding, the conductor encouraging playing from all sections redolent with the most wonderfully “charged” ambience, from the lovely cor anglais solo at the beginning to the dying viola phrase at the end. The wind trill that began the scherzo was scalp-prickling in its sheer joie de vivre, though the rhythmic complexities of this movement took their toll in places like the short fugato, where entries went off like out-of-control skyrockets! – such unsolicited excitement was only momentary, and generally the calm and poise of the harp and flute leading stepwise into the gloomy shadowlands of the coda spoke volumes for the playing of the orchestra as a whole throughout. All told, an exciting and warm-hearted concert to remember.