Tag: piano trio

The Korimako Trio – culmination of a miraculous weekend in the capital!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Concerts presentsHelene Pohl, Michael Endres, Rolf Gjelsten

KORIMAKO TRIO – bringing cheer and hope to a beleagued city!

JOSEPH HAYDN  (1732-1809)  Piano Trio No.44 in E-flat Major Hob.XV:28  (1797)
REBECCA CLARKE  (1886-1979)  Duo for Viola (or Violin) and ‘Cello (1918)
ROSS HARRIS (1945 -) Duo for Violin and ‘Cello (2000)
AARON COPLAND (1900-90)  Vitebsk, for Piano Trio  (1929)
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 -1828) – Trio in E-flat Major Op.100 (1827)

Korimako Trio – Helene Pohl (violin) / Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello) / Michael Endres (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, Wellington
Sunday, May 24th  2026

I’ve already acclaimed the occasion of this concert given by the Korimako Trio in Middle C’s previous review  (https://middle-c.org/2026/05/nztrios-sensational-dreamscape-concert-sweet-relief-for-wellington/), regarding it as one of an otherwise unconnected “twin” event – together they made for me an affirmation of  immense moment for the citizens of a city whose public service fraternity is currently under a savage “siege” of decimation enacted by Aotearoa New Zealand’s present Coalition Government.  There was, in fact, a THIRD stellar musical happenings over this weekend of wonderment in Wellington, with the  NZSO’s “Titan” concert on Friday evening featuring Canadian violinist James Ehnes with the orchestra’s principal conductor Gemma New, an event which I couldn’t attend, but whose significance at this particular punitive time added to the poignancy of the city’s bounteous musical offerings (also reviewed in Middle C – https://middle-c.org/2026/05/nzso-reaches-for-mahlers-titan-via-ades-and-korngold/), These three happenings flew in the face of the travails experienced by thousands of workers as a result of proposals concocted by those forces doing their utmost to emasculate the capital’s significance as a living, breathing functionary of essential democratic activity.

Many people attest to the vital importance of the arts as an indication of any country’s social and intellectual “health”, even though such matters have been paid scant attention by our current elected representatives, whose principal motivations seem only to concern themselves and their functionings with (in the words of Oscar Wilde) “knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.”  One laments afresh the irony (one of many such wrought by 2026 and its scenario of “government by deprivation”) of people like myself able to enjoy stellar performances by our musicians such as those featured in these concerts, as we simultaneously witness the ongoing enfeeblement and debilitation of democratic processes and human rights by others whose priorities are power and control!  Let’s hope that music-making of this strength and purpose will help bolster our fresh determination to hold onto and cherish what is being threatened – and which I suddenly realised in today’s concert composer Franz Schubert was alluding to in the final moments of his magnificent E-flat Major Trio we heard this afternoon, illustrating, to my mind, the indescribable beauty through expression of basic human dignity in the face of insuperable difficulties.

So then to today’s concert, and the Korimako Trio – a newly-formed (November 2025) ensemble, though two of its players have of course been mainstays of the country’s classical music scene for decades – violinist Helene Pohl and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten were members of the New Zealand String Quartet for thirty years, as, respectively, leader and ‘cellist of the group, until events brought about  their decision to resign from the quartet towards the end of 2024. Enough ink has been spilled and bandwidths stretched to breaking-point over the ins-and-outs of that occurrence – suffice to say that the pair, however bloodied have remained unbowed, to the great relief of legions of their supporters, myself among them! They have already  instigated various concert activities for charitable purposes, such as the well-known Arohanui Strings, the Sistema-like Charitable Trust which provides musical tuition for young children (and of which Helene Pohl is a patron), and which they continue to support. With the help of various “guest” players over 2025, the two have also continued their quartet-playing activities, specifically concentrating on a number of the quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich during what was the composer’s fiftieth death anniversary year – how fortunate we were to have such advocacy in these remarkable works, and how wonderful if it could all continue (besides the Korimako Trio activities, of course!)

A piano trio needs, by definition, a pianist – and I had heard sufficient of Michael Endres’s playing as a soloist over the years for my excitement to be considerably quickened by the news of his collaboration with the two aforementioned players. His qualities as a virtuoso soloist had been more than evident, so I was fascinated by the prospect of hearing how his solo brilliance would adapt to ensemble playing. With this in mind, I was absolutely delighted that two of the works scheduled to be performed by the Korimako ensemble were “standard classics” of the Piano Trio repertoire – one of Josef Haydn’s Piano Trios he wrote while in London, No.44 in E- Major (1797), and the second of Franz Schubert’s great Piano Trios, in E-flat Major D,929 (1827).

The third work for Piano Trio on the programme was one that has achieved a different kind of “classic” status as a representative work of the “modern” era  – Aaron Copland’s challenging “Vitebsk”, written in 1929 – a work with a somewhat different, more earthy, dissonant and insistently combatative sound to that heard in the two other trios, the three instruments seemingly in places in the Copland work as much as, if not more than, at odds as in accord with one another! The remaining works on the programme, the two Duos for Violin and ‘Cello had their own singular personalities which held up fascinatingly in such diverse company – Rebecca Clarke’s two-movement work from 1938 quixotically explored two contrasting worlds of sound and feeling, while local composer Ross Harris’s eponymously-titled Duo (2000) was a set of variations on a theme which undergoes a kind of conversational change through spontaneous-sounding interplay between the two instruments.

The Haydn work which opened the concert couldn’t help but straightaway suggest the interactive nature of the afternoon’s music-making, including as it did various delightful quirks and contrasts of expression typical of the composer.  Here, an engaging piano-led song-like opening was buoyed along by the strings’ impish pizzicato tones, before the music burst into rippling energies , the instruments exchanging modes for a beautifully-delivered modulating second subject theme on sighing arco strings with the piano’s sparkling decorations a delight! After the repeat came a simply gorgeous A major section, delivered here in a way which warmed our insides before a return to the movement’s opening, Haydn playing with our perceptions of what went before with insouciant wit and charm and a sense of fun! The second movement’s sombre unison opening suggested a moment of mourning or regret before the piano took it upon itself to instigate a “buck-up, Charles!” kind of solo which had a hint of the Baroque about it! I thought the finale, with its three-note descending motif, had a kind of “something’s up” aspect about its cheerfulness – and, sure enough, a sudden dramatic darkening of the mood had its say, the strings sharing the earnestly-striving new theme with the piano. “How does Haydn do it? “ I asked myself as the three-note motif returned triumphantly, despatched in a no-nonsense manner by two similarly no-nonsense chords? – no time for further wonderment, as delighted applause was in order!

Our positive mood was furthered by the next two pieces, both duos for violin  and ‘cello – the first, by English-born but American-domiciled composer Rebecca Clarke, was originally written for herself, a violist, to play with her frequent pianist collaborator, May Muckle (the pair gave the first public performance of the work in New York in 1918), with the viola part able to be also played on the violin, as here. The piece’s lovely, song-like opening “Lullaby” featured a singing violin supported by the cello’s gently mesmeric ”rocking” quality, then contrasting its focus with the ‘cello’s deeper toned-voice. Both instruments reached towards a touch of Tchaikovskian fervour in places, before returning to lullabic mode and concluding the episode with more exquisitely-voiced modulations.

The “Grotesque” movement that followed might well be described as a description of dreams which decry the serenity of the sleep-inducing  “lullaby”!  The music’s antics straightaway engaged and delighted – quirkily acerbic up-and-down passages were flecked with sforzando-like punctuations, and contrasting elfin-like caperings vied with heavy-footed folk-dance-ish rumbustions. And, at the  conclusion of this plethora of incessant interplay of “furtive” impulse and full-blooded exuberance, we got a gorgeously rib-tickling, throwaway ending!

Ross Harris’s Duo (2000) was actually written for today’s performers of the work, Helene and Rolf, adding a richly-flavoured potential to the music’s integral substance (not, incidentally, the first piece of music the composer has written for the couple, with a previous work “Wayleggo” having been gifted to them as a wedding present!). Here, the musicians’ near-impeccable credentials produced an intensity of identification at the beginning, the lines and phrasings sombre and tightly-wrought, not unlike Part Two of Stravinsky’s ‘Le Sacre du Printemps”, similarly tightly-bound, and with occasionally flecks of impulse from within suggesting impending activation. The piece’s double-stopped figurations in both the players’ parts gave the music a textural intensity and richness that suggested a string quartet, not a duo, was playing, the music moving meanwhile into playfulness (“bounced” tremolando phrasings, pizzicato irruptions and quixotic “ninth” interval-jumps!) and back to solemnity. A sudden crescendo brought agitations, quick-fire and varied, arco and pizzicato, until the players seemed to suddenly realise they were actually baton-passing rather than in conflict! In this way a Parnassus of sorts had meanwhile been ascended, with contentions drawn into a mystical kind of union of purpose, inextricably entwined! All that remained at the end was a satisfyingly-wrought resonance of accord and silence!

We welcomed back the full Korimako Trio for the final and somewhat tumultuous work of the concert’s first half. This was Vitebsk, a work brimming with youthful exuberance and zeal, written by an American composer, the young Aaron Copland, in response to a play he had seen performed in New York during the period 1925-1927. The play was The Dybbuk, written by Russian-Jewish author Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863-1920), best known by his pen-name, S.An-sky. Though originally written in Russian the play was translated into Yiddish by An’sky himself for its first performance in Warsaw in 1920. The story depicts a young woman possessed by the malicious spirit (known as dybbuk in Jewish folklore) of her dead lover. Though the play subsequently became a massive success, An-sky himself died before the Warsaw production could be staged that same year.

English versions of The Dybbuk were performed in New York in 1925 and 1927, but it’s not clear which of these Copland attended – however, each production used the same incidental score, written by Russian composer, teacher and promoter of nationalist Jewish music, Joel Engel (1868-1927), which included a folk melody the latter had discovered, originally a wordless Hassidic melody (a niggun), but which became known as Mipnei ma (Why/wherefore/because of what (“has the soul fallen…”). It was this melody that made a profound impression on Copland (he called it a “noble theme”), one which he used as the basis for his trio, as for him it reflected “the harshness and drama of Jewish life in White Russia (Belarus”).

Copland called his trio after Vitebsk (a city that was the birthplace of both S.An-Sky’s and painter Marc Chagall – though Copland’s own characterisation of part of his Trio as having “a Chagall-like grotesquerie” has drawn criticism from some commentators who reject the Chagall association in the music in favour of more “klezmorim” characteristics (they point out, for example that Vitebsk as a city was a cosmopolitean one, not the type of provincial village that Chagall’s paintings depicted and that Copland himself referred to). Perhaps the main criticism of association is that Copland’s music ought to be thought of as driven not by sentimental ideas of rustic village life, but by the power of the actual legend and the resonance of such beliefs in certain communities lasting some way into the twentieth century!

Right from its tumultuous beginning this music seemed as if “owned” by the the Korimako Trio players, encompassing the work’s power, energy and extremes of emotion with astonishing immediacy and candour. It unfolded in three parts, two slower sections surrounding a central more agitated sequence. The harshly intoned opening – impassioned strings punctuated by hammered piano chords – was a repeated two-note theme representing the shofar, the ceremonial ram’s horn sounded in Jewish services. Violin  and cello elaborated on these calls, their notes often resounding in discord with one another, wrenching phrases from the aforementioned folk melody Mipnei ma, before re-echoing the shofar calls. The cello’s playing of the beseeching Mipnei ma melody was taken up wholeheartedly by the violin, and with piano accompaniments lead the way back to the all-pervading shofar motifs.

This sparked off a frenetic outburst by the piano, which plunged into a headlong dance joined by the strings, a madcap frenzy of high-speed canonic-like imitation representing  some kind of “possessed” agitation, at once exhilarating and disturbing, and eventually bringing forth impassioned outbursts of the Mipnei ma theme, With the return of the shofar calls, the energies seemed all but expended, with the mood quietening and a resigned and subdued version of the folk-theme dominating the final moments before being subsumed itself  into the silences…..what an extraordinary journey! – and one whose themes and gestures have stayed with me to the point where I find myself writing this amid those same themes and their lasting resonances still in my head…..

After this, we all felt grateful for the luftpause of an interval – people I spoke with were transported by the drama and dynamism of the Copland in the wake of the rest of the first half’s interest and variety. I thought it was a good thing to allow some space to separate what we’d just heard from what was to come, music of almost a century earlier, albeit with its own set of existential profundities heart-warmingly maintaining their relevance for our time. This was the second of Franz Schubert’s two great Piano Trios, (in E-flat D.929) and has always been considered the one with the most gravitas for a number of cited reasons, chiefly that (a) it was the larger of the two trios and (b) it was the one of the few of Schubert’s late works that he actually heard performed in public (how bizarre and tragic that the composer never actually heard his miraculous D.956 String Quintet performed!)

Right from the beginning of the work the music in the Korimako Trio’s hands sparkled and glittered, with Michael Endres’s playing a particular joy, making the most of the ever-sparkling piano writing, be they the flourishes contributing to the work’s opening paragraph, or the flowing tones accompanying the concluding measures of the movement’s second theme . As for Helene Pohl and Rolf Gjelsten, I loved the forthright but still warmly-toned timbres of their lines both here and in the development’s rich explorations, mercifully free of the tendencies of some more recent recordings I’ve heard to try and “authenticise” (authenticate?) the string-playing, the latter, almost vibrato-less, practice to my ears starving the string lines of warmth and flexibility – both players here constantly gave us pulsating, well-nourished string sounds however strenuous the physical effort or tenuous the dynamic markings, the music-making emerging as a living, spontaneous-sounding entity. I was disappointed we didn’t get the first movement repeat, but the players obviously didn’t want to send us home TOO late that afternoon!

The famous Andante con moto second movement (based on a Swedish folk-song “See the sun go down” which Schubert had heard sung in Vienna) was here “sounded” by Rolf Gjelsten and Michael Endres with a kind of simple tenderness, the ‘cello and piano seeming to make the most profound impact with the simplest, and most direct means, and, despite its popularity, giving it a “heard for the first time” feeling that was profoundly moving, as was the instrumental combination with Helene Pohl’s violin in the major-key melody which followed. The players really made something of the central section’s series of climaxes, especially the concluding one, whose cumulative effect left me exhausted, having “held” to the music’s series of crescendoed surges of emotion right to the end! The major-to-minor sequence towards the end was also close to heartbreaking!

I’m always amazed by Schubert’s seemingly boundless capacities for renewal in his music – with the presence, for example, of two more movements after the Andante con moto’s cathartic conclusion! Having suffered heartbreak and hopelessness in the previous movement, what better and braver way could a composer reconstitute the present order than with a juicily canonic dance-routine! Piano and strings alternated in follow-the-leader sequences, and the trio was a kind of play-acting gem – a hide-and-seek sequence at the centre of things before the instruments found one another and retraced their adventurous footsteps – all charm and warm resolution!

Beautiful, expectant playing flowed from Michael Endres’ piano at the finale’s Allegro moderato beginning, deliciously answered by Helene and Rolf – together the trio adroitly contrasted the relaxed gait of the music with the boisterous crescendi that bubbled from out of the textures in places, then adding more urgency to the plaintive repeated-note melody, which meant they had to slow down for the “whirling” figurations of the piano part. Nothing was left to chance – each episode was richly characterised sharply so that nothing seemed superfluous or unnecessary, The change of mood to a minor key brought back a reminiscence of the slow movement’s theme on the ‘cello, and much agitation, before the repeated sequences brought what seemed like a full circle of acknowledgement and acceptance into play, enabling the players to spectacularly realise the composer’s wondrous embrace of his slow movement theme for the last time, and with a stunning modulation to the E-flat major key,  transforming its darkness into all-embracing light – a moment of transfiguration which left us gobsmacked at the bravery of the gesture, and its enduring feeling of a kind of redemption against all odds!

What a performance!  and what a blessing for all of us present to have experienced such a moment! Long may the Korimako Trio prosper amongst us and everywhere they go!

NZTrio’s sensational Dreamscape Concert sweet relief for Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

NZTrio He Taonga Wairere performing at Nga Pou Ruahine – Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, Wellington

NZTrio He Taonga Wairere – Dreamscape
ROXANNA PANUFNIK – Around Three Corners (1995)
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No.1 in D Minor Op.63 (1847)
CLAIRE COWAN – wood: strings: hammers: flesh (2008)
CHARLES IVES – Piano Trio (1911-15)

NZTrio He Taonga Wairere – Amalia Hall (violin) / Matthias Balzat (‘cello) / Jian Liu (piano)

Nga Pou Ruahine – Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui (Wellington Public Library)
Saturday, May 23rd, 2026

Oh, to be in Wellington! – annus mirabilis 2026! How ironic that, when we’re in the throes of  an unprecedentedly savage institutionalised attack by the Coalition Government on our city’s lifeblood of productive public employment activity, we’re still able, in almost Jekyll-and-Hyde fashion, to continue to enjoy, courtesy of our classical music organisations, a wondrous – under the circumstances, little short of escapist! – level of artistic excellence in concerts given by our (mostly locally-based) performers.

I write this, having experienced over the course of two consecutive weekend days a pair of chamber music presentations of performances which, quite literally, bowled me over, Both ensembles were piano trios, whose players demonstrated a breathtaking mastery of intent, understanding and execution throughout each of the concerts – as well, we heard not only established masterpieces recognised worldwide as such, but a couple of uniquely treasurable instances of homegrown composition which would have graced any such programme anywhere

These concerts came with a number of attendant pleasures relating to factors such as venue and personnel – enough for me to give each occasion sufficient “raison d’etre” to warrant a separate review. However, their combined pleasures and inspirations certainly gave extra hope and strength to my feeling that (as has happened in the past) humanity both in this part of the world and at large will actively respond to these resonating artistic expressions with sufficient will and determination to overcome aforememtioned troubles and go on.

As outlined above, the superb NZTrio He Taonga Wairere, performing at the capital’s magnificently refurbished Public Library (Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui) began for me this memorable two-staged feast, and with the “other” newly-formed Korimako Trio continuing the weekend’s pleasures at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church, also in Wellington, the following day – the two events were not “linked” as such in any way except in terms of their remarkable “shared”  qualities. A particular feature of the earlier NZ Trio concert was the presence of guest pianist Dr.Jian Liu, Associate Professor of Piano from Te Koki/New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, who has been at the keyboard for the Trio’s “Dreamscape” series of concerts, along with regulars violinist Amalia Hall and ‘cellist Matthias Balzat.

Besides the music we were able to enjoy the surroundings of the Library’s new music-performing space, Nga Pou Ruahine, spectacularly appointed with various artworks depicting most prominently a rawa by Darcy Nicholas of the Feminine Pillars of Life,  Earth Mothers HIneahuone, Hinetitama and Hinenuitepo, one whose resonances stretch right across the ceiling, and which cast vivid impressions of the goddesses’ all-pervading influence. Earlier today I glanced through writer Elizabeth Kerr’s useful thoughts upon performance spaces for music available in Wellington and their acoustical suitability for music, a compendium to which this striking environment can be added with enthusiasm, even though I wondered about the effect of having significant walled areas on each side of glass surfaces upon the acoustics. Every venue has its own particular sound-character, and in this case I did initially prefer, I must admit, the slightly crisper St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace “sound” the following day for the Korimako Trio. Still, the ear does adjust quickly to all but the most intractable of acoustics at most concerts I’ve attended, though I have to say I agree with my colleague’s views over the distinct “lack of bloom” in the ever-problematic Michael Fowler Centre, awaiting as I am the return of the near-matchless sweetness of the sounds of music in the city’s Town Hall auditorium (a building mercifully spared the wrecker’s ball!).

One characteristic that Nga Pou Ruahine readily allowed us to enjoy was the “shared” aspect of the listening-space, mercifully freed from any restrictive boundary between performers and listeners (several other local venues also have this warmly-communicative quality, making music-listening such a joy!) – so it was when Amalia Hall, Matthias Balzat and Jian Liu appeared, with any initial aural “opaqueness” I’ve hinted at soon relegated to normality as the concert proceeded.

NZTrio “Dreamscape” members – Amalia Hall (violin), Jian Liu (piano), Matthias Balzat (cello)

What a programme it was!  beginning with Roxanna Panufnik’s haunting “Around Three Corners” a palindromic-like piece with a theme as its centrepiece flanked by variations on either side! I thought the piece a real “adventure” one framed by opening and closing sequences with the strings repetitively “decorating” the piano’s beautifully meditative, fanciful line, and with the sounds at the end returning to the mists out of which everything had first emerged. Along the journey were adventures aplenty – sequences of true, breath-catching wonderment from both piano and violin, each living “for the moment” and the ‘cello seemingly earth-bound while looking upwards in mild bemusement – and Jian Liu directly “activating” the piano strings by reaching into the instrument’s body, bringing into play what could only be described as “interior” worlds, as the violin and ‘cello voiced pleasure/concern with “dying fall” phrases and equivocal moments of note-bending. I loved the “harrumphing” piano rumbustifications and the scintillatingly “shivery” tremolandi from both strings as the trajectories rumbled along (“Are we dreaming you or are you dreaming us?” I could imagine as thoughts were made into words!) – with a “held” violin note echoed by the ‘cello, I imagined the dream beckoning to its participants that its hour had passed for the moment, with beautiful violin tones drawing empathetic responses from the ‘cello, and deferring once more to the piano, a kind of envoi as the sounds took their leave….

It seemed a perfect scenario into which to introduce the music of Robert Schumann, surely the most instantly recognisable of any composer’s music, with its “poetically serious” energies constantly striving to break through and into the light. The players here instantly “got” the restless ebb-and-flow of emotion, its evanescent quality which spontaneously varied in intensity mid-phrase, or even sometimes, mid-note! Were they playing harmonics in the ethereal middle section of the first movement? – such an other-worldly, almost visionary aspect to the music! I loved how Jian’s playing was so attuned to the strings, as if the piano was often at times another stringed instrument! A lovely lead-back to the opening teased our expectations right to the moment of re-recognition – and a beautifully-voiced coda underlined Schumann’s reluctance to let the music go!

Schumann’s mania for near-endless rhythmic repetition in his scherzo movements (surely having an influence upon Bruckner?) generated tremendous momentums here, like “a galloping horse” in places – breathlessly exhilarating! The Trio was, in contrast, like a kind of “wafting” over the same ground, but with an entirely different kind of trajectory! The contrastingly deep piano chords which began the  “Slowly, with intensity” third movement had a beautiful austerity here, which the ‘cello’s entry softened as the dialogue came beautifully together – the increased flow was nicely paced, with the piano joining the thematic ranks – how spellbinding these players then made the introduction to the finale, whose initial sighs of relief were here given an ebb-and-flow kind of physicality, in places quixotic, in others full-blooded – it had a feeling of joyous culmination, even abandonment, reminding me of the finale to the Piano Concerto!

I mean no disrespect to anybody or anything, composer, music, or performer, by declaring that the concert seemed to get even better as it went along – and not due to anything in particular, but the result of a cumulative effect of a constant stream of wonderful music and its astonishing execution! The concert’s final two items were, in a sense, incomparable with both the rest and with each other – each was a kind of idiosyncratic singularity of creativity, conceived in its own isolated surroundings, and brimming with its own time-and-place energies and purposes! First we were drawn into Auckland composer Claire Cowan’s work, wood: strings: hammers: flesh (2008) – one which the composer herself described at the time in a Schumannesque kind of poem –
and you will wear my heart on your bow
you will speak my words
music like flowers will blossom from your fingertips
and they will see right through me
Violinist Amalia Hall told us, by way of introducing the work, that she played in the ensemble which gave  the first performance of Cowan’s piece. I loved its sense of shared discovery  – the opening emphasised the sheer physicality of music-making, with the composer’s performers here using knuckles knocking, fingertips drumming and tapping, and hand-palms slapping and resonating upon the wood, fibres and metal objects and surfaces normally employed as conduits for conventional musical expression. Here the dimensions were enlarged, resonated and given basic, instinct-like impulse, spotlighting the frameworks and interactive relationships between performers and their instruments in an almost primitive, state-of-origin way. From this plethora of sounds came ideas using basic processes to “grow” music before our very eyes, combinations of timbres, rhythms and tones as the players and their instruments interacted, creating moments of magic (the piano strings directly activated by the pianist) and rhapsodic expression (violin and cello strings bowed and plucked) with, by turns, both startling and haunting results. As the unfolding soundscape took us through the various episodes everything became more physical and almost epic in its imaginative reach, to the point where my senses seemed overwhelmed by a kind of ferment of discovery! A final, decisive “clunk” from the players at the end broke the spell, from which I awoke to a kind of silence that hummed with a memory of having shared something of a composer’s journey, or at the very least, a brief immersion into realms (Schumann, again!) of infinite possibilities.

The evening’s final work approached the idea of music-making from the other end of the process – American composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) believed that life itself was the source for music, reflecting as many kinds of creative activities as could be discovered, and disdaining any kind of “hierarchy” that put “art-music” at the top of the pyramid and more populist styles below. An excellent programme note for the concert written by Charlotte Wilson underlined the debt owed by Ives to his father, George, himself a bandleader, and “clearly a force of nature, like his son, innately inquisitive and enquiring” and who bequeathed to Charles his own fascination for music, its essences and its different sources.

Ives’s Trio for Violin, ’Cello and Piano, completed in 1911and revised in 1915, drew much of its inspiration from his student days at Yale University, from where he graduated in 1898. Pianist Jian Liu remarked on the work’s in places riotous nature, drawing our attention to the second movement’s “TSIAJ” title (This scherzo is a joke”), and referring to its somewhat chaotic amalgam of tunes therein, emphasising that we were thus warned! Ives himself made reference to his inspirations for the work, citing a “short but serious talk” by “an old philosophy professor” as the first movement’s source of origin, then characterising the somewhat chaotic second movement as “the games and antics by the students on a holiday afternoon” – he then described the final movement as “a remembrance of a Sunday service on the campus”.

I’d heard a recording of the piece before going to the concert, so was “prepared” better than I would have been had I encountered the music as a novice listener – nevertheless I couldn’t believe the extent that the NZ Trio’s playing “made sense” of what had seemed almost like total chaos during my first listen! Here, the first movement distinctly characterised the different dialogues between, firstly, the ‘cello, and then the violin, with the piano – the first measured and circumspect, the second, more animated and even quixotic in places, as if real personalities! The second movement’s “onslaught” of themes also seemed less “randomly disorganised” here, more purposeful and driven, enabling one to really “swing along” as a listener, rather than feeling as if endlessly floundering in a sea of random ditties! Not that spontaneity was lacking – one felt driven less by desperation here and more by “good-old” riotous remembrance!

As for the finale, Moderato con moto, the musicians sounded the “perfect fifths” sequence fanfare-style, before  performing (and repeating) what seemed increasingly like various enigmatic “nostalgia-rituals” – duetting soulful sequences, surviving near-dissonant encounters, tripping through brief, syncopated dance-sequences whose trajectories allowed moments of skitterish excitement, before returning to the soulfulness of the opening “duet” and revisitng the other sequences theme – until, almost out of nowhere came (incredibly moving!) the “Rock of Ages” theme, firstly on the ‘cello then the violin, and lastly (minus its concluding note) on the cello once again, the piano continuing to muse broke off before sounding the phrase’s final B-flat! Enigmatic to the end though it all seemed, the Trio allowed us to drift back into our recognisable lives by playing part of a Brahms Trio – the Andante grazioso from Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor. – before sending us all home!

Trio Obscura – singular tones and timbres bringing to life old and new music with verve and sensitivity

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

TRIO OBSCURA
Bede Hanley (oboe), Robert Ashworth (viola), Sarah Watkins (piano)

AUGUST KLUGHARDT (1849-1902)
“Schilflieder” (Songs of the Reeds) – Five Fantasy Pieces   (1872)

ALYSSA MORRIS (1984- )
“The Big Questions” (2024)
1. Who am I?  2. What is this Crazy Thing called Life? 3. How is it Possible?  4. What Comes Next?

CHARLES MARTIN LOEFFLER (1861-1935)
Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano (1901)
1. Lento (un poco andante ) – L’etang (“The Pool”)
2, Un poco maestoso  (Andante) – La Cornemuse (“The Bagpipe”)

JANET JENNINGS  (1957- )
Five Emotional States (2025)
1.Anxiety   2.Melancholy   3.Anger  4.Relief  5.Exhilaration

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts
St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday 10th May, 2026

Trio Obscura’s name reminded me somewhat of TS Eliot’s wonderfully idiosyncratic poem “The Naming of Cats”, in which the poet describes a cat’s reverie when contemplating “…his ineffable, effable, effanineffable, deep and inscrutable, singular name”.  Of course, there’s no such comparable mystery regarding “The Naming of The Trio” (its title is sufficiently and resonantly suggestive!), but there’s certainly a kind of singularity in the actual combination of “sounds” here, one which was sported blithely and cheerily by this combination of musicians!

I’d not heard of two of the four composers on today’s programme, the first of whom was August Klughardt, born in Köthen, Germany, in 1849, and who grew up during a time of turmoil in music between conservatives who held to classicism and its traditions and the progressives who wanted to explore new modes of expression. From an early age he worked at developing his performing as well as composing skills, first as a pianist and then as a conductor, in which capacity when working at the Ducal Court in Weimar he encountered Franz Liszt, who exerted a profound impression upon him, introducing him to Richard Wagner and the “New German School” of creativity (Klughardt was to conduct Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the court in Dessau in later years). His own compositions, however, reflected a kind of eclectic attitude to the music of the times, taking elements from both traditional and progressive influences. Today his music – symphonies, concertos, operas, vocal and chamber music – is hardly known, though his chamber music is beginning to receive increased attention –  an obvious influence in his work we heard today was that of Schumann  (as it was in Klughardt’s own 1884 Piano Quintet, the appearance of which suggested an act of homage made by one composer to another!)

Today’s work “Schilflieder” (Song of the Reeds) took the form of five “Fantasy Pieces”, inspired by the poetry of Nikolaus Lenau (1802-50), whose work also inspired music by Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss. This particular set of verses devotes a separate stanza to the different moods of a wanderer’s day and evening in a forest and by a pond.  “Schilflkieder” was written in 1872 and dedicated by Klughardt to Liszt himself – and actually achieved well-deserved attention for the remainder of the composer’s lifetime.  Interestingly, Klughardt noted in the score that the oboe part could be played if necessary by the violin, a starkly practical, if somewhat radical-sounding adjustment to a sound-world!

The first piece, titled “The sun is sinking over there”, was begun by Sarah Watkins’ piano solo as a sombre preparatory.  The music continued its melancholy course on Bede Hanley’s oboe, until Robert Ashworth’s viola’s entry brought a contrastingly flowing, more expressive character to the mood, seeming to have cheered the oboe up considerably when it re-entered. In this mood of appeasement the instruments ended the piece quietly together. With the following “Darkness falls, the clouds are flying”, I was straightaway taken into what seemed a Schumannesque world = the music had that same earnestly-toned sense of striving (the music marked “impassioned”), with, of course the viola’s sombre tones adding to that so-distinctive ambience! With the following, and so delectably, in places, Brahmsian  “Along a secret path”  I found myself straining to hear the viola at first, against the piano, (the composer’s rather than the player’s fault, here!) wanting more body of tone to make the lines sing. The oboe had no difficulty in this regard, even despite the florid nature of the piano writing, but the viola’s line I thought too subdued in places for the material.,

As for the fiery “Sunset” which followed, it sounded as if we were on board Wagner’s Dutchman’s ship battling the tempests – Sarah Watkins’ piano-playing conjured up a veritable storm through which the oboe piped strenuously and heroically, except that the viola was for the most part, to my ears, lost, swamped in the torrents of sound! Most thankfully, with the “sehr ruhig” of the final piece “On the pond, the motionless one”, we heard both exquisite solo lines and beautiful duetting between oboe and viola, suggesting perhaps moonlight on the tranquil waters after the storm, the viola spaciously raising its voice and singing its melodic traceries. The piano still generated energies aplenty with triumphant-sounding chords in places, but was content to accompany its companions over the work’s serenely lyrical close.

Another name new to me was Alyssa Morris (b.1984), an American composer whose style was described in the programme as “approachable, flashy and beautiful” – the title of her 2024 work “The Big Questions” poses the idea of confronting our very existence, pondering imponderables such as “Who am I?” / “What is this crazy thing called Life?”/ “How is it Possible?” / “What comes next?”.  Reasoning that there are as many potentialities and possibilities as there are humans on this planet capable of flooding one’s sensibilities with uniquely-conceived minutae potentially delivering as much confusion as enlightenment (that sentence will do for a starter!), I strained forwards in my seat hoping to discern via the infintinesimal/infinite action of sound-impulses upon my primed sensibilities a true sense of awareness illuminating my inner being. I wasn’t sure whether the result would be any different to my listening to a favourite piece of music at any given moment of out-of-the-ordinary receptivity – but I counted myself at that particular moment as “ready for anything”.

It struck me that the composer was indulging in a kind of “sleight-of-hand” in giving us the existential titles I’ve already quoted, their “idea” actually containing the seeds of execution more than the actual sounds that followed. “Who am I?”, for example, began with a viola’s single note over which oboe and piano elaborated, recitative-style in a series of “statements” – the piano floridly invited the oboe and viola to similarly elaborate their lines. The music became very “Big American Musical” or “Big Screen”,r even “Big Country”, encouraged by fulsome instrumental tones. A by-product of these fulsome amplifications was that I felt “engaged “ with ideas while losing any specific sense of any uniquely distinctive and definitive state – was it me in this “Who am I?” moment, or was I actually experiencing with this “the craziness of the thing called Life?”

There were “clues” as to what was happening – conversational exchanges between the three instruments punctuated by crazily sassy detailings such as the viola’s sudden downward-plunging glissando, followed by pizzicato-like excuses for such off-the-wall spontaneities! Then there’s a waltz-rhythm, with the three players “bending the trajectories” in Salvador-Dali-like ways, until the famously flaccid structures raised themselves up with an effort and brought off a surprisingly “cutsie” gesture of farewell!

By this time, the question of “What comes next?” that we felt “ready for” had been gazumphed in itself so many times by the music itself we felt ready for anything! A piano solo, gesturing and ruminative, answered by the viola and echoed by the oboe (where he/she goes, we go! was almost sentimentally refrained by the ensemble) – until there was definitely a sense of something impending – was this, perhaps “The Next?” – the piano plunged into  a running, surging accompaniment-like figure which had left its soloists at the starting post by accident! – but which oboe and viola catch up hurriedly! The music became a full-scale song, almost Negro-spiritual-like in manner! The instruments fulsomely decorated their lines as if approaching a kind of climax! Suddenly, everything stopped! – could this be “an end”?  Was there actually such a thing?  I remember when a small boy thinking “When the spaceship reaches the so-called “end of space”, what’s behind that end-wall? – there’s still more space!” Similarly, was this an ending? – or was there simply no end? Was this “What comes Next?” – will there be “no end” of “What comes next?”… except continued (and gorgeous!) soft playing?  The music drifts into space – the oboe and violin hold their notes……the piano softly elaborates…..and finishes!

We needed a half-time! – the sense of “Where am I?” needed some familiar, reassuring sign-posting  – also, I was uncomfortably aware of having perhaps too readily indulged in fancy throughout Alyssa Morris’s essentially “escapist” piece. I needed something more earthily “real” once again, upon which to plant my feet. Interestingly,  the composer Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935) whose music was next on the programme  was to supply me with a soupcon of empathy in this respect – Loeffler was described by violist Robert Ashworth in his introduction as “a German man trying to be French”! This was a reference to the composer’s reluctance to acknowledge his actual birthplace (Schonëberg, Berlin), and his somewhat “displaced” sense of upbringing, as he spent most of his life claiming his birthplace was in the Alsace region, which famously borders France, Germany and Switzerland! – (in fact a number of references I checked continue to maintain his claim that he was born in the French Alsacs region!)

Embarking on a career that took him from his birthplace in Germany to the United States via France, Russia, Hungary and Switzerland, the young Loeffler studied the violin in Berlin with Joseph Joachim and then composition with Ernest Giuiraud in Paris, playing in various French orchestras. After his move to the United States in 1881 he joined the Boston Symphony, with whom he performed as assistant concertmaster until resigning from the orchestra to devote his energies to composition. He’s known today as a skilled, highly fastidious and self-critical composer, belonging to no “school”, but combining his earlier French influences and sensibilities with his later “New World” experiences . In February 1931 Olin Downes, Music Critic of the New York Times, wrote in a seventieth birthday tribute to the composer, that Loeffler was “one of the representative musicians of an age”, but concluded that “his expression of that age has come from within, and not, as an imitation of fads and shibboleths of the hour, from outside.”

This work was originally planned as a set of Three Rhapsodies in 1898, but was extensively revised by Loeffler after the tragic death of the dedicatee – one of the pieces was shelved, and the two remaining works were rescored during 1901 for oboe, with viola and piano The first of these Rhapsodies became a memorial for the composer’s deceased colleague. Consequently, the piece began darkly, with the viola answering the piano’s first sombre notes strongly and whole-heartedly, more than matching the oboe’s plaintive tones, the viola here far more assertively-voiced than was the case with the Klughardt work. The style recalled the late-Romanticism of Ernest Chausson, evident in the “longing” nature of the phrases for all of the instruments, the oboe delivering a particularly beautiful solo episode at one point over the piano’s rippling phrases. A darker passage for both instruments resulted in recitative-like passages suddenly seeming to break into a dance , almost like the “friss” which follows a “lassu” in the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, the music readily ebbing and flowing across the instrumental timbres, until the sombre mood suddenly returned, the viola again richly-and darkly-toned against the plaintive oboe and  piano, with the music hauntingly drifting between minor and major harmonies as the voices died away.

The Second Rhapsody (subtitled “The Bagpipe”) actually began as if it were a Liszt Rhapsody, with a florid piano passage, but then wistfully morphed into a kind of plaintive Bartokian folk-song – perhaps the bagpiper’s tune? Its repetition was suitably lump-in-the throat in its wistfulness – oboe and viola responded most rhapsodically, the “bagpipe” theme by turns lively and ruminative, either goading its listeners into dancing-mode or regaling listeners with a story. We felt regaled by story-telling tones and gestures from each of the instruments, feeling as if the listeners had “heard this tale before” and were reliving its characterisations and narrative lines! And what a particular joy it was to hear the viola sing so sonorously, next to its companions!  After oboe and viola had finished their near-operatic “duet” with the piano’s sterling guidance, the three instruments engaged in a brief, gestural “are we all here, still?” exchange before letting the tones of the discursive tales find their rest.

For those who felt that the Loeffler work was much too earnest a response to those “Big Questions” posed by Alyssa Morris earlier in the afternoon, an alternative, “thistledown-on-the-wind”-like  rejoiner to “Life And Its Problems” was posed by Waikato composer Janet Jennings (whose work “Voices of Women” I’ve previously reviewed on “Middle C” – see https://middle-c.org/2020/09/16161/ )  This work – “Five Emotional States”  – is described in a programme note by its composer as “not to be taken seriously”, a comment that on a certain level of engagement makes plenty of good sense, but may simultaneously “beg the question” of emotional health in general for those who look beyond the work’s wondrously rollicking capacities for entertainment and into the real world of 2026 New Zealand, where people of all ages and circumstances are often forced against their will into situations where these states are all too palpably experienced. I’m not saying the work shouldn’t have been written – rather the opposite! Perhaps, though, it needs, in my opinion, not to be trivialised.

Having gotten that concern “off my chest”, may I say that the experience itself was for me an absolute riot, a palpable and resonating amalgam of delight and disturbance whose sequences I could all too readily recognise as having a degree of self-ownership of feelings generated by both inward and outer tensions – it also made me aware of the vital role that hope has to play amidst such experiences, given expression here in the section called “Relief”, and without which for me would have been akin to a horrifying, inwardly Faustian prospect of eternal damnation! Am I myself thus guilty of doing what the composer urged her audiences not to do?  I was, all above concerns considered, ultimately delighted by the experience – and, to the performers, Sarah Watkins, Robert Ashworth and Bede Hanley, I dips my lid in boundless appreciation!

NZTrio – “fantastique” here in Wellington in every way

Posted on by Peter Mechen

NZTrio presents “Fantastique”
Music by Turina, Shostakovich, Chen Yi, Psathas and Franck

JOAQUÍN TURINA – Circulo (1936)
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH – Piano Trio No. 1 in C Minor (1923)
CHEN YI – Tibetan Tunes (2007)
JOHN PSATHAS – Angelus (2025)
CESAR FRANCK – Piano Trio No. 1in F-sharp Minor (1841)

NZTrio – Amalia Hall (violin) / Callum Hall (‘cello) / Somi Kim (piano)

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Saturday, 30th August, 2025

To my surprise I discovered my last encounter with the justly-vaunted NZTrio took place no less than seven years previously – though the Covid pandemic can be held responsible for numerous  cancellations, dislocations and reorganisations of music presentations over time, such a biblical duration of estrangement in this case hardly seemed likely! On further investigation I found I had actually been “gazumphed” on a handful of occasions by my fellow-reviewers who’d obviously snaffled the Trio’s more recent Wellington appearances for their own delectation!

Now, here in 2025 I realise this is not the same NZTrio I had seen and heard perform in 2018 – in fact, not even slightly! These are three different musicians whose qualities have naturally realigned my expectations, but whose performance has predictably given rise to a “vive la difference” reaction, and particularly as I had already encountered both Amalia Hall and Somi Kim as concerto soloists in concert to spectacular effect.

To enrich matters even further, the group had a “guest” cellist on this occasion, one who’s currently filling in for the recently-appointed Matthias Balzat – apparently the Trio are using “guest” cellists in different programmes throughout the year, of which Callum Hall (who happens to be Amalia Hall’s brother) is one for this Fantastique programme. Whether this arrangement will continue in future seasons, or the Trio will eventually “secure” Balzat’s occupancy of the cellist’s chair remains to be seen!

Described as “a programme of contrasts”  this Fantastique presentation certainly filled the bill, with a positively global range of evocations! Joachim Turina’s music is slowly finding its way back into concert programmes of all kinds, my memory being of a recent performance in Wellington of the once-popular and colourful Danzas fantásticas, and of not-so recent but still-remembered occasional outings for the composer’s second Piano Trio. Tonight’s work was new to me, and a joyful surprise – a brilliant evocation of an Andalusian day, whose title, Circulo, suggests the metaphorical “circle” of a regular world-wide phenomenon of progression from dawn through midday to dusk – there are, of course, “no words to make the sun roll east”, as New Zealand poet ARD Fairburn once wrote….

The music appropriately began with Amanecer (Dawn), with darkly and deeply pondering cello and piano exchanges, from which grew an opening melody on the cello – the violin took it further, and with the piano’s full-blooded support united with the ‘cello in a soulful string unison utterance! How beautifully the NZTrio players then nudged the growing light of day forwards, colouring the changes beautifully with alternating harmonies and reaching a point where the music was liberated into the morning’s fullnesses! Here the violin and ‘cello soared upwards as the piano cascaded light-and-sound energies in all directions, the music conveying an irresistible sense of joyous delight at the day’s promise amid pending excitement, then breaking off exultantly at the top of the music’s concluding phrase!

The second movement, Mediodia (Midday). plunged us into the world of flamenco trajectories and sonorities, with flailing pizzicati from the strings and crunching rhythms from the piano dramatically riveting the listeners’ attentions, see-sawing throughout the movement  from pizzicato to arco and from jagged accents to sultry lines – the flamenco rhythms gathered themselves for a final sequence of exuberant swashbuckling gesturings before grandly tipping over and into the work’s final Crepúsculo (Dusk) movement, redolent with feelings of spent energies and relaxed release, the music gradually and beautifully surrendering its buoyancies and high spirits to the oncoming night and its mysteries – gorgeous string  playing from Amalia Hall and Callum Hall, with sonorous support from Somi Kim’s piano here, redolent with a nostalgic sense of farewell – with such playing it was easy for me to fall madly in love with this work.

As promised each item brought with it a markedly different sense of “place”, with Dmitri Shostakovich’s youthful Piano Trio in C Minor bringing a new world to view. The marked contrasts within the piece itself were somewhat accentuated by the seventeen year-old composer’s somewhat agitated state when the work was written, of having fallen in love and subsequently dedicating the work to the object of his affections  – she eventually married someone else having left her indelible mark on this music’s wildly passionate character! Adding to the music’s character are the pronounced influences of Scriabin, Rachmaninov and Glazunov, the last-named  Shostakovich’s composition teacher at the Petrograd Conservatory. Despite its juvenile aspects the music readily hints at a number of the composer’s lifelong traits, such as his love of grotesquerie in various forms – sudden changes of mood through contrasting dynamics, timbres and trajectories, His occasional employment as a cinema pianist also shows through –  I read an account of Shostakovich actually rehearsing his part in the work with others as an accompaniment to some films he was playing for!

The piece had almost everything its instrumentalists could want as regards satisfying and involving display of all kinds – trenchantly-involving lines, lyrical display, brilliant and quixotic passages of teamwork, and in certain places near-fulsome virtuosity – both Amalia Hall’s violin and Callum Hall’s ‘cello caught the heart-on-sleeve melancholy of the opening exchanges, but were equally at home with the skitterish contrasting episodes which boiled over in places, the players appearing to relish the “sparring” aspects of the sequences – as for pianist Somi Kim, her playing delivered in spadefuls every variation of mood, from the deep, full throated utterances of the opening, through the more gently-lyrical Rachmaninovian sequences to the all-out virtuosic sweep of the work’s more coruscating moments! Another tidbit of information I picked up from elsewhere was that the final section of the work had at some stage been lost, so that the piece’s last 16 bars in the work as published (not until after the composer’s death) were apparently “added” by one of Shostakovich‘s pupils (Boris Tischenko).

Next came music by Chinese-born American-based composer Chen Yi, a work called “Tibetan Tunes”, one which I’d previously heard twelve years ago, when it was played by the “old” NZ Trio at a memorable “China meets New Zealand in music” concert held at Victoria University of Wellington.  Chinese-born Chen Yi, now living in the United States was trained as a classical violinist, but was inspired by her contact during the Cultural Revolution with Chinese folk music to take up further studies of her folk music heritage. She moved to the US in 1986 to continue her musical studies at Columbia University, and at present is Distinguished Professor of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri/Kansas City.

Her two-movement work Tibetan Tunes, written in 2007 for the New Pacific Trio and premiered by them the same year was inspired firstly by a Tibetan folk melody “Du Mu” which is the name of a god of Tibetan Buddhism, one which the composer here wished  to depict “in a serene mood”. I remember thinking at my previous hearing of the work how evocative of something “elsewhere” was the writing for the instruments – as it was here, the violin’s harmonic-like held notes contrasting with the rhapsodic, folkish cello tune while the piano’s echoed the exchanges with decorative roulades. After some gentle, widely-spaced canonic gesturings, the strings joined in unison to celebrate the god’s all-encompassing equanimity, and afterwards reflecting individually, leaving the piano with the last word.

The second piece, “Dui Xie” had its genesis in ensembled folk-music featuring bowed and plucked strings and bamboo flutes – dance-like from the beginning, and altogether livelier than the opening work, the strings sang a melody and its variants over the piano’s rhythms, the cello’s lines having a particularly folkish kind of portamento character in places – charmingly old-fashioned! This excitingly changed to exciting string pizzicati and driving piano figurations, before the opening returned bringing  expressive, recitative-like harmonics – amazing playing from Amalia Hall – along with piano ostinati, sustained trills from the strings and a climactic mid-air finish!

Appropriately one of the concert’s stopover places was Aotearoa New Zealand,  represented here by a work from John Psathas, a piece with the name Angelus and freshly commissioned from the NZTrio itself. It’s actually in part derived from an earlier work for ‘cello and piano called “Halo”, one whose final movement Psathas reworked for NZTrio – these are the composer’s comments at the time of writing the complete work: –

I created this piece around the time of my mother’s death, something I’ve always found it difficult to write about.

The pre-recorded sounds in this piece are very subtle, and in a live performance it should not be visible to the audience how and when these sounds are beginning and ending.

The ‘circle on the head of an angel’ is a good metaphor for these extra sounds; they are like an audio ‘halo’ around the live sounds. They should be quiet enough that the listener isn’t sure if they are hearing them or not, almost like it’s an invisible processing of the natural piano sound.

They are supposed to represent the presence of a spirit from ‘the other side of life’ – for me it is the presence of my mother’s spirit in the room. For you or anyone listening, it could be anyone in your life or mind or heart.

The last movement is really about (the memory of) conflict between child and parent. This conflict is fuelled by strong emotions, mostly love, and is often powerfully dramatic. The way our anger and conflict can be shaped by love within our closest relationships.

The last LH idea in the piano is a way to end with a question, and also a representation of the infinite, and also a dissolving of the physical (the live instrument sound) into the spiritual (the invisible audio halo). I love this ending very much – it is like music from beyond life. (John Psathas)

From the piece’s abrupt beginning the music grabs the listener with its insistent driving rhythms, the syncopations activating exhilarating criss-cross rhythmic thrusts and tugs, with pizzicato violin set against arco cello set against running piano, the intensities rising and falling as the violin’s sul ponticello tones rasp and sting, with the strings  descending into the depths, the tremolandi tones intensifying, and the piano sounding doom-laden pronouncements. As the ambiences descend further the composer’s “audio halo” sounds as if from another world, eerily activating a harmonics response from the strings, a strange and wondrous dialogue of connection of sounds floating through space.

Out of the exchanges come impulses of urgency, the energies pushing all ways, upwards, downwards and forwards simultaneously, the piano elaborating on an ever-ascending chorale-like theme which leads to an impassioned kind of recitative from the strings, additionally “whipped up” by swirling piano figures – the resonant sonic wave emanating from the sudden climax of this cornucopian all-together is almost heart-stoppingly allowed to run its course until a gentle piano ostinato emerges, registering first a violin then a cello tremolando response – and, as the piano continues to gently rhapsodise and the strings murmur their assent, the sonic halo reappears, transfixing our riveted sensibilities into an indefinite silence…..what an experience!

I was looking forward to the César Franck Piano Trio at the programme’s end, fascinated at its Op.1 place in this composer’s output and marvelling upon further investigation at there actually being two other similar works sharing the same Opus number! These works were praised by both Mendelssohn and Liszt, the latter generously organising further performances throughout Germany – but Franck’s early years and works were blighted by his difficult relationship with a dominant father, resulting in eventual estrangement and the young man going his own way, pursuing the career of an organist and only returning to chamber and symphonic works in his maturity. As someone who loves masterpieces such as the Violin Sonata and the Piano Quintet, this Op.1 Trio was for me fascinating in sounding occasional pre-echoes of the inspiration that would eventually flower to produce those resounding achievements of Franck’s later years.

A stepwise piano figure opened the work, joined by cello and violin elaborating on a soulful theme, with the exchanges intensifying the interaction – out of a sudden pause came a charming second theme, the instruments then building the triplet rhythms up with gusto, Somi Kim’s piano pounding out the trajectories  as Amalia Hall’s violin passionately sang the melody, with Callum Hall’s ‘cello-tremolandi filling out the quasi-orchestral textures with urgently upward-rushing figures! These vigorous peregrinations wound the exchanges down through major-minor key shifts to a crashing,almost apoplectic-making concluding chord!

An allegro molto movement followed, the piano tapping out a repeated note triplet rhythm and the strings urging along a kind of horseback-ride melody – splendid stuff, with the strings adding skitterish figurations for exciting effect! – the trio section did well with simple means, a downward-rushing scale in canon between piano and strings, varying this effectively with the strings ascending against the piano’s descent! A return to the triplet scherzo music had the solo strings varying the  mix with pizzicato repetitions of the horseback music, almost to sinister effect in places – this led to an unexpectedly resounding plunge, attacca, into the work’s finale – a stirring transition which worked splendidly, so that, almost before we knew what was happening, the Allegro Maestoso was on its way, complete with  great pianistic flourishes and gesturings from Somi Kim.

Easeful, lyrical and whole-hearted playing from Amalia Hall’s violin and Callum Hall’s ‘cello engaged our interest through contrasting minor-key episodes and some singular, almost honky-tonk modulations – the young Franck determined to flaunt his wares! – that done, the players raced into what felt like the movement’s coda, at the conclusion of which , the unexpected pause before the final flourish caught us out, as it would have done many audiences before, bursting in as we did, with premature applause! –  followed, of course, by subsequent laughter and giggles all around at the combination of our eagerness and the youthful composer’s largesse! All in all –  Fantastique! – just as promised!

The Ghost Trio completes a great 2024 for Wellington Chamber Music Concert Series

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
THE GHOST TRIO  –  SCHUMANN, HOLMES, SAARIAHO. RAVEL

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Piano Trio No. 1 Op.63
LEONIE HOLMES – Dance of the Wintersmith (2017)
KAIJA SAARIAHO – Calices (2009)
MAURICE RAVEL – Piano Trio in A Minor (1914)

The Ghost Trio – Monique Lapins (violin). Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

(Andrew Joyce replaces ‘cellist Ken Ichinose for this concert)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

Sunday, 25th August, 2024

“New Zealand has so many great musicians that we have decided to have eight concerts” proclaimed the Wellington Chamber Music’s 2024 series website at the year’s beginning. Having been fortunate enough to attend (and review) six of these concerts, I’m finding myself at the conclusion of this, the final one in the series, overcome with gratitude at being able to enjoy so much great music in the company of these – yes, truly! – great musicians! And glancing at the society’s prospectus for 2025 has already whetted my appetite for more….

But, to the business at hand, this final concert! – and to The Ghost Trio’s remarkable metamorphosis via a replacement ‘cellist, Andrew Joyce, stepping into the role for the temporarily unavailable Ken Ichinose, and bringing his own remarkable qualities to bear upon the concert’s two major works by Schumann and Ravel without any discernable hiccups! The composer-lineup remained the same as before, except that violinist Monique Lapins and pianist Gabriela Glapska adroitly substituted two not insubstantial violin-and-piano works by Leonie Holmes and Kaija Saariaho respectively for the original “all-piano-trio” lineup.

First up was Robert Schumann’s adorable D Minor Piano Trio Op. 63, a work which shows how much the composer’s recent absorption of JS Bach’s works (particularly the “Well-Tempered Clavier”) had influenced his thinking, evident in a new kind of expression marked by contrapuntal entwinings and polyphonic voicings well beyond the scope of his other chamber music up to then. The players here responded with sombre, forward-thrusting gestures at the outset with vibrant lines and strong but always flexible trajectories, continually catching our ears with the music’s on-going subtleties of dynamics and intensities. Monique Lapins had demonstrated for us on her instrument Schumann’s innovative use at one point in the movement’s development section of ghostly sul ponticello bowing accompanied by the piano in its highest registers – when it came in the performance it sounded extraordinary! – it brought to my mind the composer’s well-known penchant for the expression “different realms”, which he himself obviously cherished.

After a couple of “Ready, steady” chords, the players “galloped in” the dotted-rhythm scherzo, the oft-repeated ascending theme cheekily combining whole- and half-note intervals, with the contrastingly graceful Trio a series of ascending and descending figures, almost like the scherzo itself in a more languid, even sleepwalking mode. A different world awaited us with the Langsam mit inniger Empfindung slow movement, the opening violin solo solemn and focused with near-vibratoless tones – the ‘cello encouraging more warmth from the notes, and seeming for a while to “lighten” the violin’s emotional load. The gravitas then returned, so exquisitely “voiced” here by both players, and with the piano giving discreet and sure-footed support, the instruments gradually reducing their tones to near-silence, and leaving us with only our beating hearts for company for a semi-second of silence…… Schumann then decided to give us as a finale one of his warmest and great-hearted of melodies by way of leading us back into domains of light and joyousness, a mood not unlike that of his Piano Concerto’s finale, albeit here in 4/4 trajectory rather than the Concerto’s 3/4!

Teamwork between the players pinged, clicked and hummed as the theme flowed, skipped, sang and declaimed its way through sequences conveying by turns energy, contentment, mischief and exaltation, each with its particular deftness of touch or vigorous exuberance – I admired things like the will-o’-the-wisp exchanges between Monique Lapins’ violin and Andrew Joyce’s ‘cello, as well as the latter’s beautiful intonation in a high-lying rendition of the movement’s second theme, and (perhaps most especially) pianist Gabriela Glapska’s brilliant dexterity and unflagging strength in holding together and maintaining the flow of the finale’s seemingly boundless energies.

Monique Lapins, who’d introduced the concert’s first item, then added something of a performer’s perspective for us to the programme note written by the composer regarding the concert’s next item. This was a work, Dance of the Wintersmith, by Auckland composer Leonie Holmes, inspired by a Terry Pratchett book for children called ‘Wintersmith”, a fantasy-tale of a young witch whose dabbling in “dark arts” causes worldwide climate disruption that puts humankind in jeopardy.We were alerted to the composer’s requirement that the violinist additionally “vocalises” some of the music, and were told not to be alarmed at the inclusion of such sounds at some point!

The work began with an almost Gypsy-like solo gesture, one with eerily-spaced intervals and chromatic descents, and alternating near-frenetic bowings with mysteriously disembodied harmonics – all beautifully realised by the player! The piano’s entry echoed the atmospheric character of the sound-picture, though the players soon “struck out” with some impactful gesturings – strong pizzicato, followed by scherzando interchanges between the instruments, with the scenario marked in places by a vivid sense of grotesquerie, the “dance” angular and fantastic, its projection almost visceral! – a silence created a moment of mystery which the piano embellished at first, the violinist then quietly humming a melody, and accompanying the vocalising on the violin – the effect was of a kind of lament, a “lost song” looking for some kind of answer or redemption – all very moving, as everything drifted into silence.

Monique Lapins (who on this showing would, I feel, get a PR presenter’s job in any sphere of activity with no difficulty) then told us briefly about the composer, Kaija Saariaho, of the next item and the music we were about to hear – again a work for violin and piano, its title Calices (2009) means ‘calyxes’ in French, and refers to the protective layer surrounding a flower in bud; one could imagine the violin as representing a spring flower bursting into life. Calices is actually derived from Saariaho’s own violin concerto Graal théâtre (1994).

I found this extraordinary quote from the composer regarding the concerto which could well have a bearing on the shape, form and syntax of Calices:

‘I had a kind of vertigo, a fear of high places, when I started this concerto. I played the violin as a child and I loved many violin concertos passionately – and I was afraid to step into this domain.’

The programme note enlarges on this with a further comment by Saariaho herself relating to  this particular time, one involving “frustrated illusions, longing and love”. The article went on to emphasise that Calices is noteworthy for its intimate familiarity with violin technique, wrought from those experiences of the composer. Monique Lapins’ and Gabriela Glapska’s remarkable performance reinforced the character of the writer’s description “ the piece ebbs and flows through different moods, from calm and contemplative to violent, with a good deal of tempo fluctuation, and with recurring notes acting as reference points within each section, like a magnet to which the music returns….”

The work was in three sections, opening with a gesture that suggested folk-like, almost oriental influences, which at first belied the violinist’s description of the work as “icy”, but soon established its severities, demanding both percussive exchanges between the instruments and contrastingly isolated single notes from both – we experienced incredibly unworldly-sounding harmonics from the violin in places, and  the pianist occasionally reaching into her instrument’s body to hauntingly activate the strings.

Part Two began with a “falling” set of sequences from the piano as the violin delivered cadenza-like flourishes, the piano creating what one description called “cloud-formations ”as the violin mused throughout repetitive meditations – my notes at this point read  “we are in a fantastic world of improvised fantasy”.  The third part of the work began in agitato fashion, tersely dynamic gestures exchanged but then coming together in a part conciliatory, part “distanced” mood, leaving this listener with feelings more enigmatic than resolved – in that sense similar to the ending of the Fourth Symphony of another Finn, Jean Sibelius.

With the concert’s final item ‘cellist Andrew Joyce provided for us a “from-the-heart” introduction to the work, Ravel’s 1914 Piano Trio, echoing the programme note’s associating the work’s genesis with the outbreak of war in Europe, and Ravel’s desire to be involved despite his poor health and his mother’s anxieties regarding her son’s decision. I particularly enjoyed his remark regarding the composer’s attested “sobbing over (my) sharps and flats” (in a letter to a friend at the time), commenting that Ravel should have spared a thought for the generations of musicians left “sobbing over those same sharps and flats” when preparing performances of the work! Perhaps the nearest Ravel got to this kind of admission was with the piano writing, which he confessed was ‘too difficult for its composer to play!”

As with Ravel’s great contemporary, Debussy, in his String Quartet, this A Minor Piano Trio demonstrates mastery of classical form but with many individual touches – Gabriela Glapska’s beautiful piano-only opening of the work suggested the composer’s attraction towards the music of the Basque region, the melody at once dreamy and restless, able to express at once great longing and anxiety. The violin and ‘cello octave-doubled string-writing carried this mood onwards until its growing angst irrupted as the instrumental exchanges intensified. What relief, then, as these energies quickly dissipated to allow the achingly beautiful second subject to appear on the violin, then on the cello and be echoed by the piano – we so relished such a gorgeous dialogue for the strings here, together with such limpid piano notes! And what passions we were then plunged into by the return of the opening theme revisiting its volatile tendencies, the sounds here flung even more energetically across the soundscape by the players, and quelled only by the second theme’s “laying on of hands” return. We were relieved by the violin and ‘cello’s wanting to make peace and, finally, prevailing over the piano’s brooding aspect! Peace, when it finally came, was like balm for the senses.

I’d obviously got carried away with this first Ravel movement in The Ghost Trio’s hands, but their “characterisation” of the music’s chameleon-like moods was so absorbing and well-rounded, it seemed to squeeze words out of me like toothpaste! The second movement is a scherzo headed Pantoum: Assez vif , and takes its title from a Pantoum, a Malay-sourced poetic form popular with French poets such as Baudelaire, one which repeats and overlaps words and lines in much the same way as Ravel alternates the movement’s first two themes – though I’ve always thought the highlight of this movement is the Trio, during which Ravel cleverly combines fragments of the strings’ scherzo themes (in 3/4) with the slower, more lyrical Trio theme (4/2) on the piano, and all without the music’s heartbeat seeming to falter, the players skilfully maintaining the different time-signatures’ happy co-existence!

The third movement Passacaille: Très large is of course a Passacaglia based on the piano’s opening eight-bar bass line – when played on a string instrument the melody straightaway sounded “folky”, and its return on the piano in a higher register had the same heartfelt effect. Moment then followed breathcatching moment, such as the duetting between violin and ‘cello, the succeeding ‘cello solo, and the rapt concentration of the piano’s final utterances.

Then, not unlike the effect Schumann had achieved earlier in the concert during his G Minor Piano Trio with his strings’ sul ponticello playing and high-registered piano figurations, Ravel’s violinist and cellist respectively played arpeggio harmonics and double-stopped high-fingerboard trills at the finale’s beginning, a melody whose exotic decorative aspect gave it something of an oriental fairytale  character, but then whose irregular time signatures of 5/4 and 7/4 in places added a vertiginous quality to the music’s vigorous and ever-burgeoning sonorities, the players giving their all and achieving an exuberance and euphoria right up to the piece’s no-holds-barred ending.

Nothing much further needs to be said, but “Roll on, 2025” – Wellington Chamber Music can justly feel pride and satisfaction with this year’s efforts on behalf of a grateful public!

 

 

Mostly youthful music presented with aplomb by the NZ Trio

Posted on by Anne French

Triptych 1: Unquiet Dream

Benjamin Britten: Introduction and allegro for piano trio
Chris Cree-Brown: The Second Triumvirate
Lera Auerbach: Trio No 2 Triptych – this mirror has three faces
Felix Mendelssohn: Trio in D min, Op. 49

 NZ Trio (with guest Sarah Watkins)

Public Trust Hall, Wellington

Wednesday 23 May 2024

 This was a distinctly youthful concert. Not because it was packed with music students (although there were a few there amongst the grey heads, chins thoughtfully propped on knees, listening intently), but because most of the music was written by the young. Britten’s work was composed when he was 18, in his second year at the Royal College of Music, being taught composition by Frank Bridge, who had taken the boy under his wing. The piece was premiered at a party at the Bridge house and then lost. Eventually, a decade after Britten’s death, it was found again and received its public premiere at the Wigmore Hall in 1986.

Lera Auerbach’s piece, the intellectual heart of the concert, was written when she was 38. Auerbach was only 17 and on a concert tour of the US when she defected from the Soviet Union. She is a remarkable talent: a poet, pianist, conductor, and sculptor as well as a composer. She was at the Juilliard with Sarah Watkins, Amalia Hall told us when introducing the work.

Mendelssohn’s D Minor Trio was written, like his best works, when young. He was only 20, and when it was premiered in September 1839, Schumann described it as ‘the master trio of the age’.

So Chris Cree Brown (b. 1953) was the senior composer represented, although his work, a commission by the Trio, is bang up to date, receiving its premiere on this tour.

First to the Britten. It is a terrific work, and I can only imagine Frank Bridge’s excitement when he first saw it. It opens with a beautiful cello solo, but immediately the tonality is unsettled. There is beautiful piano writing, very reminiscent of Ravel, with rippling liquid passages. But the string writing sounds like no one else: questing, unsettled, exploratory – not like the mature Britten, except in flashes. Ashley Brown described it to us as ‘quirky’ and said, ‘It took a while to grow on us.’  It finishes with the strings playing long, very high, pianissimo chords, with the piano continuing to ask questions underneath. I would have very much liked to hear it again.

The Chris Cree Brown followed. It is a follow-up to the first ‘Triumvirate’, written for the Trio in the early 2000s, and conceived as an imagining of the different voices of a trio at work (discussing, disputing, agreeing). But the second Triumvirate posed some difficulties. According to Ashley Brown, the trio found it helpful to discuss it with the composer while they worked on it. His comments were ‘eye-opening’ and ‘transformed the piece’. Being told that the programme of the work is three personalities in discourse, sometimes breaking into argument was certainly helpful to the audience. The rhythms are complex, imitating speech rhythms, and the work might have been impenetrable without that information.

Next to the Lera Auerbach. Immediately I felt as though we were in the hands of a very interesting musical personality. Like the Cree Brown work, this one also evokes three individuals in harmony and conflict. It is a work in five shortish movements. The middle movement is a kind of Schostakovian waltz, very slow and sardonic. Around it the outer movements explore ‘individuality and ensemble, harmony and conflict’. The first movement began with long, sustained, melancholy phrases; the second featured a passionate, romantic rush of sound from the strings, with amazing piano writing that took Sarah Watkins up and down the length of the keyboard. At the end of the third movement, the sardonic waltz returned. It sounded as though a beautiful doll puppet was being forced to dance to an unpleasant commentary. The fourth movement was very fast, a crazy pursuit at breakneck speed.

The last movement had moments of pure nostalgia (the marking is ‘Adagio nostalgico’), beginning with slow beautiful fragments of melody from the strings while the piano marches towards something.  At one point, the tremulous violin sounded like a sad bird; later, after some general agitation, the violin sang over the cello accompaniment like a bird in a ruin. Finally, the violin sang like a theremin.

We can always rely on the NZ Trio to present interesting music with aplomb, but the Auerbach was a triumph.  More, please!

And after the interval, the Mendelssohn Trio. What can I say? Schumann was right. It’s a lovely work, full of the best Mendelssohnian melodies, beautifully played by the NZ Trio. My notes say ‘a perfect example of chamber writing’, with ’lovely clarity and balance between the strings and piano’.

A note on personnel: founding member Sarah Watkins returned to the Trio because Somi Kim is off on maternity leave. It was as though Sarah had never been away.

The long way to Bohemia

Posted on by Anne French

Wellington Chamber Music Sunday Concerts series  presents:
Czech Mates

Martinů – Piano Trio No 2 in D minor
Janáček – Violin Sonata
Bowater – Fekete Folyó (Black River)|
Dvořák – Piano Trio No 3 in F minor (Op. 65)

New Zealand Chamber Soloists
Lara Hall (violin), James Tennant (‘cello), Katherine Austin (piano)

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Sunday 19 June 2022

A cold grey afternoon in the middle of winter. But the programme looked interesting: a Czech club sandwich with a slice of Bowater. The New Zealand Chamber Soloists have a history of commissioning new works. The work by Helen Bowater was commissioned in 2020 as part of their ‘Seven by Seven’ project: seven works by seven New Zealand women composers, lasting seven minutes, with support from Creative New Zealand. But how would the Bowater fare, I wondered, surrounded by works written by three of the great Czech composers of the past 150 years?

The programme notes were succinct, but the performers provided excellent introductions to each work.  Cellist James Tennant told us that Martinů grew up in a bell-tower (the tower of St Jakub Church in the small town of Polička), where his father was both a bell-ringer and fire watcher. We should expect lots of bell sounds in this energetic work, especially in the piano part, he said. ‘Bong! Bing! Bang!’

Having been expelled from the Prague Conservatory at the age of 20 for ‘incorrigible negligence’, Martinů managed to get himself to Paris in 1923, where he studied with Roussel and listened to jazz. Back in Prague, Martinů had been keen on the French Impressionists. Now he was living amongst them. But in the late 1930s, he was forced to leave Paris. He had written a work celebrating the Czech resistance and was wanted by the Nazis. He made it to the US by 1941. This Piano Trio was written during a very productive period, 1948-56, when Martinů taught at the Mannes College of Music in New York. (Burt Bacharach was one of his students.)

The Piano Trio, written in just a few weeks in 1950, has all the emotional complexity of the position in which Martinů found himself. On the one hand, he was productive and happy. His symphonies were being performed by the big American orchestras. On the other, his marriage was in difficulties. His wife wanted to return to France; he wanted to go home to Bohemia. But after the coup of 1948, when the Communists came to power, he couldn’t go back to Czechoslovakia.

The trio expresses all of this. There is delight and even fun (James Tennant imagined the young Martinů hopping down the steps of the bell-tower), with sprightly string rhythms and glittering flows of notes from the piano, and a fast scramble to the end of the first movement. But the second movement opens with sombre chords from the violin. The piano is sympathetic, but positive; the cello is supportive and understanding. Where? Why? Eventually all three voices reach a kind of agreement. The third movement starts with a terrifying energy (like Schubert’s Erlkönig) that morphs quickly into energy minus terror. The piano part is busy, lyrical, and positive, but it becomes drawn in by the violin’s insistent rhythms. The bell sounds in the piano part are not soothing. The violin is agitated; the cello supportive. There is much more agitation before the final chords come down.

This is an interesting work, not often performed. I was struck by the expressive beauty of the piano writing, and by Katherine Austin’s gorgeous technique. The voices are pretty evenly balanced, but it is the violin that seems to speak for the composer, directly and frankly, from the heart.

Next was the Janáček Violin Sonata. Katherine Austin explained that, while other Czech composers assiduously researched Czech folk music traditions, Janáček sat in cafés listening to conversations, and notated Czech speech rhythms.  He tried to write a violin sonata when he was a student, studying in Leipzig, and again in Vienna, but his early sonatas have been lost. This work was written in 1914, when he was 60. Janáček said that, in this sonata, ‘I could just about hear the sound of steel clashing in my troubled head.’ The sonata was premièred in Brno in 1922, and the following year it was performed in Frankfurt, with Paul Hindemith playing the violin.

The con moto first movement ‘sounds like a row, really’, as Katherine Austin put it, with the voices continually interrupting and contradicting each other. It opens with a big statement by the violin, with the piano strumming broken chords. The piano part is fast and ranges all over the keyboard, the violin interjects, or comments, and finally has the last word. The second movement, Ballada, Katherine Austin described as being like a lullaby, with ‘quiet breathing’. It opens with a lyrical tune from the violin and a restless piano part underneath. Anxiety turns into a sad but resigned song, full of dark energy, with a rippling motif from the piano. The third movement began with a nursery tune in the piano and ‘something flying overhead’. The fourth movement was pastoral, lyrical, ‘like watching dawn break’, with brusque interruptions from the violin.

And next, the Helen Bowater piece, Fekete Folyó. The Danube is the ‘Black River’ of the title, and the work recalls terrible events happening to the Jewish Hungarian and Romanyi people of Budapest. The cello is given a solo that tells of heartbreak and tragedy, and the violin sings a melancholic song. But its seven minutes also capture the wild rhythms of gypsy music, with plenty of pizzicato and strumming, and some Jewish harmonies. It finishes with a kind of threnody for the violin and cello together, then just the violin. And then silence.

This is an interesting and affecting work that sounded well alongside the Czech composers. It was evocative and sympathetic, with plenty to tell us.

And finally, the Dvořák Piano Trio No 3, written in 1883, the earliest work on the programme. This trio is not as famous as his fourth, the Dumky (1891), and it is not written in his cheerful Slavonic style. It is a big work, nearly 40 minutes long, with a lengthy first movement that Lara Hall described as ‘a great journey, long and deep’. At the time of writing, Dvořák was facing a tricky problem. He had been approached to write a second opera, but on a German subject and with a German libretto. Dvořák longed for recognition as an operatic composer, but he wanted it on his own terms. (He had already suffered from anti-Czech prejudice.) And his mother had just died…

From the first bars, we are back in Bohemia, as though the concert has been a long journey home. After the trio’s first performance, in which Dvořák played the piano part, the contemporary critic Edward Hanslick wrote that ‘the composer finds himself at the pinnacle of his career’. (He was not to know that the best was yet to come.)

In the third movement, the violin introduces the ‘dead mother’ theme, with sympathetic support from cello and piano. It is all so sad. But the piano is more optimistic – perhaps there is a way through. The violin repeats the theme, but higher and sweeter. Perhaps there is.

The fourth movement (allegro con brio) features a furiant, that Bohemian dance in alternating 2/4 and 3/4 time with strong accents. Dvořák used it memorably in the eighth Slavonic Dance. Finally, all tensions resolved, they dance off, presto, to a joyful resolution.

This trio brought out the very best from the players. The NZ Soloists have been playing together since 2006, and it shows. They are well balanced and make a beautiful sound.  James Tennant’s cello was especially warm and beautiful, supported by Lara Hall’s lyrical violin playing and Katherine Austin’s gorgeous support from the piano. The whole concert was conceived as a complete experience, with its moments of emotional intensity and resolution well placed.

Wellington’s Ghost Trio’s flair and brilliance concludes an eventful 2021 for Chamber Music Hutt Valley

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music Hutt Valley presents:
The Ghost Trio in concert

Joseph HAYDN – Piano Trio in G Major, Hob.XV:45
Josiah CARR (NZ) – time and glue 2017
Gabriel FAURE – Piano Trio in D Minor Op.120
Antonin DVOŘÁK – Piano Trio  No. 3 in F Minor Op.65

The Ghost Trio :
Monique Lapins (violin). Ken Ichinose (‘cello), Gabriela Glapska (piano)

St. Mark’s Church, Woburn Road, Lower Hutt

Wednesday, 13th October, 2021

What a year for Chamber Music Hutt Valley! – a glance at my season ticket brings back ripples of musical pleasure as memories crowd in of concert following extraordinary concert, with only one pang of disappointment clouding the glow of satisfaction generated by the Society’s 2021 series. This was the cancellation of August’s “Sweet Chance” Vocal Duo presentation – Morag Aitchison (soprano), and Catrin Johnsson (mezzo), with Rachel Fuller (piano) and Serenity Thurlow (viola)  – due to Covid-19 restrictions. One can only hope that audiences get a “Sweet SECOND Chance” in the not-too-distant future to experience what had promised to be an intriguing and unashamedly entertaining evening’s music-making.

Though the shadow of the pandemic took its effect on this, the final concert in the series (masks, social distancing, audience numbers reduced, and the cancellation of post-concert supper), those who attended revelled in an evening’s music-making which fully reinforced the high-watermark standards of achievement set by these 2021 performers. I’d actually reviewed an earlier concert this year by the same performers at the NZ School of Music, and did try to arrange for one of my Middle C colleagues to take this concert – but came the time and nobody else was available (to my secret delight, I freely admit – though, I did wonder what the musicians’ reaction might be to having the same reviewer’s opinions regarding their playing and interpretations “served up” for two concerts running!……)

Fortunately the repertoire in each occasion’s case was “chalk-and-cheese” different, which helped my reviewer’s cause a great deal! – this latest concert was a veritable “showcase” of the art of the Piano Trio, beginning with a work from Joseph Haydn, the composer who had virtually “invented” the present-day version of the genre, before contrasting this with a contemporary work by a New Zealand composer, Josiah Carr, and continuing with two vastly different pieces from more-or-less contemporary figures written at different times in their careers, Gabriel Faure and Antonin Dvořák, each contributing his own individual stamp to the form and creating something uniquely characteristic in doing so.

I felt a tad perplexed when, before writing this review, “looking up” the concert’s opening Haydn item, as listed per the programme note – I was surprised at finding the Hob. Number of the work played not aligning to what I heard the Ghost Trio perform for us – so I remain mightily confused as to just where the work is “placed” in the composer’s oeuvre (in my list of Haydn’s Piano Trios there is no “Hob.XV 45” mentioned, for example, and “Piano Trio No.45”  is actually “Hob: XV 29 in E-flat major”, again, according to my source). Somebody reading this will know, and sort out the correct numbering and key so that I can actually track down a recording……

Monique Lapins introduced the concert for us, her choice of descriptive imagery relating particularly to, and illuminating aspects of both the Josiah Carr and the Faure works for us – I particularly enjoyed her equating the Faure Trio’s sounds to “a warm bath of colour”, a quality that the subsequent performance realised most gorgeously, reinforcing her point about the composer’s instinctive use of harmonic variation determining the music’s character more significantly than did its structure.

First up was the Haydn, however, a work in which the piano dominated, though the strings invariably brought their colours and textures, as well as a sense of interplay, to the music. The work’s development section climbs into different tonal regions, the violin occasionally giving an exuberant “whoop” via accented single notes, while the ‘cello keeps the contrapuntal textures simmering away in tandem with the keyboard. I’d heard it said that the ‘cello part in many of the early examples of Haydn’s Piano Trios is reduced to a kind of “filler” function – but seemingly not here, in most places, and even more not-so with a ‘cellist of Ken Ichinose’s elegance.

The work’s Menuet has a fetching minor-key sequence. Lapins’ violin giving this great poignancy, and Gabriela Lapska’s playing allowing her plenty of ambient space, highlighting  the ensemble’s marked quality of “listening” to one another, something which the following Adagio also readily brought to the fore throughout the music’s journey of enchantment, every note made significant. The finale, too, exudes character, with a rustic “thwang” on the violin’s note-attack, Lapins seeming to “pizzicato” one of these ejaculations at one point, whether by accident or design! – whether bowed or plucked, it all worked just as engagingly!

New Zealand composer Josiah Carr’s “time and glue” employed, through the poetry of Aucklander Emma Harris, a fascinating analogy with the creative process in presenting fragments of sound that become “associated” through interaction. The work provides a time-frame, and the piano the “glue” (the composer helpfully provided a programme-note!), into which scenario the strings contribute ideas and impulses that struggle to “mend” as required along the lines of the piano’s framework. I enjoyed this process, especially the trenchant episodes during which the instruments appeared to “confront” one another, perhaps out of sheer frustration at meeting resistance rather than co-operation! I fancied the idea the sounds then suggested of the piano next “stalking” the strings, which had taken stratospheric “refuge in the treetops”, and gradually enticing them down once more, the violin prevaricating with lurching slides (spanning sevenths?- ninths?) before slowly capitulating, the ‘cello more circumspectedly keeping a pizzicati eye-out for trouble, but eventually making its own connections. A stimulating, thought-provoking piece!

From this we were then taken into the very different world of Gabriel Faure, whose D Minor Piano Trio Op. 120 was written during his final years (he produced only one other work, his single String Quartet, before his death in 1924) and allowed us to savour a unique musical aesthetic, characterised by a quiet strength and truly original attitude towards form and structure. We heard in the first movement of his Piano Trio the mature composer’s obvious delight in daring harmonic modulation, his invention seemingly unconstrained by any “tyranny of key-signature”, and his imaginative fancy transforming convention into something almost child-like in its spontaneity, the results exciting and absorbing!

The Andantino brought us more of these “impulses of delight, the players etching out the composer’s tender dialogues between piano and strings, and violin and cello in turn, the themes allowed to resonate and echo, with the piano sometimes the accomplice, sometimes the leader in the process. There’s a breathtakingly beautiful piano solo from Glapska mid-movement which the strings briefly “touch” with comments, adding their intensities of feeling to the already burgeoning contents of the phrases; and subsequent sequences which once again begin climbing and festooning the music through key-changes into what Robert Schumann used to call “other realms” when sounds seemed to magically transform themselves – did someone mention a “warm bath of colour” at one point?……..

The strings and piano squared off at the finale’s beginning, the piano sparking with excitement in reply to the strings’ dotted-rhythm challenges, until the music disconcertingly skipped away, the players again floating their harmonies freely upwards as the dance energised our listening-pulses! A couple of unison shouts from the strings were peremptorily dismissed by keyboard flourishes, and the dancing continued, the players at first delighting in the music’s hide-and-seek-like harmonic shifts, but gradually “toughening up” on the folk-like ambiences, so that as the music modulated upwards the excitement grew accordingly!

So we came to the concert’s second half, whose music generated its own distinctive energies and tensions, Antonin Dvořák’s first widely-recognised “great” chamber work, the Op.65 F Minor Piano Trio. It’s often described as the composer’s most “Brahmsian” work, referring to  the older composer’s friendship with and frequent advice and encouragement to the younger man at the time this work was written – as with the D Minor Symphony, also composed at around this time, Op.65 seems more-than-usually “European” in its formal and thematic expression, as if Dvořák was emphasising “mainstream” modes ahead of his native “Czech” instincts. Fortunately, his native gifts as a composer were exceptional and distinctive to the point where any such “models” or “influences” didn’t diminish his own achievement – though Brahms’s influence is apparent in this work, it’s still “Czech” enough to be judged on its own merits and enjoyed as such.

The Ghost Trio readily took up the work’s challenges, recreating at the outset the music’s dark, serious purpose via the sombre themes and the terse gestures, though with the occasional touches of Slavonic harmony in places suggesting that this piece has roots in a specific kind of soil. And the second subject, played firstly on the cello and then the violin (Ken Ichinose and Monique Lapins respectively) had a freshness and ardour to the melody that for me proclaimed its Dvořákian provenance in the lilt of its last few bars – and the quasi-martial aspect of the episode immediately following straight away brought to mind a similar sequence in the composer’s later ’Cello Concerto…..

A similar “haunted” quality hung about the Allegretto grazioso second movement, the triplet accompaniments to the melody having to my ears a suggestion of unease amid the thrusting orchestral-like writing, as did the piano’s haunting oscillations a little later – the trio section is more flowing and atmospheric, like “music from another room”, the violin’s and piano’s tender figurations beautifully augmented by the ‘cello’s contributions. And I loved the frisson created by the opening’s return, the cross-rhythms at first hinted at, then suddenly released, the ensemble building the excitement with trenchant rhythmic interjections from all the instruments. The contrasting Poco Adagio slow movement felt like a tranquil woodland recollection in places, before the piano delved into the music’s darker, more troubled side, the strings taking refuge with gorgeous interchanges, the violin soaring, the cello musing and the piano simpatico. The composer’s rich re-imaginings of his material seemed to release a spontaneity of fancy to the journey, the performance here reaching a point of rapture, with the piano’s breathcatching modulations prompting the tenderest response from the strings that one could wish for.

After this the finale puts on dancing shoes, the players making the most of the somewhat angular “falling octave” figure at the beginning, before relaxing into a second minor-key melody with great charm and point, Dvořák imbuing this episode with an inimitably nostalgic, almost “homesick” quality. Vigour and tenderness continue their interplay, the music twice seeming to grow towards a kind of peroration before breaking off for some further reflection – the sounds then become almost confessional in these interludes, the composer unable to resist revealing to us a further precious glimpse of his heart-felt longing – be it mere convention, or a deeply-felt burst of resolve, the work ends with a triumphant flourish, one that on this occasion sparked rapturous acclaim from an appreciative audience.

 

NZ Trio with accessible and illuminating music for Wellington Chamber Music

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Music Trust

NZ Trio: Amalia Hall (violin), Ashley Brown (cello), Somi Kim (piano)

Beethoven: Piano Trio in C minor, Op 1 No 3
Christos Hatzis: ‘Old Photographs’ from Constantinople (2000)
Salina Fisher: Kintsugi (NZ Trio commission, 2020)
Dinuk Wijeratne: Love Triangle
Ravel: Piano Trio

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 27 September, 3 pm

Perhaps because of Auckland’s continued restrictions, and limits on audience size, Wellington, and no doubt other cities, seem to benefit from more concerts. This was the first of three concerts by the NZ Trio, the others at Lower Hutt and Waikanae, with the same programme.

Beethoven 
It began with Beethoven’s third piano trio in C minor: sombre, restrained with the violin sounding cautious, but a crescendo slowly prevailed, subtly enough: the cello played with a light bow; the piano gave itself to sensitive rhythmic patterns in the second movement, Andante cantabile; in fact throughout the performance. The third movement might not have been a Scherzo, which was the kind of spirited third movement that Beethoven wrote increasingly; but it’s a brisk Menuetto quasi allegro, which had scherzo-like aspects in which the piano has a leading role; in fact the piano was rather prominent throughout the whole work.

It was a highly rewarding, early example of one of Beethoven’s compositions that showed marked individuality; that Haydn famously had misgivings about, as the programme notes remark. The performance exploited that originality and energy most successfully.

Three recent compositions occupied the central part of the programme.

Christos Hatzis is a Greek/Canadian composer : ‘Old Photographs’ is the seventh movement of Constantinople, an eight movement work, most of which involves a mezzo soprano part; ‘Old Photographs’ is one of only three purely instrumental movements. It is described as the most exuberant piece, “mixing solemn parlour music with the raunchiest of tangos”.

It opened slowly and meditatively, its style and era difficult to identify. It presented no alienating avant-garde characteristics, nor does it claim stylistic originality. Its only recognisable image was pronounced tango rhythms, Piazzolla style rather than the popular Argentinian character, with piano in the lead.

Salina Fisher 
Then a rather delightful piece by young New Zealand composer Salina Fisher who seems to have become one of the most accessible young composers as well as winning important composition awards in New Zealand and a major post-graduate award in New York. She is composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University.

Salina describes the sense of the title Kintsugi: “musical fragmentation, fragility, mending and finding beauty in cracks…  the embracing of ‘brokenness’ and imperfection as a source of strength.” Its musical substance rests in flighty trills, meditative crescendos, fluttering violin and piano phrases, a lazy string of notes that are gently melodic. I wasn’t sure that I captured the specific evocation of brokenness and imperfection… finding beauty in cracks; but the experience was engaging and surprisingly comfortable in musical terms.

Dinuk Wijeratne’s Love Triangle began as if the instruments were hesitantly tuning up, which added to the curiosity that was inspired by conspicuous changes of clothes by the three musicians in the interval. The music slowly took shape, emerging as a comfortable example of non-European music: eastern Mediterranean, Arabic, Indian, it was not easy to identify; it became increasingly vigorous, with just occasional dissonance. Curiously, that offered some kind of recognisable musical source. It was longer than the two previous works, which I persuaded myself was justified by its lively sense of originality.

Ravel’s Piano Trio 
The last piece was a return to familiarity; one of the finest piano trios of the 20th century: Ravel’s.  Though I could catch little of Amalia Hall’s comments about it, little persuasion was needed to hold the attention; and the varied tempi and dynamics highlighted the first movement’s mood changes, from the disturbing to the excitable.   It’s easy to mention the Malay origin of the rhythm of the second movement, but more difficult actually to understand how Ravel deals with it: the key changes, and the energy and exuberance.

The third movement, Passacaille: Très large, invites attention to the ancient passacaglia rhythm which steadies the movement, with long passages for violin and cello, and the cello and piano in succession, alone. as bass passages are prominent.  The Finale, animé, acknowledges the traditional classical form of a four-movement work, but its unorthodox rhythms and musical invention offered distinction even though they didn’t arouse any sense of the avant-garde. The players fulfilled the unusual characteristics and the taxing demands of its interpretation admirably.

The worthwhile combination of two major trios, two centuries apart, together with three varied but perfectly accessible pieces of the past 20 years, all splendidly performed, created a highly enjoyable recital.

 

Young musicians of Poneke Trio deliver singularly revelatory concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime Concert at St Paul’s Cathedral

Trio Pōneke
Claudia Tarrant-Matthews (violin); Sofia Tarrant-Matthews (piano); Bethany Angus (cello)

Haydn: Piano Trio No 26 in C minor, Hob.XV:13
Shostakovich: Trio no.2 in E minor, Op 67

Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Friday 28 August, 12:45 pm

This was a promising recital by three young women who have lived around Worser Bay in Wellington: two are sisters, the cellist a long-time friend. Both Tarrant-Matthews are violinists who have played in Orchestra Wellington and the NZSO, but are also proficient pianists; both graduated in music from Victoria University. Claudia who is violinist in the trio, has been studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London while pianist Sofia plans to study in Germany.

The Haydn trio* is a two-movement work which I didn’t know; from the first charming phrases I was disconcerted to realise that I had not heard it before. However, I wondered how well the players would cope with the famously challenging acoustics of the cathedral. But I was immediately surprised and reassured, and wondered just how much of their handling of the sound was careful calculation of the acoustic or was simply their instinctive response to what they could hear; it was hard to know.

The main melody in the Andante, first movement, is a delight. It asks to be played calmly, rejoicing in its beauty which was revealed in playing of considerable subtlety, with a calm, piano sound volume. In achieving that, all three responded, in the Andante, with what I could only describe as extraordinary delicacy and sensitivity. The sound that seemed to emerge secretively as if from distant parts of the nave, was magical, with balanced dynamics from each instrument. Though violin and piano tended to be the most audible, the cello could be heard in the role of a sort of basso continuo, or in careful harmony with the violin.

The second movement, Allegro spiritoso, might have invited more forthright playing but the players again resisted any attempt to exaggerate the ’spiritoso’ marking. Instead, there was a fairy-like lightness here, through most of the movement, though the score certainly offered chances to sound mezzo forte; but they were resisted.

Guessing that this trio is typical of Haydn’s trios generally, I am inspired to explore more of them, which seem (to me anyway) to be seriously neglected, overshadowed by and in comparison with the string quartets.

The Shostakovich piano trio is well known, a singularly memorable work that I got to know well many years ago, not least as it was played by the sadly short-lived Turnovsky Trio which flourished in the 1990s.

Here again, the cello’s opening by playing scarcely audible harmonics, certainly demonstrated Bethany Angus’s talents, even if they’d not been so conspicuous in the Haydn. The violin soon joins and both complied fully with what their mutes were designed to do. The hard part is for the piano to match its partners in a comparably secretive spirit: Sophia Tarrant-Matthews did. The dynamism of the central part of the first movement slowly emerged, and revealed for the first time, the impressive technical abilities of the three players.

While the ‘con brio’ second movement invites a display of energy, their restraint paid dividends, and its frenzy seemed to be moderated by a slightly sinister character. The third movement, Largo, can be heard as some kind of return to the mystery of the first movement. Claudia Tarrant-Matthews ’s violin seemed to emerge from a darkened cavern, while Bethany Angus’ cello complemented that disturbing atmosphere. The sombre, uneasy atmosphere seemed to find its perfect partner in the acoustic, though I doubt that reading a sinister message in a cathedral would meet with widespread approval.

The Largo merges seamlessly into the last movement, whose marking ‘Allegretto’ cannot be read as suggesting anything light-spirited, with its incessant pulse, driven by emphatically strong down-bows from the stringed instruments as well as the striking piano part that underpinned the rhythm; at moments the piano’s tone suggested the sounds of the small bells of a carillon.

In the end it seemed to me that, far from being any kind of handicap, the cathedral acoustic had proved a perfect vehicle and environment for this extraordinary music.

This was a singularly successful recital; I hope that Trio Poneke can find time, or that concert promoters will find ways for them, to perform again in Wellington before the two Tarrant-Matthews head again for Europe.

 

* Appendix

As an aside, from one who has an unhealthy fascination with lists, schedules and catalogues, the identification of Haydn’s works offers particular interest.

That the programme note takes care to employ the accepted scholarly classification, referring to both the authoritative Haydn catalogues (Anthony van Hoboken and H C Robbins Landon), is evidence of the players’ proper attention to such matters.

Hoboken’s catalogue was the earlier, dividing the works into genre groups, employing Roman numerals: thus symphonies are I, string quartets III, piano sonatas XVI and piano trios, XV. Hoboken lists 41 piano trios, paying less attention than Robbins Landon to dates of actual composition. His numbering for this trio is misleadingly early, at XV:13.

Robbins Landon’s massive catalogue was published later, between 1976 and 1980. It lists the works in strictly chronological order of composition rather than publication date, and in this case his number for the C minor trio is 26 of the list of 45 trios. Many of Robbins Landon’s ‘early’ trios have late Hoboken numbers because they were actually composed long before they were published.  

So this piano trio is one of Haydn’s later works, 1789 (not conspicuously influenced by the French Revolution), the year before Haydn went to London and composed the 12 great Salomon symphonies. One notes that Haydn composed twenty more piano trios after this one, most after the age of 60; there are plenty of riches to explore!