Tag: orchestral

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.

Melodies for orchestra (Body), Violin Concerto (Barber), Tristan and Isolde, a symphonic compilation after Wagner, arranged by Henk de Vlieger

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pietari Inkinen with Cho-Liang Lin (violin).

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 20th March

Though reviewing concerts that are being normally covered by the press was not part of the ‘mission’ of Middle-C, and I did not decide to attend the first of the NZSO’s subscription concerts in Wellington till that afternoon, the temptation to hear Barber’s Violin Concerto, live for the first time (I think), and what Henk de Vlieger had done with Tristan und Isolde, without voices, and in just over one hour, proved too strong.

And I enjoyed the concert so much that a review, perhaps even a panegyric, imposed itself upon me.

Jack Body’s Melodies from the early 1980s opened the programme. Little of his music has been written for orchestra and I relished the chance to hear how he extended his palette to opulent symphonic musical forces.

Body writes that his intention was to ‘create coherence and continuity’ in the orchestral fabric, simply conveying something of the joy and excitement he experienced when he heard the pieces. All the outward marks of excitement – speed, rhythmic energy, and orchestration that is spare but striking, with his idiosyncratic use of percussion – were there, but in spite of a brilliant performance I found little emotional warmth or some kind of spiritual feeling which I’m sure infused the originals, even in the quieter piece from West Sumatra.

Though it was hard to perceive musical relationships, or meaningful contrasts between the three works in the evening’s programme, the two major pieces made the concert.

For most of the 70 years since its composition, the Barber concerto has been regarded in academic musical circles as rather an anachronism if not an irrelevancy. Happily, the disinterment of much of the tonal and attractive music written during the bleak years has restored Barber’s music to the permanent repertoire.

The tunefulness of the first movement is as surprising and beguiling as the lyrical, elegiac second movement. Though the last seems to take off in a direction that has not been prepared for, the whole is a vindication of the continuing relevance of a traditional form.

American violinist Cho-Liang Lin emerged as a balanced and mature musician, an ideal performer of the work through his committed and deeply sympathetic reading that brought it immediately to life. The orchestra played with a conviction and intensity that is being noticed in international reviews of its recent recordings under conductor Pietari Inkinen. Where I was, centre stalls, balance was admirable and the orchestra rarely lay too weightily on the violinist.

The second half comprised an hour-long performance of a ‘Symphonic compilation’ by Dutch musician Henk de Vlieger of music from Tristan und Isolde. Enjoyment of it depended not at all on recognition of where the various leitmotive came from or what they represented in the opera, but it did depend both on freedom from Wagner antipathy and any doctrinaire aversion to such transformations or arrangements. At the end, I was simply surprised that the hour had passed and that I  felt a great, all-consuming satisfaction.

In character, it was like one of Strauss’s longer tone poems – Don Quixote, or Death and Transfiguration perhaps, and the strength of Wagner’s musical inspiration, especially in the consummating Liebestod, compensated for what might be felt as shortcomings in the evolution of this orchestral survey.

A piece of this kind will inevitably press an automatic disapproval button in some listeners who are programmed to fault any kind of tampering with the original character of a great work. I wondered whether I might find that the treatment cheapened or corrupted the essence of the original music, but all I noticed was condensings and bridge passages – where one episode was grafted on to another. De Vlieger succeeded in avoiding anything tasteless or clumsy.

Seven episodes called up various scenes, none as dramatic as the second act love scene in the forest, interrupted by the arrival of King Marke. The music was as self-sustaining as in the opera itself, one of whose most remarkable features is the absence of harmonic resolution at any point till the very end. De Vlieger followed the same path and there were no breaks between sections and the transitions were rather well crafted.

I only had a slightly unfulfilled longing for more passionate, aching expression, perhaps a slower and more undulating pulse, in the love music.

I had wondered whether I would long for singers to emerge after the Prelude, but perhaps my first experience of the work came to my rescue: broadcasts of the orchestral version of the Prelude and Liebestod in Early Evening Concert on 2YC in the early 1950s when I was discovering music as a teenager. As a result, I even remember being disconcerted when I first heard the scene complete with singers. This purely orchestral treatment, so well conceived and played, brought me full circle.

Finally, I was glad I happened to hear about 40 minutes of the later broadcast of the concert on Radio NZ Concert (Monday 6 April). My impressions were confirmed, not only of the success of the musical compilation, but also at the opulence of the NZSO’s performance: its careful dynamic gradations, the swelling of tone in string phrases in the second act love music, the splendour of the brass and the richness of the strings.