Tag: organ

Douglas Mews makes most of St Andrew’s chamber organ’s limitations in fine Bach performances

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Clavier works by J. S. Bach

Douglas Mews (chamber organ)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 12 April 2015, 12.15pm

As Douglas Mews explained to the audience, Bach wrote many pieces for keyboard that could be played in the domestic setting.  This meant they were probably most often heard in his day and after on the harpsichord, but the clavichord, chamber organ and piano would all have been used.  These works do not come under the umbrella of the 330th birthday celebration at Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul, where on Friday lunchtimes all Bach’s organ works are being performed by Michael Stewart and Richard Apperley.

The programme comprised four of the 15 Sinfonias (BWV 794-797), and four Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book One.  These were written 1722-23 when Bach was in Cöthen.  The final work, the Concerto in D minor based on an oboe concerto was written much earlier, when Bach was living and working in Weimar.

Unfortunately, other responsibilities mean I was late for the concert, and since the Sinfonias were played continuously and are quite short, I only heard the last of them.  However, I was immediately struck by the lovely ‘chuffy’ sound of the chamber organ playing these works.  This was the one in G minor, the others played were in F major, F minor, and G major.

The Preludes and Fugues were those in F# major, F# minor, G major and G minor, BWV 858-861.  The first key contain 6 sharps!!  Playing these takes a lot of mental and digital concentration.  The first, particularly, was played delicately and lovingly; Mews said that this key produced a serene sound, and so it proved, despite the fine bouncy rhythms.  This first Prelude was played on flutes, including the 15th (2-foot) stop.  All were played sequentially, giving extra point to the gorgeous changes of registration.

None of the works used pedals, since most of the instruments most likely to have played them would not have them, though the chamber organ at St. Andrew’s does.  Nevertheless, Mews amply demonstrated what this organ can do.

The stunning counterpoint of these pieces is full of interest, and the same applies to Bach’s concerto in D minor (BWV 974) based on Alessandro Marcello’s oboe concerto.  The Italian composer was a contemporary of Bach’s – 1673-1747.  The concerto is familiar; as Mews said, Marcello’s original is played on the radio from time to time, and despite the desire of baroque composers, by and large, to have the performers create ornamentations more-or-less spontaneously, usually oboists performing the Marcello use Bach’s suggested ornamentations for the single manual organ!

The registration employed in the concerto had less ‘chuff’ than that in the earlier Bach pieces, and thus sounded appropriately more orchestral.  The first movement was marked andante e spiccato, and spiccato it certainly was, followed by an adagio, then finally a very finger-fast presto movement.

This organ has very few stops, yet Douglas Mews managed to mix and match what was there to make effective differences between the various Preludes and Fugues, and between the movements of the concerto.

The Bach Project splendidly under way on the St Paul’s Cathedral organ

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Project at Saint Paul’s

Michael Stewart and Richard Apperley (organists)

Programme No 6 – played by Richard Apperley

Organ chorale: ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross’, BWV 622
Concerto in D minor, BWV 596
Sonata III in D minor, BWV 527
Partita diverse sopra il corale ‘Sei gegrusset, Jesu gütig’ BWV 768

Cathedral of Saint Paul, Wellington

Tuesday 31 March 12:45 pm (330th anniversary of J S Bach’s birth)

Middle C’s neglect so far of this momentous project, the performance of all, yes all, of Bach’s compositions for the organ is regrettable: caused by absences from Wellington, conflicting obligations. In my case, the Nelson Chamber Music Festival, Napier’s production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, escapes to sun on the Horowhenua coast, and the past fortnight in Auckland and the far North.

Most of the musical fraternity know something of Bach’s huge output of music for the organ, though I imagine it’s rather confined, as is mine, to the ‘pure’ organ pieces – the preludes, toccatas, fantasias, passacaglias and fugues bearing BWV numbers in the 500s. But the scores of pieces based on chorales and other vocal music are perhaps too varied and numerous for the non-specialist to focus on.

My first reaction to the project was, ‘is it really possible, to play all the organ works in a series of 28 ¾ hour recitals’? If you look at the BWV catalogue (for example in Wikipedia) the organ works number from BWV 525 to 771, and there are later additions to the catalogue of organ pieces listed as Neumeister Chorales, BWV 1090 to 1121, which are also programmed throughout the series. That’s about 270 pieces. But if Stewart and Apperley play an average of ten or so each time, they make it.

This recital was a bit special as it was on Bach’s birthday.

The programme notes are written in a personal manner, a certain amount of musical learning, but a good deal of comment on the way the organist, here Richard Apperley, feels about the music and why it was chosen for the birthday.

The first piece was an organ chorale on a Lutheran Passion Hymn, for Lent (which is now), included in Bach’s Orgelbüchlein – Little Organ Book – composed during Bach’s years at Weimar (1708 – 1717). The notes quote Charles-Marie Widor’s judgement of it as ‘The finest piece of instrumental music written’, and Apperley adds that it’s one of the few chorale preludes to which he finds it possible to resist adding ornamentation. Indeed, as he played it, Bach’s own ornaments are elaborate enough, particularly given its chromatic character and richness of the counterpoint and fugal writing. Though generally it was an interesting illustration of the tastes of the period.

The general mood is lamenting, calm and heartfelt; and the tasteful registrations chosen allowed it to be heard clearly in the big space.

The Concerto in D minor is a transcription of one of Vivaldi’s L’estro armonico set, Op 3 No 11, which was for two violins. The Vivaldi is in three movements while Bach divides the first movement in two, separating its fugal section, so making it a four-movement work (Bach marks them: I. Ohne Bezeichnung (without indication), Grave; II. Fuga; III. Largo; IV. Finale). Though, before reading the notes, I had thought the fugal passage was, indeed, simply part of the opening Allegro.

The Vivaldi is a splendid work, but as the notes remark, Bach’s account is even more exciting. This had the effect both of demonstrating Bach’s genius as well as that of the commonly under-estimated Vivaldi who was after all responsible for the basic music and its shapes.

There were many delightful elements in the work, the varied registrations, the tempo contrasts, the beautiful Siciliano middle (third) movement, and the racing Finale of great virtuosity.

Richard Apperley wrote that the Sonata III, also in D minor, was his favourite of the six sonatas in the set; sometimes referred to as Trio Sonatas, they require the right and left hands to play distinct melodic lines on separate manuals, as if a violin and cello, while the feet play the basso continuo part on pedals, calling for considerable skill. The Trio Sonatas for organ seem to have been composed in Bach’s first years in Leipzig, from 1723; an early biographer stated that Bach wrote them as practice for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann.

Apperley gave clarity to the sonata’s distinct parts, displaying his own mastery of its challenges which encouraged the listener to hear them again in order to grasp better the sense of the counterpoint and strongly contrasted lines.

Finally the Chorale Partita, ‘Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig’, which was perhaps written very early, at Arnstadt where Bach worked between 1703 and 1706, that is, aged 17 to 21. It would explain the feeling I had as it was played, that its variation form – eleven of them – somewhat disguised an unsophisticated, apprentice composer. It was very listenable music, but the short, not organically connected variations sustained the attention only through their vivid contrasts, of mood, of registration, of tempo and all the multitude of devices available to a gifted young composer and a skilled player.

It is natural, of course, that in presenting the entire oeuvre of any composer, the masterpieces must take their place along with juvenilia and music that lacks strong character or inspiration. However, this does not detract from the importance of this brave adventure on which these two musicians have embarked.

 

Brief and benign “Spanish Disquisition” on St.Andrews’ Chamber Organ

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series:
Spanish organ music from the Renaissance to the Baroque
Ephraim Wilson (organ)

Cabezón: ‘Dic Nobis Maria
Victoria: ‘Sancta Maria succurre miseris’
De Aguilera de Heredia: Tiento Lleno based on ‘Salve Regina’
Bruna: Tiento del segundo tono … Sobre la Letania de la Virgen
Cabanilles: Tiento Lleno

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

 Wednesday, 18 March 2015, 12.15pm

Although relatively short, and not well attended, the organ recital was interesting, in that it introduced an organist new to most of us, was played entirely on the small baroque organ, and consisted almost entirely of Spanish organ music, which I am sure was new to everyone in the audience.

Pedals were not part of the design of Spanish organs (or indeed many others) at the period covered by the programme: Renaissance to Baroque. So we had a total of one pedal note in the entire programme; that in the last piece, by Cabanilles.

After explanatory remarks about the programme, Wilson played the short ‘Dic nobis Maria’ by Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566). His articulation of ornamentation was very fine, but at the beginning the tempo was rather uneven.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) was the most famous of the composers featured. As Wilson’s programme note stated, his complex style of writing created emotional intensity, not a common feature (to modern ears, anyway) of earlier music. Here a little more separation of repeated notes would have been desirable, especially in the melody lines.

The remaining pieces were in the form of ‘Tiento Lleno’, which Wilson described as a Spanish musical form analogous to the fantasia in other traditions, but also having elements of the toccata. The first one, based on the Salve Regina, was more complex than the previous pieces, and was played with a fuller registration. It was by Sebastián de Aguilera de Heredia (1561-1627); the music was very well articulated.

Pablo Bruna (1611-1679) was another new name. The full title of the piece by him is ‘Tiento del seguno tono por Ge Sol Re Ut Sobre la Letani de la Virgen’. Having swotted this up a little, I hazard that ‘Ge’ is the low bass G, which in the system of hexachords (the basis of the sol-fa system of John Curwen in the early nineteenth century) was the lowest note recognised in writing music down – thus the word ‘gamut’, the ut being the bottom note in any scale (now called doh in English-speaking countries).

My Spanish dictionary gives ‘sobre’ as ‘in addition to’ and ‘por’ as ‘from’, so I hazard a guess that the piece’s title might be Tiento on the second tone from A [the second note from G], to E, to B, to A, in addition to the Litany of the Virgin’.

Bruna’s melody at the beginning of the piece, and which recurred throughout was, however, rather akin to Arne’s ‘God Save the King’ (Arne was born nearly one hundred years after Bruna’s birth). The changes in registration, and thus dynamics, employed between the various sections increased the interest of this piece.

Despite the programme note for the final Spanish work stating that the Tiento Lleno “Like the previous tiento (this piece) is intended to be played on full register throughout…”, I think this must have applied to the previous work, Aguilera de Heredia’s Tiento Lleno, since there were many changes of registration in the Bruna piece.

Cabanilles’s was a true baroque composition, and contained drama and excitement. It featured quite a lot of staccato, but again, there was not enough separation of repeated notes.Wilson added a short Bach chorale prelude, but it was not one with which I was familiar. It, too, was played without pedals.

The little organ has quite an incisive, even loud tone, especially on full organ. However, though it was interesting to hear the Spanish works, and on the whole they were well performed; perhaps a little more variety of programming might have made for greater appeal.

Unorthodox organist Christopher Hainsworth with brilliant late trumpeter Nicolas Planchon

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Chris Hainsworth, organ, Julien Hainsworth, cello (1) Nicolas Planchon, trumpet (2)
Two recitals, the first supported by the Maxwell Fernie Trust

Charpentier: Te Deum (1&2);
Torelli: Concerto in D (2);
Handel: Uncelebrated Largo (1);
Albinoni: Other Adagio (1);
Purcell: Not Famous Trumpet Voluntary (1);
Fauré: Pavane (1);
Anderson, George: The Battle of Waterloo, 1815 (1);
Verdi/Arban: Fantasy on La Traviata (2);
Takle, Mons: Power of Life (1)
Cool Selection: ‘In umbral colours’ (including theme from Lord of the Rings, Monti’s Czardas; 1); Tribute to Wellington Weather (‘Summer Time’ from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess; 2)
Other items introduced to the programme are mentioned in the text below.

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Sunday, 8 February 2015 (1), 3pm, Monday 9 February, 1pm (2)

A concert of two halves, the result of trumpeter Nicolas Planchon being held up, courtesy of airlines, in Dubai.  The outcome for the sizeable audience on Sunday afternoon was a recital that included the organist’s cellist son playing a borrowed cello and downloaded music.  A free concert was announced for the following lunchtime, by which hour the absent trumpeter would have arrived.  Inevitably, not so many people could avail themselves of this opportunity, which was a pity.

The Sunday recital supported the  Maxwell Fernie Trust, which assists young organists.

It began with Charpentier’s Te Deum, the only piece to be played on both days.  If we couldn’t have a real trumpet on Sunday, we nevertheless could have the trumpet stop on the organ, which sounded very fine, and the playing produced lovely contrasts.  Some of the tuning of the reed pipes was a little bit out; perhaps due to the humid afternoon.

Jean-Baptiste Barrière (1707 – 1747) was a French cellist and composer.  In place of the prescribed trumpet concerto, on Sunday we had a Larghetto for organ and cello by the French composer.  A solemn piece, it was beautifully executed.  The gallery was surprisingly resonant for the stringed instrument; Julien Hainsworth made a delightful sound.  The accompaniment was a very simple affair.

After a spoken introduction, Chris Hainsworth played a Handel Largo from one of the organ concertos; he labeled it the “Uncelebrated Largo”, with his usual ironic sense of humour.  The Fagotto pipes seemed to have some extraneous vibrations going on, alongside the low notes.  Though uncelebrated, the piece eminently justified its place in the programme.

The “Other Adagio” followed, this time in fact by Albinoni, and not a doctored later construction as was the famous one.  It proved to be a charming and appealing piece of baroque music.   Purcell’s “Not famous Trumpet Voluntary” was a lively addition to the programme, that gave the trumpet stop a good roll.

Staying with the baroque, Julien Hainsworth played the well-known Prelude to J.S. Bach’s first cello suite, demonstrating lovely tone.

For something completely different, we had, for the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, the piece of that name.  Despite neither Wikipedia nor Grove listing any compositions by this nineteenth-century Master of the Queen’s Music, Chris Hainsworth described and produced for us one of the most bombastic, patriotic, rumpty-tum pieces of music I’ve ever heard, complete with aural descriptions of battle between the British and Prussians against Napoleon’s French’ rejoicing, lamentation for the slain (this section very ‘churchy’), complete with cannonade and appropriate vocal interjections.

Another import to the programme necessitated by circumstance was a Vivaldi cello sonata.  Despite the exigencies of their situation, the performers played the gentle, slow opening with great delicacy and accuracy.  The fast second movement featured the same characteristics, despite the tempo, and the final movement, again slow, had quite a wistful or even lamenting air to it.   The cellist gave very clean execution of the ornaments.

The fast finale demonstrated very fine, accomplished and musical playing from both performers, especially noteworthy considering the almost impossibly short notice; Chris Hainsworth told the audience that they had last played the Vivaldi 10 years ago!

“Mons Leidvin Takle. born: 1942. country: Norway … ‘He brings enthusiasm and boundless energy to whatever repertoire he tackles.”  I couldn’t resist copying this Internet entry.  I had never heard of the
composer before.  This piece was written for the fortieth wedding anniversary of his sister, we were told.  It was a rumbustious organ piece, a forte both in dynamics and performance.  There was plenty of vigour, and dynamic variation.

I’m giving way to temptation to say “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’  It reminded me of the
hurdy-gurdy my friends and I had heard played the previous day, at Pataka in Porirua, as part of the Festival of the Elements.

For the ‘Cool Selection’ Chris mentioned ‘umbral colours’.  Some of the themes he played were familiar to me, others not.  Vittorio Monti’s Czardas was an appropriately jubilant way to end the recital.

Next day, the diminished audience heard in a little over half-an-hour those works from the original programme that had to be postponed on Sunday.  The Charpentier now featured live trumpet, and what a player! Not only could the organ open up more with the trumpet as soloist, but what a great sound Nicolas Planchon produced!

The Torelli concert (allegro-largo-allegro) was a jubilant piece, with much brilliant work for the trumpet.  The slow movement opened with what initially sounded like that used by Barber in his famous Adagio for Strings.  The lively, even bouncy, finale complete a most satisfying work.

Cécile Chaminade (1857 – 1944) is one of the few women composers to be heard reasonably often.   Her Pastorale for organ employs rather conventional nineteenth-century harmonies, but is attractive nonetheless.

Fauré’s well-known Pavane received a most beautiful rendition on trumpet and organ.  The arrangement (by one of the performers?) began with the muted trumpet, with which Planchon made a most beautiful sound.  The middle section was sans mute; the last part again with mute.
The result was magical.

The major work was Fantasy on Verdi’s La Traviata by Joseph Jean-Baptiste Laurent Arban (1825 –1889).  To say that this was très difficile for the trumpeter, is an understatement.  He revealed wonderful control of his instrument.  I’ve never thought of the trumpet as subtle, but here is was. After the statement of several themes from the opera, the virtuoso stuff started – variations putting great demands on the player, all of which he fully met.

Chris Hainsworth announced the last item as a tribute to Wellington’s weather.  What was our surprise on hearing Gershwin’s Summertime, elegantly and artistically played, again with the initial announcement of the theme by the muted trumpet.

Despite the extraordinary circumstances, those of us lucky enough to attend on both days heard a great variety of music superbly performed.

 

Youth and experience: organ-playing at St John’s, Willis St.

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Organ Recital at St. John’s Church

Bach: Toccata in D minor BWV 565
Couperin: Selections from one of his Masses
Franck: Chorale no.3, in A minor
Moritz Deutsch: nos. 9-12 from Twelve Preludes on Old Synagogue Melodies
Mozart: Adagio and Allegro for a Mechanical Clock, K.594 (arr. D. Halliday)
Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B minor BWV 544

Chelsea Whitfield and Dianne Halliday (organists)

St. John’s Church, Willis St., Wellington

Sunday 28 September 2014

It was interesting to be treated to a recital by two female organists, one a young student, the other long-experienced and highly expert.  However, the latter is currently a student too, working towards a doctorate (Doctor of Musical Arts) at Victoria University.

In St. John’s Church, with its fine wooden architecture, both external and internal, sits a splendid organ which needs some money spent on it to keep it in good playing order.  The series of recitals is one of the ways in which  the church is trying to meet that need.  It is a Lewis organ: Lewis and Company was an important firm of organ builders founded by Thomas Christopher Lewis (1833-1915), one of the leading English organ builders of late 19th century.

The organ, perhaps demonstrating its need of some restoration work, was a little out of tune in places on Sunday.

Chelsea Whitfield is an organ student at the New Zealand School of Music, but began learning the organ at 15.  She played first the well-known Bach Toccata in D minor.  It was probably nerves that accounted for quite a number of ‘fluffs’ in this piece – playing something so well-known compounds the difficulty, and also playing an instrument with which she would not be so familiar (she plays mainly at St. Paul’s Cathedral).  Of course, every organ is different in ways far more profound than is true of any other instrument, and it can take time to get to know a new one.  She chose a very suitable registration, nevertheless.

François Couperin’s Pièces d’orgue consistantes en deux messes (Pieces for Organ Consisting of Two Masses), were written around 1689–1690 when the composer was 21.  The pieces chosen from the first Mass, written for parish churches (many of which have splendid organs, of which I have recently had first-hand experience) gave variety of tempi, mood, and registrations.  There was a little blurring of notes on the flutes early on, i.e. they were not cleanly fingered.  But this was a rare aberration in Chelsea’s performance of the attractive music.  It was good to hear the different colours of the organ, as described in the titles of the pieces: ‘Recit de Chromhorne’, ‘Dialogue sur Le Trompette du G. C. [Grand Choir?] et sur la Montre’, the latter being the French name for Diapason.

Chelsea seemed very at home in this repertoire, and also in the Franck Chorale that followed.  This composer is not my favourite, but the Chorale was a brilliant piece well played – an exciting and highly competent performance.  The gradual build-up of volume and the selection of bright-sounding stops kept the work out of the mire into which Franck’s Chorales can fall.  There was plenty of contrast, and many tricky passages and turns were well mastered.  It was a fine rendition.

Dianne Halliday’s first pieces were something new to me, and I suspect to the rest of the audience too.  As I discovered in France, and as Dianne described, synagogues in some European countries have had organs for a long time, and music was written specifically for them.  Moritz Deutsch lived from 1818 to 1892, in Germany.  The first two of the pieces was written for the festival of Rosh Hashanah, and the next two for Yom Kippur, both festivals taking places around this time of year, as Dianne explained (in a voice projected so as to be easily heard, despite not using a microphone).

The first was rather ‘square’, with an improvisational feel to it; the second prelude brighter and without that improvisational character.  No.11 was solid, rather like a church chorale, but with some interesting chord progressions.  Nos.11 and 12 both began in the bass, on pedals.  No.12 was very bright, with contrasts.

Dianne’s arrangement of Mozart’s piece for an even more mechanical instrument than the pipe organ (in reality a minute pipe organ mechanically operated) had its delights.  The charming adagio was followed by a fast allegro with lots of trills.  The use of a 2-foot stop perhaps equated to the high tones of the tiny pipes of the original, and made for a brilliant, almost bird-like tonal quality.  The last section was quiet on flutes, and without the bright top.

Playing Bach was a great way to end the recital.  What ample interest Bach built into his organ music!  In his company both Franck and Mozart seem dull (no reflection on the arranger of the latter’s piece!)  Bach’s progressions, counterpoint and cadences promote a mood of certainty and cheerfulness – yes, even in a work written in a minor key.  The complexities of the fugue held no fears for Dianne Halliday’s capable technique.  Some of the harmonic modulations would be astonishing even if Franck had written them.

While organ recitals never attract a large audience (except the free ones that were held in Wellington Town Hall, of happy memory), there was a respectable number present to take in the diversity and interest of the programme and its performers.

Douglas Mews at the organ – St.John’s, Willis St

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St.John’s, Willis St. Organ Concerts presents:
Organ recital by Douglas Mews

Handel: Concerto in G minor Op.4 no.3 (arranged for organ solo)
Vierne: Arabesque; Cathédrales
Bach:   Sonata C minor, BWV 526 / Chorale Prelude: O Mensch bewein’ dein sunde gross, BWV 402
Prelude and Fugue in E flat, BWV 552

Douglas Mews (organ)
St John’s, Willis Street

Sunday, 14 September 2014, 2.30pm

St. John’s Church is hosting three organ recitals this month, on Sunday afternoons, of which this was the first.  They celebrate National Organ Month, and also are a vehicle for raising money for the upkeep of the fine Lewis organ at St. John’s.

Unfortunately, on this Sunday and the next, there are numerous competing concerts.  Thus, a rather small audience was little reward for the work that had gone into preparing the recital.

The programme opened with a Handel organ concerto, arranged to be played on organ only.  While I found the first movement (adagio) a little bland, and there were a few fluffed notes in the allegro second, throughout the work Douglas Mews made lovely use of solo stops.  I would have liked a little more detachment of repeated notes.  The third movement was a fine adagio, and the jaunty finale was a happy eompletion of the work.

In his remarks to the audience, Douglas pointed up the fact that an early organist at St. John’s was Maughan Barnett, who was involved in many musical activities in Wellington before he moved to Auckland.  He was the first Wellington City Organist; Douglas himself was the last.  The position is currently in abeyance; the Town Hall organ is in storage while the hall is closed pending earthquake strengthening.  (As one who was emerging from that building at the time of Wellington’s worst earthquake in recent years, I am all for it being strengthened!)

Two short pieces by Louis Vierne proved to be most effective.  The first featured a most attractive contrasting solo stop for the melody line.  The second was perhaps inspired by Notre Dame in Paris, where Vierne was organist for 37 years.  The piece was a complete contrast to the light delicacy and high pitch of Arabesque.  Here, there was grandeur, following an opening on reeds.  I could imagine the tolling of cathedral bells in some sections of the piece.  It contrasted mellow tones with almost harsh, loud chords.  Later, there were gentle, dulcet tones and rather more conventional harmony.

Apparently Barnett played all of the Bach organ music that was available; this was unusual at the time: 1895-1913 being the years he was in Wellington.  This information acted as a link to the playing of Trio Sonata in C minor, BWV 526.  These sonatas are thought to have been written for Bach’s son Wilhelm Friedmann to use for practising keyboard technique. But they are in no way tedious exercises, being full of delights; the clarity of the three parts, their thematic development, and their artistic unity are among them.

The vivace first movement introduced charming flute sounds, but the pedal part sounded woofy compared with the upper parts, in fact this was a characteristic elsewhere in the recital also.  In the largo second movement I felt rather more phrasing was required.  The allegro finale had the three parts all very clear and the contrasting registrations between the two upper parts were very fine.

Bach’s sublime Passiontide chorale prelude (for which the chorale words were printed in the programme, in Catherine Winkworth’s translation – coincidentally, in Radio NZ’s ‘Hymns on Sunday Morning’ that morning, she and other translators of hymns from other languages were featured.  I did not particularly like the rather buzzy reed stop used for the melody line, and I would have preferred more even quavers, and more lift between repeated notes.  Yet the expressiveness of the piece could not fail to impress.

The last item was a considerable tour de force.  The opening Prelude and the closing Fugue of Bach’s Clavierübung are often coupled together, and in English tend to be called the “St. Anne” Prelude and Fugue, because of the likeness of the fugue’s melody to the tune of that name, set to the well-known hymn ‘O God, our help in ages past’.

The fast opening of the prelude has a strong dotted rhythm, well emphasised by Mews.  The fugue melody needed more phrasing, to my mind – as though it were being sung.  Nevertheless, Douglas Mews brought off this demanding fugue, with its three separate sections (thought, with other features of the work, to represent the Trinity).

The demanding programme brought to the fore many features of the St. John’s organ, and demonstrated a range of great music for the instrument, ably performed.

The organ recital next Sunday at the same time will be by Kevin Duggan, visiting from Denmark, and the following week Dianne Halliday, organist and director of music at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, also in Willis Street, will perform, along with Chelsea Whitfield.

Cathedral’s festival celebrated by satanism and the supernatural in film and music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Phantom of the Opera – silent film accompanied by organ
A Cathedral Jubilee Festival Event
Barry Brinson – organ, Hannah Catrin Jones – soprano

Cathedral of Saint Paul

Saturday 26 July, 7:30 pm

How satisfying is the experience of a silent film?

As part of the Cathedral’s 50th anniversary, a famous silent film made in 1925 was screened, with a dedicated sound-track comprising a live organ performance. The inspiration for an organ accompaniment came from the theme of the film itself set in the Paris Opéra where performances of Gounod’s Faust were taking place. The film tells the tale of an organ-playing ‘Phantom’ which has taken up residence in the dungeons beneath the theatre and is doomed to remain there with his deformed face until a woman loves him.

The woman targeted is an opera singer, Christine, who is understudy to the role of Marguérite in a production of Faust. The Phantom makes it known that the prima donna, Carlotta, must stand aside so that Christine can sing the role.

Our first encounter with the opera is the ballet scene (well, two of the seven numbers in the ballet) which Gounod wrote when Faust was produced by the Paris Opéra in 1869 (it had premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1859, with spoken dialogue and various other differences from the version usually performed today). The ballet was an addition to the orgiastic witches’ scene on the Brocken in the Harz mountains in central Germany, known as the Walpurgisnacht: another appropriate link with the Gothic (last year your reviewer went by steam train up to the Brocken searching for evidence of earlier heathen depravity, but was disappointed).

After the threat has been fulfilled and Carlotta is ‘sick’, we hear Christine singing Marguérite’s affecting last act aria, ‘Anges purs, anges radieux’, sung beautifully by Hannah Catrin Jones. But the next night in spite of the Phantom’s threat, Carlotta again attempts the role, and Hannah sings the Jewel Song (it would have been nice to have had surtitles for the words of these), but amid flickering lights, the mighty chandelier in the auditorium crashes on to the audience. The Phantom seizes Christine and holds her in the dungeon below the theatre.

In the second half Hannah sang ‘Il était un roi de Thule’ and the Phantom at his organ went through the motions of Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor: M. Brinson did it much better, as he did with Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. After the final chase leading to the disposal of the Phantom in the Seine, Brinson played one of those splendid Lefébure-Wély-type pieces with which Parisians make their exits from church.

There is no need to narrate the complex and rather contrived story after that, and its departures from the original novel as well as the changes made in the course of the film’s production; the ad hoc modifications that had to happen in the course of recovering and restoring the film, the original 35 mm version of which had been lost, are to be found on the Internet.

So: how satisfying as a theatrical and music experience was this silent movie?

The film cannot really rank as a classic of the silent film era, as there is far too much incoherent, clichéd, ‘horror’ effects, suspense, pointless chase scenes, dwelling on the Phantom’s hideous face and the satanic elements, not to mention a story that echoes, in a confused way, aspects of the ancient Wandering Jew or Flying Dutchman legends, hinting at the idea of redemption through a woman’s sacrifice, as well as echoes of the Faust story itself.

Many would have been there for the music though. While Barry Brinson accompanied with imagination and frequent pointed effects, any attempts to echo the supernatural and the intended terrifying phases of the story did not quite measure up to the kinds of music such things might inspire from an imaginative composer of today, so that the dated visual devices were hardly rescued from their weaknesses by the injection of dramatic and chilling music.

Nevertheless, the presence of an organist who knew his way around this versatile instrument and managed generally to find music, some from related material such as the Andrew Lloyd Webber version of the story, with a lot of tremolo rather than much real musical evocation of scenes of ‘horror’ and suspense. Yet we heard a musician of impressive improvisatory, and well as memory skills who actually produced the kind of musical accompaniment that might have been heard in the 1920s in a movie theatre.

The novel and the film of The Phantom of the Opera fall into the broad class of Gothic fiction that arouse in the late 18th century.

The Gothic pattern involved calling up a variety of effects and situations: mysterious, supernatural, terrifying or horror-filled. There are visions, omens, shadows on walls, ghosts, ancient castles, or, in this case, a rather wondrous neo-gothic – architecturally neo-almost-everything – opera house; they often involved a woman threatened by violence from a fiendish character, accompanied by staring eyes, fainting, screaming.  The story makes great use of suspense, supernatural events, inanimate things coming to life, appearances and disappearances, a woman in danger, tyranised by a crazed or evil man.

The French origin of the film was a novel of the same name that appeared in serialised form in 1909-10. It was emphatically in the tradition of the Gothic fiction that touched poetry, drama and the novel, as well as opera and ballet and the visual arts throughout the 19th century. It was a very important sub-genre of the Romantic movement.

The movement had started with Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto in 1764 and novels of Ann Radcliffe such as The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, The Monk by Matthew Lewis (who became known as ‘Monk Lewis’), aspects of Walter Scott’s novels, the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, elements of Dickens, like Little Dorrit and Great Expectations. Later examples were Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White.

The genre flourished in the German Romantic movement from the time of Schiller’s Die Räuber in 1782 (which became Verdi’s I masnadieri), Kleist, Tieck and most importantly ETA Hoffmann. Jean Paul’s novels were steeped in the genre (his Titan reverberated through the 19th century, even, misleadingly, to Mahler’s First Symphony). In opera there was Weber’s Der Freischütz, with Samiel, the Satanic ‘Black Hunter’ and the magic bullets, Marschner’s Der Vampyr drawn from a story by John William Polidori, the creator of ‘Vampire literature’ – a sub-genre; and de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine (a water sprite) which inspired much later writing and music, such as operas by Hoffmann himself, Lortzing and Dvorák’s Rusalka.

In Russia, Gothic elements exist in Pushkin’s Queen of Spades and Lermontov’s Demon (both of which inspired operas by, respectively, Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein).

Later in the 19th century the style revived with R L Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Henry James The Turn of the Screw. And of course it could be no surprise that the cinema soon realised how brilliantly the whole assemblage of hysterical and supernatural nonsense could be exploited on the screen.

 

The lyrical and the spectacular from Thomas Gaynor at TGIF Cathedral lunchtime recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Thomas Gaynor – organ

Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 541
Bach: From the Leipzig Chorales: “Schmücke dich”, BWV 654 ; Trio super: “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend”, BWV 655
Saint-Saëns: Fantaisie in E flat; Danse macabre
Widor: Organ Symphony No 6 – Allegro (1st movement)

Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 27 June, 12:45 pm

This year is the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Wellington’s Anglican Cathedral, and so the concerts staged this year celebrate that.

This particular recital was apparently organised by the late John Morrison, who, among many activities that helped the arts, particularly music, to flourish in Wellington, was chairman of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Wagner Society. Your reviewer, as a member of the society, wants to record that link.

I arrived as Gaynor was about four minutes into the Bach Prelude and Fugue, the sounds thrilling about the great space of the cathedral. I’d missed the Prelude but the fugue was proceeding with energy and, given the great reverberant cathedral, was emerging with as much clarity as was consistent with the character of dense contrapuntal music and the need for it to resound in a way the echoed what Bach saw as life’s enigmatic meaning. There was an elasticity in the tempo and a familiarity with the capacities of the organ illuminated the music through well contrasted registrations.

Two pieces from what are known as the Leipzig Chorales followed: they are among the relatively few purely organ compositions written at Leipzig, BWV 651 – 668. “Schmücke dich” (‘Deck thyself’), a beautifully calm piece in which Gaynor played the prominent chorale melody on a distinct stop in sharp contrast with the comforting, weaving, quaver accompaniment. And the ‘Trio Super’ “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend” (‘Lord Jesus, turn to us’) followed without a break. I can find no explanation of the term Trio Super; its character was very similar to the preceding piece with the vocal line played, again, on a more prominent stop than the accompaniment (not being an organ expert, just a lover of the instrument, I hesitate to guess at the names or ranks of the myriad stops).  It was joyous and lively, moving colourfully through a number of keys.

In some ways the leap of 150 years or so from Bach to Saint-Saëns’s seemed less remarkable than the dates might have suggested; a commentary on Bach’s sophistication rather than any conservatism in Saint-Saëns. His Fantaisie in E flat is one of his earliest works (1857, age 22), evidently before he had developed any particular melodic individuality; after an unobtrusive opening, it struck out bold and fluent, demanding of the player plenty of virtuosity and Gaynor’s employing of a colourful range of stops allowed detail to be heard clearly.

Then came the most spectacular piece on the programme – the very popular Danse Macabre which I’d never heard played on the organ before. It’s had several incarnations: it began as a setting of a poem by Henri Cazalis with piano accompaniment, then came the orchestral tone-poem, with a violin replacing the vocal line; it was transcribed for piano, famously by Horowitz, and the standard organ version is by Edwin Lemare. Lemare’s arrangement exploited the organ’s most flamboyant characteristics and the organist’s skills and flair: it called for the most unusual individual stops and combinations thereof, re-creating the spooky effects, the dark rushes of all-stops-out of the climactic crescendo. In fact, the organ version seemed to capture the unearthly, dehumanised feeling of the piece even more dramatically than is possible with the orchestra, and Gaynor lost no opportunity to overwhelm us.

Charles-Marie Widor was ten years younger than Saint-Saëns, and so impressed the latter that he appointed Widor his assistant at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, age 24, in 1869, and the next year lobbied for his appointment to St Sulpice, in which the famous organ-builders, Cavaillé-Coll, had built their most spectacular organ; Widor was there till 1933.

The Toccata from his Fifth Symphony is his most famous piece. But here we had the welcome chance to hear something from another symphony, the first movement of the 6th. Quite a lot of rhetorical writing, clamorous flourishes, hectic turbulence, then arresting chorale-like passages, all adorned in authentic registrations that illuminated the intriguing contrapuntal writing and the variety of tones and colours that are there to be enjoyed.

Gaynor will spend the northern summer at courses in France and Germany before returning to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester for further post-graduate studies. Quite a large audience heard this recital and will have been highly impressed both by his committed and virtuosic playing and the chance to hear the wonderful resources of the organ being fully extended.

The two organs on display: St Andrew’s on The Terrace first off in Wellington’s concert series

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Jonathan Berkahn – the chamber organ and the main organ

Music by Byrd, Samuel Wesley, Mendelssohn, Edward d’Evry and William Wolstenholme

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 12 February, 12:15 pm

The long-standing (since the 1970s) Wednesday lunchtime concert series from St Andrew’s on The Terrace is back in town: this was the first for 2014. And the rest of the year’s series is mapped out, though not in detail.

Jonathan Berkahn has become a well-known keyboard player in Wellington since studying at Victoria University; following in the footsteps of his teacher Douglas Mews, he plays the organ as well as harpsichord and fortepiano, and he has recently become a choral conductor (The Festival Singers). Here, he gave the church’s two organs an all-too-rare work-out. (I wish these concerts employed the organs more regularly; it seems an awful shame that concerts in churches so rarely put on public display the instrument that has been specifically built for and installed in them).

The programme was a bit unusual, almost wholly devoted to English organ music: the one departure, Mendelssohn, whose organ sonatas were, in any case, written for England.

Berkahn played the first two pieces on the chamber organ, on the right of the sanctuary: a Fantasy by William Byrd, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and from the late 18th century composer Samuel Wesley, a Voluntary in C (Op 6 no 2).

The Fantasia emerged as a set of variations that begin in plain, open registers, unadorned, and through four or five successive stages grow in complexity, rhythmic variety, syncopation, brightness, using increasingly rich stops with more reed characteristics; they also accelerated subtly till at the end we got a 1600 equivalent of the Rossini crescendo of round 1820. An enjoyable, thoroughly persuasive performance.

Berkahn’s university thesis was devoted to the music of Samuel Wesley. To clarify: born in 1766 (four years Beethoven’s senior), he was the son of the hymn writer Charles Wesley who was the brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism in the early 18th century. Samuel’s son, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (born in 1810, same year as Schumann and Chopin), was also a musician, a noted organist and composer.

Jonathan entertained the audience with a quote from his thesis in which he vividly described Wesley’s eccentric, irresponsible, even criminal nature, and his rejection of Protestantism for Roman Catholicism, to family dismay, as well as his great musical gift.

This Voluntary, in four parts, displayed a post-Handelian quality, but could also have been influenced by Arne and Boyce, as well as by his contribution to the revival of J S Bach. The limited range of the small chamber organ sounded exactly in keeping with the style and Berkahn played with authority, using the organ most skilfully to achieve both clarity and due weight.

The exploration of a composer like Wesley is just another element in discrediting the tedious assertion that Britain produced no major composer between Purcell and Britten (perhaps Elgar).

After speaking briefly about the Mendelssohn sonata, remarking that his organ sonatas were written in response to the suggestion that he write some voluntaries (Berkahn said that he wrote sonatas instead because he didn’t know what a Voluntary was), he walked upstairs to the main organ in the gallery over the west door.

There had been commentaries on earlier pieces from without by pneumatic drills which contributed sporadically to the sounds within, but at the moment when Berkahn raised his hands to the keyboard, the noise stopped. The sonata began with a few loud chords but immediately subsided in the minor key to the hushed introduction to the first movement. The commanding contrast to the modesty of the chamber organ was impressive, and I found myself, a not unwavering advocate of Mendelssohn, becoming quite engrossed in the sophisticated procedures that he pursued, and at Berkahn’s command of the very attractive instrument. It’s not a long piece and that worked in its favour, allowing just enough time to absorb the ideas in the course of their fairly economical development.

Next was a Nocturnette (a new form to me) by one Edward d’Evry (also a new one to me – 1869-1931). Moonlight was the suggested characteristic and though it was hardly a match for Beethoven or Debussy for evocativeness, its brevity was a compensation for its inconsequentiality. But very charmingly played.

Finally, another name that rang only faint bells: William Wolstenholme (1865-1931). There is an imposing list of gifted, blind organists, and he makes probably only a modest contribution to their number. His Finale in B flat was chosen as an arresting close to the recital, but it was more bombast than rapture and I could not escape the feeling that his heart was not in it and that he wished he’d been asked to write an adagio elegiaco or a lacrimosa instead. A French contribution here (say Lefébure-Wély) might have sent us out of church with spirits higher uplifted.

However, in total, this was an admirable recital, a welcome reminder of the riches of the organ repertoire and the many underused instruments (apart from church services) in the city; the high points had really been the Byrd and Wesley on the chamber organ.

 

 

‘Great Music 2013’ on lute and organ: wonderful Messiaen

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Bach: Suite for Lute in G minor, BWV 995
Messiaen: La Nativité du Seigneur

Jennifer Chou (organ); Stephen Pickett (lute)

Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul

Friday 6 December 2011, 7.30pm

It is almost exactly two years since I reviewed Thomas Gaynor playing the same mighty Messiaen work, which dates from 1935,  in the same Cathedral series (though that was a lunchtime concert).

About the same number of people were in the audience on both occasions: around 40. However, there was at least one major difference this time: the audience was seated in the gallery above the main door, at the back of the church.  As a note in the printed programme had it, the organ sounded ‘clear and powerful’ from this position (mostly).

The lutenist sat facing the audience, in front of the balcony rail of the gallery. This enabled us to hear him; almost any other position in the Cathedral would have made this difficult or impossible.

It was an interesting juxtaposition of one of the quietest instruments against one that is potentially the loudest.  I found the contrast too great.  The opening Allemande from the Bach Suite sounded rather dull, and in light of what we heard later, it was monochrome.  The playing was so gentle and quiet that it was hard for the sound, in the early part of the evening, to conquer those of coughing and of traffic. However, the gallery was a good place to deliver the desirable intimate ambience, and to enable us to be close to the lutenist.

I know nothing about lute technique, but it seemed to me that an occasional twanging sound on the lower strings was unfortunate, as was the uneven tone produced, some notes sounding strongly while others disappeared.

Jennifer Chou is based in Australia, and is a highly competent organist.  She followed the lute’s Bach Allemande with the first three movements of the Messiaen work; the two further batches of movements were interspersed with movements from the Bach.

Thus we heard ‘The Virgin and the Child’, ‘The Shepherds’ and ‘Eternal Purposes’ in the first sequence.  The excellent programme notes and introductory article about Messiaen were by one David Gammie.  His descriptions of the movements, based in part on Messiaen’s own notes about the music, were very descriptive.  The words about the first movement, based on the plainsong ‘Puer natus est’, were apt: words such as ‘hypnotic dance’ and ‘the music takes flight in an exquisite flute cadenza’.  While the music is vivid, and quite different from any other composer’s works, at times there seems to be a traffic jam of contrasting sounds, rhythms and timbres.

The subtle, ethereal effects used in the second movement are unique to Messiaen. But I was sure I heard the tones of the donkeys, too!  Or perhaps it was a result of memories of John Rutter’s Brother Heinrich’s Christmas at Te Papa the Sunday before last.

The third movement, ‘Eternal Purposes’ was concerned not with the Christmas story but embodied more profound ideas.  Its slow, even ponderous pace was almost soporific, or at least mesmerising.  The lower chords did not sound very distinct, at the considerable distance we were from the pipes.

More lute music, this time the Sarabande and Courante.  Although the former is certainly a slow dance, this rendition seemed a bit too slow to dance to.  The notes were not sounded with equal clarity, and a few were out of tune.  The second dance had more pace, spirit and volume, and involved more counterpoint.

Back to Messiaen.  ‘Le verbe’ (The Word) incorporated many colours from the wide palette available (and Messiaen was one of those rare individuals who saw colours when he heard musical sounds).  The long solo on the cornet stop produced delicious tones.  The solemn melody had a noble character.  The organ certainly sounded very well from the gallery in this movement, giving not only a fine demonstration of the range of pipes, but also precision in the dynamic constrasts, the runs and figures.

The words in the programme notes ‘Messiaen’s music does not evolve or develop… it simply is’ I thought particularly apt for the movement entitled ‘God’s Children’.  The richness and beautiful contrasts were memorable.

‘The Angels’ introduced a wonderful spread through the range of the instrument, and through the tonal colours.  Jennifer Chou’s immaculate technique was equal to all of it.  The audience didn’t worry about what she was doing, so far away.  We simply enjoyed the music with all its marvellous sonorities and dynamics.

The last two movements of the Suite for Lute brought a jolly mood, but it was a huge divergence from the variety of sonorities we had just been hearing. There were fewer unpleasant twangs here, and a more full-bodied tone emerged from the instrument.  The Gavottes and Gigue were presented with more shape and structure than we had had with the earlier movements.

The opening of Messiaen’s seventh movement, ‘Jesus accepts suffering’, was quite shocking in its discordant, dramatic, forte opening chords.  The solemnity of the deep bassoon reply and the tension of the evocation of suffering in the treatment were amply conveyed.

The music for ‘The Wise Men’ easily evoked images of the three wise men travelling across desert, seeing a star, and encountering something that inspired them with awe.

‘God among us’, the climax to the work, was full of exciting episodes and passages.
Technically very demanding, its musical language represented the Incarnation, Communion with Christ and Mary’s ‘Magnificat’.  The luminous, grand final chord, long-held, was a climax of contentment and joy, not of flashy virtuosity.

A towering work, La Nativité du Seigneur was played with mesmeric skill and panache.  This was a mammoth accomplishment, creating a rhapsodic experience, unlike that to be had from any other composer’s music.