Tag: orchestral

PULSE – Vector Wellington Orchestra’s first 2009 subscription concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Body – Pulse; Beethoven – Piano Concerto No.1 in C Major, Op.15; Janáček – Sinfonietta

Vector Wellington Orchestra: Marc Taddei (conductor); Michael Houstoun (piano); Members of the Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force

 

Wellington Town Hall

 

Saturday 18 April 2009

 

First things first – full marks to Vector Wellington Orchestra’s programming flair for this concert, bringing together such an interesting juxtapositioning of works to open its subscription season. The remaining concerts in the series don’t in my view have quite the same enterprising zeal (we could have done with at least one other New Zealand work, for example, to counterweight things like Duke Ellington’s Suite from The River and Piazolla’s Tangazo). No matter – Michael Houstoun’s performances of all the Beethoven piano concertos will, I’m certain, more than compensate, along with crowd-pleasers such as Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Respighi’s Pines of Rome.

 

It’s interesting that both the Wellington Orchestra and the NZSO chose works by Jack Body at the beginning of their respective seasons. I have nothing but admiration for Body’s music, and consider his orchestral works excellent concert choices, but am left wondering when any of our local orchestras are going to get around to giving neglected works by, say, David Farquhar, John Rimmer, Edwin Carr and even Douglas Lilburn (his First Symphony languishing in concert-hall obscurity) the chance to become repertoire classics of a homegrown kind, music which can be heard alongside and compared favourably with any from anywhere.

 

Still, it was fascinating to compare the performances of Body’s music by two different orchestras and conductors (albeit in different works), Melodies with the NZSO a fortnight previously, and Pulse with the Wellington Orchestra in the present concert. The NZSO and Pietari Inkinen scored points in matters of ensemble and polish, but regarding flair, colour, atmosphere and rhythmic excitement, Marc Taddei and the Wellington Orchestra seemed to me to have a distinct edge, taking us right inside the intoxication of ritualistic frenzy noted by the composer when observing the original New Guinean fire-dance from which much of this music was transcribed.

 

There’s been some discussion regarding Jack Body’s transcription pieces, with opinions expressed as to the validity of regarding the works as original compositions – but Jack himself has no such inhibitions regarding his sources or inspirations, describing his Pulse as ‘a radically conceived composition for orchestra based completely on transcription and quotation’.

 

The work liberally quotes from Beethoven’s Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Stravinsky’s ballets Agon and Le Sacre du Printemps, though the ‘borrowings’ are intriguingly, at times even gruesomely refracted (Beethoven ‘synthesised’ by Berlioz?) through a pulsating latticework of rhythmic and textural incident, making the point that all music worldwide and through the ages is derived from ‘pulse’. Interestingly, it was as much melodic as rhythmic pulse which Body’s use of those quotations brought out – and who would have ever thought that the opening chord of the Eroica would give rise to smiles and chuckles from an audience?

 

Michael Houstoun then took the stage to give us the first instalment of his much anticipated cycle of Beethoven Piano Concertos with the orchestra, beginning with the First (actually composed AFTER the Second, but published as No.1 in C Major).

 

Houstoun gave us poised and finely shaped playing at the outset, his first entry and subsequent taking up of the leaping octave theme slightly more relaxed and mellow than Taddei’s opening tutti with the orchestra, which seemed at first a little edgy in places in intonation and rhythm. A beautifully-pedalled ambient glow from the pianist marked out the development’s beginning as a magical entry into a realm of enchantment, anticipating something of the romantic feeling of the work’s Largo movement. The cadenza was a marvellously exploratory exercise in modulation, Houstoun occasionally gathering up armfuls of tonal weight and splendour, which would then be tossed aside in favour of differently constituted ideas, in a way that I found fascinating – and I liked the witty “Yes? – No….Yes!” series of indications from the piano regarding the orchestra’s reentry point..

 

The slow movement was gorgeously introduced by Houstoun’s opening paragraph, one which I felt Taddei and the orchestra took a little time to warm to, some unexpectedly brusque phrase endings from the orchestra suggesting that the players’ concentrated feeling for the music didn’t quite extend to the whole of some of the passages.

 

With Houstoun, there’s not a note I think that hasn’t cost him a great deal of thought regarding where it fits in the scheme of things, so that you get the feeling that he values it all so much and presents it as something cherishable and to be taken seriously. The reprise of the orchestra’s reply to the pianist’s opening was more lovingly shaped by Taddei, as if things had by then come into wider focus; and the rest was characterised by some rapt exchanges between piano and orchestra, a momentary ‘blooped’ brass note at one point reminding us of how expertly delivered everything else was.

 

Altogether, the performance was a wonderful realization, with the ebb and flow of the argument between soloist and orchestra nicely maintained. The only thing I miss with Houstoun, and this was especially evident in the concerto’s finale, is a ready sense of humour – nothing is ‘cheeky’ or just a wee bit outrageous or simply ‘thrown away’ though, I must admit that at one point during the Rondo Houstoun surprised me by finishing a phrase on a diminuendo when I was expecting an upsurge of tone, which made me smile. In all other respects it was a very strong interpretative viewpoint, as always with this pianist, and one I suspect that would stand up to repeated hearings and remembrances really well – I look forward eagerly to the remainder of the Beethovens from him during this year.

 

In a sense Janáček was a kind of Beethoven of his time, wholehearted and expressive in his emotions, single-minded in his pursuit of musical ends, totally uncompromising in the face of diffidence or hostility of others towards his music, and obsessed with the musical ‘idea’ ahead of its execution, pushing things to extremes in search of his goals. His Sinfonietta was originally planned as a set of fanfares for a gymnastics festival in Brno, but the work then took hold of the composer and grew into five movements for full orchestra.

 

Resplendently filling two rows of organ gallery seats in the Town Hall on Saturday night, the dozen or so members of the Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force made a stunning initial impression with their playing of the opening fanfares, even if Marc Taddei’s tempo was, I felt, a shade too quick for them to get successfully around the treacherous syncopations of the toccata-like middle section, which could have done with more ‘point’ rather than speed.

 

But the players were able to fill out the grander phrases with marvellous tones, aided and abetted by the hard-working stick-flailing timpanist Stephen Bremner. The second movement, played attacca, brought in the full orchestra with its utterly different sonorities to great effect, strings and winds playing their hearts out – though the players at first found the tempo changes between different sections unsettling, causing ensemble difficulties and affecting incisiveness at points.

 

Things came together nicely to herald the epic brass statements (played by three of the Central Band ensemble’s trumpets), creating a stirring, open-air feel around the proceedings, their highest notes having a kind of snow-capped splendour, with one player surviving and quickly rectifying a false entry towards the dying fall of one of the phrases.

 

The orchestra really came into its own in the third movement – a melancholy string phrase at the start was underpinned by deep, sonorous notes from the tuba, and plaintive winds echoed the opening string phrase – after which the orchestral brass announced itself, quite magnificently, with nicely nimble work from Peter Maunder’s solo trombone, and waves of great black tone pinning back our ears and bringing forth appropriate shrieks of terror from the winds. The horns couldn’t quite keep their ‘whooping’ up at the cracking pace Marc Taddei set when charging towards the movement’s climax, but it was a small blip on a mightily impressive sound-sequence.

 

More fanfares in the fourth movement were this time played keenly and crisply by the orchestral brass, with strings supplying an agonized counterpoint, and one of the percussionists bashing the tubular bells for all he was worth! Taddei and the orchestra also nicely brought out the folkish aspect of the last movement’s introduction, before Moira Hurst’s clarinet and Timothy Jenkin’s piccolo began to screw up the tension, leading the way into a kind of chaotic vortex of confusion which the composer resolves with a cymbal crash and a trumpet call, the fanfares of the opening returning with a kind of full orchestral counterpoint adding to the ceremonial magnificence. Was the tempo a shade too fast for the brass once again?

 

Taddei did broaden the pulse for the coda, which was spectacularly delivered by all concerned, an overwhelming final chord bringing out the raw grandeur of the music.

 

NZSO with Inkinen and Cho-Liang Lin – Barber’s concerto and Tristan for orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

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.

RICHARD FARRELL The Complete Recordings Volume One

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

RICHARD FARRELL The Complete Recordings Volume One
Music by GRIEG, LISZT and BRAHMS
Richard Farrell (piano)
The Halle Orchestra / George Weldon

Atoll ACD 208/1-2

The exhumation of mostly long-invisible recordings by New Zealand’s greatest pianist has been a slow and laborious exercise. Richard Farrell who died aged 31 in 1958 left only a small number of commercial recordings, although there is other evidence of his career surviving in the Radio New Zealand sound archive which I hope will also soon reach the light of day. I heard Farrell play more than once though I can pin-point only one concert in 1951 when I was a 6th former at Wellington College, as I still have his signed recital programme from the Wellington Town Hall.

Atoll Records are in the process of releasing three double albums of the extant recordings. The first has just appeared and contains an interesting variety of music, and with playing that emerges as so revelatory, so commanding, so effortless yet dazzling in its virtuosity and entrancing in its musical feeling. The first disc opens with the Grieg Piano Concerto. It’s a long time since I sat and actually listened to the work, either live or on recording and I was quite beguiled both by its charm and its high level of musical inspiration. Grieg of course has fallen out of fashion for many listeners more concerned with being in tune with what is critically a la mode than to listen to music through their ears and to respond with their emotions. Words that have been used often to describe Farrell’s playing are ease, naturalness. The Grieg concerto may not be among the most challenging in technical terms but the sound, the flawless playing and the timeless quality of Farrell’s interpretation remove it from any hint of being a restored vintage recording. Interpretation is the wrong word too, for this a simply a glorious, lyrical many-coloured performance of Grieg without any sense of the pianist’s own mannerisms or ego interventions.

Next come the Brahms Ballades Op 10. Farrell plays these not-so-familiar early pieces with a simplicity and feeling for their singing qualities that we are more familiar with in the last groups of piano pieces from Op 116 onwards. No 3 in the set is particularly interesting. There is a concentration and imagination in the playing that is not common. It is a bold and somewhat dark fairy-like piece in which Farrell makes magic out of its fleeting emotions. The fourth ballade is the longest and owes more perhaps to Chopin and foreshadows the mature piano pieces; Farrell holds the attention with the poised delicacy of his playing. Given the age of the recording – in this case 1958 – the piano tone that he draws is warm and opulent and remarkably varied. The rest of the first disc is taken with the 16 Waltzes. Brahms himself adapted his original duet version for solo piano and again Farrell displays his gift for investing rather slender music with eloquence and charm if not actually grandeur. The second disc starts with Grieg again. The Ballade in G Minor, a kind of keyboard tone poem, 20 minutes long, is one of Grieg’s finest works but because of cyclical musical fashion, little known. Farrell offers a delicate and quite entrancing rendering that establishes a sympathetic disposition for the group of Popular Norwegian Melodies and Lyric Pieces that follow. From few pianists since Farrell (perhaps Emil Gilels, or Leif Ove Andsnes) have we had such profoundly sympathetic Grieg performances. These are far from trivial pieces – in sophistication, artistry and plain musical inspiration, they are in the class of comparable music by Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, music quite simply of the greatest beauty whose neglect has been a real loss to the last generation.

For me, these recordings have done far more than reawaken my huge admiration for Farrell, but have renewed my affection for Grieg, understanding why a couple of generations ago he could be classed among the great composers. The First Piano Concerto of Liszt was originally issued with the Grieg on a Pye LP and later, in stereo, on the American Mercury label. Accompanying was the Halle Orchestra conducted by George Weldon, one of Britain’s finest conductors of the post-war period, the conductor who first made the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra into a great ensemble. The concerto is a model of discretion, orchestral and piano clarity, yet it does not lack excitement and rhetoric; the contemplative character of the first section allows the subsequent dramatic passages to make greater impact. Both conductor and pianist are clearly at pains to show Liszt’s poetic and lyrical qualities, and they take time to dwell on these aspects to an unusual degree. There is a joyousness, a youthful buoyancy, clarity of detail yet dazzling virtuosity in the piano, as well as a beautifully balanced orchestral presence in this performance.
This re-issue of recordings long out of circulation, the work of Wayne Laird of Atoll Records, ought to be embraced wholeheartedly by New Zealanders, finally able to appreciate the great gifts of the one pianist of undeniable international stature that we have produced.

Handel – MESSIAH – The Tudor Consort

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Handel – MESSIAH – The Tudor Consort
Madeleine Pierard (soprano)
Nicola Hooper (alto)
Edmund Hintz (tenor)
Hadleigh Adams (bass)
Tudor Consort
Vector Wellington Orchestra
Conductor: Michael Stewart
Wellington Town Hall
Thursday 4th December 2008

This was a “Messiah” performance that obviously caught the public’s imagination before a note had even been sounded in public, judging by the palpable buzz of excitement in and around the Town Hall beforehand, with queues of people waiting to be admitted a few minutes before starting-time. The Tudor Consort has always publicised its concerts cannily, and perhaps the presence of Madeleine Pierard as a rising young soprano star was also a drawcard – whatever the case, the choir, as well as the Wellington Orchestra people, must have been gratified by the near-full Hall.

Reading conductor Michael Stewart’s note in the programme beforehand, regarding the work’s history and different performance practices over the years, alerted one to the idea that this was going to be a performance of Messiah with its own distinction. In practice, this was very much the case – Stewart had obviously thought long and hard about the work and recent scholarship into performance style, so that this would definitely be something of a fresh look at a much-presented classic, far removed from a mere reproduction of the last hundred or so Town Hall performances over the years.

Obviously with the superb voices of the Tudor Consort at hand, the conductor had the singers able to fill out his conception of the music with real sounds, along with an orchestra at his disposal that has in the past proved a flexible, willing and highly skilled band capable of rising to the most demanding of challenges. The result was an energetic and totally committed performance from all concerned, that earned for the performers a sizeable ovation at the end from an extremely satisfied audience. Whatever criticism one might be inclined to make regarding this and that detail, the overall conception of the work had a conviction and overall sweep which couldn’t help but impress.

The over-riding impression one carried away from the evening’s performance was the obvious extent to which everybody – conductor, soloists, choir and orchestral players – gave of themselves to the music. Thus the story of the oratorio was put across with a considerable amount of energy and skill, atmosphere and colour, an upshot of the very physical way that all of the musicians seemed to engage with the business in hand. All of the four soloists had particular qualities to offer, even if only one of them, soprano Madeleine Pierard, possessed the technical and interpretative means to bring off triumphantly almost everything she wanted to do within her part. Each of the others began strongly, and had their notable moments – Edmund Hintz truly consoled our sensibilities with a lovely “Comfort Ye!” right at the beginning, Nicola Hooper similarly charmed with a nicely-turned “He shall feed his flock”, and bass Hadleigh Adams pinned our ears back with his blood-and-thunder “Thus Saith The Lord”, as well as negotiating “The People Who Walk in Darkness” with a growing sense of passing from a state of gloom and despair into one of hope and gladness.

Despite the difficulties encountered by tenor, alto and bass at various other moments, each had the ability to sustain the mood of the music and the sense of what was wanted, so that the musical argument was sufficiently maintained. By contrast, Madeleine Pierard’s singing was a joy throughout, an artist whose work came across with the confidence, élan and sparkling projection that informed whatever she sang – a truly class act. It was possible to feel just a touch of astringent tone in one or two places, particularly noticeable when she followed Nicola Hooper’s opening “He Shall Feed His Flock” – but by the time she had reached “I know that My Redeemer Liveth” her voice had all the focus, warmth and colour to do the music full justice.

Director of the Tudor Consort Michael Stewart controlled his forces expertly throughout, and secured an extremely vital and energetic performance. He got absolutely splendid playing from the Vector Wellington Orchestra, who weren’t spared by an insistence on fleet-fingered tempi and incisive rhythms whenever the score called for them. Yet the playing had an attractive gravitas in places as well – a fine performance, with lovely brass work in items such as “The Trumpet shall sound” and of course “Halleluiah”.

Which brings me to the Tudor Consort Voices themselves, who covered themselves in vocal glory, despite in places being asked by their director to negotiate the music at what I occasionally felt were speeds that reduced the music’s coherence. I felt that Stewart’s desire to “blow away the cobwebs” resulted in the quicker music being given an edge that was too insistent, to the point that some of the structure’s paintwork was blistered as well as the surfaces freshly cleaned. It was as though he was relying too much on speed rather than rhythmic pointing to generate momentum and excitement, at which times I felt cheated at not being able to experience the delight of listening to those strands interlocking together to produce an amazing and articulate musical structure.

For me the approach emphasised the energy and vigour of Handel’s writing at the expense of some of its grandeur – there were places where I thought the music under- characterised, as in “For Unto Us A Child Is Born”, where the cries of “Wonderful’ and “Counsellor” hardly “told” so as to provide a contrast with the delicious contrapuntal matrix of the opening.  The wonder is that the choir enunciated their lines as clearly as they did, but despite their skill I felt that some of the music was passing me as if in a blur. “And He Shall Purify” reminded me of high-speed trains crossing a network of lines in a complex operation that gave me more anxiety than pleasure – in some of the choruses (such as “He Trusted in God” and “Let Us Break Their Bonds”) a valid emotional response, but surely not as an all-purpose treatment of quick movements and numbers.

The famous “Halleluiah!” made its mark, though, partly because of the focused singing and playing, and partly because almost everybody in the hall stood up – “that hoary old tradition!” was one friend of mine’s reaction – but I loved jumping to my feet with everybody, because doing so heightened for me the whole evening’s sense of occasion, of ritual, even of participation in the performance instead of listening passively. Of course, long before the performance had reached this point, Michael Stewart, with his soloists, the Tudor Consort and the Wellington Orchestra had already swept all of us up in the ferment of music- making; so this was a kind of “word made flesh” moment of audience involvement, which was almost unanimously relished. In its way it was a spontaneous tribute to the performance as a whole, with Stewart’s “fresh perspective on a favourite work” receiving its proper, well-deserved due. (PM)