Tag: orchestral

NZSO, Gorecki and Ponifasio/MAU share singularly successful juxtaposing of utterly disparate creations, of profound common human vulnerabilities

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Festival of the Arts

“Chosen and Beloved”: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristjan Järvi with MAU Wahine
Created by Lemi Ponifasio

Performers: MAU Wāhine
In white: Kahumako Rameka and Ria Te Uira Paki
In black: Rosie Te Rauawhea Belvie, Kasina Campbell, Terri Crawford, Rangipo Ihakara-Wallace, Anitopapa Kopua, Taiahotea Paki-Hill

Gorecki: Symphony No 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs), with soprano Racha Tizk

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 21 February, 7:30 pm

It might have been slightly unusual to open a festival with a work (two works?) whose subject was the nature of woman, childbirth, even death, and dealing indirectly with one of the most terrible episodes in history.

However, it drew attention to the way in which this festival has been created and conceived. Substantially put together by three leading figures in the performing arts, ‘Guest Curators’, carefully chosen with attention to racial and cultural balance, and sheer imaginative and creative genius.

This concert was the inspiration of Lemi Ponifasio, ‘director and choreographer’. Though not a name very familiar to music audiences in New Zealand, he’s been involved for many years in performance activities that don’t match ordinary categories at international arts festivals, for example, at festivals at Avignon, Marseille, the Theater Der Welt and the Ruhr Triennale in Germany, at the Venice Biennale, for the opening of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi; in Noumea, and Sydney; and even an appearance at the 2012 festival in Wellington (which I didn’t see).

[You may be interested (I was) in the surprising history of MAU’s activities around the world: I copy an article in an appendix at the end.]

The Maori ‘ceremony’ from MAU Wahine
When the audience was allowed into the auditorium at 7:15 it was greeted at once with the performance, though there were no sounds. The stage itself delivered an immediate message: the entire back wall and choir stalls was shrouded by black curtains and a white sheet covered a four metre, or so, width of the stage extending from side to side in front of the empty orchestra seats. An array of rocks was scattered over it.

A woman in white, with long black hair (Kahumako Rameka), was walking very slowly from side to side, and she began to deliver a long lamenting whaikorero (a Karakia – about protection), about her origins, the different stages of birth and re-birth.

Soon two black-clad women appeared at the foot of aisles on either side of the balcony; they intoned first one then the other, though amplification made it difficult to tell who was singing, especially after five others appeared on the stage – that didn’t matter, but amplification removes that important aspect. However, the voices created a transcendent, ethereal effect that sought to avoid literal or precise understanding.

These were MAU Wahine, Ponifasio’s dance theatre company (‘Mau’ is the Samoan word meaning ‘the declaration of the truth’). For some time it bothered me that I could not understand their words, or at least their drift, but eventually I concluded that the women and a child in the arms was simply a reflection, or an anticipation, of the Gorecki composition, perhaps encompassing the experience of the loss of a child in awful circumstances. Gorecki said that his symphony was an evocation of the ties between mother and child, and I sensed that that might also have been the best way of interpreting the Mau ‘ceremony’ that had preceded it.

These were my own surmises, but I found myself taking it all very seriously, and I decided it would be useful to me as well as others if I could elaborate the meaning of what was happening.

So I contacted the Festival, asking whether members of the company could help my understanding (I could do this, not having a tight dead-line to adhere to). Very helpful information reached me later on Monday. I’m indebted to MAU Wahine for responding to my request.

I continue, with the benefit of their help.

When eventually a second white-clad woman appeared (Ria Te Uira Paki) with a baby in her arms, the message, expressed through their lamentations at the suffering and exploitation of women, chimed with the essential message of Gorecki’s music.

Ria Te Uira Paki delivered “a Pātere (chant), specifically Māreikura, perhaps the embodiment of the female essence. The word Māreikura can be translated or described as in all of its forms. The Pātere recites the genealogical connection to seven pro-dominant female entities within Māoridom and how they imbued their qualities within wāhine Māori. It talks of their journeys and connections being interwoven into our own feminine beings. It is a reminder of the feminine essence of Papatuanuku our terrestrial mother and the unbroken connection of the umbilical cord that  bonds us all the cosmic divine. A power, a strength and the beauty that we all hold and can conjure from within.”

My only uncertain criticism might have been of the length of this creation, with its quite protracted expanses of chant that ninety percent of the audience could not understand, even though its likely significance could be guessed at. Was it so different from the wordless 80 minutes of a Bruckner symphony or an extended liturgical work in Latin whose literal text is not understood in detail? In the end I dismissed this thought as a reasonable criticism.

The Gorecki Symphony
The words ‘Chosen and Beloved’ are taken from the first line of the first poem used in the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.

But first, some of Ponifasio’s words:
“In the ceremony of Chosen and Beloved, we greet and embrace those who have gone before us, and prepare to welcome those who are about to join us. We acknowledge the difficulties of the past, share our sufferings and hopes, and with deep empathy begin to construct together the world we wish for ourselves, and for the new generation.”

Gorecki is recorded as not wanting to write a symphony ‘about war’, dealing with the horrors of war; and so in no way does he display in this work, bitterness or hatred of the perpetrators of the three events that inspire the symphony’s three movements. He wanted his work to be heard as three independent laments, and not really like a symphony at all.

The famous words of the second movement were found on the wall of a Gestapo prison at Zakopane in southern Poland. The words used in the two other movements also had their origin in poems that touched, not on the horrors of war or the Holocaust, but on mothers’ grief for the loss of a son, probably in the Silesian Uprisings in 1919-21, and for the third movement, words from a folk song in which Mary speaks to Jesus dying on the cross.

Reading about the reactions to its original performances in the late 70s and even after the huge success of the famous Dawn Upshaw recording in 1991, the critical nastiness that was uttered comes as a surprise now, when devotion to the sterility of the avant-garde, dissonance, and serialism has largely disappeared. I recall the anger vented on some of the reviews I wrote at that time, unappreciative as I was of the slavishly disagreeable music composition students were expected to write then.

Gorecki himself had rejected the dictates of the avant-garde Inquisition; and it’s almost a surprise to observe how, in many ways there’s been  a return to the idea that music needs to engage audiences.

There’s much to be fascinated and moved by in the work: first, though the orchestra is quite large, with quadruple flutes, clarinets and bassoons, horns and trombones the range of instruments is limited: no oboes or trumpets, no timpani or percussion. Each string section is in two parts and often operate separately. One’s attention is drawn to that at the beginning as the first almost inaudible sound is from the double basses, taking about 15 minutes to move through all the strings and a sequence of keys each in a different mode. That sequence was followed in reverse before the soprano entered.

Racha Rizk is a Syrian with an attractive, ethereal soprano voice, that was beautifully suited to the lamenting quality of Gorecki’s music which in turn reflected the emotions of each of the verses.

She sang in a sort of isolation from the front of the balconies nearest the stage: first on the right, then on the left, and for the third movement, from a high, obscure platform in the middle of the black curtain that covered the entire wall behind the orchestra. That separation of voice from the orchestra meant that the balance between the two varied with each movement and according to ones’ seat in the auditorium. That is no criticism: merely an observation.

What might have been a bother for some was the array of fluorescent tubes suspended above the front and rear of the stage which probably affected the visibility of the stage for those in the centre of the balcony.

I was interested to read about Rizk’s background: Syrian classical music performers do not flood the concert halls and opera houses. The programme note included this (to me) interesting item:

After her exile in France due to the war in Syria, Racha is continuing her concerts in Europe with orchestras including the Syrian Expat Philharmonic Orchestra and ORNINA Orchestra, performing Syrian symphonic compositions in concert halls including the Berliner Konzerthaus, Bremen’s Die Glucke, Berlin Philharmonie and Athens Megaron.

In the hands of Kristjan Järvi the orchestra was electrifying in the extraordinarily restrained and spiritual passages (and there are really no other kinds of music in it). There’s a full hour of music, and it cast a spell over the audience, so that at the end when the entire back wall turned into a vivid cascade, the audience remained subdued.

The audience, uncertain about the end, clapped before the water ceased to flow and the lights came up, breaking off as they sensed that it was emotionally unfinished. So they clapped again when the real ending was signalled and the conductor rested his baton.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Lemi Ponifasio / ‘MAU Jerusalem Inside Us’

From the programme booklet for the Jerusalem concert on the following evening, which was more complete than the notes for Chosen and Beloved.

Lemi Ponifasio founded MAU in 1995 working with diverse cultures and communities around the world. His collaborators are people from all walks of life, performing in factories, remote villages, opera houses, schools, marae, castles, galleries and stadiums. Mau is the Samoan word meaning the declaration of the truth.

Lemi Ponifasio is acclaimed internationally for his radical work as a choreographer, stage director and designer, and for his collaborations with many communities.

The projects have included fully staged operas, theatre, dance, exhibitions, community forums and festivals in more than 30 countries.

He has presented his creations with MAU in many places including Festival d’Avignon, Lincoln Center New York, BAM New York, Ruhrtriennale, LIFT Festival London, Edinburgh International Festival, Theater der Welt, Festival de Marseille, Theatre de la Ville Paris, Onassis Cultural Centre Athens, Holland Festival, Luminato Festival Toronto, Vienna Festival, Santiago a Mil Chile, the Venice Biennale and in the Pacific region.

His recent works include Love To Death (2020) with MAU Mapuche, Santiago Chile; KANAKA (2019) with Theatre Du Kanaky, New Caledonia; Mausina with MAU Wāhine for 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand (2018) and Standing In Time (2017) with MAU Wāhine; Die Gabe Der Kinder (2017) with children and community of Hamburg; Ceremony of Memories (2016 and 2017) with MAU Mapuche of Chile; Recompose (2016) with MAU Wāhine and Syrian women for Festival Herrenhausen, Hanover; Lagimoana Installation (2015) for the Venice Biennale 56th Visual Arts Exhibition; Apocalypsis, Toronto (2015); I AM: Mapuche, Chile (2015) and I AM for the 100th Anniversary of WW1 (2014), which premiered at Festival d’Avignon.

Other major international performance tours by Lemi Ponifasio and MAU include The Crimson House (2014), Stones In Her Mouth (2013), the opera Prometheus by Carl Orff (2012), Le Savali: Berlin (2011), Birds With Skymirrors (2010), Tempest: Without A Body (2008), Requiem (2006) and Paradise (2005).

 

Appendix 2

From The New Zealand Herald

From an interview with Lemi Ponifasio before the performance at the New Zealand International Arts Festival in 2012

Birds With Skymirrors …..

“Some people think I am God, some people think I am the devil,” says choreographer Lemi Ponifasio, whose Birds With Skymirrors will cast his usual controversial spell, this time over Wellington’s St James Theatre for two nights of the New Zealand International Arts Festival.

Ponifasio and his dance theatre company Mau – which he prefers to speak of in terms of “community”, just as he repels the label of “performance” for his work – are far more feted in Europe than in New Zealand. Mau is a regular highlight of all the great arts festivals, biennales, triennales and “festspieles” of Europe, but it will be his first time at the New Zealand festival.

“Well, well,” he says, with the sly, characteristic smile than might mean amusement, cynicism – or pain.

The title Birds With Skymirrors was inspired by the apocalyptic sight of frigate birds flying over the ocean off Tarawa Island, in the Pacific, carrying glittering pieces of black plastic waste in their beaks, the ripped plastic looking like liquid mirrors.

The momentous issue of climate change, and the global discussions and negotiations about the future of the planet, were already on Ponifasio’s mind, and a subject he wanted to work with. “The frigate birds provided the symbolic image,” he says. “Birds have long been attached to our desire to be free.”

The resulting work, a powerful reflection on our connection with our environment, expressed through dance, poetry, ceremony, chant and oratory, premiered in Europe in 2010.

Formerly based at the Corban Estate in West Auckland, where he also regularly held the extraordinary Mau Forums, Ponifasio declares himself a failure in that he no longer has a home in New Zealand, the Pacific heart-spring and source of inspiration for all he does. “I have had to go international to survive,” he says.

Ponifasio is back in New Zealand briefly, between extensive European engagements, to find a new base, probably in South Auckland. The constant travelling between New Zealand and Europe is difficult for his immediate family and for his Mau family. And expensive.

“I am working on it, it will come,” he says. “The nature of current work in New Zealand has been that of a production line that I don’t fit. Europe has a bigger capacity to take on something provocative, something more than just arts and crafts and the entertainment industry.”

Born and raised in Samoa until he was 15, he came to New Zealand to complete his formal education, living in a Catholic priory until he was 21. But it is the experience of living in the natural world far more than human-made cultures and religious ideologies that inform Ponifasio’s unique voice. It is a voice that reflects the primal drama of the rhythms of the earth, the cycles of light and dark, life and death, rain and sun, the moon, the cosmos and mankind’s vulnerability, struggles, rituals, strange ceremonies and surrender within.

“To negotiate this exchange in life, Samoan parents tell their children the most important motto: to teu le va – to tender the space, to reverence the space, to be the space, to beautify the space, to embellish the space,” he says. “This is relational space, consciousness, a cosmological relationship with all existence. We call this ‘va’.”

Mau Forum 2010 took place at Schloss Charlottenberg, a historic palace in Berlin, and illustrates Ponifasio’s va in action.

“Not long ago, not far from this place, the people of Berlin exhibited Samoan people, like animals, in their zoo,” Ponifasio said on that occasion, “and not long ago, the people of Berlin came all the way down to Samoa and dominated and colonised the Samoan people.

“So it is very important that today we welcome and host the people of Berlin with respect, ceremony, theatre and art and share a meal, to allow for the clearing of space and the harmonising of spirit – so the work can begin.”

Ponifasio aims, he says, for “transformation”, which is equal parts prayer and political activism.

His work Tempest: Without a Body featured New Zealand’s own “face of terror” Tama Iti and terrorist suspect (since exonerated) Ahmed Zaoui.

“I make work for those who love this kind of work,” he says, “and for those who don’t like it, it is something to talk about. Art is not enough. I don’t want to make myself an artist. It has to be the path of love, the path of activism and its origins have to be in the community.”

Mau’s most recent work, Le Savali: Berlin, prompted French newspaper Le Figaro to propose Lemi Ponifasio as “the new miracle” on the choreographic landscape.

Ponifasio returns to Germany this year to produce his first opera, Carl Orff’s Prometheus, for the Ruhr Triennial 2012.

 

Michael Houstoun bows out triumphantly at Waikanae in the company of the Amici Ensemble

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society

Michael Houstoun and the Amici Ensemble (led by Donald Armstrong)
The Amici Ensemble: Emma Barron and Anna van der Zee (violins), Andrew Thomson (viola), Ken Ichinose (cello), Oleksandr Gunchenko (double bass), Bridget Douglas and Kirstin Eade (flutes), Douglas Mews (harpsichord)

J S Bach:
Trio sonata from The Musical Offering
Partita No 4 in D, BWV 898
Brandenburg Concerto No 4 in G, BWV 1049
Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 9 February, 2:30 pm

The first concert in the Waikanae Music Society’s 2020 season welcomed the audience with a ‘Full House’ notice at the door: meaning that around 500 filled the hall. It was a celebration of Michael Houstoun’s long career: his last concert for the society which has hosted him regularly since 1986. He played in the company of Donald Armstrong’s Amici Ensemble which has also been a major and very popular contributor to Waikanae’s concerts. It was an inspiring combination.

The programme that was devised was particularly thoughtful and appropriate, serving, somewhat incidentally perhaps, to display a range of Bach’s instrumental music not all of which is well known. One solo piano piece and Bach’s best known keyboard concerto, both featured Houstoun at the piano. Giving Houstoun time to catch his breath, the ensemble, including Douglas Mews at the harpsichord, played the Trio Sonata from The Musical Offering for flute, violin and continuo and the fourth Brandenburg Concerto.

Attention to the RNZ Concert crisis
But before they began president Germana Nicklin spoke briefly about the crisis that was upper-most in everyone’s thoughts – Radio New Zealand management’s intention to get rid of RNZ Concert, firing almost the entire staff, and giving its FM transmission network to a new programme devoted to what the management thinks are the tastes of young people, let’s say teen-agers. She invited Elizabeth Kerr to the stage, the former manager of Concert FM, as it used to be called (no longer if Thompson and Macalister have their way: it’ll be Concert AM, only some of the year and with no obtrusive human voices). And Elizabeth read a passionate message from Wilma Smith, founding first violin of the New Zealand String Quartet and later, Concertmaster of both the NZSO and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. There was no mistaking her dismay and anger at the barbaric plans.

The Trio Sonata
But to the music at hand. The Trio Sonata played by Armstrong, flautist Bridget Douglas and cellist Ken Ichinose, with Mews with the harpsichord continuo, was one of the many varied pieces of The Musical Offering that Bach sent to Frederick the Great in 1747. It’s entitled Sonata sopr’il Soggetto Reale (‘Sonata on a Royal theme’). The trio sonata form was common enough at the time and Bach wrote a number of others, but this one is unusually technical and makes formidable play with the theme that the King had invited him to use for an elaborate fugue. In fact it matched the gravity of our situation, sombre, in a minor key, in spite of the generally happy character of the flute.

The performance set the benchmark for the concert, as all the pieces were played without the introduction of any unwritten decoration (as far as I could tell), or the imposition of any inappropriate emotional character beyond what is intrinsic to the notes on the page. And this continued to characterise the two following Allegro movements. It offered proof of their ability to sustain the serious character of the King’s theme. Bach’s seriousness pf purpose seemed to be illuminated in the extended Andante movement, spacious and thoughtful.

Keyboard Partita No 4 
Houstoun’s choice of the fourth of the challenging keyboard Partitas was a further mark of the concert’s serious yet deeply satisfying character. Each of the six partitas has three movements in common (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and a Gigue in all but one case), along with a wide variety of other movements. No 4 is the only one that opens with an ‘Overture’ and it presented Houstoun with a formidable opportunity to express what I suppose can only be discovered in the greatest classical music. And that undoubtedly illustrates what great art can offer to those who have troubled to cultivate and familiarise themselves with the musical material that composers like Bach used to explore the depths of human experience. Nevertheless, the fugal character of the Overture’s second part avoided undue complexity and was the more rewarding for that.

Houstoun seemed to have discovered how to handle the most interesting and revelatory aspects of each subsequent movement. In some ways the second movement, Allemande, is both the longest and the most elaborate, with a subtle change of mood following pauses at the end of each paragraph. Longer pauses occur in the slow Sarabande and though it’s not a slow movement that plumbs the profundities of the Chaconne of the second violin partita, Houstoun managed to suggest a depth that made a singular impression.

The Gigue struck me as a particularly rewarding movement in Houstoun’s hands, with fugal elements and episodes for the left hand alone that led to complex polyphony.

Brandenburg Concerto No 4
All players arrived on stage to play the fourth Brandenburg concerto, with Douglas Mews again on the harpsichord, and others as named above. Each of the six Brandenburgs is different; No 4 has the character of a concerto grosso, featuring a group of three (or so) solo instruments (two flutes and Armstrong’s violin) and the balance (‘ripieno’), a small core of strings and harpsichord.

As with the Trio Sonata, the sound of the harpsichord didn’t project very well. While it was often audible in the earlier piece, among a larger number of modern instruments in the Brandenburg concerto, it failed to make much contribution. Nevertheless, the first and third movements were particularly lively and entertaining. The Andante might have been on the slow side; perhaps better described as careful and studied, ending with slow chords that introduced the last movement. The splendid fugue was particularly effective, shared interestingly among the three solo instruments. Donald Armstrong enjoyed an impressively virtuosic solo passage towards the end.

Piano Concerto in D minor 
Bach’s keyboard concerto, No 1 in D minor, really does demand performance on the piano and I felt that its choice as Houstoun’s last performance for Waikanae again demonstrated his serious and intelligent approach to this occasion and to music generally. In spite of the many great performances of the popular and spectacular piano concertos that comprise part of the symphony orchestral repertoire, Bach’s No 1 in D minor is a singular work that seems to be rarely played, though I remember clearly a performance, my first, unsurprisingly, in the old Concert Chamber of the Town Hall (it shocked me that it was replaced by a smaller space in the shape of the Ilott Theatre). It was, perhaps, in the 1950s (the pianist and the orchestral ensemble I can’t recall). Its seriousness and power impressed me then just as this performance did on Sunday.

All the instruments contributed with distinction, as they had in the Brandenburg, often playing in unison, without a great deal of fugal or contrapuntal writing. It’s widely considered a major preliminary step towards the piano concerto that emerged in the second half of the 18th century, the piano no longer just a polite member of the ensemble but a striking solo contributor. Towards the end there’s a striking dialogue between piano and cello and a virtuosic cadenza.

As with the performances of the three previous works, the most striking characteristic was the sense of integrity and honesty with which all players handled the music: no straining for ‘Romantic’ colours and emotions: just the notes in the score played with honesty and faithfulness.

This was a distinguished and momentous concert in which every aspect had been carefully studied and prepared. I hope that Michael Houstoun will be able to reflect on the occasion with as much gratitude and pleasure as the audience which, at the end, rose in its entirety to its feet.

 

Big audience for the first NZSO Shed series avoiding the mainstream classics

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Shed Series: Symmetries

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Brahms: Hungarian Dances No 1 and 3 (orchestrated by the composer)
Lissa Meridan: Tuning the head of a pin
Mozart: Divertimento No 11 in D, K 251 – Rondo
Birtwistle: Bach Measures from eight Chorale Preludes from the Orgelbüchlein:
Russell Peck: Drastic Measures, II. Allegro
John Adams: Fearful Symmetries

Shed 6, Wellington Waterfront

Friday 31 January, 7:30 pm

The idea of using the first of its Shed concerts to open the NZSO’s 2020 series proved a winner, as there was a bigger audience than I’ve seen at these before and the result was an endorsement of the idea of a less than formal affair to attract a different audience. Everyone I spoke to agreed that it had attracted people you wouldn’t see in the Michael Fowler Centre which has – mistakenly of course – the reputation of hosting forbidding, heavy-weight music.

It followed the same pattern as other Shed concerts: a mixture of light classical pieces, easy to grasp, some as the composer wrote them, some as a composer of today had arranged or transformed them. No ‘pop’ music but music influenced by jazz and pop styles, as well as a couple of contemporary pieces by a New Zealander and others.

Two of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances put the audience at rest, played in a genial manner, without too much finesse, but plenty of energy and rhythm.

Tuning the head of a pin
Though Lissa Meriden graduated from Auckland University she spent a few years as leader of the Sonic Arts Progamme at Victoria University from 2000, and is now based in Paris. Tuning the head of a pin was written in 2002, but according to McKeich it had not been performed here. As well as the usual chamber orchestra, it demands a huge and fascinating range of percussion. Such scoring sometimes seems merely a way of showing off a composer’s versatility without making the music more interesting or exciting. But I soon found myself more than a little absorbed by a sense evolution, in which the musical ideas did actually make use of exotic instrumental sounds inevitable. The spectacular scoring slowly played itself out and strings and winds introduced some comfortably diatonic sounds. Strong, highly varied rhythms continued but an agreeable character sustained it, holding the attention and I found myself rather delighted by the whole composition. Not least, it made clear that its successful performance demanded a versatile and well resourced orchestra.

Mozart Divertimento
The fifth movement from Mozart’s Divertimento in D, K 251 followed: a nice illustration of one of the clearest classical forms – the Rondo. It happily involved charming tunes that would, I hope, have been enjoyed by a not especially knowledgeable audience, though that is a dangerous observation as I had the feeling that many of the audience were musically very aware if not erudite. It was an excellent piece to end the first bracket.

Birtwistle on Bach
The second set of pieces, after the first interval as the orchestra moved to the south end of the space, opened with the arrangements by Harrison Birtwistle of five of Bach’s 45 Chorale Preludes (variously, between BWV 599 and 639). They were orchestrated with an eye (ear) to the unusual, perhaps even the eccentric. But in spite of such a first impression, one maintains an open mind and I found myself oddly intrigued by them; which is not to say I thought Bach emerged very intact or prominent at times. But that’s irrelevant as there would be little point in a major composer devoting time to such an exercise if the original work was still very audible and he hadn’t contributed something significant.

It was another opportunity for the reduced NZSO to exibit its brilliant versatility with unusual scoring.

Drastic Measures
A saxophone quartet (soprano, alto, tenor and baritone) then appeared on a low platform in the middle of the shed, to play the second movement, Allegro, of Drastic Measures, a jazz-style piece by Russell Peck. Spiky, witty, immediately attractive, and played with panache, it struck me as a particularly successful case of cross fertilisation by a fertile composer, at home with jazz but not tempted into hyper-intellectual, avant-garde idioms. It ended with a sudden calm and a gentle smile. I was drawn to explore Peck’s music on YouTube and was even more attracted to the first movement of the piece, Cantabile e molto rubato.

After a second interval the orchestra returned to the north end. I hadn’t fully grasped McKeich’s first rather sketchy programme announcements, and it took a few moments to realise that here were the last three of Birtwistle’s eight Chorale Preludes. Having had an hour to acclimatise to the earlier pieces I found this second group kind-of familiar. Each piece expressed a distinct idea or emotion and I suspect someone who studied the words of the chorales themselves, would be able to recognise their musical interpretation.

Adams’s Fearful Symmetries
Then came the piece that was probably most looked-forward-to: John Adams’s Fearful Symmetries.  (Do you notice the fashion for music titles using two-word, abstract notions?) It arrests the listener from the first moment, though I confess that I’d never heard it before. But I recognised close relatives such as Adams’s Chairman Dances and Reich’s Three Movements. It’s driven by an incessant, heavy rhythmic pulse, that easily conjures the sounds of high speed trains such as exists in a YouTube recording of the Reich music, perhaps with the wonderful throb of a steam locomotive. Though there are long stretches with little variation, the changes are actually very marked over its 25 minutes and it holds the listener transfixed. Like most minimalist music, the changes, a single chordal shift or the arrival of different instrument, though no instrument had special attention. Those subtle changes of timbre and dynamics removed any risk of tedium, and the acoustic, lighting and general atmosphere suited the performance admirably.

If I’ve had reservations about programmes of earlier Shed concerts, and can think of many delightful dance-like pieces I’d prefer to the Brahms dances, this scored very high and might have proven the Shed project beyond doubt.

Large audience for a delightful concert by Camerata chamber orchestra

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Haydn in the Church

Camerata chamber orchestra
Concertmaster:  Anne Loeser
Soloists: Robert Orr and Anne Loeser

Corelli: Concerto grosso in G minor Op. 6 No. 8 (Christmas Concerto)
J. S. Bach: Concerto for Oboe and Violin in D minor after BMW 1060
Haydn: Symphony No. 10 in C, Hob. 1:10

St Peter’s Church, Willis Street

Thursday 12 December 2019, 6 pm  

Camerata’s vision is to ‘perform high quality joyful chamber music accessible alike to newcomers and classical aficionados’. The small chamber orchestra includes members of Wellington’s professional orchestras as well as students and graduates of the NZ School of Music. It is a very accomplished ensemble.

Corelli: Christmas Concerto
Anne Loeser and Ursula Evans violins, Robert Ibell, cello

This is probably Corelli’s most popular work, often featured in anthologies of Christmas music. It is now hard to appreciate how revolutionary such music was in its time, a purely instrumental piece not written to compliment or accompany vocal music but to showcase purely instrumental and above all, string music. One is taken by the sheer beauty of the sound of strings on top of a bass continuo. It is not difficult or challenging music, it is just gorgeous. The work is made up of six short movements that alternate between fast and slow. They are built on contrasting repeated phrases, miniatures of devotional music. The playing requires a light touch and precision. It culminates in the beautiful Pastorale.

This is one of the 12 Concerti Grossi commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, a notable patron of arts, and was performed, very likely, in 1690 at one of the Cardinal’s Monday “academies”,  his concerts. The commission was a mark of Corelli’s success and recognition. He was acknowledged as the finest  violinist of his generation. Corelli’s music and musical form had a great influence on younger and later composers, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach and others.

Bach: Concerto for Oboe and Violin
Robert Orr, oboe and Anne Loeser, violin

Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether the original version of this concerto, transcribed from Bach’s Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C minor was lost or never existed, this arrangement of the keyboard parts that correspond to the individual range of the oboe and violin parts is one of Bach’s most attractive instrumental pieces. In the 1970s Nikolaus Harnoncourt transposed the concerto one tone up to D minor and this is the arrangement that was played. From the very opening bars of the work, the lively sound of the oboe lifts the music. Robert Orr, principal oboist of the NZSO is an exquisite musician who engages instantly with audience and orchestra alike. There was a lovely interplay between violin and oboe, though it was hard for the violin not to be overwhelmed by the penetrating sound of the oboe. The final movement was just exuberant joyous music. It was wonderful to hear this work.

Haydn: Symphony No. 10
Haydn was in his mid 20s when Count Morzin engaged him as music director and chamber composer for his orchestra of about 16 musicians, a steady job for a young man who until then had  lived precariously as an occasional violinist and music teacher. Haydn wrote some 17 symphonies while in the employ of Count Morzin for the Count’s weekly entertainments. These were expected to be light works, easy to listen to, nothing challenging, nothing to cloud the mood of the guests. Haydn learned composition by studying the works of Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, with help from the Italian composer and singing teacher, Nicola Porpora for whom he worked as an accompanist. Thus his first symphonies were based on tradition. But they, as evident in No. 10 that we heard, had signs of the future Haydn. This was refreshingly different from the previous works in the concert, revealing a sense of humour, and, particularly in the last movement, a suggestion of an earthy, peasant dance. The horn, oboe and bassoon that joined the orchestra added a richer variety of tone.

The concert was a delightful journey from Corelli though Bach to early Haydn. It was all thoroughly enjoyable music, ideal for anyone approaching classical music with some trepidation. The gratifyingly large audience appreciated it all and was rewarded with a repeat of the Pastorale movement of the Christmas Concerto, this time with the addition of winds, adding a richness to the work.

 

Wellington Chamber Orchestra succeeds with Šinkovec Burstin in Grieg piano concerto, and other Nordic classics

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Samuel Burstin with Ana Šinkovec Burstin (piano)

Nielsen: Helios Overture, Op 17
Grieg: Piano concerto in A, Op 16
Sibelius: Symphony No 5 in E flat, Op 82

Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 8 December, 2:30 pm

In my review of Jian Liu’s performance two years ago of Grieg’s Piano Concerto I remarked that I was mystified that it continued to be considered a popular, even hackneyed work when, for many years, it’s been so little performed. That lovely performance with Jian Liu may have prompted the Wellington Chamber Orchestra to take a look at it. If so they served themselves and Edvard Grieg very well.

Helios 
Nielsen’s Helios Overture is a relative rarity too, perhaps more understandably, though I remember the surprise I felt when I first hear it perhaps 30 years ago, that such an engaging and imaginative piece had eluded me so long. My last record of hearing it live was in 2007 from the NZSO.  I don’t think I’ve heard it from RNZ Concert for a long time and given the current limited range of music played, I don’t expect it.

There’s no problem with Sibelius of course, though it would be nice to hear the 4th or 6th instead of the ubiquitous 2 or 5 or perhaps 7.

The Helios Overture is a concert overture – not evidence of an unperformed opera. Helios was a small-time god in the ancient Greek cosmos. I was a minute late arriving and it had reached the beginning of the enchanting ‘dawn’ theme, first from strings, then woodwinds, depicting the sun rising over the Aegean (a bit difficult as Athens faces south-west across the Saronic Gulf; however, the sun rises from the sea in other parts of Attika peninsula). Nevertheless, Burstin was successful in drawing evocative sounds from the orchestra, the four horns acquitting themselves well, but no better than the perhaps less prominent playing from trumpets and trombones and the woodwinds. Nielsen didn’t seek to create a visual impression, and though I can’t say that I experienced anything approaching a Mediterranean sunrise, the nature of the themes and their orchestration certainly generated an emotional response that one might compare with looking out to sea from Cape Sounion; deeply nostalgic and enchanting – but then I’ve long been a lover of Nielsen, as well as Greece (how about Nielsen as featured composer for Orchestra Wellington in 2021; six symphonies and all?).

Grieg Piano Concerto 
This second hearing of the Grieg concerto in two years hasn’t dulled my affection for it. In spite of a somewhat too emphatic opening (which I should try to refrain from likening to the thunderous cataclysm of early that morning), it quickly settled into a well-balanced performance. The pianist, Ana Šinkovec Burstin, was born in Slovenia and is a recent arrival in New Zealand after a varied musical career in Europe and the United States in the past decade. Though there were moments in the first and last movements where I felt her playing was a little guileless, overall, and especially in the Adagio slow movement, she captured Grieg’s happy mingling of innocent charm and bravura, sensitively, exploiting that unexpected subsiding to silence in the middle of the Finale, creating as magical an effect as I’ve ever experienced. It highlighted the sudden revival of the music’s abandoned, folk-dance character through to the end, under the generally splendid partnership between piano and orchestra.

Sibelius 5 
The presence of the most popular of Sibelius’s symphonies was undoubtedly as good an explanation for the big audience as the concerto might have been. In the past the WCO’s percussion and brass have tended to sound unruly in the generous though recalcitrant acoustic of St Andrew’s; this time, perhaps my position at the back of the gallery calmed things. The result, in any case, was attractive. Though competing themes sometimes risk confusing harmonies, here was clarity, and carefully paced crescendi were always under control, producing the effect that the composer clearly sought. Strings whispered secretively with the support of bassoons, and rich brass choruses expanded to achieve impressive climaxes; flutes and oboes varied the colours nicely.  The first movement ends with an exciting crescendo which the orchestra managed rather splendidly (according to what I scribbled in my note-book).

The Andante Mosso (second movement) uses a lot of pizzicato strings and the playing was fine. Against underlying support of a lovely wind chorale, strings handled the very typically Sibelius episode of throbbing strings carefully, even movingly.

After the peaceful, pastoral Andante the finale opened with lively throbbing strings, and undulating horns created a near-professional impression. The movement is enriched with a deeply moving melody that arrives later, created mainly by horns. The orchestral sound was fairly dense, moving between hushed passages; then slowly evolving crescendi led by flutes and clarinet and eventually, quite elegant brass harmonies.

By the end, there was a very satisfying feeling of a convincing interpretation through a carefully studied pulse that had evolved through the repetition of the almost hypnotic theme, till those last widely spaced chords that always come as a slight surprise.

This was a particularly successful and enjoyable concert, with some of the most beautiful classics from three Nordic countries; perhaps a tribute in particular to conductor Burstin, it has consolidated my respect for the orchestra.

Enthusiastic reception by big audience for Orchestra Wellington’s final 2019 concert of remarkable but unfamiliar music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Orchestra Wellington, conducted by Marc Taddei

Tristan Dingemans, Neil Phillips, Constantine Karlis, and Rob Thorne (orchestrated by Thomas Goss): Ko Tō Manawa, Ko Tōku: Purita. Your Hears is My Heart: Take Hold
Samuel Barber: Piano Concerto (Michael Houstoun – piano)
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8  

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 30 November, 7:30 pm

This was the last of this year’s subscription concerts by Orchestra Wellington. The Michael Fowler Centre was filled almost to capacity, despite the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra playing another concert at the same time in Shed 6. Orchestra Wellington played a difficult programme, made no concession to popular taste, yet it had the largest audience of any orchestra in New Zealand. There is something remarkable about this. I believe the secret of the success of the orchestra is relationship, the relationship the conductor, Mark Taddei, has with the orchestra and with the audience. The good prices for season tickets helps, but essentially this is Mark Taddei’s orchestra and players and musicians trust his judgement. Other ensembles can learn from this.

Dingemans, Phillips, Karlis and Thorne: Ko Tō Manawa, Ko Tōku: Purita. Your Hears is My Heart: Take Hold
The names of these composers might not have been familiar to some in the audience. They were all part of a group of rock musicians who made award-winning recordings in the early 2000s. Rob Thorne, in his programme notes, said that working with Tristan, the guitar player, he was excited by the simplicity, beauty and power of the words of ‘Hold On’ and by the idea of introducing a whole audience of music lovers to a synergistic musical realm, using taonga puoro, early Maori musical instruments, for initial experiences of journeying through music. The arrangement by Thomas Goss of the collaborative work uses a range of Maori wind instruments and electric guitar with a large symphony orchestra including an expanded percussion section.

The work starts with very soft whistling sounds produced by Rob Thorne on the taonga puoro instruments and gradually the orchestra joins in, the music expands, the loud percussion emphasizes the rhythmic elements and the piece, and the music, come to an overwhelming climax reminiscent of great Shostakovich climaxes, foreshadowing the rest of the programme. The guitar, which in a rock music context is loud and dominant was somehow overshadowed by the symphony orchestra, but this was an exciting piece of music and the large audience appeared to have been stimulated by it and enjoyed it. Rob Thorne, the composer, wrote that every performance is a highly concentrated conversation between past and present, identity and connection.

Barber: Piano Concerto
This is a major work, a substantial concerto, yet somehow it is seldom heard. Samuel Barber was on the fringe of the twentieth century musical trends. He was a thorough craftsman, yet only a few of his works stood the test of time, though to the credit of Orchestra Wellington his cello and his violin concertos were both featured during this season. The piano concerto is a challenging virtuoso piece. It starts with a long piano solo which introduces the three themes. These are taken up by the flute and then the orchestra in a lush, tuneful, romantic passage. The second movement is in contrast to the stormy first movement serene with gentle dialogue between piano and orchestra. The Finale returns to the turbulent mood of the first movement.

The concerto dates from 1962. It was the era of Boulez, Messiaen, Ligeti, Elliott Carter, late Stravinsky, Xenakis, and indeed, Shostakovich, but listening to Barber’s concerto with its scintillating piano passages and lush romantic orchestral responses you would hardly know this. Although this concerto won a Pulitzer Prize for Barber and was well received in its time, it has largely dropped out of the repertoire. Michael Houstoun, the thoroughly professional pianist that he is, was prepared learn this difficult work for possibly a single performance. He played with total control and assurance. The audience appreciated his always reliable artistry with warm applause and was rewarded with an encore, the lovely, charming Prokofiev Prelude in C (the Harp).

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8
This symphony takes over an hour. It is a deeply moving work, written in the middle of the war and was first performed in 1943, a year after Shostakovich’s Seventh, the ‘Leningrad’ Symphony.

But whereas the earlier work is one of Shostakovich’s most often played symphonies, No. 8 languished for many years, and was virtually suppressed in the Soviet Union. It is a very demanding work for players and listeners alike. It is gloomy, melancholic, with little to lift the spirit. Yet it is beautiful, haunting music from beginning to end. Shostakovich considered that his triumphant Seventh Symphony, and his mournful Eighth, to be his Requiem. Shostakovich’s use of the orchestra is unlike anyone else’s.

The symphony opens with a long passage for strings, much of it dominated by the basses and cellos, while the rest of the orchestra is silent, then out of the long sombre string introduction the rest of the instruments join in. There are wonderful solo passages for the oboe, the flutes, unusually, long solos for the piccolo, the horns and the trombones with the tuba. It is like a gigantic chamber music ensemble with dialogues among sections of the orchestra. The first movement takes over half hour and is longer than the other movements together. There is ’emptiness in the pain’, ‘screams in the desert’. This gigantic first movement is followed by two scherzos, a danse macabre, and a short sarcastic section. The fourth movement is a dark Largo leading to the finale of hope of sorts, but not the celebration of Soviet victory that people expected after the Stalingrad victory.

Tragedy was the background to the symphony. Shostakovich’s student, Veniamin Fleishman died in the battle for Leningrad. Shostakovich also became aware of the fate of Jews in the German occupied parts of the country, while huge numbers of people were killed in the Battle of Stalingrad. All this is reflected in this symphony, which reached a whirlwind climax with six percussionists hammering at their instruments with full force. The symphony ends with a sombre quiet Adagio and for special, but appropriate effect, the lights were gradually dimmed until the podium was in complete darkness, a chance for a few moments of reflection.

This epic symphony will stand out as a memorable landmark in the orchestra’s performances.

Mark Taddei gave a brief preview of next year’s season, titled “The great Romantic” and will feature Rachmaninov’s three symphonies and his major orchestral works. He also gave the audience credit for its strong support for often difficult, challenging programmes.

Nothing showed the orchestra’s involvement in the community more than the opportunity it gave to Virtuoso Strings, a student community orchestra from Porirua to perform in the foyer of the Michael Fowler Centre before the concert and then attend the concert, a real experience for these young musicians.

 

Gustav Mahler’s heartfelt expression of existentialist optimism given resplendent treatment by the NZSO and departing Music Director Edo de Waart

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
RESURRECTION

GUSTAV MAHLER – Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”)

Lauren Snouffer (soprano)
Anna Larsson (mezzo-soprano)
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir (Music Director, Karen Grylls)
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Music Director, Brent Stewart)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Edo de Waart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday, 22nd November 2019

“It opens as if on the brink of an abyss, and ends with an exhilarating rebirth”. With these words Edo de Waart, the conductor of this performance of Gustav Mahler’s monumental “Resurrection” Symphony, summed up in a programme foreword his reasoning for making the work his final assignment as the NZSO’s Music Director. According to the archive of that redoubtable critical periodical, “Middle C”, this was his seventh separate Mahler Symphony performance undertaken with the orchestra, the only ones missing from the canon being the Sixth and the Eighth – and with de Waart promising to return as “Conductor Laureate” in years to come, who can say whether or no he has either or both of those works in his sights as a “completion” of sorts?

It sometimes seems that the classical music world has become “cycle-mad” (an attitude in marked contrast to that of a number of great musicians of the past who expressly refused to perform (and record) certain works (even what many would regard as “great” ones) that they felt little affinity with). However, with all of the Mahler performances I’ve heard de Waart conduct over the years I’ve enjoyed his particular insights into and affinity with the Mahlerian ethos, albeit via a tightly-disciplined, straightforward and direct way with the music. I for one would be most interested in the idea of him completing his Mahler symphonic survey with the orchestra – something to consider, perhaps?

Over the period I’ve been attending NZSO concerts (since the late 1960s), the orchestra has been fortunate in having a number of music-directors seemingly well-versed in this composer’s once warily-regarded oeuvre – performances of the symphonies that stood out for me over the pre-de Waart years were those by Michi Inoue, Uri Segal, Victor Yampolsky, Franz-Paul Decker, James Judd and Pietari Inkinen, not to mention Vladimir Ashkenazy’s sensational presentation of the rarely-heard “Symphony of a Thousand” the massive Eighth, at an Arts Festival concert in Wellington in 2010  (regarding recent Festivals by comparison, those, unfortunately, were the days!)…..

All of those occasions referred to above have contributed to the orchestra’s building up a well-versed Mahler style, one shaped according to each maestro’s wishes, and evolving as a living, breathing and above all, flexible attitude, one able to readily encompass the demands of each of the composer’s symphonies along the interpretative lines of whomever is on the podium. This state of things was expressed in no uncertain terms this time round by the orchestra’s delivery of the Symphony’s first movement, marked Allegro Maestoso. Right at the  beginning, de Waart and his players gave the music arresting, sharp-edged focus and tremendous tonal weight, serving notice that everybody was here to mean business.

With an inexorable tread, allied to a dark, and ominous ambience, the movement’s opening firmly established the piece’s overall character, the funereal mood occasionally lightened by the tenderest of soundings from strings and winds, softly coloured by superbly-wrought horn-playing, but forever held under the sway of the all-pervading march rhythm, whether deep and insidious or sudden, volatile and alarming! The movement is replete with directions for the players, who, here, encompassed the composer’s demands for the widest possible dynamic and colouristic variations imaginable without faltering in their overall purpose – the final, lumbering funeral cortege-like sequence followed a heart-rending episode of the most bitter-sweet nostalgia for times past, pitilessly bearing away all such remembrances as part of life’s temporal baggage and reaching a remorseless point of near-despair, one reinforced by the startling penultimate major/minor cry of pain from the brass, and the cataclysmic orchestral collapse into complete darkness at the end – all superbly brought off!

The evening’s only performance aspect I might have questioned had I been asked was the tempo taken by de Waart for the second movement – after a lengthy pause (actually specified by the composer as five minutes, though nobody in concert dares take quite that long!) the Andante Moderato begins, marked by Mahler Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen. (Very leisurely – never rushed.) Here, I wanted more poignancy, more heart-stopping nostalgia at the opening than de Waart was prepared to give us, with the result that, to my ears, the Ländler rhythm sounded a shade bland, or matter-of-fact. This affected the central, more agitated section of the music as well, the contrast between the two moods less marked than I expected – of course de Waart‘s players took it all in their stride, making the conductor’s more urgent conception work almost as fluently as if no other existed. And conductor and players did inject a strain of echt-Viennese sweetness into the opening’s reprise with the most delicate of pizzicati giving way to heartfelt counterpointed melody at the music’s conclusion.

Two rapid-fire attention-grabbing timpani thwacks at the scherzo’s beginning launched the movement in no uncertain terms, after which the music’s insistent lines wove their sinuous strands every which way, as the composer intended. De Waart and his players tirelessly reiterated the lines and motifs as if participating in some kind of relentless dance – the music quotes one of Mahler’s own songs, a setting of a text from “Das Knaben Wunderhorn” (a famous collection of German folk poetry) describing how the Saint, Anthony, preached a sermon to the fishes, who, after the sermon finished, swam away, as sinful as before! A lovely interlude, mid-movement, featured some beautiful trumpet playing (I couldn’t see the player), after which the same garrulous lines returned, provoking a sudden tumultuous upheaval leading to what the composer called a ”cry of disgust” from the full orchestra – de Waart and the players certainly pulled out all the stops for that one!

After the music slunk darkly away a new mood suddenly materialised, in the form of mezzo-soprano Anna Larsson, beginning Mahler’s brief Urlicht movement – according to her “artist bio”, fresh from singing Erda (from Wagner’s Der Ring) at the Berlin Staatsoper, and here sounding as if she had brought the character along with her, her tones world-weary and worn, and eschewing any kind of radiance. Still, her obvious artistry in shaping the words was beautifully augmented by the brass who replied exquisitely to her “O Röschen rot”, and by the oboe who echoed her reference to Heaven at “im Himmel sein” so tenderly.

Straightaway at the song’s end, its shaft of heavenly light was torn into fragments by ground-heaving irruptions from the lower strings, as well as a nightmarish full-orchestra outburst which reiterated the previous movement’s “cry of disgust”, and, incidentally, containing the only slightly miscued instrumental note I heard all evening – all part of the excitement of the players’ pushing the music to its extremes. This was the work’s final movement, the introduction to what the composer called the “Great Summons”, and featured some magnificent off-stage brass-playing, judged to perfection by de Waart and his musicians – what an incredible sense of space was created therein by the distant brasses and the near-subterranean percussion instruments, evoking a void, a firmament’s emptiness needing to be filled! And how incredibly the musicians responded, firstly with a spectrally-delivered brass reiteration of the well-known “Dies Irae” theme, and then a full-orchestral vision of Heaven in all its imagined glory, the whole awaiting the moment of Judgement.

Mahler began this next sequence with a terrifying pair of crescendo whose force seemed here to shake the building – in his own words, written for a programme note at a performance in Dresden in 1901: “ The earth trembles, the graves burst open, the dead arise and march forth in endless procession. The great and the small of this earth, the kings and the beggars, the just and the godless all press forward!” – de Waart didn’t rush the company almost off its feet (as some conductors have done!) but built the excitement in layers towards the moment where the bells rang out amid the clamour, and consternation gripped the assemblage – one of the problems of performing this work are that there are so many “climaxes” along the way that there’s a danger of the excitement “peaking” too early, and undermining what is still to come, but de Waart seemed to keep enough in reserve for the entry of the “Eternal Judge”, heralded by offstage trumpets excitedly warning the company of “the moment” and marked by a final terrified cataclysm of turbulence from the whole orchestra!

Just as arresting was the sudden stillness, broken by distant, apocalyptic trumpets and, incredibly, the song of a nightingale, played by the flutes. Came the gentle, hitherto unsignalled sounds of voices (the choir remained seated throughout their opening verses, as did the soprano, Lauren Snouffer), intoning the words of the Ode that had originally given Mahler the idea for his finale, which the composer then added to, giving the movement its final shape and form. The sounds drew us in, held us in thrall in a completely ingratiating manner – here was no terror, no darkness, no on-going suffering, but a new radiance and fresh hope in existence, what Mahler himself had indicated in his own words of the text – Was du geschlagen – zu Gott wird es dich tragen! (That for which you suffered – to God shall it carry you!).

Singers, choir and orchestra under de Waart’s steadily-wrought direction ascended the heights of the symphony’s concluding moments with ever-increasing fervour and excitement, creating over the final pages a resoundingly memorable sense of both occasion and fulfilment. How appropriate for de Waart to conclude his NZSO Music Director tenureship with this composer’s work, having already given us so many splendid Mahler performances – here, this heartfelt, utterly committed music-making got a fully-deserved enthusiastic and extended response from a truly appreciative audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO: Salonen’s Violin Concerto points in a fruitful, inspiring direction; Schubert’s Greatness persists through 200 years

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Edo de Waart with Jennifer Koh (violin)

Esa-Pekka Salonen: Violin Concerto
Schubert: Symphony No 9 in C, D 944 (‘Great’)

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 8 November, 6:30 pm

Here was another NZSO concert that merited a bigger audience. Again, as at the 24 October concert, the gallery was well inhabited but the stalls rather sparse. A concert that is dominated by a very long work, unless by Mahler or perhaps Bruckner, suffers from a lack of variety and there needs to be a smaller, first-half piece that will overcome it, probably a familiar and well-loved concerto.

Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is well-known as a conductor, but few would have heard any of the compositions he has been writing in an effort to establish a different career, and to contribute to a repertoire of more accessible music. But he may not yet be widely known, and it was unlikely that a much admired, and even popular violin concerto by him would thus get the kind of reception accorded to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky or Sibelius. Predictably, a couple of acquaintances remarked adversely about it at the interval.

Salonen’s Violin Concerto was written on the eve of his departure from 17 years as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 2009. It was commissioned by The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, among others, as a collaboration between Salonen and Canadian violinist Leila Josefowicz, who played the first performance. United States violinist Jennifer Koh, comparably alive to and inspired by the music’s character, played here. The programme notes quote his remarks at the time, writing that his move to the United States caused him to question the assumptions that his experiences in Europe had taught him: inter alia, to “avoid melody, clear harmonic centres and clear sense of pulse … over here I was able to think about this rule that forbids melody. It’s madness!”

So the concerto avoids most of the forbidding characteristics of a lot of music written in the past half century; yet it could never be heard as other than very ‘contemporary’. The first movement, Mirage, is far from what that word suggests; it’s hectic and energetic, a “razor-sharp violin toccata in constant motion”, Alex Ross called it. The solo violin opens as if in mid-flight and it’s soon joined by, first, subtle celeste sounds, then glockenspiel and vibraphone and some ringing chords from the harp.

Flutes and clarinets were added and then brass, along with prolonged string chords (noticing that Concert Master Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s place was taken by associate concert master Donald Armstrong while his place was taken by Martin Riseley). However, it’s the woodwinds and celeste that are the soloist’s main companions in the semiquaver department, though Koh was vividly centre stage, playing constantly through the near ten minutes of the first movement for all but a dozen or so measures.

The sound was uniquely Salonen, and I came to feel delight as the music of the first movement stormed along, steadily gaining familiarity, helped by the changes of tempo from time to time.

Two Pulses and Adieu
The next two movements are entitled Pulse I and II, driven in turn by an astonishing refinement in the singular orchestration, and then in Pulse II by an utterly different impulse, a sort of concerto grosso for violin and drum kit. It employed the log drum and other percussion again, acquiring the character of rock music by engaging with the jazz or rock percussion, including cymbals, tom-toms and occasionally vibraphone and marimba. And at the end the drum set is told to ‘go crazy’.

The finale, Adieu, is the longest movement, beginning with a quiet, dreamy solo violin, accompanied tellingly by solo viola, soon joined by bassoon, harp and quite prominently, cor anglais. Finally we heard from the battery of tuned gongs suspended behind the horns. As elsewhere in the concerto there were sounds, especially combinations of instruments, whose source eluded me, individually or in ensemble: from the gongs, vibraphone, harp, celeste…: their spirit was no less haunting than those in the elusive Pulse I. Edo de Waart knew how to exploit and enhance these beauties and managed it all with full attention to clarity, balance and expressiveness.

For me, this enchanting, energetic work epitomised the feelings I’ve long had, winning lively disapproval from avant-garde quarters, lamenting the prolonged dominance of music over the past century by determinedly difficult, academic, melody-free music. For this was a happy combination of the refined, deeply felt, sophisticated music from Europe, and some of the music of America which has been closer to popular roots and a better awareness of the likely death of classical music through intellectual, esoteric, universities-driven ideas. And it was played by a stunning young violinist evidently steeped in the idiom, with impressive conviction and a deep belief in the music’s worth and importance.

The Great Symphony
Schubert’s ninth symphony is one of music’s great masterpieces, and though I love Schubert’s music, there are features of this last symphony that give me a bit of trouble. The numbering of the symphonies is one interesting topic (there are perhaps three incomplete or perhaps non-existent ‘symphonies’ which would make The Great No 12 if they were counted); but of more musical concern is a matter the programme note ventured to discuss: the many repeats of melodies, without interesting development. Ever since the work’s discovery by Schumann in 1838, there have been questions about Schubert’s repetitive melodies that lacked change and variety. A common defence has been that Schubert was more interested in variety through tonal modulation, which scholars have pointed out was not common in the 19th century.

The first movement makes its claim to greatness right at the start with horns opening the 4-minute-long Andante: warm, legato sounds conjured a wonderful sense of peace. The brass section as a whole, that is the trumpets, trombones as well as horns, sounded unusually rapturous, building expectations of something portentous in the main body of the movement, Allegro ma non troppo. The pace, the dotted rhythms and the magnificent balance maintained by De Waart throughout, quickly created an expectation of a near hour of musical fulfilment and inspiration.

The Andante con moto marches at a steady pace gaining interest, as usual, through modulations that were not a common feature at the time, but making a profound impression: particularly the lengthy preparation for the stunning, dissonant climax in the middle of the movement, dramatically delivered. After that, the remaining half of the movement generated a sense of peace and beauty that never seemed too long.

Each movement is around a quarter of an hour, and after the slow movement, the formally repetitive Scherzo and Trio can sound too mechanical. Yet there are constant modulations, and one’s response depends on one’s openness to them; after all, the shift from C to A major at the Trio might hardly sound very exciting.

The repetition affair has, for me, been a noticeable matter in only some performances; and this was not one of them. There’s never any problem with the first ten minutes or so of a Schubert movement, and in the finale, Allegro vivace, audiences can read some kind of message in the famous Beethoven quote early in the second part of the movement. Beethoven is also there with Schubert’s use of trombones which had only just been used by Beethoven for the first time. The splendidly calm pace added to the sense of grandeur and contentment.

At a certain point the last movement might seem to repeat its main themes too often, but if you are presented with a performance from a conductor like De Waart who grasps the entire structure and is capable of investing it with grandeur and spiritual conviction, those repetitions actually help sustain it. And they speak to any listener with open ears and capable of perceiving genius in a work of art. Even a self-effacing composer like Schubert surely knew that his symphony was a masterpiece and an imposing sequel to Beethoven’s. That’s certainly what I experienced, and I felt exhilarated, deeply moved and at peace at the end.

 

Admirable NZSO concert touching several rewarding themes: all German apart from Ken Young’s new piece

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jun Märkel with Samuel Jacobs (French horn)

Kenneth Young: Te Māpouriki
Mozart: Symphony No 31 in D, K 297 ‘Paris’
Strauss: Horn Concerto No 1 in E flat, Op 11
Mendelssohn: Overture: Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op 27
Schumann: Symphony No 1 in B flat, Op 38 ‘Spring’

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 24 October, 7:30 pm

I had guessed perhaps a bit cynically, that this might not be a hugely well attended concert. The balcony was well populated but the stalls were rather thin. The absentees made a serious mistake.

Its programme looked unorthodox: a relatively brief concerto for horn, an overture at the beginning of the second half, and two symphonies. And a new composition by Ken Young to mark the 250th anniversary of Cook’s first visit to New Zealand.

Mozart: Paris Symphony
The earliest music was Mozart’s ‘Paris’ Symphony, No 31 in D major, written in the hope of pleasing Paris audiences on his 1778 visit to Paris with his mother who died there; his father, Leopold, held Wolfgang responsible. The symphony generally met with the approval of audiences at the Parisian Concert Spirituel where it had several performances. As the programme notes remarked, Mozart was pleased to have a larger orchestra than he was used to in Vienna and he scored this symphony accordingly, in particular, for clarinets for the first time. Apart from the absence of trombones which didn’t arrive in symphonies till Beethoven’s 5th symphony, we heard a wind section that was widespread well into the next century.

The result was music that sounded more ‘symphonic’ in a 19th century sense than anything Mozart had written before and Märkel drew luminous playing of great clarity, achieving distinct contrasts between instruments, though subtle and unpretentious. Charming, crisp themes in the first movement, a gently rhythmic, unpretentious second movement; no minuet third movement, but straight into the Allegro last movement, illuminated alternately with subtlety and energy.

I noted certain player absences: no Andrew Joyce leading the cellos; concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen’s place taken by Associate Donald Armstrong whose place was taken in turn by one-time concert-master Wilma Smith.

Mendelssohn overture
Next in chronological order was the youthful Mendelssohn’s overture, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (1828), based on two poems by Goethe. The note pointed out that ‘calm sea’ misrepresents the poet’s meaning which really describes a ‘becalmed’ ship, a matter of serious concern in the days of sailing ships. However, the becalmed episode was breathlessly beautiful.

Fairly clearly, it was chosen as a possible allusion to Cook’s voyages, the subject of Kenneth Young’s piece, discussed later.

It’s a gorgeous, magically orchestrated work, and Märkel presided over a delightful performance, with a charming flute solo introducing the rising wind that enables the ship to make way again. Though written a couple of years after Mendelssohn’s even earlier (16) masterpiece, A Midsummer Night’s Dream overture, it’s no less inspired and masterful. And it reminded me of the former programming tradition of starting concerts with an overture; very rare these days.

This overture is among the many that need to be resurrected, as there’s nothing like of one the scores of beautiful, memorable, thrilling overtures to implant a love of music in young minds: in my youth, an overture almost invariably opened a concert opener, and overtures opened every evening’s 6pm ‘Dinner Music’ programme on RNZ Concert’s predecessor which was important in guiding my own musical explorations.

Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony
Putting a symphony by Schumann together with the Mendelssohn, who was only a year older, was an inspired little gesture, and not merely as our Spring might be arriving. Schumann wrote his first symphony a decade later, in 1841. Apart from Berlioz’s Fantastique, it was the first important and successful symphony since the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert.

Schumann’s orchestral works have long been rather neglected, smeared ritually with criticisms of his orchestration. But this was a performance that should have won the ‘Spring’ Symphony hundreds of new fans. It was revelatory, both for its inspired, lyrical music and its originality, and very importantly through the colourful, lively performance itself, with Märkel’s careful attention to dynamic and rhythmic subtleties that simply lifted the spirit. It’s a work that suffers if played too seriously, with rhythms that are too careful; but this, throughout, was simply beguiling and brilliant: alive with sudden tempo and dynamic changes.

Strauss: Horn concerto No 1
Forty years later the eighteen-year-old Richard Strauss wrote a horn concerto for his horn-playing father (he wrote another during the Second World War). This performance with the NZSO’s principal horn player, Samuel Jacobs, was marked by an authentic stateliness and polish from the first bars; it might have been formally akin to Mozart’s horn concertos, but not so high spirited. There was calm beauty in the playing of the slow movement, and the return to the Allegro of the last movement was something of a renewal of the character of the first. In all a splendid exhibition of precocious composition and brilliant horn playing.

Just to prove that he was not simply a good player of the valve horn, Jacobs returned after spirited applause with a dull bronze coloured natural horn and danced his way through a piece by Rossini: Rendez-vous de Chase (arranged by one Hamuera Makawhio); Wikipedia tells me it’s also known as Fanfare pour quatre trompes composée pour Monsieur le baron Schickler. It was flawless and the audience was transfixed.

Kenneth Young: Te Māpouriki
Ken Young’s piece, Te Māpouriki, opened the concert: an attempt to depict James Cook’s arrival in New Zealand – the actual 250th anniversary this month. It was immediately attractive, opening with a calm, luminous, beautifully orchestrated passage dominated by flutes and piccolo in gentle dancing music. That was soon disturbed by underlying, throbbing, uneasy bass sounds that led to an troubled alternation with the treble woodwinds. Then came the surprising arrival of the New Zealand National Anthem; I couldn’t decide whether it was intended as an ironic comment, suggesting the intrusion of Europeans on the peace-loving native peoples who’d lived in the country for about three hundred years, and had devoted much of their time to waging war with each other.

A touch of history
The dominant feeling of the piece settled around this contrast between gentle, peaceful lamentation, and dissonant, intrusive conquest by more barbaric forces. But I was reluctant to interpret the music in the manner of some of the historically ill-informed, distorted interpretations of Cook’s exploration and the enlightened intentions that guided him in his approach to native peoples with whom he made contact. But the programme notes gave me no comfort from such misrepresentation.

I was mystified by Young’s remarks quoted in the programme notes, “…and Cook, the man unable to divest himself of his background as a hegemonic absolutist…” and that he was “unable to deny the arrogant and imperialistic nature of his temperament and agenda”.

Cook’s brief was to explore, to observe planetary phenomena – the Transit of Venus in Tahiti and the Transit of Mercury at another location which turned out to the Coromandel Peninsula. It’s as if mankind’s urge to explore his planet had not been increasingly important at least from the Renaissance. He was emphatically NOT urged to claim territory, and did not do so.

Indeed, the programme notes seemed to turn away from the better-informed and historically objective views that make it clear that we cannot always apply today’s attitudes to historical events.

Cook, as well as other explorers in the Pacific at the time, such as De Surville who almost encountered Cook around North Cape and Marion du Fresne were creatures of the Enlightenment – in the case of the French, deeply affected by Rousseau’s views on ‘the noble savage’, and they made serious efforts to deal with indigenous people humanely. Du Fresne, after five weeks of exemplary relations with Maori at the Bay of Islands in 1772, was killed along with 24 of his crew, evidently for unknowingly breaching sacred rituals.

The British Royal Society’s advice to Cook embodied this Enlightenment spirit and it’s very clear that Cook and the scientists and artists accompanying him took these matters very seriously.

In the case of Cook at Turangnui-a-Kiwa (Gisborne), his men were attacked and their reprisals, not sanctioned in any way by Cook, were a matter of extreme regret to Cook and his companions.

Nor is anything to be gained from attributing blame for unfortunate events of the past to just one group, especially when the behaviour of the explorers was exemplary by any standards and certainly were, in the context of the late 18th century.

The wrongs between Maori and Europeans occurred not with Cook’s contacts, but with the arrival of whalers and sealers and other adventurers, and during the period of the murderous Musket Wars between Maori iwi in the decades before 1840. In those wars perhaps 10,000 Maori were killed without any involvement by Europeans whatsoever. Nor is there any argument about the unjust and exploitative dealings by land-hungry settlers during the period after the establishment of self-government in New Zealand, from around the 1860s – almost a century after Cook’s arrival here.

It might be useful for those parading these ill-informed views, to read the unimpeachable article by Graeme Lay in the Listener of 12 October.

None of this detracts from Young’s very engaging music and Jun Märkel’s sensitive and sympathetic performance. Whatever its inspiration, its musical and emotional characteristics were most interesting and the orchestra conjured a satisfying feeling of imaginative, descriptive music.

Delightful, delicious, and declamatory – a “no-holds-barred” night with Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN

CLAIRE SCHOLES – Cuba on Cuba (with the Arohanui Strings)
SAMUEL BARBER – Violin Concerto (Amalia Hall – violin)
AARON COPLAND – Symphony No. 3

Marc Taddei (conductor)
Arohanui Strings (Claire Scholes)
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 20th October, 2019

Orchestra Wellington has earned a special niche for itself amid the welter of artistic activities supported by the capital, one that’s steadily developed over the years of Marc Taddei’s tenure as Music Director, and in recent times enjoyed obvious fruition in terms of its enthusiastic audience following. Its appeal is based on several factors, not the least of which is the unflagging wholeheartedness and enthusiasm of conductor Taddei for whatever he’s presently engaged in doing with his players, and the ensemble’s remarkable development in playing standards over the duration. As well, the organisation’s on-going policy of keeping its audiences guessing from year to year as to what’s next in store heightens the fun and excitement of it all, be it the announcement of an oncoming season’s programme or the orchestra’s always delightfully “sprung” collaboration with the youthful Arohanui Strings Ensemble (both of the latter taking place this evening!)

Regular attendees at OW concerts will be well familiarised with the work of this music-education/social development programme, which works with children who grow up in areas of economic deprivation in the Wellington/Hutt Valley area. Begun in 2010 by OW violinist Alison Eldredge, the group includes over 300 children per year in these areas, teaching them string instruments, singing and music notation. Tonight’s concert began with the more advanced students playing a work by Manawatu-born, Auckland-based composer Claire Scholes called Cuba on Cuba, one inspired by the “thriving party zone” atmosphere along Cuba St. in Wellington.

Scholes wanted her piece to be, as far as possible, “children-led”, her writing having the younger musicians presenting the piece’s main ideas, which in turn were taken up and developed by the adult musicians. Beginning with an attractively soulful and melancholic violin solo, the piece brought the dance energies in straight afterwards – aside from a slightly-too-prominent tin-can, the percussive noises brought out catchy, angular figurations  punctuated by occasional “Ooh!” and “Wow!” vocalisations from the players. A brass choir opened up the textures further, revealing a “bright, new country”, not unlike in spirit the vistas to be evoked by Aaron Copland’s music later in the programme., the “tin-can” rhythm joined by other instruments, building up the textures, working jazzy tattoos into the mix between percussion irruptions, and finishing in the time-honoured manner with suitably grand and satisfying gesturings, both music and playing generating a warm reception!

A piece called “Amadeus” followed, an arrangement of the first movement of Mozart’s 25th Symphony (the “little” G Minor!) with some of the writing’s angularities removed. Then the “big guns” were brought out (the youngest of the Arohanui Strings’ students), standing in a line across the front of the platform, to everybody’s great pleasure, and playing a couple of folk-song tunes as well as “What shall we do with a  Drunken Sailor” and the lovely “Hine e Hine”. The response was rapturous!

Came the second instalment of the evening’s packagings, this particular segment unwrapped by the musicians with the utmost delicacy and beauty of feeling. This was Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, a work written in 1939, and one whose history is of a complexity which the concert’s programme-note writer, Erica Challis obviously considered would be best left well alone! Barber wrote the work for a former classmate of his at the Curtis Institute, Iso Briselli, who responded favourably to the first two movements of the work, but not to the brilliant, but comparatively short finale which he considered somewhat insubstantial! Various other people, including Briselli’s own teacher, added their opinions, the teacher, Albert Meiff, even offering to rewrite parts of the work in consultation with the composer! Barber declined the offer and after various other comings-and-goings between him and Briselli (all to no avail, except that they actually remained friends throughout all of this!) gave the concerto to another violinist, Albert Spalding, who premiered the work with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy in February 1941.

Unfortunately for Briselli, a version of the story involving his rejecting the concerto because the third movement was ”too difficult” for him to play gained currency at about this time and actually became the accepted “story” of events in most descriptions of the work’s genesis. It wasn’t until fifty years afterwards, when the violinist published correspondence between him and the composer, that the “correct” version of their interaction re the concerto was given its proper status – that it was the “character” of the final movement, and not its difficulty, which had led Briselli to reject the work.

So, leaving behind all the fuss, both preceding the first performance and its aftermath, how was the concerto and its performance as presented by Amalia Hall and Marc Taddei with Orchestra Wellington? – in a word, dazzling! Where the violinist had demonstrated both technical and intellectual strength and flexibility throughout the rigorously earthy Bartok Second Violin Concerto which she’d played earlier in the year with the Orchestra, here she responded as readily and wholeheartedly to the Barber work’s heart-on-sleeve nostalgia, romantic variation and (in the finale) fleet-fingered brilliance. Throughout, Hall treated her line with the greatest of sensitivity, a finely-wrought “voice” threading its tones through a beguiling orchestral tapestry, one which Marc Taddei and his players supported and abetted at every turn.

After a first movement whose performance surefootedly negotiated the music’s ebb and flow between sunlight and shadow, from the utmost tenderness to full-blooded expression of feeling, the sounds gently and beguilingly dissolving at the end into beguilingly pastoral ambiences, the slow movement brought into play equally veiled strings, golden horns and a plaintive oboe, the strings then further “brokering” the material between clarinet and horn before the soloist took up the line – at first tenderly, then more intensely, and further into  anguish, and a sequence shared with distant , muted trumpets that suggested some private grief.

But then, how sweetly Hall’s playing drew from this unpromising state of things a flow of such warmth as to disarm all woe, the music seeming to suddenly open a vein of nostalgia for golden days of yore, as if bidding them farewell – to youth, or perhaps to innocence – times that will possibly come again only in memory…….I thought Barber’s touch exemplary in its refusal to let the music wallow, instead remaining ready to remind all of us that everything under the sun comes and goes – the orchestral “shudders” that followed these outpourings were here as telling as the climactic moments had been.

As for the work’s finale, the subject of much comment and conjecture over the years stemming from the  non-engagement of the originally intended first performer of the work, violinist Iso Briselli, with the music, it was here a tour de force from all concerned, by turns a shimmering of elfin quicksilver and a veritable whirlwind of energy, brilliantly, and astoundingly played by Hall, the accompanying orchestral playing just as astonishing in its poise and knife-edged dexterity! At the end, the applause simply went on and on, all of us present exhilarated by the music’s energies and the soloist’s brilliance, ideally matched by that of conductor and players. What a work and what a performance!

Before the second half’s music was embarked upon, Marc Taddei annouced that next year’s Orchestra Wellington subscription season tickets were now available for purchasing, and, what was more, at their cheapest price, this being the benefit enjoyed by people willing to “take a chance” with the orchestra’s as yet unannounced programme of six concerts. The only clue Taddei would give us was that the composer was strongly identified with the Romantic era – naturally enough, this was enough to ignite all kinds of post-concert discussion, my friend and myself wavering between Liszt and Schumann as likely candidates! Only time will tell, of course!

Try as I might, I couldn’t raise quite the same unbridled enthusiasm at the end for the final work on the evening’s programme, Aaron Copland’s Third Symphony, despite what seemed utterly committed efforts on the part of Marc Taddei and his orchestral players. Somehow, I found parts of the work too bombastic and overtly rhetorical, as if in places the music’s purpose had somehow run dry and was left seemingly empty-sounding.

Better, more “felt” to my ears, were the work’s less declamatory, more pastoral moments, both rhythmic and lyrical, such as the beautifully “open” string melody at the work’s beginning, and the wind-choir coda to the first movement, the rest impressive, but in a way that seemed too ready to overstate. True, the quieter moments stood out in all-the-more sweeter relief to the grand gesturings, but I thought the latter here simply too much of a good thing.

Outdoor energies were the order throughout the second movement – rhythms turning into dance, and figurations quick and slower juxtaposing. The exuberances recalled Copland scores that I really loved – Appalachian Spring and Rodeo in particular – hence underlining my ongoing surprise at not responding more positively to the composer in this, his more symphonic mode. Still, I did enjoy the cheek-by-jowl contrasts in this movement , with the brass sounding their themes weightily and grandly, as the rest of the orchestra danced underneath and all around. And the “trio” section, with its contrapuntish winds, was particularly delightful!

The playing breathtakingly caught the third movement’s aching, almost spectral feeling at the third movement’s beginning, before winds and strings attempted stoically to energise one another, to try and return confidence and hope, and began to dance. Despite moments of enchantment and energy the strings seemed to suddenly lose heart, the energies dissipate, and the instrumental lines lose direction and drift upwards – the music seemed suddenly lost, beyond redemption.

Out of this suspended chaos sounded the “Fanfare” theme, steadily played by the winds, when suddenly to growls of approval from the basses, the brasses burst in, their theme punctuated by percussion outbursts – tremendous playing by all concerned, even if (to my ears) by this stage the grandiloquence of such gestures seemed already well “milked”! As the music drove mercilessly to its admittedly magnificent-sounding conclusion, there was no doubting the orchestra’s capacity for giving conductor Marc Taddei what he wanted at this or any point in the work – and aficionados of full-blooded, give-it-all-you’ve-got playing would have been in seventh heaven amid the splendours of the work’s final chord, less actual music, I thought, than a truly seismic event! A nineteenth-century American critic fond of writing in the vernacular, at the end of a review of a particularly tumultuous concert given by the first great American piano virtuoso, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, said it all – “I knowed no more that evening!”