Tag: piano

Mark Menzies and Michael Endres – linking worlds with violin and piano

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music presents
THE MENZIES/ENDRES DUO – Music by Schubert, Schnittke, Fisher and Beethoven

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Rondo in B Minor “Rondo Brilliant”
ALFRED SCHNITTKE – Violin Sonata No. 2 (quasi una sonata)
SALINA FISHER – Mono no aware
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Violin Sonata No. 9 “Kreutzer”

Mark Menzies (violin) and Michael Endres (piano)

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

Sunday, 18th June, 2023

This was a well structured, interesting programme, culminating in Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, perhaps the greatest of violin sonatas. The programme notes the connection of the works on the programme to this Sonata and Beethoven: the main theme of Schubert’s Rondo has reference to the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, while Schnittke’s Sonata echoes the structure of  Beethoven’s Op 27 piano sonatas, “quasi una fantasia”. This may be a little far fetched, but undoubtedly the programme built up to the climax of Beethoven, while exploring a range of musical idioms in the violin and piano repertoire.

Franz Schubert Rondo in B minor ‘Rondo Brilliant’

Schubert wrote this work for the Czech violinist Josef Slavik. The latter was compared in his circles to Paganini, and was a friend of Schubert. Schubert was essentially a composer of songs, not one noted for the elaborate structures of his works. This piece has beautiful melodic passages interposed with virtuoso displays. It is joyful music, with suggestions of rustic wind band music in places, but ultimately it was not an entirely convincing reading, being very difficult to bring off. In the dialogues between the violin and the piano, some of the nuances of the exchamges were lost. The placing of the violinist with his back to the pianist didn’t help in places, with the voicings not being ideally balanced.

Alfred Schnittke Violin Sonata No 2 (quasi una sonata)

Schnittke’s Second Violin Sonata is a very challenging work, both for the musicians and the audience.  It opens with powerful, discordant chords, separated by precisely timed pauses. This section is followed by a number of distinct episodes, with references to past musicians, from Bach through Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky, to Shostakovitch, though to the listener, hearing the sonata for the first time, none of this is obvious. What is clear is the unrelenting drama, the thought provoking process that pose questions about the nature of music. The musicians have to perform actions that are not part of the normal skill sets of violinists or pianists, free ranging glissandos, unpitched tremolos, drum-like chords.

To add to the drama, one of the strings snapped on the violin. Mark Menzies stopped, walked off the stage, came back with the violin re-strung, carried on, and resumed where had left off. This sonata is one of the masterpieces of the post-Soviet Russian era, but it requires vast preparation and deep understanding. The performance was a true partnership between violin and piano, and whatever misgivings one might have had about the balance of the two instruments in the first work no longer applied.

Salina Fisher Mono no aware

This was a peaceful contrast to the drama of Schnittke’s work. It is a calm ethereal piece of music, simple on the surface, plaintive, a meditation on nature. Is it about the ephemeral beauty of cherry blossoms, an awareness of their fragility and their inherent impermanence, as the composer says in her notes, or is it just a sequel of lovely sounds? It was a “breather” in the midst of an afternoon of intense music.

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No 9 ‘Kreutzer’

This is, arguable, the greatest violin and piano sonata ever written. It marked the beginning of what is at times termed, Beethoven’s ‘middle period’, beyond the elegant music of the period of Mozart and Haydn, pointing to an era of more expressive, more emotional, romantic music of the years of his Third and Fifth Symphonies. Beethoven had gone deaf, his life was in turmoil, and he wrote some of his most profound music. The Kreutzer foreshadowed the Waldsdtein and Appassionata sonatas, the Rasumovsky quartets. The sonata is so well known that it is a special challenge for performers not to make it just another Kreutzer, to fathom its meaning in their own individual way. Menzies and Endres started with a leisurely opening, flexible, lyrical. They brought out the grandeur and lyricism of the piece, playing it with a nice, controlled tempo. They had a grand conception of the work, bringing out its sublime beauty, particularly in the second, variation movement, with each variation sensitively articulated. The final movement was played with measured energy. It was a very fine performance and both players appeared to share its enjoyment.

For an encore they returned to Schubert with an arrangement of Schubert’s Hark! Hark! The Lark!

This Sunday afternoon concert was notable for its range, the thought-provoking questions it raised about music. No one went home whistling the tunes from the Schnittke Sonata, or even Salina Fisher’s piece,  but everybody left on a high note after the Beethoven.

Both artists, Mark Menzies and Michael Endres, teach at Canterbury University. They both have established international careers.  Mark Menzies taught at the California Institute of the Arts, and gave violin and viola recitals in Los Angeles. He is an advocate of contemporary music, and tours widely.

Michael Endres performs worldwide as soloist and chamber music partner. He has played at festivals in Europe, America, and Asia, including the Beethoven Fest Bonn and the Salzburg Festival.

We are fortunate to have them here in New Zealand.

 

 

 

 

Breaking the piano recital drought – Michael Houstoun at Waikanae

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Waikanae Music Society presents Michael Houstoun (piano)

Bach Toccata in c minor BWV 911
Brahms Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op 24
Chopin Berceuse, Op 57
                 Impromptu in F#, Op 36
Rachmaninoff Prelude in Eb, Op 23, No 2
Prelude in Eb, Op 23 No 6
                              Étude-tableau in  Eb minor, Op 39, No 5
                              Prelude in D, Op 23, No 4
                              Étude-tableau in C minor Op 33, No 3
                              Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 11 June 2023

 Piano recitals by renowned pianists, featuring major works of the piano repertoire, are now rare in Wellington. Paul Lewis, one of the leading pianists of his generation, dropped in for a concerto appearance with the NZSO, but though he has recorded all the Beethoven Sonatas and much of Schubert, he was not given the opportunity to play these in a solo recital – a sad state of affairs when one recalls from earlier times  the anticipated pleasure of hearing any visiting virtuoso in both the concerto repertoire with the NZSO and on the solo recital platform.

How grateful, therefore concert goers must be to the Waikanae Music Society for putting on solo concerts such as that recently given by Michael Houstoun. Michael Houstoun is something of an ‘Artist in Residence NZ’, widely recognized for his insightful recordings of the  Beethoven Sonatas and his series of concerts that featured Bach’s 48 Preludes and Fugues. Notably, in this concert, he played also a bracket of works by Rachmaninoff, recognizing the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff’s birth and 80th anniversary of his death. However,the first half of the concert was Bach and Brahms.

Bach – Toccata in c minor BWV 911

This is a virtuoso piece that Bach wrote to show off his skills as a keyboard player. It starts with a playful theme, which evolves into a complex substantial fugue.  Houstoun shaped every note, every phrase with care. As a pianist he had complete mastery, but it is the thought behind the notes that stood out, how the work was built up, note by note.

Brahms – Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op 24

This is one of the monumental works of the piano repertoire, 25 variations on a simple theme that Handel employed for his set of variations. But Brahms’ work is on a much grander scale. It ranges from the whimsical, the simple, playful, to the dramatic, culminating in the fugue that asks profound questions about the meaning of life. It is a mirror of life’s journey with all its various facets. It is Brahms’ tribute to an earlier, courtly age, yet reflecting the deep thoughtful romantic vision of his time. Houstoun weighted every note. His playing of the fugue, the climax of the work, was restrained, he left its grandeur to the imagination of the listener. It was a beautifully articulated playing. One may hear different interpretations of this work, but probably never a more disciplined and clear reading. It was a memorable performance.

Chopin – Berceuse, Op 57 , Impromptu in F#, Op 36

Again, in these well-known pieces every sound was clearly defined. Houstoun left it up to the listener to seek out the magic, the emotion. Both of the works were carefully shaped, with a lot of thought behind every note.

Rachmaninoff – Prelude in Bb, Op 23, No 2,   Prelude in Eb, Op 23 No 6
Étude-tableau in  Eb minor, Op 39, No 5,   Prelude in D, Op 23, No 4
Étude-tableau in C minor Op 33, No 3 ,   Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9

These works, both early and middle-period Rachmaninoff, are far less well known than his piano concertos, his Paganini Variations for piano and orchestra, his symphonies, or his big Choral works, but in this anniversary year of Rachmaninoff’s birth it was appropriate to have a glimpse of the pre-American Rachmaninoff, secluded on his estate. Houstoun selected these pieces carefully, three each from his Preludes and his longer  Étude-tableau and he performed them in two sections, suggesting that they formed complementary movements of two larger, sonata-like pieces.  Perhaps, as the program notes say, ‘Rachmaninoff was proud to follow in the footsteps of Chopin’, and these works in some ways harked back to the Chopin of Paris and French romanticism, but they also reflected a very different world, one which Rachmaninoff’s detractors would regularly claim his music refused to enter.

Listening to the first Prelude it was not Chopin, but Moussorgsky that came to mind, as also with the last Étude-tableau in D, Op 39, No 9. These are passionate pieces, but Houstoun played them with characteristic restraint. Not for him the dramatic climaxes, or the swaying emotions – “Just look at the notes, boy, play it as it written!” he seemed to be saying.

This was a fine and memorable concert. It left listeners with lots of thoughts about the meaning of the music that they had just heard. We are fortunate to have Michael Houstoun here as a pillar of New Zealand musical life. He made his listener think not only about the music’s emotions, but also the creative processes reflected by the notes on paper, and from the black and white keys of the piano, from and upon which he gave us his unique interpretations of the music.

Michael Houstoun will be back again later this year, on 27 August, playing with the violinist Bella Hristova in an interesting program of sonatas by Poulenc, Ravel and Fauré.

 

A concert of “music from then and now” with the NZSO

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Legacy – The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Stephen de Pledge (Piano)
Alexander Shelley (Conductor)

Gillian Whitehead retrieving the fragility of peace
Mozart Piano Concerto No, 20 in D Minor, K466
Brahms Symphony No, 1 in C Minor Op. 68

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday 1 October 2022

This was a concert that spanned almost two and a half centuries, from Gillian Whitehead’s work commissioned by the NZSO and receiving its first performance during this series of concerts, through Mozart’s most popular piano concerto written in 1785, and culminating with Brahms’ First S ymphony of 1876. I found it a collection of works that asked questions about the nature of music, and what this music meant to people of their time and also to audiences at present.

Gillian Whitehead retrieving the fragility of peace

Gillian Whitehead is one of the doyens of New Zealand composers. Over her long and distinguished career she has drawn on the European Modernist tradition, but she has also mined her Maori heritage. Three years ago the NZSO commissioned her to write a piece, Turanga Nui, commemorating Cook’s landing on these shores in 1769. Now, a new work,  Retrieving the fragility of peace, commissioned by the NZSO for this tour, uses a similar soundscape, using the resources of a large orchestra to capture the sounds of the forest, its bird songs, and perhaps the thumping rhythms that suggest haka, war dance.

Forget conventions such as extended melodies and themes – this piece is about the basic ingredients of music, sound, tones, beat and silences. It challenges the listener, steeped in a European classical musical tradition to sit up and listen. There are instrumental interludes of sheer beauty – an extended cor anglais solo, for example, and  a cello solo – flute, winds, brass and a wide range of percussion and string sounds add colour, but significantly, it is silences that define the piece. It ends in silence, a pause over a few bars, a few seconds. The war dance resolves into peace. It has a distinctive beauty of its own.

Mozart Piano Concerto No, 20 in D Minor, K466

Over a period of two years Mozart wrote 11 concertos, most for his series of subscription concerts in Vienna, making use of the new developments of the piano. Of these, only two are in a minor key, D Minor K466, No. 20 and C Minor K491, No. 24, written in the following year. The D Minor concerto was, and probably still is, the most popular of Mozart’s concertos, foreshadowing the later romantic concertos of Beethoven and other composers. It starts with a haunting phrase repeated, calling to mind the final scene of Don Giovanni, an opera that was written two years later.

The soloist who was expected to play at this concert was the Venezuelan pianist, Gabriela Montero, but in the event she was unavailable, isolating after contracting Covid. At short notice the Auckland pianist, Stephen de Pledge was called upon to replace her. In no way did this seem to disadvantage Wellington. Stephen de Pledge played at a relaxed, expansive tempo which let the music breath. The dramatic first movement was followed by a lyrical extended song of the second movement that his sensitive playing did justice to. The unhurried last movement was a fitting climax to the concert, its dark shadow already there in Mozart’s imagination. A notable feature of this performance was de Pledge’s use of additional ornamentation, which seemed very appropriate to the piece. He also improvised his own cadenzas, with echoes of Mozart’s operas and even of Beethoven, who wrote a cadenza that is widely used. The orchestra supported the soloist with precise yet sensitive responses. For an encore de Pledge played Schumann’s Traumerei,  a very personal, romantic reading of which Schumann would have approved.

Brahms Symphony No, 1 in C Minor Op. 68

Brahms had written a number of large scale orchestral works before writing his first symphony. The shadow of Beethoven loomed large and he had to write something that followed Beethoven’s tradition, yet was different and uniquely his. This symphony is, like the Mozart Concerto, in a minor key. Brahms had a grand vision, a work with a confluence, a mosaic, of short themes that developed into overarching subjects to fill out symphonic sonata form. His musical language was that of the North German choral tradition. The coalescence of these themes created a rich many-layered sound, and in a less clearly-focused performance these individual themes could have got lost, overwhelmed by the main theme, – however, the mark of this performance was that every little nuance came through clearly, the competing themes carefully balanced. The first movement is a dialogue between an overtly military theme and a tranquil subject. The second movement is an extended chorale embellished by a beautiful flute solo, then a plaintive melody played by the strings. This movement is one of the most exquisite pieces of music in the symphonic repertoire. The third movement has the feel of a dark German song on which the rest of the movement elaborates. It is all a long way from the cheerful, lighthearted third movements, Minuet and Trios, of earlier symphonies. The final movement is the conclusion, the summation of the previous movements. The horns, winds, call to mind the Wagnerian sound. Then the Allegro con brio introduces the triumphal final theme, a theme that brings to mind Beethoven’s Ninth. And there, in the horns, there is a synergy with the trumpet calls of Gillian Whitehead’s piece that the concert started with.

It was a beautiful, clear, measured performance. If there were some slight inaccuracies that some picked up, these were completely lost amid the overpowering beautiful playing. The audience responded with a spontaneous ovation that you seldom hear at the end of the symphony. There was a general sense of elation, with people walking out at the end of the concert on a high, with the music ringing in their ears.

Heartland of the Romantic Piano Repertoire – Michael Endres at Waikanae

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Michael Endres (piano)

SCHUBERT Drei Klavierstück, D 946

LISZT Rhapsodie Espagnole, S 254

SCHUMANN Kreisleriana, Opus 16

Memorial Hall, Waikanae

Sunday 18th  September 2022

A solo piano recital featuring the heartland of the romantic piano repertoire, Schubert, Liszt, Schumann, is very rare indeed in Wellington. International luminaries flit in occasionally, play a concerto with an orchestra and flit our again, and the solid works that were once the rock foundation of piano recitals are just no longer heard. We must therefore be grateful to the organizers of the Waikanae Music Society for engaging Michael Endres for this recital. We in Wellington have not had the opportunity to hear him recently, though, going through the reviews on Middle C, I see that he has played in Waikanae a number of times over the years. Part of the problem is, of course, that we don’t have a suitable hall in Wellington at present, nor a piano that can compare with Waikanae’s magnificent Fazioli.

Michael Endres has world-wide reputation, has made a number of recordings, and a range of his concerts and recordings can be accessed on YouTube, and he has made the very sensible decision to move to Christchurch.

He started this recital with Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces). Schubert wrote this in the last year of his all too short life, a year in which he wrote some of his greatest works including some of his monumental sonatas. This, however is a work on a much more modest scale. It is like a set of three Impromptus, and it is the more personal, moving for that. Endres brought out its understated lyrical charm and its sometimes innocent child-like quality. He brought out the contrasts, the drama and the gentle melodies. His sensitive playing did justice to the music, that flowed like songs, much like Schubert’s accompaniments to his songs, and underlying it all was a touch of nostalgia, very much part of this music.

Schubert was followed by Liszt’s Rhapsodie Espagnole. This was a striking contrast to the self-effacing modest mood of the Schubert work. Liszt’s piece is based on two Spanish dances that he had heard during the time he had spent in Spain and Portugal in 1845, La Folia de Espagnol and Jota, It is a dazzling bravura work. Endres did justice to the virtuosity of the piece. He exercised great control, while bringing out the elements of sheer fun. He let the music breath, playing it with natural fluency, straight from the heart.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Schumann, the central figure of romantic music. It started with Kreisleriana, Opus 16, It is a series of eight contrasting fantasy-like pieces in which Schumann attempted to encapsulate the constant swings of moods of Kappellmeister Kreisler, a character in E. T. A. Hoffman’s novel, something that must have been close to Schumann’s heart. He wrote these pieces in the course of just four days in 1838. Hoffman’s Kreisler was an eccentric musician at odds with the world around him, half crazed and intensely passionate. This might have meant something very personal for him with his own issues of mental balance. In the eight short pieces you hear the full gamut of moods and passions, but you also hear the power and musical resources of the piano. It is one of Schumann’s most popular piano pieces, and one is unlikely to ever hear a better performance of it then Endre’s, with its subtlety and sensitivity to the range of moods.

The concert ended with transcriptions of two of Schumann’s songs,  firstly Du bist wie eine Blume (You are like a flower), transcribed by Clara Schumann, and,Frülingnacht (Spring Night),  transcribed by Liszt. 

For an encore Endres played a charming little piece Pensée Fugitive by Smetana.  It was a most satisfying and enjoyable concert. Come back again Michael Endres!

Yuka and Kemp – a concert of popular violin music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music Society presents:

Yuka and Kemp – violin and piano

Elgar – Salut- d’Amour
Beethoven – Sonata in F Major, Op. 24 (Spring)
Maria Theresia von Paradis – Sicilienne
Anthony Ritchie – Song for Minstrel, Op. 120
Massenet – “Méditation” from Thaïs
William Kroll – Banjo and Fiddle
Handel – Sonata in D Major HWV371
Paganini (arr. R. Schumann) – Caprice No. 24 in A minor
Kreisler – Recitativo and Scherzo – Caprice for solo violin Op. 6
–   Liebesleid  / La Gitana
John Williams Theme from Schindler’s List
Monti – Csárdás

Yuka Eguchi (violin) and Kemp English (piano/organ)

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

Sunday, 10th July 2022

Yuka Eguchi is the Assistant Concert Master of the NZSO; Kemp English is a solo organist, a specialist in playing the fortepiano, and a collaborative pianist. The two put together a programme of violin music that most people know from such collections as the ‘best loved violin pieces’, but which are seldom featured in concert programmes. They are light, and lack substance that form the backbone of serious classical recitals, but  they are all immediately appealing.

Edward Elgar Salut d’Amour
The first item in the concert was Elgar’s Salut d’Amour, a popular salon piece that was Elgar’s engagement present to his future wife. It is lovely, personal, and melodious. The performance was not only notable for Yuka’s impeccable violin playing, but also for Kemp’s sensitive piano accompaniment.

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata in F Major, Op. 24 (Spring)
Yuka and Kemp gave this much – loved Beethoven Sonata a straight forward reading. There is much to this piece, questions and answers, humour, and whimsy. The lyrical, gentle, extended song like slow movement, which is the heart of the work, is followed by a limping cheeky third movement. The final movement sums up the whole Sonata; this is what life is all about. Because the playing was so clear, there were details which came through which might have been glossed over in a less precise reading.

Maria Theresia von Paradis Sicilienne
Paradis was a pianist, blind, with a prodigious memory that she needed with no eyesight. She was a contemporary of Mozart whose concertos she played. She was a prolific composer and a teacher, but Sicilienne  that she is best remembered for was, not, in fact written by her. It is a musical hoax, composed by Samuel Dushkin,  –  a Polish American violinist, who worked with Stravinsky and William Schumann on their violin concertos. He also composed pieces under the names of largely forgotten composers such as Paradis and Benda. His Sicilienne is a charming, sentimental piece harking back to another era.

Anthony Ritchie Song for Minstrel, Op. 120
Anthony Ritchie, a contemporary New Zealand composer and, Professor of Music at Otago University, is  best known for his symphonic works. Song for Minstrel, however, is a short work for violin. It starts with a violin solo of sheer beauty, followed by a jazzy development. Minstrel was a dog, not a person: the dog of the poet, Sam Hunt.

Jules Massenet Méditation from “Thaïs”
This popular work is the embodiment of a sentimental romantic age. Suspense awaits each note.

William Kroll Banjo and Fiddle
William Kroll was the leader of the Kroll Quartet, one of the great American string quartets of the 1950s and 1960s. He was an eminent teacher and chamber music player, but is perhaps best known for this short popular fiddle piece, capturing an American folksy idiom with something of a gypsy feel. It has a touch of Hollywood sentimentality. It is both showy and technically difficult.

George Frederick Handel Sonata in D Major HWV371
This sonata is Handel’s last piece of chamber music. It is rich music, evoking Handel’s operatic music, elegant, gallant. Kemp English sat down at the organ instead of the piano and played the keyboard part on the organ, which added a special effect to the piece. The organ made it sound grander, and the violin part more operatic. Like everything in this concert, it was different and illuminating.

Niccolò Paganini (arr. Robert Schumann) Caprice No. 24 in A minor
Paganini’s 24 Caprices for the violin are landmarks in the violin literature, and No. 24 is the best known of them all. It is such a compelling piece that Brahms, Rachmaninov, Boris Blacher, Chopin, Liszt, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Witold Lutoslawski, Karol Szymanowski, Eugéne Ysaÿe, Benny Goodman and many other composers have incorporated it in their work. Robert Schumann decided that a piano accompaniment would enhance the work – who are we, mortals in a later age, to argue with him? Yuka’s was certainly a virtuoso dazzling performance with Kemp quietly in the background on the piano.

Fritz Kreisler Recitativo and Scherzo – Caprice for solo violin Op. 6
Liebesleid / La Gitana
Fritz Kreisler was among the foremost violinists of his time, a generation before Jascha Heifetz. Heifetz rewrote people’s expectations of a violin virtuoso. After Heifetz Kreisler might have been considered old school. Much of his music is charming and gemütlich  evoking old-time Vienna as  in Liebesleid and La Gitana, (The Gypsy). The latter is full of exotic colours and flamenco-type rhythms. Both pieces are from a collection Kreisler published under the title of ‘Classical Manuscripts’. Some  pieces were attributed to Baroque composers, though all were his own compositions. Recitativo and Scherzo – Caprice is something else, a truly challenging virtuoso piece in the tradition of Paganini, or for that matter, Ysaÿe, to whom the piece was dedicated. Yuka was undaunted by these challenges. Jaw-dropping stuff!

John Williams Theme from Schindler’s List
Schindler’s List is a sorrowful Holocaust film and the music captures its deep unrequited sadness with its beautiful haunting melody.

Before she played the piece, Yuka said, that she dedicated it to Peter Barber, long time, colourful and much-loved member of the NZSO who passed away recently, and to Shinzo Abe, former Japanese Prime Minister, who was assassinated the day before this concert.

She also talked about her violin, made by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi in 1766. one of the great luthiers of the golden age of violin making. It is truly a beautiful instrument with a wonderful tone. It was appropriate for Yuka to acknowledge her instrument in this violin recital for violinists.

Vittorio Monti Csárdás
With the final item in the concert we are back in the jubilant mood of the earlier part of the programme. Vittorio Monti was a Neapolitan composer. This is by far his best known work. It is a rhapsodical concert piece, written in 1904, and is based on the Csárdás, a Hungarian folk dance. It is invigorating music, a showpiece for violinists.

The artists received a standing ovation, quite unusual for the sedate, elderly audience of Sunday afternoon concerts. The audience was rewarded with an encore of another lovable Fritz Kreisler piece, Rondino on a theme by Beethoven – and we all left happier for this afternoon of enchanting solo violin music music. Yuka and Kemp are wonderfully accomplished musicians. One wonders why we haven’t heard them before in Wellington.

 

An Eastern European smorgasbord at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Steven Sedley

St. Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series presents:

Music for Cello & Piano from Eastern Europe

Josef Suk: Ballade & Serenade Op 3 for Cello & Piano  (1898)

Witold Lutoslawski Grave Metamorphoses for Cello & Piano (1981)

Bohuslav Martinů Sonata No 2 for Cello & Piano.  (1941)

Robert Ibell (cello) and Rachel Thomson (piano)

St. Andrew on the Terrace

Wednesday, 22 June 2022

We are very fortunate in Wellington to have artists of the calibre of Robert Ibell and Rachel Thomson. They are both very versatile musicians. Ibell is the cellist of the Aroha Quartet, a past member of the NZSO, and now he plays with a number of different ensembles. Rachel Thomson is an accompanist, associated with many local artists. They presented a program of largely unfamiliar works from Eastern Europe. I am giving here a brief account of this, their recent cello-and-piano recital  for the historical record.

Josef Suk: Ballade & Serenade Op 3 for Cello & Piano

This is an early work of Suk. Ibell and Thomson gave the opening sombre Ballade plenty of emotion and intensity, following this with a playful Serenade. Both movements required soulful playing by cellist and pianist alike. They brought out the melodious, approachable character of the work most successfully.

Witold Lutoslawski:i Grave Metamorphoses for Cello & Piano

This was written more than eighty years after the previous piece. A lot had happened to the world and music in those intervening years – two world wars, and the disintegration of the received ideas of what music should sound like. Lutoslawski uses the first four notes of Debussy’s opera, Pelléas and Mélisande which then becomes the metamorphoses, the transformation, the breakup of the notes into different rhythmic configurations. At the end of the piece the four-note configuration from Pelléas returns.  Ibell’s and Thomson’s playing rose splendidly to meet both the technical and musical challenges posed by this work.

Bohuslav Martinů: Sonata No 2 for Cello & Piano

It’s good to hear Martinu’s music being played more frequently in concerts. This substantial sonata was written in 1941. The war was at its most brutal early stages, and Martinů’s Czechoslovakia was no more, causing him to seek refuge in the United States. He wrote this major work, which is essentially in the traditional three movements. The first movement is vigorous and energetic, the second is full of passionate longing with a gorgeous lyrical cello line, and the finale makes use of strong rhythms suggesting Bohemian peasant dances.

This, in tandem with the other works, made for a stimulating concert, and brought to us seldom performed music that was well worth hearing. I thought there was a real sense of fine partnership between Robert Ibell and Rachel Thomson throughout. Their playing was thoroughly convincing demonstrating what sounded like real affinity with this repertoire. For their committed efforts these two musicians deserve our gratitude.

 

 

 

 

Rhapsody and Rapture

Posted on by Anne French

Orchestra Wellington presents: RHAPSODY
BRAHMS – Alto Rhapsody
Contralto: Kristin Darragh
Male chorus Orpheus Choir
CLARA SCHUMANN – Piano Concerto in A minor
Piano: Jian Liu
ROBERT SCHUMANN – Symphony No 4 in D minor, Op. 120
Conductor: Marc Taddei
Orchestra Wellington

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 11th June, 2022

‘It’s all about Clara Schumann,’ said Marc Taddei, Orchestra Wellington’s conductor.

Brahms wrote his Alto Rhapsody for the wedding of Clara’s third daughter, Julie, in 1869. The second work on the programme was written by Clara Weick, as she then was, between the ages of 13 and 15. And Robert Schumann’s Symphony No 4, written in the first rapturous year of their marriage, has the word ‘Clara’ musically encoded throughout.

One thinks of Brahms as having always been middle-aged. I blame record sleeves for reproducing those very bearded photos from his fifties and early sixties – but he was an athletic, handsome, blond twenty-year-old when he first met the Schumanns. He was still a handsome man of 36, blond and beardless, when he wrote the Alto Rhapsody.

The programme notes described the work as ‘a rather odd wedding present’. Odd indeed – it seems to be full of the pain Brahms felt on hearing of Julie’s forthcoming wedding. At the
age of 26 he had been engaged to Agathe von Siebold, but the engagement was broken off. Ten years later he began to fall in love with Julie Schumann, then aged 24, but did not declare himself. When the news of her engagement arrived, he wrote the Alto Rhapsody.

The work is a setting of part of a long poem by Goethe, ‘Harzreise im Winter’, from his Sturm und Drang period, about the loneliness of a man climbing in the Harz mountains in winter. ‘Who heals the pains of one for whom balm has turned to poison?’, it begins. The answer
seems to be: ‘No one. Get over it. Music helps.’

The sombre opening chords are from the lower brass; then the texture thickens. The first two stanzas are in C minor, with a shift to C major in the third. Kristen Darragh’s first entry imitated the dark sound of the lower strings. Although the programme described her as a contralto, the biographical note called her a mezzo-soprano. She has qualities of both: a very beautiful bright higher register, with lots of power lower down. The orchestra provided rhapsodic support. The male chorus (TTBB) was provided by about 30 men of the Orpheus Choir, singing sludgy German that sometimes dragged the tempo. They did rather better further on when they got to the German Requiem-like harmonies.

The Alto Rhapsody is recorded pretty often. Wikipedia lists 19 recordings between 1945 and 2012, with two apiece by Kathleen Ferrier and Janet Baker. I first heard the Janet Baker recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult, and there was something of Janet Baker’s approach in Kristen Darragh’s performance, though I found Darragh’s voice beautiful in every register, from her bottom B to her high G flat. But the Alto  Rhapsody is not performed in concert very often, presumably because of the extra cost of the male choir for only a few pages of music. The recordings vary in length from 11 minutes 15 seconds (a French recording) to over 16 minutes (Christa Ludwig with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm).

Taddei was pretty brisk, coming in at 12 minutes, but the tempi seemed well judged to me. The soloist was never left hanging out to dry, and the emotional depth was quite deep enough without any wallowing. There were many lovely moments, such as the soprano over pizzicato lower strings in the third stanza, a clarinet solo or two (Nick Walshe), the always-gorgeous horns, and the final words from the chorus, ‘sein Herz’ (his heart), which sounded like a final Amen.

Young Clara Wieck was already an accomplished piano soloist and had performed several times with the Gewandhaus Orchestra by the time she started writing this piano concerto. It is a remarkably mature and accomplished work. Clara’s bossy piano-teacher father tried to limit her composing because he thought it would get in the way of her playing. Robert Schumann, whom she met at one of her first recitals (she was 9, he was 18), encouraged it. Writers and critics have long thought that Robert influenced Clara. But the US musicologist, Nancy Reich, who examined the manuscripts of both Schumanns and wrote an acclaimed biography of Clara (Clara Schumann, the artist and the woman, OUP, 1989), said the boot was on the other foot. Clara was a very significant contributor to Robert’s compositions, said Reich; sometimes a co-composer. On the strength of this piano concerto she was clearly capable of it.

From the start, this is a confident work. Clara had already played some Chopin polonaises, and it shows in the writing. (For his part, Chopin heard her play, aged 18, and told Liszt all about her.) Her orchestral writing here is assured and appealing, and the piano writing is glorious, both virtuosic and lyrical. Jian Liu did it full justice, with crisp, precise playing and gorgeous, subtle gradations of colour. Taddei followed Liu’s tempi, and the orchestra played with sensitivity, matching his palette of bright and dark colours. In the second movement the stage lights came down, leaving only the pianist and the first desk of the cello section lit. The piano plays an extended solo passage, and finally the principal cello (Jane Young) enters. There is a passionate duet; then the cello withdraws. The third movement is also attacca, beginning with a little trumpet fanfare plus timpani, then a big string sound and full lower brass, a horn solo (Shadley van Wyk and Ed Allen), and an echo from bassoon (Preman Tilson). The trumpets introduce a Chopin-esque passage (minus pathos), just lots and lots of notes up and down the keyboard with tempo changes. Jian Liu turned on a dime, with Taddei and the orchestra always keeping in touch.

The audience went wild. They obviously love Jian Liu (who doesn’t?) and they were warm in their applause for Jane Young too. After being called back twice, Jian Liu came back a third time and played an encore, a pleasant nocturne by … Clara Schumann.

Only one work after the interval, Robert Schumann’s well-known Fourth Symphony, written in the rapturous first year of their marriage. Marc Taddei, obviously a great favourite of this large subscriber audience, spent some time explaining how Clara’s name (C B A G# A) appears in every movement, sometimes inverted. Examples were provided on the spot by the cello section, Concertmaster Amalia Hall, the first violins, the trombones, and the horns. The audience loved it.

‘This is one of the most radical symphonies of the nineteenth century,‘ he told them (because each movement flows straight into the next). And then, ‘It is a privilege to serve you.’ The audience purred with pleasure.

And off they went.

Schumann’s Fourth is an attractive work, bathed in sunshine. The orchestra played it well, from the confident opening to the three big final chords. The cellos always made a lovely sound; the string sound was warm and the upper brass bright and clean. Amalia Hall’s ‘filigree’ version of the Clara motif was lyrical and beautiful. The third movement burst open, a fast and furious scherzo, with exquisite violin playing. The horns sang the Clara theme; then the trio section followed with the first violins playing the filigree Clara motif. The fourth movement was all sunshine and daisies, with tidy tempo changes, before the final accelerando to the finish. Rapturous applause.

Two centuries of Spanish keyboard music

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Lorelle McNaughton (piano)
PIANO MUSIC FROM SPAIN

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace

Sunday, 29 May 2022

Solo piano concerts are rare these days, apart from the occasional lunch time recitals, and Wellington Chamber Music should be complimented on featuring this concert. Lorelle McNaughton studied in Spain with  renowned Spanish pianists and is something of a specialist in performing Spanish music. She has toured Australia and New Zealand with a programme of Spanish piano works and this concert is part of a nationwide tour taking her to many centres right through the country. She played a broad range of Spanish keyboard music from Padre Soler’s two sonatas written in the mid-1700s to Mompou’s little dance of 1941

Padre Soler (1729-1783)

Sonata in D minor R24

Sonata in D-flat R88

Although Soler composed works of many different genre, concertos, pieces for organ, for string, for choirs, he is now mainly remembered for his around 150 keyboard sonatas. They were probably influenced by Scarlatti, who was a generation older, but Soler’s sonatas are more varied in form, and some longer. Playing music written for harpsichord presents special problems for a pianist. Harpsichords are more even in tone, there are no crescendos, no sustained notes, so the phrasing has to stand for these qualities. McNaughton’s meticulous attention paid to the notes made for a clarity that served the music well.

Enrique Granados (1867-1916)

21 Danzas españas Op. 37

          i.”Galante”

          ii.“Rondella aragonesa”

Next came the music of Granados, whose “Andaluza” Spanish Dance No. 5 from this set is widely known, McNaughton, to her credit, instead letting us enjoy two of the lesser-known dances, each of which capture the strong rhythmic character of Spanish music. They have lovely lyrical interludes, but also call for fiery temperamental reading to reflect the abandon of the dance. ‘Galante’ is a type of Bolero dance, gallant and flirtatious, ‘Rondella aragonesa’, is an Aragonese folk dance with wild beat, interspersed by a song-like lyrical passage.

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909)

Book III of Iberia (1907)

  1. El Albaicin

       ii El polo

       iii. Lavapiés

Iberia is one of the masterpieces of the impressionist piano repertoire. It is one of the most challenging works for the piano. This was the first of two groups of pieces performed by McNaughton from the work, each of these three pieces evoking a Spanish city, its festival or song and dance. ‘El Albaicin’ is the name of a gypsy quarter in Granada, known for its singing, flamenco dancing and virtuoso skills on the guitar, tambourine and castanet, realised here by McNaughton with suitable vigour, colour and atmosphere. ‘El polo’ is a sorrowful, melancholic Andalusian song and dance, the pianist bringing a darker, more inward and sombre character overall to the music. Lavapiés is the  boisterous music of an inn in a popular district of Madrid.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)

Cuatro Piezas Españolas (1909)

  1. “Aragonesa”
  2. “Cubana”
  3. “Montañesa”
  4. “Andaluza”

Falla said that he was trying to express through music the soul and atmosphere of each of these regions of Spain drawing on popular songs and rhythms. ‘Aragonesa’ is in the style of jota, here launched confidently and expansively by McNaughton, ‘Cubana’ here was at first silkier, more suggestive and then playful under McNaughton’s fingers, in the guajiro and zapateado dances,  ‘Montañesa’ quotes from Asturian and Mountain songs, and ‘Andaluza’ uses aspects of popular flamenco forms. Underlying all this could be heard a suggestion of subtle guitar music.

Frederico Mompou (1893-1987)

Canciones y Danzas No. 1 (1921) and No. 6 (1941)

Mompou is best known a a miniaturist, writing short, delicate improvisatory music. He uses traditional Catalan melodies and other Spanish music. These two pieces seemed in McNaughton’s hands like gentle, captivating salon music, spontaneous, straight from the heart.

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909)

Book IV of Iberia

  1. Malaga
  2. Jerez
  3. Eritaña

Like Book III these pieces capture the music of traditional regional Spanish dances. Malaga evokes the style of  malageña (though McNaughton doesn’t have quite the fluency and suppleness of Alicia de Larrocha, here, she negotiates the terrain steadily and purposefully) Jerez is in the style of a melancholic introspective gypsy dance (a beautiful, lovingly-nuanced reading, here), and Eritaña comes from the name of a popular inn on the outskirts of Seville, noted for its colorful flamenco performances.

It was an afternoon of colorful, and technically challenging music. Lorella McNaughton took her audience on a tour of Spanish piano music, from the mid eighteenth to the mid twentieth   century. Her restrained performance, with meticulous attention to the notes, made this an interesting, enjoyable concert.

 

William Berry – a “young lion of the keyboard” at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WILLIAM BERRY PIANO RECITAL

(In preparation for the National Piano Competition 2022)

  • performing the following three 30-minute programmes:

Programme 1: Scriabin – Trois Etudes op. 65 Beethoven – Sonata in E major op. 109 Albeniz – Triana William Berry – On Edge

Programme 2: Haydn – Sonata in B minor Hob. XVI:32 Rachmaninoff – Sonata in Bb minor op. 36

Programme 3: Carl Vine – Sonata 1 Chopin – Polonaise-Fantaisie op. 61

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

Sunday, 30th January, 2022

I was invited to attend this concert merely as a listener rather than as a reviewer; but the playing of eighteen year-old William Berry, a finalist in last year’s National Competition, calls, I think, for some comment by way of appreciation of what I consider to be the young performer’s tremendous talent. The competition he’s about to take part in stipulates two thirty-minute programmes of music chosen by the pianist – so one presumes Berry will either perform two of the three thirty-minute sequences of works he presented to us this afternoon, or else rearrange the items into the desired framework, depending upon which he thought came off best in performance.

Looking at the three different programmes presented by the pianist, I thought they each provided a judiciously-balanced range of repertoire which allowed him to demonstrate his capabilities to their best advantage. The first programme began with Scriabin’s Trois Etudes Op.65, the opening study all fantasy and vertiginous impulse, featuring in particular beautifully-feathery right-handed work, the whole balancing mercurial whimsy against both abandonment and circumspect inwardness. This was followed by a long-breathed meditation, one whose notes for the most part resembled exquisite stalactite-like progressions, though the latent energies flickered tantalisingly a couple of times before returning to the piece’s essential quietitude. As for the third etude , Berry breathtakingly set the opening fleet-fingered figurations against the heavier, more insistent shouts which eventually won the day with a spectacular ascending flourish at the piece’s end.

In its own way the world of Beethoven’s Op.109 E major Sonata sounded as distinctive as Scriabin’s, the evocations of each of the movements as singular and “from the air” as those of the Russian master we heard, written almost a century later. Berry gave the opening movement the free space that both the first flowing notes and the contrasting expansive rejoiners themselves suggested, impulses which alchemically made firstly poetry and then grandeur out of motion. While I thought he risked taking the swagger out of  the march-like second movement by taking it all a shade too fast, the rushing torrent that the playing evoked suited the work’s free-spirited aspect as admirably. I was sorry the repeats in the “theme and variations” were not observed, as I felt we seemed to move more quixotically than ecstatically through some of the movement’s treasurable mood-changes (I particularly wanted to hear again that wonderful “delayed modulation” sequence in one of the variations, but had to be content with this more-than-usually austere view of things, if beautifully played. But Berry made amends with his heartfelt treatment of the contrast between the “trills” sequences and the return of the movement’s quietly ecstatic chordal opening at the sonata’s end.

How thrilling to hear a piece from Albeniz’s Iberia , the colourful and evocative Triana, with its distinctive flamenco rhythms and textures characteristic of gypsy music. Berry warmed to this music from its deceptively dainty beginnings, investing the sequences with increasing textural and colouristic girth, and arriving at the piece’s middle section with considerable relish, the trajectories readily inviting the “big tune” to dance, Berry’s sure-fingered playing beautifully augmenting the textures with all kinds of tactile harmonic clusters that distinctively and irresistibly flavour the music.

We heard one of Berry’s own compositions to conclude this part of the programme, a short but hair-raising piece entitled On Edge. The music opened flowingly at first, before entangling its lines in what seemed claustrophobic fashion, with figurations shouldering one another aside as fresh impulses sprang forth, the whole gathering itself up into a scherzando section of considerable brilliance and excitement.

A Haydn Sonata (Hob.XVI:32 in B Minor) proved an excellent choice to begin the second thirty-minute section of the recital – the opening music was delivered with wit, point and schwung, giving the dynamic and textural contrasts proper dramatic life, especially in the movement’s second subject. The composer didn’t disappoint with his development sequence, enabling us to enjoy as much as did the soloist the garrulity of the repeated figures and their burgeoning interactions. And what a heartwarming homecoming here under Berry’s fingers to conclude the movement!

An attractive Menuetto was gracefully and winsomely brought into play, the opening contrasting startlingly with a middle section that seemed to fancy itself as some kind of feisty toccata for a few measures, before returning abashedly to its former manner. Continuing its litany of surprises, the work’s finale then straightaway began a kind of “cat-and-mouse” fugue, one which drew upon ever-burgeoning reserves of energy to produce a brilliant effect via Berry’s scintillating fingerwork, ideas shouldering one another aside with freshly-wrought impulses, before surprising us all at the work’s conclusion with a nicely-timed throwaway ending!

Because of Berry’s boldly-conceived programming, I enjoyed the juxtapositioning of Haydn’s and Rachmaninov’s treatment of sonata form in this segment of the concert as much as anything I heard this afternoon. Here we were able to experience a no-holds-barred arch-romantic approach to a traditionally classical format made to work from ”within” as effectively, for me, as did Haydn’s in its own context. Interestingly, Berry chose to perform Rachmaninov’s 1913 “original” version of a work he was to extensively revise in 1931 – regarding the revision, the composer himself wrote: – “I look at some of my earlier works and see how much there is that is superfluous. Even in this Sonata so many voices are moving simultaneously, and it is so long. Chopin’s Sonata lasts nineteen minutes and all has been said……” To this day pianists and commentators argue whether Rachmaninov’s alterations to the work are to its advantage, whether they eliminate unnecessary material and tighten up the structure, or whether they are a mutilation which upset the work’s formal balance and thematic argument.

My own feeling is that the first two movements are superb in their original versions, but the finale doesn’t for me sustain its overall level of creative flow to the same extent, relying over much on a certain rhetorical flamboyance which requires white heat in performance to really make work. Most astonishingly, William Berry’s passionate commitment to the cause carried us all away, riveting  our sensibilities and leaving us imbued with the music’s fervour of expression and its composer’s unique sense of a world in the turmoil of change. I loved the slow movement’s long-breathed resonances here, Rachmaninov personalising his deep identification with the ambiences he loved, those of ritual, song and music simply in the air of his native land.

The one piece across the three programmes which for me didn’t quite “fire” was in the last group, and the very last work Berry played in the concert proper, Chopin’s enigmatic Polonaise-Fantasie Op.61 – his reading here seemed almost too fluently-propelled to my ears, smoothing out some of the music’s rhythmic girth which connects with its native earth vis-à-vis the dance, and as such leaving a somewhat under-characterised impression.  I wondered whether the Chopin’s proximity to Berry’s brilliant performance of Carl Vine’s Piano Sonata No. 1  (part of which I had previously reviewed in a concert more than a year ago – https://middle-c.org/2020/09/wellington-entrants-shape-up-for-the-national-junior-piano-competition-finals/) had resulted in the former’s more circumspect manner being somewhat over-galvanised in the slipstream of such brilliance, coruscation and crackling voltage as evoked by Vine in his Sonata and realised here by the performer.

To tumultuous applause Berry took his final bow, then returned to play us an encore, characteristically, something off the beaten track and filled with interest – it was a piece of Nikolai Medtner’s, one of his numerous skazka (translated; “fairy tales”) this one Op.20 No. 1. It wasn’t something I knew, but the piece sounded very like Rachmaninov (he and Medtner were contemporaries)……it made for a satisfying and sonorous conclusion to a wide-ranging recital.

I feel certain that everybody present would want to wish William Berry all the best in his forthcoming competition – judging by the no-holds-barred aspect of his playing for us throughout the afternoon he seems sufficiently fired up so as to give it all his best shot.

 

Firstly sparks, and then a conflagration – pianist Otis Prescott-Mason in recital

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Otis Prescott-Mason (piano) at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

CHOPIN – Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor
RAVEL – Une barque sur l’ocean (from Miroirs)
BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.28 in A Major, Op.101
LISZT – Annees de Pelerinage Book 2 (Italy) S.161

Saturday, 20th November, 2021

Having heard, and spoken or written about so many piano recitals and recordings over the years in a critical capacity, I’m finding myself these days increasingly gravitating towards performances that bring to the fore a sense of sheer enjoyment of and involvement in the music’s playing. On the strength of what I heard at St.Andrews’ Church last Saturday afternoon, the young Wellington pianist Otis Prescott-Mason seemed to me to exhibit such qualities in unselfconscious spadefuls through his playing – here, negotiating a quixotic first half (by turns energetic and thoughtful) which struck sparks of different voltages, and then embarking post-interval on an epic journey whose concluding episodes brought forth a thrilling sense of open conflagration.

Currently studying with Jian Liu at Victoria University of Wellington, Prescott-Mason began his piano studies with Erin Taylor at the age of 5 through to the tertiary level, when he undertook a two-year period of tuition with Emma Sayers. He’s had a number of competition successes over the duration, the most significant being his winning first prize at the New Zealand Junior Piano Competition in Auckland in 2020, while he’s won on several occasions the Wellington Branch of IRMTNZ’s Recital Competition and the Tertiary Sonata Competition.

His choice of repertoire for today’s recital suggested at once his capacity to identify with a wide range of different musical styles and eras, and his readiness to rise to a challenge, with the music of Franz Liszt in particular representing a kind of acme of virtuosity and expression of Romantic feeling, in relation to the entire literature for solo piano. While the composer’s three “Years of Pilgrimage” collections or “Books” of pieces don’t consciously set out to define Romantic keyboard virtuosity as sharply as do his earlier Transcendental Etudes , certain sections of the former (such as the “Dante” Sonata which makes up the Italian Book’s final section)  require a similarly “transcendental” technique. But these works have a more profound purpose, presenting a freshly-wrought synthesis of poetic feeling with music, an uplifting of the kind that the philosopher Hegel referred to as “a free resounding of the soul” – whether manifestations of art, poetry or recollections of direct experience, Liszt sought to consciously fuse all of those things through music’s sounds to an extent that no-one had previously attempted.

Preceding the Liszt pieces in the concert’s first half, however, were whole worlds within themselves to bring into being, each of which Prescott-Mason plunged into wholeheartedly, bent on realising the “character” of whatever phrase, sequence or overall mood he brought to our attention – firstly came the Chopin B-flat Minor Scherzo’s dramatic beginning, with the tentative “knockings” of the opening forcefully countered by the answering phrases, contrasted with a beautiful cantabile melody launched over an exhilaratingly headlong accompaniment. Prescott-Mason delivered all of this and its sudden “breaking off” with arresting verve and focus, bringing out an almost religious feeling to the music’s central story-telling aspect which, by turns animated and becalmed, returned us in wonderment to a “meanwhile, back at the…..” with the reprise of the opening “knock and answer” sequences. The subsequent “working out” of the cantabile melody’s fate became a brilliant certainty in the pianist’s hands, the coda incorporating its strains into a spectacular conclusion!

Though I’ve never forgotten a breath-catching 2014 performance by another young, former Wellington pianist, Ludwig Treviranus, of Ravel’s Une barque sur l’ocean from the suite “Miroirs”, Prescott-Mason’s playing here demonstrated a similarly oceanic sweep allied to an acute ear for detail, accounting for the piece’s remarkable capacity in a sensitive performance to simultaneously transport and engage! Ravel often asks his music’s interpreters for what seem like contradictory qualities, as here, a deeply embedded emotion expressed with the utmost precision (one thinks also of Le Gibet from “Gaspard de la Nuit”, for example); and I got from Prescott-Mason’s playing an underlying nostalgia in the figurations and harmonies which ineffably expressed the solitude of the vessel and a steadily-focused left-handed framework that somehow suggested the vast indifference of the ocean, the whole making for an overwhelming impression.

How wonderful that this young pianist chose one of my favourite Beethoven Sonatas to include in this programme! – its opening always makes me catch my breath, an ascending phrase that seems wrought entirely from the air as if a mere passing thought, but then engenders whole sequences of give-and-take, each ascent having its own impulsive quest within an “off-the-beat” framework, Prescott-Mason dreamily “floating” the sounds in what feels like free space. The ensuing March, as playful as determined, must have surely helped inspire Schumann’s frequent use of similar dotted-rhythm-patterns, the pianist as elfin as magisterial in his approach, avoiding any sense of doggedness  in the music’s insistence. Prescott-Mason “enjoyed” the Trio’s part-fugal, part canonic game of chase between the lines, and then nicely voiced the scherzo’s return as if “from afar”, spontaneously leading us to the conclusion as a surprise rather than a pre-arranged signal.

The slow movement here seemed to resound with wonderment, its focused distillation in the pianist’s hands leading us trance-like to a kind of hiatus filled with longing, then, without warning, bringing out the work’s opening phrase once again! – and after the answering response had followed suit, the music seemed to explode with ecstatic trills and shouts of joy as Prescott-Mason released the finale upon its course! Where to from there? A “Tempest Sonata”-like arpeggiated chord seemed to cast a sea-change over the music, and a fugue began (a trial run for the “Hammerklavier” Sonata’s fugue, perhaps?), adroitly subjecting the finale’s opening phrase to all kinds of variation before crashing over the points and back onto the mainstream, Prescott-Mason giving his all in keeping the impulses on track and pumping out the energies! A reflective, “winding-down” ending is mooted at first, but with a number of precipitate chords right at the end, Prescott-Mason spectacularly paid the composer his dues in grand style.

To the pianist’s credit, there was hardly a sense at the interval of the recital being something of “two halves”, such was the feeling of continuity and ongoing purpose when he appeared to begin the Liszt part of the programme. Having readily enthused about his playing thus far, I confess to finding his rendition of the opening Spozalizio, a piece inspired by Raphael’s painting “The Marriage of the Virgin”, a tad too rushed in places. The music depicts the marriage ceremony, the programme describing “a lovely bridal song with suggestions of wedding bells”, the piece calm and ritualistic at its beginning, the softly-tolling bells alternating with the three-note “motif” that will play such a significant part in the music, the figures evoked by the stillnesses beginning to move and breathe as the sounds become increasingly animated.

Prescott-Mason’s view of the scenario was obviously a young man’s one, filled with eagerness and excitement at the occasion of a marriage, and thus enlivening the ritual aspects and letting the pealing bells “have their head”. Liszt allows the bells moments of growing excitement during the lead-up to the marriage vows, and unleashes them tellingly at the moment of the marriage pronouncement, but otherwise keeps the solemnity of the ritual very much to the fore; whereas here I felt “pushed” a shade too insistently through the ceremonial layers. Having said this I thought the pianist “enabled” the piece’s epilogue beautifully, evoking the distant bells’ pealing as a kind of ambient memory of the day’s events, and resounding them in the mind even when out of earshot. It’s all a matter of individual response, in the end; and certainly the present performance wove plenty of magic, if at a higher voltage in places than I expected.

I had no such qualms regarding Prescott-Mason’s playing of Il penseroso, Liszt’s evocation of Michelangelo’s figure carved for the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici, the music similarly wrought from what the sleeve notes describe as “lightless sonorities and frozen….melodic motion”. The pianist suberbly brought out the pounding crunchiness of the dissonances amid the darkness of the textures, releasing, as Michelangelo did from the marble, the “character” Liszt intended through his sombre evocations. Afterwards, the Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa was the perfect foil for such solemnities, the music a colourful depiction of high spirits.

Where I felt Prescott-Mason particularly excelled was in his sensitive delineation of Liszt’s responses to each of three sonnets written by the scholar and poet Petrarch (born Francesco Petracco in 1304, into a family that was acquainted at the time with Dante Alighieri). Petrarch became popularly renowned for his unrequited love for a woman called Laura, whom he immortalised in a series of poems, which are regarded as polished and perfected forms of the existing “sonnet” form. Liszt set three of these to music, firstly as songs during 1838-39, and then reworking them as piano solos for this Second Book of his pilgrimage years during the 1850s. Incidentally, Petrarchan scholars have since renumbered all 366 of the sonnets, so that Liszt’s numberings for the three (47, 104 and 123) are revised as 61, 134 and 156 respectively and thus don’t correspond with more recent editions of them!

Sonnet No.47 (61) Benedetto sia ‘l giorno (Blessed be the day), featured at the outset such a felicitous touch from Prescott-Mason as to give full moment to the music’s lifting of a curtain allowing light to flood in from the “blessed day”. And the following song of love that the pianist brought into being here abounded with tender nuances, the emotion encompassed beautifully, held at one point by a gorgeously filigree descending passage before being run again, accompanied this time by repeated figurations of heightened beseechment – words of love, indeed!

The most well-known of the three is Sonnet No 104 (134) Pace non trovo (I find no peace), beginning with agitated phrases that became halting, desperate gesturings of bewilderment to the heavens – and finally heartfelt and passionate words addressed to the beloved. Prescott-Mason encompassed it all, bringing out the bard-like character of the opening entreaties, imbuing each phrase with either gravitas or delicacy by turns, and realising the original text’s stark contrasts of emotion with strongly-characterised impulse – “I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like Ice – I have nothing, yet embrace the whole world”. He then delivered the later forthright sequences with such surety as to exclaim “Both life and death displease me – and my sorrow is the cause of my strife!” before essaying the music’s rhapsodic afterthoughts with the most poetic of tones, “placing” the phrase’s highest note with absolute certainty, and resonating the “dying fall” of the remainder with appropriately stoic resignation.

In some ways the third of Liszt’s settings of these Sonnets, No.123 (156), I’vidi in terra angelici costumi  (I saw on earth figures of angelic grace) is the most remarkable of all in its economy of both material and gesture – its opening activates murmuring undulating figures and unassuming crescendi to establish the piece’s quietly rapturous mood, after which the theme continues to freely sound, interlaced with various decorative phrases generated from the opening. I thought Prescott-Mason’s detailing of these of these felicities within the music’s greater flow simply magical, as was his gathering up of the impulses into an ecstatic frisson of enchantment with the world’s “celestial harmony”, before returning, via a spontaneous burst of birdsong to a world of “angelic grace”, all bestowed by the glory of love – a memorable and treasurable sequence!

Had the recital finished at that ecstatic point no-one could have complained – but the grand design of things having already been set, the young pianist unhesitatingly steered our sensibilities towards Liszt’s epic realisation for piano solo of thirteenth-century poet Dante Alighieri’s work The Divine Comedy, a work which took the composer over twenty years to develop into its final definitive form.  Often called merely the “Dante Sonata”, the work was given the title “Apres une Lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata”, one borrowed from the title of a poem by Victor Hugo based on Dante’s work. Rather than come up with a mere synopsis of Dante, Liszt sought to create a series of vivid atmospheric impressions which, when aligned, themselves conveyed a real sense of a musical process or journey. The famous falling tri-tone opening in the music suggests a descent into Hell, while throughout the work the tonal progressions ceaselessly build up links between all the sonata’s themes, gradually becoming an ascent towards the Divine.

From the beginning’s diabolical “ringing-out”, Prescott-Mason’s incisive playing straightaway drove the music purposefully downwards and into Liszt’s evocation of Dante’s world, the repeated “Devil’s interval” motif creepily joining forces with descending chromatic octave scales to generate a kind of infernal “Abandon hope” scenario. How cleverly the music gradually took into the textures the countering elements which brought forth the “redemptive” themes, Prescott-Mason beautifully judging the cumulative effect so as to infuse these same textures with warmth and light, before retrenching the music’s sinews with purpose for the oncoming fray. His playing, both technically and interpretatively, delineated most skilfully the composer’s intermeshing of motifs from both darkness and light to underline the endless conflict between them in both cosmic and individual realms, and he built the excitements and tensions of disharmony as readily as he evoked the serenity and bliss of peaceful order. We were left in no doubt at the recital’s end as to the extent of the journey we had all made together, one exhilarating and revelatory, Otis Prescott-Mason having certainly done the work and its evocations proud for our great pleasure.